The system of mass incarceration in the US offers few second chances to prisoners, and Maryland is no exception. As The Real News has previously reported, the state’s parole system puts incarcerated people at the mercy of an inefficient, capricious process that is unlikely to deliver a speedy release for many. Now, a new bill in the Maryland legislature could create new pathways to freedom for prisoners who’ve served 20 years or more behind bars. Alonzo Turner Bey and Desmond Haneef Perry of the MD Second Look Coalition join Rattling the Bars to discuss the Second Look Act (SB123).

Additional links:

• MD Second Look Coalition Facebook
• Contact Maryland state legislators to support the Second Look Act

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars: A podcast that amplifies the voices of people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, and subjugated while offering solutions. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Maryland is currently in its legislative session and today, we are discussing two important bills proposed by the Second Look Coalition, which focuses on sentencing reform. Joining me to discuss these, are two formerly-incarcerated organizers from the coalition, Desmond Haneef Perry and Alonzo Turner-Bey. Thank you for joining me.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

All right. Thank you for having me, bro.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

All right. Thanks.

Mansa Musa:

All right. Let’s educate our audience on the legislative process. So the legislative session in the state of Maryland has convened and it’s in the process of looking at a series of bills around the interest of the state. What’s of interest to the Second Loop Coalition is specific bills as it relates to men and women that are incarcerated. One bill in particular that the Second Look Coalition is sponsoring and trying to get people to become more aware of is Senate Bill 123. All right. Haneef, first, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

All right. Thank you for having me on here, bro. My name is Desmond Haneef Perry. I’ve been home now, out of the division of corrections, for almost two years. I came home back in May of 2022. I was incarcerated when I was 18, and I did a total of 20 years and 78 days. I was a lifer — I had life plus 15 years. I successfully won a post-conviction so that’s how I was able to obtain my freedom, but also because of something that we’re going to talk about when we get into talking about the bill.

And talking about the significance of the Second Look bill, I’m from Prince George’s County originally, and because I was convicted and sentenced in Prince George’s County, I would say it’s that I had the benefit to have Aisha Braveboy as my state’s attorney. Her program that they have right now, the Sentencing and Conviction Integrity Unit was also a means that I benefited from to be able to get out and it’s somewhat connected to what we’re talking about here today. I’ll go on a little bit more about that, but I am also a forensic peer specialist right now. Since I’ve been home, I’m so humbled to have opportunities like this to be able to speak to the public, share my story and my experience, and also the things that I’m advocating for, like this particular bill right here.

I’m a forensic peer specialist with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. I’m also the co-founder of a reentry nonprofit organization called Rectify, which is focused on trauma-informed peer support and clinical case management, helping individuals return home equitably, and being treated with decency and given the things that they need. So that’s what we’re doing now.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Turner-Bey, before we unpack this bill, tell our audience a little bit about yourself.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

My name is Alonzo Turner-Bey. I was arrested and convicted with a charge of a homicide when I was 17 years old. I was serving a sentence of life plus 5 years at 17 years old. I served 31 years, 6 months, 15 days, and 5 hours. I was released on parole on October 16, 2020 after serving over 31 years. Since I’ve been out, I’m a certified peer recovery specialist for a local county agency and I volunteer with a nonprofit organization called F.R.E.S.H, Fully Restoring Every Sons Hope. We go around the country teaching our youths about knowing their rights and how to interact with law enforcement in a manner where everybody can walk away with their life, safe, and — What’s the name — Teach them about their Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Sixth Amendment rights. We also feed the homeless.

We work with men and women who come home from prison and help them get reacclimated. Right now, we currently are doing a clothing drive for a nonprofit organization called Momma’s Safe Haven, where we are collecting clothes for women and children ’cause they work with battered women who leave their situation with nothing — They leave with the kids, they get up in the middle of the night, and they roll. So we’re trying to make sure that these women got clothes for going on job interviews and these children got clothes so they can go to school. We’re trying to help the women get back. One thing you know like me, Mansa Musa, for women who are in our situation, in prison or have been in prison, they don’t get as much attention and focus as the men do. So at Fully Restoring Every Sons Hope, we want to help the sisters out as much as we can. So we’re working with this battered women’s organization and we’re trying to provide some clothes to these women and these children and the everyday things they need.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. This opens the door for the conversation about the bill. We recognize that the women that’s incarcerated, in the state of Maryland in particular and the country general, don’t get treated nowhere near the treatment that men get. And if men get mistreated, then what’s that say about what women are getting? Today we’re looking at the legislative session being convened and we are looking at a bill that the Second Look Coalition is endorsing and sponsoring. It’s Senate Bill 123. All right. Haneef, explain what Senate Bill 123 is for the benefit of our audience.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

Thank you. In a nutshell to keep it quite simple, Senate Bill 123 is our version of what we call a Second Look bill. This bill for the state of Maryland is a bill that would grant an individual the opportunity to come back for a relook at their sentence after the individual has served 20 years of incarceration. This bill doesn’t discriminate in gender, this bill doesn’t discriminate in age, nor does this bill discriminate in offenses of any type. One of the things that we emphasize with this bill… We’re saying that if an individual has served 20 years of incarceration and that person has demonstrated that they deserve a second chance, that they have reformed, that they have done all of the things that they could possibly do — They’ve went to school, got an education, college degrees, they’ve completed all types of cognitive behavioral programming, they’ve been somewhat of a model inmate in regards to their infraction record, and they held jobs — They’ve demonstrated throughout the 20 years that they have changed, that they’ve gained the remorse and empathy that we all are looking for in such tragic crimes, that this individual should be given a second look.

His or her case now should come up before a judge and they should be given an opportunity to look at that individual and determine whether they want to reduce that individual’s sentence and give this individual a second chance. Again, we’re saying this is the second chance for all in the state of Maryland. We want the public to be aware that there are some other bills that are advocating for something similar to what we’re advocating for, however, these bills are not for everyone. One of them is focused on geriatric individuals, individuals who are 68 years old and above. Another bill is focused on giving the prosecutors the ability to bring these individuals back up. We know that can be problematic if we don’t have a complete bill that is saying, hey, look, it’s simple: 20 years or better with a great institutional record, 20 years or better demonstrating that they have reformed and gone above and beyond, then this individual should come back up.

We should be looking at their cases and reexamining it not from the perspective of the offense and the crime, because that’s one of the things that can’t change. That’s something that we like to elaborate on and talk about is that we cannot revisit that person’s offense and say, well, because of the nature of the offense or because of the offense that took place, now we’re looking at all of the good that the person has done, this man or woman has done, and we’re going to say, well, because of that, it outweighs their good, as if they’re irredeemable. It’s something that we feel like, man, it shouldn’t be done. But basically in a nutshell, this particular bill is that it’s a second chance for all; 20 years of better, a person should be able to come back up for a relook at their sentence.

Mansa Musa:

Turner-Bey, as Haneef just outlined, it’s a bill for all. Okay, we recognize that, and we recognize that it’s all hinged on if a person has a significant amount of time they have served. I was looking at the bill — Unpack this bill, if you can, about some of the factors they’re going to take into account in assessing once the person has filed a petition with the court to get a modification or to get their sentence free. Turner-Bey, talk about some of the things that the court is going to be looking at in terms of making their determination. So that it won’t just look like, well, a person did 30 years or a person did 20 years, filed a petition, said they’ve been doing good, and ain’t got no tickets. Okay, that’s all good. Now they get out. Is that the gist of it, or is it going to be a more in-depth analysis on the part of the court, Turner-Bey?

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

It’s going to be a more in-depth analysis. Let’s get this understood; We’re talking about a person who’s doing 20 years day for day, not including good days. 20 years day for day. When they came into incarceration, they got their GED, they may have went to anger management, they went to Thinking For a Change, they’ve been to all of these programs that aid in the system in becoming a better individual — They went to school, they have veiled their self to every opportunity. They have worked, they have changed. We’re going to look at their family. When a person puts a petition to a court, let’s get this clear, it is not a guarantee that you’re going to be released.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

I forgot to add that.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

This bill does not give a guarantee release. All it says is you’ll be given the opportunity to present your case before a judicial body. A judge can say, okay. Right now, you’re serving life plus 20 years. You’ve been locked up since you were 18. Okay, we’re going to take and cut your life to 50 years. Then you may go for parole in another 10 years. So it’s not guaranteed that you’re going to be released. The judge can cut your sentence to a point where you don’t have life. You can have 50 years. You can have 60 years. He can reduce your sentence based upon how he looked at your record. Victims will be notified in this case, so it’s not —

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, talk about that.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

— This bill does, in fact, have victim notification in it. If you have a crime or a case where there is a victim, the victim will be notified by the state’s attorney’s office and will be informed that you have petitioned the court and you have ask the court for a reduction of sentence. And the victim or the victim’s family or representatives will be given an opportunity to appear before this court and say what they want to say. Whether they are for it or they’re against it, they will be given an opportunity.

Mansa Musa:

Let me ask you this, Turner-Bey, then Haneef, you can weigh in on too. Okay, I’m going to push him back. In the Maryland prison system, we’re talking about introducing a bill that says if you serve 20 years that you have a right to petition the court to have your sentence reviewed. I served 20 years, I’m eligible for parole. Why do I need a law to say in addition to this, I served 20 years, I got a right to modification when I first come into the system. When you juxtapose these things to what you’re talking about with this bill, how do these things gel, Turner-Bey? Because I’m seeing they do have, in the state of Maryland, different situations where a person can gain relief post-conviction. Haneef just talked about he filed post-conviction and got released. So why do we need another law or bill to come out and say, yeah, well, we going to give you preferential treatment?

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

No, let’s get it understood. We are not saying a right, you don’t have a right. We’re saying we are giving you an opportunity. Parole is an opportunity to present yourself before two commissioners or two agents to give an opportunity to see if you’re worthy or should be given or granted parole. The first modification that any person get after incarceration, you must be filed within the first five years of your incarceration. If a person is serving a sentence of life in prison, there’s no judge on the face of the earth after your first five years of incarceration, that is going to give you some type of relief or modification. Why? Because you have not demonstrated before that court that you are not the same person you were five years ago. They want you to do some time for the crime that you have committed. So we have come to the conclusion that 20 years day for day, not including diminishing credit, 20 years from the date of your arrest all the way up to now, then you become eligible. This is not a right, you become eligible.

It’s not guaranteed that you will be released. We look at 20 years because we’re saying that after being incarcerated 20 years, if a person goes in prison and does everything that he or she is supposed to do to aid and assist in their rehabilitation process, their changing of their mindset, their thought process, and educate their self, after 20 years, this person should not be the same person they were when they came to prison regardless of what their age is. This is not a guarantee. It only presents the court with an opportunity to consider and weigh in all of the factors and then making a decision from a judicial process and saying, hey, this person may deserve an opportunity but I ain’t going to give them the complete opportunity today. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to reduce your sentence. You’re serving life with parole, well, I’m going to reduce it to maybe 50 years.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Okay.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

So over 50 years you go back up and see the parole board and then the parole board may make a determination and say, hey, come back in three years. Come back in five years. It’s not a guarantee —

Mansa Musa:

All right. Haneef, come on.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

— Go ahead.

Mansa Musa:

Let me ask you this then you can go ahead and say that.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

Go ahead. Yes, sir.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Why do you think this bill is important in terms of the mindset of the prison population in the state of Maryland? What do you think this bill represents for them?

Desmond Haneef Perry:

I believe first and foremost, this bill represents hope, and that’s something that we have to continue to give individuals who are incarcerated. Me coming from that setting… First let me say it like this because Turner-Bey touched on some things that I want to piggyback off of before I go into this. But it definitely represents hope, and this is the reason why. For those in the public who may be wondering, why are we pushing for this? Because there are other mechanisms set up for an individual, as we currently speak, to be able to petition the court to come back for some type of reduction, modification, or review of sentence. There’s no doubt about that. However, when a person has done a substantial amount of time, you end up exhausting all of those remedies, sometime before 20 years.

You’re exhausting all those remedies because everything has a time limit and a deadline that you have to get those things in. Just like Turner-Bey talked about, if you have the right or ability to file a modification of sentence in the state of Maryland, but there’s a five-year cap on it, then what? That means you get to that five years and there’s a possibility that you go up for that modification you’re not going to get it because you didn’t have enough time to demonstrate that you have reformed or that you have changed. That’s a significant thing. The number is very significant. A person may look at it like, okay, it’s 20 years. Some people may look at that and diminish that, but 20 years in reality as we know, that’s a generation. 20 years is a generation, we’re talking about a person who has been incarcerated for an entire generation of their life.

That’s key that we point that out. And that this mechanism would be a mechanism that will give individuals hope. One of the things that we don’t want to do with our individuals who are incarcerated is take away that hope. Right now, the US — And Maryland as being one state in part as we know — Incarcerates more people than anyone else on the face of this earth. Let alone that, as we now have determined, the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of the Public Defender have come together because the numbers in the state of Maryland are out of this world. It’s unacceptable that we make up 29%, 30%, or some say 31% of the population in this state, but we lock up 71%. You know what I’m saying? That doesn’t make sense.

Mansa Musa:

That math is crazy.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

That doesn’t make sense. That math is crazy and that’s not even talking about the math for the entire country. So when we’re talking about this right here and this particular bill, this bill does a lot. It gives individuals who are incarcerated something to work for, something to strive for. Like myself, for example. There’s no doubt about it, man, that had not these two things happened by the permission of God, I would not be sitting here right now talking to you. For one, I had a post-conviction and my post-conviction was denied. First and foremost, my post-conviction was denied. I filed an application for leave to appeal and the higher courts overturned my case and then the lower court granted me post-conviction relief.

The prosecutors, even after that, wanted to retry me and reconvict me again even after the higher court said, no, there was an egregious prosecutory misconduct issue here. Constitutional right was violated of this young man and you need to correct that. However, the prosecutor still wanted to prosecute me; that particular assistant state’s attorney at that time. Had it not been for something that… The only thing going on in the state of Maryland right now is that Aisha Braveboy and her team put together a Sentencing and Conviction Integrity Unit, which is similar but not quite the same to what we’re talking about right now. What they did was they put together a unit that would go and look at the individual’s constitutional record and look at how long they’ve been locked up and seeing what they have done to determine whether they would want to give them that second chance.

Mansa Musa:

You outlined your situation and how much time and what you’ve done, but put on top of that, you’ve done over 20 years. So the reality is that you’re demonstrating what this bill is representing, you and Turner-Bey are proof positive of that. Even if we take out of the equation the post-conviction, if we take out of the equation that Turner-Bey got relief, even we take that out the equation how I got relief, and put into the equation a 20-year cap or opportunity for men and women to petition the court to look at me and look at my circumstances and see if I’m worthy to be released. Turner-Bey?

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

Yes.

Mansa Musa:

Talk about how you see this bill going forward. Because you got your ear to the ground. How do you see this bill going forward? What are y’all saying?

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

This bill is imperative. We’ve got to look at this. As a whole, people of African descent make up less than 30% of the population in Maryland, but we make up 78% of the prison population. The JRA does not affect anybody who comes to prison at 18.

Mansa Musa:

For our audience, what’s the JRA, if they don’t know the acronym?

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

The Juvenile Restoration Act is a bill that passed in 2021 for individuals who are under the age of 18 and are serving long sentences. After 20 years in prison, they can come back, petition the court ,and ask to have their sentences reviewed. This is the exact same thing but for those who are 18 years and older. There are individuals that I know — Just like you know, Mansa Musa — Who came to prison two days, three days, or a week after their 18 birthday. So they missed the Juvenile Restoration Act. They have been in prison for 30, 40, or even 50 years, as first-time offenders. The bar ain’t set low, the bar set high in this bill. The bar is set high, but if you meet this and you have done everything that you’re supposed to do, we are saying that this bill will allow you the opportunity to present your case to a judicial body, to a sitting judge, and have the judge review your case and make a deciding factor in writing on why they’re going to give you some relief, and they’re going to spell it all out.

The average person is not just going to be released. You’re going to be given some parole, some probation. You’re going to have some restrictions that you’re going to have to do. There’s a lot, it’s not an immediate answer. Some people won’t get a relief, they may get a reduction, but some people may get turned down. So let’s look at all of the ramifications. This is not an opening of the valve, but the Maryland prison system need this because we’re behind Mississippi and Alabama when it comes to locking up people of African descent. As small as Maryland is, we are behind Mississippi and Alabama, so this is imperative.

Mansa Musa:

Listen, all of us been in that system. All of us been in that system when they locked it down. All of us been in that system where they had no program. All of us been in that system where we had to create our own program. Haneef, going forward, how do you look at the bill? What is the Second Chance Coalition advocating? How people can support the effort of trying to get some support and more importantly, get the legislative body in Maryland to be receptive to voting? I think today they had a hearing on it to get people receptive on passing this bill.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

First and foremost, everyone, whoever is listening to this, and if you’re interested in learning more about it, you can go to the Maryland Second Look Coalition’s website. On there you can see more about the bill. Secondly, if you would like to, after you have read it, if you agree with it, and if you heard something today that we’ve said that you agree with, then the next step is to reach out to your representative. The next step is to reach out to the senator, delegate, or congressman or woman in your district. Reach out to them and let them know that you want them to support this bill, that you are asking them to support this bill. Make that phone call. It’s very simple, it’s very easy. You can look it up and find out who in your district is the person that you need to go to no matter where you are in the state of Maryland, and you can ask and request they support the House bill for the Second Look Act and the Senate bill for the Second Look Act.

