The State of the American Prison System

The Prison Issue

The State of the American Prison System • A Prison History Timeline • Primary Document - Prison Protest and the presence of the KKK in Prisons • Interview with Executive Director of CURB, Amber-Rose Howard • Primary Document - Assembly Bill No.32 (California ban of private prisons) • The Role of a District Attorney and the New Progressive Wave • A Deep Dive - Prison Abolition and Interview with Prison Abolitionist, Stephanie Keene

Post Revolution

THE NORTH

1780s–1820s

1861

1789

Colonial America 1760s–1770s Like the English criminal system, the colonies had two main prison facilities. Jails, which held criminals waiting for their trials, and workhouses which were used to suppress vagrants and paupers.

The aim of the prison system was to frighten people into lawful behavior. With public punishments, such as hanging and flogging, it became a communal activity. Therefore, people only spent a short time in jail waiting for trial, but were rarely incarcerated.

1770s With the urbanization of colonial America the conviction rate rose rapidly, cementing the notion of a criminal class. In cities like Philadelphia, taverns were seen as the root of vice because of the many races and lower-class individuals who congregated there. The belief that the poor and foreigners were morally corrupt began to spread throughout the colonies.

American Prison

History

By this time most of the States in the North had adopted some variation of the Auburn System.

This was the beginning of American prison reform.

There was a reduction in the types of corporal crimes but it came with an increased use of incarceration as punishment. As a result, the first penitentiary was built - Walnut Street Prison in Philadelphia.

1865-1870

1870 The National Congress of Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline began addressing crime as a moral disease and shifted their focus towards cultivating a sense of self-respect among inmates through education. They created the mark system to reward good behavior and established open-ended sentencing. They created some foundational initiatives, but ultimately failed to create wide-spread change as they were only focused on native-born white Americans. It was still popular belief that Black and foreign-born individuals were more inclined to commit criminal activities.

1830s –1880s PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM This system originated from the Walnut Street Jail model and kept convicts in solitary confinement the entirety of their sentence as a means to foster penitence, encourage reformation, and prevent corruption from other members of the “immoral” community in prison.

1818 Pennsylvanian legislators authorized the construction of the Western and Eastern State Penitentiary. Both ran under the Pennsylvania System.

1826 Western State Penitentiary completed

1829 Eastern State Penitentiary completed

Only three prisons would enact this model due to the high cost of holding prisoners in solitary confinement. Yet it was widely accepted and remained in use in the Eastern State Penitentiary until the early 20th century.

1870s–90s

Penitentiaries were in physical and administrative decline due to lack of funding leading to extremely bizarre and cruel punishments like the water crib.

Antebellum Era & Post Civil War AUBURN SYSTEM The Auburn system (a.k.a. the congregated system), reformed the Pennsylvania system allowing prisoners to work and eat together, but they were put in solitary confinement at night. The prison also implemented a Silent System prohibiting prisoners from talking to each other at any time. The Auburn system was the catalyst for classifying criminals based on crime severity and became the archetype for all prisons.

1825 Rachel Welch died during childbirth due to whippings she received from a prison guard.

1830s–40s This decade promised rehabilitation through teaching personal discipline and respect for work and property. Criminals became isolated from public view requiring visitors to pay a fee to view them (this operational system was so interesting that out-of-town sightseers would come view prisoners).

1839 In response to Welch’s death, Mount Pleasant Prison was built within Sing Sing Penitentiary.

It was the first prison to separate women and men. Prior to this, there were many cases of guards physically or sexually abusing women.

Northern States began convict leasing to private business, which was legal under the 13th Amendment. Officials would abuse and torture prisoners if they refused, or were unable to work. At this time prisons also became laboratories for scientific (and pseudo-science) experiments, a move supported by influential prison reform groups.

Prisoners in the North were largely uneducated or immigrants. In Illinois, 60 of prisoners were foreign-born or second-generation Americans as opposed to California prisons where this demographic made up 45% of the population.

