Category: mass incarceration

December 4, 2021

I Survived Death Row, But I’ll Never Escape It

Oklahoma plans to take the life of Bigler Jobe “Bud” Stouffer II next week, and four more lives in coming months. Executions are also planned in Texas and Alabama. Like many people, I’m physically repulsed by the thought of the government killing — murdering — anyone. But an impending execution affects me more than most. I survived 13 grueling years on death row in Illinois. During that time, I witnessed 12 people — sons, fathers, brothers — executed at the hands of the state. Each of us were told our lives were beyond repair, that the world was a better place without us in it.

In 2003, then-Gov. George Ryan issued a blanket commutation to everyone on death row in Illinois. I escaped the death penalty — my sentence was commuted to life without parole. But the nightmares, the trauma and the despair will always haunt me.

Next week’s planned killing in Oklahoma is the latest in a long history of executions carried out in the name of “justice.” But the death penalty is far from just. Capital punishment is a racist relic that violates our most basic civil liberties and exists in stark opposition to the purported fundamental values of our nation. It’s time for this barbaric practice to end.

I cannot describe the horror I felt during each execution, while I was on death row. Twelve separate times, I watched correctional officers stolidly and indifferently march a condemned man to his death. Each execution I witnessed marked the death of a friend — a friend with whom I prayed, shared my fears, and supported as we weathered abuse from cruel and callous prison guards.

My death sentence didn’t end when I walked off death row. Like some 200,000 people nationwide, I was condemned to death by incarceration, or a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 abolished the death penalty because its application was arbitrary and discriminatory. But it allowed the practice to resume four years later, after states adopted new rules intended make the death penalty “fairer.” Yet, like many criminal legal reforms, those changes did little to fix a system rife with inequity. A 2020 report found that more than 40 percent of people awaiting execution in the U.S. were Black, like me, despite the fact that Black people only make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population. The report also found prosecutors were more likely to seek the death penalty when the victim was white.

Proponents of state-sanctioned killing argue it is reserved for the worst of the worst. In reality, those condemned to die are often the most vulnerable members of our communities — roughly one-fifth of people on death row have severe mental illnesses. When the state sought to end my life, I was 19 years old, illiterate and living with mental illness. Although I was still just a child, I had survived years of neglect, physical and emotional abuse, and sex trafficking. Homeless and starving, drugs and alcohol became my only escape. Delusional and desperate, I killed a man for money he didn’t have.

Like all people on death row, I needed a zealous advocate to fight for me at every step of the way. Yet lawyers charged with representing vulnerable people facing death at the hands of the state are rarely up for the task. Far too often, the most serious cases are handled by appointed attorneys who are plainly ineffective. Many are overworked, underpaid and unprepared to navigate the labyrinthine process from conviction through final appeal.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence in opposition to the death penalty is the frailty of human judgement. Given the stakes — a human life — there is no room for error, factual or moral. But error is everywhere: Since executions were reinstated in the 1970s, 185 people sentenced to death have been exonerated.

Even worse is the near certainty that a person condemned to die will continue to develop, to grow, to mature long after their death sentence has been handed down. During the 13 years I spent on death row, and in the 17 years I spent serving a natural life sentence after that, I learned to read, went to college and found religion. I started one of the most successful programs within Illinois prisons, one run entirely by incarcerated people. I lived and, despite the inherent oppression of our prison system, I thrived.

My humanity was considered “irrelevant” by the state when I was on death row, my existence reduced to my worst act. The complex life experiences leading up to that act — abuse, trauma, addiction, poverty — were brushed over and ignored.

I survived death row, but I still have not made sense of this country’s hypocrisy. We kill people to emphasize that killing is wrong. We value personal growth and responsibility but make no space in our legal system to recognize transformation.

We kill in the name of justice. A racist system that ends the lives of vulnerable people, no matter who they become, is anything but.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
November 29, 2021

Unnecessary and Complicated Transfers Are Spreading COVID in Federal Prisons

When I began my interview with Brett Ellis, a federal prisoner at FCI Seagoville in Seagoville, Texas, he introduced himself by saying matter-of-factly, “I’m CONVICT-19, and I tested positive.”

Perplexed and somewhat confused, I responded, “You mean COVID-19,” to which he immediately corrected me, insisting, “No, CONVICT-19, that’s what the marshals and the guards call me, and that was before I tested positive.” He continued, “In fact, I’m only in prison for 19 days, so getting COVID was about the only thing I had time to do.”

Ellis’s story is just one of thousands of similar stories of federal prisoners who are routinely subject to a series of complicated and unnecessary transfers requiring air, bus, and van transport from federally contracted county jails to a number of federal facilities including detention centers, transfer centers and holdover centers in what has become another kind of epidemic altogether — one that is worsening the already-prolific spread of the pandemic throughout the U.S. prison system.

The U.S. government designates Ellis “Federal Inmate 22319-031.” He happened to arrive as the last of 19 prisoners off a prison transport bus. As FCI Seagoville’s intake guards conducted roll call, each prisoner entering the building would be initially identified by his seat number. Ellis was number 19 out of 19 prisoners arriving, so they initially called him “19.” Coincidentally, the prison officially uses the last two digits of a prisoner’s primary number to separate prisoners into manageable groups for processing and services. Ellis’s number happened to be 22319, and he recalled moving through issue and dress-out while being summoned at each stop. “Yo, 19! Uniform pick-up, now!” “19! Commissary up!” “Where’s 19? Boots and laces! Take ’em or leave ’em! Let’s go 19!”

Ellis was sent back to prison on a probation violation for having the name and phone number of a person convicted of a felony — his best friend — listed in his cellphone. Of course, Ellis was permitted to have the phone, but he had not received permission from probation to have his best friend’s name and number as a contact. For this infraction, Ellis would be subject to a massive investigation, a revocation hearing, a probation violation and a newly imposed sentence of six months in prison.

It would take the system five and a half months just to deliver him from his home in Gardner, Kansas, to Seagoville — his assigned custody location. After several endless bus rides, private prison overnights, nationwide airlifts, and van transports, he would only have 19 days left to serve in prison. Back in Kansas, he asked the U.S. Marshals why he couldn’t just stay at the private prison, CoreCivic-Leavenworth, where he started, to which, the officer responded, “Everyone’s gotta’ eat.”

Ellis had been originally arrested in 2009, and had never been in trouble with the law. He had no criminal history. He had no history of violence. He had no hands-on victim with his charge. When he was arrested, all he wanted to do was accept responsibility, plead guilty, serve his time in good faith and return home. The system, however, would simply not allow that.

He had been initially arrested 11 years previous for possession of an illicit image depicting a minor that was recovered from his computer’s hard drive. The image was captured from an illegal website that he may or may not have visited — he simply says he doesn’t remember. He admits he had clicked on a plethora of taboo websites. Ellis accepted his fate. He took responsibility and cooperated fully. He agreed to plead guilty to put all this behind him. Unfortunately, the U.S. criminal legal system does not allow for an efficient prosecution when so many departments, agencies and civil servants, all “gotta’ eat.”

Ellis started this long and arduous criminal proceeding in 2009 when agents first arrived on his doorstep — 11 men deep, guns drawn, battering ram deployed, chaos and pandemonium as officers screamed, “get on the ground!” The first question Ellis asked himself was, “How did they know which websites I had visited?” The fed’s international cyber-crimes task force had been watching his surfing activities for more than two years before they orchestrated the siege.

He was then scooped up by the tactical team and delivered to CoreCivic-Leavenworth near his home. While housed under a federal government contract over the next few months, he would await his fate. U.S. Marshals would begin a series of transports to and from the federal court as part of the arraignment process. Ellis would be returned in five months for his official plea hearing. He would sit around at the holdover facility for another nine months, until the date of his formal sentencing hearing. Finally, he would receive a term of six years imprisonment for what the court would describe as egregious and inappropriate behavior.

By then reduced in the eyes of the guards to simply “CONVICT-19,” Ellis would be transferred by bus, airlift and transport van in 2012 to his destination at FCI La Tuna in New Mexico, where he would serve out his original sentence. Others at La Tuna serving time for similar “non-contact” computer offenses commiserated about prison terms exceeding 12, 15, even 20 years. Six years, Ellis thought, must be a walk in the park.

Ellis would eventually complete his term of imprisonment in February 2018 and be released as a “model” prisoner. He would be returned home with no infractions, no violations, but also with no formal rehabilitation or behavioral counseling except that which he initiated on his own. Despite having only a 1.5 percent chance of reoffending, he would face a 63 percent chance of returning to prison on a non-offense probation violation, so he intended to “walk on eggshells,” as he put it. Upon release, he would begin his eight years of supervision under the watchful eye of the U.S. Office of Probation. He would become one of nearly a million individuals on the sex offender registry.

Ellis eventually landed full-time employment in 2018 at a neighborhood grocery store. He attended all his required behavioral therapy meetings. He adhered to his electronic monitoring obligations. He sat for random polygraph exams, and he consistently reported to his eastern district probation officer. As a precaution for his fellow co-workers and grocery store customers, Ellis would meticulously follow all COVID-related protocols including wearing a mask, physical distancing, washing his hands, and receiving intermittent testing. He was absolutely, positively, unequivocally, “COVID-19 negative” when the assault team arrived on his doorstep later that day.

Earlier in the day, Ellis had punched into work as usual, but on this day things felt different. His co-worker of two years, a young woman in the neighborhood, seemed to be glaring at him with disdain. The evening before, she had checked the local sex offender registry and found his name listed. In her rage, fear and disgust, she immediately contacted the local probation office to warn them that Ellis has possession of a cellphone and is “likely misusing it while on the registry.”

The Office of Probation immediately formulated a task force to investigate. They dispatched an extraction team to Ellis’s home to intercept the phone. When Ellis arrived home from work, they were waiting in full tactical regalia. Even though Ellis immediately offered up his phone and explained that he had permission to own one, the team proceeded to escort him to the nearest federal building, subject him to a series of polygraph tests, rephrase questions five different ways, and interrogate him on whether he had utilized the phone for nefarious purposes.

Ellis’s phone was then subject to an extensive forensic evaluation which found nothing unusual. Eventually, a scroll through the contact list did produce the name and number of the best friend, who had previously been convicted of a felony. Nearing the conclusion of this comprehensive investigation, Ellis thought to himself, “Why did they not just ask me if I had a felon’s name on my phone? I would have told them.”

Ellis was certain he would not be transferred anywhere during the peak of a global pandemic. His confidence was based on a recent memo announcing that both the U.S. Marshals and the Federal Bureau of Prisons would discontinue all non-essential prisoner transfers to minimize undue exposure. Still, Ellis found himself on a transport bus within days.

At the peak of the epidemic in mid-July 2020, Ellis found himself in the company of thousands of other prisoners all in transit to and from various prisons. He began at CoreCivic-Leavenworth, waiting for his official revocation hearing. That hearing would be attended by a flurry of masked court personnel; investigative agents; physically distanced prosecutors; and gloved Marshals, each carrying files bearing number 22319-031. The defendant would be sentenced to a term of six months imprisonment at FCI Seagoville.

Ellis would begin his new prison assignment traveling from Leavenworth by van to the airport. He would then depart by airlift and cross country to and from Phoenix, Arizona, collecting hundreds of transferees along the way. Transport vans would shuttle him to various overnights supporting a network of private prisons and contract jails, and eventually arrive in Oklahoma, just a few hundred miles from where he began in Kansas. His temporary home would be the newly renovated private prison, CoreCivic-Cimarron. “Remember,” thought Ellis, “bus drivers, air marshals, county sheriffs, they all gotta’ eat.”

Ellis would remain at Cimarron inhaling the new paint smell for a month or so before he would eventually begin another series of transports. The pandemic continued to rage on. The Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons continued reporting that all prisoner transports were on hold for safety purposes. FCI Seagoville, Ellis’s ultimate destination, just happened to be identified as the single most concentrated population for COVID-positive cases of any institution, company, hospital, food processing plant or stand-alone facility in the world.

He would eventually arrive in the last seat on a 19-person transport, and he would enter the gates of FCI Seagoville’s holdover facility on November 6, 2020, nearly five months after he began his violation. He would be placed in a holding cell with three other temporary prisoners, and his cell would transition new prisoners in and out daily. Within a few weeks, there would be 19 different prisoners sharing these bunks, most, “non-contact computer clickers.” This prompted Ellis to ask a guard, “Why so many clickers?” to which the guard responded with elation, “Hell, you guys are the new marijuana!”

Ellis finally walked across the street in early December 2020, and for the very first time, stepped onto the grounds of FCI Seagoville where he began his official prison term. He was housed in a dorm-style building with 320 men and placed into the very same bunk of a prisoner who, just an hour before, was removed from that 10-man cell because he tested positive for COVID-19 after experiencing flu-like symptoms.

Ellis tested positive within 36 hours of his arrival. Two-thirds of his 10-man cell tested positive with him. He would satisfy his prison sentence over the next 19 days only to be returned home on December 30 with a debilitating virus. Unfortunately, this time, he would return, not as “Brett Ellis,” but rather, as “CONVICT-19.” He would return having no home, no job, no money, and no best friend to call. He would arrive hungry and soon realize, “not everyone’s gotta’ eat.”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
October 30, 2021

Russell “Maroon” Shoatz is Free, But Other Political Prisoners Languish

Russell “Maroon” Shoatz has been granted compassionate release after 50 years in prison. The length of his sentence is outrageous but it is hardly unique. The United States not only has the dubious distinction of being the country with the largest population of incarcerated people, but it also has political prisoners held longer than anywhere else in the world. Shoatz is now 78-years old and suffering from cancer. To be blunt, he is being released so that he can die outside of prison walls.

The post Russell “Maroon” Shoatz is Free, But Other Political Prisoners Languish appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
October 26, 2021

Former Black Panther Russell “Maroon” Shoatz Freed From Prison After 49 Years

Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, the Black liberationist long respected as a political prisoner and freedom fighter by friends and supporters, was granted a medical transfer on Monday to leave a Pennsylvania prison for treatment and hospice after five decades of imprisonment.

A former member of the Black Panther Party and a soldier in the Black Liberation Army, Shoatz organized inside prisons for decades to abolish life sentences without parole, inspiring activists and attorneys to take up the cause.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is now considering whether a legal challenge to the state’s practice of denying parole hearings to people serving life sentences for certain second-degree murder convictions can proceed. All life sentences in Pennsylvania excluded the possibility of parole, and the state has the highest per-capita rate of people serving life sentences in the nation and the world, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The 78-year-old Shoatz, who remains highly influential within the Black liberation and prison abolition movements, is reportedly terminally ill after being diagnosed with cancer. In social media posts, activists and family members who spent years fighting for his release celebrated on Monday after a judge in Philadelphia agreed to transfer Shoatz from a prison to a hospital.

In 2014, Shoatz was released from solitary confinement after spending 22 consecutive years in “the hole” and later won a $99,000 legal settlement. Supporters say the solitary confinement amounted to retaliation against Shoatz’s efforts to organize other “lifers” and abolish what activists now call “death by incarceration,” or life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a lawsuit brought by six state prisoners challenging mandatory life sentences for people convicted the state’s “felony murder” rule. Under felony murder rules in Pennsylvania and most other states, a defendant can be held liable for second-degree murder if they participate in a felony crime that leads to a death — such as driving another person to a botched robbery — even if they did not kill the victim or intend for anyone to die.

Like those sentenced to death who may survive for years on appeal, life sentences all but assure that people with die in prison.

Unlike other states, conviction under the felony murder rule in Pennsylvania carries an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole. The Center for Constitutional Rights reports that 1,100 people in Pennsylvania are serving life sentences for “felony murder” despite never intending to cause a death. Critics liken “death by incarceration” to the death penalty. Like those sentenced to death who may survive for years on appeal, life sentences all but assure that people with die in prison.

The United States is known for handing out much longer prison sentences than European countries, for example, where people convicted of serious crimes such as murder can serve two decades in prison or less.

“To be an outlier in the U.S. is to be the outlier in the world when it comes to life sentences,” said Bret Grote, the legal director of the Abolitionist Law Project, in an interview.

Tyreem Rivers, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, has been imprisoned since 1996 and is now in his 40s. At the age of 18, Rivers grabbed the purse of an elderly woman who fell as a result of the robbery. The woman contracted pneumonia while hospitalized two weeks later, and Rivers was convicted under the felony murder rule and received an automatic life sentence.

“Show [the Rivers case] to most people, and they will not understand why that teenager who committed that offense, should he survive to old age, must live the rest of his life in prison,” Grote said.

In a statement, Rivers said he and other people serving life sentences under the felony murder rule “bear a great sense of remorse” for the role they played in harming victims and have spent years in prison working to better themselves. Human rights attorneys are calling on the State of Pennsylvania to recognize that the plaintiffs have “undergone remarkable transformations despite the challenges and violence of incarceration and their pre-incarceration backgrounds.”

“I can honestly say we no longer think or act as we once did before having been sentenced to life without parole,” Rivers said.

Rivers and the other plaintiffs were all convicted in their late teens and early 20s. Indeed, researchers say many people serving life sentences in Pennsylvania and beyond were teenagers or young adults struggling under poverty at the time of the crime and are very different people today.

Abolitionists say caging people in prison is inherently violent and can cause serious harm rather than supporting people through a self-transformation or “rehabilitation.”

Harsh sentences for more serious crimes are also a major driver of mass incarceration, filling prisons even more than the “war on drugs” and creating an increasingly elderly prison population.

Prosecutors typically decide whether to pursue a “felony murder” charge that carries a life sentence. In Pennsylvania, 70 percent of people sentenced under the felony murder rule are Black and a disproportionate number come from Philadelphia, according the Center for Constitutional Rights. Overall, Black people are sentenced to life in prison at a rate 18 times higher than white people in Pennsylvania. Latinx people are sentenced to “death by incarceration” at a rate five times higher than whites in the state.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has not yet agreed to rule on the merits of the lawsuit. Instead, the court will decide whether the case can proceed so that plaintiffs can collectively challenge the state ban on parole hearings for those serving life sentences, rather than pursuing their pleas for parole individually. The lawsuit argues that sentencing people to effectively die prison constitutes cruel and unnecessary punishment under the state constitution.

Unlike the plaintiffs in the case, Shoatz was not convicted under the felony murder rule. Shoatz, who is considered both a political prisoner and prisoner of war by supporters, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison after a 1970 attack on a Philadelphia police station.

As they are today, tensions over racist police violence were running high in Philadelphia during the summer of 1970, when Police Chief Frank Rizzo ordered a crackdown on Black liberation groups ahead a national convention of the Black Panther Party. Anger boiled over after police once again killed an unarmed Black youth, and police were attacked in retaliation, leaving one officer injured and another dead. The attack prompted a raid on the Black Panther headquarters and the arrest of multiple activists.

Shoatz went underground but was arrested and convicted of murder two years later; supporters have said he was falsely accused. Shoatz escaped prison with other Black liberationists twice before being hunted by authorities and captured again. The liberationists were called the New African Political Prisoners of War.

Shoatz spent much of his life resisting solitary confinement, inspiring activists in the free world and working for the liberation of people sentenced to die in prison. Shoatz’s supporters say he is now free to rejoin his family during the final stage of his life.

Today, reform efforts to release aging “lifers” and limit or abolish life sentences without parole are underway in a handful of states. Abolitionists say reforms are not enough, and we must reimagine what accountability and support can look like to end mass incarceration and build a world without prisons.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
October 24, 2021

The Right to Vote Should Be Available to Everyone — Including Prisoners Like Me

People in prison often begin their life in marginalized communities where their families’ right to vote has historically been suppressed. Today, voter suppression of those communities is again on the rise. The fact that people are actively trying to legislate additional hindrances to already marginalized communities’ right to vote highlights the need to ensure the right to vote for all of these communities’ members — even if they are in prison.

This is especially true because, once convicted, their imprisonment further marginalizes them from society. In Illinois, where I’m incarcerated, everyone in prison is completely stripped of their right to vote until release. (For the thousands of people sentenced to die in Illinois prisons, this is a lifetime denial of the right to vote.)

As someone who has been sitting in prison for the last two decades, I know the full effects of being disenfranchised. It leaves us vulnerable to a voting public that has almost zero concern for our welfare, and deprives us of both a voice in society and what could be a powerful tool to facilitate our return to useful citizenship.

Fortunately, the organization Chicago Votes has been working to pass Senate Bill 828 in partnership with State Representative Lashawn Ford. If passed, this bill will restore voting rights to the roughly 30,000 individuals incarcerated in Illinois prisons, including me. After nearly passing in the final days of the 2021 regular legislative session with 64 “yes” commitments in the House of Representatives, confusion over the bill’s constitutionality stalled its passage. Since then, Chicago Votes and advocates have worked to address misbeliefs around the bill’s constitutionality. Now, the bill is poised to move during the fall veto session, which would make Illinois the first state in the United States to restore voting rights to people in prison.

Those of us in prison are severely affected by our inability to vote. First, judges in Illinois are elected. For decades, getting elected required promising to be, or proving they were, “tough-on-crime” — meaning they would, or were, handing out overly harsh prison sentences. Those judges never had to worry about the victims of those harsh sentences voting against them in the next election, because prisoners do not have the right to vote.

This continues today and affects all of one’s appeals and resentencing hearings. Moreover, the inability to vote means we can’t vote for fair-minded judges who will protect our rights in civil court, nor vote against judges who openly discriminate against petitions filed by people in prison.

Second, most legislators don’t view anyone in prison as their constituents simply because they can’t vote. This is true whether they were a constituent prior to incarceration or whether the prison is in their district. If legislators don’t need to court the votes of people in prison, it ensures they are unlikely to take their concerns or viewpoints into consideration when passing legislation.

That simple fact greatly contributed to the passing of tougher and tougher sentencing guidelines, and also ensures that today’s “reforms” of those extreme sentencing laws won’t help the currently incarcerated.

The disenfranchisement of people in prison helps to ensure that they serve more time in prison.

Thus, for numerous reasons the disenfranchisement of people in prison helps to ensure that they serve more time in prison. This does not serve any true penological or public safety goal. Rather, it largely just serves to benefit the personal political careers of judges and legislators, many of whom have already retired. Therefore, those in prison have a serious liberty interest in obtaining the right to vote.

The fact that people in prison can’t vote for state legislators also leaves them extremely vulnerable to abuse by the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Legislators constantly cater to the guards’ union because they are a powerful voting bloc. This allows them to get legislation passed that is beneficial to prison guards, but detrimental to those of us in prison. This has negatively affected everything from our right to access public records, to our ability to peacefully protest inhumane living conditions via hunger strikes.

We are also captive consumers at the “mercy” of monopolistic companies that routinely engage in price-gouging and other anti-competitive business practices — all to the detriment of the incarcerated. Additionally, the IDOC adds unnecessary, and unjust surcharges, or increases prices by demanding kickbacks or “commissions.” This too is at our expense.

Without the right to vote, this is effectively “taxation without representation.” Thus, people confined to the IDOC were not only exploited by yesterday’s “tough-on-crime” politicians and ignored by today’s “reformers,” but are continuously exploited financially throughout our incarceration.

Rather than further ostracizing people in prison … society should work to increase people’s attachments to society.

People in prison are also largely prohibited from earning a living wage, and are often forced to work for pennies per day with no days off for months on end in unsafe working conditions.

Being disenfranchised means we cannot vote for legislators who will look out for our interests — who will pass laws to stop our exploitation, require a living wage for prison labor, ensure we receive adequate medical care, have access to educational programming, and more.

Society has this misconception that people in prison are “anti-social” or hell-bent on destroying society and should therefore not be allowed to vote so they can’t “poison the system.” Nothing could be further from the truth, though. Don’t get me wrong; society’s constant efforts to marginalize, ostracize, oppress and discriminate against the incarcerated definitely doesn’t help engender strong ties to society; but despite all of that, ties to the community usually remain.

That’s because no matter how much society dehumanizes us, we remain just that — human. We are human beings with families and friends out in free society that we care deeply about. I myself am a son, father and grandfather. My right to vote, if restored to me, would be exercised primarily in support of my family’s safety and economic well-being.

My vote for candidates would also probably be much more informed than the average citizen’s, due to the fact that I have the time to research both the candidates and their stances on the issues. Moreover, I have the time to get a real understanding of the issues and not just vote along party lines or for someone who spouts the best misleading rhetoric.

People in prison also have a ton of experiential knowledge that can be used to help heal societal ills. We not only have firsthand knowledge about injustices embedded in our legal system, but we also have firsthand experience with oppression and being at the “mercy” of unaccountable agents of the state. For many people who come to prison, this makes us acutely aware of the injustices other people suffer and allows us to relate with empathy.

This is a significant factor not only in why people personally impacted by mass incarceration are at the forefront of the movement to decarcerate, but also why people who leave prison often get involved in working for nonprofits, become “violence interrupters,” fight against racial discrimination, corruption, and more.

Denying someone the right to vote is an extremely dehumanizing act. Rather than further ostracizing people in prison — the majority of whom will return to their communities someday — society should work to increase people’s attachments to society.

Restoring people’s right to vote while in prison would go a long way toward engendering feelings of belonging to society. This would both make it more likely that the incarcerated would work towards the betterment of society, and increase the likelihood that they will be “returned to useful citizenship,” as our state constitution insinuates should be the goal.

The right to vote should be available to everyone, incarcerated or not.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
October 23, 2021

When Prison Guards Refuse Vaccines, Incarcerated People Pay the Price

Tensions are reaching a boiling point as large swaths of prison guards continue to refuse COVID-19 vaccines despite mandates in some states for public sector employees. Vaccination rates for prison staff members range from 23 percent in Alabama to 78 percent in Colorado, and average 55 percent amongst jurisdictions that have reported data.

The disputes are coming to a head during a raging pandemic where, at the time of publishing, roughly 1,250 people are dying from COVID-19 each day in the United States. At least 2,885 incarcerated people and 315 staff members in prisons and jails have died from the virus.

Fifty-three percent of prison guards in the Massachusetts Department of Correction (MDOC) were unvaccinated 11 days before the state’s October 17 deadline. In response, on October 12, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker issued orders to activate 250 members of the National Guard to staff positions at prisons across the state. Days later, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Hillman denied Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union’s request for a preliminary injunction against Governor Baker’s vaccine mandate, meaning the mandate will still go into effect while the correction officers’ lawsuit moves forward. More than 1,000 unvaccinated Massachusetts Department of Correction guards could be terminated. So far, three dozen union members have been disciplined, according to a membership update from the union dated October 20.

The correction officers’ union is arguing that the mandate violates guards’ constitutional and contractual rights and interferes with officers’ rights to decline medical treatment. “Government SHOULD NOT and MUST NOT be allowed to mandate and force employees against their will and free choice,” the president of the correction officers’ union argued in a letter to Massachusetts representatives on October 6. It is unclear where the union draws the line between laws or mandates that are unjust and those that are warranted, or how the union justifies its complicity in a carceral system that routinely infringes on people’s individual freedoms. The correction officers’ union did not respond to Truthout’s request for comment. In the October 20 letter, the union wrote that the executive board of the correction officers’ union “will continue to hold this administration accountable for the unimaginable treatment you now have to endure, or we will go down swinging in the process.”

The law is unlikely to be on the union’s side. Judge Hillman cited a 1905 Supreme Court case involving the smallpox vaccine, which set a precedent for vaccine mandates. “Even considering the economic impact on the Plaintiffs if they choose not to be vaccinated,” Hillman wrote in the ruling, “when balancing that harm against the legitimate and critical public interest in preventing the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the vaccination rate, particularly in congregate facilities, the Court finds the balance weighs in favor of the broader public interests.”

Many guards are protesting the mandate by refusing to come in, according to Tony Gaskins, a jailhouse lawyer and prisoner rights advocate who has been incarcerated in Massachusetts for 30 years. “They’re running with skeleton crews,” Gaskins told Truthout. “They got a lot of guys working overtime. They work in two shifts a day right now.”

Showdowns in other states have taken a variety of shapes. Many city and state governments have capitulated to public sector union demands by temporarily allowing for weekly COVID-19 tests in lieu of vaccination and have repeatedly pushed back vaccine-or-test deadlines. Police and prison guard unions — who tend to have far lower rates of vaccination than incarcerated people and educational employees — have been filing lawsuits across the country.

They’ve achieved some success on at least one occasion. On October 13, Judge Bernard Barmann issued a temporary restraining order preventing California from enforcing a vaccine mandate for prison staff. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who received $1.75 million from California Correctional Peace Officers Association, opposes the vaccine mandate for prison guards. In line with trends across the country, prison guards’ vaccination rate of 61 percent in California is far lower than the incarcerated population’s 77 percent.

In New York City, prison guards have until December 1 to get their shots, while other public sector employees must receive a dose by October 29. Just 50 percent of guards in New York City are vaccinated.

A Pattern of Devaluing Incarcerated Lives

Guards’ refusal to vaccinate fits within a larger pattern of departmental disregard for the health and well-being of incarcerated people.

Recognizing prisons and jails as a threat to public health during the pandemic, Massachusetts passed legislation to create an ombudsman’s office within the Department of Corrections tasked with ensuring the state’s prisons were complying with health and safety practices in 2020. Yet, the department has dragged its feet every step of the way, according to Katy Naples-Mitchell, staff attorney at Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.

“The Department of Corrections has for months and months been defying a legislative mandate to appoint an independent public health expert to oversee COVID mitigation efforts,” she said. “So with that outstanding, it is no surprise, frankly, that the Department of Corrections has not taken steps to ensure the safety of incarcerated people or to create a culture of compliance with public health vaccination among its staff.”

Governor Baker’s decision to activate the National Guard, rather than decarcerate, also falls into a pattern of devaluing the lives of incarcerated people. Their deployment threatens to worsen prison conditions that are already unbearable.

“They are trained to kill, point-blank. They’re trained to be security for the country,” said Gaskins. “So it’s scary for a lot of guys. The unknown could become very explosive. if you bring them in here and they don’t know how to deal with situations, it could get out of control quick.”

The Massachusetts Governor’s Office has said the National Guard will only be involved in transportation and exterior security functions at state prisons, but there aren’t independent mechanisms in place to oversee them.

Other prison and jail systems around the country have also recruited outside assistance to address perceived staff shortages. In late September, 100 New York Police Department officers were sent to Rikers Island jail complex in response to a growing number of AWOL staffers. The National Guard was deployed in state prisons for men in New Hampshire in December 2020.

Both Gaskins and Naples-Mitchell pushed back on the idea that most prisons are short-staffed. The number of incarcerated people has shrunk by half over the past 10 years in Massachusetts, but the number of prison guards has fallen by 20 percent, and correctional spending has increased substantially despite a decreasing incarceration rate.

MDOC’s spending is predominantly funneled into employees’ salaries and pensions, not programming for incarcerated people. And now COVID-19 related restrictions have decreased the few rehabilitative activities that existed. Gaskins told Truthout that in-person visits have been extremely limited since the beginning of the pandemic. “There are people who haven’t touched their children in over a year, who haven’t seen their wives, their children, their mothers, their grandmothers, their cousins, their loved ones, period,” he said. Yet, Massachusetts Correctional Industries jobs — where incarcerated people make up to a dollar per hour — have continued.

It’s been a year and a half, Gaskins said, yet Governor Baker has yet to use his clemency power. “We’re losing our minds up in here. Some kill themselves, or hurt themselves on a daily basis,” said Gaskins. “That’s what’s going on inside of here because of this pandemic. And it’s only going to get worse if the guards don’t get their shot.”

Decarceration Is More Protective Than Vaccination

Across the country, over 400,000 vaccinated and unvaccinated guards potentially serve as vectors for spreading disease by moving in and out of oftentimes crowded and unsanitary prisons and jails every day. As such, the U.S. carceral system has functioned as an “epidemic engine” for spreading the novel coronavirus, according to a new study. By analyzing data from 1,605 counties, researchers found that an 80 percent reduction in U.S. jail populations would have been associated with a 2 percent reduction in daily COVID-19 cases — a reduction that would have prevented millions of cases.

New studies show that vaccinated people who experience a breakthrough infection with the Delta variant are less likely to pass the virus than unvaccinated people, but that protective effect against transmission dwindles after three months of receiving a second shot. Over the summer, the Delta variant spread like wildfire among an incarcerated population with a 79 percent vaccination rate. While the vaccine was protective against hospitalization, 74 percent of the incarcerated population was ultimately infected with COVID-19. The case study shows that even if everyone were fully vaccinated, jails and prisons would still serve as dangerous epidemic engines fueling the emergence of new viral variants.

The best solution for promoting public health and safety, ultimately, is to decarcerate. “There are guys here who are in their 80s, 70s, 60s,” Gaskins said. “If they catch this thing it’s going to kill them. What they need to do is set up a system where you can pick the people and let them out of here.” Data shows older people who were convicted of serious crimes in their youth are among the least likely to be rearrested.

“The gold standard approach to managing an infectious disease in a jail or prison environment is removing people from that environment, releasing people who can be safely released. The Department of Correction continues to prevent that from happening,” said Katy-Mitchell. “We should be finding different ways to respond to harm overall, and thinking about how our system of unparalleled mass human caging is not conducive to keeping communities safe.”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
October 22, 2021

How Prosecutors Use Conspiracy and Questionable Testimony in “Gang” Cases

In the United States, it is estimated that about two people are wrongfully convicted every day. In 2014, the Innocence Project estimated that around 120,000 people incarcerated in state prisons were wrongfully convicted. More than half of wrongful convictions, one study found, were the result of official misconduct by police officers, prosecutors — or both.

New York City, which was at the epicenter of perhaps the most notorious wrongful conviction saga, the case of the Central Park Five (now known as the “Exonerated 5”), has seen dozens of people freed from prison. Often, the actions of police officers were at the heart of these wrongful convictions. But what happens when someone is accused of being in a gang — and how might that make a wrongful conviction easier to fly under the radar?

Donnell Murray and the Consequences of Police Harassment

After officers walked Donnell Murray into federal court, he waved to his mother, sat next to his attorney and combed through the day’s notes. Getting to trial was a journey in itself. After more than two years in custody, Murray wanted to put the federal government’s case against him to the test.

Murray was raised in the Bronx. Like other young Black men, the entrepreneur worked with friends that he’d grown up with to make music and the street fashion that went along with it. Those friendships, the federal government would eventually argue, were part of a violent criminal conspiracy.

By 2017, Murray was living in Delaware. His mother had moved them out of the Bronx partly due to constant police harassment. The New York City Police Department (NYPD), they learned, was looking for him. In order to avoid more trouble, he turned himself in, unaware of the wild case the feds had built against him.

He hasn’t been home since, charged with a shooting and narcotics distribution in a federal gang conspiracy case.

Murray’s road to federal court might have begun in the NYPD’s 47th Precinct in the Bronx. For years, according to his mother, his fiancée and his legal team, the precinct’s officers harassed Murray. A pattern of targeted stops seemed to stem from a late-night altercation years earlier with a high-ranking 47th Precinct cop.

Murray’s former lawyer, Frank Iannucci, helped him fight some of the harassment. Iannucci, who died in 2015, was a former assistant district attorney from the Bronx District Attorney’s Office. By his own admission, he was a pro-police, pro-law enforcement guy. Iannucci became a private criminal defense attorney and represented Murray.

In 2010, Iannucci went to NYPD Internal Affairs to lodge a complaint against the 47th Precinct on behalf of his client. According to transcripts of Iannucci’s meeting with Internal Affairs Bureau investigators, early one Sunday morning in 2007, Murray and some friends were eating at a popular after-hours Bronx diner. As they began to leave, they encountered a 47th Precinct sergeant, Patrick McGill, who was there for an unrelated complaint. An argument between McGill and Donnell’s group ensued.

Next, according to Iannucci, McGill slammed Murray on a table and cops swarmed in to arrest him. Sergeant McGill claimed Murray had assaulted him. But according to Iannucci, security video showed the sergeant put his hands on Murray first, leading to a skirmish.

The assault case ended in an acquittal, but Murray’s problems with the 47th Precinct were just beginning. A string of questionable arrests and car stops followed. One arrest in 2008, Iannucci described to investigators, was for an assault where Murray had actually come to the aid of someone who had just been jumped by cops. According to Murray, the officers who arrived at the scene screamed, “That’s him, that’s him!” as they approached.