Mansa Musa:

Turner-Bey, as we close out, I saw in the bill where they talk about the role of the state’s attorney and the prosecutor. It has in there that the prosecutor can either agree with the request or disagree with the request. But you have a relationship when you get out, you build a network and you build a relationship with the prosecutor’s office. Let it be known so they can be aware of the importance that you have, in terms of helping people, and more importantly, to be able to give other people coming behind you the opportunity to see that they got the same rights that you got. Talk about how you think that’s going to play out, mainly in PG County or the state of Maryland in general. How do you think the prosecutors are looking at this bill?

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

Every prosecutor is looking at this bill. Every prosecutor is looking at it because let’s be real, the prosecutors get a say. This bill makes sure that the prosecutor gets a say. Some prosecutors are going to say no to some cases. Some prosecutors may say yeah to some cases. Some prosecutors may have an offensive mindset because they want stipulations with the reduction of sentence. All of that is welcome.

Mansa Musa:

Facts.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

Now, nobody is left out. You got a judge, you’ve got victims right advocates, you have the prosecutor, and you have the defendant and his counsel. This is imperative because in my case, Honorable Aisha Braveboy out of Prince George’s County, she sent a letter to the governor and to the parole commission on my behalf. I was the second person that she stood up for and sent letters on their behalf and said she did not oppose my release. Even my trial judge who had retired from Maryland Court of Special Appeals, he came back, because during my trial he called me everything but the child of God, but after he seen everything I’d done in prison and talked to some people, he said, this is not the same person he was at 17, and as his trial judge, I believe he deserves a second chance. So second chances are imperative. Even for us who are believers in God. If you read Acts 9, God gave Saul who later became Paul, a second chance.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

That’s right.

Mansa Musa:

All right. I heard that.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

I think all of us should look at this bill, and contact our legislators, our state delegates, and our state senators. Call them. Ask them where do they stand on this bill? Explain to them why you think they should support it, and what are your opinions and your views. You don’t have to always have somebody in your family incarcerated to support this, you can believe that we deserve second chances after serving a long, extended period of incarceration. So we ask that the audience educate themselves on this bill and then come forward and let us know your decision.

Mansa Musa:

Haneef?

Desmond Haneef Perry:

This is connected to the humanity of the people, what Turner-Bey is talking about right now. This is something that I’d like to add is that we’re talking about humanity right now. We’re talking about us being human beings when you’re talking about second chances. Every one of us forgets, every one of us makes mistakes. Just like the brother said from a religious perspective, spiritual perspective, every last one of us sins. So it’s no doubt about it, man, that when we have fallen in a situation where we have made a mistake, we want someone to forgive us and get that second chance. So it’s important that we look at this from a human perspective as well. But I want to say quickly — I wanted to make sure that I added this — Is that we already had the oral testimony done for Senate Bill 123 on the Second Look. You can look it up on YouTube. If you go to YouTube and look up the judicial committees hearings, you can find the testimony and you’ll see —

Mansa Musa:

That’s Maryland Judicial Hearings.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

— Maryland Judicial Hearings. And you’ll see, for everyone in Baltimore, that Ivan Bates on record said he supports this bill.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Ivan Bates is the state’s attorney for Baltimore City.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

Ivan Bates is the state’s attorney for Baltimore City. You will see on record that Aisha Braveboy from Prince George’s County says she supports this bill. So we have prosecutors, individuals who are basically saturated with the responsibility of defending the public and being the representatives and attorneys for the public and victims of crime, they support this bill. Because it is comprehensive legislation of this crisis that we’re living in right now of mass incarceration, especially of Black and Brown people. So the bill is Senate Bill SB 123 and House Bill 724. We have two great sponsors for this bill and I make sure that I put their names out there —

Mansa Musa:

Go on and put their names out there.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

— Because they are doing wonderful work. That is Senator Jill Carter. She is sponsoring the bill from the Senate. And this is the amazing Delegate Cheryl Pasteur. She has sponsored this bill from the House. We are getting great traction and great support with this bill from the public because from a human perspective, everyone understands that a person deserves a second chance. We should be doing that right now for our individuals who are incarcerated in the state of Maryland who have demonstrated that they deserve that second chance — Not because we’re saying we simply want to give it to them. No. As Turner-Bey pointed out, we’re saying because they have demonstrated themselves that they are worthy or deserving of that.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

We’re asking for them to give the opportunity. No guarantee, only an opportunity.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

That’s right.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. I appreciate both of you brothers for coming in. In the 20 years and 30 years that we talk about, we did a lot of that time together in the most arduous, inhumane conditions. So the fact that we are here advocating for change and advocating for change in a manner such as getting a bill passed, getting some laws passed, and letting our brothers and sisters that’s left behind that we’re trying to create a mechanism where they can have some hope and that your record is going to be what gets you out. Your record got you in and your record is going to get you out. Thank y’all. Thank y’all for joining me today.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

I appreciate y’all, bro.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

Please visit the website. Visit the website marylandsecondlook.com, marylandsecondlook.com, www.mdsecondlook.com. Visit the website and you’ll see all of it on there.

Mansa Musa:

Thank y’all for joining me.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

Thank you.

Alonzo Turner-Bey:

Appreciate y’all two brothers, man.

Desmond Haneef Perry:

Appreciate you, brother.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

A group of current and former prisoners have sued the state of Alabama with the support of two unions who have signed on as co-plaintiffs, the Union of Southern Service Workers, and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The lawsuit claims that Alabama’s system of prison labor amounts to a “modern-day form of slavery” that generates massive profits for private businesses and revenues for the state by forcing incarcerated people to work for little or no pay. Jacob Morrison and Adam Keller join Rattling the Bars to discuss the lawsuit and the importance of the fight for prisoners’ rights to the overall labor movement.

Jacob Morrison is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees, and the president of the North Alabama Labor Council. Adam Keller is a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees Local 900. Together, they host The Valley Labor Report, Alabama’s only union radio talk show.

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, a show that amplifies the voices of people who are disenfranchised, marginalized and subjugated while offering solutions. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Today we are talking about the return of convict leasing in the United States, and we are talking about why the labor movement and the prison abolition movement need to unite to fight the exploitation of slave labor in prison. A group of current and former prisons have sued the state of Alabama and two unions, the Union of Southern Service Workers and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union have signed on as Plaintiffs. The suit claim the Alabama system of prison labor is a modern-day form of slavery that forces prisoners to work often for little or no money while generating massive profits and revenue for government agencies and private businesses. I recently spoke with Jacob Morrison and Adam Keller about this issue. Jacob is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees and he is the president of the North Alabama Labor Council.

Adam is a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, Local 900. Together, they host The Valley Labor Report, Alabama’s only union radio talk show. Welcome Adam Keller and Jacob Morris to Rattling the Bars. So recently in the state of Alabama, a lawsuit was filed relative to prison labor, more importantly, to what’s called convict leasing. When you think about a lawsuit, and I come out of this space, I was litigious when I was locked up. I did 48 years, I was real litigious when it came to filing complaints. Normally, you have the Plaintiffs and then you had the Respondent. In all prison civil litigation that I ever dealt with in terms of litigation, the Plaintiffs always have the tendency to be people that are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. The unique thing about this, and something I want to make our audience aware of, is this particular litigation, the Plaintiffs consisted of formerly-incarcerated, incarcerated individuals and union representatives among other civic and social groups. Two of the representatives in the lawsuit or have knowledge of the lawsuit are my guests today. Let’s start with you, Adam. Give us some background on the lawsuit-

Adam Keller:

Sure.

Mansa Musa:

… if you can.

Adam Keller:

Sure. Yeah. So thank you for having me. I’m a labor union activist, and so that’s the perspective I’m taking into this case. When I first heard about it on the news, I was shocked that convict lease labor, which was supposed to be banned in 1928 was still happening. I knew that there was this kind of exploitation happening in Alabama’s prisons because Alabama’s prison system is itself unconstitutional.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

It is currently under litigation with the Department of Justice-

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

Right? For being cruel and inhumane. So I knew it was bad, but you’re exactly right, this lawsuit is interesting because of the combination of forces behind it, right?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

We have the Union of Southern Service Workers, which is an SEIU affiliate alongside the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union-

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right.

Adam Keller:

… RWDSU. Listeners may be familiar with them from the famous campaign in Bessemer at the Amazon warehouse. It’s the same union, RWDSU. so they have a vested interest for a few reasons, including the fact that this incarcerated labor is happening at facilities that they’re trying to organize.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

So the lawsuit, it’s a class action lawsuit, and what is happening here is that the Alabama Department of Corrections, the ADOC, they are operating what is being alleged to be a convict lease system where they lease out incarcerated workers to public sector employers and private sector employers, and across various industries including fast food franchises, auto supply part manufacturers, a Budweiser distributor, the City of Montgomery, the City of Troy, the Alabama Department of Transportation, so all sorts of industries. What’s happening is that the prisoners are being forced to go to work in these scenarios. It’s not just their choice to do so. They’re being coerced through various means-

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

… which is described in the lawsuit. When they go to these jobs, they’re being paid less than free-world workers, and if they’re being even paid the legal minimum wage. Even if they are, the Department of Corrections takes 40% off the top. Before taxes, before deductions, before child support, before any restitution, they’re taking 40%. Then they’re charging you fees for every essential service that you use, from transportation to the job, to laundry for the job, you name it, meals, you’re being charged for everything such that if you work $7.25 an hour, 40 hours a week as one of these workers, your “take home pay,” quote, unquote, at the end of the week is less than 90 bucks.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right.

Adam Keller:

And so what is also being alleged in this lawsuit that I think is an important angle to it is that because this is such a money maker, estimated to make $450 million just in 2023, it’s such a money maker that there’s a vested interest in keeping people locked up and participating.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

So the lawsuit alleges that this contributes to the lack of parole that’s being granted to eligible prisoners in the state of Alabama. There’s been a huge decline in paroles disproportionately affecting Black prisoners because you are twice as likely to be denied parole if you are Black in the last few years. So there’s a racial component absolutely through this between the folks being denied parole. You’re also more likely to be Black if you are one of these workers involved in this program, so there’s a lot of angles to it. There’s a lot of money being made. If there’s any silver lining, it is the fact that you see civil rights groups and labor unions and incarcerated folks coming together for this common cause because it is an issue that affects everyone.

Mansa Musa:

That’s where I want to go, and Jacob talk about that because I want our audience to understand that when we’re talking about this particular litigation, and as Adam outlined, some of the signatories to it happen to be industries within society. So talk about that connection, how in that regard, ’cause if I can go to a produce industry and I’m in a union and it is unionized, and I’m saying, “Okay, I want better work conditions. I want better healthcare,” and you tell me, say, “Well, listen, this is what we going to do. We’re going to say F you and go to one of the 62 or 27 prisons on the state of Alabama and get a lot of labor or cheap or none to nothing.”

Talk about that, Jacob. How is this connection between some of the signatures, mainly the union aspect of it, so people in society can understand that when we’re talking about one, you’re paying for the prison, your tax dollars are going to holding that up. But now they taking jobs, they’re not taking the job because they saying, “Well, we’re taking jobs.” They’re saying, “We got an alternative to your labor, and our alternative to your labor is slave labor.”

Jacob Morrison:

Right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think that the connection to unionism is pretty intuitively obvious in that if you have a group of free workers who are trying to organize and then you have a group of essentially slave labor that have… What the prison system in Alabama will come back and they’ll say, “They don’t have to. Nobody is forcing them into this labor program.” There are multiple ways that that’s just not true. The least coercive part of that is that if you don’t go out and take these jobs, you have to stay in the prisons in Alabama, right?

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

That in and of itself-

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

… is literally a deadly choice.

Mansa Musa:

Right. That’s right.

Jacob Morrison:

Alabama’s prison systems are the most dangerous in the entire country as far as I can tell. Like Adam said, they have been deemed unconstitutional multiple times. If you read the reporting in Alabama, there’s a death it seems like almost every day-

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, it is. You’re right.

Jacob Morrison:

… there’s a new death-

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Jacob Morrison:

… in Alabama’s prisons.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. That’s right.

Jacob Morrison:

So just in that the most minimal way, it’s extremely coercive. You have every incentive in the world to get out of these prisons as much as humanly possible. Then the second is that when you get into these programs, the lawsuit alleges that when you don’t participate, even when you are sick and you say, “No, I’m sick, I need to stay in my cell, which I don’t want to be in,” everybody knows that you-

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

… don’t want to be there in your cell.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

“But I need to be for my own health and also for the public’s help, because these prison laborers are being used in industries that you might not immediately think.” You think automotive industry, that sounds strange, but I guess I can wrap my head around it. When you think prison labor, you think chain gangs and-

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

… picking rocks and stuff.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

They’ve also got people working at Wendy’s, right?

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

So I don’t want sick people handling my food just in general, and they’re being punished not just with, you have to stay at the prison, but there are people being punished with solitary confinement, the lawsuit alleges. So that’s extremely coercive. So going back to the union issue, if you’ve got a group of people that are there in such coercive conditions, I think all of us here recognize that there’s a certain amount of coercion inherent in capitalism, but there are degrees, right?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

The degree to which a prisoner is coerced to go take these shifts is much higher than the rest of us. So it’s that much more difficult for them to stand in solidarity with other people that are organizing. In fact, I didn’t even realize this, Adam said that it’s downright illegal for prisoners to join the unions in their workplaces where they exist.

Mansa Musa:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Morrison:

So this huge self-interest outside of, this is wrong morally, obviously, but there’s a huge self-interest for the labor movement to say, “Look, this system is broken. It’s immoral. It’s not good for us, and it’s not even good for the prisoners. There are important things that we can do, and we should be doing to rehabilitate people and give them skills while they’re in prisons to the extent that we have to have them and to what extent that is, we can also talk about that.”

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

But there should be obviously rehabilitation programs, but the way that these are structured are not that. They’re moneymaking schemes for the state and they are undercutting free labor. One last thing, and I’ll kick it back over to you and Adam, but everybody can see the parallels to the convict lease system that arose immediately after the fall of Reconstruction in the Deep South. They called it Redemption. I’ve been reading a book recently about the unionism in the coal mines among Black and white coal miners. It’s so interesting the parallels not only in the dynamics, but in how the unions were fighting against convict leasing all the way back then.

You had as far back as the 1870s Black and white coal miners with first the Greenback Labor Party, then the Knights of Labor, and finally the United Mine Workers in various forms affiliated and disaffiliated with the national organization fighting against convict leasing on moral and practical terms on an interracial basis. To see that happening again in almost exactly the same words is there’s a certain inspiration in that working people are… it’s not just that people have had a sudden moral revelation that all… There are people that have been saying this in Alabama. Alabamians have been saying stuff like this is bad for literally over 100 years.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

But then there’s also the bleakness of the fact that we have been having to say that for over 100 years.

Mansa Musa:

That’s a good observation because when you look at prison labor, and when you look at it from the perspective that you just outlined how I’m using this, I got an alternative to giving people a livable wage, to giving people healthcare, to giving people a safe workplace, I got an alternative there. Well, look at my alternative. My alternative is I can go get some convicts.

Jacob Morrison:

Right.

Mansa Musa:

More importantly, I can go get Black convicts, I can go get Indigenous convicts. I can go get them and tell them that unless they work, they’re going to be in solitary confinement. Now, the alternative to solitary confinement is you go work, but where you going to go work? You going to work in the coal mine? So then you going to work in the coal mine, you going to work ungodly hours, and anything you say about the work conditions, I’m going to replace you with somebody else that’s there ’cause I got endless labor. Now, when it comes down to what you just outlined, Jacob, when it comes to the people in society saying that, “Listen, you taking my job,” not the prisoner taking my job, but the system capitalism, “You’re taking my job and you’re taking my job because you don’t want to give me a livable wage.” Therein, is the sickness of this whole system.

But Adam, talk about where the state falls in on this because I was looking at the background and okay, you got the governor and I think you say you got 67 counties in the state of Alabama, so everybody’s getting free prison labor. They complicit to it, like, well, if it’s an auto industry and wherever part of Alabama, and they saying, “Well, we need labor because people talking about they want more wages, can you lease us some convicts?” Talk about how the role of the state is playing in this oppressive system?

Adam Keller:

Yeah. So I appreciate you bringing that up because Governor Kay Ivey, Attorney General Steve Marshall, the head of the Alabama Department of Transportation, and of course the Alabama Department of Corrections, they’re all named in this lawsuit. They’re all considered complicit in this system through various means, both through the leasing itself, but also the systemic denial of paroles, which is feeding labor back into this system.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right. Right.

Adam Keller:

It’s a vicious cycle.

Mansa Musa:

It is.

Adam Keller:

People have been reporting for years about the paroles and the lack of paroles and how it’s getting worse and worse each year. Then you find out, “Well, okay, now we know why it’s getting worse.”

Mansa Musa:

Why, that’s right. That’s right.

Adam Keller:

We know why there’s a denial, and I wanted to spotlight one of the examples-

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Adam Keller:

… because there’s this company called SL Alabama, and some folks may remember this because this is the same company that is in Hyundai supply chain, and they were using child migrant labor-

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. Come on.