Foreign-Born individuals were convicted at 2x the rate of native-born white Americans and Black people were convicted at 3x the rate.

This time period also coincided with the highly popular eugenics movement (ideas of inherited criminality and social inferiority).

1873

1865 CIVIL WAR ENDS

Indiana Women’s Prison became both the first institution solely dedicated to housing female prisoners and the first maximumsecurity prison in the nation.

THE SOUTH

Black people accounted for 1/3 of the prison population in cities in the upper part of the South, as these cities were home to large Black communities. Prisons in cities in the lower part of the South were mostly made up of foreignborn whites, as most Black people were still enslaved at this time. While only 16% of immigrants entering the U.S. moved to the South, they made up between 8 -37% of the prison population.

1796–1842 Due to limited urbanization and lack of public support for the construction of penitentiaries, crime wasn’t prevalent in the South. Yet, southern states (besides Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina) slowly continued to build Auburn System penitentiaries. During this period escape and violence were common. Because of the Civil War, prisons were understaffed and staff was underpaid and overworked.

1845 First modern police force was founded in the South, originating from the “Slave Patrol”.

1865 Black Codes were passed in Mississippi and South Carolina, expanding the punishments for stereotypically “Black” crimes. New crimes like vagrancy emerged to oppress Black southerners and imprison them. The South began rapidly establishing police forces, but without the public backlash they had experienced in previous years.

1866–1868 The Freedman Bureau oversaw courts in the South.

They provided food, clothing and other support to Black people, but failed to protect them from crime and violence from whites.

1870s An increase in focus on Black property crime prosecution resulted in the convictions of 4/5 of Black defendants and only 3/5 of white defendants in these cases. The South saw a decrease in white conviction rates. Convict leasing and chain gangs began to replace Southern penitentiaries as an economic depression hit the South, post-Civil War. Due to convict leasing, profit margins rose to 276% and states didn’t care that convicts were dying at an extremely high rate; especially since 90% of post-war leasing convicts were Black. In southern states like Mississippi, prisoners died at 9x the rate of Northern convicts.

Tensions & Riots 1950s–1960s 1945 WWII ENDS

1950s The term “Correction” emerges to describe the rehabilitation model.

1929 THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS

Progressive Era 1890–1920

Prison reformist founded innovations like probation, parole and indeterminate sentencing to help convicts. The public began to slowly shift away from convict leasing as states shifted to state prison farms (which were just as bad).

This time period marked the birth of the modern prison system as people refocused on reformation - an idea forgotten during the convict leasing era even as the crime rate increased. In order to foster rehabilitation, emphasis was placed on educating inmates.

Prison labor would lose support as the public became aware of their conditions. As a response states passed laws preventing goods created by prisoners from being sold on the open market.

But, prison farms still existed. In order to keep prisoners busy, some states had prisoners create items for the state. There was also an increase in job training programs - these had mixed success.

Although the prison state farm system would be reintroduced in the future, it would be met with harsh public backlash.

Growth of the Modern System 1920s–1940s 1925–1935 The nations’ incarceration rate climbed from 79 to 139 people per every 100,000 residents.

The Black incarceration rate at this time was 3x the white incarceration rate (which was in decline).

1929 The Hawes-Cooper Act was passed allowing states to prohibit the sale of goods made by outof-state convicts. It was the first in a series of laws that would prohibit the transportation and sale of goods produced by prisoners

1931 National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement made recommendations on how to further classify inmates. It wasn’t a new idea but it gained widespread acceptance and implementation during this time. The commission also reported on corruption within law enforcement exposing widespread police misconduct and bribery.

1939-1945 WWII increased national pride and reduced prison population as many people were sent to fight overseas

1952 Two riots occurred at Trenton prison sparking prison riots across the country in response to overcrowding and horrible living conditions.

Prison examiners look into prison violence.

Many states improved conditions after media coverage of the riots. Prison officials again renewed their focus on rehabilitation.

1954 The American Prison Association (founded in 1870) changed its name to the American Correctional Association showing the shift in perspective regarding rehabilitation.