In 2009, plainclothes police officers stopped Murray in his car outside of a friend’s barbecue. They checked his license and let him go. The next day, those same cops drove into his friend’s private driveway to confront Murray and insist he come down to the precinct for a more thorough check of his license, according to Iannucci. They also insisted he bring his car.

At the 47th Precinct, cops claimed he had an invalid license and were going to release him but insisted in searching the car. They claimed to find a gun in his car. Murray was charged with gun possession, but, after many months, Iannucci had those charges dropped. Murray’s family believes the arresting officers, including Officer Abraham Villavizar, planted the gun.

Murray’s fiancée, Destinee Ferguson, was with him during many of these encounters. She remembers cops in marked and unmarked cars would nod their heads when they saw him. During one stop, she says, cops threatened Murray by saying, “Oh, Mr. Murray, if you would’ve run, we would’ve shot you.”

Donnell Murray’s fiancé, Destinee Ferguson, speaking at a protest outside the U.S. Attorney’s Southern District Offices, October 2020.
Josmar Trujillo

In 2012, cops pulled over and arrested Murray in his mom’s car at gunpoint with his infant son in the back. When his mother, Darlene Murray, went to the precinct to get her car, she saw one plainclothes officer rummaging through her glove compartment, which she filmed in a widely seen video. At that time, Donnell Murray bought and resold cars and had cash in the glove compartment. That money disappeared, according to Murray’s mom.

A few months later, Ferguson says, Murray was waiting for her in his car outside her home when cops pulled up and claimed they had a warrant for him. The officers handcuffed Murray and insisted on taking the car with them. “Donnell is not someone who’s gonna let them search his car. He knows his rights. They hate that. That adds fuel to the fire,” Ferguson told Truthout.

The couple insisted to police that Ferguson take the car and Murray’s property. Cops refused. At that point, Ferguson started to record them with her phone. “They got very upset,” she recalls. Cops took Murray. One of the officers climbed into Murray’s car and sped off.

The incidents happened during the height of stop-and-frisk policing under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who for years rationalized mass stops in the city’s Black neighborhoods. The repeated stops, Ferguson says, were frightening. “I was pregnant. It made me really scared for [Murray’s] life. I felt like he was gonna end up like Sean Bell or something.”

“I feel like Donnell was set up by the NYPD, the 47th Precinct,” his mother Darlene told Truthout. “After that incident at the diner, they had it in for him.” She also believes that because her son had sued for wrongful arrest on multiple occasions and filed numerous complaints, this put a target on his back. She says his inclusion in the federal gang conspiracy case was the culmination of a campaign of intimidation.

It is not clear if the Internal Affairs investigations into Murray’s allegations went anywhere. Investigators interviewed both Officer Villavizar and Sergeant McGill, both represented by their union lawyers, for 16 and seven minutes, respectively. The police department did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Donnell Murray’s family and supporters at a protest outside the NYPD’s 47th Precinct, May 2020.
Josmar Trujillo

Cops Repeatedly Accused of Misconduct

Officer Villavizar from the 47th Precinct was what you could describe as an active cop. Numerous lawsuits that alleged misconduct by Villavizar paint a picture of an officer who doled out aggressive arrests where charges were often dropped. Lawsuits against Villavizar and others went on over the course of a decade.

In 2008, Villavizar and his partner were alleged to have violently arrested a man in the Bronx, according to court documents. The District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute that man, who then sued for wrongful arrest and settled with the city. Later that year, Villavizar and an unnamed partner forcibly arrested a man and woman in the Bronx, subjecting one to a strip and cavity search, according to a court complaint. Charges were dismissed. A lawsuit and a settlement followed.

In 2012, Villavizar was part of a group of plainclothes cops that allegedly approached people moving furniture, accusing someone of smelling like marijuana. After consenting to a search which turned up nothing, the lawsuit complaint said, a man was violently arrested anyway and thrown from the hood of a police car onto the concrete. That case was dropped.

Later that year, Villavizar and another officer arrested someone at gunpoint who told investigators that cops demanded he show them his hands as he walked to a family member’s house. After showing them his empty hands, court documents say, the cops arrested him for marijuana possession anyway. Charges against that person were dismissed.

In 2013, Villavizar and an unnamed cop were named in a troubling lawsuit. Dressed in SWAT gear, the duo forcibly entered an apartment in the Bronx without a warrant. They arrested a woman and an unnamed “infant-plaintiff” (most likely a minor), placing both in handcuffs, according to a lawsuit. The woman was charged with marijuana possession. Those charges were dropped and the woman’s lawsuit against the city was settled for an undisclosed amount.

The CAPstat police misconduct database shows at least eight lawsuits filed against Villavizar, amounting to at least $240,000 in settlements. Half of Villavizar’s known lawsuits were either settled for undisclosed amounts or the outcome was unknown, which suggests the total amount settlements could be much higher.

And yet it was Villavizar whose testimony in the conspiracy case would be used to connect Murray — who never had a gun conviction in his life — to a gun.

In fact, one of the lawsuits against Villavizar was filed by Murray after the 2010 gun-possession arrest in the precinct. Not only was Villavizar’s gun charge dismissed, the city settled Murray’s lawsuit for an undisclosed amount. Still, Villavizar would be called upon by prosecutors to testify about that arrest to a federal jury as prosecutors painted Murray as a gang banger with a gun charge.

When the judge in the trial ordered prosecutors to provide information about past lawsuits of police witnesses, federal prosecutors wrote that doing so “would be unfairly prejudicial and would waste time and cause juror confusion.” They downplayed Villavizar’s past, writing that, “from conversations with Officer Villavizar and a review of publicly available documents, the Government is aware of one unrelated lawsuit, which was dismissed.”

The judge agreed with prosecutors. The jury didn’t hear about Villavizar’s pattern of questionable arrests or the lawsuits filed against him.

In an emailed response to Truthout, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote: “Allegations in civil lawsuits are just that — allegations. They are often irrelevant to criminal cases. In Donnell Murray’s case, we agreed with defense counsel and the judge that one lawsuit related to … Villavizar was relevant to the case and defense counsel was permitted to cross examine him about it. We also informed the Court of multiple unrelated lawsuits, which defense counsel first identified, and the judge found were not useful for cross examination.”

Donnell Murray’s mother, Darlene Murray, speaks out for her son at a rally in New York City.
The Legal Aid Society

Courts Permit Testimony From Cops Lacking Credibility

Testimony by cops with shady histories is a long-running problem in New York City. Police credibility has been an open issue in Brooklyn, where the district attorney continued prosecuting arrests by officers accused of perjury and evidence tampering. Manhattan prosecutors have been forced to publicize lists of “bad cops” whose testimony is suspect. A WNYC/Gothamist investigation into the Bronx district attorney’s use of “bad cops” included a gun case where an officer’s testimony was contradicted by video but was prosecuted anyway.

The problems continue at the federal level as well. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica K. Feinstein, who in Murray’s trial claimed the government knew of only one lawsuit against Villavizar, had previously argued against officer misconduct being entered into evidence for other gang cases.

As reported in The Appeal, Feinstein argued that the credibility of NYPD Detective Jeremiah Williams, whose prior gun arrest of Carletto Allen in 2015 was key in Allen’s federal gang trial, was not sullied by the fact that Williams had been sued numerous times. Allen was indicted in the 2016 Bronx 120 gang sweep, the largest gang takedown in city history. Allegations against Williams ranged from needless anal searches to smashing someone’s head against a police car.

While Allen’s lawyers suspected foul play, specifically that Williams may have planted a gun on their client, he was nonetheless convicted in large part due to the testimony of the detective, the only person who could tie him to a gun — like Villavizar in Murray’s case. And, like Villavizar, Williams was the subject of at least eight lawsuits (perhaps more), resulting in a total of a quarter-million dollars in settlements, according to The Appeal.

But because all of those lawsuits were settled, Feinstein could (and did) argue that there was no admission of guilt; hence, Williams’s testimony was credible.

Feinstein’s penchant for relying on testimonies of cops with murky histories even included a case where one may have been a flat-out racist. Her prosecution of Donque Tyrell, also a defendant in the Bronx 120, relied partly on testimony from police officer David Sammarco. Sammarco has had at least 35 allegations of misconduct, has been named in at least six federal lawsuits and was accused by one of Donnell’s co-defendants of stopping and spitting on him.

Officer Sammarco, according to evidence presented at trial, also appears to have had an active social media presence through the (since deleted) Twitter account @ObamaHater55, which posted racist memes about Colin Kaepernick and Muslims. Though Tyrell’s attorney tried to bring up the cop’s social media posts, they were excluded from the trial as irrelevant (the cruel irony being that social media posts are often used as evidence against defendants in gang cases). As in other cases, Sammarco’s testimony helped Feinstein connect Tyrell to a gun.

Screenshots of NYPD Officer David Sammarco’s since deleted Twitter account, “Obamahater55.”

If you note a pattern of cops with questionable histories being used to provide testimony in gang cases, consider that Williams, Sammarco and Villavizar also all worked out of the 47th Precinct. But testimony from “bad cops” is just one piece of the puzzle prosecutors use to score convictions against those who are gang-accused. The feds have a whole overarching legal framework to do that.

How Prosecutors Use Conspiracy and Hearsay in Gang Cases

Former Southern District Judge Billings Learned Hand wrote almost 100 years ago that conspiracy laws were the “darling of the modern prosecutor’s nursery.” Decades later, federal prosecutors turned racketeering laws, made possible by the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), into the new darling.

While conspiracy laws liberalized standards of proof and allowed prosecutors to connect multiple defendants to a crime, RICO enabled the lumping together of people as an “enterprise.” RICO was created to peel away the power of organized crime. Prosecutors, like former U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, used it against Mafia leaders who ordered crimes but didn’t necessarily commit them themselves.

While RICO may have turned the tide against the Mafia, it didn’t end there. RICO’s reach targeted labor unions, pharmaceutical executives and even the alleged conspirators of a celebrity college admissions scandal. RICO’s footprint in communities of color, however, has arguably been the most devastating.

In the 1980s, prosecutors began to use RICO against street gangs even as critics argued this was an overapplication. Most street gangs didn’t affect interstate commerce, required under RICO, and were unlikely to be able mount the costly legal defenses that mobsters could. How, one might ask, could police be trusted to identify who was in a gang, what crimes were “gang-related,” or even what a gang was?

There were also political and cultural undertones. RICO was used against groups formed from Chicago’s Almighty Black P Stone Nation, the Black nationalist group, as well as the Latin Kings, who were becoming involved in police brutality protests against New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the former prosecutor, in the 1990s. Bias, some noted, could also lead to a conflation of hip-hop music groups and gangs. The Giuliani administration villainized the legendary hip-hop collective Zulu Nation, calling it a “gang,” and the FBI once tried to build a RICO case against the Wu-Tang Clan.

Beginning in 2012, the NYPD increased its anti-gang efforts and worked closer with federal authorities. The trial of Murray and his co-defendants, charged like Mafia leaders, is perhaps a textbook example of what happens when police and prosecutors use their most powerful tools against young Black men.

Some days, the rear doors of Judge Paul Gardephe’s court would swing open to reveal Murray’s fiancée and their 7-year-old son, Adon. They sat in the courtroom as Feinstein painted Murray’s life as one of violence and drugs. Murray and his co-defendants, Brandon Green and Latique Johnson, had all risked decades in prison by going to trial. Most don’t. By one count, 97 percent of federal cases end in a plea deal.

The odds against them were extraordinarily steep. Conspiracy and RICO lower the burden of proof for prosecutors, who essentially only have to convince a jury of a crime that benefitted an “enterprise.” Another crucial advantage for prosecutors is allowing normally inadmissible evidence, hearsay (someone testifying about what someone else said), into court. RICO also allows prosecutors to prove the existence of an enterprise by discussing bad acts of people who aren’t even on trial.

The linchpins to hearsay are cooperating witnesses, or “snitches.” With the Mafia, the threat of RICO and mandatory minimums turned some low-level soldiers, sworn to never snitch, into snitches. However, the use of snitches has been spotlighted as tremendously unreliable and coercive, even the basis for dozens of false convictions. The practice has been so ripe for abuse that desperate prisoners have often offered testimony against people they didn’t even know — sometimes testifying in cases they’d only read about.

By leaning on snitches, prosecutors can weave a web of guilt. In Murray’s trial, cooperators testified about the alleged gang, the Bloodhound Brims. However, all were facing serious federal sentences but receiving “5k1” letters from the government to recommend lighter sentences in exchange for their testimony. Some who faced life in prison could now hope to be released with time served. Pat Daly, an ex-cop who’d become addicted to crack and indicted in the case, testified that the gang ran a drug operation from his upstate home. He got a 5k1 letter.

At the trial, several cooperators struggled on the witness stand. Two key cooperators were serial snitches. One complained about being re-indicted under RICO for a crime for which he’d already served a state sentence. Others offered conflicting versions of the gang’s structure. While one cooperator testified Murray was a gang leader, another testified that he had no standing in the gang. At least two didn’t know who Murray was. They all got 5k1 letters.

Prosecutors alleged Murray had been part of a 2012 shooting. To prove Murray’s culpability, they brought a jailed cooperator to the witness stand who claimed he overheard Murray brag about it in prison. Another witness prosecutors used to connect Murray to that shooting was so bad that the judge later called him the worst cooperator he’d ever seen. The cooperators’ testimonies were the only sources of evidence connecting Murray to a violent act.

Presumption of Guilt

After weeks of trial, all three co-defendants were convicted on most charges, though not all. While Murray was found guilty of the racketeering conspiracy, the the jury found the government did not prove he attempted murder as part of the conspiracy. Ultimately, Murray was convicted of racketeering, narcotics conspiracy and gun possession, which could mean a sentence up to and including life.

Murray’s mother, devastated by the conviction, remained hopeful because he wasn’t facing a mandatory minimum. His attorney argued for five years. Judge Gardephe sentenced Murray to 19 years, a sentence that would make him almost 60 by the time he is released.

Throughout the trial, the presumption of innocence seemed purely theoretical — to be in a gang was a sign of guilt, with the details to be sorted out later. There are, of course, gangs in the Bronx, and during the trial, there had been acknowledgement that the gang in question was, in fact, real. Murray and Latique Johnson were childhood friends who had mutual aspirations in clothing and music. The jury was persuaded to believe that they were a criminal enterprise.

For the defendants and their families, their hopes now rest on an appeals process that could take years. The trial, fueled by decades-old tactics designed for the Mafia and testimony from cops with a record of alleged abuse, leaves a bitter taste in their mouths.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
October 21, 2021

Rikers Island and the Shapeshifting Monster of Reform
“This crisis embodies the violence of a murderous system that is re-legitimized through reforms, any time its true character becomes too visible, like a shapeshifting monster in a horror film. It never stops consuming life,” says Kelly Hayes. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Hayes digs into the crisis on Rikers Island, why people are dying, and why this isn’t a story about understaffing, but rather, a story about a system that cannot be redeemed.

Music by Son Monarcas and Charles Hubbert

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity. Copy may not be in its final form.

Kelly Hayes: Welcome to “Movement Memos,” a Truthout podcast about things you should know if you want to change the world. I’m your host, writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. You’ve probably seen headlines in recent weeks about the crisis at Rikers Island, where horrifying conditions, and the deaths of 13 imprisoned people this year, have prompted some New York officials to demand the mass release of people being held at the facility. The more I learned about the situation at Rikers, the more concerned I became about how we talk about it. Because it would be very easy to allow this to become a story about the extremity of the moment, rather than a lesson about how this system cannot be reformed. The story unfolding at Rikers is a story about why mass decarceration is a moral imperative. This crisis embodies the violence of a murderous system that is re-legitimized through reforms, any time its true character becomes too visible, like a shapeshifting monster in a horror film. It never stops consuming life. So we’re gonna get into that, and we’re also going to hear from Mon M., an Indian designer, writer, and abolitionist organizer who is fighting the good fight in New York City.

Now, the surface level, mainstream narrative is that Rikers is an institution that’s basic functions are breaking down because of a staffing shortage. About a year into the pandemic, a federal monitor noted that an “extraordinarily large number of staff were not reporting to work.” While COVID-19 certainly drove some of those absences, the commissioner of New York’s Department of Corrections, Vincent Schiraldi, stated at a hearing that he suspected that some officers were using their unlimited sick days as “an unlimited vacation pool.” New sick day restrictions have reportedly been put in place, but is this a story about a place where things would be okay if more staff were coming to work?

As Jarrod Shanahan wrote for Truthout,

[The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association] claims that the widespread prisoner abuse at Rikers stems from “understaffing” — a highly dubious assertion, given the comparatively massive size of the DOC’s uniformed workforce in proportion to its captive population. Moreover, it is incorrect to assume the capacities of Rikers are simply overwhelmed. The present number of prisoners on the island, an estimated 6,000, is still very low historically — the island reached its peak population of almost 22,000 in 1991, and until 2015, the average population had not dipped below 10,000 for decades. What we are seeing now did not happen when the population was much higher.

Instead, today’s crisis on Rikers is fueled by ad hoc work stoppages by guards, part of a long history of organized actions by DOC guards to insist on impunity and the ability to commit abuses without oversight.

The union’s leadership claims that the best way to address the current crisis would be to hire 2,000 more guards. As Shanahan reported, the city’s supposed plan to eventually close Rikers, and replace it with multiple borough-based facilities, would ultimately lead to a reduction in staff for the Department of Corrections — which is something the union is raging against. Now, historically, when New York Corrections officers get militant about their demands, bad things happen. In 1986, guards at Rikers staged a staff riot at two different jails, attacking imprisoned people and causing serious injuries. As Shanahan wrote, “COBA [Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association] President Phil Seelig was present and reportedly at the center of the action, giving speeches and cheering on the assaults.” The guards rioted again in 1990, and won most of their demands, by blockading the bridge to Rikers Island and violently preventing people from entering the facility for 36 hours. The guards even brawled with emergency medical technicians who tried to reach the island in an ambulance. After a tense standoff with police, the guards were told their demands had been met, and the guards, many of whom were intoxicated, celebrated by pushing their way into the jail to attack imprisoned people who were rebelling inside, after days of abandonment.

So, I wanted to begin with that framing, because the conditions we are seeing at Rikers are being manufactured by people with direct control over this facility, and those are the same people who make that facility a torturous, inhumane place that has been unceasingly cited for brutality and neglect. These people maintain the suffering of imprisoned people at Rikers daily, and now, they are ramping up that suffering in order to demand more resources. Given that guards control virtually all aspects of imprisoned people’s lives, we’re basically talking about a hostage situation, and the answer isn’t to bargain with the guards or hire new ones. The answer is to free the hostages.

Now, as a prison abolitionist and an organizer, I have to say, it is heartening to see legislators demanding mass release of incarcerated folks as a solution to the horrors that are currently unfolding. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and two congressional colleagues toured Rikers last week after signing a letter calling for mass release last month. The group released a statement, after their tour, that included another call for mass decarceration. The representatives wrote:

It is inexcusable that the number of in-custody deaths on Rikers Island has more than quadrupled over the past two years, including five individuals who have died of suspected suicides this year alone…. To address overcrowding, we can act today by beginning the decarceration process, supporting individuals’ return to their communities, and working with the Courts to reduce pretrial sentencing and to expedite hearings for those currently incarcerated…. The inhumane conditions we witnessed today are a stain on the City and State of New York. Rikers horrific history must come to an end.

New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio has responded to calls for decarceration from officials who have visited Rikers by saying “that’s not going to happen” and that the city of New York is not going to “just open the gates” of the facility.

In September, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Less is More Act, which eliminates incarceration for most technical parole violations. Hochul also ordered the release of 191 people who were being held in Rikers for technical parole violations. Even that drop in the bucket was offensive to the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. Union President Benny Boscio, Jr. told reporters, “This legislation releases 200 of the over 6,000 inmates in our custody. Less criminals in our custody only means more crimes will be committed in our streets, creating more victims and that is an injustice.”

But fear mongering about crime has not managed to eclipse the story of what’s happening inside Rikers. New York State Assemblymember Emily Gallagher recently tweeted, “A reporter from Paris just interviewed me, and asked, ‘in a Rikers, did you feel ashamed?’ I found myself suddenly on the verge of tears. Finally I had clarity on how I feel. I am ashamed. We are collectively detached from the suffering of our most vulnerable, intentionally.” Gallagher added in a subsequent tweet, “To be clear this feeling isn’t limited to Rikers. It’s also how we treat the homeless, those with physical or psychological differences or needs, those who are recovering from trauma, substance abuse and more. Our culture is so often pro-isolation, and it exacerbates pain.”

So what did Gallagher, AOC and other officials who have toured Rikers witness? Gallagher wrote a piece in Jacobin documenting her experience. In it, she wrote that, at Rikers:

I met men who had been stuck for days in the intake center, held in overcrowded cells and temporary pens without toilets, cut off from contact with their family or their attorney. I learned that, in some cases, families tried posting bail, but no one was bringing the detainee to their court appearances where they would be released. Many were there for tiny infractions, such as missing curfew on parole or getting into a fight at a barbecue. I met men with broken bones who were not being given medical treatment.

On the floor, there was garbage, cockroaches, human feces, and urine. Most toilets were broken, so men were given plastic bags to defecate in. Many reported only eating one meal a day — and often had to beg for it. Everyone was thirsty and had limited or no access to water. The temperature in some areas is sweltering in the humid summer heat, and there is no air conditioning.

People formerly imprisoned at Rikers and the families of people who are either still confined at the facility, or who have died there, have also raised the alarm about heinous conditions at the jail — while making clear that these conditions are part of a much larger, ongoing disaster that has been playing out for years. At a protest outside City Hall last month, Melania Brown declared, “Rikers is a human slaughterhouse.” Brown’s sister, a 27-year-old transgender woman named Layleen Polanco, died in her cell at Rikers in 2019.

Officials who actually have the power to implement decarceration measures, however, are not interested in that obvious course of action, even though voices from within the system itself have called for those solutions. In a letter to the New York City Council, Ross MacDonald, the Chief Medical Officer and Sr. Assistant Vice President of Correctional Health Services in New York wrote, “Unfortunately, in 2021 we have witnessed a collapse in basic jail operations, such that today I do not believe the City is capable of safely managing the custody of those it is charged with incarcerating in its jails, nor maintaining the safety of those who work there.” MacDonald wrote that “jail conditions meaningfully contributed” to people dying, adding that, “Death and injury are predictable consequences of repeated failures to perform certain essential functions due to unavailability of staff. These include sustained failure to process and house new admissions to jail within 24 hours, resulting in pervasive problems of overcrowded pens where incarcerated people are held for days on end.” MacDonald explained that people were being kept for prolonged periods in temporary spaces such as showers, at times standing in feces, and noted that, “These conditions lead to fights over necessities including food.” MacDonald described a public health crisis, where imprisoned people were not being transferred for care “even when 911 has been activated and EMS has arrived to transport them.” He warned that, “As critical jail functions break down, self-injury, medical emergencies, use of force and serious injuries all rise.” MacDonald also complained about the medical staff’s inability to contain the spread of COVID-19 and dismissed current plans to address the situation as inadequate, saying, “plans with months-long timelines are not adequate for the urgency of the situation…. Decarceration efforts, which are a proven public health response to COVID-19, have not been meaningfully pursued since 2020.”

Zoey Thill and Kimberly Sue, two former physicians at Rikers and other city jails, echoed MacDonald’s concerns, but also refuted the notion that getting AWOL guards back on the job would be a worthy resolution. In a piece for the Gotham Gazette, the two recent wrote:

To date, proposed solutions to these problems have largely focused on increasing staffing and reopening strategically shuttered facilities. But the idea that improved staffing will magically improve conditions on the Island is not grounded in reality. The truth is that, even in times of adequate staffing, the care we provided in the medical clinics was marred by the violent and inhumane setting in which our clinics were embedded.

Our exam rooms were not private. The clinic was disturbingly loud with guards and inmates yelling profanities and threats at each other or with people in “pens” begging to be seen right away or struggling psychiatrically. Patients reported trying to get appointments for weeks but being denied care by guards who wouldn’t sign them up for or escort them to the clinic. Providers were limited in what we could prescribe because even pretty harmless things like chapstick were considered ‘contraband.’ Improving staffing will not fix any of these problems.

Mon M., who is an abolitionist activist and organizer in New York City, made a similar point when we talked recently about the crisis at Rikers.

Mon M.: One of the things I think is important to fight right now is the narrative that’s coming from the mayor’s office, the governor’s office, the Department of Corrections in New York that are arguing that the current disaster within Rikers is caused by understaffing.

And while the lack of support from corrections officers perhaps adds to the problem, it’s not the thing that’s driving the problem. Efforts to make sense of the current emergency have focused primarily on the pandemic’s impact on corrections officers, without contextualizing the overall disaster within the jails as a result of mass incarceration itself. Even as judges are driving the crisis forward by continuing to sentence people to jail. Vincent Schiraldi, the commissioner of the Department of Corrections and Mayor de Blasio are doing their best to characterize the situation as an issue in unemployment. But there are higher numbers of corrections officers employed by the Department of Corrections than people currently incarcerated in the jails. Mainstream media is focusing on the understaffing and not on the fact that at one point during the pandemic, Rikers was leading the country in the number of cases of COVID-19. Roshan Abraham, a journalist, has actually written about this and said that Rikers has a dramatically higher staffing ratio than any other jail across the country, even on days when roughly 2000 people are unavailable to work.

Narratives of that understaffing obscure the true source of the crisis, which is longstanding mismanagement, neglect, abuse, and callousness towards lives of incarcerated people. The city has to have a plan to transition its 7,000 plus corrections officers into less dangerous work and retrain them for roles that do not involve punishing people or overseeing their death sentences. Instead of working to decarcerate the city’s jail population drastically over the long term and shut down Rikers immediately, Schiraldi and de Blasio have promised minimal repairs and to hire more guards while suspending AWOL officers. Kathy Hochul, the governor, who has the power to unilaterally shut down Rikers, signed the Less is More Act, which released 191 people who were inside on technical violations. 191, while significant, is a drop in the bucket of the over 6,000 people currently incarcerated in New York City jails.

Although Less is More begins the project of massively decarcerating Rikers, Hochul has to use her power to do more in the face of such an expansive catastrophe. The moving of people from Rikers to an upstate prison just demonstrates how incapable state and city legislators have been for seeing the crisis for what it really is, and how they’re just playing politics with the lives of incarcerated people.

KH: So let’s talk about the larger social context of this crisis. Carcerality is a defining feature of our health care system, of our social services and public education system. Cycles of punitive control and human disposal have been normalized all around us. Because in addition to building a lot of physical walls and borders, the prison-industrial complex also creates less visible constraints. As a social force, securitization constructs borders that create barriers to human empathy — borders that reinforce to us that we don’t have to worry about what happens to people behind certain walls and fences, because those people are in a zone of punishment for a reason. Whether that zone is a prison or a school, we have been conditioned to accept suffering when it is inflicted on criminalized people.

Occasionally, some policy or set of conditions will violate our understanding of what’s ordinary within these structures, and we see condemnations and outrage. Politicians may even weigh in, as we’ve seen with Rikers. People may feel the need to condemn the atrocity of the moment, but what the public usually winds up settling for is a return to “normal” levels of suffering that are easier to ignore — or the promise of future reforms that either never materialize, or ultimately compound the problem. So that’s something we really need to talk about, with regard to Rikers, and every jail and prison where people are suffering right now due to unspeakable conditions, which is probably happening somewhere near you, wherever you are. Because we have to understand that reinforcing the system only makes moments like these more inevitable. No amount of money or staffing will make death-making institutions responsive to crisis in ways that prioritizes life.

Out in the uncaged world, when a crisis hits, we expect the government to mobilize a response — a response that mitigates the damage and saves lives. That’s not what happens in jails or prisons when a crisis hits, just like it’s not what happens with policing, because these are systems of disposal. Healing, care and rescue are not functions of these systems. These are systems that disappear people from society, and grind them through conditions that bring about premature death. How quickly those conditions bring about premature death may vary, according to the severity of the situation, but even without a staffing shortage, or a pandemic, or a hurricane — all situations where imprisoned people have historically been left to die — prison conditions in the U.S. are so horrendous that they strip years off of people’s lives. So we’re talking about a mechanism that robs people of life. That’s how it functions. It robs them of their liberty in real time, and it also shaves years off of people’s futures. Of course that system is going to become more brutal and punishing in any crisis, because when it comes to meeting the needs of the people, the government is generally doing the bare minimum that it needs to in order to avoid unrest, or to placate the electorate. With prisons and jails, those concerns don’t exist in the same way, because the system has been very successful in conditioning most people not to care about what happens to people in jails and prisons, so the consequences of simply allowing people, who have already been deemed disposable by society, to just die off, often aren’t politically significant. We have all been given social permission to forget about imprisoned people, because, as the wisdom goes, they should not have done whatever got them incarcerated — even if that thing was simply being Black or Indigenous, and in the path of a police officer.

We’re allowed to forget about them, because they exist within the realm of our fears. These are people who we are told are being contained for our safety, so most people wind up accepting that containment on the state’s terms, without asking too many questions. And so the monster that is the prison-industrial complex becomes more deadly and it grows.

We have to remember that with police and prisons, the system’s position will always be that they need more resources to get it right. In New York City, we have seen a lot of controversy over plans to close Rikers, with some community organizers backing the city’s current plan, that would ultimately create four borough-based jails — facilities that would supposedly be modern and more humane than Rikers, even though they would be staffed by the same department. Opponents of the plan point to the fact that Rikers itself was created as a reform effort, and that this system will only continue to replicate suffering and cause premature death, regardless of how much money is poured over it, because it isn’t designed to do anything else. One of those abolitionist organizers, who has argued for the closure of Rikers without the construction of new jails — a position that is also backed by AOC — was Mon M. When we talked about the nightmarish conditions at Rikers, Mon emphasized the importance of understanding that what we are witnessing is part of a larger cycle of violence.

MM: On October 15th, the 13th person to die in [the] Department of Corrections’ custody passed away. It was state sanctioned murder, and his name was Victor Mercado. What’s happening inside Rikers is that there is a crisis of neglect, of no health care, there is a crisis around state legislators and city legislators using the lives of incarcerated people as a bargaining chip, as a political pawn, and taking no real action to get people out so that they can receive real care. Up until now, 13 people have passed away in Department of Corrections’ custody, and the majority of them were held pretrial on incredibly high bails, which means that they have died because they weren’t able to pay their bail. The current conditions being reported inside sound uninhabitable and unlivable. People have reported that there are bodily fluids and trash all over the floors, people are packed tightly into cells, well over capacity, people don’t have places to relieve themselves.

Somebody reported that one could be spending days or even weeks in intake, where there’s no access to a bed or showers, there’s just benches in a crowded and maskless space. People are not receiving bedsheets, towels or other basic necessities. After hours of waiting for a client to be produced for a visit, attorneys often just give up and leave without any contact. So that’s currently the situation. Some of the legislators who visited Rikers in early September described circumstances that I think would be horrifying to anybody, but one of the things that they haven’t done, is contextualize the current crisis inside Rikers as part of an ongoing crisis of mass incarceration in New York City that is primarily impacting poor, disabled, and Black people in the city.

Instead of talking about the deaths that have happened under Department of Corrections custody this year as part of an ongoing disaster and an ongoing failure on behalf of the city to take care of people who are poor and criminalized. Instead of talking about it as the extension of the neglect that happened inside jails during COVID-19, or even before that, as the kind of neglect that took the lives of people like Layleen Polanco and Kalief Browder, or even before that. In the seventies, when people were rebelling against the conditions in New York City jails, or even before that, instead of contextualizing the current crisis as part of this longstanding disaster unfolding inside the penal colony known as Rikers Island, legislators are reducing the situation down to a question of staffing and just not enough corrections officers. The situation is changing basically day by day, so even I might not even know what new insidious plan they’ve cooked up to avoid actually addressing the problem.

One of the most intense things that happened, which was really surprising to me, was that 14 legislators actually signed a letter demanding that district attorneys in New York City end the bail practices in light of the crisis. This is kind of amazing because one of the things that was in the letter was that … it’s just amazing to see legislators actually openly say free them all. And so I feel like this is a moment where certain people are waking up to what the answer should be, which is to shut down Rikers without new jails and let people out. But yeah, the people like Vincent Schiraldi, the mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, the governor’s office, the Department of Corrections, the Board of Corrections, the judges, the DAs, are kind of colluding to sustain incarceration in a moment that demands like totally different, radically different solutions.

But also one of the things I feel like is so telling about this moment is that many abolitionists for many years, literally for the last 50 years and beyond, have talked about how this kind of situation where there’s death after death after death in New York City jails is inevitable. So for a lot of people, they saw this coming and for legislators to act like this is just a shocking, incomprehensible, inexplicable disaster. It’s so cruel it’s laughable almost, because anybody else could have told you that this was going to happen.

KH: And Mon is, of course, correct that many people have made clear, for many years, that Rikers was a site of atrocity where things were bound to get worse. One of the voices currently raising the alarm about conditions at Rikers is actually a federal monitor. That monitor was appointed in 2015 as part of a settlement in a case called Nunez v. City of New York, a class action lawsuit filed in the spring of 2012, in which 11 people who were imprisoned at Rikers sued after experiencing chronic, “unprovoked” beatings at the hands of guards. The U.S. Attorney joined the suit in 2014 after a two year investigation into the treatment of minors on Rikers revealed there were more than a thousand incidents of officer-on-minor beatings in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The report described a “deep-seated culture of violence” among guards, that included attacks on imprisoned youth who refused to keep quiet about violent incidents. The settlement included a lengthy list of reforms, including fast and thorough reports of use of force incidents, and the appointment of the federal monitor, who would track the implementation of those new policies. But activists who had been organizing against the state violence committed at Rikers weren’t buying it. Brian Sonenstein, an activist and writer for Prison Protest, told The Gothamist, in the wake of the settlement, “While some of these reforms would certainly be marked improvements on the horrifying status-quo on Rikers Island, the city appears committed to using a wrench where it truly needs a wrecking ball. Rikers can’t be saved.”

Sonenstein was correct, and by 2020, the federal monitor was reporting that the Department of Corrections had “not yet demonstrated progress in reducing the frequency of unnecessary and excessive force.” The Gothamist reported that, “In 2020, the use of force rate per person remained higher than all years prior since the monitor was in place, despite historic lows in the jail population — from about 5,600 in January to below 4,000 in June.” The federal monitor’s report also indicated that use of force rates against young adults had also increased almost 200 percent among 19 to 21-year-olds since 2016. More recently, the federal monitor’s reports have grown even more dire. At a hearing earlier this month, the monitor described an incident in which guards were six feet away from an incarcerated person who was actively hanging themselves, and failed to intercede or even acknowledge what was happening.

All of this evidence tells a tale, not of an institution with a staffing crisis, but of a monstrosity that can only serve to replicate violence. As Brian Sonenstein put it, “Rikers cannot be saved.” But the violence of Rikers is not simply the violence of a facility. It is the violence of an apparatus that’s character will not be rewritten by hiring more guards, or monitoring their behavior, or by redistributing their violence to a new set of locations. But elected officials, for the most part, can’t admit that institutions like jails can’t be saved, anymore than they can admit that hiring more police won’t reduce crime. They don’t plan on instituting policies that would actually improve the conditions that generate harm and crime, because that would be antithetical to neoliberalism, so as things get worse, having the police around, to guarantee our cooperation with capitalism, and having jails, where cities can dispose of people who don’t cooperate or fit in, is pretty important to the people who govern us. So the solutions forwarded by officials will almost always involve fortifying those structures, or just getting them to work better.

This is familiar logic when it comes to the criminal injustice system. When policing fails to address intra-communal violence, we’re always told that police just need more funding and control over people’s lives. In Chicago, we hear all the time that we simply need people who are accused of crimes to have fewer rights. Our police superintendent and mayor blame bail reform for violent crime, even though no data supports any correlation between bail reform and violent crime. But even in the absence of data, police claim that if the people they arrested were simply held, pending trial, even though they haven’t been convicted of anything, we would be safer. Again, no evidence supports this. Police simply want an arrest to carry the same weight as a conviction, in that if they charge you, you’re basically serving a sentence — which is how things play out for a lot of people, including in facilities like Rikers. In Chicago, our top cop and mayor also want people charged even when the police know they don’t have adequate evidence to make a case, as the mayor recently highlighted by condemning States’ Attorney Kim Foxx for refusing to file charges in a shootout where police and prosecutors agreed that there was no evidence of who did what.