Adam Keller:

… and including children as young as 13. This very same company is one of the companies in this lawsuit, and they were working incarcerated workers 11 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. So this same company that feeds into Hyundai, this big auto manufacturer that receives subsidies from the state of Alabama, so there’s another way we’re paying for it, right? We’re subsidizing the industries.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Adam Keller:

We’re paying for the prisons, and then we’re seeing our jobs being undercut by the use of incarcerated labor. We’re seeing union organizing being undercut by the use of incarcerated labor, and then the exploitation that these people are facing is just cruel. It’s a moral outrage. It’s an economic outrage. To see an alliance between the state and these private industries and the local governments, like you said, because from the lawsuit, it looks to me like so many of our cities and counties would struggle to even operate if they were not utilizing this. You think about how many employees they would hire to fill this gap.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

You talk about city jobs with benefits, pay that starts at maybe 15 an hour, so it goes up from there, how many more jobs would be in our community if it weren’t for the reliance on these systems? It’s a moral outrage, but I think it’s worth highlighting again, $450 million is how much is alleged to be created in profits last year from the system. The state of Alabama made a million dollars just off transportation fees of work release folks, a million dollars just charging people for the van rides to and from the Wendy’s, to and from the SL Alabama, to and from the city of Montgomery, and so it is a giant money maker. It is a perverse way to deal with incarcerated human beings. These are our brothers and sisters, and it’s worth highlighting that Alabama has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country-

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. That’s right.

Adam Keller:

… which means we lock up more people than almost any other place on planet Earth, disproportionately, Black folks, because 26% of Alabama’s population is Black, over 50% of ADOC’s population is Black. It’s even more disproportionate when you look at the people in these actual convict lease scenarios. So it’s a racist system, it’s a profit-generating system, it’s an anti-labor system. So that’s why it’s important that all working people, we all know people who are impacted by the criminal justice system, almost all of us do, particularly in Alabama if you’re a working class person, but we all are impacted as members of the workforce. We are all impacted as taxpayers, frankly.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

So we all have a vested stake in seeing this cruel system come to an end.

Mansa Musa:

Now, you know what-

Jacob Morrison:

I want to-

Mansa Musa:

Go ahead. Jacob, before you go there, ’cause I wanted to ask you, and if you can integrate this into your answer, whatever you want to talk about, I wanted to ask you about, is the state of Alabama are incentivizing corporations that come into the state and that’s using this labor? Because I know in the District of Columbia, they throwing money left and right at developers to come and develop and build, and they selling real estate like it’s ice cream, a hot summer day. But I want to know in y’all observation or y’all research, have y’all come across that. Well, go ahead, Jacob. You weigh in on that how you feel.

Jacob Morrison:

Well, has the state of Alabama incentivized these employers to come here? Yes. I don’t know that there’s been any incentives specifically to utilize convict labor. I don’t know about that, but there has definitely been an inordinate amount of money shoveled onto specifically the auto industry. The auto industry in Alabama has been in the news a lot lately because of the budding UAW campaigns. Across the state now, Mercedes and Hyundai workers in Alabama have both gone public with their campaign, and Governor Ivey has been attacking them immediately after their announcements. But in 1993 with the building of the Mercedes plant, that came at the cost of $200 million. That’s right, Adam. It was 200 million to get Mercedes here in ’93.

Adam Keller:

I believe so, and it’s been over a billion dollars in-

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. Right. Right.

Adam Keller:

… overall industry subsidies, right?

Jacob Morrison:

Yeah, and just recently, the state of Alabama announced another $50 million investment in a training center right next door to us here in Decatur to serve the growing auto industry, Toyota Mazda here in Huntsville, specifically. So there’s been huge investment in these industries-

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

So like Adam said, we are paying on multiple ends for this kind of exploitation. Adam mentioned SL Alabama, and I wanted to highlight that the working conditions of people at SL Alabama are in part the result of the undermining of solidarity and worker organizing efforts driven by this convict leasing system because SL Alabama in particular, but Alabama’s auto industry as a whole is extremely unsafe compared to the auto industry in the rest of the country.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

Alabama Arise has a new report out that’s really good that talks about how Alabama’s auto industry has evolved and devolved in many cases. As it relates to safety, Alabama workers are at least 10% more likely to have an amputation as people in different parts of the country and 70% more likely to have an amputation than auto workers in Michigan. So then if we take a look at SL Alabama in particular-

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Jacob Morrison:

… they’re using prison labor, they’re using child labor. During this time, while they’re doing both of these things, putting children at risk, children shouldn’t be in automotive manufacturing-

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

… facilities anyway. Those are dangerous jobs, and we understand that, and there’s a certain amount of a degree that just comes with the job, right?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

But SL Alabama is above and beyond that by multitudes, as is evidenced by the multiple OSHA fines that have been levied against SL Alabama, which OSHA does not just throw out fines willy-nilly.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

You would know if you look through the press releases of OSHA and look at how many people have been fined by OSHA in the last week or month or year, $50,000 for crush and amputation hazards in one year is what you saw at SL Alabama while they were using prison labor, while they were using 13-year-old children. Those conditions are in part, of course, there are lots of reasons, but no doubt, the undermining of the solidarity that is possible by the use of people who are coerced to the extent that prisoners are. That’s the thing that you get when you go about running your state this way. You get insanely dangerous working conditions. You get low pay, you get bad benefits and a working class in this state that is just generally, it’s worse to be a worker here in Alabama than basically anywhere else in the country when you look at wages, working conditions and benefits. The prison convict system is just one more reason that is the case.

Mansa Musa:

When we talk about capitalism being evil, this is evil personified because-

Jacob Morrison:

Right.

Mansa Musa:

… as you say, the reason why I asked about the state being incentivized, I’m quite sure that they don’t put in their packet when they try to solicit somebody, a corporation to come there, “Oh, yeah, we use child labor.” “We got cheap labor,” or, “We got endless labor of force.” No, they don’t say that, but that’s known by the corporation because every corporation, every corporation in the United States of America, anywhere in the world, they want cheap labor, they want a lot of it, and they want to work you from sun up to sun down and get as much money out you before you fall out. So that’s the narrative when it comes to capitalism. The exploitation of man against man, that’s the narrative. Marx, Lenin, all of them exemplified that in their writings.

But Adam, talk about where we stand at, ’cause I know the suit was filed, and I recall an injunction was… they asked for an injunction. Now, and I want you to answer this in the context of if you have any knowledge on the impact this is having on the prison population, ’cause I read where a lot of the prisoners, and rightly so, are fearful of the retaliation. At the same token, they don’t have no choice now because the cat’s out the bag. The suit is out there, but what about the injunction? What kind of coverage are the men and women getting in the system based on this? Because ain’t no doubt in my mind the hornet’s nest been kicked and they ain’t feeling good about this one here. You getting ready to take their big pocketbook.

Adam Keller:

Oh, yeah, yeah, I agree. The hornet’s nest has definitely been kicked. The lawsuit is asking for changes to the parole system immediately for folks to be paroled. They’re asking for back pay for the workers affected. They’re asking for an end to the system immediately. My understanding is there is a hearing coming up, I believe next month. Jacob, maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong there, but I do believe next month. So I’ve noticed a lot of silence from our state government, and so that’s interesting. I know that of course, they’re going to say, “We don’t want to comment on pending litigation.”

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right. Right.

Adam Keller:

That’s always the go-to answer, but there has certainly been a lot of silence from Governor Ivey, from the Attorney General’s office, from the Board of Paroles. They don’t want to talk about this at all. I think you’re right, it’s because it’s like the cat’s out of the bag. Now people understand why some of these things have been happening in our system.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

We’re connecting the dots now and seeing, “Okay, you’ve been running this scheme this whole time. You’ve been generating these profits. You have all these people depending on it and thriving off of it. Well, no wonder people can’t get out. No wonder we can’t get real prison reform in the state of Alabama. No wonder when the federal government says, ‘Your prisons are unconstitutional and you need change,’ our answer is to say, ‘Okay, we’ll just build more prisons.’”

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

That’s what the state government has proposed, is to build new mega prisons to house even more people as opposed to real criminal justice reform, as opposed to ending the drug war, as opposed to doing the kind of actions that we need to actually make communities safer, right?

Mansa Musa:

Mm-hmm.

Adam Keller:

Yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I’m very curious to know how deep it really is, because the lawsuit says over 500 employers have been involved. So the lawsuit really is just scratching the surface.

Mansa Musa:

Right, exactly.

Adam Keller:

So that’s something that I think is going to be interesting to see in the coming months is how much more do we find out? How many more people are involved in this? How much more money is being made off of this? So I’m glad as a labor union activist that organized labor is taking a stand here and is getting involved, and I want to see more of it because-

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

… ultimately that’s the kind of solidarity that we need if we’re going to really thrive as working class people faced against this sort of system.

Mansa Musa:

Jacob, going forward, what do you want the takeaway for our audience? ‘Cause like I said earlier, I was telling Adam this earlier, I think off-camera, I wanted to get in this space a long time. I’m constantly trying to make the connection between the prison industrial complex and how it impacts society, overall and why society should be having an invested interest in it. Talk about going forward, what you want our audience to have as a takeaway and how they can get in touch with you and Adam.

Jacob Morrison:

Yeah. Well, the takeaway, I guess, with this case in particular is just stay tuned, and we’ll see what happens. Hopefully, there will be some justice here in this case. But more broadly, the answer is that we have to, and this answer is going to be similar across the country, that mass incarceration is not working for working people. If you take a look at-

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. That’s right.

Jacob Morrison:

… people who are in prisons, it is not the bosses. It is people who have been down on their luck for one reason or another and made mistakes, sometimes very bad and gross mistakes, but that by-and-large can be rehabilitated and will be back in society at some point.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.

Jacob Morrison:

That’s a thing that the opponents on this issue just don’t seem to want to reckon with is that 95% of people in our prisons today are going to be back out on the streets. So the question is not, are these people going to be back out on the streets? The question is, in what state are we going to return them when we release them, and are we going to continue doing this? Really, the state that we return people to society now is in a worse state than they came in. So also a question going forward is, how many more people are we going to subject to this system, to this system that you said, Mansa, is really anti-human? I think to some of the opponents on this issue, some language that may hit them harder is anti-American, really-

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

… continually anti-American-

Mansa Musa:

Right. Right. Right.

Jacob Morrison:

… because who believes that our system of incarceration is just? What you have to believe about the American people is that the American people are so rabid and immoral and wicked and vile-

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Jacob Morrison:

… uniquely so, compared to every single other population of human beings on the country that we have to cage more people than anywhere else for our own good-

Mansa Musa:

In the world, yeah.

Jacob Morrison:

… because if we don’t cage all of these people, then we won’t be able to have a functioning society. That’s what you have to believe about the American people, that we are uniquely evil and wicked and incapable of handling freedom to believe that this is a just system. So when you put it to people that way, I hope, and I’ve seen it in some cases, that it’ll get their gears turning because it’s just on its face such an inhumane, unjust system that we have to upend it for the betterment of our society, of the working class and for our country and for the world.

It’s not a good system for anybody except the people at the top. I mentioned that working people are the ones who fill our prisons. One of the stark reminders of that is when you take a look at, I mentioned OSHA’s press releases. If you go through there every single week just about, you’re going to find OSHA fining some employer because they were responsible, they were found responsible for their employee’s death. We just saw OSHA come out with the results of their investigation for the 16-year-old who was killed in a Mississippi poultry plant.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Jacob Morrison:

$200,000 is the fine that this multi-$100 million organization is going to have to pay for killing a child. Nobody’s going to prison. Nobody is having any amount of freedom taken away, and nobody is even having a significant monetary penalty placed on them. It’s a slap on the wrist at best, while people that child was working alongside are going to prison for much less. So it’s just fundamentally unjust.

Mansa Musa:

But that’s a good observation and a good articulation of what we know to be the reality. Adam, speak to the broader issue. Speak to the labor union. Tell the labor unions nationwide and worldwide why they need to be cognizant of this, because I think it was Marx or Lenin, say, “Workers of the world unite.” Well, they didn’t say, “Workers in society unite, and workers in slave labor, you ain’t considered work.” As we close out, talk to the labor union in a broader aspect of why it’s important that they understand this particular contradiction.

Adam Keller:

Right. Right. Our labor movement in this country for all of its flaws and warts over the years has historically fought for an end to convict lease labor. It has fought for an end to child labor. It’s fought against these forms of super exploitation, and so it’s our historical mission. That’s our calling is to fight against exploitation and oppression wherever it may lay. Workers of all kinds rely on solidarity to survive, and we have a responsibility as labor unions with resources, with members, with reach to do what we can to fight for justice, to fight for what is right. The right thing to do is to oppose the system, but there is a practical concern because it undercuts the wages of our members.

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Adam Keller:

It brings in workers who are literally ineligible. According to the rules of the Alabama Department of Corrections, they cannot join RWDSU, right?

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Adam Keller:

They cannot join the Union of Southern Service Workers. These are unions that are organizing in places like Wendy’s, in places like poultry plants where this source exploitation is taking place. So there are practical concerns, there are moral concerns here. Our labor movement, if we’re serious about representing working people, if we’re serious about bringing about the kind of country we need for working people to thrive, we can’t sit back and let something like this happen. We can’t allow state government to collude with local governments and with private employers to extract so much from people. To do so in such a cruel manner with such force, it’s not acceptable, not acceptable. In the year 2024, it is not acceptable.

Mansa Musa:

I agree. I agree.

Adam Keller:

So I applaud RWDSU. I applaud the Union of Southern Service Workers. I do see more labor unions get involved and get engaged in this, we all have a role to play in this fight. The more of us that speak up and the more our unions speak up, the louder we’re going to be.

Mansa Musa:

Okay, and thank you. Thank both of y’all for joining me today on Rattling the Bars. Y’all definitely rattled the bars today, and y’all rattled it in such a manner that we ask our audience to really look at this issue right here. This is not about Alabama. This is not about Alabama prison system. This is not about the Alabama Unions. This is about humanity. This is about, as Jacob outlined, we had to be some demented, twisted individuals to say that the citizens of the United States, that American people are so demented that they would allow our country to just go get kids, put them in places where they subject to be mutilated by the machinery, go get prison labor that at the end of the day, you denying people parole premeditatedly because you want to hold on to the labor. So we thank y’all for coming and rattling the bars today. We ask that our audience continue to support the Real News and Rattling the Bars, ’cause guess what? We actually are really the news. Thank you.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

The US has one of the highest prisoner recidivism rates in the world: over 70% of incarcerated people who are released from prison in the US will be rearrested within five years of their release date. That is not an accident. Our system of mass incarceration sets people up to fail as they leave the prison system and try to reintegrate into society. That is why organizations like Hope for Prisoners in Nevada are working to provide returning citizens with the resources and support they need to rebuild their lives and maintain their freedom. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Jon Ponder, founder and CEO of Hope for Prisoners, about why returning from prison is so difficult for so many, and what it takes to “empower the formerly incarcerated and their families to create a successful future.” 

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, a show that amplifies the voices of people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, and subjugated while offering solutions. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Joining me today is John Ponder, founder and CEO of Hope for Prisoners. Hope for Prisoners assists with reentry by providing to formerly incarcerated long-term support and services as they work to reclaim their lives, families, and standing in the community.

Welcome John.

Jon Ponder:

I’m glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Mansa Musa:

All right, and full disclosure, I met John when I was in Vegas visiting Dominique Conway and a friend of mine connected me, told me I had to reach out to John when I got into Vegas. So ultimately we connected and he was gracious enough to have me come to his workplace, I want to call it. And it’s remarkable place, the work that you’re doing, I’m familiar with it and I’m doing some of them the same, myself. Tell our audience a little bit about Hope for Prisoners and how you came about that concept.

Jon Ponder:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Again, I just want to make a reference to our time that we spent here in the office. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation because when you get two people that’s working on the same page, I could sit up and talk to you for hours. So our organization Hope for Prisoners. We work with men, women, and young adults that are exiting different arenas of our judicial system. And what we do is to provide the supportive services to help the men and women to successfully reintegrate back into the home, back into the workplace, and ultimately to help them to be standup leaders out into the community. So I founded Hope for Prisoners back in 2009. It was birthed out of my own personal experiences. I was a guy who was coming in and out of the system since I was 12 years old, been and out of every different juvenile systems in the State of New York, multiple jails, prisons here in the State of Nevada.

And then I got stretched out in the maximum security United States federal penitentiary behind 50 foot walls. So coming in and out of the system all that time, I made a whole lot of mistakes trying to get life right and I would violate and go right back to the prison system. But it came a time on that journey where God taught me tremendously valuable lessons from all those mistakes that I made and those lessons that I learned, it helped me to live life on a whole different level. So what my passion in life is, the reason why I founded the organization is to turn right back around and help the other men and women who were facing those same challenges that I once had to face, to do everything I can to remove the barriers that are preventing them from being successful and to help to escort them up to the next level of life.

Mansa Musa:

And like you said, by your own admission by, I did 48 years in prison prior to getting out and at some point in time, I had to come to the realization that what I did that got me in prison, is not going to get me out. And if I do get out and hold onto it, it’s not going to sustain me. Talk about how your program offers sustainability to men and women coming out.

Jon Ponder:

One of the things that we’ve learned, and again speaking from personal experiences, is that the vast majority of people from this segment of the population, they really do want to change, but they have no idea how to do it. So for so long we’ve been telling people in this segment of the population to come home and be a productive member of the community.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right, that’s right.

Jon Ponder:

But they have no idea what that looks like or we tell them sometimes even get a job and some of them have never worked a legitimate job a day before in their life. Or we ask men to come home and take their rightful positions in their home as the husbands and fathers that they need to be, but they have no healthy reference point up in here on what that might look like. So what it is that we do is we provide them with the tools to not only get a good job, but it’s important that we help them to maintain that good job. But we also lay down the foundation for which people can build up this brand new life to where they never, ever, ever re-offend again.