1955 The national incarceration rate reached 112 people per every 100,000 people, making the total prison population 185,780 people. New drug laws were put in place that overwhelmingly affected Black and Hispanic communities.

1959 The Medical Model would become the predominant model in correctional facilities. Criminal behavior was once again seen as a disease curable through rehabilitative programs. Using the inmate classification system established in 1931, prisons would “diagnose” inmates and prescribe the counseling and education programs that would be used to “cure” them of their criminal tendencies.

1965 Laws passed under the Medical Model, like the Prison Rehabilitation Act, led prisons to implement programs to help inmates adjust to life outside many programs gave prisoners more freedom.

While there were positive results there was also a lot of backlash from the press when prisoners committed crimes.

1967 A fight broke out at San Quentin Prison causing the death of a white inmate

Racial tensions in prison rose alongside the Civil Rights Movement as groups like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam inspired Black prisoners to become activists. Prison reformers and correction experts began to make the connection between the tensions inside of prisons to the movements happening on the outside.

Prison professionals abandoned reformation and reverted back to using prison as a means of punishment when they realized that their prescribed therapies were failing to lower recidivism rates.

War on Drugs 1960s–1990s 1968 Nixon began to wage his “War on Drugs” as part of his “Tough on Crime” campaign. He promised harsher drug convictions and the phasing out of indeterminate sentencing - a move prison rights groups supported.

Early 1970s The Medical Model was deemed ineffective so the Bureau of Prisons adopted the “Balanced Model”, this is the current model of corrections. The philosophy identifies punishment, deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation as the primary goals of the prison system. A loss of faith in the rehabilitative process led to an emphasis on punishment and deterrence.

1971 Attica Prison Riot occurred when a group of multiracial prisoners issued demands for the restructuring of parole and the end to abuse from prison officers. Negotiations broke down and prisoners took over the prison, holding employees hostage.

On September 13th, state troopers and the National Guard stormed the prison killing both prisoners and hostages. In the aftermath, the brutality of prison guards increased and fortified the nations “Tough on Crime” stance.

During the 21st century, crime rates continue to decrease with murder and violent crime rates reaching a historic low.

1980s Overcrowding in prisons became an even bigger problem due to both Nixon’s and Reagan’s “War on Drugs”. The prison population increased from 320,000 in 1980 to 1.3 million by 1999. Overcrowding led to horrible sanitary conditions and an increase in violence between prisoners. To address this problem, the federal government encouraged states to privatize their prisons - companies took over health care, education, training, etc.

1984 The Comprehensive Crime Control Act created new Federal crimes, abolished parole, reinstituted the Federal death penalty, and established sentencing guidelines. As the “Tough on Crime” era pushed forward, prisoners experienced rollbacks of their education programs and rehabilitation efforts due to lack of public faith in prison’s rehabilitative ability. This led to an uptick in the development of maximum security prisons.

1990s Crime rates decreased during this time, yet people still called for tougher punishments because of the intense media coverage of crime. Although homicide rates dropped by half from 1990 to 1998, homicide stories on the three major news networks quadrupled, fueling public fear.

1994 Heightened public fear made way for president Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. It gave more funds to law enforcement, awarded grants for mandatory sentencing, created the “three-strikes” provision and mandated life sentences for people that committed three violent convictions.

Slow Shift Towards Reform 2000s–Now 2002 The Life Connection Program, which was the Bureau of Prison’s first multi-faith based program, was created in order to help reduce recidivism.

2000-2009 The state and federal prison population increased and reached its peak at 1,615,487. It has decreased over the last 10 years to 1,489,400.

A reduction in the prison population has been spurred on by prison reform initiatives like the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010, and the reduction of excessive sentences for 46,000 federal prisoners by the United States Sentencing Commission.

2014 California voters passed Proposition 47, which reclassified low-level property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Alongside the legalization of marijuana, other attempts have been made to reduce mass incarnation at the state level.