Officials who actually have the power to decarcerate often have a jail them all and let god sort it out approach to law and order because their larger political agendas don’t allow them to address the root issues, that are landing people in jails, so fear mongering about crime and siphoning people into the system is all they’ve got.

When jails and prisons produce so much suffering and premature death that people who have been conditioned to ignore carceral violence actually take notice, we are told that this is an anomalous situation that can be remedied with more resources and oversight. But it’s not anomalous. It’s inevitable and observation is not alteration. We simply cannot address these harms by bolstering the system. We can address them by setting people free en masse and tackling the root causes of violence and dysfunction in our communities. In New York, there are activists and organizers fighting for that vision, and proposing plans for getting people out of Rikers without building new jails or further reinforcing the system. One of those proposals is called Cage Free NYC.

MM: So Cage Free NYC is actually one of the models and one of the plans for decarceration put forward by a group of organizers, including me. It’s not the only one, so there were plans that were put forward by the People’s Plan New York City, the DSA also put out a plan for ending the carceral state, but Cage Free NYC was one created by abolitionist organizers who have been organizing in the city for a couple of years. And Cage Free NYC essentially highlights a decarceral path that would shut down Rikers without building new jails. The thing that Cage Free NYC prioritizes is reducing the numbers of people inside New York City jails to a level that Rikers can be shut down and it can be done immediately, without building new jails.

The majority of people inside Rikers right now are held pretrial, which means they haven’t been convicted of anything, So one of the other things that Cage Free NYC highlights and prioritizes is the end of pretrial detention and the elimination of bail so that people are being let out. In particular, Cage Free NYC highlights a holistic path to decarceration, which includes reducing police interactions with the public, resulting in fewer arrests, reducing funding for prosecutors in the Department of Corrections, resulting in fewer sentences, and expanding investment in reentry services such as free education, free vocational training, without police involvement or electronic incarceration. It also highlights steps to curb the power of the courts and to reduce the levels of policing within New York City, which would then significantly reduce the jail populations. If the city were to decarcerate to such an extent and reduce the amount of people moving in and out of not just jails, but courts, the city would not have a need for extra beds after Rikers is shut down.

One of the things that we said in Cage Free NYC is jail expansion is a choice, but not the only one. The city is choosing jail expansion, but closing Rikers is possible without new jails. The current crisis, if anything, demonstrates how incapable the Department of Corrections is of keeping people safe, we already know that jails are death making institutions and in the hands of the New York City Department of Corrections, they become even worse, completely unviable and completely unconscionable. But instead of taking these common sense steps, which are not necessarily…. These are hard steps, but instead of taking these common sense steps, the city is offsetting the problem onto staffing. But you’re not going to fix a problem by adding to the problem. When the root of the problem is Rikers itself and the Department of Corrections itself, then reforming the Department of Corrections, reforming incarceration in New York City, building new jails, hiring more employees in prosecutors’ offices, hiring more corrections officers is not going to be the way to undermine the problem.

One of the things I want to highlight is that city officials have argued that the demands to shut down Rikers immediately without new jails are unrealistic and they’ve even stopped mentioning the possibility of canceling the jails plan. So in a lot of reporting about Rikers, the borough-based jails, particularly about the current crisis in Rikers, the borough-based jails aren’t being mentioned, but they go hand in hand. Right now, the only option being put forward for shutting down Rikers is one that shuts it down by 2027 with new jails. But Rikers Island was built as a reform to recover from the injustices, so-called “recover,” of Blackwell’s Island Mental Asylum. And if prison profiteers continue in their ways, more reforms will be used to deal with crises like the ones inside New York City jails now, only to require undoing years or decades later. Instead of exceptionalizing Rikers and exceptionalizing this moment, we need to see it as part of a continuum of neglect and abuse that come with the carceral state, not just in New York City, but in New York state and also across the country and world.

KH: The bottom line is that disposal systems do not provide care. They inflict suffering and cause premature death. When the manufacturing of premature death accelerates, and a society doesn’t react, the needle can just keep moving, until you’re living in a place where the formalized disposal of human life becomes swift business. Those of you who are terrified of a right-wing takeover and the continued rise of fascism should think long and hard about what that means. These carceral horror stories are not a blip. They are the shape of things to come in an era of ongoing crisis, and we need to recognize that piecemeal reactions, that simply demand the amelioration of whatever singular horror broke through, and got a reaction out of the general public, often wind up reinforcing the system. Because the system will always say it needs more money and resources in order to treat people more humanely, and it will consume the billions of dollars that are fed to it, as reform, and it will continue to do what it has always done: inflict suffering and inflict even greater suffering in times of crisis. That’s why we have to challenge ourselves, to not simply turn down the volume of atrocity, but to say, “Why is this happening? What mechanism keeps producing these outcomes? What would it take to get different results?”

There are no structures of care that can be adequately fortified in these places, because sites of human disposal are the antithesis of care. They are where we put people who have been stripped of popular empathy, and without that, the system can do things to them that would horrify people in any other context. But once a person is incarcerated, they are physically situated within the realm of our fears, so any regard for their well-being is pitted against our fears, and our sense of inevitability. Because the system will always frame itself as essential and inevitable, even though it is neither.

So how can we support people incarcerated in Rikers? Mon had a few thoughts about that that I would like to share with you all.

MM: So one big thing people can do is to support the demands coming from the inside. For example, currently women incarcerated at Rosie’s on Rikers Island have signed a petition against moving them to state facilities. A couple of days ago, the state announced that it would be transferring people from Rosie’s to Bedford Hills. The transfers to upstate prisons are so nonsensical because the upstate prisons are equally terrible if not in some ways worse because of how long people are incarcerated there. And now people incarcerated at Rikers are advocating for themselves to not be transferred and to be freed. So one of the biggest things people can do is actually support the demands that are coming from inside New York City jails, the demands coming from people who are incarcerated, particularly from people who are demanding an end to pre-trial detention, demanding better conditions inside, demanding better food, better healthcare, and demanding better services to be provided to them when they get out.

It’s really important that people support incarcerated people right now, who are incarcerated in New York City jails, and also build relationships with them because we need to be seeing them as part of our community. And because if people don’t have relationships with incarcerated people and don’t support their advocacy for themselves, then it allows the city and state and the Department of Corrections to silo them and silence them and make it seem like nobody is fighting for them. So that’s a big way that people can support and get involved. I think it’s a big call to action. Another way is to support demands to stop the borough-based jails plan, to move capital construction funds away from the borough-based jails to other projects, to delay the construction, to prioritize healthcare inside jails, to prioritize free services for people who were formerly incarcerated over the building of new jails as part of an agenda for New York City.

And lastly, the other big narrative thing is people can learn about what pretrial detention is and how to end it. Ending pretrial detention is a huge part of how we’re going to abolish mass incarceration in New York. I don’t think that the shutting down of Rikers should be contingent on the fight to end pretrial detention, but do think that people need to learn about what pretrial detention is and how to end it, and what bail is, in order to start advocating for solutions that are not incremental, and for reforms that will actually shrink the prison industrial complex, shrink New York City and state’s carceral sprawl, instead of expanding it.

KH: We do not experience the fullness of our humanity under this system. Our tolerance of mass suffering and death deprives us of that. It leads us to accept the unacceptable. Jails, prisons, detention centers and refugee camps are sites of human disposal in a larger system of disposal, surveillance and control. These systems cage people, but they also confine human potential. Because what our government has accomplished, by cultivating widespread indifference about human suffering in carceral spaces, is the blueprint for our destruction under capitalism, whether it’s waged by the right-wing or a neoliberal regime. Right now, the right-wing appears to be winning, by continuing to forward its agenda at the state level and through the courts, even though the Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress. But under either party, our acceptance of the mass manufacturing of premature death makes us morally malleable in ways that have and will prove disastrous. The elasticity of our tolerance for suffering and death will be our undoing if we don’t destroy the borders that restrict our empathy. We all have human and political potential that cannot be realized until those borders are undone.

Peeling back layers of desensitization can be painful, but it can also free up something inside of us that we didn’t even know was caged. When we allow our sense of human connectedness to dissipate, on a categorical level, whether it’s people who are imprisoned, or people who are entangled with immigration or the family regulation system, something goes dark inside of us. In my work, I have found that when those barriers come down, there’s a spark of possibility that doesn’t exist anywhere else, or happen any other way. When we acknowledge that the prison-industrial complex should not exist, and imagine what it would take to eliminate any perceived need for such a monstrosity, we are setting our imaginations loose upon the world in ways that are incompatible with the violence of capitalism.

It reminds me of an activity I’ve used in the opening of direct action workshops with, where I would ask people what it would be like to be truly free. People would name things like free education, free healthcare, guaranteed housing, and not being subject to state violence — things that are, under this system, really radical demands, but that just make sense to people, when they think about what it would mean to be free. Most of those people were not prison industrial complex abolitionists, but when they tried to imagine a world where we all had a shot at living freely and in peace, they envisioned many of the things that abolitionists are fighting for, because in a world where we prioritized meeting those human needs, we would not be trying to figure out how to dispose of or contain millions of surplus people, whose needs and struggles don’t match the demands of a cut throat system. Taking that step, of actually imagining the prioritization of life as being fundamental to what it means to be free, and fighting from there, is liberating. Questioning your boundaries around who that prioritization extends to, or who landed where they are, because their survival and well-being were never a priority — that can lead to a liberation of thought that will absolutely blow your mind, if it hasn’t already. It’s that jailbreak of the imagination that allows us to demand what we need, rather than beg for status quo levels of suffering.

I know that not everyone listening to this podcast is an abolitionist, but I don’t think we all need to be on that page to contemplate the prioritization of life as being fundamental to our freedom. Because freedom has to mean more than not being disposed of in a cage. And I don’t think you have to be an abolitionist to trouble your boundaries around that. I believe that when anyone gets real with themselves about the borders that restrict the flow of their empathy, and takes a wrecking ball to that shit, there is a flash of potential in the world that wasn’t there before. That’s how we find each other in the struggle to stay human, and that’s how we wind up emptying cages together.

I want to thank Mon M. for talking with me about abolition and the rights of imprisoned people, for this episode. If you would like to get more involved in supporting imprisoned people in Rikers and elsewhere in New York, we will have some links in the show notes that you can check out on our website. I also want to thank our listeners for joining us today, and remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good, and to remember, that the good we do matters. Until next time, I’ll see you in the streets.

Show Notes

If you would like to engage with this issue:
- To learn more about how you can support people being held in Rikers, you can check out In Defense Of. In Defense Of is a storytelling and action platform curated and powered by public defenders and their clients.
- Mariame Kaba created this list of commitments “for people who want to be part of supporting and working alongside incarcerated people this year and need some concrete ideas/steps. It is an incomplete list. But it is a good start. Please feel free to share this with others.”
- Survived & Punished (S&P) is a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence and the culture of violence that contributes to it. S & P’s New York contingent is focused on freeing criminalized survivors from prisons and detention centers through organizing and policy advocacy in the state.
- Covid Bail Out NYC is a volunteer-powered effort to bail people out of NYC jails. You can support their efforts here.
Further reading:
- Rikers’ Forceful Guard Union Is Deepening the Jail’s Humanitarian Crisis by Jarrod Shanahan
- The Real Reason Behind the Crisis at Rikers Island by Roshan Abraham
- The True Jailers of Rikers by Angel Parker
- 10 Deaths, Exhausted Guards, Rampant Violence: Why Rikers Is in Crisis by Jonah E. Bromwich and Jan Ransom
- Some Rikers Guards Will Test Body Cameras As Part Of Reform Settlement by by Emma Whitford
- Report: Use Of Force On The Rise In City Jails, Despite Historically Low Inmate Population by Sydney Pereira
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
October 8, 2021

Biden Aims to Keep Trump Drug Policy That Widened Racial Disparities

Congress quietly used last week’s government funding bill to extend a Trump-era drug policy that is widely perceived as deepening racial disparities in criminal sentencing. Criminal justice groups say the policy will worsen mass incarceration and lead to increased numbers of overdoses — but for unclear reasons, the Biden administration is pushing to make the policy permanent.

In 2018, the Drug Enforcement Agency under former President Trump used its emergency authority to preemptively criminalize an unknown number of substances it considered “fentanyl-related,” but without any health analysis by government agencies to determine each substance’s potential for abuse and lack of therapeutic potential. The DEA classified all these variants of fentanyl as Schedule I drugs — the same class as heroin and cocaine — even if they have no realistic potential for abuse.

This was especially noteworthy given that fentanyl itself — a powerful synthetic opioid that is used as pain medication and is also widely available on the black market — is a Schedule II drug, meaning it has potential for abuse but also medical value. Congress has codified and extended the policy multiple times since, including a three-month extension that was quietly added to the bill to avert a government shutdown last week. The move applied decades-old mandatory minimum sentences for this newly invented class of fentanyl-related substances.

“It’s a totally novel approach — to criminalize something before it’s even determined to be harmful,” Laura Pitter, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s US Program, said in an interview with Salon. “There’s concern that they’re going to try to apply this to other types of substances going forward as well,” she said.

Human Rights Watch was one of more than 140 advocacy groups that called on Congress and the Biden administration to allow the policy to expire. Congress extended it anyway.

“As we approach the 50-year milestone of President Nixon’s announcement of the War on Drugs, there is ample evidence that these unscientific policies destroy communities, entrench racial disparities, and do nothing to reduce drug supply or demand,” the coalition said in a letter to congressional leaders.

The coalition sounded the alarm on the rise of overdoses from fentanyl analogs but says “drug interdiction does not address the root cause of these overdoses,” pointing instead to factors like economic instability, alcohol use, and mental health challenges.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is described as 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, is available legally by prescription and is used in hospitals to treat severe pain. Most fentanyl and fentanyl analogs found in recreational drugs are manufactured in illegal laboratories. Some of these fentanyl analogs can be far more potent than the prescription drug, but most have not been extensively researched and in some cases are essentially “biologically inactive.” Fentanyl and its analogs are sometimes added to other street drugs, including heroin and cocaine, and users are often unaware their drugs are laced with a fentanyl-related substance. Nonetheless, prosecutors can seek mandatory 20-year sentences if a user is found with just a trace amount of a fentanyl analog in a mixture of fewer than 10 grams.

“When there’s such a broad classification of anything that’s chemically similar, I think it really opens up this opportunity for substances that don’t have any impact on the body or brain to land as a drug that can be deeply criminalized,” said Ellen Glover, campaign director for drug policy, harm reduction and criminal justice at the grassroots network People’s Action, in an interview with Salon.

As a result of the class-wide scheduling, fentanyl analogs now involve higher penalties than many other drugs. Pitter said there are “huge racial disparities in the way these prosecutions are carried out and the impact they have on Black and brown communities in particular.”

Indeed, an analysis released by the U.S. Sentencing Commission earlier this year found that nearly 70% of those sentenced for fentanyl analogs in the year after the policy was enacted were Black or Latino.

Proponents of the policy have argued that it helps law enforcement target illegal manufacturers and get ahead of black-market chemists who tweak the chemical structure of drugs to evade regulation. But data shows that only about 10% of prosecutions have targeted the most serious offenders like importers, distributors and leaders.

“They’re not going after the factory. The largest percentage of these prosecutions are low-level, they’re not kingpins,” Pitter said. “The people who are really going to be harmed by this continued over-criminalization are going to be the people at the lowest level of the drug food chain, the ones who are the users.”

In fact, existing laws already allowed prosecutors to charge people found in possession of fentanyl analogs and much of the fentanyl panic has been “fueled by misinformation,” according to a study published by the National Institutes of Health. This situation has made it more difficult to treat drug users while encouraging “hyper-punitive criminal laws,” the study concluded.

“The more we criminalize substances, the more it pushes people who use drugs into the shadows, where they are less inclined to access support or care because they’re afraid of the criminalization impacts,” Glover said, pointing to the “skyrocketing overdose death rate.”

The number of overdose deaths from synthetic opioids hit a record high in 2019 and continued to rise in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic.

Since the class-wide scheduling of fentanyl analogs went into effect, “overdose rates have skyrocketed, so criminalization is not an effective approach to trying to curb overdose deaths,” Glover said. “We want to save lives, we want to stop them from overdosing. We know that science and evidence show us that we need to invest in public health solutions like treatment and harm reduction. There’s lots of evidence to support that.”

Pitter said she worries that the crackdown on fentanyl and its analogs could mirror the infamous increase in mass incarceration caused by the nationwide crackdown on crack cocaine in the 1980s and ’90s.

“It’s a continuation of the same policies and a failure to learn from the mistakes of the past,” she said.

The DEA has lobbied Congress for years to make this policy permanent. Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have sponsored the FIGHT Fentanyl Act, which would classify fentanyl analogs as schedule I drugs indefinitely while removing some mandatory minimums.

A spokesperson for Portman told Salon that his bill addresses concerns about mandatory minimums while empowering law enforcement.

“Sen. Portman addresses both concerns through his FIGHT Fentanyl Act, which he introduced this year — the only bipartisan proposal that would permanently schedule fentanyl analogs,” the spokesperson said, claiming that “we took into account feedback from the criminal justice reform community to ensure that mandatory minimum sentences are not automatically applied,” while also sending “a message to the makers of these deadly drugs that we are serious about addressing this problem by giving law enforcement the tools it needs to keep these substances from coming across our borders.”

The Biden administration has similarly proposed making the class-wide scheduling permanent while removing all quantity-based mandatory minimums. This proposal would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to remove or reschedule individual fentanyl analogs that are found not to possess a high potential for abuse.

“By acting on these recommendations, Congress can take decisive action against the fastest growing driver of overdoses in the country, while protecting civil rights and encouraging scientific research,” Regina LaBelle, the acting director of National Drug Control Policy, said in a statement.

Glover said the proposed changes have not addressed concerns raised by People’s Action “at all.”

“The truth of the matter is that criminalization does nothing to save lives,” she said. “If the goal is to end overdose deaths, then this is not the solution.”

Pitter said the proposal addresses “some” of the concerns raised by advocacy groups but “it’s not just mandatory minimums that are the problem, it’s prosecution. It’s still criminalizing possession and putting people through the system.”

Pitter noted that the Biden administration’s proposal would create a complex mechanism for people who are wrongly prosecuted under the scheduling policy to have their prosecutions reversed retroactively if it is later found that the substance they possessed should not have been criminalized in the first place.

That byzantine loophole amounts to an “acknowledgment that overcriminalization is going to happen and people are going to be prosecuted wrongly for this,” Pitter said. “Undertaking an initiative like that is incredibly time-consuming and you’ve already put somebody through the entire process of prosecution. And they’ve already lost everything. Their job, their lives.”

Advocates have increasingly called for drug decriminalization, pointing to successes in countries like Portugal, which has seen drug overdose deaths drop by more than 80% since it decriminalized drugs like heroin in 2000.

“Use and possession of drugs should not be criminalized to begin with,” Pitter said. “There should be a health-based approach to drug policy and it should be grounded in providing people with the treatment that they need, not arresting their way out of this crisis.

“They should be focused on providing treatment and testing kits that allow people to test for the presence of these types of harmful substances in their drugs,” she said, adding that such “health-based approaches” were not even included in Biden’s proposed policy.

Despite the absence of such public health strategies, were not included in the proposal but LaBelle of the National Drug Control Policy has urged Congress to fund Biden’s budget request, saying it “includes $10.7 billion to expand access to substance use prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery support services.”

Other advocates say that’s not enough. People’s Action is instead backing the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act, which would expand access to medication-assisted drug treatment, and the Support Treatment and Overdose Prevention (STOP) of Fentanyl Act, which would invest in harm reduction policies like overdose prevention and expanded access to treatment.

“I hope and expect that Congress has learned its lesson from 50 years of failed drug policies,” Glover said, “and that we’ll follow a new path forward that supports public health solutions.”
October 4, 2021

Electronic Monitoring Has Widened Its Net Amid COVID

For Mohawk Johnson, the next call from the Cook County Sheriff’s department may come at any time. It could be at 4 a.m. or smack in the middle of dinner. Over the course of a year on house arrest on a GPS monitor, Johnson estimates the sheriff’s department has called more than 60 times accusing him of being AWOL when he is asleep in his bed, watching television or taking a shower. As a self-defense mechanism, Johnson has posted videos of many of these calls to his

Twitter account showing himself crawling out from under the blankets to answer the phone or trying to relax in front of Captain America on the TV screen as the call arrives. Johnson’s tweets, along with high-profile cases like those of activist lawyer Steven Donziger and Baltimore grandmother Gwen Levi, have given the punitive vagaries of electronic monitoring (EM) a touch of media play.

But until recently, researchers have not stepped forward to provide data to substantiate stories like Johnson’s and provide fuel for activist campaigns against EM. The lack of data about electronic monitoring is shocking. To begin with, no national census of monitors exists. While prisons and jails produce population counts regularly, the last attempt at a national tally of electronic monitors was a 2016 census by Pew Charitable Trusts which concluded that 131,000 devices were in use, excluding those used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Yet Pew’s total seems questionable, since a 2009 report by the late EM expert Peggy Conway placed the total number of monitors at nearly 200,000. State and local authorities shed little additional light. Most keep no serious records of who is on the monitor, how often people are returned to custody due to violating the frequently irrational rules of EM or how many false alarms trigger undue arrests or harassment. Even basic annual reports or assessments are rare. The major companies that provide the devices and often run the programs — BI, Satellite Tracking of People (STOP), Sentinel, Attenti and SuperCom — are also notoriously secretive about their data. While knowledge of the harms done by these technologies to individuals like Johnson and Donziger has become well known, the normalization of GPS trackers in smartphones, fitness devices that record biometrics and the addition of Amazon Ring to millions of front doors have softened popular concerns about the impact of carceral technologies like GPS ankle monitors.

New Research

However, in the past three years, activist-researchers have begun to apply a critical lens to electronic monitoring. Three factors have precipitated this shift. First, the rise of the movement to end cash bail often prompted authorities to release people on monitors. Impacted individuals and many activists quickly realized release did not always equate with freedom. Under EM, people often landed back in jail for violating some petty rule. Alternatively, regulations like those applied to Mohawk Johnson frequently subjected them to extreme regimes of confinement in their own homes. As Timothy Williams, who spent several months on a pretrial monitor in Chicago put it, electronic monitoring is “hell … the same as jail. There’s no difference.” Second, ICE has steadily increased the use of GPS tracking and other surveillance devices on immigrants. Lastly, during the pandemic, popular pressure to release individuals from the pressure cookers of carceral spaces prompted a turn to releases on monitors. As David Gaspar, The Bail Project’s national director of operations noted to Truthout, “It has become ridiculous how quick they are to hand out what has become their go-to piece of jewelry.” Since March 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons alone has granted early release to over 30,000 people, thousands of whom landed on house arrest with an ankle monitor.

Researchers like Ruha Benjamin, author of the prize-winning Race After Technology, George Washington University law professor Kate Weisburd, Chaz Arnett, Ali Panjwani and Puck Lo, as well as organizations like Mijente, Just Futures Law, Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, and the Community Justice Exchange have led important efforts to unearth the details of electronic monitoring. All told, the results of this new wave of research are providing the kind of data needed to fuel campaigns to block expanded use of electronic monitoring and other punitive technologies, often referred to as “e-carceration.”

At least three studies are surfacing previously unknown details about both the policy and operations of electronic monitoring and the overall industry. “Electronic Prisons: The Operation of Ankle Monitoring in the Criminal Legal System,” released by George Washington University (GWU) Law School in late September, constitutes the most comprehensive examination yet of EM policies and laws. In this study, a team led by Kate Weisburd collected and analyzed 247 records from 101 agencies in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Their scope included pretrial and post-prison EM, as well as juvenile applications of monitors. Weisburd, who in her courtroom days defended dozens of youths placed on electronic monitors, told Truthout she aims to add “to the efforts of community organizers and advocates who are pushing back against the expansion of e-carceration.” The GWU work depicts “how monitoring is used, including the terms and conditions that people on monitors must abide by.” Weisburd said their project documents “the restrictive nature of monitoring that, like prison, infringes, if not eliminates, fundamental rights and undermines privacy, financial security, autonomy and dignity.” Some of the restrictions the team unearthed were staggering. In Kanawha County, West Virginia, for example, authorities compel a person on EM to agree that: “I will not allow persons of disreputable character to visit my residence during the period of home confinement.” In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, those on monitors are compelled to conduct themselves in “an orderly manner at all times.” No definition of “disreputable” or “orderly manner” are offered.

The normalization of GPS trackers in smartphones [and] fitness devices that record biometrics have softened popular concerns about the impact of carceral technologies like ankle monitors.

The Louisville Metro court specifies that a person under “home incarceration” must remain inside the house proper. For those authorities, “inside means no decks, patios, porches, taking out the trash, etc.” In Milwaukee, individuals are only allowed to go to the grocery store for one hour per week.

The language of the rules is often as punitive as their content. The Florida Department of Corrections informs people under their program: “You will charge the tracking device for a minimum of four (4) hours a day and at all times while at home unless otherwise directed.” In Kansas, a person is banned from sleeping while charging their device.

Privacy is another key issue. In San Francisco, people on monitors must “acknowledge that my EM data may be shared with other criminal justice partners.” No specific partners are mentioned. Six agencies actually require people on EM to submit to warrantless searches of their cellphones and other devices. The report also notes how devices are increasingly adding on features like two-way audio, meaning that the person’s ankle can operate like a speaker phone, “talking” loudly to the person on the device at any moment chosen by law enforcement. This creates a fear on the part of the user that the device may start “talking” while a person is at work or in other places where such an interruption would be problematic.

Weisburd’s team also compiled a detailed list of the daily user fees for many of the jurisdictions. These charges, simply for being on the monitor, range from $1.50 per day in Lancaster County, Nebraska, to $47 per day for a self-employed person in Sacramento County, California. The charges in Sacramento would add up to over $17,000 per year, more than half the earnings of a person on minimum wage.

While the GWU study provided a broad overview, the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts produced the most detailed case study of an EM program to date: 10 Facts About Pretrial Electronic Monitoring in Cook County. Focusing on what is the largest and likely the most punitive pretrial electronic monitoring program in the country, this research aimed to refute arguments advanced by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart that people on pretrial release on electronic monitors were contributing to heightened violence in Chicago. Appleseed Senior Policy Analyst Sarah Staudt, who led this research project, systematically refuted Dart’s allegations. In the kind of deep-dive research previously unseen in the world of electronic monitoring, Staudt exposed how the Cook County EM program has been dramatically expanding since the pandemic, that people are being kept on house arrest for longer periods than ever, and like every aspect of the criminal legal system, EM disproportionately impacts Black people. While Black people only comprise 23 percent of the county’s population, they constitute 74 percent of those on electronic monitoring.

While the number of charges for acts of violence committed by people on a monitor has not grown, the figures for people sent back to jail for minor violations of monitoring rules has.

The Appleseed document totally undermines Dart’s contentions that EM and pretrial justice reform are linked to violence. Contrary to Dart’s allegations, which are not supported by data, Staudt’s calculations show only 1 person in 12 on electronic monitoring is arrested on new charges. While the number of charges for acts of violence committed by people on a monitor has not grown, the figures for people sent back to jail for minor violations of monitoring rules has. Reincarceration for acts like failing to charge a battery, returning home late from work or not having a place to live more than quadrupled from 2019 to 2021. Moreover, people are spending longer periods on pretrial monitoring. At the time of the Appleseed research, over 1,000 people had been on EM for over a year, proving that Mohawk Johnson is not an exception. Lastly, the report debunked one of the major motivations for pretrial EM, ensuring attendance at court appearances. A survey of Cook County EM from 2016-2018 showed virtually equal rates of appearance for all court appointments, for those on a monitor (83.52 percent) and those not on a monitor (82.75 percent). The study concluded that EM has “no clear benefit to the public” and at an annual cost of over $30 million, represents a drain from funding streams that could “prioritize investments in grassroots, non-court-related services to support people involved in the criminal legal system.”

While research in the criminal legal system has opened up lots of new territory, equally important advances in unearthing the complexities of electronic monitoring have come from immigrant rights activists. A collaboration among Freedom for Immigrants, Immigrant Defense Project and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law surveyed the harms of EM for people under the authority of ICE. In perhaps the first serious look at the health implications of being on EM, their report found that more than 70 percent of the 147 respondents reported “aches, pains and cramps,” 55 percent reported numbness and roughly 1 in 5 said they had received electric shocks from the device. These findings raised possibilities for further study and even litigation concerning the health effects of ankle shackles, an aspect of EM that has been ignored by authorities and providers for decades. This work has melded with studies of the role of Big Tech in immigration carried out by a collaboration involving Mijente, Just Futures Law, Immigrant Defense Project and the National Immigration Project.

EM and State Struggles

The expansion of EM research coincides with intense struggles in state legislatures over pretrial reform where electronic monitoring has become an important contestation point. These fights demonstrate a growing understanding that electronic monitoring, like cash bail, cannot be attacked with a single-issue focus. Pilar Weiss, the director of the Community Justice Exchange, a network that organizes over 100 community bail funds, argues that framing is critical. She stresses that letting people out of jail without payment of bail opened the door to a range of post-detention conditions of which EM was one of the most common and likely the most restrictive. She reminded Truthout that “the problem is not with the person but with the system.”

While Black people only comprise 23 percent of the county’s population, they constitute 74 percent of those on electronic monitoring.

In at least three states, activists made serious interventions to block the use of electronic monitoring as part of legislative reform. In New York, blockage of EM came via banning the introduction of private companies or fees in monitoring programs. This forced jurisdictions to assume operational and financial responsibility for EM, a burden most authorities weren’t willing to cover. In the words of Katie Schaffer, who was active in the legislative campaign as director of advocacy and organizing for the Center for Community Alternatives, the bill made EM “functionally not an option.”

In Illinois, sparked by the work of the statewide Coalition to End Money Bond, the legislature took a different path, passing the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA), the first legislation in the country to ban cash bail. While the activist critique of EM was not enough to convince the legislature to totally ban electronic monitoring, the PFA ultimately called for mandatory court hearings to place a person on EM, coupled with a compulsory review of the electronic monitor’s continued use after 60 days. As Sharlyn Grace, a past leader of the Coalition recently wrote, the reforms “take away some power and prevent harmful practices from continuing unchecked.”

The California process was more complicated and remains unresolved. After many years of battling over pretrial reform, authorities advanced Proposition 25 to the November 2020 ballot. The proposition aimed to enact SB10, a bill which would have ended cash bail via intensive use of racially biased risk assessment tools and expansion of harsh conditions of release like EM. While mainstream Democrats and some progressives supported Prop 25, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Californians United for a Responsible Budget, and a broad spectrum of abolitionists and radical reformers campaigned against Prop 25. Predictably, the bail bond industry also opposed the measure because it would have nullified most of their revenue stream. In the end, 55 percent of voters opposed the referendum. Activists hoped this would bring the use of risk assessment-based reform to a halt and provide space for community-driven initiatives based on participatory defense and transformative justice. These approaches mobilize families and communities to contest individual cases as well as push to change the underlying structures that continue to propel Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other marginalized folks into the system. But in the spring of this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom stepped in and allocated $140 million to place pretrial services statewide under the authority of the Department of Probation, effectively sidelining community-led efforts. This move will doubtless lead to the expansion of electronic monitoring. As campaigner Ivette Ale told Truthout, “Probation loves EM.” In their capacity as a leading member of the CARE First Coalition, which aims to derail Newsom’s moves, Ale told Truthout the organizing strategy is to build grassroots structures in each of the state’s 58 counties. “We only win by mobilizing more people than anybody,” Ale emphasized.

Grassroots efforts have scored many victories in the fight against mass incarceration’s numerous fronts. But perhaps pushing back against technology also requires some additional strategies. Puck Lo, research coordinator at Community Justice Exchange, contends, “We need to go someplace we haven’t been before and to do that we need to think differently.” In the realm of surveillance technology, Lo views the merging of location tracking and biometrics as creating more potential for the criminalization of individuals through the use of technology. She maintains this may direct us to needing to find ways to “erase databases rather than control them.” But whether the aim is controlling the technology or erasing it, the key rests with building popular support for measures to undermine the power of Big Tech, EM companies and elected officials like Newsom and Sheriff Tom Dart who provide finance and political cover for widening the net of e-carceration.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
September 26, 2021

Christianity Is Empty If It Doesn’t Address the Racist Carceral State

Religion becomes an empty theological exercise if it does not address human suffering — and this includes the anguish wrought by systems of mass incarceration and policing.

I believe this deep down as a philosopher whose religious sensibilities are informed by an African American prophetic tradition that emphasizes courageous speech, deep lamentation, and outrage in relationship to those who undergo social and existential agony.

Forms of religiosity that fail or refuse to concern themselves with “the least of these” risk becoming manifestations of empty idolatry and theological abstraction that leave by the wayside those in need of compassionate community, loving grace and spiritual support.

Given the clarion call for defunding the police within the context of the killing of unarmed Black bodies, religious leaders and institutions in the U.S. must confront the evils of policing, which is undergirded by the legacy of white supremacist domination.

Policing is inextricably tied to deeply problematic normative assumptions and institutional, structural practices and policies that define as suspect, criminal and abject those who are vulnerable (racially, economically, socially, psychologically). I am speaking not about “bad apple” officers, but about policing as a mode of power, control, confinement, gratuitous violence, inhuman isolation, civic death and forms of social death that must be abolished.

Increasingly, a wide range of religious communities are engaging with the struggle to abolish policing. To discuss the effort taking place within Christian communities, I spoke with Mark Lewis Taylor, who emphasizes the indispensable importance of linking the ideology and practice of carceral America with the historical Jesus, who faced a form of policing governmentality by imperial Rome that saw to Jesus’s torture and execution.

As a white ordained minister and theologian, Taylor insightfully and critically engages his own whiteness, emphasizes the importance of Black resistance as agency, critiques white Christian nationalism, highlights the importance of political ontology as a crucial point of politico-religious embarkation and pulls from the wisdom of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Taylor is a professor in Religion and Society at Princeton Theological Seminary who earned his Master’s in Divinity at Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Virginia) and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Among his most recent books are Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers and American Empire (2005) and The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World (2011). Taylor received the Best General Interest Book Award for his 2001 book, The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America (2nd edition 2015).

In addition to years of anti-death penalty work and activism for political prisoners, including founding the group Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal (EMAJ), Taylor remains active in solidarity work against U.S. wars and especially against U.S. dominance and exploitation in Central America. He has taught the course “Critical Race Theory as Theological Challenge” for 20 years at Princeton.

George Yancy: I’m interested in posing a question about your understanding of the historical Jesus in relation to your critically engaging work within the context of carceral logics and prisons as sites of oppression, marginalization, alienation, fragmentation and dehumanization. I am interested in the specific Christological question: “What would Jesus do vis-à-vis mass incarceration?” Cognizant, of course, of falling into a problematic presentism, speak to how you understand the telos of the historical person known as Jesus and how, were he alive today, he would respond to mass incarceration. His own crucifixion was linked to the oppressive structure of the Roman Empire, execution by the State, and those who would rather see him dead. So, there is that sense of being an outcast. I think here of Black bodies which are disproportionately imprisoned, those racially embodied persons who are seen as the abject (etymologically, “to throw away”). How could the historical Jesus not be critical of our contemporary hegemonic prison practices and ideology?

Mark L. Taylor: I definitely agree with the answer you suggest we give: The prophetic Jew from Nazareth in Palestine would have been critical and run afoul of today’s “contemporary hegemonic prison practice and ideology” in the U.S., in “lockdown America” — just as he did amid the religiopolitical repression of first-century Roman Empire. Not to say and live this, while claiming some kind of faithfulness to Jesus is, as I write often, a “betrayal of the gospel,” understanding “gospel” as the core meanings of Jesus’s life and teachings.

Even as I make that claim, however, I want to issue two warnings. First, because of today’s problematic Christian supremacy, this claim is neither the most-needed thing to say nor the first thing that needs to be stated. The first and most important thing to voice is lament and outrage over the violating attacks today on Black people of African descent who labor still in the afterlife of slavery. Also, we must know the resilience and resistance by those rendered abject. Without this, any counter-carceral or counter-imperial Jesus will make little sense. I tell my students, and have stated in my Theology Department, that I am a human-in-the-world before I am a follower of Jesus.