Mansa Musa:

And that fact right there, that foundation, what do that foundation look like? Now, let me give you an example. I work in this organization called Voice for a Second Chance. What we do, we provide, when men and women come out of the system, we help them get their critical documents and try to stabilize as much as possible. We are not in a position to provide everybody how we create a housing mechanism for people, but the foundation that we have is that we let the people come in there know that if you follow the directions that we offer you, you will be stabilized. Not like tomorrow, but you will be stabilized. What’s that foundation look like for you, for hope?

Jon Ponder:

So again, it is the training. It’s the complete wraparound services. We train very intensively on things like the importance of winning attitude, the attitude about their past, the attitude about their present condition, and how could we cultivate this winning attitude that’s going to help carry them into a successful future. We train very intensively on things like how to go above and beyond the call of duty inside the home, inside the workplace, and then out there in our community.

We take a deep dive into effective communication and understanding the different personality types, the people that you’re going to be interacting with inside the home, the workplace and the community. We also take a deep dive into goal setting and time management and banking and budget and conflict resolutions and when and how to apologize, the importance of forgiveness.

And then we put a strong emphasis on leadership. Teaching individuals, number one, how to lead yourself, how do you get those results that you’ve always wanted to get out of life? How do you be that leader in the family, in that workplace and ultimately out there in the community? So again, it’s those wraparound services. When we address the needs for housing, we address the needs for employment, we address the needs for transportation and then, also very important, the family reunification.

Mansa Musa:

So in terms of walk me through a client coming out and how do they get access to Hope and walk me through that process. I just got out, I heard about y’all, where would I be at?

Jon Ponder:

So the beauty of what it is that we do is that we have a pre-release model. We’re in seven institutions here in the state of Nevada where we work with them up to 18 months prior to them even being released. So doing that needs assessment with them. We do a risk assessment because we want to target the people who are moderate to high risk to re-offend. That’s our target population. If you could make it out there in the community without us and we help you be successful, what good have we done? So being able to get in there with them and number one, if drugs and or alcohol had something to do with the initial offense of why you went to prison. Then I have my licensed drug and alcohol counselors begin to work with them and do an assessment.

And out of that assessment, while they’re still inside, that comes up with a treatment plan. And sometimes that treatment plan on the inside looks like one-on-one counseling or group therapy. So we start all those intensive trainings while they’re on the inside and again up to 18 months. And when they get to the 12 month mark, then we fast track them into, for the next six months, into what we call… We built our vocational village to where we now train them before they get out, we train them with HVAC, electrical, plumbing, welding, warehouse logistics, other manufacturing and a masonry training program. And we built a full scale commercial driver’s license school on the prison yard. What does that mean? That means that not only are we addressing the cognitive and behavior change, the moral recognition therapy, but that vocational training that we have them go through, then that means that they are certified and ready to go to work the minute that they walk out the back door.

Now when they walk out the back door, remember we were 18 months before they get out, but then we put them into an 18 month mechanism once they get released. You see, it wasn’t enough for us to be able to train them very intensively while they’re inside. But if we release them out the community by themselves, we will have wasted time, effort, energy and resources. We do that through intensive case management and mentoring where we have trained up well over 550 men and women from our community that are serving as mentors right now.

These mentors come from a very diverse group of people. Now these are pastors and leaders from churches across southern Nevada, other leaders in other houses of faith. These are business owners and business leaders. These are school teachers from our school district, professors from the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, right down to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. And I smiled every time I say that because the sheriff has given us an army of volunteer police officers that are serving as mentors. Never before in the history of reentry, nowhere on this planet to this magnitude has law enforcement gotten this involved in mentoring and training people coming home from the prison system. So it’s that kind of wraparound services that we know that helps them to be successful.

Mansa Musa:

Now in terms of success ratio, what is y’all’s success rate? Because I know from a personal experience, and like I said, I’m in this environment where people come through there and like we say, you give them a roadmap to be successful. If they stay patient with it and they deviate. And you look up and you go back through the system or they contact you and what happened? Well, they come up with a myriad of reasons. What about in y’all situation? What about that? And then how do y’all deal with people that recidivate?

Jon Ponder:

Sure, absolutely. So we are very encouraged. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, their criminal justice division had come in and they wanted to take a look at how well we were doing. And what they did was they took a look at 522 high risk-to-reoffend after that assessment and what they determined of those 522 people that they took a look at, more than 74% of those were successful in gaining full-time employment and sustainable wage jobs. 25% of those were full-time employed after completing the first initial stage of what we do post release. And of those 522 men and women who by every stretch of the statistics should be back on the yard, only 6% of those individuals return back to the prison system. It is something that we are very encouraged by. We know that what it is that we’re doing is working, but to be quite honest with you, I’m not satisfied with that rate.

We’re always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of what it is that we do. So we wanted to take a look at that 6% of people to try to figure out why was it that they were going back. And there was two things that we found, the common thread. The number one reason why people were returning back to the prison system was going back to drugs. This is why we increased our substance abuse treatment and therapy prior to them being released because that’s really where the rubber’s going to hit the road and the benefit of us working with them while they’re inside now. When they get released, we create this continuum of care. They’re not having to go get substance abuse treatment, meet another therapy, it is just that continuum of care. And the other reason why people are continuously going back to the prison system of that pilot group of people was that went back to the old neighborhoods.

We have this saying, and I know you’re familiar with this, that you’re associations determine your destination. If you show me who your friends are, I will tell you exactly who you’re going to be two years down the road. So when someone does recidivate, again, the beauty of us being inside the system, we get to touch that person at every area, at every stage. So they recidivate, do something wrong, parole violation, we can connect with them in the county jail and start wrapping our arms around them. If they have to go back up to prison, then my staff is in the prison waiting for them. So we just start all over with them on the inside, then stay with them, and then they start all over again once they get released.

Mansa Musa:

Go ahead. Go ahead John.

Jon Ponder:

No, please go ahead.

Mansa Musa:

What gives you this enthusiasm? How do you stay focused? How do you maintain this enthusiasm to maintain working with this population? I know for me personally, I get burned out. I don’t get burned out to the point that I’m burned out. I let my flame go down. My passion is not where it be at all the time. One time I might be on 100, next I might be on 15, but I’m still moving forward. What is it that sustains John Ponder and to maintain the belief that it is Hope for Prisoners.

Jon Ponder:

So absolutely, I am a man of faith and I understand that I’m walking in what God has called me to do. So I find my strength and my enthusiasm in Him. I get my directions from Him and I always have to stay connected to God. Do I get burnt out? Do I get tired? Absolutely, 100% I do. But it’s important that I have people on my team that I trust, that I’m ever able to delegate things out to, who have the same level of enthusiasm as I do. They’ve climbed up into the vein of what it is that we’re doing and have caught the vision and they stay focused with that. You asked me what it is that gives me hope because I know and understand that if people would just give God enough of their time, God could do some amazing things with their life.

When you’re able to see someone who is at rock bottom in the prison system and we have a chance to walk alongside them and then they’re in the post release phase, for me, it’s like watching the evolution of life. That’s what keeps me going. Take someone from absolutely rock bottom to today, they’re employed as an electrician journeyman and just purchased their home and reconnected with the family and they’re taking vacations. That’s what it is that really, really keeps us going. And the other thing is, I’ll have to tell you a story about how, many years ago when I was founded the organization. I was giving birth to this thing that God impregnated me with. We were ready to get our 5501-3C and we needed to come up with a name for the organization.

And people were asking, “Well, what is going to be the name?” And I felt like God dropped in my spirit that the name is going to be Hope for Prisoners. And the people that were in the world around me at the time had said that, “John, you don’t want to call it Hope for Prisoners because you’re not going to be able to raise money. People are more likely to donate money to get their cat spayed and neutered as opposed to giving it to prisoners.” And they said, “Why do you want to name it, Hope for Prisoners?” And I said, “It’s simple. Number one, I’m doing it because God told me to.” And then I reminded them that the mission of Hope for Prisoners, the mission of our organization is to help to create a massive amount of people who come home from the prison system, and not only do they never re-offend again, they begin to live levels of life that most people only dream of. And when we get them there, then they become the Hope for the Prisoners.

Mansa Musa:

I got you. And that’s what opens the door for the segue to my next question is, what do you want to tell people that have the perspective that “You do the crime, you do the time.” And it’s no such thing as any type of repentence that, all right, I hear what you saying, this sound good. But at the same time, crime is on the rise. People still doing these things and I can’t get these blinders off for of me because I’m thinking that it’s a waste of money and a waste of time. How do tell, what do you tell these people that I know you come in contact with, that I know you know exists?

Jon Ponder:

Absolutely, 100%. And I’m going to speak from my personal experiences. I did just about 17 years in prison. It wasn’t a straight shot, it was two years here, four years here, six years in county jail and accumulated about seven… Life on the installment plan and I returned back to the community. People, if you take a look at who I was, fully addicted to everything known to man. Gang affiliated, I was a monster. I was a menace to society. But then I respectfully have to say, take a look at my life today. If I could change, someone else can change. And if you could take a look at the vast majority of people that are in our prison systems today, one day they will be coming home. And if we don’t embrace them and provide the support, pour time, effort, energy and resources in them to help them to be productive members of the community, then I think that we are missing the mark.

They’re coming home anyway. And I would rather have them come home and they’re coming home and being in our next door neighbors. They’re in the shopping malls with us and so forth and so on. And what condition do you want that person in? Do you want that person… If you don’t address it, they’re in that never ending cycle of recidivism. Or do we want to do everything we can to assist them after they paid their debt to society?

Come on, they paid the debt, they paid the debt to society and they’re coming home. And I just feel that we, as a community, have an obligation to do everything that we can to help them to be tremendous assets to their home, to their workplace and out there in the community and not a liability. And when we’re able to help them to secure sustainable wage employment, because that’s basically what people really want, to where they can take care of themselves and be able to take care of their family and we would help them to get sustainable wage employment and they start working out in that community, what people really need to think about is that they then become fuel in the economic engine of our communities.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, I like that. John, you had the last word. And I appreciate that articulation and that observation because at the end of the day, unless the person is to be locked away and throw away the key, they are going to return. Whatever state they return, that’s going to happen. And as a civil society, it’s our obligation to look out for the least of these, as a civil society. I think that’s what all of us claim to believe at some point in our lives, we claim to believe in a higher power. We claim to believe, have a certain amount of spiritual decorum. So I think at the end of the day, when we look at with the work that you’re doing and people in similar situations, we recognize that like you say, there is hope for prisoners. Our audience tell our viewers and listeners how they can get in touch with you and how they can support your work.

Jon Ponder:

And thank you very much for that. You can reach Hope for Prisoners, certainly visit our website at www.hopefor and it’s “for” prisoners.org hopeforprisoners.org. Or you can give us a call at 702-586-1371, 702-586-1371. And there are many, many ways that you could support our organization. We do accept donations, small monthly supporters. You can get all the information on our website. Well, the other thing that we do is we look for mentors, not only here in our local community, but we look for mentors all over this country that could become part of our mentoring program. So we train and equip mentors and then they can connect with our people coming home over Zoom, over Teams. So this way, we are here in Las Vegas, Nevada, but you can be in Tupelo, Mississippi. If you had some life experiences that you feel that you’d be able to give back and help someone navigate some challenges you have had in your life, then we would love to be able to have a conversation with you.

Mansa Musa:

Thank you, John for joining me today on Rattling the Bars. You definitely rattled the bars today, and I appreciate your taking time out of your busy day. I know you’re busy. Taking out time out of your busy day to really educate our audience on how we… We’re talking about a civil society. We’re not talking about a draconian, dark age unforgiving society. We’re talking about us in a civil society where people like ourselves come out and making amends for what we have done. We make amends in the form of helping the least of these and being the example. You are definitely a good example. Thank you. We ask that you continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. Thank you very much.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

Last June, the state of Wisconsin placed two correctional institutions in Green Bay and Waupun on lockdown due to concerns about overcrowding and the quality of facilities. In the ensuing months, several other Wisconsin state prisons have been affected by the lockdown, and Gov. Evers has yet to present a clear plan to end it. Meanwhile, thousands of incarcerated people have been trapped in horrendous conditions. Inmates are spending 23 hours a day in their cells, without access to in-person visitation, regular programming, or even daily showers. Mark Rice, coordinator of the Wisconsin Transformational Justice Campaign at the grassroots network, WISDOM, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the crisis in Wisconsin prisons and the clear solution Evers has ignored so far: to wield his authority as governor to reduce the state’s prison population.

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

Mansa Musa:  Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, a show that amplifies the voice of people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, and subjugated while offering solutions. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.

Today, we’re going to talk about the current state of Wisconsin prisons, the people incarcerated in them, and we’re going to be talking with our guest, Mark Rice.

Mark spent 26 months incarcerated in the Wisconsin prison system and eight years under the supervision of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. His experience with the state carceral system inspired him to become a leader in the movement to dismantle this unjust system. Today, he serves as the coordinator of the Wisconsin Transformational Justice Campaign at the grassroots network WISDOM. This campaign aims to advance racial justice, decarcerate Wisconsin, and redirect resources away from the prison-industrial complex and into building safer, stronger, and healthier community.

Welcome to Rattling the Bars.

Mark Rice:  Thanks for the invitation.

Mansa Musa:  Let’s unpack this conversation by first briefly telling our audience about what’s currently going on within the prison system.

Mark Rice:  Right now what’s going on in the prison system in the state of Wisconsin is a human rights crisis. At least two prisons in the state have been on lockdown now for nearly a year. It’s having a devastating impact on people who are incarcerated in those two prisons. One is Waupun Correctional Institution, the other is Green Bay Correctional Institution. There have been other prisons as well that have been impacted by lockdowns, but most of the attention has been on Green Bay and Waupun.

We’re talking about people who have been locked in cells for 23 hours a day, sometimes 24 hours a day. Getting meals in their cells. They’ve had programming totally disrupted. The most basic of human needs have been taken away, have been limited or completely taken away.

There have been no in-person visits. They’ve had recreation taken away or extremely limited. There’s been a lack of access to medical care, lack of access to psychological services, to treatment programming, educational programming. Even showers have been limited, so we’re talking about, like I said, the most basic human needs are taken away.

Wisconsin has a problem with overpopulation in the prisons. There’s not a problem with under-staffing, it’s overpopulation.

There’s many ways that Wisconsin can reduce the prison population that policy makers are refusing to move forward. The state legislature has many ways to reduce the prison population. Governor Evers can use his executive authority to bring down the population, he can commute sentences. The Department of Corrections has authority over some of the areas, like they can stop sending people back for technical violations.

There’s some really common sense policy changes that they could move forward to bring down the population. If the population was brought down, then there would be no lockdowns.

One of the primary root causes of the lockdowns is having so many people needlessly being incarcerated for too long. Excessive sentences. In Wisconsin, there’s a huge amount of racial injustice within Wisconsin’s system.

By some measures, Wisconsin detains Black people and Indigenous people at a higher rate than any other state. Some of the neighborhoods in Milwaukee, by some statistical measures, are the most incarcerated neighborhoods ever in the United States. In Milwaukee, there’s a zip code, 53206, which is predominantly Black, that has the highest incarceration rate of any zip code in the United States by some measures. Really, there’s a lot of change that’s really urgently needed in this state, for sure.

Mansa Musa:  Let’s talk about… Let’s go and examine these two institutions in the state of Wisconsin. Are both these institutions maximum security?

Mark Rice:  Yes, they’re both maximum.

Mansa Musa:  Okay. Now, in terms of the reason why they’ve been on lockdown so long is because they’re claiming it’s understaffed. But as you articulated, it’s not understaffed, it’s overpopulated. How long have this been going on, in terms of them utilizing this particular excuse to basically turn these institutions into control units? How long have they been using this excuse?

Mark Rice:  Over eight months now, so almost a year going on. Definitely, long-term lockdowns are torture. Definitely, there’s been suicides. We work with a lot of folks who have loved ones currently incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons.

We’ve launched an entire campaign to challenge what’s going on within the Wisconsin State Prison System. We have a campaign called In the Lockdowns campaign, led by formerly incarcerated people and people who have loved ones who are currently incarcerated and being impacted by the lockdowns. There’s been stories of suicides, it’s led to suicides. Like I said, it’s having a devastating impact on people psychologically. Definitely, the root cause is the overpopulation.

That’s something that WISDOM, I work for an organization called WISDOM in Wisconsin, and one of our goals for a long time has been to cut the state’s prison population in half. We actually have a policy agenda that lays out how Wisconsin can do this.

On the front end, Wisconsin can expand treatment alternatives to incarceration. There’s a program, Treatment Alternatives and Diversions, in Wisconsin, which is really underfunded, under utilized, which can get people out. On the front end, it could divert thousands of people from even going in in the first place.

There’s some in-prison issues. There’s some people who were sentenced under the old law in Wisconsin are still eligible for parole. There’s almost 2,000 people who’ve been incarcerated for over 20 years now. Just got really long, excessive sentences with the expectation that they would be given a fair chance to be released under parole. But then, parole essentially shut down in Wisconsin after Wisconsin went to Truth in Sentencing in the year 2000. That’s another way that people can be given early release through parole.

We also have an earned release program for people who were sentenced under Truth in Sentencing, where they can participate in programming to get time taken off their sentences by participating in that program. That program’s really underfunded, under utilized.