2009-2016 The Black prison population fell 17%, white prison population dropped 10%, and the Hispanic prison population remains unchanged. Black people still represent 33% of the federal and state prison population, despite the fact that they represent only 12% of the U.S. population. Due to public support for prison reform, the U.S. has taken steps to reduce the overrepresentation of minorities in prisons.

Eight to Three

The Prison Issue

Primary Document: Smash the Klan

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1977

Earl Schoonmaker Jr. (without a hood), the Grand Dragon of the Independent North ern Klans, Inc., New York staters largest KKK order, stands with wife and other topranking members at Pine Bushf N. Y.

广! “The Schoonmakers ^re. some of the really great people of our time. They’re not afrai'd / l \

to stand up for what they believe in is right. The liberals would give the country over to tbe niggers and the Jews who control the businesses andthe news medi^. Earl won't do that and neither will we. We’re gonna keep it Where it belongs— witli the white people/' f

r

........

quoted in Gallery, March ’75

患iS f e

John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, Box 411 Times Plaza Station, Brooklyn, Sl.Y./ 1015

This collection is entitled “Miscellaneous Articles on the Ku Klux Klan and White Chauvinism” and it was pulled from the Online Archive of California. The following images are from the published text “Smash the Klan”.

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GREEK HAVEN PRISON 10/29/77 Dear Friends, ¥e write this letter to ask for your support. ¥e are 10 Black and Brown prisoners facing trial in the wake of tlie August 8th Rebellion at Napanoch Prison* We have been singled out by the State in an attempt to ,fwhite washn the racism and ppen Klan aggression that was responsible for igniting the rebellioru After racist and inhumane prison conditions readied the point of "being completely intolerable more than 200 prisoners seized Li hostages and demanded four basic concessions, They w e r e : 1 ) an end to unsanitary messhall conditions and a new and improved nrison diet; 2) the removal of two correction sargeants who are both knoim racists and suspected Ku Klux Klansmen; 3) tixe passage of the ‫ב‬good time1* bill whicii would give prisoners the inceniiTre and ability to come up for parole consideration earlier upon the exhibition of good behavior; and L) complete amnesty for all those who took part in the action• After 12 丄 ong hours, in which the State used every possible maneuver to break the rebellion — from iear-gassing the prison block to discharging high-powered rifle fire in it, all hostages were re丄 eased unharmed once promises were made by State officials to ,Tseriously look into,f the demands. Needless to say, none of these promises were kept. ; did not history demands

Like most prison rebellions, the Napanoch takeover, though sTDontaneous, take place in some timeless vacmim, birb was rather the end result of a long of protest and straggle over Elan organizing and barbaric conditions. The 0301y scratch the stirface.

In mid 197厶 , Black and Brown prisoners struggling at Napanoch were able to expose KKK organizing at the prison geared to stifle the formation of a prison chapter of the NAACP and i:iie implementation of progressive self-help programs.

Their exposes were answered with extreme forms of repression.: NAACP leaders and other prisoners had their cells fire-bombed, received threatening notes signed ,TKKKTT and were subjected to brutal beatings and solitary confinement.

The civilian t?inmate TDrogram director‫ ב‬received hate notes and phone calls from the Klan threatening her* life, and her office was broken into and on at least twot occasions her car was vandalized in the prison parking lot. She later armed herseif to travel to work and was eventually forced to resign for fear of her life.

We took our case to prison officials and to the governor• No one believed our accusations.

In December,1972- it became public knowledge that Earl Schoonmaker a remedial reading teacher who had worked at the prison for 5 years ， was the KKK TIGrand Dragon,J of New York State. Prisoners contimied to speak out against the Klan, exposing the fact that close to 5〇 guards at the prison were Klansmen, filing federal lawsuits against the Klan and prison officials, and consistently protesting barbaric prison conditions. ¥fa.en the August 8th Rebellion was over, the Klan held a cross-btiriiins: ceremony on tiie hill overlooking the prison.

Consistent ^rith their past practice, nearly all of us were singled out because we were outspoken and politically active at the prison.