This means I have to reckon with the kind of human I am — with a personal history and thus a political, racial, social, economic way of being in the world. All this is integral to — indeed, I think a precondition for — any faith claims I may want to make. This is why I have stressed (in The Theological and the Political) that a certain kind of political ontology of my being, of my embeddedness in societal and historical antagonisms, is preliminary to a sense of the theological. And if you permit me another reference to my own work, I emphasize in the preface to The Executed God, that I do not, in that book or elsewhere, propose Christian discourse as having a premium on the thinking and practice necessary for resisting and living amidst and against the carceral and imperial logics of lockdown America. “Muslims, Jews, engaged Buddhists, the Yoruba, traditions of Caribbean cultures, secular activists as well as many others abroad and in the U.S. — all must be engaged to take on Lockdown America.” All this is part of resisting Christian supremacy.

My second warning is that we must exercise a strict epistemic humility in talking about “the historical Jesus.” We really know very little about the historical Jesus, so little that in fact I sympathize with those who even doubt that he was. But we need not go that far. In fact, biblical scholar Bart Ehrman — himself an avowed agnostic and humanist — has written an entire book entitled, Did Jesus Exist?, in which he argues that a disciplined historical method will show “a Jesus of Nazareth who existed in history, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” In her book, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen also emphasizes that “the single most solid fact about Jesus of Nazareth is his death: he was crucified by the prefect Pilate … in the manner that Rome reserved particularly for political insurrectionists, namely crucifixion.” This may seem a stripped-down minimalist Jesus to many Christians today. Or they find it too fearsome a thing. In all likelihood, Jesus met the fate of many if not most of the crucified: being left to the birds and beasts of prey before being tossed ignominiously into a mass lime pit. No wonder many Christians of both conservative and liberal persuasions prefer certain orthodox “grand scenarios” for interpreting Jesus’s death. They look away, abstracting from this ugly history. They intone instead the grander themes: he came to forgive sins, to make expiation for human sin, to satisfy on the cross God’s wrath, to pay ransom with his death on the cross to appease an angry God, to die intentionally to show self-sacrificing love, and so on.

My work, to the contrary, takes as a starting point the neglected historicity of Jesus’s torture-death, his imperial execution. I ask what it means to remember that, and how any life can come from remembering that. To be crucified was a shameful, terrorizing thing. Early Jesus movements barely survived the stigmatizing that went with being associated with a crucified Jesus.

Even today, especially in the U.S., Christians prefer the grand scenario interpretations of Jesus’s death to a thoroughgoing identification with Jesus as counter-imperial, political insurrectionist who met a torturous death. I emphasize, though, that even with this more limited, “solid” historical claim about Jesus, to ask today, “What would Jesus do?” and to answer “Well, he would criticize and resist today’s death-dealing, torturous ways of U.S. state violence” — even that answer requires first an awareness and serious reckoning with our violent U.S. State, driven by a warrior-elite today buttressed by the ways of white supremacy, empire and a long history of European and American coloniality of power. Feeling and thinking those antagonisms, I repeat, is the condition for the possibility of a liberatory retrieval of the historical Jesus.

Aware that none of us are beyond reproach, which I think helps us to maintain a certain religious and ethical humility, speak to what it is that contemporary ordained ministers and theologians have failed to do regarding the deep political, social, economic and existential problems of incarceration. I’m thinking here of the failure, assuming that this is what you would call it, of ordained ministers and theologians to embody forms of outrage that are linked to practices that are intended to liberate those who have been subjected to forms of carceral injustice. This raises the issue of praxis, a Christological mode of being-in-the-world that imitates the work of the historical Jesus. Assuming that there is a “failure” here, is it one that is linked to a certain insular, apolitical understanding of Christian theology? Is it a case of fear of enacting fomenting practices that challenge the U.S. empire and its ruling elites who support forms of carceral rule and domination? What are your thoughts?

Yes, indeed I agree. Most “ordained ministers and theologians” have “failed,” and in all the ways you mention here. Having experienced as I have some versions of white evangelical Christian traditions (even if I thoroughly rejected them decades ago), and though now I work in a theological institution often seen as a flagship seminary for especially mainstream Protestantism (primarily Presbyterian mainliners, but also some evangelicals) — given all this, indeed I have to work with a profound sense of “religious and ethical humility.” Better said, perhaps, I have to own a kind of complicity, an embeddedness in white institutions and ethos that conditions not only my conscious life, but also my unconscious. Thus, my whiteness will be at work in many of my reflexive gestures, opinions, modes of expression, relationships to others and at times in my selected theoretical positions, and often in spite of my best intentions. (And then, how often do we whites even have good or “the best” intentions?)

At work here is something more than “complicity,” since complicity usually suggests some kind of involvement that you can become aware of and then lay aside or grow beyond. Again, my whiteness and its anti-Blackness are aspects of conditions of political being, an ontology of being-white that puts Black life “under erasure,” as Calvin Warren writes about it in Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation. Because this persists, due to the history and politics into which I have been thrown by sheer birth and acculturation (as well as by my individual choices and failures), there is for me great lament and outrage. Those ontological conditions include Western modernity’s slavery-based racial capitalism, U.S. wars and empire-building, as these are continually reinforced by and reinforcing a heteropatriarchal gender and sexual system. I cannot just renounce all this. Nor, of course, can I go to an anti-racist training seminar to get over my “white fragility.” It’s a white forcefulness with which I must reckon, the very power of which is marked by my body (again, whether I intend that or not). Admitting this is the stuff of white loss of innocence. James Baldwin’s essay, “The Age of White Guilt and the Disappearance of the Black Individual,” should be read annually in all white churches. Alas, many of my white students have not read it.

If there is not a re-politicization of Jesus understood as one who not only suffered but challenged imperial practices of torture and the forced subjugation of the body, then Christian leaders and their communities will hardly find the will to be “decolonizers” at all.

Most of the church and its leaders are ensconced in a reconciliatory dreaming that starts from problems of generalized guilt and sin that “Jesus came” to do something about. This again foregrounds Christian theology’s grand scenarios. This is to abstract from the problem of how one might find life, possibly, by remembering Jesus’s political insurrectionary torture-death. But abstracting away from this Jesus is often a piece with Christian leaders’ abstracting also from any outrage over their own thoroughgoing whiteness as a form of radical evil (again, I mean not only whatever personal manifestations of whiteness they may show, but also whiteness as racial capitalism, as gender and sexual subjugation and erasure of Black lives, etc.). This chronic abstracting is part of the heart of whiteness, as I have argued since my 1990 works, and it is a vicious thread running through various modes of subjugation. In sum, I don’t think Christian leaders will be outraged about the carceral logics of our time until they/we sink into and own a lament and outrage over their/our own emplacement in a political ontology of whiteness.

Speak to how you understand the relationship between coloniality and U.S. mass incarceration. When I think of the two, I think of usurpation, expansionism, exploitation, domination, control, subjugation, the attempted creation of docile bodies, marked bodies, raced bodies, dangerous bodies. I assume that part of addressing the relationship between coloniality and U.S. mass incarceration would also involve processes of decolonization, yes? If this is true, then it seems to me that we must ask (demand?) of ordained ministers and theologians to become better decolonizers. Please explore.

Again, I have to say that before ordained ministers and theologians can become “better decolonizers” or to engage in decolonizing at all, they need to counter the de-historization of Jesus’s death to which they contribute by continuously narrating any number of the grand scenarios about Jesus’s death on the cross. These scenarios mask the insurrectionist and mundane political meanings of his imperial torture-death. Decolonizing, or “de-linking from the coloniality of power” — as decolonial thinkers such as Samir Amin would say — requires also a “de-imperializing” commitment. Imperialism is the brutal commandeering power of colonial expansion and maintenance. If there is not a re-politicization of Jesus understood as one who not only suffered but challenged imperial practices of torture and the forced subjugation of the body, then Christian leaders and their communities will hardly find the will to be “decolonizers” at all.

If we are serious about decolonizing, the road ahead is tangled and will demand our utmost. The “colonial matrix of power” presents a foreboding set of intersecting dynamics of power. Summarizing the work of one of the most influential of decolonial thinkers, Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, I have argued elsewhere that the coloniality of power is “a matrix of four ambits of social structural and cultural practices. These include, first, labor (structural practices of global capital), sex and sexuality (structural practices of hegemonic masculinism and heteronormativity), subjectivity (structural practices of Eurocentric white racism), and state authority (structural practices of state boundary fortifications). These four ambits are not separate circles of operation. They should be seen as overlapping, with various interactions specifiable between them.” In the ambit of “state authority,” Christian ministers today have a special responsibility to challenge the current directions of the U.S. State. Long-existing American traditions of white supremacy are now consolidating their hold over security, military and police functions with the aid of newly energized white Christian nationalism. It has been easy for many Christian liberal ministers and theologians to distance and differentiate themselves from this Christian right wing. But they have yet to really call them out and challenge them, organize to block their fascist aspiration. During the years of George W. Bush, I attempted to sound the alarm with my book Religion, Politics and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers and American Empire.

As a white male ordained minister and theologian, how do you understand the tensions that exist between the liberation work that you do and your own whiteness? I have long argued that white religious folk have failed to give critical attention to their whiteness, especially in terms of how their whiteness is linked to structures of power, hegemony and violence. It seems to me that well-intentioned white religious folk must do the work of removing their masks of “innocence,” as James Baldwin would say. Without a critique of their own whiteness, they will continue to be complicit in anti-theological structures. Then again, white racism is so deeply pervasive and encrusted, I imagine that self-critique is not enough. One can rage against the machine of whiteness and still benefit from and perpetuate racialized injustice. There must be something far more global and systemically insurrectionist — not simply reconciliatory, but abolitionist. In short, how do you critically address your own whiteness, what insights have you learned, with respect to living the life of a white male ordained minister and theologian who is committed to social justice, especially as you also teach at an elite academic institution that has roots within slavery?

As you can imagine from the foregoing, the status as “ordained minister,” which I took on over 35 years ago, is a difficult one to maintain. I grew so uneasy with the status that 15-20 years ago I went on non-active status in my ecclesial judicatory. I still will speak in churches, but I am no longer a celebrant of its “priestly” functions and practices. I respect the many good things that some do in their roles as ordained ministers, but personally, I am no longer comfortable with such a role. It is so difficult to extract white ecclesial functioning in the U.S. from white supremacist and U.S. imperialist formations. Even “theology,” at least as the guild discipline it has become, is one from which I have distanced myself (see my book, The Theological and the Political). There I articulate a notion of “the theological” that frees it from the doctrinal genre that usually defines it, and from the transcendentalizing discourses that usually lead theology into abstractions that slight, or neglect altogether, the concrete and historical demands of faith and practice (like remembering the death of Jesus as an imperialist torture-death, comparable to lynching, as James Cone emphasizes). But the theological of which I would now speak is one that stays close to some very ancient meanings of the term. The theological is a discourse that traces awe-inspiring spectral forces born of remembering those who suffer the deep antagonisms of history (Ignacio Ellacuría’s “the crucified people”), and those who, when remembered, portend a disruption of the standing order and generate practices of struggle to birth other possible worlds.

It is so difficult to extract white ecclesial functioning in the U.S. from white supremacist and U.S. imperialist formations.

Any of these changes though, any specter for overcoming the antagonisms spawned by white supremacy’s anti-Blackness, demand that whites lay aside our innocence. Our whiteness dogs us at every step…. I might make some progress shaking off some of the more egregious marks of individual white prejudice, but my place in structural racism, my having been thrown — as I’ve already stated — into the political ontology of whiteness, keeps me always a racist and my reflexive thoughts and actions can always surprise me to remind me of that uncomfortable fact.

So, what then? I argue that the way forward for a white person is to find our places in a collective struggle against the structures of white supremacy. Expect yourself to make mistakes. Watch out for them. Acknowledge them when they happen, but then keep moving forward, at the cues given by the leadership of Black, Indigenous and other leaders of color. There are times when leadership from whites against white supremacy is essential. But usually this has to happen from within a collective of movements against white supremacy. Along this route there is no gaining of purity or renewed innocence for the white individual. Such a collective route should not become another prominent adventure displaying a white person’s descent into display of our valiant wrestling with whiteness and then some rising into restored, emancipatory whiteness (or worse, some claimed “no-longer white-ness”). That is to chase again the will-o-the-wisp of purity and innocence. All too often it is only the foregrounding of yet another white hero narrative — a claimed sojourn “up from whiteness!”

As a hopeful Christian theist, I am also haunted by skeptical and pessimistic sensibilities. This partly accounts for my use of the term “hopeful.” It’s not just the epistemological question of God’s existence, but the sheer magnitude of being sick and tired of, for me, anti-Black racism. This would include questions of mass incarceration, the policing of Black bodies, the killing of unarmed Black bodies, social and civic death, the investment in Black bodies as “criminal,” “disgusting,” “morally incorrigible,” “subhuman,” “hypersexual.” When I think of liberation, through what I see as a form of racial realism à la Derrick Bell, I think of truncated forms of adjustment, one after another. I think of the arc of white American history that is only prepared to bend to the extent that whiteness remains hegemonic, where hope, therefore, functions to sustain Black people from taking far more serious and perhaps dangerous revolutionary action against their dehumanization. There are times when I think that systemic forms of anti-Black racism are just too embedded within the structures and psyches of white America, and that at the end of the day, my Black humanity will still be denied. It is at these crucial times that I want to avoid the seductions of Karl Marx’s dictum that “religion is the opium of the people,” which implies a form of deception, where one exclusively looks beyond this life to the one (allegedly) to come. Yet, there are times when the weight of human misery is so great, and the ethical, moral and spiritual imagination (strength and capacity) of human beings seems so meager, that I think that there is nothing that will liberate us short of the eschaton, which I see not simply as a reckoning but as a day of ending all evil and suffering, something like a metaphysical intervention in human history. Do you see the tension here? Speak to this in terms of how you deal with what I’m trying to articulate.

Yes, I share in the heaviness of being “sick and tired” of my own whiteness but especially of the structural anti-Blackness with its roots in multiple streams of the past and sustained by the many ambits and levels of the coloniality and neo-coloniality of power today.

So, maybe I need to be very concrete here both about my own pessimism for all the reasons you note so eloquently here, but also about my own … well, I won’t say hope, surely not optimism — but something like hope. I do find myself unable to let go of an arts-nurtured spirit of defiance toward the future, which in combination with others’ defiance, maybe especially at work among today’s youth of struggle, can keep the future open.

And this is where it is so important to keep our struggle broad, our focus on anti-Black white supremacy understood as also animating the multidimensional coloniality of power. And that coloniality does have a historical beginning in the constellation of modernity’s colonizing powers. We are still on the way to undoing those powers. We need to strike multiple blows at not only the micro- and macro-aggressions that so obviously mark white racism. We need also to join with people of every nation who know U.S. imperial power is animated by a transnational whiteness and accumulative systematic greed that drives down so many of us. I know Maya activists in Guatemala who live and fight on the underside of U.S.-backed genocide in their country and who tell me that the changes they fight and hope for will not come until their grandchildren’s time. I know well one political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who insists on finding something to laugh about every day as a way to hope. With Mumia still in prison in spite of my years of work in movements for him, the temptation to despair is real. Yes, I am convinced that movements for him got him off death row, but now he endures a “slow death row,” as he puts it, with a life-without-parole sentence. While he is still in prison, I am about to retire after teaching the whole four decades that Mumia has been in prison since 1982, the same year of my first Fall as a professor in Princeton. I’m headed for retirement maybe with some comforts on the eve of death. Black activist and revolutionary Mumia is still in prison. There’s the difference that whiteness makes right there! What hope can there be?

I’m not sure, but I hold onto some artistic form, some song, some poet, the love in my life and family — any of which might at the very least support in me and us a spirit of defiance toward any future that still seems overwhelmed by anti-Blackness. A lyrical but uncompromisingly political reggae song can often carry me a long way; and I confess that almost any ballad by even a white troubadour — one who is ready to sing of workers’ struggles toward unity with a whole “motley crew” of international rebels against Western colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism — is also a defiant spirit welcome to my being. It is in this spirit that I also receive the hand-painted notecards that Mumia occasionally paints and sends to me (and to others). Defiant spirit is especially operative in such sites of organized liberatory action as the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home. Indeed, as you say, part of this future means holding open the possibility of a “dangerous revolution,” but it will have to come when the most victimized by colonizing white supremacy call for it and dare to seize, and make, the right time for it. Moreover, maybe it will not come until the churches, even churches of the dispossessed, cease offering prayers that some God will mitigate the ways of white supremacist corporate monopolists.

We need to create new spaces and discourses that defy any future that looks only like more of the same.

Maybe those prayers need to stop. We mainly need prayers that align us with a spirit of defiance for another future. And I do look for this on this side of what Christian theologians call “the eschaton,” and on this side of what Afropessimists term “the end of the world,” fixing as they do on that one phrase plucked from midway in a poem by Aimé Césaire and as cited by Frantz Fanon. We cannot wait for that. I’m not proposing we trust some liberal reformism instead. That’s deadly too. With the arts nurturing a spirit of defiance, we need to break liberals’ “freedom-speak” open to a more radical thinking and acting toward freedom. We need to create new spaces and discourses that defy any future that looks only like more of the same. The arts nurturing defiance, if well-crafted and inspiring, help me (us?) “taste” that future and to live defiantly toward it. In the meantime, I recall Mumia’s words that I have cited often, about the urgency and possibility of resisting the U.S. and its imperial force: “…what history really shows is that today’s empire is tomorrow’s ashes, that nothing lasts forever, that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression.”

I know these words do not assuage the angst amid the repression of now, but it does display an intelligent spirit of defiance toward the future that maybe we can embrace.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
September 20, 2021

Bipartisan Reforms Often Expand Prisons and Police. We Need Abolition Instead.
As the concept of “mass incarceration” entered the U.S. mainstream over the last decade or so, diverse networks of advocates, funders and politicians have criticized the country’s overwhelming reliance on police and prisons as a response to a vast array of social problems. A critical consensus that mass incarceration is bad has given rise to a criminal justice reform coalition that is almost as bipartisan as the push for expanding police and prisons has been in previous decades.

Yet, as Kay Whitlock and Nancy A. Heitzeg argue in their new book Carceral Con: The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform (UC Press, 2021), this reform coalition has actually extended the carceral apparatus of surveillance, policing, incarceration and punitive social control. Carceral Con examines several domains where money and politics blunt meaningful transformation: policing, pretrial reform, sentencing and diversion efforts, and incarceration and reentry. Instead of backing the bipartisan reform agenda, Whitlock and Heitzeg advocate abolitionist alternatives.

This interview, conducted via email with both authors, illuminates why they wrote the book and how we can best move forward — beyond reform and toward abolition.

Dan Berger: You both are longtime activists and analysts of the carceral state. Why write a book critical of reform efforts?

Kay Whitlock and Nancy A. Heitzeg: We wrote this book to help people question and look beyond public relations talking points in order to understand how and why most reforms do the opposite of what most people hope. In fact, most reform agendas expand rather than shrink systems of policing, surveillance and carceral control.

Many want to believe that reforms will reduce police violence, end mass incarceration and eradicate the inequality that pervades the criminal legal system. But when you look at collective impacts, reforms don’t do any of those things.

Almost any reform can be made to sound great. But policing, prosecution, and carceral policies arise and evolve within a larger social, economic, political, and ecological context, which is racial capitalism. We analyze reforms and their impacts within that context and the structural raced, classed, gendered and ableist violence and inequality racial capitalism requires. That’s key to understanding who gets criminalized and who doesn’t. It’s key to understanding how the criminal legal system itself both distills and reinforces mass hardship, violence, and, in Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s trenchant phrase, “group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”

We often hear that “partisan gridlock” prevents meaningful transformation. Instead, your book argues that bipartisanship does. How so?

The so-called “bipartisan reform consensus,” is a series of brokered agreements by elite public and private interests that appear to be responsive to growing public opposition to police violence, mass incarceration and the harms they produce. In reality, these reforms often do end runs around protests and uprisings that challenge the structural violence and inequality of the system. They serve to legitimize rather than challenge racial capitalism, endlessly funneling more resources into policing and punishment along the way.

Carceral Con encourages readers to interrogate the very purpose of the criminal legal system within this context of racial capitalism. If, as abolitionists contend, the system is functioning as it is designed to, then “reform” will almost always find ways to reinforce the norm.

Even the title of your book takes a strong position against this bipartisan reform partnerships and coalitions. Who is being conned and what makes criminal justice reform such a “deceptive terrain”?

The heart of the con is this: Bipartisan reform agendas often co-opt the ideas and language of abolitionist and progressive struggles for racial, gender, disability and environmental justice, harnessing them to approaches that deliver more carceral expansion under the guise of what James Kilgore calls “carceral humanism.” Some people do benefit from some reforms, including sentencing changes. But even sentencing reforms sometimes reclassify certain offenses more harshly. And overall impacts don’t reduce structural inequality.

The con is present in the multiple layers of implied promises that emphasize managerial and procedural reforms. Anyone who believes that these reforms help to create more racial and economic justice is being conned. And the con is present in suggesting to people that getting rid of private prisons or ending the war on some drugs or modifying procedures for addressing so-called “non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual” offenses will lessen structural inequality and create more justice.

If, as abolitionists contend, the system is functioning as it is designed to, then “reform” will almost always find ways to reinforce the norm.

Expansion comes in the form of carceral databases; more surveillance-and-monitoring technologies; new (still punishing) “alternatives to incarceration” and “specialty courts”; new prison architectures and unit designs said to be “more responsive” to the needs of transgender people, women, people with cognitive disabilities; and more. And almost always, more funding for policing and punishment.

What the public wants to believe it’s getting is not what’s being delivered through billionaire-driven funding schemes that hide more than they reveal.

Your book describes the reform coalition as a form of “neoliberal world-making,” pursuing an agenda largely set by “billionaires, corporate donors, major foundations, large nonprofit organizations, prestigious university research institutes, and some newly minted reform organizations.” What key goals or strategies are embedded in this agenda?

We’ll note four broad approaches that are usually embedded in bipartisan consensus reforms, though they aren’t openly stated as standard features:
- shifting more and more influence and decision-making into the hands of private, unaccountable interests — especially through funding schemes and the proliferation of public/private partnerships;
- emphasizing the case for austerity agendas through repetitive claims of “budget crisis” and the need to “save taxpayer dollars”; ignoring, dismissing or seeking to discredit discussion of the need for radically different fiscal and social priorities, including higher taxes on the wealthy and other means for redistribution of social and economic power;
- expanding criminal databases and use of surveillance and monitoring technologies under the rubric of creating a more just, humane and efficient system;
- creating, funding and institutionalizing new reform organizations that are wholly beholden to the brokered interests we refer to as Reform, Inc. but masquerade as grassroots activism.
Not every reform partner across the political spectrum would publicly embrace these as goals or strategies. But they run like powerful currents through bipartisan reform agendas and their implementation.

How does the bipartisan reform coalition benefit — politically and economically — from this approach?

Big Money seeks to buy relative social and economic stability across administrations and parties. Politically, there’s a benefit to maintaining the racial and economic status quo, to offering bogus “solutions” to the enormous human and environmental crisis of the criminal legal system so that nothing significantly changes.

An enormous amount of public and private money is in play to be allocated within and among reform circles. This includes everything from contracts for research and services to investment opportunities to grants for creating new carceral designs, technologies and infrastructure. This is in addition to the huge fixed costs of the criminal legal system, estimated by Prison Policy Initiative as at least $182 billion in 2017.

Reform money from major donors, donor-advised funds, foundations, and local, state, county, and federal governments end up supporting a lot of law enforcement and reform industry employment and vested self-interest. Law enforcement officials tend to dominate many of the various bipartisan reform councils set up to drive or give cover to state, county and local reforms. Bipartisan reform campaigns never seriously challenge their influence, even when they work tirelessly to try to weaken or even derail certain reforms, as with money bail and pretrial reform.

We also describe the emergence and institutionalization of a reform industry that wields unprecedented influence in creating and expanding systems of surveillance that always are utilized for such repressive purposes as criminalizing political dissent and protest.

How do abolitionists and others to the left of the bipartisan agenda fit into the story?

In a number of ways, especially by challenging the public relations promotions through political education around reform issues and producing some amazing resources for community groups. There’s generally an emphasis on working independently and placing reform within a larger social and economic context. For decades, abolitionists have been working to create new models of community accountability and transformative justice. From time to time, some groups may get involved in reform coalitions, at least for a time, believing they can help leverage more liberatory kinds of change, but, as we show in our book, such efforts can easily backfire. It’s tricky territory, because despite implied promises, bipartisan reform agendas are never going to support transformational structural change.

For abolitionists, there are real distinctions between “non-reformist” reforms that can help relieve hardship and suffering without expanding systems of policing and punishment and reforms that support such expansion. One example of a non-reformist reform is closing down jails and prisons without renovating, replacing or repurposing them. Another might be advocating for the mass use of compassionate release procedures without requiring an eventual return to prison or the punitive electronic monitoring of those released due to age, infirmity, or other serious conditions.

You wrote this book under the Trump administration. How do you see these issues playing out under the Biden administration and beyond?

We knew the book had to be — and is — relevant, no matter who won. Trump didn’t give a damn about reform, but other influential right-wing politicians and philanthropists do. And so does President Joe Biden.

Whether in the U.S. Senate or the White House, Joe Biden has always actively championed intensified policing, surveillance and repressive conditions of confinement. Today, he supports hiring tens of thousands more police, sending more financial resources into policing, making it more difficult for incarcerated people to receive, for free, original letters and photographs from home, and more. In some sense, his reform cred rests on the inaccurate image of Vice President Kamala Harris as a champion of progressive criminal justice reform.

The reform agenda survives through a disingenuous recycling of performative appeals to improvements of prisons and policing, and proposed solutions that expand rather than shrink the carceral state. We hope our book helps people look beyond the public relations talking points and political image-making factories to consider more deeply the relation of carceral expansion to strengthening systems of structural violence and inequality.

You write “Sometimes, as readers will see, it is better to withhold support, better to regroup and redefine the fight, than to embrace proposals that will make things worse.” What can abolitionists and others critical of the bipartisan reform agenda do to “regroup and redefine”?

We should start by recognizing the volatile political and economic environment we’re in. It’s always a really bad idea to expand police forces and systems of surveillance. Today, with fascist ideas and campaigns taking hold, it’s dangerously foolish to do so.

For starters, we suggest more energetic effort to build the strong community relationships we will need to get through the tsunamis of economic and environmental catastrophe that are upon us. Who in your community is doing abolitionist work? Where are the resources? How can you tap into abolitionist work, or ongoing work leaning in that direction? What mutual aid networks and cultural avenues exist to support these efforts?

How are reforms being paid for and implemented in your city, county or state? Who gets to decide? Do a power analysis. Work to accumulate useful information and incorporate it into independent organizing toward structural change.

Intentional efforts to build anti-carceral, abolitionist relationships across movements for social, economic, environmental and cultural justice are essential. The points of connection already exist, ranging from criminalization of communities of color, poverty and protest to the enormous environmental devastation that carceral economies demand to the dire need to shift social and fiscal priorities away from carceral and military expansion to human and ecological needs. Now we need to make those connections active and ongoing, in strategic ways, with bold programs and proposals that address structural harms. And keep at it. Backlash comes, but we can stand in the storms and come through them stronger.

Give up any remaining illusion that building new jail, prisons and “special units” can be a steppingstone toward a more just society. Actively oppose all such efforts while relentlessly asserting new priorities and approaches.

Don’t mistake good intentions or the good public reputations of some major reform partners for guarantees that the collective, long-term impacts of reformist reforms build a more racially and economically just society at the intersections of gender, disability and ecologies.

Finally: We need to be international in our vision and praxis, linking struggles

here in the United States to those around the world. There is so much to learn from one another in terms of insight, analysis and organizing strategies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
September 13, 2021

Former Attica Prisoner Describes Racist Brutality That Sparked Deadly Uprising

On the 50th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, the deadliest prison uprising in U.S. history, we speak with Tyrone Larkins, a formerly incarcerated survivor, who was shot three times in the brutal crackdown of September 13, 1971. He describes Attica as “the roughest place that I’ve ever seen in my life,” as he recalls what led to the rebellion on September 9, 1971, when prisoners overpowered guards and took over much of Attica prison in upstate New York to protest conditions. At the time, prisoners spent most of their time in their cells and got one shower per week. Larkins lays out how tense negotiations with politicized prisoners followed, and says the rebellion was on its way to being resolved through diplomacy when Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to storm the facility. Police opened fire, killing 29 inmates and 10 hostages.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Today we spend the hour marking the 50th anniversary of the deadliest prison uprising in the history of the United States. A state cover-up of the mass killing began that day. We will air long-suppressed testimony of survivors who were tortured by guards, and speak with one of the survivors, as well as a negotiator and a filmmaker who helped uncover what really happened.

And a warning to our listeners and viewers: Today’s show will include graphic, painful, brutal descriptions and images.

Yes, 50 years ago today, September 13th, 1971, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller waged war on the men held in Attica state prison in western New York, ending a four-day prisoner uprising.

The rebellion started on September 9, 1971, when prisoners overpowered guards and took over much of Attica to protest the conditions at the maximum-security prison. At the time, prisoners spent most of their time in their cells and got one shower per week.

Days of tense negotiations followed in the prison yard. The rebellion was on its way to being resolved through diplomacy. But on the morning of September 13th, Governor Rockefeller ordered state troopers to storm the prison. Through a haze of tear gas, police opened fire, killing 29 prisoners and 10 hostages. Three prisoners and a guard were killed by prisoners in the days before the retaking. In all, there were 43 deaths.

This is a trailer for the new documentary called Betrayal at Attica on HBO Max that examines the hidden history of what really happened in the Attica uprising through the men who lived it, the Attica Brothers, and their defense attorney, Elizabeth Fink, who died in 2015. The film draws on an archive of evidence that was once owned by Liz Fink, available now for the first time.

ELIZABETH FINK: I stole all this stuff. I shouldn’t say that. I expropriated it from them as the chief counsel for the prisoners, who were the plaintiffs. They were going to destroy it. We’re at this point right now where they are refusing to admit they have all these files, and they are lying about what they have.

LOUDSPEAKER: Those of you who have not done so, surrender peacefully. You will not be harmed. Place your hands [inaudible] on your head.

ELIZABETH FINK:I t’s all going to be blown up, because I took it all, and also because of you.

AMY GOODMAN: In the documentary Betrayal at Attica, prisoners describe how they were tortured when the uprising was brutally suppressed. These are actually deposition interviews from the 1974 civil suit against the state of New York filed by the Attica Brothers Legal Defense.

In this clip, Frank “Big Black” Smith, who became a spokesperson of the prisoners and helped protect the hostages, as well, describes what happened to him. A warning: His answer and the images that accompany it are graphic, brutal, emotional.

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: I was made to crawl after I was knocked to the ground, pushing me, kicking, calling me all kind of [bleep], telling me to walk, telling me to run, drug, dragged.

ATTORNEY: Where did they take you?

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: They took me to —

ELIZABETH FINK: Want a handkerchief?

ATTORNEY: Took you to where?

ELIZABETH FINK: You’ve got to let him do his thing now. Want a break? Take some water?

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: Took me, and they made me lay on the table in the yard, and they beat my on my nuts, threatened me and dropped cigarette butts on me and hot shells on me and spit on me.

STENOGRAPHER: Hot what? I’m sorry.

ELIZABETH FINK: Shells.

STENOGRAPHER: OK.

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: Telling me they was going to cut my testicles and my genital out. That’s what was happening to me.

ATTORNEY: OK. How long did that go on?

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: A long time, three to six hours, all day.

ATTORNEY: Was the football under your — under your chin?

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: Under my chin, yes.

ATTORNEY: All day?

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: Yes.

ATTORNEY: All day?

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: Yes.

ATTORNEY: The shells were on your chest all day?

FRANK ”BIG BLACK” SMITH: All during — I was moving, trying to get them off me, and the cigarettes off me. A bunch of times, they’d beat, call me a bunch of names, because my legs was dead. They was numb. I couldn’t walk. They finally drug me and took me to the hallway, and I had to go through the same thing everybody else was going through, because I was about the last person out of the yard. They made me run through the gauntlet.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Frank “Big Black” Smith, who survived the brutal state suppression of the 1971 Attica uprising 50 years ago today, in a clip from the new documentary, Betrayal at Attica, which brings to light new evidence about what really happened. Big Black said the officers put a football under his chin and told him if it dropped, they would kill him. He went on to fight for justice in a civil suit for prisoners and also pushed for compensation for the guards’ families. Big Black died in 2004.

For more, we’re joined by Tyrone Larkins. He was incarcerated in upstate New York’s Attica prison at the time of the uprising. He was 23 years old. He was shot three times. After 29 years of incarceration, Tyrone was released via parole in 1997 with a college education through Marist College. He’s also featured in a Showtime documentary, brand new, called Attica by Stanley Nelson, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Tyrone Larkins, welcome to Democracy Now! This is a painful time, I’m sure, for you, even now, half a century later. Can you start off even before September 9, 1971, when the prisoner rebellion began, and describe the prison conditions at Attica and the political climate at the time? What led to this uprising?

TYRONE LARKINS: Give me a second. Hearing the overview of Frank’s voice and what happened, it — wow — it took me back 50 years ago today. Let’s make note that this happened exactly 50 years ago today on a Monday morning. And as I was on my way to where I was going to do this taping at, I seen a cloudy sky, and it reminded me of September 13th, 1971. And so, I’m a little discombobulated now, but I am ready to go. And your question was: How did it all start? Am I correct?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. How did it all start, even before September 9th, the beginning of the prisoner uprising?

TYRONE LARKINS: OK. I got to Attica. I was transferred to Attica in January 1971 from Sing Sing, Ossining, which was known then as Ossining Correctional Facility. And when I got into Attica, I seen that this was — I mean, from the time I got off the bus, me and about 40 other people that was transferred seen that this was the roughest place I’ve ever seen in my life.

The only time the prison guards spoke to us was to give us a description of the institution, to tell us when you bang on — they bang on the wall once with their stick, it means go, and when they bang on the wall with their stick twice, it means to stop. And that basically was the extent of the conversation.

You can feel the roughness and the tightness of the facility in the air, I mean, after coming from Sing Sing, which was relatively — I wouldn’t say open, but a little more humane.

When I finally got settled into the facility, at my cell, I was given a roll of toilet paper, a bar of soap, and was told that this roll of toilet paper would have to last me for one month and that I will possibly get a second bar of soap in two weeks’ time. And that was it.

I should say at this juncture that Attica, prior to the disturbance itself — and I use the word “disturbance” loosely, because we was in the climate of international things that was happening throughout the world. First of all, from an ethnic pride sense, a lot of the African American prisoners, such as myself, adhered to James Brown was singing — “Say it loud: I’m Black, and I’m proud” — that gave us a racial identity, as opposed to be adhering to what a nigger is and stop doing what niggers do. And that made us feel good. Then you had the “Hell no, we won’t go” slogans was permeating all over the world in regards to the Vietnam situation. So, we was getting a certain sense of politicalization and ethnic reality at the same time. And we started adhering to things of that nature. And this was counterculture to the powers that be in Attica Correctional Facility.

And to give you an example of that, the first time I seen it fully in full operation, the racial divide, was in the summer of 1971. It was a hot day. And the officers came out into the yard — I was locking in B Block at the time — and had a wheelbarrow full of ice and emptied the wheelbarrow full of ice on the ground and said “white ice,” which meant that that ice was for the white prisoners. And after they picked their ice up, a second wheelbarrow was rolled to the yard, and the officers dumped it on the ground and said “black ice,” and that was for the Black and — well, let me say, people of color prisoners that was locked up in Attica at the time. And this caused a definite racial divide.

However, I would say, in later part of June, early part of July, when ice was thrown on the ground and it was depicted white ice and black ice, nobody in the yard would pick it up — nor white inmates, nor Black inmates, nor Hispanic inmates, nor Indian inmates. Nobody would pick up any ice that was depicted for a racial people. As a matter of fact, the fact that the ice was thrown on the ground, as opposed to being left in the wheelbarrow, was an insult in itself.