There’s a compassionate release program where people having health problems can be released. That’s underutilized.

On the back end, there’s thousands of people going back for technical violations [crosstalk] —

Mansa Musa:  Right, I know. Answer this here, then. Based on this common sense approach, as you had just outlined, why is there such an apprehension to invest in the ideas, and the policies, and the programs as you just outlined? Two, where are these two particular institutions located? Are they located in an urban part of Wisconsin, or are they located in the rural part of Wisconsin?

Mark Rice:  Waupun is located in rural Wisconsin. Green Bay is in Green Bay, which is a somewhat urban area. It’s located right in the city of Green Bay.

There’s definitely been some momentum around closing them. I think people are starting to realize that these prisons need to be closed because they’re so old. Both of them were built over 100 years ago, and they’re falling apart. It’s going to become extremely expensive to keep them open, to put in the resources needed to renovate those places so that people continue to… It’s not going to be a good investment to even keep these places open. I think that’s part of the conversation that people will start to…

But, there’s also some who want to build new prisons. There’s some of the legislatures, particularly Republicans, who want to close Green Bay down, and they want to do economic projects on that land where it sits, but then they also want to build a new prison.

That’s the fight that we have as well, is we have to stop the construction of a new prison and get people to realize that, by implementing some of these common sense policy changes that I’m talking about, simply, there’s 5,200 people Wisconsin prisons for revocation without a new conviction, sent back for violating the rules [crosstalk] —

Mansa Musa:  Right. Technical, technical violations. Yeah.

Mark Rice:  — Technical violation.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah. Okay, let me ask you this here. Again, why the state of Wisconsin isn’t investing in the common sense approaches that you outlined? For example, I read where the number one thing that they’re utilizing is, because so many people are on parole and probation, they’re utilizing technical violations to get people back in the system. I think they said they only release like 5.28% of people a year.

What is it about the state of Wisconsin’s attitude to be so intransigent about recognizing the need to become more objective? And, it would be more cost-efficient, because right now they’re saying $1.5 billion is being allocated towards the prison system. $1.5 billion could be allocated, you could take that money, allocate it towards schools, education, hospitals, employment, and also investing in some of the things that you talked about.

Why is it that the state of Wisconsin is so adamant about not investing in eliminating and eradicating the overpopulation of the prison system?

Mark Rice:  For one thing, there’s definitely financial incentive. There’s definitely a lot of corporations, a lot of companies making money off the system. As you know, they’re charging people really outrageous prices for phone calls, for food. There’s the financial incentive. A lot of powerful interests want to maintain the status quo, keep that going, to ensure that they’re continuing to make money off the system.

The status quo within the Department of Corrections has been really powerful. There’s many people who are administrators in the Department of Corrections that have been there for years, for decades, and are really resistant to any change to a better approach.

Then, there’s the political as well. There’s still legislators in the state — It’s a very gerrymandered state, it’s one of the most gerrymandered states. There’s been politicians who’ve built their careers off of increasing incarceration rates, on building more prisons. That’s part of it.

I think a central piece of it is the dehumanization of people who’ve been convicted of crimes. I feel like they cannot treat people like this and incarcerate people at the rate that they’re doing without dehumanizing them first. I feel like that’s a central part of the work that we do, is working to change and challenge the narratives that are really dehumanizing people with conviction records. I feel like that’s central.

The more that we can get our stories out — And many of us are out in the community flourishing. Many of us have done years in prison. I’ve been incarcerated myself, many of my colleagues have been incarcerated for a long time. But when we were given a chance to get back out and get in the community, and we’re provided with support services, many of us are now flourishing in the community. The more that we can get those stories out, and to really challenge those narratives, those stereotypes that people have of those who’ve been through the system, then that’s going to change things for the better. I feel like that’s a central part of the work.

Then, we need to change the overall narrative as well. That there’s still that narrative out there which is really powerful, and it’s hard to change, is that many people in the state still believe that building more prisons and filling them up is keeping us safer, and it’s not. We know that.

We actually create safety by investing in jobs, investing in healthcare, housing. We really need to reimagine the entire system and the way resources are allocated in the state, and that starts with cutting back on spending.

For far too long, the state has relied on, really, courts, prisons, police as responses to some of these problems. But instead, it’s really time to start reallocating those resources, putting them especially in the neighborhoods that have been most harmed by incarceration.

Especially Black and Brown neighborhoods, Indigenous communities across Wisconsin, to really start investing in those neighborhoods that have been most impacted by incarceration, most neglected over time, and put those resources then to programs and services we know are going to create public safety.

A lot of these initiatives now are being led by formerly incarcerated people as well. We have a lot of organizations in Wisconsin that are led by people who’ve been through the system [crosstalk] really know how to do this in a way that’s really going to help people flourish in the community.

The more that we can invest in those organizations that are led by directly impacted people, that are providing the services, that are working to change the system, that’s going to really help to start to shift this and change things for the better.

Mansa Musa:  Talk about y’alls strategy going forward, in terms of… We recognize that, based on what you’re saying, that it’s overpopulation. It’s not a lack of staffing. The fact that wanted to bring the National Guard in to oversee the population.

One, address whether or not, if that do in fact take shape, is that going to allow for the two institutions that you talked about to open back up and allow the men to be able to have their basic human rights acknowledged? And two, going forward, what is y’alls strategy in terms of how y’all intend on getting the state of Wisconsin to recognize that it’s more cost-efficient to invest in people’s getting out and staying out, as opposed to chasing people that’s out, running them down, and putting them back in to maintain the count?

Mark Rice:  The first priority for us is that we’re working to get immediate decarceration to happen. We know Governor Evers has the authority to immediately bring down the prison population by using his commutation powers. In an emergency situation like this, there’s definitely a need for them to start using those powers.

The Department of Corrections has the ability to also immediately reduce the prison population. They did that during the beginning of the COVID crisis in Wisconsin prisons. Wiconson secretary, the DOC secretary, Kevin Carr, he brought down the population by 1,200 people with one policy change. He put forward this policy change to release people who were in for technical violations, and that led to one prison that we were working to close down, Waukesha Detention Facility, the population at that prison was cut by more than half during COVID.

But they started to reverse back to normal policies and practices over the last year, and the population started coming back up.

That’s the priority right now, is to get the population down. Then, there would be no need to bring in the National Guard. If they brought down the population, they could actually close down Waupun Correctional Institution, they could close down Green Bay Correctional Institution. By immediately bringing the population down.

Governor Evers, we definitely need him to step up and start using his commutation powers. He ran on a platform, when he first ran for Governor, he promised to work with us to cut the state’s prison population in half. There’s been very little follow through on that.

Now is the time we feel that he really needs to step up and start following through with that promise, and to use his executive authority that he has to do that. The Department of Corrections can cut way down on the number of people who are being sent back for supervision violations, for crimeless revocations, we call it in Wisconsin.

Also, they also have the power to immediately end lockdowns as well. There’s definitely the capacity, even immediately, before those changes are made. They can immediately end the lockdowns without that. Because there’s definitely no logical explanation, no reason —

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, justification there.

Mark Rice:  — To take away people’s basic services and needs, that should never be disrupted. People should always have access to showers, in-person visits, to educational programming, medical care that they need, psychological care. That should never be taken away in any circumstances. The state has the responsibility to care for people who are incarcerated and they’re not doing — A lawsuit, in Waupun right now. They’re facing a lawsuit.

Mansa Musa:  The reality is that Eighth Amendment violations, it’s cruel and unusual punishment. Now, I’m being punished, I got a sentence, I’m doing my time. But now I’m being punished not because of an incident that took place in the institutions — I was locked up 48 years prior to being released. I’ve been in institutions where we’ve been locked down eight, nine months on end.

In most cases, you could trace it back to some type of incident or some type of problem going on in the environment, that they could justify locking us down. Just to say they locked us down because the population’s overcrowded, and you’re claiming that you don’t have enough staff, that in and of itself is cruel and unusual. The explanation shouldn’t even wash.

But talk about, from what you’ve been able to gather, in terms of the people that’s locked in these environments, how are they responding? You mentioned earlier about the suicide rate. But how are they responding overall? And more importantly, how are the families? How is it impacting the families?

Mark Rice:  It’s really having a devastating impact on people who are incarcerated right now. We’ve been hearing that a lot of people are becoming suicidal. A lot of people are having problems with their mental health. A lot of people have not been able to get access to medical care that they need to survive.

One of the leaders who’s been involved with the campaign, her name is Megan Kolb, her father actually committed suicide in Waupun Correctional Institution. He was there during the lockdown right as it was starting, but also got put in solitary confinement on top of that.

They have records now that he was denied several medications that he needed over time. He was diagnosed with serious mental illness, had several health problems. It was denied for months. He was not given access to medication that he needed, and ended up hanging himself while he was in solitary confinement. She’s been involved to really lift up the impact that it’s had on her and her family, how devastating that experience was, and is really working to hold Governor Evers accountable.

Governor Evers actually called 2023 the Year of Mental Health, that he was going to push forward mental health initiatives. Then, there was something like that happens that’s totally in contradiction with that. Mental health, that should extend to not only people who are outside, but also to people who are incarcerated. There’s this language that they use, they call people who are incarcerated “people under their care”, which I feel is not accurate.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, sanitized. Yeah, sanitized.

Mark Rice:  I feel like that’s an oppressive term. It’s an oppressive term that’s pushing forward a narrative of benevolent owners of slave people.

Mansa Musa:  Yeah, that’s why I say sanitized.

Mark Rice:  There’s a lack of care too, so definitely, we’re pushing back against that. Definitely, we want humanizing language, to call people people, but the people under our care piece, when they add the under our care, it becomes an oppressive term.

But also, there’s others that are involved right now who still have loved ones who are in there. They’re really worried as well, that some of their loved ones have become suicidal. They’re worried that their loved ones could be next, where there could be another tragedy happening. We’re hearing from people all the time. There’s a sense of urgency, and that’s why we’ve been taking so much action.

We’ve been organizing actions and community forums, almost on a weekly basis in Wisconsin, due to the facts of what we’re hearing from people who are personally impacted.

Then, we also have many people who’ve been incarcerated in these places themselves, so they know exactly what’s going on. We’re stepping up to several organizations, like EXPO, Ex-incarcerated People Organizing in Wisconsin, whose been really stepping up. Many of their staff people and leaders have been incarcerated in Green Bay and Waupun.

One of our organizers from Madison, he actually was contemplating suicide while he was locked up in Waupun Correctional Institution. I feel like we really have people who understand and empathize due to their personal experience of being incarcerated in those places.

It’s really important for the work to be led by those who are most impacted, and also the strategies to be developed by those who’ve been most impacted. I feel like that’s what we’re really doing in pushing this out.

Mansa Musa:  Let me ask you this here. As we close out, what can our audience, anyone that want to get involved with this fight in Milwaukee, to get some justice and some relief for the men that’s locked up in these plantations, how can they get involved? In terms of helping y’all get the word out, but more importantly, change the conditions that the men are now being subjected to?

Mark Rice:  Definitely. They can check out our website, wisdomwisconsin.org. Definitely, you can sign up. There’s information about the Transformational Justice Campaign at WISDOM, definitely sign up and get on the email list to get more information.

We’re on social media as well, on Facebook, on X, on several other platforms. I’m on several platforms myself under ricermark, R-I-C-E-R-M-A-R-K. You can find me on X, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. Definitely reach out, connect with me on those platforms.

We have community forums coming up, there’s going to be one in Madison, Wisconsin on Feb. 1, 6:00 PM. I can get you more information about that. We had a forum recently, in Milwaukee.

Our format, we’re really focusing on engaging directly with elected officials now. We’re inviting representatives to come to these forums. We’re giving people a chance to share testimonies, three-minute long testimonies, about anything related to the lockdown. A lot of people who have been directly impacted are showing up, sharing these testimonies.

The one in Milwaukee, I talked to one person afterwards. He said, after hearing all these testimonies, there’s no way anyone could support continuing these lockdowns, because they heard about the suicides, the devastating impact it’s had on people and families. I feel like it’s very important to hear from those who are being impacted and their loved ones. These community forums are providing a platform for that to happen.

But also, we’re taking it to people who have the power to make the changes. We’re taking it to Department of Corrections administrators, to the Governor’s office, to state legislators. We’re going to be having some meetings with the Governor’s policy advisors with the Department of Corrections coming up and definitely need people, as many people as possible, we need them to reach out and contact Governor Evers, contact the Department of Corrections, contact their state legislators throughout the state, and let them know what’s going on right now is a human rights crisis that needs to be ended immediately.

We really need to demand that, to say what’s going on right now is not acceptable. We really need to start demanding that they implement these common sense policy changes to reduce the prison population and put resources back into communities that have been most harmed by incarcerations so we can really start to build safer, stronger, and healthier communities by making smarter investments with public resources.

Definitely, direct engagement with elected officials, but also organize. Definitely, people can get involved. We have several different task forces, ways to get involved. We have a structure with this campaign that, definitely, anyone that wants to get involved and show leadership, which is based in Wisconsin or even nationally, but definitely it would be helpful for people to get involved nationally. Put pressure on from outside Wisconsin too, to let them know that people across the country are looking at this and saying, this is really a stain on the reputation of Wisconsin, nationally. I think to have that national spotlight put on it is going to be really powerful as well.

Mansa Musa:  All right, Mark. Thank you. There you have it. The Real News, just like the name say. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. That’s going to do it for us today. But you can find us here every Monday as we continue to rattle the bars for truth and justice.

I want to thank our guest, Mark Rice, for joining me as we rattled the bars today. We ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars, which you can do by clicking the donate button next to this video. Or, by going to therealnews.com/donate. Because guess what? we really are the news.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

Four Louisiana police officers in the city of Baton Rouge are facing charges in connection to the torture and sexual abuse of a detainee at a secret torture warehouse known as the ‘Brave Cave.’ Two lawsuits and the separate testimony of a third victim describe a pattern of abuse and torture perpetrated by the now-disbanded anti-street crime unit of the Baton Rouge police. Rev. Alexis Anderson of PREACH joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the long history of Baton Rouge police terror against the local community, and what efforts are being made to fight for justice.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: David Hedben

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. We often hear about police misconduct. We had the upheaval of George Floyd. Everybody got in the social justice space and all kinds of police reforms was taking place. But then we find ourselves in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2023. Now mind you, we talking about George Floyd not that long ago, but we’re in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2023, and we had police continuing to run amok.

Here to talk about the state of Baton Rouge Louisiana’s Police Department and some of the fascist behavior that’s taking place within that department is Reverend Alexis Anderson. Welcome, Reverend Alexis, to Rattling the Bars.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Mansa Musa:

Yes, ma’am. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself. We was talking earlier. You said you wear many hats so you can put them on and take them off as you go along.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Sure. So as I mentioned, I wear a lot of hats. Obviously, I’m an ordained minister. I am the executive director of a ministry called PREACH, which stands for Presenting Resources Effectively Applying Christlike Humbleness. I am also one of the founding members of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition. And so my work with this subject has been longstanding. But the coalition began essentially with the death of Lamar Johnson, who died in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison. And since that day, we’ve looked at almost 70 people who have died, most of them pretrial in a pretrial facility, which is one of the deadliest in the country.

So in that work, we have obviously paid attention to everything that causes somebody to end up in that facility. And needless to say, because we have an abnormal number of policing agencies here, the Baton Rouge Police Department, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Department, the LSU Police Department, the Southern University Police Department, the BRCC Police Department, and I can go on and on for at least 40 more places, all of those are part of why we have such a huge issue. And so the most recent thing obviously is our finding out about the Black sites. And these are not new. We have known on the streets that they existed for some time.

Mansa Musa:

In that regard, right, because this is how it broke out, it came to my attention when I seen the letter that y’all sent to… You and several other organizations collaborated on this letter. Y’all sent it to now US Attorney Garland, and y’all say, made a renewed request for pattern and practices investigation of Baton Rouge Police Department.

And in this request, y’all documented how y’all made this request to previous AGs. Y’all documented this from 2017 on out. Like you just said a minute ago, you have this myriad of police departments within Baton Rouge, and y’all made this request. Why do we find ourselves in 2023 on the heels of George Floyd that Baton Rouge just seems to be stuck in a time warp? They not moving. Why is Baton Rouge in such a state like this when we seen it, and as you well know and y’all participated in it, this social upheaval-

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Yes, and you’re absolutely right.

Mansa Musa:

… why’re we right here, right now?

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Because in some ways, nothing actually changed.

Mansa Musa:

Yes, ma’am.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

And what I mean by that is that if you remember all the way back to Katrina in New Orleans, that other police departments in fact filed complaints against the Baton Rouge Police Department for many of the behaviors they had, that because it is one of the larger agencies, these bad practices and these bad players moved from agency to agency.

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

And so we had an article not very long ago about the use of these canine units on children. And if you’ve ever seen a police dog and how they are trained, the trainers wear a bunch of gear to protect them.