Conditions at Napanochi prison were horrendous* Racism was rampant and undis guised* The two sargeants whose nimmediate removal,T was demanded were known through out the prison for their racism, brutality, and Klan affiliation.

To blame 10

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prisoners for what halpened at Napanoch is like blaming a baloon for bursting after you*Ye pumped it with air past its breaking point• What happened at Napanoch was •unavoidable.

In order to protest the Sian and cover up these conditions, the State has chosen to use a political scapegoat in their racist white wash. We have decided not to let it happen!

Those of us now facing charges have banded together to form the August 8th Brigade, an organization geared to expose the true conditions at Napanoch and to fight the Klan-inspired propaganda aimed at condemning prisoners for speaking out against their oppression.

Only you can help us in this fight. Help us defeat racism and Klan aggression.

SUPPORT THE AUGUST 8th BRIGADE!

Khali Hodari, for the AUGUST 8th BRIGADE

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THE PEOPLED PARTY AND THE KLAN AT NAPAIMOCH Eight to Three

The Prison Issue are

For the past 3 years, members of the Peoples Party have played a central role in the affairs affecting prisoners irr the Napanoch state prison.

The Peoples Party has engaged in such activities as leading and organizing sit-in s and general instructional strikes, at times taking the spear-head in confronting racial abuse of prisoners at the hands of the Klan employed by the prison administration.

Since such actions in which Peoples Party members have played prominent roles, we have been harassed by members of the Klan who are fruitlessly seeking to identify other Peoples Party members. The result is that they are creating a general atmosphere of discontent, and leaving a trail of potential Peoples Party members as they continue to perpetrate their cowardly acts.

The Peoples Party has been in existence now for 3 years at Napanoch, and it is by no means the only chapter of the Peoples Party in New York State prisons - there are others in various kamps, all in most cases working in unity with the Napanoch chapter. Since the organization of the Peoples Party there has been a lot of attention paid to the Klan and its guards-members whose distaste for political individuais and movements has forced them to increase their atrocities. But with the receptive ear of comrades in the communities working in cohesive unity with the Peoples Party, we have succeeded in immobilizing the Klan-guards to a great extent. We

fully aware that the department continues to maintain Klansmen on its payroll and that our struggle to purge the Klan from Napanoch state prison and the communities is far from over.

Nevertheless, we the Peoples Party at Napanoch wish to extend our comradely greetings and power salute to all who have helped and continue to help us in our struggle.

We wish to let people know that the Peoples Party is made up of brothers from different religious backgrounds, and we come in all colors and shapes.

The primary theory leading us forward is Marxism-Leninism, but we are not foolish enough to neglect the great works of brothers like Mao, Che, Albizu Malcolm X, George Jackson, Ho. The fact that our struggle here is nothing more than a p a rticu la r part of the global struggle fo r international liberation makes us soldiers in that whole movement. We bear witness that our struggle is a just struggle, and for this end we here will break our backs to see this through. In accord with our principles and our struggle, we are compelled to secure our existence. We have dedicated ourselves to cultivating ourselves as true sons of our respective fatherlands, always acknowledging that we are a common people under the yoke of one common oppressor. With this in mind, we move to secure our liberation, regardless of where we find ourselves on bourgeois soil!

May 5 , 1755

SLUKKKA MUST GO The appointment of C.O. Frank Sluka to the position of Sargeant last summer has created an unstable and precarious situation that could blow the lid off Napanoch Prison any second. Sargeant Sluka, an active Klan (K K K) member and overt racist has made it clear through his recent campaign of terror that he is out to .."get the niggers and the spies," including minority staff personnel as well as Third World prisoners and prison leaders. One of the major demands in the September 13 prison strike was his IMMEDIATE REMOVAL. To date, Sgt. Sluka has been accredited or directly linked with th e f 〇llowing:continuous harassment of select prisoners and prison leaders; the sabotage of prison organizational meetings; harassment of prison students in the college program; threatening and derogating minority staff members including C.O. Houston, whom he called a "Black bastard" in the presence of another Sargeant and a number of prisoners, most recently Ricardo Gonzalez and Mr. Lytel, Director of the Grievance Committee and Education Counsellor respectively, both of whom were threatened with physical violence and/or loss of their jobs. The latter two have both filed complaints to Albany. Constant’ ’cell searches’ ’ and undue "keeplocks" of Black and Latin prison spokesmen: refusing outside community and