In June — excuse me, ratcheting it up to the end of July — or, August, I should say, pardon me, when George Jackson was killed, was murdered, as we would like to call it, in San Quentin prison, on the so-called information that he had a gun in his hand and was trying to escape, that created a unified concern for basically everybody that was in Attica. As a matter of fact, the day after he was killed, it was organized that everybody in the facility would not eat. We had a hunger strike. We went to the mess hall as we were supposed to, picked up the silverware or plastic silverware as they gave out, but nobody picked up any food. And it was extremely quiet. You didn’t hear no noise, no chatter, no nothing. And when it was time to go, we left out of the facility, the eating facility, which was known as the mess hall.

On September 8th, 1971, two guys that was locked up was horsing around in the yard, in A Block yard. And the officers rushed over to them to threaten them to stop it, so forth, etc. And a circle of inmates, a gathering of inmates, got around the officers and said, “You’re not doing anything to anybody.” And they backed off. Well, later on that night, the men, the two men who was horsing around, was literally dragged out of their cells and was beaten all the way to a special housing unit. And you could hear the cries throughout the A Block yard.

Well, the next day, September 9th, the guys that was coming from — that was on the same jail company or housing company where these two guys was pulled out of, was coming back from the mess hall, and they was told that they was not going to the yard for their morning recreation. They was going back to the cell blocks. And that was the spark that started the whole thing.

And they took control of A Block, and they took control basically of the facility. I personally was locking in B Block and was working in the metal shop. And the next thing I know, I seen guys from A Block, B Block, C Block in the metal shop. And I knew it was a full-scale — well, we called it a prison riot, but let me say that it elevated from a prison riot to a prison demonstration. And I know those words, sometimes people will not like to interchange it, but it was, because the mere fact that we, as people that was confined, took on the situation of electing our best and our brightest to represent us, to talk to the administration of the powers that be of the problems in Attica, and that we had some hostages also.

And we adhered to all the factors that was involved. There was no problem in that yard. And sooner rather than later, we had observers come in, because we asked for people from the outside to come into the prison itself. And their level of participation ratcheted up from being an observer to being our negotiators with the powers that be. Well, now, we know that didn’t work out too well, because of what happened on Monday, this Monday, the 50 years ago, exactly on the 13th — exactly on a Monday the 13th, September 13th, 1971.

I woke up in the morning after a fitful night of sleep because the mist and the rain came. And it was a mist and a rain over the yard that morning. And the next thing I know — I guess it was 8:30, 9:00 — I heard a big helicopter hovering, and I seen it hovering over the yard. And the announcement came: “Put your hands on your head. Lay down. You will not be harmed.” And there was some gas that they released from this helicopter that literally knocked me to my knees, and it cleaned my sinuses out.

But at the same token, the ground all around me was jumping and shaking. And I’m thinking I was in some type of a movie or something. But what was jumping all around me was bullets. And I took three shots. And I fell out, but then I regained my consciousness. Somebody — it was a correction officer or a state trooper — was kicking me in my side. And I was told, “Get up and start crawling,” and “Let’s go to the exit, to A Block door.”

And once I got literally thrown into A Block yard by correction officers or national guardsmen or state troopers — I don’t know who it was — I was thankful to see that there was people with stretchers that came and grabbed me by the nape of my neck and pulled me out of a crowd of other individuals who was laying on top of me and on the side of me, and put me on the stretcher and took me out the yard.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to —

TYRONE LARKINS: I’m sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Tyrone, we thought at this moment we would play a clip from Betrayal at Attica —

TYRONE LARKINS: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — which is the actual video depositions of prisoners, like yourself, and what happened to them after the state troopers opened fire, killing 39 men — among them, prisoners and guards. These clips are extremely graphic, and so are the images it shows.

MICHAEL HULL: In 1974, Attica Brothers Legal Defense filed a $2.8 billion civil suit against the state of New York for damages on behalf of 1,281 inmates. After years of delay by the appointed judge, pretrial discovery depositions got underway in 1991. These tapes are from that deposition. They have never been available to the public.

GEORGE ALEXANDER SHORTS JR.: George Alexander Shorts Jr.

ATTORNEY: Do you recall where you were on the morning of September 13th, 1971?

GEORGE ALEXANDER SHORTS JR.: Yes.

ATTORNEY: Where were you?

GEORGE ALEXANDER SHORTS JR.: In Attica prison.

SURVIVOR 1: I was hit.

SURVIVOR 2: I was kicked in the side, the back and the buttocks.

SURVIVOR 3: My head was in the dirt.

SURVIVOR 4: I was kicked in the side. I was kicked in the hip, kicked in the back.

ATTORNEY: You had any inmates being kicked in A Yard?

PRISON OFFICIAL: I don’t recall that.

SURVIVOR 1: I was hit in the testicles.

ATTORNEY: By what?

SURVIVOR 1: A shotgun.

ATTORNEY: Can you tell me about how many times you feel you were hit during that?

SURVIVOR 1: I couldn’t even say. All I know, I was hit. I was hit — what? You know, when you’re hit like that, you’re not trying to count. You know, you’re scared to death. I wetted on myself. I was hit in the head, the back, my arms, trying to block, in the lip.

ATTORNEY: Lip?

SURVIVOR 1: Face, yes.

ATTORNEY: Did you wear glasses at that time?

SURVIVOR 5: Yes, I did.

ATTORNEY: Did you have them on?

SURVIVOR 5: No, they had taken them and stomped on them.

SURVIVOR 2: Then my glasses was taken off me, stomped.

SURVIVOR 5: We were forced under gunpoint to crawl the length of the yard on your knees and elbows.

SURVIVOR 2: I was told to take off all of my clothes. I was hit and told to run, [bleep].

SURVIVOR 1: Then he put the gun to my head, cocked the gun and said, “[bleep], I’m gonna kill you.” And that’s when I started pleading for my life.

SURVIVOR 2: There was a correction — two correctional officers there telling me the same thing: “Run, [bleep], run.” And that’s exactly what I did.

SURVIVOR 1: And I was told, “When I hit this door with this stick, [bleep], you better start moving.” And when he hit the door, I started to move.

ATTORNEY: Did you hear what kind of language was being uttered in that yard?

PRISON OFFICIAL: Emphatic language: “Get over there. Get down. Move along.” That sort of thing.

ATTORNEY: Did it have, after it, words such as [bleep], when you said, “Get down there. Move along”?

PRISON OFFICIAL: No, I didn’t hear that. If I did, I’d report it to you.

AMY GOODMAN: So, these were testimony in depositions. Tyrone Larkins, it is utterly painful. And in the documentary, Betrayal at Attica, it goes on and on, what happened to these men, and, of course, also your story that we’re hearing today.

TYRONE LARKINS: Yes. Yes. After going to the — well, actually, I laid on the stretcher with quite a few individuals in the yard that was between the giant wall, the hospital and special housing unit. And as I was coming in and out of consciousness, because the pain was — it was great, the pain was great — I seen a line of men that was being escorted or ran like cattle and being beaten by sticks, naked, going to a special housing unit, which is called HBZ. And at the last one I seen, I seen one guy, he fell, and a bunch of correction officers was over him and beating him until he got up and continued to ran — to run, rather, I should say. Sorry, I’m a little emotional, and my words may be getting a little jumbled, because I’m going directly back 50 years.

And then I was taken to the hospital. And I thank god for that, because the medical personnel that took care of me, it was a doctor — I forget his name. I know he mentioned it. And he said he was from Meyer Memorial Hospital. And he told me, “Look, I’m going to try to fix you up, but let me look at the extent of your wounds and see what can be done, to see if you need to go to the outside hospital or if I can do local procedures here.” Well, I guess he felt that he can do the local procedures there and in Attica, because I was taken immediately up to the hospital ward. And they started the preliminary examinations, things of that nature, and started the repairing or the rebuilding of myself.

AMY GOODMAN: Tyrone Larkins, we’re going to break. And when we come back, we’re going to be joined by one of the negotiators. Many believe if the negotiators had been able to continue their work without New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller calling on the state troopers to open fire, this could have resolved peacefully. Tyrone Larkins, formerly incarcerated at Attica prison, was shot by state troopers 50 years ago today, September 13, 1971. We’ll also speak with the HBO Max documentary filmmaker of the film Betrayal at Attica. Stay with us.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
September 3, 2021

Biden Administration Should Grant Clemencies and Oppose Racist “Risk Assessment”

South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela once said, “Fools multiply when wise men remain silent.” As the pandemic continues to ravage our country — in particular those within the prison system — the time to remain silent is no more.

As we have seen time and time again, across both the state and federal level, most institutions have contingency plans in place for emergencies. But the prison system is woefully negligent on this front, and we have seen countless people pay for it with their lives over the course of the last year and a half. The First Step Act, touted by both Republicans and Democrats as a bold solution to mass incarceration, has done little to protect them.

After the First Step Act was passed in 2018, the law has retroactively released over 3,000 of the more than 600,000 individuals incarcerated by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) as of May 2020. Then, the law codified a directive from standard operating procedures mandating that pregnant people not be shackled during childbirth — but still left discretion up to officers. The law also removed the stacking clause that once added a 25-year penalty to cases involving violent and drug trafficking crimes that included the possession of a firearm. This mandate had already been enacted through former Attorney General Eric Holder’s “Smart on Crime” initiative during the Obama administration. Former President Donald Trump disbanded Holder’s program — only to circle back and falsely claim victory for the removal of the stacking provision under the First Step Act a few years later.

Moving forward, the Biden administration won’t be able to build on the First Step Act until it addresses the racist, oppressive clauses that worsened the lives of Black communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. You don’t build a house on an unstable foundation.

Black and Brown people were stuck in prison and left to die based on the racist risk assessment tool mandated by the First Step Act, known as the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs. Advocates for the Act kept quiet, even as these risk assessment tools and initiatives have been found to be biased and create disparities because of static factors that disproportionately impact marginalized, primarily Black, communities. These factors include an individual’s number of arrests and violations, age of first police interaction or arrest, and highest education degree or grade level completed.

Because Black and Brown communities and schools are over-policed in this country, Black adults and children are more likely to have early and multiple interactions with the police over the course of their lifetime. Schools in marginalized and oppressed neighborhoods are more likely to be staffed with officers than social workers, leading to increased punishment of children by law enforcement for minor offenses and misbehavior, compared to children in communities with higher economic status.

These immense racial and socioeconomic disparities mean that many Black incarcerated individuals scored higher on the First Step Act’s risk assessment tools, while political cronies convicted of white-collar crimes, many of them friends of Trump’s, were released to home confinement or sent home without any conditions.

Through the CARES Act, the Trump administration released 4,400, mostly Black incarcerated individuals from BOP custody. The people who were released now have to comply with strict conditions such as home confinement and GPS monitoring, and could be sent back to prison once the federal government officially declares the pandemic “over.”

President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris are faced with granting those individuals clemency or overturning former Attorney General William Barr’s memo, which began the discretionary release of at-risk individuals to home confinement, in order to allow those living under this conditional release over the past year to remain home with their families. It’s time for Biden and Harris to live up to their campaign promises and begin to address past harm, including Biden’s co-sponsorship of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that enabled the harmful expansion of mass incarceration and policing in the U.S., and Harris’s record as a prosecutor.

The First Step Act was not enough and, with the threat of a resurgence in the COVID-19 pandemic, will continue to fall far short of what we truly need. Incarcerated people continue to suffer under the stress of strict home confinement that could send them back to prison any day, or remain stuck behind bars under constant threat of illness, all because a biased risk assessment tool decided their fate.

Let this be a reality check: If officials don’t grant these clemencies, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party are done for in the 2024 election. Trump and his advocates have already begun campaigning on a faux-progressive platform around the criminal legal system and continue to take credit for the First Step Act’s pre-existing reforms.

My organization, JustLeadershipUSA, is currently working to call out these injustices, regardless of party, and to demand that marginalized people — especially incarcerated people — are given a say in what comes next. That is why we have worked with Senators Tammy Duckworth and Cory Booker on the reintroduction of the Correctional Facility Disaster Preparedness Act, which aims to ensure prison emergency response and recovery plans protect the health, safety, and civil rights of incarcerated individuals during public health emergencies and natural disasters.

We must protect those who are often forgotten and amplify their voices. This administration must begin to uphold its commitment to all people in this country and work tirelessly to reconcile the past in order to not entrench further harm.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
August 30, 2021

The Court Knew She Didn’t Commit the Murder. They Sentenced Her for It Anyway.

After nearly 15 years behind bars, 39-year-old mother and domestic violence survivor Erika Ray will soon get another day in court to attempt to gain her freedom.

Ray is currently sentenced to remain in prison until 2049. But on August 3, she appeared in court to argue that her defense attorneys provided ineffective assistance at her 2010 trial and that one of the actions for which she was convicted — armed robbery — did not occur at all. On September 1, she will return to court for closing arguments. If the court rules in her favor on either argument, Ray could return to her family sooner.

A “Felony Murder” Charge for a Death She Didn’t Cause

In 2006, Erika Ray was a 23-year-old single mother working as a server at Leona’s, a Chicago restaurant with several locations.

Ray had had problems with one of her supervisors, Corey Ebenezer, for months. It started, she told Truthout, when he obtained her phone number from the restaurant’s records and called her at 2 a.m. “I told him, ‘Don’t ever call my phone again.’”

At work, she said, Ebenezer repeatedly asked her out and followed her around. She reported his behavior to the shift manager, who spoke to Ebenezer. But his behavior didn’t stop, she recalled. “It created a more hostile environment.” Ebenezer would prevent her from serving tables where she might earn more in tips; other times, she said, he slowed her orders, causing customers to complain. “Unless he thought I was being nice, he was aggressive,” she said.

On June 14, 2006, Ebenezer and Ray had a dispute about whether she could serve a party of 30 by herself. “What do you mean I can’t have the table?” Ray recalled saying. “It’s in my section.”

Ebenezer ordered her to go home. When Ray refused, he called the restaurant manager, claiming that she was insubordinate. Upon arriving, the manager told her that she could be transferred to another restaurant, but could no longer work at that location. Ray refused, feeling that she was being penalized for being harassed; she was fired.

Illinois law allows prosecutors to pursue a first-degree murder charge (also known as “felony murder”) if a death occurs during a crime. Under felony murder, the person can be charged even if they did not cause the death or, like Ray, were not present.

That night, when Ray picked up her seven-year-old daughter Jada from her grandmother’s house, two of her cousins were there. After she told them what had happened, one cousin, 18-year-old Paris Gosha, decided to physically confront Ebenezer, bringing along his 14-year-old brother, and two friends. Unbeknownst to Ray or her cousins, one of those friends, 19-year-old Lorenzo Wilson, was carrying a gun. Their plan, she told Truthout, was to confront Ebenezer about his actions, but not to rob or kill him. “I didn’t even know anyone had a gun,” she said.

Ray drove the group to Leona’s, but stayed in the car. Once inside, the planned confrontation went awry and Wilson shot Ebenezer, who later died. Ray, her cousins and Wilson were arrested and charged with armed robbery and first-degree murder. (The fifth person was never charged.)

Illinois law allows prosecutors to pursue a first-degree murder charge (also known as “felony murder”) if a death occurs during a crime, such as robbery. Under felony murder, the person can be charged even if they did not cause the death or, like Ray, were not present.

In 2010, after three years in Chicago’s Cook County Jail, Ray and Wilson went to trial. Shortly before her trial began, Ray recalled that her attorney, Paul Christiansen, told her that the state had made a plea offer of 21 years at 50 percent (meaning she would only have to spend 10.5 years in prison), but he had turned it down because he thought she wouldn’t take it. (Christiansen is now dead.) He also told her not to talk about Ebenezer’s harassment because it would be construed as victim-blaming.

At trial, Gosha, who had pled guilty to robbery and was sentenced to 30 years at 50 percent, testified that, though their intention had simply been to beat up Ebenezer, he had taken cash from the restaurant.

The court instructed the jury that, if they found that Ray had intended an unlawful act, such as armed robbery, and that Ebenezer was killed by one of the people involved in that act, that would be sufficient to find her guilty of murder. Following these instructions, the jury convicted Ray of armed robbery and murder.

Ray was sentenced to 42 years in prison (with a 22-year sentence to run concurrently, or at the same time). Her earliest release date is 2049. (Wilson was convicted and sentenced to 75 years.)

Ray’s Fight for Freedom

Ever since she arrived in prison, Ray has been thinking about the plea deal that her lawyer never communicated to her, which would have allowed her to come home after 10.5 years.

Ever since she arrived in prison, Ray has been thinking about the plea deal that her lawyer never communicated to her, which would have allowed her to come home after 10.5 years. Had her attorney told her in advance, she told Truthout in a call from prison, she would have accepted and would now be home. Although she realized that some of her actions had set into motion the events that led to Ebenezer’s death, she knew her sentence was unjust. “I felt like I should have a level of accountability,” she stated. “But 42 years doesn’t salvage the situation.”

After being assigned another attorney, she asked him to file a motion of discovery for any plea offers made before trial.

A 2017 hearing uncovered a state record of a discussion with the original prosecuting attorney, who had made an offer. But the specifics of the offer had not been documented.

Ray also filed a post-conviction petition. In 2021, a Cook County court agreed to hear her petition on two issues — whether her original attorneys told her about the prosecutor’s offer for a 21-year sentence at 50 percent (or 10.5 years in prison) if she pled guilty to armed robbery and, paradoxically, whether an armed robbery, on which her conviction and prison sentence hangs, even occurred.

At the August 3 hearing, Victor Erbring, the co-counsel in Ray’s original defense, testified that only one plea offer had been made — a 20- to 40-year sentence at 100 percent (meaning she would serve the full sentence) — and that Ray had declined it. Ray told Truthout that she was never offered such a plea. Erbring, now an assistant district attorney in Travis County, Texas, did not return Truthout’s request for clarification.

At that same hearing, Paris Gosha, who had been paroled in March 2021, testified that he had perjured himself at trial to keep his younger brother from being charged as an adult. (The teen was charged as a juvenile and sentenced to five years in juvenile prison.) There had been no robbery either planned or committed that night, he stated.

“It was just supposed to be a fight,” Gosha told Truthout. “A fight is something that everybody can walk away from. No one had any intention of killing someone.” He declined to discuss the specifics inside the restaurant.

He said that, though he was a state witness, he hadn’t intended to testify against Ray and Wilson.

“I did what I had to do to get out of that situation,” he said, and what he felt he had to do was confess to a robbery that did not happen. At the time, he had reasoned, “If I said I took something — and no one knew that I took it and I didn’t split the money — then they wouldn’t charge no one else. It [the charge] won’t fall on nobody else’s head.”

Gosha’s testimony helped convict Ray and Wilson.

He reiterated to Truthout what he had testified at the August 3, 2021 court date — no one took anything from the restaurant. Also on August 3, Ray’s shift manager, who had not been called to the stand at the original trial, testified that she had been called into the restaurant after the shooting and found the register still full of cash. She also testified that Ray had complained to her about Ebenezer’s behavior and that she had witnessed it.

“I Was Part of the Movement That Was There for Me”

Jada Lesure hugs her mother, Erika Ray, during a pre-pandemic visit organized by Mothers United Against Violence and Incarceration.
Courtesy of Holly Krigof Mothers United Against Violence and Incarceration

Three dozen supporters filled the court on August 3. Among them were women who had been imprisoned with Ray — and whom she had helped during their time behind bars.

Paris Knox is one of them. As reported previously, Knox was convicted and sentenced to 40 years for the 2005 death of her ex-boyfriend after he attacked her. After grassroots organizing by advocates, the conviction was vacated and Knox was released.

If the court rules that her counsel was ineffective in not communicating the initial plea offer, Ray could be resentenced to that uncommunicated offer of 20 years at 50 percent, entitling her release.

Women were unable to get phone calls, mail (including legal mail) or access the commissary or the prison store. None had been restored by Knox’s 36th birthday two weeks later. To cheer her up, Ray suggested that they play Monopoly. While they were playing, another woman came to their table, demanding attention. When she didn’t get it, she tossed the board and all its pieces.Knox and Ray met in 2007 at the Cook County Jail, where both were incarcerated awaiting trial. They were assigned to the same judge and transported to court together and, later, placed in the same housing unit. They reconnected at the Dwight Correctional Center, where both were imprisoned after sentencing. In 2013, both were moved to Logan Correctional Center when the state of Illinois shuttered Dwight.

Knox and the attention-seeker fought, despite Ray’s efforts to calm them. Physical fights are prohibited in prison; both were sent to segregation, or solitary confinement, for 14 days. When they returned to the housing unit, Ray had them sit down, talk through their disagreement and apologize to each other. That, Knox said, was the type of person Ray is.

Ray was also, Knox recalled, “a genius in the law library,” helping women with their post-conviction petitions. Some had already had their petitions denied by the courts, but with Ray’s help, were able to redraft their petitions to have their cases heard.

In 2017, after three years in jail and 10 years in prison, Knox’s conviction and 40-year sentence were vacated due to ineffective assistance of counsel. Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney, agreed to a deal in which Knox pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was given time served and released two days later on February 15, 2018. Ray counseled Knox through those last two days as Knox worried about reentering a drastically changed world. Ray, still with decades on her sentence, reassured her friend. “She told me, ‘You’re going home. You’re going to be fine,’” Knox said.

Three years later, for Ray’s hearing, Knox made t-shirts with Ray’s face and the words “Free Erika.” She had two special shirts made for Ray’s daughter and toddler grandson: “Free My Mom” and “Free My Grandma.” Of the three dozen supporters who attended the hearing, one-third sported “Free Erika” shirts that day. For Knox, the moment was profound, not only because she could see her friend again, but she said, “I was part of the movement that was there for me when I was behind these walls.”

Lauren Stumblingbear, who was released from Logan prison in July, also sported a “Free Erika” shirt that day. Stumblingbear met Ray at Logan when she joined its Helping Paws Program, in which women trained therapy dogs for veterans and children with disabilities. The two quickly became friends and Ray, who had been imprisoned for six years by then, frequently helped Stumblingbear navigate her guilt and helplessness at not being with her family.

During Stumblingbear’s incarceration, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She died in April 2020. “I never had a chance to make it home to her,” Stumblingbear told Truthout. Ray listened and talked with Stumblingbear, counseling her through her grief and guilt. “There were some nights I don’t know how I could have made it through,” she said. Ray also comforted her through her cousin’s death the following year.

When COVID ravaged the prison in late 2020, Stumblingbear took care of Ray after both women contracted the disease and were moved to the COVID unit. Ray, who has Lupus, could barely walk, dress or shower. Stumblingbear cared for her, making her food and ensuring that she ate, helping her dress and make her bed (a requirement in prison) each morning.

Also present in court on August 3 was Jada Lesure, Ray’s daughter. Lesure was seven when Ray turned herself in to the police, telling her daughter she had to go away for a while before leaving the girl with her grandmother. Lesure was too young to attend the 2010 court proceedings — or even grasp her grandmother’s descriptions of them. The post-conviction hearing was the first time Lesure, now 21, attended court. It was also the first time she had seen her mother since March 2021 when COVID stopped prison visits. Visits have resumed, but Lesure has not yet been able to make the 175-mile trek from Chicago to Logan. “I hadn’t seen her in a whole year,” Lesure told Truthout. “It felt good to see her even though I couldn’t hug her.”

On September 1, Ray will return to court for closing arguments. If the court agrees that no armed robbery took place, it may vacate that conviction and resentence Ray to fewer than 42 years.

If the court rules that her counsel was ineffective in not communicating the initial plea offer, Ray could be resentenced to that uncommunicated offer of 20 years at 50 percent, entitling her release.

If that happens, said Lesure, “it would be like a new beginning. I hadn’t had a mom since I was seven years old. It would complete my life.”

For Ray, resentencing could mean not just a second chance, but the possibility of reaching out to the people she hurt. In February of this year, Ebenezer’s fiancée wrote her a letter, wanting to know what had happened that fatal night. But Illinois law prevents incarcerated people from communicating with their victims and victims’ families. If she were released, Ray reflected, “there could be a real reconciliation. [State’s Attorney] Kim Foxx ran on a platform of transformative justice. This is the opportunity for that.”

Foxx’s office declined to comment about Ray’s petition and potential resentencing.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
August 24, 2021

Ex-Weather Underground Member David Gilbert Is Granted Clemency by Cuomo

Outgoing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used his final hours in office to grant clemency to six men, including former Weather Underground member David Gilbert, who was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison for his role in a 1981 robbery of an armored truck that left a security guard and two police officers dead. Gilbert, who is 76 years old and has been incarcerated for four decades, will now be able to apply for parole. “Now it’s a matter of hoping that the parole board will do the right thing,” says Steve Zeidman, Gilbert’s lawyer, who also represents four of the other men granted clemency. “They recognize the harm, the trauma and the grief that their actions caused.… They have done everything a human being can do to repair and atone while inside.” Zeidman and other advocates are still pushing for the release of hundreds of others, saying “the list is eternal.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Here in New York, Kathy Hochul was sworn in as New York’s first-ever female governor early Tuesday after outgoing Governor Andrew Cuomo’s resignation took effect at midnight last night, after a state attorney general report found he sexually harassed at least 11 women. Cuomo used his final hours in office to grant clemency to six men: David Gilbert, Greg Mingo, Robert Ehrenberg, Ulysses Boyd, Paul Clark, and Lawrence Penn, who received a full pardon.

The most high-profile case was that of former Weather Underground member David Gilbert, who was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison for his role in the 1981 robbery of an armored truck to expropriate money for the Republic of New Afrika that left a security guard and two police officers dead. The police union and some members of the victims’ families lobbied heavily to fight Gilbert’s clemency. He’s 76 years old, has been incarcerated for 40 years. He’ll now be able to apply to the parole board for his freedom.

Gilbert is the only person connected to the crime who is still [incarcerated in New York]. In 2016, Cuomo also commuted the 75-year sentence of Judith Clark, who was released on parole in 2019. Kathy Boudin was paroled in 2003.

Gilbert and Boudin are the parents of Chesa Boudin, who is currently the district attorney of San Francisco. Chesa Boudin tweeted Monday night, quote, “My heart is bursting. On the eve of my first child’s birth, my dad–who’s been in prison nearly my entire life–was granted clemency. He never intended harm, yet his crime devastated many families. My heart breaks for the families that can never get their loved ones back,” he said.

While in office, Governor Cuomo granted 41 clemencies, including 20 during the pandemic — far fewer than many other governors.

For more, we’re joined by David Gilbert’s lawyer, Steve Zeidman, who is co-director of the Defenders Clinic at the City University of New York’s Law School, CUNY’s Law School. Four of the men whose prison sentences were commuted Monday by Cuomo were also part of the Defenders Clinic.

Steve, welcome to Democracy Now! Let’s start with David Gilbert. Explain what exactly Cuomo has done, what this clemency, this commuting of his sentence, means.

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Sure. When any governor — in particular, Andrew Cuomo — when they grant clemency, they have two options. And this is by way of a sentence commutation. So, what he did for David is he commuted the sentence, making David immediately eligible for parole. The other four men whose sentences were commuted received what is essentially time served, meaning they’ll be home within about two or three weeks, once the Department of Corrections handles some paperwork. But David — I mean, we are grateful, thrilled, overjoyed that David has the opportunity to make his case before the board, but that’s what it means. That parole interview will be arranged within the next, hopefully, several weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: So, he will then go before the parole board. Now, Judith Clark also went before the parole board, and she was denied first time around, right?

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Yeah, that’s correct. And that’s still a concern. It’s exactly what Cuomo did with Judy, commuted the sentence from 75 to life to essentially what is approximately 35 or 36 to life. And since the minimum has been served, you’re eligible for parole. And now it’s a matter of hoping that the parole board will do the right thing.

AMY GOODMAN: Governor Cuomo noted Gilbert’s convictions, quote, “were related to an incident in which he was the driver, not the murderer,” and said in a statement, quote, “While incarcerated, Mr. Gilbert has made significant contributions to AIDS education and prevention programs; he has also worked as a student tutor, law library clerk, paralegal assistant, a teacher’s aide, and an aide for various additional facility programs.”

Also, RAPP responded, and I want to go to that clip right now. The Release Aging People in Prison Campaign, RAPP, said in a statement, “Incoming Governor Kathy Hochul will inherit an indefensibly racist and brutal prison system and we are hopeful that she will lead our state toward a more humane system of justice for marginalized New Yorkers by using her clemency powers and championing parole reform.”

So, if you can talk about both? You clearly have been lobbying for David Gilbert and others, and you’ve had enormous success at this point. Right before Cuomo left, it was not only David Gilbert, and we’ll talk about the others. What is it that did it this time?

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Oh my. You know, if we could put our finger on exactly what it is that leads to clemency, that would be — that would just be remarkable. And I say that because the five men who had their sentences commuted, they are emblematic of — and this is not hyperbole — thousands, thousands of others in New York state prisons alone. So, is it age? I mean, the average age of the five men whose sentences were commuted is 65 years old. They’ve collectively served almost 200 years in prison. They have vast amount of support inside and outside. So, from my perspective, I’m obviously thrilled their sentences were commuted yesterday, but it begs the question of: Why wasn’t it two months ago, two years ago, 10 years ago? How much time must somebody serve?

So, I agree with my friends from RAPP. I’m hoping that Governor Hochul will take a look at clemency, take a look at the problem of mass incarceration, and say to her and her staff, “You know what? We want to do clemency on a rolling basis. We want to do it throughout the year, not just once at the end of the year or not just when I have one foot out the door.” So that’s my hope. Take a look at the remarkable 41 people who have been released through clemency. Look at the lives they are leading, the remarkable work they’re doing, frankly, just living their lives with their families and friends. So, I am cautiously optimistic.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the other men who Cuomo granted clemency to yesterday? Of these six, you represented how many?

STEVE ZEIDMAN: The five men whose sentences were commuted were all clients of the Defenders Clinic at CUNY Law School.

AMY GOODMAN: And then there was a sixth, who was pardoned entirely.

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Correct.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about them. If you can talk about Greg Mingo, Robert Ehrenberg, Ulysses Boyd, Paul Clark, Lawrence Penn, who received the full pardon?

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Sure. It’s my pleasure to speak about them. I am almost at a loss for adjectives. These are just remarkable, beautiful, wonderful, extraordinary men, who have devoted their time inside to repair, to transformation. Maybe perhaps the best word to describe is “mentor,” because all of them have spent so much time with younger people coming into prison, talking with them, understanding how people came to be where they are, and also trying to figure out how to build a better path for the future, so that they’re men who have remained optimistic, forward-thinking, within the incredibly — you know, stating the obvious — harsh confines of prison. They’ve all suffered incredible losses while inside. I’m thinking of Paul Clark, his beloved mother, who visited him for 40 years, who passed away. I know all of them have experienced that kind of loss.

And I’ll say one other thing about them, as well. Certainly for some of the men there, there are profound issues of innocence and whether they were wrongly convicted — no question about that — cases that have been investigated. But for all five men —

AMY GOODMAN: All convicted — all convicted of murder.

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Yes, that’s —

AMY GOODMAN: Of course, for these long sentences.

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Yes, correct. And the average sentence — I mean, we’re talking 50 to life, 58 to life, 75 to life — draconian sentences unknown in any other industrialized nation. So it cried out, frankly, for clemency.

But the point I also want to make is that — and I know, I’m speaking on behalf of all of them, just to reiterate one thing that comes up all the time — the remorse they carry is so deep and genuine and profound. When you meet each of them, it’s the first thing they talk about, no matter what you ask them. They’ve recognized the harm and the trauma and the grief that their actions caused. But I guess the most important thing is they have done everything a human being could do to repair and atone while inside.

AMY GOODMAN: All the other men are African American.

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Correct. Oh no, no, I’m sorry. Bobby Ehrenberg is not.

AMY GOODMAN: Except for him.

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Were there others on your list? And what happens now?

STEVE ZEIDMAN: The list is eternal — not an understatement. There are 30,000, 35,000 people in New York state prison. And I wish we would get to a place where we could annually review all 35,000 and just say, “What purpose is served by this person remaining in prison?” And if we took that approach and really put the burden on the Department of Corrections or the local prosecutors to explain why they believe it is necessary for someone to remain in prison — if we did that, I think we could finally seriously rectify and redress mass incarceration.

So, what’s next? We have about 40 pending clemency applications. We’re about to file another dozen. Come January, we’ll work with another 10 to 15 people. But I want to emphasize it’s a drop in the bucket. It’s a drop in the bucket because, again, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of people, who I think, from any objective, reasonable assessment, no — I mean, I say “no longer should remain in prison.” Frankly, for a number of them, you have to scratch your head and wonder why they’re behind bars in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: RAPP’s slogan is “If the risk is low, let them go.” Explain, Steve.

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Oh sure. You know, it’s one of the few things that is agreed upon in criminology, sociology, this adage that people age out of crime. It’s been proven over and over. You can look, whether — you can look at New York, the people who have been released. No one has been arrested for anything.

I think the better example, frankly, is look at Pennsylvania, where there were close to 500 people who were sentenced to life without parole when they were teenagers, 17 and under. And according to the Supreme Court, mandatory life without parole for young people was unconstitutional. So, I think it was 469 have been released over the last several years. I believe the recidivism rate hovers at about 1%. So the risk is — it’s even beyond low. There is no risk.

Again, it gets back to the question: What purpose is served by keeping people in prison as they age? And frankly, the only answer I think anybody can give is for those who are interested in eternal punishment. That’s the only purpose. I hope we’re better than that.

AMY GOODMAN: So, as we wrap up now, again, for David Gilbert, when does he go to the parole board?

STEVE ZEIDMAN: Well, if Judy Clark’s example provides us some guidance, it will be within the next two, three months. I’m hoping it will be expedited as much as possible. David turns 77 in November, has been incarcerated for 40 years. So, obviously, this interview can’t happen soon enough.

AMY GOODMAN: Gilbert survived COVID?

STEVE ZEIDMAN: He did. He did indeed. And as you mentioned before, I think David’s release — I mean, what could be more appropriate? Because David devoted so much time and energy with other men inside to develop training programs about AIDS prevention for people who are incarcerated. It no doubt saved countless lives of people inside and outside. So, in the midst of a pandemic for David to receive clemency, just ideal. Absolutely ideal.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Steve Zeidman, lawyer for David Gilbert and a number of the others who were granted clemency by outgoing Governor Cuomo hours before he left Albany. Steve Zeidman is with the Defenders Clinic at CUNY Law School and a professor there.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
August 3, 2021

I Want to Start School So I Can Learn to Write Letters to My Dad in Prison

This piece was granted special recognition through the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize.

My name is Little Coconut. My birthday is May 18. My favorite color is pink, no I mean glittery red. I like learning about dinosaurs. I watch Totally Spies and Loud House. Sometimes I watch Charmed with my grandma and SpongeBob with my great grandpa. Sssssshhhhhhhh that’s a secret.

My dad is in Connecticut. He is in jail but he is not a bandit. He does not know all these things about me unless I tell him. When I finally get to visit I will pretend to make him meals. I like cooking.

The police told my mommy she can’t bring me to visit him. Not all police are bad but I saw them step on a man’ s neck on TV. They kill us because we are Black and beautiful, they are afraid of us. My mommy told me I am Black and beautiful.

I miss my karate class and therapy session when I go visit him, but I get to see my cousins if they are home. When I go to school this year, I will learn to write him letters.

I cannot wait for Daddy to come home so we can be a family with Mommy, Grandma, and Mrs. Little Violet, my cat.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
July 23, 2021

Biden Upholds Last-Minute Trump Memo That Would Send 4,000 People Back to Prison

For her 65th birthday, Diana Marquez was grateful to be out of prison and celebrating with her daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren. They feasted on a smorgasbord of brisket, sushi and Mexican food. She was not allowed to leave the house, but she still felt blessed to celebrate the day surrounded by family rather than confined in a prison cell.

Marquez is one of over 4,000 people who were released from federal prison to home confinement under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to stem the spread of COVID-19 behind bars. The CARES Act prioritizes the release of people whose age or health makes them vulnerable to COVID, whose “risk assessment” is low and whose convictions are for federal crimes classified as nonviolent. Marquez, then aged 63 and 16 years into a 30-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute marijuana, qualified; she was released from prison on May 22, 2020.