Mansa Musa:

Right. That’s right. That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

So imagine those same dogs being set on African-American children. And all that ends up happening is essentially a little slap in the wrist. We change some policy, but the players never go away. And so we had the issue of the narcotics scandal, and many of the same players that are part of this Brave Cave situation were players in. And so again, the same sort of what I call moving the chairs on the Titanic, on the deck of the Titanic, no real systemic change. No real holding accountable. And so we are not surprised because we have known whether it was the police chases with cars in the middle of metropolitan areas resulting in people dying-

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… whether it was the systemic attack of children-

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… whether it was the unlawful stops, that this has been ongoing. And so the drip, drip drip has never stopped. But one of the things that has happened, and it’s not just Baton Rouge, but it is so tragic that on the heels of an Alton Sterling, on the heels of a Raheem Howard, which you may remember that case, that was a young man-

Mansa Musa:

Right. That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… that a corrupt officer, yes, pretended that young man had taken a shot at him, and what people don’t remember about that case is had that farce continued, they would have asked for the death penalty on that young man. And so these Brave Caves and these Black sites, which are not just against the law, period, they are against international law-

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… were a result of, quite frankly, decades of policing that gave an okay to these types of systems. And keep in mind some of-

Mansa Musa:

And talk about that.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Yeah.

Mansa Musa:

Go ahead. No.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Well-

Mansa Musa:

Not to cut you off, but talk about… Look, talk, because that’s where I want our audience to get a picture of this here. Because we’re moving to say the highest police officer in the country, the Attorney General, “Can you come down here and intervene in this?” But what about on the local level, like the local government and then on the state level? Because they’re culpable in some shape, form or fashion. The monies for the police comes out of the state coffer or the local coffer. So who in that department is oversight, or where’s the oversight on the state and local level about these? Because like you say, this has been going on for-

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

It has been going on for decades.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. So where’s the disconnect in that department, in that area, Reverend?

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

I think the disconnect becomes with the sheer fact that-

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

The disconnect becomes with the sheer fact that people believe that excessive policing is the same thing as public safety.

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

The other piece is that, and let’s be honest about it. When you target poor areas, when you target primarily African American young men that are in low and no wealth communities, you count on people not necessarily caring. And so one of the things that has been so disheartening, if I can say that, has been the rallying around, as opposed to asking for accountability from either the mayor and our metro council and the people that are in charge of these agencies. There has not been the rallying around you would hope for. And again, what I always say to people is that until it shows up at your door-

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… I like to tell people that in these stories that we’re talking about, these are people who look like my brother, like my cousins, like my sons, like my grandsons, like my great grandsons. And until we can get a community that will show up at the polls first and foremost, because how you get accountability is through a vote. When you allow people to spend, for instance, the bulk of the opera money on increasing police but never holding them accountable. We have one lawsuit after another lawsuit after another lawsuit-

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. I’ve seen it.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… in this parish. And yet the accountability is not there. The atrocities that have been named, which are many and specific, these aren’t antidotes, these are documented atrocities, that they are bigger than what was in Minnesota. They are bigger than what has been seen in some of the largest cities in our country. And yet I suspect it is because we are in a very red state where our votes don’t have the same power, that our request doesn’t land in the same way. But on the ground grassroots, we are demanding accountability every single day. And there are multitudes of groups. So it is not just the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition. It is not just the Promise of Justice. It is not just the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is hundreds and thousands of families that have been victimized, and we know that. And I can’t stress enough, one of the things that is so powerfully inspiring to me is that the two lead attorneys in this case are public defenders. And oftentimes we denigrate public defenders at every level because they’re under-resourced, they’re understaffed.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

But if it was public defenders that in for their private practices stood up and took all the heat and all the abuse that comes with this. And it is people like Professor Armstrong at Loyola University with the Incarceration Transparency project that are bringing lights to this. It is people like Professor Thomas Frampton who has worked on this project long before this became a very public event. So we are grateful for those voices, but until people vote as if this was their child, their family member, it doesn’t change. And the reality is it doesn’t change until that happens.

Mansa Musa:

And you know what, [inaudible 00:11:59], I want to talk about, because this is like outright terror. And we talk about terrorism. When we talk about terrorism and we got all this international outcry about terrorism. So we talk about terrorism. Let’s look at the terrorism that’s being inflicted on the Baton Rouge community because let’s look at the black site. Now I’m looking at some of the information that’s coming out there, how they denigrate women, how they take people to the black site, and pretty much whatever they feel like they want to do at that specific point in time, that’s what they do to them. But my question is, how are they able to get away with it at the level that they’re doing it because they didn’t took the position that we doing this with impunity.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Oh, of course. If you never ever punish the people who did things, and you never ever hold them accountable, whether it’s with a Brady list, whether it is putting them before a judge and holding them to those charges, because even the officer that has been most named in these, his charges are misdemeanors. I mean, it is one of the ironies of this work. And so even qualified immunity and all the other things that go along with protecting people in law enforcement from being held accountable for the decisions they make oftentimes. And again, many of these things are often co-signed by leadership.

And so whether it is, well, we’ll change a policy as opposed to a stand down and saying, “First of all, we’re going to hold the people who did the thing to account. But secondly, we are going to say systemically in all of our settings that we have to retrain our people because this is not the way we roll.” Instead, there’s normally a press conference, there’s a delay, delay, delay. There is subterfuge. In many cases there’s never ever anything other than the always infamous internal investigation. And I like to tell people, I don’t let my children investigate themselves. Why would I let somebody who already has a record, a track record of not ever be an accountant? And then on the parish side, we have lawyers that just write checks. You tell that to the family of that grandmother- [inaudible 00:14:45]

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, the kids that got people that got killed.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Yes.

Mansa Musa:

Or like you say, sexually assaulted.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

And when people hear that, and I say to them, I want you to understand something. After the Alton Sterling protest, there were people who were locked up, who were protesters, and they were locked up sometimes for a day, sometimes for a few hours. Most of those people still can’t talk about what happened to them. [inaudible 00:15:12] abuse. The kind of torture that happened in those settings. And then add to that, that this was parish owned property. Somebody knew that people were being brought in and out of that place.

Mansa Musa:

Oh my God.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

So the ideal that there’s a single person, there is not. There is a chain of custody, of corruption, of complicity, of denial and coverup.

Mansa Musa:

Go ahead.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Yeah. And until we get external eyes on these things. And again, keep in mind, this is Louisiana. So when you step outside of Baton Rouge and you look at which one of our agencies have a myriad of their-

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

You look at which one of our agencies have a myriad of their own problems, then you go to the state police, well, the state police have Ronald Green. We have to have external investigations to even bring a modicum of objectivity to these issues.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. In every regard, y’all reached out to the US Attorney General and we talking about an administration that speaks about and give lip service to social justice and justice reform and administration that always in this space of we on the side of right, we on the side of good versus evil, for lack of better terminology, but why they haven’t came to the aid of Baton Rouge community, and well-documented. This is a culture of police. This is a culture of police misconduct, police abuse, Gestapo type text. Why you think the United States of America, the President of the United States, his representative, why you think they haven’t responded with a sense of urgency that is evident is needed?

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Because I believe that local officials have put their fingers on the scales, quite frankly, and said, oh no, no, nothing to see here. We got this. And nothing could be further from the truth. As I mentioned, we had teenage boys that were sexually assaulted after an unnecessary police chase in the middle of a municipal area, and that didn’t raise the eye. Raheem Howard didn’t send the alarms. Alton Sterling did not send the alarms. A man was shot in cold blood and in a Trader Joe’s parking lot. And the police literally allowed the person who did it to walk away because they felt that the person who was killed, his life did not have value. And over and over and over again. And the answer primarily from local officials, nothing to see. I believe because those officials are almost exclusively Democrats, they are not Republicans.

Mansa Musa:

Oh, we already know that. And the ethnicity is also our color.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

And I think what has to happen, because I tell people all the time because somebody says, you did it didn’t make it suck. We have got to start responding to the fact that these agencies have not earned our trust. We have to investigate. We have to authenticate. We have to implicate the people that we know. There are lawyers from the most high level criminal justice lawyers to public defenders who have been told these stories for years. And yet these two wonderful, young, brilliant attorneys took it into their hearts to take the risk to try to end it. And what we’ve got to do is a community, and I’m talking about the larger community now, is step up and support that investigative work and say to President Biden and say to the Department of Justice that you don’t know what you don’t know yet. And the only way we get there is if you will bring the tools of the United States government to our own localized Abu grave, because that’s what we have here.

Mansa Musa:

Oh, that’s exactly what it is.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

We don’t know how many of these black sites we have. We can only estimate, but we don’t know how many we have.

Mansa Musa:

And then the other part of the realm is this, the black side aside, but when you have a mentality that you can do whatever you want with impunity, you don’t need a black side. You can just like, I pull you over to the side, shoot you, I pull you over to the side, take whatever you got, threaten to kill you and keep it moving.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Yes.

Mansa Musa:

But going forward, what are y’all strategy going forward? If this request and this call for the AGs office to get involved is not going to give you the response that y’all need in order to start getting some control over these Gestapo police. Going forward, what is the strategy of y’all going forward?

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Well, I will say at the grassroots level, we have what I think is a threefold strategy, and it doesn’t change based on the disaster. Can I just say that?

Mansa Musa:

Yes, ma’am.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

You change tactics in a war. You do not change your strategy to win. And our strategy to win is first and foremost, we must amplify and we must get these stories out. And so we are doing that at every single level. We must also encourage our people. And it is frightening because what I tell people is law enforcement knows who they target. We don’t. So the victims are very real and they have a very real reason to be terrified.

But with that being said, we are constantly pushing in the courtroom, we are watching the courts to see what these affidavits of probable cause are looking like. We are pushing in as many legal circles as we can get to get those stories amplified and codified and lawsuits moving forward. And then third, we are asking our people to recognize the totality of these issues and start using their tools for voting. They have to. And while we don’t expect anything to be resolved in a day or two, because unfortunately, whether it was Katrina, whether it was an narcotic scandal, whether it was Raheem Howard, whether it was a gentleman that was killed at an on and on and on.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

What we know is that we have to stay in the fight and we have to believe that we are the solution we are looking for. I’ve got a brand new great-grandson just born a few days ago.

Mansa Musa:

Thank God.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

I wouldn’t want him dead right now. That’s right. And so it’s my job to make Baton Rouge better. And how I do that is I’m going to reach out to every grand mama I know, every great grand mama I know

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

Every young person I know, and I’m going to tell the story on street corners. I’m going to tell the story in the pulpit. I’m going to tell the story in the outhouse. I’m going to tell it wherever we need to tell it, but we are going to stay on point. There is a absolutely beautiful woman here. Her name is Linda Franks. Her 27-year-old son was killed in the jail. They can never be made whole. But what she never ever forgets is she never wants another family to know what she knows.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

I sit in the courtroom almost every single day and I tell people I sit there because God sent me there because I don’t want any other family to know the things that we know.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… there because I don’t want any other family to know the things that we know.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

I do not want to know that a grandmother my age can be stopped, stripped, sexually assaulted by people who are using my tax dollars for the privilege of doing it.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, come on.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

I do not want not another 13-year-old boy, because I got grandsons in that age bracket, I do not want any of them to wonder if they do some minor incident, can they end up in Angola? And so I have to fight. The families here have to fight. We have got to build an army, but we’ve also got to have the same way that people rise up for all the other causes around the world who have got to care about a place that they may have never been. Most people know New Orleans, they know Mardi Gras, they know Jazz Fest. But what they ought to know that Baton Rouge is one of the most over police with one of the highest death tolls in a pretrial facility with things that nobody would want done in their name. And so we need make a clearing call to all citizens-

Mansa Musa:

You had-

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

… that if you [inaudible 00:25:19] injustice, that you have got to speak to your government. And we need people to reach out. We need people to reach out to the Attorney General, to President Biden, to representatives in our legislature. And I understand our legislature right now is very red. That’s not my problem.

Mansa Musa:

That’s right.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

That’s not my problem.

Mansa Musa:

And we’re talking about a human rights issue. We’re not talking about a red state or blue state. We’re talking about a human rights. And we want our ordinance to know that we’re not talking about 1965 Bull Connor. We’re not talking about 1960 Jim Crow. We’re not talking about an era where they bombed the church and killed little Black babies. We’re talking about 2023 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where if you go to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you’re subject to be pulled aside, take to a Black site, possibly sodomize, then release if they feel like they want to release you after they did terrorize you and dare you to say something.

Reverend, you got the last word on this. How can we get in touch with you? Or how can we stay focused, stay abreast of what’s going on, what y’all doing down there and how can our audience support you? We’re employing our audience to really support this effort.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

First of all, thank you for this opportunity. You can reach out to our coalition at www.ebrpprc.org or you can go to our Facebook page by the same acronym, EBRPPRC, and keep up with everything that is going on. We have a running scroll of what is going on in police department. We have a running tab of what is going on in the parish as a whole. You can also go on our Facebook page and we livestream the issues around our police department. We are showing up in meetings. We are showing up at our metro council. We are showing up in the streets and we need people to show up in our government offices because at this point it is truly in the hands of the Attorney General.

And what I believe is that in many towns across the country, not just southern towns, many towns around the country that these same issues are occurring. And they are occurring because in many ways we gave the right to use a gun and use a tool that has become so dangerous to the least of them. And I remind people with all due respect, you may honestly think, “Well, I’m not Black, I’m not poor, I’m not a young male. This isn’t my story.”

Mansa Musa:

Come on.

Reverend Alexis Anderson:

So let me begin with this. Remember I told you that we had almost 70 people who have died in our pretrial facility since 2012. One of those people was a 73-year-old white male, navy veteran. They may not target you, but you might be collateral damage. And I remind people, if you have somebody in your family that struggles with behavioral health, that struggles with addiction, that finds themselves in Baton Rouge on the wrong side of Florida Boulevard, they might just be collateral damage. They might not have been the intended target, but that won’t make them any less sexually assaulted, any less sexually abused, any less beat up or any left left for dead.

Mansa Musa:

There you have it. The Real News, Rattling The Bars. We want our audience to be mindful of this here, that we’re talking about people in the United States of America. We’re not talking about people in another part of the world. We’re talking about people in the United States of America in a community that is being terrorized by the police on the hills of George Floyd. But we had a George Floyd outcry. But as the reverend, remind us that this is post George Floyd and pre George Floyd. This been going on forever. And we ask you to continue to support Rattling The Bars and The Real News and support this issue because it’s only because of people like Reverend Alexis, Alec, that we are getting this information. Thank you very much and we ask that you continue to support us.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work, so please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

A recent investigation into sexual abuse at a women’s federal prison in Dublin, California, brought down several guards and the prison’s former warden, Ray J. Garcia. But a new lawsuit from eight women now alleges that the investigation has not stopped the culture of sexual abuse. Erin Neff of the California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the new lawsuit and the underlying culture of sexual abuse found throughout US prisons.

Studio: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, I’m your host Mansa Musa. Do you know who Joan Little was? Joan Little was charged with the 1974 murder of Clarence Alligood, a White prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina, who attempted to rape Little before she could escape. Little was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Recently, eight female prisoners, dubbed the Rape Club by prisoners and correctional staff alike, found a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prison arguing that sexual abuse and exploitation have not stopped in Dublin FCI, despite the prosecution of former warden and several former officers.

The lawsuit filed in Oakland by attorneys representing prison and the advocacy group California Coalition for Women Prisoners also named the current warden and 12 former and current guards. It alleged the Bureau of Prison and staff at Dublin Facility didn’t do enough to prevent sexual abuse going back to 1990. An Associated Press investigation last year found a culture of abuse and coverups that persisted for years at the prison. What does the #MeToo movement garnering public attention mean in terms of obtaining justice and relief for incarcerated women? Here to talk about the current state of Dublin FCI and related issues is Erin Neff, who is a legal advocate with California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.

Erin Neff:

Thank you, Mansa, good to be here.

Mansa Musa:

Tell our audience a little bit about yourself.

Erin Neff:

My name’s Erin Neff, I work with California Coalition for Women Prisoners. We are a grassroots organization that has been active in the California prisons for the last 28 years. We began at Chowchilla with the CDCR giving support to a woman named Charisse Shumate, who was advocating for the lack of medical care. Since then, she actually did not survive her illness, but she began a movement with us, with people on the outside to create advocacy relationships. We have been working mostly with the CDCR system in the women’s prison system, and we are currently in the last few years working at FCI Dublin.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Now recently, an article came out or information came out about the current state of Dublin Prison in Oakland, California, or in the Bay Area, as it relates to female prisoners being abused, sexually abused. We know that in the federal prison system they have what’s known as PREA, Prison Reform Enforcement Rape Act, I think that’s what it stands for, but the concept of PREA is that anyone under the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prison, anyone under any state or local facility that has an issue about being sexually abused or sexually assaulted by either inmates or staff, they have this mechanism where they can immediately contact someone, had a person allegedly done something to them removed from the institution and have the person that’s making the allegation removed from the institution, and then an investigation going on, and in the interim of that, until that is resolved, these people are never put in the place together.

But now, come to find out that in California, in Dublin in particular, in terms of this particular incident, it’s known that this is far more reaching than just in Dublin Prison, this is a … I think I read somewhere that say it’s the culture of the prison system. Talk about Dublin first, let’s talk about that and what’s going on as far as the lawsuit and how this came about, and if you can give historical context to it, if you have one.

Erin Neff:

Yeah. So PREA is the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and that should generally give a person who is experiencing sexual harassment or abuse a way to confidentially report this abuse, and that appropriate action and investigation will be taken against this person who is doing the abuse. In the case of Dublin, just to give it a historical context, 30 years ago there was a horrific incident of abuse on many people, and there was a big case and a big settlement, and it is heartbreaking to see that 30 years later the same thing is happening. What it exposes is a culture of turning a blind eye to this abuse, there’s cooperation, there’s coverup, there is very difficult to report, let alone confidentially report.

