On November 30, I had the chance to tour the abandoned prison, now a historic site in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, in the company of people I'm happy to claim as kin: photographer Sarah Bloom and artists Rosalind Bloom and Peter Lamb. 

When Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829, prisoners were to be kept in total isolation. This was seen as a humane alternative to flogging and other physical punishment. The reformers, mostly Quaker, who created the penitentiary thought that time in solitude would give miscreants the opportunity to reflect on their lives and rediscover their inner light. 

ESP gave up the use of solitary confinement in 1913, but today in the US, more than
20,000 prisoners are held in isolation. The aim is no longer rehabilitation. It is purely punitive. Even back in the 19th century, when most visitors to the dark, dank, stone penitentiary in Philadelphia were impressed by the innovation, Charles Dickens thought the effects of isolation were "immeasurably worse than any torture of the body."

I'll write more about solitary soon.

The prison closed in 1971. By then it harbored a colony of stray cats, progeny perhaps of some of the pets prisoners were eventually allowed to keep. For 28 years, a local man named Dan McCloud visited the prison three times a week to feed them. (I am a cat lover, but I have to think about the prisoners who never got visits.) Artist Linda Brenner created more than three dozen cat sculptures, "Ghost Cats," that can now be found
throughout the building. 

When will America's SHU facilities and Supermax and Communication Management Units be historical artifacts? Who will remember the ghosts of the men and women who suffered there? 
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I'm hunkered down, hiding out in my virtual writers retreat to work on fiction for the first time in a long time. But if any social action would lure me out, it would be in support of the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay, the worst California prison in existence -- and maybe ever. Duc almost got sent here. A mistake, but once there, who knows if he could have gotten out--and I'll bet other men who pose no danger are also there by mistake. Even the most violent criminals must not be tortured and treated in ways that would get you arrested if you did it to a dog or cat. So in case anyone happens upon this blog, I want to spread the word however I can. Here's the summary from the Youth Justice Coalition:

20 days ago, people incarcerated within the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of
California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, declared the start of a hunger strike to
force the California Department of Corrections (CDCR) to publicly recognize
years of torture and abuse.  Since then, at least 6,000 prisoners in SHUs
and from the general populations in 13 prisons have gone on hunger strike. The
hunger strike has been organized by prisoners in an inspiring show of unity
across prison-manufactured racial and geographical lines.  The changes the
strikers are demanding are standard procedures in other Supermax prisons
(including federal prisons in Florence, Colorado, and Ohio), supporting the
strikers’ position that CDCR’s claim of such demands being a threat to safety
and security are exaggerations.  It has been reported that the health of
some strikers is rapidly deteriorating, but the CDCR has refused to negotiate
with the strikers.  

For too long, our loved ones have returned home from state prison as broken men and
women, permanently impacting the health and progress of our families and
communities. When we tolerate the inhuman treatment of our fathers, mothers,
uncles, aunts, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters inside state prisons,
then we allow for that same treatment to spread unchecked to our schools and
communities.  In light of realignment conversations, we push “Welcome Home
LA”, a plan that provides an alternate vision for a humane treatment for all
people in prisons and returning to community.  As the County debates
between the Sheriff’s Department and the Probation Department, the YJC proposes
that community who have already been taking care of people coming home in a
dignified way should continue to do it.   

The United Nations and international justice courts have ruled that long-term isolation and sensory deprivation are torture, yet many people are subjected to it in
California prisons. People in the SHU can be held for indefinite periods for
alleged “gang” affiliation, which is arbitrarily determined by the guards with
no appeal process. In a statement of support, people held in the SHU at
California’s Corcoran State Prison wrote:  "What is of note here and
something that should concern all U.S. citizens, is the increasing use of
behavioral control - torture units and human experimental techniques - against
prisoners, not only in California but across the nation. Indefinite confinement,
sensory deprivation, withholding food, constant illumination and use of
unsubstantiated lies from informants are the psychological billy clubs being
used in these torture units. The purpose of this ‘treatment’ is to stop
prisoners from standing in opposition to inhumane prison conditions and prevent
them from exercising their basic human rights.”

The strikers outlined five core demands to end the inhumane conditions and
long-term isolation: 

1. End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse – This includes the administration’s
abusive, pre-textual use of “safety and concern” to justify what are unnecessary
punitive acts. This policy has been applied in the context of justifying
indefinite SHU status, and progressively restricting our programming and
privileges.

2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria
-    Perceived gang membership is one of the leading reasons for placement in solitary confinement.
•    The practice of  “debriefing,” or offering up information about fellow prisoners particularly regarding gang status, is often demanded in return for better food or release
from the SHU. Debriefing puts the safety of prisoners and their families at risk, because they are then viewed as “snitches.”
•    The validation procedure used by the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) employs such criteria as tattoos, readings materials, and
associations with other prisoners (which can amount to as little as greeting) to
identify gang members.
•    Many prisoners report that they are validated as gang members with evidence that is clearly false or using procedures that do not follow the Castillo v. Alameida settlement which restricted the use of photographs to prove association.