Marquez is not free. She is under home confinement with an electronic monitor shackled to her ankle. She must get prior approval for any movement outside of her daughter’s house, including picking up her three grandchildren from school or going grocery shopping. She is allowed two hours out of the house each morning to go to the park. She must check in with federal halfway house officials every two weeks. She is not allowed to attend church services. However, Marquez told Truthout, “I’m not complaining. I’m at home, able to walk around the house, not in a small room.”

Now, she faces being returned to prison. She’s not alone; after spending over a year reuniting and rebuilding relationships with their families and friends, thousands of people face being returned to prison.

On January 15, 2021, five days before Donald Trump left office, his Justice Department issued a memo stating that people whose sentences lasted beyond the “pandemic emergency period” would have to return to prison. The Biden administration has decided to uphold that decision. While the official state of emergency is not expected to end in 2021 because of the rise in new infections and the Delta variant, the threat hangs over Marquez. Her sentence ends on March 9, 2031; by then, she will be 74 years old.

“It worries me,” she said. “It’s devastating to think that at any moment, they can come and take me.”

Returned to Prison on a Technicality

Some of those who’ve been released due to the pandemic have already been returned to prison, thanks to technical “violations.” That’s what happened to 75-year-old Gwen Levi. Levi had served 16 years of a 24-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to distribute heroin. She also battled cancer while in custody, a fight that, along with her age, left her more vulnerable to contracting severe COVID. She was released under the CARES Act and placed under electronic monitoring and home confinement in Baltimore.

“What are people supposed to do? Hope that the pandemic never ends so we can keep our freedom?”

During her year at home, Levi reconnected with her family, including her children and her 94-year-old mother, with whom she now lives with and cares for. She began volunteering with prison advocacy organizations, including Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls and the Maryland Justice Project, where she is advocating for state legislation that would give a second chance to people sentenced to life as juveniles.

In January 2021, she was shocked when she heard about the Justice Department memo. “We were assessed and [found] not to be a threat to our community,” she told Truthout. “Don’t hang the threat [of being returned to prison] over my head — not because of something I’ve done, which I understand — but because of the pandemic [emergency period ending].”

Nonetheless, she carried on with rebuilding her life, including signing up for a five-week-long computer class. Under home confinement and electronic monitoring, all movement out of the house must be preapproved by federal officials. Levi obtained approval and thought that it was for all of the five weeks.

Members of The National Council, Life After Release, Maryland Justice Project and Out for Justice demonstrate outside of the Department of Justice on behalf of Gwendolyn Levi and the more than 4,000 people released under the CARES Act, on June 30, 2021.
Sharon Smith / The National Council

On June 12, 2021, during her third week of class, she learned otherwise. That morning, federal officials were alerted by her ankle monitor that she was not at home. Levi had turned her phone off during class and did not answer their calls. She returned home by 1:17 pm that afternoon, but federal officials logged the incident as an escape. She was arrested and sent to a Washington, D.C., jail, where she spent several weeks facing the possibility of being locked away from her family for the next seven years.

During that time, advocates — including formerly incarcerated women with the National Council and the Maryland Justice Project — organized to demand her release. Within two days of her arrest, approximately 50 people traveled to Washington, D.C., to rally outside the Justice Department. They worked to attract media attention and public outrage.

Samantha Masters and Skylar Mundell demonstrate on behalf of the more than 4,000 people released under the CARES Act.
Sharon Smith / The National Council

On July 6, a federal judge reduced Levi’s sentence to time served. In her ruling, Maryland U.S. District Court Judge Deborah K. Chasanow noted that Levi had done well during her year out of prison. “Because of her release to home confinement, the most pressing initial concerns (COVID, age, and health) were addressed,” Chasanow continued. “The court concludes that it would do little (if anything) to serve the goals of sentencing to require her to return to full custody.”

The decision freed Levi from the threat of being returned to prison, but she knows that same threat hangs over the heads of the nearly 4,500 others released under the CARES Act. “What are people supposed to do? Hope that the pandemic never ends so we can keep our freedom?”

She has expanded her advocacy to include speaking out against the proposed re-incarceration of those thousands — and speaking out to help build momentum that will push President Joe Biden, who campaigned on a promise to end mass incarceration, to rescind the memo and grant commutations (shortening prison sentences). “There are people who reunited with their children and families that they haven’t seen for years. You’re just going to snatch them away?”

“We’re Not Decarcerating People, We’re Re-Incarcerating People”

“The pandemic is not over,” Andrea James, co-founder of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, told Truthout. “Prisons and jails are petri dishes in this horrible pandemic.”

Seven months into office, the Biden administration has yet to grant any clemencies.

When Biden was elected, the Council, which had pushed the Obama administration to grant clemencies to women serving draconian federal sentences, renewed their clemency efforts, calling on the new president to commute the prison sentences of 100 women during his first 100 days in office.

Tiawana Brown of The National Council and Beauty After the Bars demonstrates on behalf of the more than 4,000 people released under the CARES Act.
Sharon Smith / The National Council

“Some really easy clemencies would have been people already out [of prison] under the CARES Act,” James said. James and other members of the National Council have participated in several phone calls with Biden’s transition team and then his administration about criminal justice reform. She recounts that, in these calls, they stressed decarceration. “It’s about the liberation of our people, not prison reform,” James said, noting that many are serving lengthy sentences meted out during the height of the war on drugs.

Seven months into office, however, the Biden administration has yet to grant any clemencies, either in the form of a commutation (the shortening of a prison sentence) or a pardon (which expunges a conviction).

James is outraged by the Biden administration’s decision to send people back to prison once the pandemic is no longer considered an emergency.

“Biden ran on a platform that convinced us all that he understood the need for criminal justice reform,” she said. “[Now] we’re going backwards. We’re not decarcerating people. We’re re-incarcerating people.”

Although they’ll continue pushing for clemency, advocates are not waiting for Biden to come through on his promises. James notes that lawyers with the National Council, in conjunction with a coalition of other attorneys, have been filing motions in federal court asking that judges follow Chasanow’s example and resentence people to time served, thus preventing their return to prison.

Marijuana Is Legal, But Diana Marquez Still Faces Years in Prison

In Texas, Marquez is praying for clemency, not only for herself, but for all others who have been convicted on marijuana charges. “Now, marijuana is legal in 19 states for recreational use and in 36 states for medicinal use,” she said.

Marquez has not told her 91-year-old mother about the Justice Department memo or the threat hanging over her head. “I don’t want to let her know that they want to send me back to prison,” she explained. Since her release, she has not yet been able to visit her mother, who lives in Nebraska and whose health makes travel impossible, or her 13 other grandchildren or two great-grandchildren, all of whom live in the Midwest.

“I would like to be reunited with the rest of my family,” Marquez said. And, once she gains her freedom, she wants to advocate for others the way that the National Council and other organizations are advocating for her.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
July 11, 2021

People With Mental Illness Face Acute Dangers During and After Police Encounters

On February 25, 2019, Karrie Schaaf drove to the local emergency room, desperate to find help for her son Darik.

It was not the first time she had sought help. But because Darik, a Black man then in his mid-20s, was legally an adult, medical and psychiatric staff had repeatedly told her that they could not offer help unless he sought it himself.

This time, hospital staff called the police. When two deputies from the Riverside sheriff’s office arrived, Schaaf told them that her son was feeling suicidal and begged them to intervene. But, she recalled, no one went to their house to check on him. Exhausted, struggling with her own mental health, and worried that she might say something to make her son feel worse, Schaaf checked into a hotel for a few days. She emphasizes that, at no point, was she ever afraid of her son.

Three days later, the sheriff’s office asked her to come to the precinct. She panicked, assuming that Darik had died by suicide and they were asking her to identify his body.

When she arrived, she said that deputies interrogated her about her son’s behavior. Exhausted from work, sleep deprivation and constant worry, she tried to convey her fears that Darik might harm himself. What she didn’t realize was that her words would be used to justify arresting and charging her son with several felonies, which, if convicted, could mean a life sentence. Darik has remained in jail awaiting trial ever since.

Schaaf, who is white, emphasizes that she made a conscious decision not to call 911 on her Black son and instead turned to the local hospital for help. She had long known that calling 911 when Darik was in crisis could be a death sentence. Her fears are not unfounded: The Treatment Advocacy Center estimates that at least one quarter of all fatal police encounters are of people with serious mental illness. Furthermore, just as police are more likely to brutalize or kill Black men than their white counterparts, they are also more likely to kill unarmed Black men who exhibit signs of mental illness than white men demonstrating similar behaviors.

“I guarantee that if Darik were white, we wouldn’t be talking right now,” Schaaf said.

Darik Schaaf sits with his dog, Old Man Reggie.
Courtesy of Karrie Schaaf

When questioned by police later, Schaaf attempted to make them understand that her son needed help. The entire ordeal, she says, stems from “asking for help — and look where we’re at.”

Schaaf didn’t realize that her son’s mental health crisis — and her pleas for help — could be twisted into a series of criminal charges with a possible lifetime prison sentence.

Schaaf didn’t realize that her son’s mental health crisis — and her pleas for help — could be twisted into a series of criminal charges with a possible lifetime prison sentence.

Darik’s situation is mirrored in other stories from around the country. Police-perpetrated violence against people with mental illness has gained more attention lately — but even those who survive encounters with law enforcement are not in the clear. People with diagnosed mental illnesses make up a disproportionate number of people behind bars. Nearly half (44 percent) of people in local jails and 37 percent of people in state and federal prisons have a diagnosed mental illness. Even when they are not prosecuted and imprisoned, becoming entangled in the legal system can have far-reaching ramifications for those diagnosed with mental illness and mental health disorders.

“Labels of Disability Can Be Leveraged to Confine People”

A diagnosis of mental illness can mean an increase in criminalization, advocates say.

“Labels of disability can and have been leveraged to confine people,” stated Dustin Gibson, co-founder of Disability Advocates for Rights and Transition. That confinement isn’t limited to jails or prisons; they also include psychiatric hospitals and facilities, which can hold people for lengthy, if not indefinite, periods of time under similar conditions.

“Disabled people cycle between jails and psychiatric institutions often,” noted Talila A. Lewis, an attorney and the director of HEARD, a cross-disability abolitionist organization. Lewis explained that if a person is arrested and their “competency” — or ability to understand the criminal charges and assist in their legal defense — is called into question by an attorney or judge, they are sent to a psychiatric institution (or sometimes held in the jail) for evaluation. A judge can order “competency restoration” if the defendant is found to be incompetent during a subsequent competency hearing. Restoration often involves coercive “treatment” including forced medicating. If deemed restored or restorable by “experts” and the court, the defendant will remain confined in a medical or carceral institution as they face criminal charges. Or, if the defendant is deemed not restorable or incompetent, after months or years of failed competency restoration measures, charges against them could be dismissed, but the person can be recommitted to a psychiatric institution for an indefinite amount of time using civil commitment laws. Alternately, they may be released only once they meet exacting residence, guardianship, and other requirements.

That’s the cycle that 43-year-old Siddharta Fisher has been pushed into for the past 25 years.

His mother, Cindi Fisher, traces his entanglement with the criminal legal and psychiatric systems to his childhood — and the systemic racism he faced as an adolescent. In the 1980s, the Fishers were one of the few Black families in Vancouver, Washington (where Black people make up less than 3 percent of its population today). Nonetheless, the young Siddharta thrived in school, winning chess championships and academic accolades.

Nearly half (44 percent) of people in local jails and 37 percent of people in state and federal prisons have a diagnosed mental illness.

When he entered junior high, however, Fisher heard complaints from teachers who accused her son of disrespect. “But when I talked to my son, I found out it was because he was holding the teacher to the same rules they had for the kids. Like you don’t call the kids ‘knuckleheads’ or berate them. He would call the teachers on that,” Fisher recalled. This was in the 1990s. The term “school to prison pipeline” had yet to be created, but Siddharta’s experience reflected what was occurring in schools around the country — Black students were more harshly disciplined than their white counterparts. This included — and still includes — disproportionate rates of suspension and expulsion as well as arrests for incidents which could (and, advocates say, should) be handled internally by school officials.

That’s what happened to Siddharta. In seventh grade, he intervened when classmates stole another student’s coat. The next day, when he attempted to return it, the principal accused him of stealing it. When Siddharta wouldn’t name the culprits, the principal called the police, who arrested him and brought him to juvenile detention. He was confined for a week. That, Fisher said, changed the trajectory of his life. “He had always been taught that if he did the right thing, things would turn out right,” Fisher stated. That experience taught him otherwise.

Siddharta began skipping school and running away. At 15, he was arrested after a friend stole a gun from a classmate’s home during a party. He also began showing signs of dissociation, talking to himself and having breakdowns. At 17, after he stole his mother’s car, authorities recommended that she bring him to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist recommended risperidone, an antipsychotic drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Less than three months later, Siddharta began showing signs of akathisia, an acute movement disorder characterized by an inability to sit still. He also began self-mutilating — cutting and burning himself. He complained that the medications caused him pain, but, when Fisher brought him to the emergency room, physicians dismissed his complaints. One morning in June 1995, seven months after beginning risperidone, he woke his parents. The dead, he said, were coming through the floorboards. He accused his parents of poisoning him before leaving the house and knocking on doors in an adjacent neighborhood to seek help. When no one answered, he broke a window before collapsing in the street. When the police arrived, Cindi Fisher recounted, he told them he had been poisoned and begged to be brought to the hospital. Instead, they took him to jail.

Six months later, court evaluators declared him unfit to stand trial and ordered him to Western State Hospital for competency restoration. It would be the first of over a dozen arrests and hospitalizations.

The issue of confinement for “competency restoration” is a widespread one. In 2015, Disability Rights Washington and the American Civil Liberties Union filed Trueblood v. DSHS, a class-action lawsuit charging that Washington took too long to provide competency evaluations and restorations. Meanwhile, people languished in jails — often in solitary confinement and often without mental health care — exacerbating their conditions. A federal court agreed and ordered the state to provide competency evaluations within 14 days of a court order, and competency restoration services within seven days of the evaluation.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, that timeline was met only an average of 24 percent of the time. In 2020, that number dropped to below 7 percent — and sometimes as low as 2 percent. That includes Siddharta, who, in 2020, spent four months in jail awaiting an evaluation and three additional months awaiting transfer to Western State Hospital for competency restoration. During those seven months, he was in solitary confinement, a common placement for those with mental health issues.

The idea of competency, noted Gibson, “can’t be divorced from a broad spectrum of disability because it’s built around the idea that disabled folks of all kinds need to be under surveillance and confinement.” This includes making a person’s release contingent on limiting where they can live or surrendering control over their own finances.

On April 12, 2021, Siddharta was approved for discharge. He remains confined until the social worker arranges housing through the approved social service agency. Fisher has said that she has informed the social worker of two programs which provide housing and peer support, enabling Siddharta to be discharged more quickly. “Over institutionalizing is no less harmful and illegal than discharging to the streets,” she wrote to the hospital administration on June 22, 2021. “Such overinstitutionalization, according to statistics, negatively impacts recovery gains, wasting taxpayers’ dollars, and increases Siddharta’s risk of reinstitutionalization.”

This surveillance and confinement is not limited to people experiencing mental illness which, Lewis noted, is in itself a disability. It also extends to people with other disabilities, including deaf people, and people with intellectual/developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy and dementia, among other disabilities. Lewis also underscored that many disabled people have more than one disability.

Psychiatric Hospital Expansions

In 2018, the federal government pulled $53 million of annual funding from Western State Hospital for failing to comply with standards. Inspectors found that staff had restrained a patient for hours without cause; they also found violent assaults on patients and staff and numerous unauthorized patient “walkaways.” By then, the state had accrued more than $55 million in fines for repeatedly failing to meet the Trueblood timeline.

“Having a mental health crisis is not a crime.”

In 2021, the Washington state legislature approved plans for a new Western State Hospital with 350 forensic beds, or beds for those who have been deemed incompetent to understand the criminal charges pending against them. Lawmakers also announced the creation of smaller in-patient facilities for civil patients, or patients who are not facing criminal charges, by 2023, allowing Western and Eastern State Hospitals to concentrate solely on competency restoration.

However, says Lewis, these reforms do not challenge the problems with the idea of “competency” itself.

“The application of concepts of competency and due process are deeply flawed,” stated Lewis. “Ableism, anti-Blackness and other forms of oppression are baked into medical and legal processes and inform lawyers’, doctors’, judges’ and jurors’ understanding of a person’s competence, culpability and character.” Furthermore, Lewis noted that deprivation of freedom and bodily autonomy are being perpetrated under the guise of “securing due process,” “treatment” and “care” despite the fundamental unfairness of the criminal legal process and violence of medical incarceration.

Fisher doesn’t think that more psychiatric beds, even in smaller facilities closer to home, is the solution, pointing to a recent Seattle Times investigation exposing the failures of Washington’s private psychiatric hospitals.

Instead of smaller versions of the psychiatric hospital, Fisher wants alternatives where those in crisis can go “that’s not going to chain them up, lock the doors behind them, or force medicate them.” She is now involved in pressing for the resurgence of the Soteria House model. Started in the 1970s, Soteria House was a residential home for people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia. Instead of hospitalization and psychiatric interventions, Soteria House operated as a safe haven, similar to today’s peer respites, voluntary residential houses where nonprofessional staff treated residents as peers rather than patients in need of psychiatric intervention.

“We understand the need for respite for people who are wealthy, white, or otherwise in positions of power when they make the same request under a different name,” explained Lewis. “For them it is called vacation or sabbatical. But when people who are houseless or traumatized, or living through deprivation and precarity, need something similar, they are labeled lazy, pathologized, or criminalized.”

“A Concrete Cage Has Been My Son’s Reality”

Darik Schaaf remains in Riverside County’s Blythe Jail. His mother Karrie cannot afford the $1,040,000 bail set by the court or the 10 percent ($104,000) required by a bail bondsman. “My son has not been found guilty of anything, but because we’re poor, he’s been sitting in jail,” she said.

Despite being the alleged victim, Karrie says she has not been contacted by the district attorney’s office. “I’ve been very clear about my stance,” she told Truthout. “I’m not supporting these charges.”

The Riverside district attorney’s office did not return Truthout’s request for comment. In June 2020, it opposed Schaaf’s motion for a mental health diversion program. The judge agreed and ruled him ineligible for the diversion. Karrie Schaaf was devastated.

In January 2021, Karrie came across a post for the Riverside chapter of All of Us or None, a national network of formerly incarcerated people fighting for their rights. She attended a virtual meeting where she spoke about her son’s incarceration. She has also connected with family members whose loved ones have been fatally shot by police responding to mental health calls. Members have helped organize protests outside the district attorney’s office, calling for them to drop charges against Schaaf. They’ve also launched an online petition demanding that Darik be released into a mental health diversion program.

So far, their demands have not been met or responded to. Schaaf’s next court date is July 30, 2021.

“My son is not a criminal and having a mental health crisis is not a crime,” Karrie Schaaf told Truthout. “I struggle trying to understand how a concrete cage has been my son’s reality since March 1, 2019.”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
July 5, 2021

Baltimore to Stop Prosecuting “Nonviolent” Crimes. Activists Say More Is Needed.

The pandemic, in the midst of its many horrors, has temporarily slowed the number of arrests across some U.S. cities. With pressure from advocates and incarcerated organizers, District Attorney Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg in Seattle, State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in Cook County, Illinois, and City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore pledged to curb or stop prosecuting “low level” crimes in attempts to minimize the spread of COVID-19. By 2018, newly reelected Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had already directed his office to stop prosecuting sex work, marijuana possession and marijuana drug paraphernalia.

Most of these prosecutors have strictly tied their commitments to the duration of the pandemic. However, in March 2021, the Baltimore City State Attorney’s Office (SAO) announced that it will permanently instate its COVID-19 policy. Moving forward, the office said it will decline to prosecute crimes categorized as nonviolent, including Controlled Dangerous Substance (CDS, or drug) possession, attempted distribution of CDS, paraphernalia possession, sex work, trespassing, minor traffic offenses, open container, rogue and vagabond, and urinating/defecating in public.

“The policies enacted over the past year have resulted in a decrease in arrests, no adverse impact on the crime rate, and address the systemic inequity of mass incarceration,” Mosby’s office wrote in a press release. Within a year, the incarcerated population dropped by 18 percent and there was a 39 percent decrease in people entering the carceral system in Baltimore City, according to the release. In a comparison between March 13, 2020 and March 13, 2021, violent crime was down by 20 percent, and property crime was down by 36 percent in the city. The Baltimore Police Department press office told Truthout that its officers made 14,043 arrests in 2020, a 43 percent decline from 24,826 in 2019.

It is unclear whether the sharp decline in incarceration rates was a function of Mosby’s policies, or the natural result of COVID-19 related shutdowns. Across the country, from mid-March to mid-April, jail populations decreased by a quarter. In 527 counties, jail populations decreased and stabilized in May, while 270 others crept back up to pre-pandemic levels and 454 never decreased substantially.

Nevertheless, the announcement was welcomed by several local organizations, including the NAACP and the Baltimore Crisis Response, Inc., an organization that provides mental health services throughout the city.

Others welcome the news, while remaining skeptical that the policies, in practice, are sufficiently reining in police power over marginalized communities. Brandon Soderberg, longtime Baltimore-based journalist and author of I Got A Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad falls into this category.

“This policy on the ground — in court — is far more complicated and limited than it seems,” he told Truthout. “The ‘war on drugs’ is not over in Baltimore.”

Despite announcing that [Baltimore] would decline to prosecute attempted distribution of drugs, [the city] will still charge “drug sellers” caught with evidence such as baggies, scales or large amounts of drugs.

Despite originally announcing that her office would decline to prosecute attempted distribution of drugs, Mosby’s strategic policy and planning director told The Baltimore Sun that the office will still charge “drug sellers,” who are caught with evidence such as baggies, scales, packaging materials or large amounts of drugs. On June 24, the Baltimore Police department tweeted that, in collaboration with the SAO, it arrested and indicted at least five members of a “drug trafficking organization.”

Since Mosby’s COVID-19 policy went into effect on March 18, 2020, there were 30 instances in which “possession with intent to distribute” or “attempted distribution” of a controlled substance was charged and not dropped, according to Zach Zwagil, a data analyst with Open Justice Baltimore. An additional two charges involving marijuana are still being prosecuted.

Even if an individual’s charges are eventually dropped, people who are arrested for distribution or possession of drugs still face serious hardships.

Of 527 bail review hearings involving “attempted distribution” and “intent to distribute” as the most serious charge since March 18, 2020, 398 resulted in held-without-bail rulings, according to Zwagil, meaning a defendant can’t leave jail until their case is resolved, which can take months or years. Within the same time frame, 32 of 35 hearings involving possession or attempted possession as the most serious charge resulted in held-without-bail rulings. In July 2020, The Appeal reported drug possession with the intent to distribute as one of the three most common charges for people denied bond.

“Try to tell someone who say, spent a month or so in jail on charges that were dropped that they should still see Mosby as progressive,” said Soderberg.

Bilphena Yahwon, a local organizer, similarly told Truthout that prosecutorial policies must be closely assessed from the courtroom. “A lot of people don’t see how a prosecutor’s policies and a prosecutor’s integrity and a prosecutor’s actual work is seen in the courtrooms — not in the press — but when you actually go into the courtroom, to see how it is functioning, you actually get a grasp of what a prosecutor is about.”

On the ground reporting from Baltimore Courtwatch — a group that documents daily hearings in court — exposes the fine print. On June 25, the group reported that a person’s case was dismissed after they were held in jail for a year. One of the involved officers was facing felony charges, yet the SAO pursued the case, according to Courtwatch. On June 26, the group reported that an individual had been held for more than six months on drug only charges. Assistant State’s Attorney Tyler Morrison recommended they be held without bail and Judge Jones agreed. Another individual was held without bail on drug only charges for over 14 months before being released on recognizance in June 26.

Baltimore Courtwatch also reports that the odor of marijuana is often used as a pretext for stop-and-search. Then, if police find an illegal weapon during the search, the individual is arrested and typically held without bail. Such stops can be lethal for Black people in Baltimore. Infamously, in 2015 Baltimore City Police forcefully stopped and arrested Freddie Gray, later claiming he had an illegal switchblade. Police partially severed his spine and he died a week later.

Even if prosecutors declined to pursue all “nonviolent” cases, the ongoing realities of policing and arrest would persist.

“I would love to celebrate a prosecutor that is actually moving away from the carceral system, but that’s not so,” Yahwon said. “And we know that it’s impossible for prosecutors to actually not participate in the carceral system.”

Courts are structured to dole out punishment and reinforce dominant hierarchies, not solve underlying problems. And prosecutors, with only one tool in their toolbox — punishment — have a tendency to become increasingly punitive over time, wrote lawyer-researchers Seema Gajwani and Max G. Lesser. Gajwani, who was hired to help advance juvenile justice reform under Attorney General Karl Racine for the District of Columbia, watched this happen. “While hiring progressive prosecutors may slow the rate of punishment at the beginning,” they wrote “it will not change the trajectory.” Timothy Silard, chief of policy to the San Francisco district attorney from 1996-2008 told Gajwani and Lesser that no amount of training could counter this increasingly punitive trend.

Even if prosecutors declined to pursue all “nonviolent” cases, the ongoing realities of policing and arrest would persist.

“Violent Crime” Framing Drives Mass Incarceration

Freddie Gray, despite not harming anyone, would have been considered a “violent” defendant, had he survived. In the public imagination, violent crimes constitute sexual assault, domestic violence and murder. In reality, the label is fairly arbitrary. Possessing a gun without a permit is considered violent. Wiggling in handcuffs can be charged as assault on a police officer in Washington, D.C., a violent offense.

So-called “progressive prosecutors,” such as Mosby, Foxx and Krasner often reify the “violent” and “nonviolent” dichotomy by arguing that police resources should be directed toward aggressively pursuing “violent” crime instead of charges like drug possession. Yet this framing is weaponized against communities who experience state-sanctioned violence daily.

“The state has the job of deciding what they consider a violent crime versus what they don’t,” Yahwon said. “This word of ‘violent’ crime, I always want to break down because there are so many violent crimes that are being done against Baltimore citizens [by the state], specifically poor Black ones.”

If the U.S. released everyone convicted of crimes categorized as nonviolent tomorrow, it would still have an incarceration rate greater than most countries in the world.

The case of Keith Davis Jr. is a tragic and poignant example. In 2015, Keith Davis Jr. was shot by Baltimore police officers after they said he attempted to rob a cab driver — a claim the driver disputed in court. Three of the officers’ 44 shots struck Davis, leaving his sinuses severely damaged. During trial, based on the Baltimore Police Department claim that a gun was recovered nearby, he was convicted of possessing a gun with a felony conviction. Davis’s lawyers argued that the gun was planted. (Baltimore Police Department Gun Trace Task Force was later federally indicted for stealing money, and dealing and planting drugs.) Days later, Mosby’s office charged him with the murder of Kevin Jones, who was killed near the scene where Davis was shot by police. The SAO failed to convict Davis during three separate trials. On the fourth try — a rare occurrence — he was convicted of second-degree murder. Baltimore Circuit Judge Sylvester Cox recently granted Davis a fifth trial based on new documents Davis’s attorney filed 14 months ago.

The state did not consider firing 44 shots at Davis a violent crime, Yahwon, who organizes with the Free Keith Davis Jr. campaign, pointed out. “So now the question becomes, ‘Exactly what violent crimes are we prosecuting?’” she said. “Here we have four officers, one of them being Catherine Filippou, who was investigated by the FBI for using her badge to aid a drug trafficking ring, who has committed a violent crime, such as this one. And yet, Marilyn Mosby got to decide that she would not prosecute them. So once again, what discrepancies are we using when we say violent crime?”

Maintaining this dichotomy to appear progressive, Yahwon says, is an example of prosecutors co-opting radical messaging to ultimately maintain the carceral system. Roughly half of the country’s prison population — nearly 1 million people — are incarcerated for crimes categorized as violent. Following racist “tough on crime” policies of the ‘80s and ‘90s, according to the Prison Policy Institute, the number of people with life sentences increased five-fold, from 34,000 in 1984 to 162,000 in 2016. Life imprisonment is comparatively rare to nonexistent in most European countries. And if the U.S. released everyone convicted of crimes categorized as non-violent tomorrow, it would still have an incarceration rate greater than most countries in the world.

The rhetoric is laying the foundations for supplanting the “War on Drugs” with a “War on Guns,” which is more palatable for progressives.

Approaches to “change the system from within,” such as the progressive prosecutor movement, can in fact sometimes thwart the aims of abolition.

“The language and the logic of how Mosby claims to reduce homicides as an elected official, continues to be through talking up policing and incarceration,” said Soderberg. “And so, she’s trying to split the difference between being progressive on what she considers nonviolent crimes. But when it comes to anything that might suggest violence — including gun possession which is not ‘violent’ — she is very carceral.”

The trend is national. In October 2020, the U.S. attorney announced that the DOJ would ramp up its prosecutions of firearms-related crimes, particularly against people arrested with a gun who have a prior criminal record. Biden has upheld this policy. According to the Philadelphia district attorney’s office data portal, firearm possession arrests have ballooned from 387 in 2015 to 709 in 2020 — a five-year record.

A report by Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research found that the confiscation of illegal guns through racist “stop-and-search” methods did not reduce rates of gun violence in Baltimore. The report did find that “highly focused enforcement of gun laws” and “focused-deterrence initiatives,” a strategy whereby police and members of the community work together to identify, surveil and sometimes offer social services to populations considered likely to commit violent crimes, reduced gun violence in some cases. The Prison Policy Initiative, a data-driven nonprofit investigating mass criminalization, doesn’t recommend such tactics, however, citing a report that found it associated with an increase in “intensive punitive enforcement efforts such as surveillance, investigations, arrests and intensified prosecutions.” Many abolitionists agree, arguing that police — as white supremacist and violent institutions — are the problem, not part of the solution and their involvement perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence and poverty in the long-term.

The carceral system is “built on genocide and colonialism, anti-Blackness and white supremacy,” said Yahwon. “Infiltrating it ain’t gon’ change it.” Approaches to “change the system from within,” such as the progressive prosecutor movement, can in fact sometimes thwart the aims of abolition, which is both a project of dismantlement and a creative process. “We have to build new structures, new things have to exist that are not connected to the old things that we had before,” Yahwon said. “When we infiltrate, we’re preventing the ability of the destruction of the old things to occur…. How can you dismantle something that you’re in?”

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
June 26, 2021

Organizers Are Calling on Congress to Close Loophole That Enables Prison Slavery

While the 13th Amendment abolished chattel slavery, an often ignored clause still allows for slavery and involuntary servitude as “punishment for a crime.” This “slavery clause” is now the target of #EndTheException, a new campaign launched this year on Juneteenth weekend. #EndTheException is pushing for the passage of the Abolition Amendment, a joint resolution cosponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Nikema Williams, which would strike the slavery clause from the 13th Amendment making it so that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime.”

On Saturday, June 19, as communities across the country celebrated Juneteenth — a long celebrated holiday by Black Americans, particularly Black Texans — Merkley and Williams joined advocates from groups including WorthRises, LatinoJustice PRLDF, JustLeadershipUSA, and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition for an online discussion about the #EndTheException campaign and to explain how the promise of freedom has yet to be unfulfilled.

The average incarcerated worker earns 86 cents per hour, and yet in five states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas — laborers inside earn nothing. Jorge Renaud, the national criminal justice director for LatinoJustice PRLDF, was incarcerated in Texas for 27 years. For 13 years, he experienced not just the painful labor of fieldwork — chopping trees and picking cotton, sorghum, and corn — but also retaliation when refusing to work.

“[It was] two years into my last sentence — I had a 60-year sentence,” Renaud said, “I thought I was going to die in prison and I drew a line. I said, ‘There are some things I’m not going to do for you all. I don’t care what you do to me.’ So I’m working out in the fields and I threw my aggy [grubbing hoe] up in the air and I was lucky they didn’t shoot me. They said, ‘You’re not going to work?’ and I said, ‘I’m not going out in the fields for y’all,’ and they put me in solitary for a couple of years.”

Renaud spoke of how prisons force incarcerated laborers to work any type of job assigned to them, and how protesting such work will inevitably lead to being assigned “more brutal jobs, more degrading jobs until you finally end up in solitary confinement. [Then] you don’t have to work but now you’re in there with nothing: no privileges, no commissary, no visitation, no nothing.”

The inclusion of the “slavery clause” made the passage of restrictions targeting Black people like the Black Codes possible as well as convict leasing of the late 19th century. It’s important not to erase the unique horrors faced by those who were enslaved and those who are currently or formerly incarcerated, but the fact is that the “slavery clause” helped enable the current system of prison labor where incarcerated people are forced to work for both the state as well as private companies for little to no pay.

Recent years have brought more attention to how private companies make up a small portion of those who benefit from incarcerated labor — only roughly 1% of incarcerated laborers are employed by private companies and about 6% of imprisoned workers are employed by state agencies who task them with jobs including manufacturing furniture for public colleges, making hand sanitizer, or washing scrubs and linens for state hospitals. In truth, the overwhelming majority of work performed by incarcerated laborers involves facility maintenance — a fact that panelist Deanna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadership USA, came to understand years after her own incarceration in Ohio where she was not paid at all for her labor.

“I thought it was an incentive,” Hoskins said. “We take these jobs thinking, ‘I’ll work in the kitchen to get extra food,’ or ‘I’ll work in the laundry to get out of the current pod and not be in the chaos.’”

It wasn’t until Hoskins went to work for a Department of Corrections that she understood whose labor was actually keeping the facilities operating. The state was effectively undercutting their employee budget by having incarcerated individuals staff services like laundry, landscaping, working in the kitchen, custodial work, janitorial work, gardening, and so on.

“Even down to state departments actually used women’s prisons as their call centers to alleviate them from having to pay for that,” Hoskins said.

In Texas, Renaud pointed out, the type of work provided to those inside also varies tremendously based on race. Black and Latinx people are often assigned to these more custodial positions while their white peers are more likely to get jobs that enable them to acquire more technical skills.

“I once took a tour about five years ago,” Renaud said. “I took some legislators down to a prison in TDCJ where they [offered] computer refurbishing. They had some 47 people in there [working on computers] and there were two Black individuals and like three Latinos. That job at least could give you some technical expertise [so that] when you got out there would be a prestigious job or maybe a well-paid job, [but it] was reserved still for white people.”

The phenomenon reminded Renaud of the separation between enslaved people working in the house versus the field. It also serves as a reminder that in addition to the loss of wages and the strain that places on families who are now tasked with financially supporting their incarcerated loved ones, prison labor also fails to provide jobs that can translate into careers upon release.

Even jobs that could lead to fruitful careers, such as positions in California’s Conservation Camps where incarcerated people fight fires alongside local and state fire departments, are rife with inequity. In addition to not earning anything close to the wages enjoyed by their free world counterparts, incarcerated firefighters are often barred from continuing this work upon their release because of restrictions in getting their license due to their past conviction. For Michael Mendoza, director of national advocacy for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, this profoundly stifles people’s ability to reshape their lives.

“When we talk about jobs in prison,” Mendoza said, “We’re talking about jobs that don’t lead to actual careers because of these exceptions and these laws that we desperately need to change.”

In addition to advocating for The Abolition Amendment at the federal level, movements to end prison slavery are being made on the state level as well. Thus far, Colorado, Utah, and Nebraska have abolished prison slavery in their state constitutions and groups like the Abolish Slavery National Network are working with grassroots organizers in 24 other states to help works towards the same goal.

Writers, historians, and activists have warned about the dangers of overconflating chattel slavery and mass incarceration — arguing that doing so ignores the unique horrors faced by those who were enslaved and those who are currently or formerly incarcerated — but the “slavery clause” is an important tie between the two oppressive systems that must be addressed. As the country winds down Juneteenth celebrations for the year—the first in which the day was commemorated as a federal holiday — #EndTheException organizers are tasking the public with not just memorializing the past but also considering our responsibility in the present to create a more free future.

“This fight is deeply important to the soul of our nation,” said Kamau Allen, lead organizer with the Abolish Slavery National Network. “We find ourselves at a crossroads to decide who we want to be as a society moving forward. We must win and we can win because we’ve done this before.”