So in recent times, what you’re seeing are people being abused who are undocumented. So first of all, they are being targeted because the staff knows that they are people who are going to be deported. So there is an exposure there. They are threatened that if they say anything they’ll be deported, so these people are people who’ve been here maybe their entire lives, all of their family’s here. So the possibility that they will be deported, and I’m sure this staff lets them think that they have some sort of power as to whether they can stay or go, so there’s that. They’re being retaliated against by putting in isolation, they are getting strip searched, it goes on and on. They’re being deprived of medical care, of mental healthcare. These people have really suffered tremendous abuse, and on top of this abuse they’re being punished again by not getting the medication that they were once taking. That is a very common scenario where their medication that helped them survive in this place of incarceration, they’re not getting the medical care, they’re not getting counseling.

In some cases, reports where they’ll get minimal counseling, but it’s with a man who is part of the staff, they do not feel safe at all. Their commissary is getting limited, harassment in the middle of the night. It goes on and on and on. While this has been exposed, Warden Garcia was found guilty and sentenced to 70 months for his abuse, this ongoing abuse. There was a chaplain, multiple correctional officers, the counselors who were cooperating and giving information to those who were abusing and they’re giving people away to target people who are more vulnerable, those for example who were undocumented. So you’re seeing people transferred out of state if they do report, so they’re getting transferred away from their families and their communities. It goes on and on and on.

Mansa Musa:

We’re not talking about Orange is the New Black, we’re not talking about some HBO theoretical or theatrical rendition of what an ideal prison would look like in America. We’re actually talking about real live human beings. But talk about the lawsuit, so now we’ve reached critical mass to the point where we have a lawsuit, talk about the lawsuit and in talking about the lawsuit, has an injunction been leveled against the institution to cease and desist? How are you able to get coverage for these women? Because as I said earlier, as you outlined, that type of fear permeates the population.

When you’re in the prison, and I’ve been in prison myself, I did 48 years, when you’re in the prison environment and you don’t have no control whatsoever to begin with, but the isolation really makes you feel like you don’t have no rights, and whatever’s going to go on with you that day or that period in time, either you’re going to accept it or you’re going to die trying to defend yourself. But at any rate, you’re going to be subjected to some harsh, cruel, brutal treatment, or mistreatment. Talk about the lawsuit, if an injunction is in effect, and how do these women get coverage where they can get a sense of security?

Erin Neff:

Yeah. So CCWP is the organizational plaintiff for this case against the BOP, along with many individuals. Currently, where it stands is we are waiting for a response from the BOP, it’s currently a bit in what feels like stalling stage on their part, before the trial will be granted. So we are waiting on that. In the meantime, anyone who is part of this lawsuit is also currently incarcerated, some people have been released, but many are still incarcerated at Dublin or transferred. People that I am visiting are talking about being treated as less than human. Last week I sat across from someone who is being denied her medical care, her mental healthcare, she feels completely forgotten, she feels completely hopeless, she’s been subjected to isolation.

This is a real person with children, she speaks to her children and her children are so worried about her because of her feeling of hopelessness. She’s already paying for her debt to society, she’s doing her time, and on top of that she is being treated as less than human. This isn’t a TV show, these are real people. The effect on that individual, the effect on their families, their children, it’s not isolated to that one person. So the hopelessness is very hard to fight against. What we try to do is educate them and inform them of what we are doing on the outside, and that they are not forgotten. They did recently say that they saw us when we filed the lawsuit, and we had a demonstration out in front of the courthouse in Oakland, and that was extremely empowering for them to know that people are active and that we are fighting.

Mansa Musa:

Like you said, this is not no TV show, this is not no, “Wait, go back, act like you’re distraught. Wait, go back, put more emotion.” No, this is real life. Speaking on the outside, and this is just my perspective, and we’re talking about California and we’re talking about the Bay Area, but we’re also talking about a state where if these women were in Paramount Studio, if these women was in some major corporation, if these women was in anywhere in society being subjected to this, the #MeToo movement, the feminist movement, every ambulance-chasing lawyer would be outraged, would be in uproar, would be identifying the warden, the corporate leader and trying to get charges against him, trying to get him locked up, trying to get their money, a lien on their moneys. Do you feel like that it’s a disconnect between these movements and women that are incarcerated? If so, why? If you can talk about that.

Erin Neff:

Well, yes, there’s a huge disconnect, even in the Bay Area people are not aware that this is going on. Unfortunately, what you see in the prisons, everyone knows, is we see Brown people, Black people and poor people, people who are already vulnerable, people who have suffered a tremendous abuse, and a blind eye is turned to these people. This is a capitalist society where we value people who are seemingly of value, and it’s a very, very tragic view even in California, where we are the most liberal state. We see people turning away from this, it’s incredibly painful to see that truth. People don’t want to see that, they don’t want to know that is happening in California.

Yeah. If you see someone on the outside, not to minimize the tragedy of that recent expedition to go see the Titanic, these millionaires, billionaires spent a ton of money and very tragically they died in this accident. You see an outpouring of interest and focus on this. Why are these people who are incarcerated of less human value?

Mansa Musa:

Right. Let’s give a context to people that are incarcerated, because according to the judicial system and according to criminal law, we have what we call crime and punishment. A person’s charged with a crime, the punishment they get is the amount of time they are to serve, not how they serve their time, the amount of time. If I do robbery, if I rob somebody and robbery incurs 10 years, the crime is I committed a robbery, the punishment is the 10 years. The punishment is not, “I’m sentencing you to 10 years to go be raped, sodomized, brutalized, terrorized, and then released.” The punishment is that I’m going to be sent to an institution, the next phase in my sentencing process is and the narrative is that I’ll be sentenced to an institution that’s going to provide me with the means and the mechanism to make the adjustment for my ultimate return to society.

Not where I’ll be subjected to, as a female, more importantly than anything else, be subjected to coming into an institution and the way the prisons are, this is the prison culture in terms of how we look at people that’s incarcerated, we know the institutions they be going to, we know the way the institutions are ran, we know what goes on in these institutions, probably even get there. They say, “Oh, yeah. You’re going to Dublin.” The first thing I know is, “Okay, I know that this is the way …” There’s real abuse like this here, women are being … I’ve got to be on the lookout for this, I’ve got to be on the lookout for that. Automatically what happens is once I get into this environment, I’m automatically on the defense because I recognize that the abuse about the environment proceeded itself.

But talk about the women, and you talked about earlier about how some of the clients that you deal with are really being depressed, and rightly so. But talk about how we’re able to get them to hold on and have faith and be more spirited about the fact that, not only this too going to pass, but the people that’s responsible are going to be held accountable. That’s a fact. We know that based on y’all organization and y’all organizing. But talk about how you are able to get them to hold on and recognize that they’re not wrong for wanting to be human, they’re not wrong for expressing their desire for their humanity. The people that’s wrong is the people that’s abusing them, that’s being given the authority to abuse them.

Erin Neff:

That’s right, yes. It’s an excellent point. The punishment is the time you do, and your time in prison is supposed to include opportunities for rehabilitation. That is another thing that people are allowed to do programming, and this programming can include AA, NA, ways to improve yourself, codependency. This is another form of retaliation in that they deprive you of getting to take those classes and be in groups and in community. So you are being doubly punished. What we try to do, we have in-person visiting where we are trying to meet as many people as possible and let them know that we are here. We have a writing relationship with them, they have access to email where we start being in contact as much as possible. We use this as an opportunity to find out what is going on inside.

Now, no email or phone calls are confidential, so it’s not a guarantee that we can exchange real information. We have also a newsletter called the Fire Inside that CCWP has been publishing for 28 years. We have three issues a year. We’re send those to people in CDCR as well as the FCI Dublin, it’s in Spanish and in English. We solicit information and content and poetry and stories from them to get their stories out, so that they are heard. Last week in my visit I shared the newsletter with many people, and it was great because it’s also in Spanish, and I think it was-

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Erin Neff:

Tragically, they are so moved because they are not used to having people acknowledge their existence and their suffering.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Erin Neff:

So the fact that that is happening and we are giving them voice, we want to know what’s going on, we really want them to know that their stories are incredibly important and they are not suffering alone. Sometimes the only thing that we can do is write a letter and say, “We are here. How is your day going?” That can make a huge difference. But things like the lawsuit is incredibly important. A demonstration in front of the courthouse when the case gets filed, these things are incredibly important because it does get inside.

Mansa Musa:

We want people to recognize that we’re talking about human beings, first of all, we’re talking about people, human beings, but more importantly we’re talking about women. The fact that in this society we deal with chauvinists, sexists, racists, bigoted society, capitalist society, the fact that these things exist seems to overshadow what we’re talking about when we’re talking about people that were sentenced to serve time, the judge did not say when sentencing them, “I’m sentencing you to 10 years in Dublin Federal Correctional Institution to be raped, sodomized and brutalized, dehumanized, and hopefully by the time that you return to society you’ll be a shell of a woman.” No, the judge sentenced these people, sentenced these women to a term of imprisonment and to be rehabilitated.

But Erin, you’ve got the last word on this here, how do we get in touch with you? What do you want our viewers to take away from this here? More importantly, when you go back and talk to the sisters, tell them we send our solidarity out and big hugs.

Erin Neff:

Thank you so much. Thank you also doing the shout-out to women who are just a more vulnerable population. Most of the time women end up in prison, have been system impacted, or they have been abused or trafficked, and end up in these situations where they’re getting abused even more. If you would like to get in touch with California Coalition for Women Prisoners, we have an advocacy program where we join people on the outside who are interested in reaching this population and doing advocacy and learning from the ground up. We are a grassroots organization, you can look at WomenPrisoners.org and send us an email and we will get you connected. We have orientations and trainings, bimonthly meetings to support you in this work. It is a really big community of amazing, amazing organizers and people with tremendous heart to recognize that this problem, while isolated to what’s happening inside of a building, inside of a prison, is impacting all of our lives.

Our communities are being impacted, your neighbor is being impacted. Whether you feel it directly or not, it is. It’s welcome-everyone and please come and check us out. WomenPrisoners.org. The women at the FCI Dublin would love to be in touch with you.

Mansa Musa:

Thank you, Erin. There you have it, the Real News, Rattling the Bars. Are you rattling the bars today? We see an event where the person threw their hat up in the air, and when he threw his hat up in the air it was a moment where everybody came around and supported. This is that kind of time. This is a throw-your-hat-up-in-the-air moment for women incarcerated throughout the United States of America, more so importantly in Dublin. Nobody has the right, nobody has the right, nobody has the right to violate your body. Nobody has the right, because you’re serving a sentence, to come in and say, “Because you’re serving time, or because you’re considered an illegal alien, or because you’re a woman that I have a right to subject you to the most dehumanizing, inhumane treatment, only because I got the authority. I got the right to rape you. I got the right to sodomize you. I got the right to deny you your medication. I got the right to deny you food. I got the right.”

No, you do not have the right. You do not have the right. The right is not given to you. The right that you have is to ensure that I’m in a safe environment, and when you subject women to this cruel and unusual punishment, you’re going to be held accountable. We see this being taken place now by the work that Erin and the sisters and brothers in California are doing. We ask you to continue to support the Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s only from the Real News and Rattling the Bars that you’re going to get this kind of information. You’re not going to get this information on ABC or CBS or NBC News. You’re not going to get this information from someone from the White House getting on a platform saying, “Yes, we find it’s problematic that women are being raped in prison and women are being sodomized in prison, and that we’re paying money for this to make sure that they do it with impunity.”

No, you’ll only get this information from the Real News and Rattling the Bars, and we ask that you look at this report. We ask that you investigate what’s going on in the prison system, and particularly in California. We ask that you take a stand. If you believe that raping people, sodomizing people and abusing people are a good thing to do because they was convicted of a crime, then weigh in on that. But understand this here, if they come for me in the morning, they’ll come for you at night. So you’re not immune to it, you will be subjected to the same harsh treatment when it goes unchecked. Thank you, thank you very much, Erin, and thank you for listening.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither was out on parole when then-Gov. Glendening of Maryland revoked parole for all persons convicted of a life sentence. Since the late 1990s, Gaither has remained incarcerated—despite once having been deemed fit for release. His story is not unusual for those who’ve experienced Maryland’s parole system. Since 2015, barely half of 523 parole-eligible prisoners serving life sentences have had their cases reviewed, and just 76 have been released. A new study from the Justice Policy Institute, Safe at Home: Improving Maryland’s Parole Release Decision-Making, identifies the problems with the system and attempts to map solutions. Tara Gaither, daughter of Thomas Gaither, and Shekhinah Braveheart, of the Justice Policy Institute, join Rattling the Bars to discuss Maryland’s parole system.

Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

Mansa Musa:  Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.

Parole, also known as provisional release or supervised release, is a form of early release of a prisoner where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral codes of conduct, including checking in with their designated parole officer, or else they may be rearrested and return to prison. This is what parole is in theory but parole looks very different in practice, and I’m speaking from experience.

How does a prisoner get parole? What are some of the barriers? Here to talk about the Maryland parole system is Shekhinah Braveheart from the Justice Policy Institute, who recently published a study entitled “Safe at Home: Improving Maryland Parole Release Decision-Making.” The report examines the Maryland parole system and how it decides to release or deny prisoners parole.

Also joining me in the studio is Ms. Tara Gaither, whose father is currently serving a paroleable life sentence and has been in prison for over 55 years. Thank you for joining me. So let’s start with you, Tara. How are you doing today, first of all?

Tara Gaither:  I’m great and happy to be here.

Mansa Musa:  Alright. Thank you for coming here on such short notice.

Tara Gaither:  You’re very welcome.

Mansa Musa:  But let’s talk about your father. Give us a little bit of information about your father before we go into his current state as it relates to parole.

Tara Gaither:  My father is Thomas Gaither. He has been incarcerated since he was 19 years old. At the time he was incarcerated, I was barely one year old. I am now 54 years old, so that’ll tell you how long he’s been incarcerated. While incarcerated he obtained his bachelor’s degree in social sciences from Coppin University. He’s had lots of programs where he’s helped inmates learn how to read. He helped inmates learn how to play musical instruments. He was a part of the Family Day Organization, helping incarcerated people be able to see their children at least once a year, not behind the glass or not with a desktop separating them. So he’s done a lot of good things and I’m really proud of my dad.

Mansa Musa:  Okay. As you should be. Now let’s talk about his progression because you mentioned some of the programmatics that he’s been involved with. And full disclosure, me and Thomas Gaither were locked up together. He’s commonly referred to by us as Tahaka. So me and Tahaka were locked up together and did a significant amount of time together prior to me getting out. But let’s talk about, at one point, was your father in work release and pre-release and working on the street during the course of his incarceration?

Tara Gaither:  Absolutely. My father made it all the way to pre-release, work release. He was at JPRU for a good amount of time but he also rode on a truck, I believe it was through state-use industries, where he delivered furniture to different state office buildings. He did that for a long time.

Mansa Musa:  The reason why he was sent back, I think it was ’97 or ’95, then-governor Glenn Denning had sent everyone back to serving a life sentence after someone had killed –

Tara Gaither:  His girlfriend.

Mansa Musa:  – His girlfriend while he was on pre-release. So he was sent back under Denning. He wasn’t sent back because he had violated any of the conditions of being in a less secure institution.

Tara Gaither:  Oh, no. He was sent back basically due to the fact that someone else did something that they shouldn’t have done.

Mansa Musa:  Right now, what’s his status in terms of parole? Walk us through that, as much as you know about where he’s at and how long he’s been waiting. If you can.

Tara Gaither:  Basically, two years ago he went up in front of the parole board and was told to come back in two years. Then recently, within the last, I’m going to say, six months, he went back up and they did grant him parole but they told him that he needed to have a psychological evaluation. As far as I can tell, it’s been taking about two years, maybe two and a half years to get a psychological evaluation.

Mansa Musa:  Okay. And to Shekhinah Braveheart, you heard Tara outline her father’s situation and it is not uncommon. I went up for parole. I had postponed my parole hearing one day. When they sent everybody back from camp, I had postponed mine all the way up until from ’95 to 2015. When I went up in 2015, the only thing they could say to me at that time was, don’t get any more tickets and the last ticket I had prior to that was in ’97. For the audience, restate what the report is and the name of it.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  Okay. The name of the report is – This is our new report – And it is “Safe at Home: Improving Maryland’s Parole Release Decision-Making” and it’s based on about five years. JPI researched and analyzed about five years’ worth of data about the Maryland Parole Commission. The data were collected, prepared, and shared by DPSCS. For those who don’t know, that’s the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

Also, in developing the recommendations to address the findings, and the findings were not good by the way, we reviewed the latest research, we examined best parole practices in other states, and we talked to a lot of people like the young lady, the family members, individuals who have experienced Maryland parole firsthand, as well as attorneys who assist individuals applying for parole. So no, her story is not surprising and it is sadly common. It is pretty much the norm.

In theory, parole should function as a system of incentives to help incarcerated people prepare for returning to their families, and returning to the community, and it should be a key component to successful reentry. But the study finds that the system conditions people for hopelessness, for despair. People look to the system for guidance in preparing for parole and what they find is more confusion and these arbitrary decisions. She described all the things that her father accomplished. So instead of recognizing how people have changed – They earned a diploma, a degree, did programming, contributed to the wellbeing of all the people around them, all these positive things – A person will get to a parole hearing and all the commissioners want to focus on is the original offense.

Mansa Musa:  Right, and let me –

Shekhinah Braveheart:  Which, in some cases, was decades old or an out-of-date risk assessment. So instead of parole being the release mechanism that it’s meant to be, it actually clogs the exit and it’s a driver of mass incarceration, as opposed to a mechanism for release.