3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006
Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement – CDCR shall
implement the findings and recommendations of the US commission on safety and
abuse in America’s prisons final 2006 report regarding CDCR SHU facilities as
follows:
•    End Conditions of Isolation (p. 14) Ensure that prisoners in SHU and Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) have regular meaningful contact and freedom from extreme physical deprivations that are known to cause lasting harm. (pp. 52-57)
•    Make Segregation a Last Resort (p. 14). Create a more productive form of confinement in the areas of allowing  inmates in SHU and Ad-Seg [Administrative Segregation] the opportunity to engage in meaningful self-help treatment, work, education, religious, and other productive activities relating to having a sense of being a part of the community.
•    End Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Release inmates to general prison population who have been warehoused indefinitely in SHU for the last 10 to 40 years (and counting).
•    Provide SHU Inmates Immediate Meaningful Access to: i) adequate natural sunlight ii)  quality health care and treatment, including the mandate of transferring all
PBSP- SHU inmates with chronic health care problems to the New Folsom Medical
SHU facility.

4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food – cease the practice of denying adequate food,
provide a wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals, and allow
inmates to purchase additional vitamin supplements.
•    PBSP staff must cease their use of food as a tool to punish SHU inmates.
•    Provide a sergeant/lieutenant to independently observe the serving of each meal, and ensure each tray has the complete issue of food on it.
•    Feed the inmates whose job it is to serve SHU meals with meals that are separate from the pans of food sent from kitchen for  SHU meals.

5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates.  Examples include:
    Expand visiting regarding amount of time and adding one day per week.
•     Allow one photo per year and a weekly phone call.
•    Allow  Two (2) annual packages per year. A 30 lb. package based on “item” weight and  not packaging and box weight.
•    Expand canteen and package items allowed. Allow us to have the items in their original packaging [the cost for cosmetics, stationary, envelopes, should not count towards the max draw limit]
•    Allow TV/Radio combinations, or TV and small battery operated radio, along with more TV channels.

 Allow Hobby Craft Items – art paper, colored pens, small pieces of colored
pencils, watercolors, chalk, etc.
•    Allow sweat suits, watch caps, and wall calendars.
•    Install pull-up/dip bars  on SHU yards.
•    Allow correspondence courses that require proctored exams.






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Post Title. 03/11/2011
 
My latest in LA Progressive:

March 11, 2011 By Diane Lefer

He was a 16-year-old kid when he was brought to the Chicago police station on suspicion of arson murder. He was attached to a ring in the wall, beaten, had his testicles squeezed until he felt as though his head would pop right off his body. The cops told him the torture would stop as soon as he confessed to the Cook County Assistant DA. He refused. He was not allowed to talk to his mother. He was not allowed a lawyer. The torture started again. He confessed.

Mark Clements was labeled a mass murderer. He was labeled mentally retarded. He is one of hundreds of men of color tortured–some with metal rods shoved up their rectums–by Chicago police detectives under the command of Jon Burge. Though Burge has now been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, many of the tortured men remain locked up. Clements lost 28 years of his life until he was finally exonerated. Wednesday evening, speaking in the auditorium of the Leavey Library at the University of Southern California–obviously intelligent and in no way developmentally disabled–he said, “If I’d been two years older, they would’ve thrown me on a gurney.” What would have happened then to his accusations of torture? “A dead man can’t talk.” He recalled, “You sit in prison and you’re voiceless because you’ve been labeled as something that you’re not.”

Voiceless no more, Clements came to Los Angeles along with Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News and author of Prison Profiteers, and Cameron Sturdevant, a Bay Area activist with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty as part of that organization’s national speaking tour.

The event– Lethal Injustice: Standing Against the Death Penalty and Harsh Punishment — was moderated by local activist Danielle Heck and sponsored by the USC-campus club of the International Socialist Organization — which made it very fitting that Wright described “capital punishment” as “those without the capital get the punishment.” Or as he put it, the death penalty means “the State can kill you as long as they give you a trial. The State doesn’t say your lawyer has to be awake.”

Wednesday, March 9th was a fitting date–one celebrated by the handful of students and about 50 community members in attendance — because earlier that day, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois following years of evidence of wrongful convictions. (California, by contrast, today has more people on death row than any other state and Los Angeles County under D.A. Steve Cooley is, according to Sturdevant, the “death penalty capital.”)

Wright sees a direct connection between the death penalty and extreme sentencing. “Once you have the death penalty on the table, everything else pales in comparison,” he said and so people don’t recognize the injustice of harsh sentences. “In Russia, the maximum sentence is 15 years–left over from Stalin’s time. In China, it’s 20 years maximum,” while in California people are serving life sentences for stealing pizza or videos. In the case I’ve written about before, there’s my friend Duc, serving life for a teenage incident in which not a single person was hurt or injured in any way.