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places and issues currently underreported by national media.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
June 11, 2021

50 Years Later, a Majority of Americans Want the Drug War to End

Jonathan Wall is currently jailed in a maximum-security federal prison in Baltimore, Maryland, facing 15 years in prison. The 25-year-old man’s alleged crime? Doing what small businesses and multimillion-dollar corporations alike do as members of the nation’s fastest growing industry: Growing and selling cannabis.

Wall’s attorney, Jason Flores Williams, also represents legal cannabis businesses from his office in Denver, Colorado. A couple weeks ago, Williams was on the phone with Wall discussing his potential prison sentence, which could be at least 10 years due to harsh federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws that have filled prisons for decades. A few minutes later, another client called Williams for advice on investing $1.5 million in a legal cannabis business. Unlike wealthy investors, Williams said Wall could not afford a cannabis license where he worked in California. The feds came after him because his product allegedly crossed state lines — just like billions of dollars worth of cannabis does each year.

Some form of cannabis is legal in nearly every state, and cannabis rich in psychoactive THC is legal for medical use in 34 states and recreational use in 17. In Baltimore, Maryland, prosecutors no longer charge people for drug possession and minor crimes, a move heralded by advocates for reducing incarceration rates and needless suffering in a majority-Black city where 20 percent of families live below the poverty line. Medical marijuana is legal in Maryland, with roughly a half dozen dispensaries located in Baltimore, and recreational marijuana is sold in nearby Washington, D.C. A short drive from the federal prison where Wall awaits trial, cannabis firms are investing millions of dollars in warehouse space to grow weed. Williams says cannabis should be regulated, but locking Wall away for a decade or more is a “profound human rights violation.”

Jonathan Wall’s attorney says he is facing 15 years in prison because he could not afford a legal cannabis license in California and his product crossed state lines.
Courtesy of Jonathan Wall

“This is the only court, this federal court in the City of Baltimore where this could possibly be happening,” Williams said in an interview, adding that his own family was “torn apart” and left in poverty when his father was incarcerated for years on drug charges. “The question is, who will be the last American citizen to be incarcerated for cannabis?”

Next week marks the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon declaring the war on drugs in hopes of squashing rivals in the antiwar and Black liberation movements. Since then, an estimated $1 trillion has been spent waging the drug war in foreign countries, incarcerating millions of people at home and militarizing law enforcement at all levels of government. Drug war violence — the police brutality, the taking of children from parents, the caging of human beings, the deadly stigma and discrimination against drug users — has fallen hardest on low-income neighborhoods and young Black, Latinx and Indigenous people in particular.

As statewide cannabis legalization becomes the norm and progressive locales slowly reduce penalties for small amounts of other drugs, the drug war’s contradictions are becoming impossible to ignore. Communities of color bear the brunt of drug prohibition, but the vast majority of legal cannabis business are owned by white people. Former cops who aggressively enforced marijuana prohibition are cashing in on the weed industry. The psychedelic drugs MDMA, psylocibin mushrooms and ketamine largely remain illegal, even as promising, well-funded studies show they are effective at treating various mental health conditions such as PTSD. The government attempted to prevent overdose deaths by cracking down on painkiller prescribing and drug trafficking, but the opioid supply became more unpredictable and dangerous as a result, one of many reasons why the number of overdose deaths are skyrocketing instead.

Today, more than 80 percent of Republicans, Democrats and independents agree that the war on drugs has failed, according to a new nationwide poll of registered voters from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Drug Policy Alliance. More than two-thirds of voters say drugs are a public health issue and criminal penalties should be removed for all drugs, not just cannabis, so the money spent on drug enforcement can be reinvested into addiction treatment and mental health services. Decriminalizing people involved with drugs and refocusing resources on public health would mark the beginning of the end of the drug war, but federal drug laws prohibiting drugs remain frozen in time. Where they exist, state and local reforms move slowly and are often limited to cannabis or small amounts of drugs.

For decades, ending illicit drug use at home and abroad was the stated policy goal of the United States. That goal proved deeply unrealistic and inhumane. A large swath of the adult population uses drugs without causing much harm to themselves and others. Among those who do develop addiction and other health problems from drug use, millions struggle to get the medical treatment they need.

Today, more than 80 percent of Republicans, Democrats and independents agree that the war on drugs has failed.

Researchers say rates of fatal drug overdose have been rising rapidly since the late 1970s (not the mid-1990s when painkiller prescribing became more liberal, as the media often claims) and correlate with economic decline in communities across the country. Five decades after Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one,” the drug overdose death count reached a terrifying new high in 2020 and is rising fast in Black communities that have long been targeted by police and denied equal access to health care and addiction treatment. Rather than blaming a scourge of drugs that have always been with us, and a growing chorus of activist drug users and public health experts declare, “every overdose is a policy failure.”

If the war on drugs was ever intended to protect us from the harms of drugs, it’s clearly done the opposite. In the meantime, public health experts and activists who use drugs have developed a litany of strategies and community-based services for making drug use safer and helping users take control of their own health. Yet police continue arrest and even kill people for being involved with drugs. Police arrest people for drugs more than any other crime, with more than 1.5 million drug arrests recorded in 2019, according to federal data. Police disproportionately target Black and Brown people for drug enforcement, one reason why racial minorities are vastly overrepresented in the prison system, and Black people are more than three times as likely as white people to be killed during an encounter with police.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and his attorneys attempted to use George Floyd’s drug use as justification for the gruesome murder that sparked nationwide protests last year. Breonna Taylor, whose death at the hands of police also fueled Black Lives Matter protests, was killed during a botched drug raid in Kentucky that reportedly failed to recover any drugs. Protests for Black lives ignited again in April, when police in North Carolina shot and killed an unarmed Andrew Brown Jr. in his own driveway while serving a search warrant alleging Brown sold small amounts of drugs.

People who sell drugs (and may use drugs themselves) are a major focus for law enforcement now that the overdose crisis has helped reframe personal drug use as a public health issue. If we are to end the war on drugs, advocates say, policymakers must abandon the flawed idea that arresting and locking up people who sell drugs makes anyone safer or causes drug markets to shrink. Indeed, incarcerating Jonathan Wall for 15 years won’t put a dent in the illicit cannabis market. A growing number of voters appear to agree; the poll found that only one-third of voters say drugs should be addressed through the criminal legal system. Sixty-one percent support commuting or reducing prison sentences for people incarcerated on drug charges. Grassroots activists have even bigger ideas, such as immediately expunging all drug convictions and paying drug war reparations directly to Black and Brown communities.

Rates of fatal drug overdose have been rising rapidly since the late 1970s … and correlate with economic decline in communities across the country.

Despite decades of violent drug war, demand for drugs has remained consistent. The war is extremely lucrative for law enforcement, and while some politicians will campaign on reform, they are rarely willing to spend political capital on an issue that’s long been stigmatized once in office. Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, campaigned on the MORE Act, a bill passed by House Democrats last year that would finally decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. The legislation would also direct tax revenue from legal cannabis sales to programs in communities harmed by prohibition and create a process for expunging federal marijuana convictions, policies supported by racial justice groups. However, Harris has since avoided questions about cannabis legalization, and reports suggest the “tough” former prosecutor may have flip-flopped on the issue.

While the groups that conducted the new poll oppose the drug war, their findings echo other previous surveys that found growing opposition to drug prohibition and changing social attitudes about drugs, even in deeply conservative parts of the country. House Democrats have reintroduced the MORE Act, giving their slim majority in Congress another chance to finally end federal marijuana prohibition. Whether politicians like Harris are willing read the writing on the wall remains to be seen.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
June 1, 2021

Dismantle NYC’s Mass Surveillance Project — Start With Jail Recordings

Mass public surveillance is becoming a threat in everyday life, with big tech corporations digitally tracking our every move. For incarcerated people, surveillance is even more intrusive.

In the last year, the New York City Department of Corrections (DOC) illegally recorded more than 1,500 privileged calls between people incarcerated in its jails and their attorneys. Many of these illegal recordings were turned over to prosecutors.

This blatant constitutional violation has critical and disproportionate impacts. Three-quarters of people incarcerated in New York City jails are awaiting trial and many are held solely because they cannot afford bail. More than 90 percent are Black and Brow n, thanks to discriminatory police and prosecution practices and the fact that the U.S.’s criminal legal system is constructed on a foundation of white supremacy.

Behind these illegal recordings looms a scandal-plagued surveillance-tech-company-turned-DOC-phone-service-provider: Securus Technologies. The city’s contract with Securus expired on March 31. Yet, despite this scandal and the many others plaguing the vendor nationwide, the DOC quietly extended its relationship with Securus for another year.

The city’s decision to do so highlights the threat our ballooning surveillance apparatus poses to New Yorkers’ civil liberties and rights. A critical first step to ensure that neither our privacy nor our dignity are for sale would be to end the universal recording of jail calls.

As a public defender, I am intimately aware of the crushing isolation that comes with being charged with criminal wrongdoing and caged on a remote island. Cut off from support structures, separated from loved ones and subjected to intense situational stress, New Yorkers who are detained in city jails rely on phone calls to stay in contact with their spouses, children and other loved ones. The phone is the singular lifeline for solace, counsel and advice.

But phone calls — free of charge since 2019 thanks to local advocacy — come at a dehumanizing and devastating cost: the sacrifice of privacy, intimacy and dignity. Every call made to a spouse, parent or child is recorded. There are no exceptions: not for calls to ask your mother for advice on your case; not for calls to talk through your spouse’s medical test results; not for calls to receive news that a younger sibling has passed. Every call is recorded.

It is easy to imagine that jail calls have always been recorded and that this type of dehumanizing surveillance is essential to public safety. Neither is true.

The recording of jail calls is one example of the city’s misguided investment in covert surveillance programs.

For decades, when law enforcement suspected that someone was a jail security threat or planning a crime, they had to apply for an eavesdropping warrant with the requisite evidence. However flawed the eavesdropping warrant regime is, there at least were oversight mechanisms under this system. The warrant requirement for call recording in New York City jails was blanketly eliminated in 2008 — at a time when the city’s crime rates were low and declining — with a simple administrative rule change by the Board of Correction. Their primary justification? “Everyone else is doing it.”

This rule change opened the door for today’s universal recording practice, which solidifies the biased impact of surveillance: Those who cannot afford bail also cannot afford their right against self-incrimination.

Years later, in 2014, Securus doubled down on privacy invasion when it began “voice printing” everyone in DOC custody. Simply put, a voice print is a visual representation of an individual’s speech pattern. A biometric (like finger and faceprints), voice prints are used to attempt to identify participants in call recordings. Not only was Securus voice printing incarcerated people, but the company also began tagging and tracking the voice of anyone receiving a call from a New York City jail. Those voice prints along with the call recordings — to the tune of 30,000 per day — are saved to Securus’s databases. With data being today’s most lucrative commodity, Securus is creating a new product line out of the voices of my clients, their loved ones and myself.

The revelation that Securus has been illegally recording phone calls between people incarcerated on Rikers Island and their attorneys is just the latest in a long line of public scandals involving the company. For illegally recording privileged calls alone, Securus has been sued across the country, from California to Texas, and from Kansas to Maine.

New York City must terminate its contract with Securus. Sadly though, the problem is not limited to just one spy-tech vendor. Many of the same concerns are raised by the city’s relationship with other corporations like Vigilant Solutions, Dataminr, Palantir and Clearview AI. The recording of jail calls is one example of the city’s misguided investment in covert surveillance programs, which include the monitoring of New Yorkers’ movements, social media activity and other highly personal information.

These surveillance activities impact not only the specific targets of the surveillance, but also their families, friends and communities. New York must dismantle its biased mass surveillance project. Eliminating universal jail call recording is a good first step.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
May 27, 2021

The Lives and Deaths of Tony McDade and Malik Jackson

McDade and Jackson’s tragically intertwined lives tell the story of a society that feeds on and maintains oppression through punishment, violence, and isolation. They also show us a way out.

This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
May 26, 2021

Getting Real About Prisons and Why They Don’t Make Us Safer

“People end up in prison for a reason, but it’s not the reason that we’re fed by all of these cop shows,” says Victoria Law. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Kelly Hayes talks with journalist Victoria Law about prisons, why they don’t work, and what even well-meaning people tend to get wrong about incarceration.

Music by Son Monarcas

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity. Copy may not be in its final form.

Kelly Hayes: Welcome to “Movement Memos,” a Truthout podcast about things you should know if you want to change the world. I’m your host, Kelly Hayes. As our regular listeners know, the subject of prison abolition comes up pretty frequently on this show, because, in addition to being a writer and organizer, I am a prison abolitionist. And I know this is a tough topic, for a lot of people, who may agree with me about a whole lot of other things. Because this society presents us with a lot of horrifying problems, and very few solutions. So when we talk about defunding the police, or abolishing prisons, some people feel like we’re talking about taking away the only recourse they have, in a society that subjects them to a lot of harm.

That’s why I think it’s important to, first and foremost, remember that, as Ruthie Gilmore tells us, “Abolition is about presence, not absence.” It’s about demanding and creating structures and supports that would actually allow us to create safety, and prevent harm from happening, rather than grasping for punitive solutions after tragedies have already occurred. But I also think it’s important to get honest about what prisons and policing really are, and how they work. In a recent episode called “You Cannot Divorce Murder From Policing,” I talked with Alex Vitale about the history and current state of policing, and I encourage everyone to check out that episode if they haven’t yet. In today’s episode, I talk with author and journalist Victoria Law about prisons, why they don’t work, and what even well-meaning people tend to get wrong about incarceration. Regardless of how you feel about prisons or prison abolition, I think we all need to reckon with the realities of a system that is devouring millions of people as we speak. Because none of us are exempt from the harms being done or reinforced, and none of us are safe, so long as safety is mythologized on these terms.

[musical interlude]

KH: Today’s guest is Victoria Law. Victoria is a freelance journalist and author whose most recent book “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration dispels popular beliefs about prisons, violence, and safety. She is also a Truthout contributor and co-author of the book, Prison by Any Other Name. Victoria Law, welcome to the show.

Victoria Law: Thanks so much for having me Kelly, and thank you so much for all of these issues you cover.

KH: I’m grateful for the chance to have these conversations. So how are you doing today, amid all the things?

VL: I’m doing okay. I mean, in the midst of a pandemic and the twin pandemics of white supremacy and the coronavirus, I am doing as okay as can be. I’m not imprisoned. I don’t have COVID. I think that’s okay.

KH: Well, I am so glad you could be here. Because I really think “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration is one of the most important books I’ve read in a really long time, and I’m definitely not alone in that assessment. I know Mariame Kaba has called it an essential read, both for people who are new to this subject, and for those of us who are already organizing against the prison industrial complex. Angela Davis has also called the book “an important tool” that could “enable precisely the kind of understanding we need in this moment.”

I felt similarly about Prison by Any Other Name, which you co-wrote with my dear friend, and Truthout’s editor-in-chief, Maya Schenwar. I’ve heard you say that you think the two books compliment each other, and that you were actually working on them simultaneously. Can you say a bit about how the books serve as complementary resources and who you hope will read them?

VL: Sure. So I see prisons my Prison by Any Other Name, which Maya and I actually envisioned back in 2015 when Obama was president, and we were looking at bipartisan criminal justice reform and the ideas of kinder, gentler forms of surveillance and control, that didn’t necessarily address root causes of imprisonment and still entrenched the idea that prisons or some form of confinement were necessary for some people. We wrote that with the idea that people who already understood that mass incarceration was a problem, that it was a gigantic 2.2 million person problem, and that it needed to be eradicated wouldn’t fall for solutions that simply proposed building different sorts of prisons with the same underlying carceral logics.

“Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration is geared more towards people who are new to prison issues, might be coming into it especially this past year from movements and mobilizations to defund the police, understanding that policing and prisons are related forms of state violence, but may not necessarily know very much about prisons and thus are susceptible to some of the most pernicious and most pervasive myths about mass incarceration.

And as Maya and I noted frequently in Prison by Any Other Name, if you don’t understand what causes mass incarceration, and you fall for some of these myths that point the finger at some entity that is perhaps a parasite, but not a primary driver of mass incarceration, you’re going to fall for solutions that don’t actually solve underlying causes of harm, violence, or this idea that we need prisons to keep us safer. And instead might fall for the more cosmetic changes that instead entrench prisons in other ways in our lives in our communities.

KH: Well, I can’t stress enough that I hope everyone will pick up both of these books. In the opening of “Prisons Make Us Safer”, you offer up some pretty disturbing numbers. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prison population. The U.S. had 2.3 million people in cages, as of 2019, and 6.7 million people whose movements were under some form of surveillance or control, such as house arrest, electronic monitoring, parole, or probation. 4.9 million people cycle through our nation’s jails each year, and the majority of those people have not been convicted of a crime. And on any given day, 2.7 million children have a parent in prison.

As I’ve discussed on the show in the past, conditions inside U.S. prisons are so abhorrent, that each year spent in a U.S. prison takes two years off a person’s life expectancy. And with over 2 million people incarcerated, prisons have shortened the overall U.S. life expectancy by almost two years.

So we’re talking about a grotesque system of torture and death-making, and a public health crisis, that most people have been conditioned not to think about. But what I hear most often, when I do confront people with facts or figures about how horrific prison conditions really are, is that people wind up there for a reason. And we’ve been trained by cop shows and popular, punitive ideas about justice and revenge to accept that vague notion of “a reason” as sufficient cause to write off whatever happens to people within those walls. But I really want to take a moment and dig into why we tolerate something so grotesque, that involves so many harms and indignities, that people would otherwise consider outside their values.

As you name in your book, the main arguments in support of incarceration are deterrence, incapacitation, and justice for victims. Can you say just a bit about why these arguments don’t hold up?

VL: Yes. I mean, what we see when we have these three arguments. Well first, I’m going to back up a minute. I want to address your point that people say, “Well, people end up in prison for a reason or for reasons.” And yes they do, but it’s not the reason that we’re fed by all of these cop shows, law and order shows, politicians, and media hype that push for stricter and harsher penalties. People end up in prison because our society does not have a robust safety net. We are a society that is still plagued with racism and white supremacy. With misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and the unwillingness to provide basic resources to people living in this country. And instead of providing those resources, imprisonment in all of its forms seeks to sweep these problems under the rug and out of public view.

So yes, people end up in prison for a reason. But it is not necessarily a reason of personal responsibility. It is a reason of a collective failure, over decades, and decades, and decades, to provide for people. And it is our societal failure to uproot things like white supremacy and misogyny that this country was actually built on. And instead, strengthen ways in which people can be safe in their homes, among their families, and in their communities. So looking at prisons as either deterrence, incapacitation, or justice for victims feeds into this myth that prisons provide this sense of safety for people.

But if you’re listeners think back to this idea of deterrence, and they think back to their past week and anyone who irritated them or annoyed them when they were going about their daily lives, how often did they respond to that person with violence or harm? If somebody cut you off in traffic, did you get out and punch them in the face? If somebody grabbed the roll of toilet paper that you were looking for or cut you in line at the supermarket, did you respond by slamming your shopping cart into their legs? If somebody cat called you on the street, did you turn around and take your meat cleaver out of your purse and smack them upside the head?

And if you did none of these things, did you refrain from doing this because you were afraid of the threat of arrest and imprisonment? Or did you recognize that this person was irritating, or annoying, or upsetting, and then choose either a different response or no response at all? Not because you are afraid that you might get arrested or you might be facing jail time, but because you recognize that this was actually not a way that you wanted to handle the situation.

And there have been studies that show that people don’t think about prison or prison time when they are committing acts that are illegal, whether they be criminalized acts or acts of harm and violence. If they think about prison, it’s some far away notion that might or might not happen. But very few, if any people are deterred from causing harm and violence because of the threat of imprisonment.

Because if this were the case, given the gigantic number of people behind bars or under some sort of carceral supervision, everybody in the United States should be deterred by this giant looming threat of imprisonment hanging over their heads. And instead, we see that we are not the safest country. There are acts of violence happening on a daily basis. People are not deterred by this threat of arrest and imprisonment, despite all of the law and order shows, the cop shows, the draconian sentences, the increases in policing in urban areas. This has not deterred individuals from engaging in criminalized actions, including harm and violence.

When we think about incapacitation, and justice for victims, we have to remember that according to the Department of Justice’s own findings, over half of violent crimes go unreported each year. So over 50 percent of people who have been harmed by violence do not report it to the legal system. So people are not seeking justice or safety from the system in the first place. And from there, even fewer people are actually arrested. So if you have, say 46 percent of people who have been harmed reporting to the police, fewer people are arrested. And then from there, even fewer are referred to for prosecution, and even fewer are actually convicted and sent to prison.

So prison doesn’t incapacitate people who cause harm and violence by and large. What we’re seeing is that it incapacitates some people who happen to be reported, arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. And then they are sent to prison.

And there, they often are sent into a chaotic, violent, racist, misogynistic, transphobic, and homophobic environment that does nothing to address the root causes of why they harmed somebody else, or why they engaged in violent behavior, or why they had to engage in criminalized behavior if there was not somebody who was directly harmed by their actions.

And again, what we see over, and over, and over is that the criminal legal system does not provide these kinds of resources either to the person who engaged in the harm or to the person who was harmed, who might need a plethora of resources in order to begin to recover, and heal, and rebuild their lives. The criminal legal system is not built to offer, say mental health counseling, or medical care, or help with medical bills, or time off from work so that they can begin to heal. Or childcare, or any other sorts of supports that people need after they have experienced violence and harm.

KH: I know that some people believe that prisons are sites of potential reform. But most of the people I grew up around, and most of the people I encounter in the world, don’t really have any illusions about prisons being sites of reformation. Some of them argue that prisons are a deterrent. But mostly, they believe punishment is a necessary end in itself. I know I walked around for most of my life believing that, because we really are conditioned by this society to conflate satisfaction with justice. And that conflation is a pretty easy con. Most people want to be told that their impulses are correct. And when we are harmed, most of us, reflexively, want some kind of revenge. We don’t like to call it that, so we may dress that impulse up linguistically, in a variety of ways — some of them quite lofty — but fundamentally, it is a completely human impulse to want to see the people who harm us hurt or suffer. It’s understandable. But what this system does, is to tell us, “Yes, you are right to want that. And that if this person does suffer, then justice has been done.”

And that line of thinking really lets the system and the rest of society off the hook. Because if all that really needs to happen for us to arrive at justice is for that person to suffer, we don’t really have to address the inequality that you’ve spoken of, or the cycles of violence, or the lack of healthcare, or the destruction of the social safety net, or the lack of positive socialization or support that so many people are experiencing. Confronting those things would often involve a radical reorientation of the way society works. And the criminal system is about maintaining the norms, order and hierarchy of a grossly unequal society. It’s not about our personal safety, or personal reckonings with injustice. It’s about maintaining our cooperation with the very system that generates the harms we experience.

So rather than saying, “What happened here should be unthinkable, what would we need to change to keep it from happening again?” The system tells us that if the person is punished, we should experience satisfaction and peace, and feel assured that the world is safer. But of course, the system doesn’t really offer that either. It offers the idea of that. Because most people who experience harm, as you say, don’t even bother to engage with the system. And those that do rarely get any satisfaction from that engagement. Can you say a bit about the mythology of justice in the U.S. system and how it compares to how victims and survivors actually experience the system?

VL: Yes. So we have this myth that justice equals retribution. And to paraphrase Mariame Kaba, a long time prison abolitionist and an organizer against gender violence, prison abolition is not about not having consequences. But in our society, we equate punishment with consequences. So people should face consequences for actions that they take, whether they be large or small. I mean, think about how many times, if you live in a household with somebody, you try to hold them accountable for things like, “Hey, you said you were going to do the dishes and you didn’t.” Or, “Hey, please don’t leave your dirty socks all over the living room.” So small actions like this to larger actions like, “Hey, you need to be responsible and there needs to be consequences for the fact that you’ve harmed somebody.”

But because we live in a punitive society and a society that has conditioned us to expect that punishment is a logical consequence, we have this idea that people need to suffer. And they need to be put into places that are, to quote Mariame Kaba, “Somewhere else away from us.” And that these places must be hellholes. If they’re violent, if they’re chaotic, if there are no rehabilitative opportunities, if their relationships with their family members are destroyed, if their communities are devastated by having so many people pulled out, well, that is because of their individual actions. And it lets society off the hook for the large systemic failures of why we have income inequality. Why do women make so much less money than men? Why do people of color make so much less money than white people? Why do women of color make so much less money than their white counterparts? Why do police profile? Why are communities that are often income communities of color that are devastated by violence even further devastated by police violence instead of having money being put into resources that those communities need to address violence and to stop economic, and gender, and racial inequalities?

So prisons obviously don’t solve any of this. Prisons are a solution to punish people for being part of systemic societal failures. And for victims, what this often looks like is if they decide to report to police, if they go to the system in the first place, they have to tell their story over and over to police officers, and later to prosecutors, in a way that is believable and credible. And we have to remember that not every person is seen as a victim. So when Black men are killed, the system takes their deaths less seriously than it does for their white counterparts. We see this also with people who are sexually assaulted, over three quarters of whom do not report to the police in the first place.

And then if the victim’s case goes to court, they are called to testify in front of a grand jury, which is a panel of total strangers who are impassive. And they have to tell their story in a way, again, that is believable to this panel of strangers who hear many, many cases in one day. So by this point, everybody’s mind is just blurred into horror story, after horror story, after horror story. And then if their case goes to trial, they must then tell the story again in a courtroom to a jury in a way that is believable and stands up against any personal attacks on the defense.

And then at the end of this, if the person who harmed them is convicted, they’re able to come to court and give a victim impact statement. But for people who don’t want there to be draconian penalties, I talk about the one mother whose son was accidentally killed. Her 17 year old son was accidentally killed by his friend who was also 17 years old. She did not want her son’s friend to go to prison for a long period of time. But the district attorney and the courts never notified her about the sentencing. She had no opportunity to go and give a victim impact statement that said, “My son is gone. Let us not wreck another 17 year old’s life by sending him away to prison for a long period of time.” But she never had a chance to do that. And she only found out later that her son’s friend got some absurdly long sentence because the jury said, “Okay, you are convicted of murder.” And the judge said, “Okay, here are the sentencing guidelines.” And nobody asked her what she wanted.

Not all victims want the person who harmed them or their loved ones to go away for long periods of time. This is why we often see that family violence, particularly domestic violence and violence against children is underreported, because they don’t want to see their family member or loved one spending long periods of time in some hellish prison. They simply want that person to stop hurting them. And that is not what the current policing in prison system can provide.

KH: I also want to talk a bit about private prisons. In 2019, Maya Schenwar and I co-wrote a piece called The Problem With Child Detention Isn’t That It’s Private. It’s That It Exists. And we got a lot of pushback from people who I think mostly had not read the piece, about how private prisons were a good place to start. And that obviously people insisted, if you removed the profit motive, there would be fewer children imprisoned and better conditions for incarcerated children.

In your book, you wrote the best breakdown I’ve seen of why that’s just not the case, really shattering the myth that we would somehow be rescuing people by ending private prisons. And also, the myth that taking them on is even the best place to start. Could you say a bit about that?

VL: Yes. So what we have to remember is that people are sent to prisons as punishment. And private prisons for the criminal legal system make up 8 to 9 percent of the total prison population. They make up 73 percent of immigration detention, which is a different structure with many of the same similarities of imprisonment — the lack of freedom, the violence, the chaos, the brutality, etc.

But when we’re talking about mass incarceration or immigrant detention, we have to think of private prison corporations as parasites in the same way that we think of the companies that run the telephone systems, or the companies that provide the uniforms, or the companies that sell mass amounts of soap and gruel and whatever else. As parasites that are making money off of mass incarceration. There is a place to make a buck, and they are going to figure out a way to do so.

However, what we have seen is that in places where private prisons are closed, this does not result in people being released. So when Obama’s Justice Department issued a memo towards the end of his presidency stating that they were going to allow their contracts with private prison companies to phase out and they would not renew them, the order did not come with an accompanying memo that said, “And for the X thousands of people who are currently held in private prisons, we’re going to arrange for them to go home.” So they were not going to be released, as a result of private prison closures, they were going to be shuffled into government run prisons, which are just as shoddy, which are just as violent, chaotic, and ill-run. With the only difference being that there was not a giant corporation being paid a fixed amount per body per day for caging them.

We see the same thing in states where some states that have rescinded or stopped using private prisons contracts have not seen a decrease in their prison population. Instead, what they are seeing is they just shuffle people from private prisons to their government run prisons.

Last year, Oklahoma ended its contract with a private prison corporation to close one of its larger private prisons as a cost saving measure. But what they did not do as a cost-saving measure was have a large-scale release of people who were being held in that private prison, or a large-scale release of a corresponding number of people being held in that private prison. Instead, those people were shuffled into the already overcrowded state run prisons in Oklahoma to continue serving their time.

So what we see is that when private prison corporations, or when private prisons are closed, or when divestment strategies happen, private prisons themselves might close, but people inside are not freed. And furthermore, these corporations, which are built to make a buck, simply reshuffle and figure out new ways to profit. So we see groups like GEO Group, which is one of the largest private prison corporations, going into the business of halfway houses. We see them going into drug rehab. We see them buying up electronic monitoring company BI Incorporated to be able to continue their profit. But they are not the drivers of mass incarceration. We have to remember that two of the largest private prison corporations started in the mid 1980s, as prison population started to soar with this war on crime, war on drugs, tough on crime, just say no policies were happening, and states were really enacting harsher and harsher punishments, and corporations saw a way to make a buck.

I think of historian Elizabeth Hinton who talks about how Lyndon B. Johnson introduced both the war on poverty and the war on crime. And the war on crime won out. And that’s why we don’t have all of these structures to eradicate poverty because we’re so busy trying to lock people up.

But if the war on poverty had won out, some of these same corporations might’ve evolved as corporations to make a buck off of efforts to eradicate poverty. So it is not necessarily that they are driving these policies. They may lobby. They may give political donations. But we also have to remember that the majority of prisons are government run prisons with government workers, who are in unions, who have a lot more political power, a lot more clout, donate far more money to political candidates, and offer to provide votes for these political candidates as well.

So private prison corporations are this sort of parasite that if we focus all of our attention on getting rid of them, we still don’t solve the problem of mass incarceration. We get rid of a parasite. Great. You don’t get to feed off of caging X number of people, whatever 9 percent of 2.2 million is. But this doesn’t mean that people get to go home at the end of the day. And people should remember that.

KH: Another misconception you address in your book is the idea that prison slavery drives mass incarceration. You write that fewer than half of the 2.3 million people who are locked up in the U.S. work while they’re incarcerated, and less than 1 percent of those people work for private corporations. So why does the myth that slave labor is a driving force behind the prison system persist?

VL: I think we see this as a holdover from the 13th Amendment, which abolished chattel slavery in southern slave holding states with the exception of somebody who was convicted of a crime. And in the South, lawmakers seized on this exception. Law enforcers seized on this exception to be able to basically re-enslave the newly freed Black population and send them back to work in fields, in mines, in other types of hard, grueling labor. But it was a way to deprive them of their freedom once again.

Fast forward to the 1980s, and 1990s, and 2000s, and even today. We have large numbers of people who are in prison who remain idle. If prisons were about profit, every one of those 2.2 million people in prison would be put to work doing something. Instead, we have something like between 80,000 to 100,000 people in solitary confinement, which means that they are locked into their cells 23 and a half to 24 hours a day with absolutely nothing to do.

For example in Texas, there are large numbers of people in what’s called administrative segregation, which is their fancy term for being locked in your cell 23 and a half to 24 hours a day. They are not being put to work in the fields, where Texas prisoners are often required to work, and plant food, and harvest food for people inside the prison. They are not being put to work in the braille industry where the Texas Department of Criminal Justice contracts with these textbook companies to translate books into braille. And people in prison are not being paid for this, but TDCJ is.

But if profit was the sole motivation, then you would not have well-educated people who are probably going to be very good at translating books into braille languishing in solitary confinement, or languishing in places where they are idle and unable to work.

Instead, what we see is work is often used as a control mechanism. It is a control mechanism if somebody has a job that pays them a better wage and allows them to buy some things. And we also see it as a way for prisons to offset their own costs. So if you have people, imprisoned people mopping the floors, scrubbing the toilets, cutting other people’s hair, running errands for the prison warden, working in these fields, that is work that you do not have to pay an outside person whatever the minimum wage is in the state or county that you were in to do, but it does not necessarily offset the gigantic costs of 25,000, 30,000, 45,000, $55,000 per prisoner per year that the state incurs. So it is not an offset.

I mean, in the outside world, saying that we would spend $55,000 for somebody to sit in their house all day, everybody would decry this as welfare queen, welfare, lazy, something, something, something. We would say no, you cannot pay $55,000 for a person to sit in their house and do nothing.

But we do this all the time with imprisonment. We see that very few people are employed. Even fewer are employed by private prison corporations. And instead, prison systems spend an enormous amount of money keeping hundreds of thousands of people just sitting all day doing absolutely nothing.

KH: I want to talk a bit about sex offender registries. In your book, you take on the myth that sex offender registries are necessary to keep children safe. I feel like this is a tough one for a lot of people, because the desire to hang on to these registries comes from a very emotional place. Parents and other people who love children are afraid for the young people in their lives, and many don’t want to give up anything that they think could offer even the smallest chance of insulating young people from violence. We also have a lot of contempt in our society for people convicted of anything construed of as a sex crime. And I think that’s both the product of personal pain and resentment, sometimes stemming from our own experiences, and also from the collective pain and trauma that some cases have instilled in us as a society — which is why these laws are often named after victims, who we would like to believe these laws would have saved. Those feelings are reinforced by cop shows like Law and Order SVU that position police and prisons as our best protection against monstrously depraved people, who are depicted as lurking around every corner.

But one in four girls and at least one in six boys are sexually abused in the U.S. before their 18th birthday, as you wrote in your book. And prisons and sex offender registries are not protecting children from those outcomes. Can you say a bit about these registries and how they actually function, and why they don’t keep us safe?

VL: Sure. So we have to remember that sex offender registries like arrest and like prosecution and imprisonment come after harm has occurred, and only come if the harm is reported. So we have to remember that this statistic that you just read, one in four girls and one in six boys nationally are sexually abused before their 18th birthday. And of those, very few report to the authorities that this has happened. We have to also remember that 93 percent of child sexual abuse happens at the hands of family members or acquaintances, not strangers. So we are fed this idea that sex offender registries deal with the stranger in a white van who’s going to pop out of their van, and grab your kid, and do who knows what with your child. And in reality, child sexual abuse is more likely to happen at the hands of a family member, a community member, a trusted person, or an acquaintance.

And we also have to remember that child sexual abuse has a very low percentage of reporting. So of every 100 incidents of child sexual abuse, only 10 to 18 instances are reported to the authorities. And from there, the number gets significantly and terrifyingly lower. If we think that police, and prisons, and sex offender registries keep children safe. Of those 10 to 18, only six people who have committed harm go to trial. And only three are convicted. And they are convicted of something, not necessarily of hurting a child or children. But they might plead guilty to something else in order to avoid being labeled a sex offender.

So A, the sex offender registry does nothing to prevent sexual harm and sexual abuse, because it happens after the fact. Also policing and prisons do not keep children safe, because it happens after the fact. But what this does do is it vilifies people who harm children as depraved monsters. And it makes it harder for us to identify and recognize people who are exhibiting warning signs as people we should perhaps look out for.

So nobody wants to think that their grandfather, or their great uncle, or their aunt, or their cousin, or their neighbor, or their little league coach, or their music teacher or whoever, or their brother or their sister might be somebody who will harm children. Because in our minds, people who harm children are these depraved monsters. And they must have horns, and goblin fangs, and something else. And they could never be the beloved people in our community.

And when we fail to recognize these warning signs, we fail to act to prevent them. So what are the warning signs that could have prevented this from escalating in the first place? So similarly, what are the warning signs if you see somebody that is behaving in a way that leads you to believe that they may not be safe to be around children?