organizational guests entrance into the prison; in tim id a tio n of T h ird W o rld ethnic festiva l committees in their attempt to sponsor "approved" periodic social functions; and implementing his own //rules,/ which spurred the Bakery Strike last summer, near riots in the Big Yard on at least two occasions, and was partially responsible for the major strike last September when over 70 percent of the entire popoulation locked in their cells in protest for a period of three days.

This open communication is issued as a warning, to place Albany and the State of New York on ALERT. If this individual, Sluka is allowed to remain at Napanoch 'Prison, we can not be held responsible for what happens here. We request that our families and all concerned community and citizen groups petition Albany for the removal of Sluka and other Klansmen. If Attica has taught us any kind of lesson, let us not forget that this was only a few years ago The wall markings are cropping up again. They are demanding the REMOVAL OF SLUKKKA. We issue this comrrlunication with ample advance notice: avoid another tragic situation — REMOVE SLUKA NOW! PEOPLES PARTY October 30,1976

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stolen from them; and the Puerto Rican independen ce movement is in daily, forceful confrontation with US colonial and imperial domination and is exposing the genociaar stranglehold of the US. As a response to the rise of Black liberation, the

Klan re-emerged vicious, violent and massive Racism and prisonorganization protest areasaaprein the South. Operating as an extra-legal arm of the US government, the K[an openly vailing part of American Ourthe courts ana elecTed collaboratedhistory. with the police, officials td'beaf 'bomBHynch and terrorize tRe.. Stack movement examination of thisliberation history helps usmany forms and to attem in its pt to bring it to its knees. However, the Klan failed signficantiy In its "TTTlgSioh tojDrevent Black people understand wherefrom thevotinq.^tte.adim cracks in our school ancf seizintLa por_ti〇r r oT power over their lives, in Lowndes County, criminal justice system Alabama,began. for instance, where the KKK waged a par ticularly repressive campaign, the Black Panther Par ty built a strong base and won crucial elections. .ノ j

While the US government would like people to gWhil ieve that the FBI worked diligently to uncover the believe in the 60’s, the truth is exactly the opposite.

Klan ir The Klan and the FBI, the Klan and key state gover nors such as Faubus of Arkansas, Maddox of Georgia, Wallace of Alabama, the Klan and key national figures like former Kleagle Robert Byrd (US Senate Majority Leader) worked hand in hand to stop the Black movement. When that strategy failed, the government resorted to the outright murder of 30 Black leaders, framed and jailed many more organizers, and established COINTELPRO (counter in telligence program) the explicit mission of which was to disrupt and discredit Black and other Third World leaders and their organizations by any means necessary. This program manifested itself in the murders of Fred Hampton, Malcolm X and George Jackson, and the framing of such leaders as Assata Shakur and Geronimo Pratt on criminal charges. The government has consistently attempted to make criminals of those who fight for liberation while sup porting and covering up for the Ku Klux Klan. \

•

Jail and lengthy prison terms became not only the government strategy for many leaders of the Black liberation movement, but have become the corner stone of the oppression and containment of Black and other Third World people. George Jackson and Ho Chi Minh both identified the prisons not only as a primary resort of imperialism and white supremacy to contain national liberation, but simultaneously as the schools for revolutionaries. During the trial of the ''Panther 2 V in New York City most city jails ex perienced concerted rebellions, And in 1971 the At tica rebellion demonstrated that Black, Puerto Rican and other Third World prisoners would challenge the wh'yp suprejTiacy of the prison system on a massive scale ana fac?* Nelson Rockefeller's massacre to declare "We are men. We are not beasts and we will not be treated as such." The murder of the 43 Attica brothers was a clear sign of the government's con tinuing retaliation against Third World peoples who rise up to demand fundamental change.