According to Sturdevant, thanks to the Three Strikes law, California prisons now house 40,000 people serving indeterminate sentences that can keep them inside for the rest of their lives. (I do give Cooley credit for saying Three Strikes needs to be reformed.)

Decrying the “two-tiered system of justice,” Wright pointed out that while former Alabama governor Don Siegelman has spent millions to defend himself against corruption charges, while he was in office, he put a $400 cap on compensation for court-appointed attorneys representing indigent defendants facing the death penalty. Is it any wonder poor people are inadequately represented in court while being overrepresented in prison and on death row?

Our prison system, said Wright, “is a tool of class war.” He thinks some people do belong in prison: “They’re sitting in government offices and they’re sitting in corporate suites.” As for the death penalty, its purpose in his opinion is ideological. He reminded the audience that Bradley Manning now faces a possible death sentence while not a single soldier who committed any of the war crimes revealed by the documents Manning leaked has been charged with a crime.

Sturdevant spoke of his failed efforts to stop the 1996 execution of William Bonin, the notorious “Freeway Killer” who was convicted of the rapes and murders of 14 young men and boys. The crimes were horrific, but Bonin had been victimized by sexual abuse as a child. He was hospitalized in a mental hospital after two tours of active duty in Vietnam but under the Reagan administration policy of deinstitutionalization, Bonin ended up, still mentally ill, on the street. “The State of California was there to kill him,” Sturdevant concluded, “but not to provide any help.”

Indeed, our prisons have become the very expensive and inhuman substitute for affordable housing, adequate public education, living-wage employment, mental health services, and welfare. And, said Clements, “We’re sitting here listening to a government that lies to us saying ‘We ain’t got no money.’”

Wright cited estimates that from 40-80% of inmates are illiterate or functionally illiterate, but educational programs have been cut. Most of these prisoners will be released at some point and what sort of livelihood are they likely to find? Clements was taking college courses while in prison until, under the Clinton administration, the grants that made this possible were eliminated nationwide. Today, said Wright, Texas is the only state with funding so that prisoners can obtain higher education. Here in California, I’ll never forget the struggle Duc went through in prison as state authorities again and again blocked his attempts to finish high school.

“We’ve had a criminal justice solution to social ills,” according to Wright who said that Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor and Democratic icon, took federal funds intended for low-income housing and used the money to build 50,000 prison cells instead.

The speakers stressed that public safety is better served by education, treatment, and rehabilitation rather than prolonged incarceration and State-sanctioned murder.

“We better wake up because we have failed,” said Clements. “Where is the love?” He–whose own youth was spent in a cage–today works with youth, the kids who are labeled “out of control” and he warns we have to listen to young people. “A lot of their anger is directed because they have no one to talk to. You got to pat them along to pull them out of the mud.”

“We welcome the hard questions,” said Sturdevant when an audience member raised the question of victims’ families and said if he’d lost a family member to murder, he wouldn’t want to see the killer walking down the street.

“I’m sorry if my presence here offends you,” said Wright who served 17 years for murder. “Unlike Mark,” he acknowledged, “I did it.”

But if Paul Wright is a danger today, I believe the only threat he poses is to the continuing injustice of the system.



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Picture
I went to prison last night thanks to the LAPD. That is, the Los Angeles Poverty Department, the activist theatre company that John Malpede runs with the residents of Skid Row. The Box Gallery on Chung King Road was transformed into a prison space much like where Duc Ta now lives -- bunk beds completely filling the place with only narrow passage between rows. Before the performance started, with everyone talking, I understood what Duc meant when he said the place is as noisy as Wall Street. The actors gave us a taste of prison life in more ways than one, even preparing in front of us a communal prison meal. Again, something I'd heard about but never seen. Men and woman dumping ramen noodles into a big plastic bag, adding whatever they had -- packets of tuna, crumbled Doritos, canned sausage, mayo, jalapenos, tortilla strips, whole raw garlic cloves. Then add hot water. Mix and massage the mess. It looked awful. Someone handed me a bowl and to be a good sport, I ate it. Man, it actually tasted good!  The LAPD is doing more performances along with education about the prison system, overcrowding, mental health issues, and lack of reentry services. They'll be taken the performance and installation "State of Incarceration" to Chuco's Justice Center and Highways Performance Space and then on tour to other parts of the US. For some reason, I can't create a link so here's their website: http://lapovertydept.org/
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I was lucky enough to see a rough cut of City Island last year and can't wait to be in the audience this weekend. (in LA - Landmark Theater at Westside Pavilion).

Andy Garcia plays a prison guard with two secrets -- but this is not the kind of disturbing prison and parole story you're used to reading on this blog. Quite the opposite!

The film is written and directed by Raymond De Felitta and also stars Julianna Margulies, Steven Strait, Alan Arkin, and Emily Mortimer. 

Highly recommended!
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