Mansa Musa:  – Now, you said that y’all have been doing this study for five years. Okay, so let’s look at what –

Shekhinah Braveheart:  No, it was based on five years worth of information.

Mansa Musa:  – Right, five years worth of information. But okay, let’s look at what has taken place once the study came out and what should have remedied this problem in and of itself. Because prior to a couple of years ago, we had successfully, under Walter Lomax’s advocacy, got parole taken out of the hands of the governor.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  That’s correct.

Mansa Musa:  Ultimately, at some juncture such as in your father’s case, whenever they were recommended for parole, the recommendation would have to be if the parole board said yes, then it would have to go to the governor, and the governor would normally sit on it for like two or three years. Braveheart, let’s examine the study and juxtapose it against Thomas Gaither’s case. Because as his daughter said, he is waiting to go to Patuxent Institute for a psychological evaluation.

Now, in y’all study, how does this play out in terms of when you look at what they have been accomplishing since they’ve been locked up? How does this play out in that regard? Does this take precedence over all the accomplishments that the individuals had, or is this something that’s utilized to validate why they should or shouldn’t get parole?

Shekhinah Braveheart:  Okay. By law, the MPC decisions are rendered based on specific criteria. This required criteria. So it’s a number of things. It’s like you said, the risk assessment, drug or alcohol evaluation, victim impact, compliance with a case plan, any progress they made while incarcerated, meeting those educational benchmarks, physical, mental, and moral qualifications. There’s a whole list of things that are in the law.

The problem is, that the law does not specify how MPC should weigh these factors. Keep in mind that most commissioners are former law enforcement officers, so it’s no surprise when they use their discretion on how to consider these factors, they’re going weigh more on the offense than anything, and there’s nothing in the law saying that they can’t do that. So, unfortunately, that is what’s happening.

I want to point this out too, now that you mentioned that her father has been incarcerated for a really long time, and you were incarcerated for a long time. Although that law was passed in 2021 that eliminated the need for the governor’s approval for paroling people with life sentences, many people who were approved by parole are still incarcerated due to the objections of past governors. So of 215 people with life sentences the MPC did consider for parole since 2015. And that’s out of 523 total parole-eligible lifers. Only 76 were granted parole. Then when you think about that 76, then there’s that risk assessment problem, where people are waiting 2-3 years because there’s only one or two clinicians for the entire state of Maryland, so it causes severe delays.

Mansa Musa:  Tara, me and you were speaking off camera. You spoke about that, as far as this evaluation. Talk about what you later became aware of about the person who was down there doing the evaluation.

Tara Gaither:  There was a person who was doing the evaluations. They actually saw my father twice and declined my father twice but then they ended up being dismissed by the state of Maryland because they found out that he was incompetent.

Mansa Musa:  Right. And that goes back to your point, Braveheart, that most of the people involved in this process have a stake in maintaining the status quo. I want to highlight something that you mentioned earlier about the criteria. Now, at one point when we went up for parole when they gave you a decision, your decision was pretty much three lines. Denied parole, come back, get job training.

And at one junction it was a case of Terrence Johnson and Terrence Johnson had 25 years. He had a celebrity case out of Prince George’s County. They were keeping him locked up no matter what he did. But in the end, when his attorneys filed habeas corpus to have him released, as opposed to rule on the habeas corpus, they released him. What came out of that was a sheet that they used for criteria and this is the sheet that they use for when you go up for parole, what they give you.

Going back to your point, Braveheart, this sheet gives you everything: You should do a hearing recommendation, special conditions after release, sex offender treatment, or administrative refuse. But in every category, it gives a reason why to either give you parole or deny your parole. And that came out of the code of Maryland regulations where the parole regulations are stating that you should be given a hearing and then what the hearing should consist of.

I noticed that y’all were showing that in the report how a lot of times the hearings that were being given, all the mechanisms that are supposed to go into account to help a person get parole, y’all had seen where in most cases, it was a lot of arbitrary and capricious factors would be taken into account. Can you speak on those things?

Shekhinah Braveheart:  Yes. There were a number of problems. People are not really being adequately prepared because they don’t receive the proper notifications, in cases where they do receive notifications, there’s still no opportunity to prepare outside of a handful of volunteer organizations that go inside prisons that help people prepare for that interview process.

Commissioners the parole hearing officers, come in with a file, and I’m sure you’re familiar with that. They have everything in front of them and they have some things in front of them sometimes that people who are candidates for parole don’t even know about. They can throw stuff at people. The attorneys who have helped them, the individual who is applying for parole, have no way to refute anything that’s erroneous, or at least be prepared to answer those questions because it’s not in the file. It’s not visible to the actual potential parolee or the attorney. That’s deeply problematic. So there’s that preparation issue.

Even back to this risk assessment, their concerns about amplifying racial and ethnic disparities because it’s based on fixed benchmarks like was there a parental presence in your household growing up? How old were they when they got their first criminal offense? Things that have nothing to do with the present and things that people cannot change. You can’t change the way you were brought up. You can’t change what happened when you were 14 years old and you stole that gum out of the store and got a record. You can’t do anything about that. The only thing you could do is deal with the present and be the best person you can now.

That’s why in our best practice recommendations, one of the first things that we talk about is the decision should be based solely on objective factors related to the person’s current state and their future risk to the community. It shouldn’t be about anything else.

Tara Gaither:  That’s correct. Actually, in my father’s last risk assessment, the person concentrated on a suspension from school when he was 12 years old.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  That’s outrageous.

Tara Gaither:  An interaction between him and the school principal.

Mansa Musa:  And not only is it outrageous but this is another part that they don’t do right. Now we have this study that’s come out of the Supreme Court about the state of mind of a youth. They’re already saying that a young person doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand decision-making at a certain age. As a result of that, the Supreme Court then came out and said that because the person doesn’t have that informed intent, they have to take that into account when they are sentencing them or when they are trying them.

Now we have an administrative system that says that as opposed to recognizing that Thomas Gaither, Tahaka, has a BA degree and graduated from college, worked on the street – Mind you, for a number of years – Was in society, working on the street, paying taxes, albeit conditional. As opposed to recognizing that Thomas Gaither, Tahaka, has been incarcerated for 55 years, that he’s an accomplished musician, can write, read music, conduct, and all that. As opposed to recognizing any of that, we’re going to say that at the age of 12, he did something that a child did, therefore we’re going to take that and let that supersede these factors. That was going to make the informed decision as far as the criteria are concerned. Is he a safe risk to society? Yes, because he been working in society. Does he have a social network? Yes, he has a family. Is he qualified to return to society? Yes.

Braveheart talk about your recommendations. Talk about some of the recommendations that address some of these draconian dispositions of the Maryland Parole Commission.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  Yes. Okay. I’m going to go through some of these best practice recommendations, but first I want to highlight one of the things you talked about that we also found in the report. That is that those individuals who served the most time, they serve more of their sentence than most people and they are over the age of 60. And the research says that crime is a young person’s endeavor. At the age of 40, the likelihood of re-offending drops. 50, it drops. 60 is almost at 0%. No one would re-offend. So her father wouldn’t be a risk to society, to public safety.

But according to our report, those are the people who are denied the most; They have a 28% grant rate which is lower than young adults at 37%, middle-aged at 31-35 years old, that’s 43%, and once you get older it drops. That is the opposite of what the research tells us. The research tells us that those are the people that should be released and those are exactly the people that MPC does not release.

So among our best practice recommendations are, like I mentioned, making parole decisions based solely on objective factors, using a race-neutral structured decision-making tool that incorporates a validated risk needs assessment tool, adopting more transparent parole procedures, and documenting the reasons for denial. And they should be appealable. Really appealable. Now, they’ll claim that it’s appealable but it really is not.

And make it transparent. In that form that you showed, they write one sentence at the bottom of why they deny but it really doesn’t give a legitimate, clear reason why and something to back it up. Also, establishing inclusive standards for parole board member eligibility. As I said, currently most commissioners are former law enforcement or prosecutors.

Mansa Musa:  And appointees.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  And they’re appointed by the governor and supported by the legislature as well.

Mansa Musa:  And Tara, answer this question. First of all, how’s your father’s health?

Tara Gaither:  My father had… He’s over 70 years old.

Mansa Musa:  Goodness, yeah.

Tara Gaither:  He’s got high blood pressure and he’s had a couple of surgeries since he’s been incarcerated. He has the health of a –

Mansa Musa:  Of a 70-year-old man that’s been locked up 50-some odd years.

Tara Gaither:  – That’s right. He’s sharp as a tack.

Mansa Musa:  Oh, we already know that.

Tara Gaither:  Sharp as a tack. He loves his family and takes care of his family.

Mansa Musa:  Let me ask you this, because you spoke on your age when he was locked up, and this is a part that the parole board doesn’t ever take into account: What role did your father play in your life since he’d been incarcerated?

Tara Gaither:  My relationship with my father is solely… I give everything to my grandmother because at the time, if I didn’t have my grandmother willing to come pick me up every weekend and take me to the Maryland State Penitentiary to see my father, then I would not have been blessed as I am to know my father. My father and I have never not had a relationship.

But that is not common. That is not common. The one thing that the state of Maryland does not take into consideration when they do this over-incarceration is that a lot of these men have children. Then what happens to the children? The children end up incarcerated, too. If you are not going to examine the full picture, then you’re doing an injustice to the public. I don’t know what type of person I would have turned out to be, I would not be the successful person that I am without the input of my father, without the family days, without the functions, and without the visits on Sundays.

But there are a lot of people that are in the same situation that I am that were not lucky enough. And my dad has lost his mother. My grandmother is gone. But thank God for my grandmother. There are so many other people out here, women my age, that are incarcerated right now because their mother was incarcerated or their father was incarcerated and they did not have the opportunity to have that relationship. I thank God every day for my grandmother and for the fact that my mother wasn’t the type of mother who said you ain’t going to see him, he ain’t no good, blah, blah, blah. You know what I’m saying?

Mansa Musa:  Let me ask you to say – And I’m going to get back to you, Braveheart – I know you would be biased otherwise but do you feel as though, based on what your father has been doing since he’d been incarcerated and based on the person that you know him to be, your father would be a good candidate to be released from prison and be an asset to society, as opposed to a detriment?

Tara Gaither:  My father should have been released a long time ago. Even as an old man, he still has a lot to contribute. I have two grandsons who would love to have their grandfather be a part of their life. Even at 70 years old, he’s lived a lot longer than he has left, but we still want him home. We have a whole community. My father has friends that he left on the street who are looking forward to him coming home. My father has lost a lot of friends. He has lost a lot of relatives, brothers, and his mother.

Mansa Musa:  I know.

Tara Gaither:  When you are a person that is incarcerated, that takes a lot out of you. At the same time, he has strong family values, and we are right there with him, and we are going to fight. I’m not going to allow my father to die in prison.

Mansa Musa:  We know that.

Tara Gaither:  So with whatever I have to do, we have to fight. Somebody needs to take a bigger look at the full picture and know that when you incarcerate one person, let them be punished and let them do their time, and then let them come home because you’ve incarcerated a whole family. I have two brothers. I have one brother who unfortunately has been incarcerated and I know that if my father had been there a little bit sooner, things would be a whole lot different. I was a teenage mother. That wouldn’t have ever happened if my dad had been there.

Mansa Musa:  Braveheart, when you looked at this study, did any of these social factors come into play that she outlined? Because this should be the genesis of everything.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  Absolutely.

Mansa Musa:  Was any of these things coming into play? They got the relationship with the community, and they got a list of criteria, but based on what Tara was saying, it’s self-evident that these things are not taken into account. Because right now Thomas Gaither is waiting on the part of the parole system that sends them somewhere to be evaluated, and that’s been going on forever. Then to have to wait another amount of time for that decision to come back before they say, oh yeah, instead of going straight home, go over here in this program and progress your way out. Were any of these things from y’all study, did y’all see any of these things taken into account prior to y’all highlighting the fact that they weren’t being looked at?

Shekhinah Braveheart:  Yes, absolutely. Both things. We recognize that the destabilization of our communities, our Black communities, is due to mass incarceration. And the same public officials who would talk about all this “get tough on crime.” We only have a choice between mass incarceration and high crime where parole offers alternatives that they haven’t even considered.

They should prioritize comprehensive parole reform to help people who’ve paid their debt to society return home. They’re fully functioning members of society, they lead more effective lives. As she said, her father is a positive role model. I know, Mansa Musa, I know a lot of people. You probably know a lot of people. It increases public safety. We have higher levels of public safety because those same people come home as returning citizens and they dedicate their lives to being mentors and violence interrupters. So we need them.

So Tara, yes, you need your father but we need your father. Our communities need your father. And that’s not what these elected officials really think about when they say “tough on crime.” More than 95% of people who go to prison are going to return to the community, so we should be doing everything we can to help them succeed when they come home and not unnecessarily prolong the process because it’s not healthy for us and it’s at a great personal expense to the individual, to their families, and to taxpayers. It’s expensive, it’s a waste of money, and it’s to no public safety benefit whatsoever.

Before I forget, Tara, I want to say that there’s a medical geriatric parole bill for 2024. It’s called Compassionate Release, and that covers geriatric parole and medical parole, under the geriatric provision, people over 60 years of age would have a parole hearing automatically at 60, and it would be every three years. But it looks really promising this year.

Then of course there is the medical component, which thank God your father doesn’t need, but hence fourth, if this bill passes in 2024 and goes into effect in October of 2024, people like your dad won’t be sitting there languishing with nonsense parole decisions like come back in four years, five years, two years, whatever, or wait for this risk assessment. It’s based on their age and if they have served at least, I’m not sure if it’s 20 or 15 years inside.

It’s long overdue. The number of parole-eligible people over 60 has tripled since 2015. Tripled. So they make up 8% of the newly parole-eligible population.

Mansa Musa:  Tara, as we close out, what do you want to tell us about your father? Like I said, full disclosure, me and your father served time together. Me and your father were involved with a lot of activity together. So to say I’m biased, yes I am, in regard to not only him but the men that I served time with and the women that I knew that are still incarcerated. But what do you want people to know about your father? How they can support your father’s effort to expedite his release so he can come home with his family and give you a big hug?

Tara Gaither:  I want everybody to know, my dad, he’s a good person. He’s a good man. He’s strong, he’s capable. He can do a whole lot more out here than he can in there. He’s got a lot of support and he’s not a person that anybody would ever have to worry about re-offending or doing anything like that.

The thing is that there’s a big picture and I hope everybody will, especially people in the government, take time to look at the big picture because a lot of times people wonder what’s going on in the street. Why are all these kids in trouble? Why are they doing that, doing this? Find out how the percentage of those children, how many of their fathers are incarcerated, and how many of their mothers are incarcerated. That is a big part of the picture. If my dad couldn’t take care of me, I had somebody that was out there that could but all kids don’t.

We should concentrate on letting people out that need to come out. Some people maybe do need to be there but the big picture is that when you’re incarcerating this one person and you’re keeping them for 55 years and they have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and people out here that love them, it is a waste of money and it’s a waste of time. Ensure that it is time to think about what we’re doing as a whole and not only think halfway.

Mansa Musa:  Okay. And Braveheart, what do you have to say? You’ve got the last word.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  I’ll concur with her that it is a waste of time, it’s a waste of money, but most of all it’s a tragic waste of human capital, valuable lives that contribute greatly to society. People who have wisened over time who could contribute so much sitting there. I would encourage anybody who is listening to this, or watching this, to connect with either a grassroots advocacy organization or even a larger national advocacy organization like the Justice Policy Institute. Come to Annapolis and tell your stories before these people who are making the laws and who may not have the firsthand experience that you have. They don’t know.

And it’s one thing for me to go there, for my colleagues to go there with all of our numbers and all of our statistics, but it’s more impactful when you come and you marry that with the human experience, that this is what it looks like when you don’t pass these laws. This is how it affects a human being. This is how it affects a family. This is how it affects an entire community, and this is how it affects society at large. No one is immune. No one is unaffected by this.

Mansa Musa:  There you go.

Shekhinah Braveheart:  So please come and encourage. JusticePolicy.org.

Mansa Musa:  There you have it, the real news. Y’all rattled them bars today. Now, we want to focus on what Tara said. We want to focus on the big picture. What is the big picture? We oftentimes hear about a lot of crime and a lot of things going on but what is the big picture?

This is the big picture. When the Unger case came out and I was released, this was the big picture. Prior to them releasing us, they said 250 murderers and rapists were going to have a plague on society. Since we’ve been released, only two people have returned to prison that came out with that Unger class. Two people. What is the big picture? The big picture is that Thomas Gaither, Tahaka, was working in society. Why is that not being taken into account if we’re looking at the big picture? If we look at the big picture, we have a system that’s broken.

Now, the study Justice Policy Institute showed us that it is safer at home, that the decision-making of the parole system is draconian and outdated, and we have to look at the big picture. What is the big picture? The big picture is Tara Gaither sitting here, asking us to support her father. Not only that but to support all men and women that are incarcerated.

And we ask you, as we close out, to continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News because it’s only from Rattling the Bars and The Real News that you’re going to get a real conversation, a report, and then humanize the report by having a person whose family member is actually suffering as a result of the draconian parole policies that exist. If not for the Justice Policy Institute, we would not know these things. But for Tara, we would not really be able to understand them in the human context. Thank y’all, and continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News.

This post was originally published on The Real News Network.