So when we fail to recognize these warning signs, we fail to do things that could either support that person in getting help before they harm somebody or before they continue to harm somebody. And instead, what we do is we turn a blind eye and we’re like, “That’s Desmond. Desmond is great. He might be kind of weird, but I know that I’ve known him since we were both six years old. And I know that he would never harm anybody.” As opposed to saying, “Hey Desmond’s, let’s talk. Let’s try to figure this out. Let’s look for resources together.” And it also keeps people who are in criminalization, keeps people who are struggling with impulses or ideas about hurting children from voluntarily seeking help, because they are afraid of being criminalized, locked up, and put on the sex offender registry.

In addition, people are put on the sex offender registry with no way to get off and no support to help keep them from hurting somebody else again. Instead you’re given a long list of what you cannot do. You cannot live near a school. You cannot live near a daycare. You cannot live with your sister, because she’s got three minor children. You cannot get a job here because you might be violating X, Y, or Z. You cannot live in this place because it is near school, daycare, children. You might have to be cut off from what little support system you might still have that might be able to hold you if you feel like you are struggling.

And there have been numerous studies that show that people who commit child sexual abuse are more likely to commit violence again when they’re without their support system, when they are stressed, when they’re feeling isolated, than when they are in a system that tries to hold them responsible and accountable, however imperfectly that might be. And I say however imperfectly, because what we know again, and again, and again, is that the creation of the sex offender registry has not resulted in larger numbers of children being safe. We have more than 900,000 people on the National Sex Offender Registry right now. That is a number that is greater than the entire population of Vermont. Yet we are not seeing an increase in safety for children. The creation of the sex offender registry did not stop Larry Nassar, the doctor who was arrested and imprisoned for sexually assaulting numerous child gymnast throughout his career, from doing what he did.

It did not allow anybody to recognize that this nice doctor that treated so many gymnasts might have a problem and might require intervention. Instead, what happened is that countless young people were subjected to child sexual abuse at his hands were afraid to come out and say something about him. Or if they did, their complaints were not taken seriously because he did not fit this idea that people who harm children are depraved monsters, and somehow we can spot them a mile away.

KH: I absolutely agree, and I also want to name that these registries, of course, reach far beyond the bounds of child sexual abuse, and beyond crimes like rape. As many people know by now, there are states where people can wind up on these registries for things like public urination, or taking a naked photo of yourself, if you’re a teenager, or even being a client of a sex worker, and I want to acknowledge that there are people whose lives are being destroyed by these registries over those things too. Because when we create mechanisms of surveillance and control like this, their reach will always creep outward, and ensnare people who are not the supposed targets of the legislation. But, to avoid falling into a reform trap, where people think we just need to tweak who gets registered, it’s really crucial to name, as Victoria has here, that even in cases where people have committed acts of sexual harm that deeply disturb us, these registries are not preventing those harms from happening and they are not making anyone safer. They really do cause nothing but harm.

I want to circle back, for a moment, to Prison by Any Other Name, and the sort of creeping extensions of the carceral system that we are witnessing. Because people often think of incarceration, and that kind of surveillance and control as happening somewhere far away, or, at least, removed from their existence. But as you and Maya Schenwar wrote in Prison by Any Other Name, the prison nation really is extending into so many areas of our lives. As society fails more and more of us, it becomes increasingly important for the system to depict us as failures, who have to be surveilled, punished and controlled, because it can’t be society that has to change. It has to be us, who are lacking and failing, and need to be whipped into a better state of cooperation with it. So we see escalations of the carceral management of people, in schools, at work, in healthcare, and in family regulation systems, like DCFS [Department of Children and Family Services]. And, of course, we also see the outsourcing of incarceration into people’s homes. Can you say a bit about how the prison industrial complex is presently extending its reach?

VL: Yes. I mean, what we see is we see the prison industrial complex creeping into our lives in several different ways. First, we see the expansion of prison-like solutions often posited as alternatives to incarceration.

One of the most popular is electronic monitoring, which is when somebody is shackled with a global positioning system device, or a GPS device, which tracks their every movement. And electronic monitoring is almost always accompanied by home confinement, which means you are locked in your house. Well you’re not physically locked. You are told to say in your house. And if you want to leave your house, you must have prior approval from the authorities. That authority can be the Sheriff’s office, the electronic monitoring company, a probation officer, a parole officer. The authority varies, but the result is the same. If you walk out of your house, even in an emergency, without that prior approval, you can be sent back to prison. And electronic monitoring is one of the growing ways in which imprisonment has been extended into our homes and communities. It is seen as a kinder, gentler form of imprisonment. And many people say, “Yes, I would rather be sleeping in my own bed, eating food from my own refrigerator. Not having to get up five times a night to recite my prison ID number whenever the guard demands that I do so.” But it is still a form of imprisonment. And as a solution to the physical jails and prisons, we need to be careful not to create similar structures in our homes and communities.

What we also see is this creep of criminalization into other institutions that are not meant to be prisons, but start looking remarkably like prisons. We see this with schools, particularly schools that serve low income students of color. So we don’t see this in the Waldorf and the Montessori schools. We don’t see this in the schools in the wealthier, whiter suburbs of, name the city of your choice. What we see this is in the schools that are often Black, brown, and immigrant, where the students and the families are from lower income brackets, and do not necessarily have the resources and the wherewithal to go someplace else. And we see these schools criminalizing students from an early age. We see these schools having more police officers than school counselors. We see students being brutalized and punished for acts that two decades ago would just be dealt with by the school. So we see that students are being arrested and put in handcuffs for things like having a fistfight. In some instances, which occur more frequently than anyone can imagine, we see that young Black girls as young as five or six get put in handcuffs by school police officers for things like having a tantrum because they don’t want to take a nap, or they don’t want to stop coloring, or whatever the case is.

Listeners who have small children in their lives, whether it be their own children, or their loved one’s children, or their neighbors’ children will know that four, five, and six year olds sometimes throw tantrums. And no parenting book in the world says the way that you respond to a small child that does not want to do something and is throwing a tantrum, is to bring in a large law enforcement officer who will then put handcuffs on this child and terrorize them, and handcuff them to a desk, or put them in the back of a police car, or do something else that will cause them much, much more trauma.

Now that is not actually the way to deal with children, ever. But that is what we see with this creep of criminalization into institutions like schools, like preschools, like child welfare systems or foster care systems. So we see this idea that people should be treated as if they have somehow committed wrongdoing. Yes, tantrums are annoying. But they are not criminalized actions and they should not be punished in that kind of brutal way. And we see people being punished, sometimes brutally, for acts that a few decades ago, we would have said, “Okay, clean up your crayons. Okay, you don’t get to participate in sing-along because you broke all the crayons and threw a tantrum, and it took us 20 minutes to have to deal with you. So we’re not going to allow you to do this. Or we’re going to talk to your parents about that.” But we do not respond with brutal physical punishment, or we should not. And we are seeing in an increasing number of instances this idea of punishment, carcerality creeping into our systems.

KH: I just want to say that as someone who has experienced that carcerality, in the mental healthcare system, and in other systems that were supposed to be offering me assistance when I was younger, I felt really seen reading Prison by Any Other Name. And I think a lot of people who have had these experiences will feel the same when reading this book. Because what’s positioned as “help” is often a form of punishment, and the blame aspect is important, because the system has to depict people as failing to correctly participate in something that fundamentally works, in order to maintain itself, and to avoid having to make any correction. Society didn’t fail that person, we’re told. They failed at participating in society, and they need to be disciplined into getting it right. And given what’s happened to wages over the last 30 years, and what’s happening to the environment, health care, and just all of the ways this society sabotages people, we have to confront the reality that people aren’t failing at something that works, and they don’t need to be managed and punished and treated harshly, in order to do better. Abusing people further won’t magically give them a functioning role in this slow motion collapse we’re experiencing, this thing Ruthie Gilmore calls “organized abandonment.” Punitive responses won’t save people, and allowing them to be enacted on others will not save the rest of us.

So I highly recommend that people read Prison by Any Other Name, and really challenge themselves to recognize how easily most of us could be ensnared by one of these tentacles of the prison nation.

But all of these things said, I think a lot of people, when confronted with the realities of the prison system, are at something of a loss. Because while police and prisons are about the maintenance of order within the system, they also help us order the world in our minds. In the absence of them, a lot of people don’t know where to begin. I know this isn’t a question any one person can answer for the rest of us, and that there are many potential answers and experiments under construction, but what would you say to people who are listening and find themselves agreeing in principle, but who can’t really picture another way?

VL: I think first of all, they should think back to their own interactions. In their families, in their communities about how they deal with harm and violence. So most of us when confronted with harm done to us by people that we love or care about, or maybe even people that we don’t like and don’t care about but are in our communities, often do not go to the police as a first step. Again, as I mentioned earlier, over half of violent crimes are not reported to the police each year. So we are already not going to the police and to the prison system to resolve our conflicts, including conflicts that are involving violence.

So A, we need to think about ways in which we have dealt with harm and violence in our own lives. And some of that might be, “I wish I had responded differently.” Not necessarily, “Oh, I have this magical solution.” But it’s also thinking about what else can be done. One of the insidious things about policing in prisons and this reliance on policing in prisons is it has shrunk our imagination so that we do not think that we individually or collectively can deal with conflict or harm on our own. And instead, we have to outsource it to this violent institution that takes up more and more of our resources.

So I would say, first of all, look at some of the experiments, initiatives, and projects that have been happening. Some of them are relatively new that have come up in the past year or two. Some of them have been long-standing initiatives. In the back of my book, I list several places where people can go to start looking for blueprints and roadmaps on how to address harm without calling the police. We have to understand it is not a one-to-one solution. We do not take out everybody who is convicted of X and then put in a similar sized one-size-fits-all solution. So if 55 percent of people have been incarcerated for violence, we don’t take out prison as the solution and then put in something else that is as giant and mammoth, and does not address everyone’s needs. But what we can do is we can say what have other people done in these situations?

One of the things that I’ve turned to is the idea of pod-mapping, which was started by the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, which seeks to end child sexual abuse. And Mia Mingus, one of the co-founders and a long-term abolitionist, put it this way, is that abolition and accountability are a muscle you have to continue to practice or exercise. She gave some sports examples that I don’t really remember because I don’t follow sports. But she said such and such basketball player did not magically one day just start shooting baskets into a hoop all the time. He had to practice, and practice, and practice. And that’s something that we have to do with abolition.

So they have an idea, this thing called pod-mapping, where you map out relationships that you have with people. Who can you turn to when you need help? And these can be different people for different roles. Maybe if you are in need of $10, you can take a taxi to the hospital or to urgent care. Or you need $10 for groceries. Who can you turn to? It might be neighbor X, neighbor Y, and neighbor Z.

Who can you turn to if you have been harmed by somebody? That might be best friend A, best friend B, best friend C. But those best friends may never, ever have 10 extra dollars to be able to lend you. Whereas your neighbors might say, “I’m really busy, or I don’t have the wherewithal, or I don’t have the skills to be able to support you if you have been hurt by violence.”

Now, who can you turn to when you are the one that has committed harm? Because we have to be honest with ourselves in that we also cause harm to other people. It might not be forever lasting, traumatizing, violent harm, but we also harm other people in our day-to-day lives because we are humans. And who do we have in our lives who might say, “Hey Vicky, that was a messed up thing that you did. What are you going to do about it?”

And that person might be a community member M, community member, and community member O. But those people may not be there for you when you need $10. They might not be able to provide childcare. They might not be able to do other things.

So it’s important to think about what your relationships are to other people, and who might be able to help. And also, where you are in relationship to other people. So you might say, “Neighbors, A, B, and C that can lend me $10. I don’t ever have $10 to lend back, but I’m home on Tuesday afternoons, and their kids can come over to my place and have a safe place to go.” Or, “I can be here if they need help during X, Y, or Z times, because I am home during this time, and I can be the person that helps them with this.” So I think it’s building relationships, and building supports, and being able to envision before a crisis happens what are the relationships, and then strengthening those relationships as well.

There’s also a website called One Million Experiments that Mariame Kaba has put together that looks at ways in which people are experimenting with responses to harm and violence that do not involve calling the police. There’s also a gigantic 400 page toolkit called Creative Interventions, which is also available online that chronicles people’s stories and experiences dealing with harm, violence, and conflict without calling the police. These are not manuals. They’re not like your stereo manual or the manual to put together your Ikea shelf in which you follow A, B, and C to the letter and voila, you have a shelf or you have a stereo system.

But there are ways in which we should and can stretch our imaginations to say, “What else is possible when something happens?” Instead of saying, “Well, I can either call the police or I can do nothing,” which are currently what larger society tells us are our only two options.

KH: Thank you for that. Are there any asks or final thoughts you would like to leave our listeners with today?

VL: I would quote Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who is a co-founder of Critical Resistance and a long-term prison abolitionist who says that abolition is not aspirational. It’s a journey. And we’re practicing abolition every day and in many different forms. This is actually a paraphrasing, not a quote. And she points out that fair wages are a form of abolition. She points out that migrant justice is a form of abolition. There’s so many different ways in which we can work towards abolition. Because we have to remember that abolition is not just the tearing down of prisons in all of its manifestations, but also replacing them with resources and supports that actually meet people’s needs and effectively addresses and reduces harm and violence, therefore making prisons unnecessary and obsolete.

KH: Absolutely. And we will be including links to some of the resources that Victoria mentioned in the show notes, which you can find at the bottom of the transcript of this episode on our website at truthout.org. And, I just want to say, as someone who reads a lot about prisons, I really learned so much from your book, Victoria. And I really hope that all of our listeners will check out “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration and also Prison by Any Other Name, because I really believe that if a critical mass of people really took the time to process these texts, we might find ourselves living in a different world. And both are available as audiobooks, by the way, since I know that’s important to some people — including me. So don’t forget to look for those links in the show notes.

Victoria, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a great conversation.

VL: Thank you so much, Kelly.

KH: I also want to thank our listeners for joining us today. And remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good and to remember that the good we do matters. Until next time. I’ll see you in the streets.

Show Notes:

Victoria’s books:

“Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration by Victoria Law

Prison by Any Other Name by Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar

Further reading:

Many So-Called “Alternatives” to Mass Incarceration Are 21st-Century Shackles by Vincent Schiraldi, James Kilgore and Victoria Law

The Problem With Child Detention Isn’t That It’s Private. It’s That It Exists. by Kelly Hayes and Maya Schenwar

Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind by Rachel Kushner

Resources:

One Million Experiments is a place to explore snapshots of community-based safety strategies that expand our ideas about what keeps us safe.

The Creative Interventions Toolkit is an extensive resource that promotes community-based approaches to ending interpersonal violence.

You can learn about podmapping by visiting The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective’s website. BATJC is a community group based out of Oakland, CA working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
May 12, 2021

Thirteen Facts About American Prisons That Will Blow Your Mind

In a few minutes time you’ll want to abolish prisons. If you’re not ready for that intellectual and emotional transformation, then please stop reading now. Or put on your thunder shirt.

If you grew up in the United States, like I did, then you probably think prisons are a fact of life. We just go through our day-to-day assuming that a huge chunk our population must be hardened criminals (which is very different from hard criminals: scalawags involved in burgling while aroused) and that without prisons these delinquents would be running everywhere, breaking things, kicking squirrels in the face, and urinating in your car window while you’re at a stoplight. We just assume prisons have been around forever — as if back in caveman times they had one of the caves walled off with sticks and vines where they kept Blartho because he was a real a-hole.

The post Thirteen Facts About American Prisons That Will Blow Your Mind appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
May 1, 2021

My Child Is Incarcerated. One Second in This Unjust System Is Too Much.

For several years, I have met weekly with a remarkable group of mothers and one father who, like me, are fighting for the release of their adult children from Chicago-area prisons. We call ourselves the Mothers of the Kidnapped. My new sisters and brother, all in a group no parent wants to join, speak powerfully to the loss of their children and to the agony of being caught up in a police and trial process that actively works against us and the supposed rights of our children to access a transparent and even-handed legal system.

This month we celebrated the long overdue release of Gerald Reed, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1990 after he was tortured and framed by disgraced Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge. We also raised up his mother, Armanda Shackelford, for her steadfast work over 30 years to secure his freedom. But, as Gerald and Armanda both noted in a press conference, this goes far deeper than Gerald’s case, when so many more people remain behind bars, including those convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has done right in Gerald’s case, and we thank him, but he can do so much more to free the wrongfully convicted and others who are incarcerated, as can other state governments around the country.

What we have learned through discussing our children’s cases is that many Chicago police officers and detectives are extraordinarily corrupt. From Kenneth Boudreau, to Jack Halloran, and James O’Brien to Jon Burge and Reynaldo Guevara — accused in the framing or coerced confession of more than 200 people, including my sons Juan and Rosendo — we know this to be the case.

Moreover, many judges are complicit in the falsehoods that prosecutors, police and detectives convey to win convictions. Our children have been entrapped in a web of collaboration involving judges, prosecutors and police officers.

In recent weeks we saw Chicago police have to walk back their initial claim that 13-year-old Adam Toledo was killed in an “armed confrontation.” Cook County prosecutor James Murphy was placed on administrative leave after wrongly claiming that the child was armed when shot by police.

Judges seem to feel no urgency to change this lethal system. When we show up to court, they dehumanize us, disrespect us and blame us. They forget to bring the correct papers, show up late or don’t show up at all. They are on one side of a legal line while Black, Brown and economically struggling white parents are on the other.

Justice is supposed to be “swift.” But what happens if you’re on the receiving end of a judge meting out a decision based on falsehoods and crooked police behavior? Then the wheels of so-called “justice” turn slow.

One second behind bars is too much.

Last month, members of Mothers of the Kidnapped were part of a virtual meeting with staff for State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Unfortunately, Foxx did not meet with us personally. We were told to “be patient.” But some of us have been contending with unjust decisions for a decade or more. That language, perhaps well-intended, simply does not sit well when one’s child has languished in prison for years for something he didn’t do.

During our now-online calls with one another, I have seen a framed picture of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass on the wall of one of my sisters. When told to “be patient,” I cannot help but think of King’s words: “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

But, in fact, it is worse than that. The original sin here is not that we are waiting years rather than months or weeks for court reversals. The original wrongdoing is that our sons were beaten up by police and convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. One second behind bars is too much. One angry detective grilling them over something they did not do is too much.

All of us, in Mothers of the Kidnapped, have undergone the worst sort of learning process. Time and again doors are closed to us, all of which has been made worse in the last year by COVID-19 slowing our efforts to free our children. Our names are Denice Bronis, Bertha Escamilla, April Ward, Armanda Shackleford, Regina Russell, April Ward, Rosemary Cade and Frank Ornelas. All of us have been trapped, trying to free our children from a system that was never meant to work for us. We are not alone. Our struggle is wrapped up in the struggle of all incarcerated people and their loved ones. Whether or not an individual has a mother who can appeal to the sanctity of motherhood to garner support, no human should be caged, and it is not only police torture survivors whose stories matter.

I have come to see the cruelty of what we face as an abuse of reproductive justice.

Two hundred years ago, the U.S. legal system prevented Black women from controlling their bodies and reproduction. Yet today, even if we raise our Black and Brown children safely to young adulthood, there is no guarantee that these children will not be stolen from us by an oppressive legal system built on a racist foundation and the vestiges of Black enslavement. The American legal system and police were originally established to patrol Black bodies so it is no wonder that racially charged abuses continue to this day.

Increasingly, I have come to see the cruelty of what we face as an abuse of reproductive justice. Yes, our children were able to survive our city’s gun violence and reach adulthood. But one of the joys of growing older is seeing our children mature and engage with us as equals, not to mention the possibility of seeing the future through grandchildren. These relationships cannot be fully developed through the bars of a prison or the looking glass of a visiting room.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
April 13, 2021

Biden Poised to Break a Promise on Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

More than a hundred racial justice and public health groups are urging Congress and President Joe Biden to abandon a Trump administration policy that enhanced criminal penalties for people involved with drugs containing forms of fentanyl, the opioid that has received sensational media coverage for its role in the overdose crisis.

Along with law enforcement efforts, the Trump-era policy failed to prevent a dramatic surge in overdose deaths while expanding the use of mandatory minimum sentencing laws that contribute to mass incarceration. The coalition is asking lawmakers and the White House to embrace a public health and harm reduction approach to fentanyl and other opioids, rather than repeating past mistakes of the war on drugs, such as the crackdown on crack cocaine that filled prisons and fueled racist myths about Black people in the 1980s and 1990s.

“The Biden administration and leaders of Congress are faced with their first major test of criminal justice reform … if they choose to extend this Trump-era policy, it will increase mass incarceration and the over-policing and incarceration of people of color,” said Hilary Shelton, a policy director at the NAACP, during a call with reporters on Monday.

Biden has come under heavy fire from racial justice activists for his role in establishing mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which require federal judges to hand down lengthy prison sentences to defendants accused of certain crimes. Biden has pledged to end mandatory minimum sentencing and address systemic racism in the criminal legal system, but his administration is reportedly poised to extend a Trump-era ban on a broad class of chemicals related to fentanyl that allows prosecutors to pursue mandatory minimum sentences in an alarming number of cases that often involve low-level drug sellers struggling with addiction.

In 2018, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) temporarily placed an entire class of compounds with a similar chemical structure to fentanyl on the Schedule 1 list of drugs that are strictly prohibited by federal law, such as marijuana and heroin. Fentanyl analogues vary in potency, but even a trace of any of these compounds in a batch of drugs can trigger a lengthy mandatory minimum prison sentence.

On Monday, the Government Accountability Office raised concerns that the fentanyl ban could result in people receiving lengthy sentences for compounds that are not even harmful or contain trace amounts of fentanyl-related substances. The ban has also made it harder for researchers to study thousands of fentanyl-like compounds, including to make treatments and antidotes for people living with opioid addiction, according to public health groups.

However, in a statement to the right-leaning outlet Real Clear Politics, a spokesman for Biden’s Office of National Drug Control Policy said the administration will work with Congress to extend the ban for seven months. Biden likely wants to avoid attacks from conservatives claiming he is “legalizing” a drug that has been so heavily demonized in the media, although allowing the Schedule 1 ban to expire is a far cry from legalization.

This “class-wide” scheduling of compounds related to fentanyl — a painkiller commonly used in medical settings that became the subject of media hysteria — came in response to the overdose crisis, which grew over the past two decades despite law enforcement crackdowns on prescription opioids and heroin that caused fentanyl to proliferate. At the same time, the government has so far failed to remove barriers to effective addiction treatment and to take meaningful steps to make drug use safer.

The increase in prosecutions against people involved with fentanyl and its analogs has failed to stop the supply of drugs on the street and stop overdose deaths.

An extension of the class-wide ban approved by Congress will expire next month, but the Biden administration is under pressure to make it permanent, according to advocates. That would lock-in mandatory minimum sentencing for years to come, “doubling down a fear-based, enforcement first response to a public health crisis,” according to a letter submitted to top members of Congress by the coalition of racial justice and health groups on the front lines of the overdose crisis.

“Why, at a time when the murder of George Floyd is on our minds and in our hearts, with the very situation of over-policing that led to his death, why would the Biden administration consider supporting an extension of a Trump policy that exasperated over-policing of communities of color, mass incarceration and drug war?” said Nkechi Taifa, founder of the Justice Roundtable, a group that pushes for criminal legal reform.

Proponents of the class-wide ban argue that allowing it to expire would essentially legalize fentanyl, allowing traffickers to flood the country with dangerous drugs. Opponents say this is false. Illicit fentanyl and analogues would remain illegal, and prosecutors could still secure convictions under the Federal Analogues Act as long as they can prove that an analogue drug is harmful.

Between 2015 and 2019, the number of federal prosecutions for fentanyl offenses increased by nearly 4,000 percent, and the number of prosecutions for fentanyl analogues jumped by more than 5,000 percent, according to an analysis of federal data by civil rights groups. The vast majority — up to 75 percent — of people prosecuted for fentanyl offenses are people of color, and more than half of those prosecuted for fentanyl analogues in 2019 played minor, street-level roles in distribution. Many are young Black men. Even a trace amount of a fentanyl analogue mixed into 10 grams of street drugs can trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison, and people can be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison for less than 10 grams.

The increase in prosecutions against people involved with fentanyl and its analogs has failed to stop the supply of drugs on the street and stop overdose deaths. Instead, the drug supply has become more unpredictable and dangerous.

Rates of fatal drug overdose increased during the Trump administration and began spiking in 2019 before skyrocketing to record highs during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are multiple factors behind the rising rates of death, as well as drugs besides synthetic opioids, and federal overdose data is not always accurate. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that synthetic opioids are driving the numbers of deadly drug overdoses to historic highs — even though overdoses can be easily prevented when people have access to harm reduction resources and health care.

The number of overdose deaths appear to be rising fastest in Black communities, reflecting longstanding drug war stigmas and deep inequities in access to health care and addiction treatment. Policymakers have treated opioid use in white communities more like a public health issue, but in Black communities the response remains harsh and punitive, according to Premal Dharia, executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration at Harvard.

“We must stop repeating historical choices that we know do not work and start working toward building health and flourishing communities for all,” Dharia said.

Dharia and other advocates said the crackdown on fentanyl-like compounds mirrors the crackdown on crack cocaine in Black communities. Like the fentanyl crackdown, crackdown on crack was also fueled by sensational media reports and led to massive disparities in sentencing between Black people involved with crack and white people involved with powder cocaine.

“Once again, with fentanyl, people of color are being disproportionately policed and incarcerated just as they were with crack, and with a punitive approach based in fear and misinformation,” Taifa said.

The Biden administration has hinted that it may be open to diverging somewhat from the drug war and embracing harm reduction, a broad set of practices that includes various methods of overdose prevention and syringe exchange that can make drugs like fentanyl safer to use. The Biden administration will still attempt to reduce the drug supply with policing — the DEA is not going anywhere yet — but the administration has pledged to “eradicate” racial inequities in the criminal legal system and increase access to addiction treatment.

The class-wide fentanyl ban, which expires May 6, will be one indicator of whether Biden will move in any meaningful way toward scaling back the drug war.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
April 6, 2021

To End Mass Incarceration, We Need to Bust the Myths That Prop It Up

One of the most pervasive myths about incarceration is that it makes a society safer. Now, a leading journalist who focuses on the criminal legal system has taken on that question in her new book.

Victoria Law is a prolific reporter who is perhaps best known for spending years in the trenches exploring the experiences of women in prison. Her work always centers the voices of impacted people, while maintaining a broad lens on mass incarceration and digging deep into a wider variety of issues related to prison and jails.

Having just released a joint book with Truthout editor Maya Schenwar in July of last year, Prison By Any Other Name, Law already has another book on offer. This new work, “Prisons Make Us Safer”: and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration, is designed as a primer. While promoted as a rudimentary guide to the issue of mass incarceration, this volume provides both basic facts and figures while tackling some of the more complex carceral debates in an accessible way. With clear-cut analysis and a plethora of factual information, Law addresses issues like private prisons, the idea of releasing everyone convicted of a nonviolent offense, the perception that immigration has nothing to do with mass incarceration, and the notion that only cisgender Black men are incarcerated. I had the pleasure of interviewing her about the book for this article. She touched on all those issues and provided an especially rich analysis of why we need to pay so much more attention to women and transgender folks who are incarcerated.

James Kilgore: What inspired you to write this book, and how did you find the energy to do it after just having published Prison By Any Other Name?

Victoria Law: I see the two books as complementary. “Prisons Make Us Safer” is a primer for people just beginning to think about incarceration while Prison By Any Other Name is for readers who have already identified mass incarceration as a problem and are thinking about ways to shrink the prison population. That book is to warn against reforms that might seem like they decrease the numbers of people in physical jails and prisons, but actually expand similar systems of surveillance and control to homes, communities and other institutions.

I know you are a voracious reader, so I am wondering as you wrote this book, what authors or activists came into your mind as sources of inspiration for this work?

Angela Y. Davis has inspired all of my work. I’m also heavily influenced by the continued work of Beth Richie, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Mariame Kaba, to name just a few amazing abolitionists who are organizing and documenting their work.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons’s Love WITH Accountability was pivotal to rethinking about safety from family violence, particularly child sexual abuse.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha has long highlighted responses to intimate partner violence in activist communities; her work, along with that of Mimi Kim of Creative Interventions and Ejeris Dixon, who started the Safe Neighborhoods Campaign in Brooklyn, illustrates initiatives happening right here and right now to building a world that doesn’t rely on prisons and punishment.

Your book is about myths that prop up and perpetuate mass incarceration. Can you tell us a bit more about these myths? How do they work? Are they like a Trumpian “Big Lie” or do they contain some kernels of truth?

One of the most widespread myths is that we need prisons to keep us safe(r). It’s a myth we’ve been fed since childhood from school seminars about safety, to crime shows and daily news hours. Every abolitionist has been asked, repeatedly, some variant of “How will we stay safe?” The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population and approximately 25 percent of its prison population. If prisons kept us safe, then the U.S. should be the safest nation in the world. That’s obviously not the case but it’s a persistent myth that tugs at people’s fears about violence and safety.

If prisons kept us safe, then the U.S. should be the safest nation in the world.

Some other myths acknowledge that prisons are problematic, but then blame the bloated prison populations on the private prison industry (which incarcerates approximately 8.5 percent of the nation’s prisoners and 73 percent of those detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) or private corporations that utilize prison labor. Some myths shift the onus of mass criminalization and incarceration away from systemic failures — such as endemic racism, poverty and cut-away social safety nets — to the individual.

These myths take reality — for example, that Black people are disproportionately targeted and incarcerated — and twist a distorted explanation — that they commit more crimes, not that the U.S. has a long history of racism that manifests today in current structural inequalities, including the systemic racism inherent in policing as well as the perpetual under-resourcing of communities of color.

These myths justify the continuation of mass incarceration as a catch-all solution to all of society’s problems. If we don’t debunk these myths, then we end up either continuing down the same path of perpetual punishment (without any real safety) or else fall for proposed reforms that don’t address root causes of problems or ensure safety.

Probably more than any other journalist, you have researched and written about gender issues in relation to mass incarceration, especially about the experience of women in prison and jail. How did that work inform how you tackled this book?

Women make up roughly 10 percent of the nation’s incarcerated population. Not only do women experience all the abuses facing incarcerated men, their gender allows the prison system — and a constellation of other institutions — to inflict additional injustices and violence on them. For instance, the majority of people in prison have children. When a father is imprisoned, he’s likely to have family members who will care for his children. He may not always see or hear from them, but he’s less likely to worry about losing them to foster care. When a mother is incarcerated, her children are five times more likely to end up in the foster care system. Until recently, however, navigating family court and custody issues were not considered prison issues because it wasn’t an issue that affected the majority (incarcerated fathers).

Similarly, including the experiences of trans women (who are often confined in men’s facilities) highlights the transphobic violence inherent in incarceration. Trans people experience all the violence and harassment that cisgender people do; but they also face additional forms of discrimination, harassment and violence based on their gender identities.

By centering women (both cisgender and trans women), I include experiences that might otherwise not be thought of as prison issues but illustrate the insidious ways that mass incarceration devastates not only individual lives, but also families and communities. Centering women’s experiences also pushes readers to think about how gender and gender identity complicate some of the myths about safety, fear and imprisonment.

You devote considerable attention to the myths that surround domestic violence, both in terms of those who do harm and those who are harmed. Why do you think the myths surrounding these issues are so important?

Among people incarcerated in women’s prisons, past abuse — family violence, sexual violence and/or domestic violence — is so prevalent we now have a term for it: the abuse-to-prison pipeline. Until recently, this was a largely ignored pathway. For instance, there’s some anecdotal evidence that many women imprisoned for the death of their partner or ex-partner had experienced sustained abuse from that partner. But there’s no government data on what percentage of women incarcerated for murder or manslaughter had been abused by the person they killed. That’s in large part because of the way our adversarial criminal legal system works — a prosecutor’s job is to convict (or wring a guilty plea from a defendant), not to examine the underlying causes for why harm or violence happened.

It’s only because of the sustained efforts of advocates, including currently and formerly incarcerated abuse survivors, that we’re starting to see this pathway recognized — and legislative efforts being made to provide consideration for the role domestic violence might play. But it’s been a long and slow slog. New York passed the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act in 2019. The law allows a judge to consider the role of abuse in the crime when sentencing an abuse survivor and mete out a less harsh sentence than the state sentencing guidelines recommend. The law also allows survivors to apply for resentencing if abuse was a significant factor. But it took advocates nearly 10 years to convince lawmakers to pass this bill.

Even today, if a survivor brings up domestic violence in court, prosecutors (and often judges) dismiss these claims. We saw this last year, at the start of the pandemic, when Tracy McCarter, a Black nurse, was arrested and held for six months awaiting arraignment for the death of her estranged husband. At the start of the pandemic — when nurses were badly needed in New York City’s hospitals, and Rikers Island, the city’s island-jail complex, was a hot spot of infection — prosecutors opposed allowing McCarter to be released pending trial. The district attorney’s office could have looked at McCarter’s statements about the abuse she had suffered — as well as her estranged husband’s past acts of violence — and taken that abuse into consideration both in arguing against her release and, six months later, deciding whether to charge her with murder (which carries a higher sentence), manslaughter, a lesser charge, or no charge at all. But that’s not the way that our criminal legal system works — there’s little incentive for an assistant district attorney to believe a defendant’s claims of abuse, let alone decrease the severity of the charges or drop them altogether.

You offer both restorative justice and transformative justice as vehicles for addressing the harm and violence that our society typically responds to with punishment and incarceration (or even the death penalty). Can you briefly summarize the difference between the two and why you see them as so central to the elimination of mass incarceration and the creation of a different type of society than what racial capitalism has to offer?

Restorative justice is a process centering the needs of the survivor rather than simply seeking to punish the person who caused harm. The process also includes people who have been indirectly affected, such as family members and other loved ones. This typically involves a facilitated meeting in which survivors are able to talk about the long-lasting effects of the harm caused and what they need to begin healing, including actions the harm-doer(s) can take. The harm-doer is encouraged to take responsibility for their actions and work to repair the harm. In our existing court system, the person accused of harm is encouraged to deny, downplay and dismiss the consequences of their actions.

Transformative justice centers the needs of the survivor while also working to transform the conditions that enabled the harm. It also doesn’t rely on policing, imprisonment or other types of punishment.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that I, a small Chinese woman, am walking down the street and am attacked by a man yelling anti-Asian slurs. I hit him with the meat cleaver I have in my purse.

In a restorative justice process, we would (eventually) have a facilitated meeting in which I talk about the effects of the harm he has done to me — I’m now more concerned about being attacked because of my ethnicity, my gender and my size, and feel anxious every time I have to leave my house. I want to know why he’s targeting Asians and help figure out what needs to happen to decrease the chances that he’ll do so again. What resources are available to help him ensure that he won’t do so? And what do I need to feel restored to my previous sense of safety?

In a transformative justice process, we would go deeper to examine the conditions that encouraged this attack. This includes all of what I said above, but we would also identify — and try to change — conditions that led to this harm in the first place. This would involve asking why he is attacking Asians: is it because he’s bought the Trumpian Kool-Aid that Asians are responsible for COVID? Does he have mental health issues that are entangled in racism — and if so, how do we transform that? Also, what are the conditions that have made me fearful enough to carry a meat cleaver in my purse?

Under the current system, we’d both be arrested, jailed and no one would ask, “What are the conditions that need to be changed?” Racists would continue to attack Asians; some of us would fight back, but the root causes would remain unaddressed.

Please note that this is a hypothetical example. While the threat of anti-Asian violence is ever-present these days, I do not carry either a meat cleaver or purse when I go out.

This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
April 2, 2021

New Mexico Passes Cannabis Legalization And Expungement Package

Santa Fe, NM – With the New Mexico Legislature approving social justice-centered cannabis legalization during the special session today, Emily Kaltenbach, Senior Director for Resident States and New Mexico for the Drug Policy Alliance, released the following statement:

“New Mexicans are finally able to exhale. After many years of hard work, another whirlwind legislative session, and input from stakeholders throughout the state, social justice-centered cannabis legalization is on its way to the Governor’s desk, where she has already agreed to sign.

We thank the Governor and our legislative allies for not taking ‘no’ for an answer and stopping at nothing until we were able to get justice for New Mexico communities—particularly Hispanic/Latinx, Black, Native and Indigenous—that have been immensely harmed by cannabis prohibition.

The post New Mexico Passes Cannabis Legalization And Expungement Package appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.