THE NAPANOCH REBELLION

It is no accident that one of the most consistent, militant struggles .aaaiast c ^n iz e ^jw h jte supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan is being waged trom within the walls of the Napanoch prison in upstate New York, The Klan is rising again in the late 1970fs and has rooted its organizers firmly in the New York state prison system whose 20,000 prisoners are 85 percent Third World. In 1974, when leaders of the struggle for decent prison conditions inside Napanoch un covered the Grand Dragon teaching and organizing in the prison, few white people on the outside believed that the Klan even existed. Yet from under the gun of the KKK the prisoners released a list of 35 guards suspected of Klan membership or sympathy (see fact sheet immediately following).

Continued on the next page

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The Prison Issue

It should not have been a surprise. The Klan has a l long history in the Catskill mountain region where at least 15 "correctional facilities” are located. In Ulster County a lo n e ,15,000 people were registered Klan members in tlie 1920’s. Presently there are at least 2 Klan organizations building a base in the cities and in the countryside. There are "Klaverns" or local groups in at least 4 places: Pine Bush, Newburgh, Mid dletown and Waverly. While Schoonmaker's In dependent Northern Klans are receiving visiting Grand Dragons from all over the country, the United Klans of America are handing out White Power literature to high school students. Cross-burnings have occurred in Binghamton and Hamilton, N.Y. in the past 2 months, as well as nearby northern Pennyslvania and Amherst, Massachusetts.

The prisoners at Napanoch have waged tha. fjcjht against the Klan on many fronts. They Flave mounted two federal lawsuits charging both the Klan and the state and local prison authorities with brutality and harassment of individuals and the NAACP chapter.

They have written complaints to every prison and government official. They have conducted work stoppages demanding an end to Klan activity. Finally on August 8th, 1977 prisoners banded together to seize part of the prison complex and 14 hostages to say "no more" to the Klan and inhumane prison conditions. While the state, in negotiating the release of the hostages, promised an investigation in to the prisoners' charges, none has been made. And the state government continues to suppress a report by the Commission on Corrections which is said to verify Klan activity in Napanoch and other prisons.

The state's cover-up is the latest example of gover nment collusion with the Klan and repression of those who fight against it.

Since the Napanoch rebellion, the Pennsylvania and New York Klans have built a coalition to sponsor a Klan rally on public land in Newburgh, New York.

Newburgh is a dying industrial city where Black and Puerto Rican people fought back after a Nazi party rally several years ago. And the Klan has been organizing all over the US. On the fourth of July they held rallies in Columbus, Ohio, Plains, Georgia and have since begun a border patrol at the Texas/Mexico and Texas/California borders to keep "illegal aliens" out of the country. Last Spring the Klavern in Rockaway, Queens promised to burn a cross on Mother’s Day on a beach used by many Black people. The Klan is clearly out to make a show of force and to make itself and its program as visible as possible to white people. It must be remembered, however, that the Klan is never only a show, but a force which can mobilize not only its relatively few members but masses of white people who support its violent program of repression and genocide.

The message of the Ku Klux Klan has always been 100 percent white supremacy. It has viewed with pride the history of the United States - a history which in fact depicts the destruction and ex propriation of the resources of Native peoples, the enslavement and murder of millions of Black people, the conquest of Mexican land, and the seizure of whole nations. The Klan preaches a message that most white Americans agree with on one level or another: that their jobs, their social status, their sense of self-worth are dependent on keeping everyone else down.

Recently the white supremacist message of the Klan is becoming even sharper. The Klan is more and more baldly appealing to people on the basis of their white privilege the strident anti-Catholicism of the 1920’s is being dropped and Catholics are joining the Klan in numbers; while anti-Semitism continues, it is becoming muted. And the anti-union stand has vanished as unions have proven themselves staunch defenders of the "American way." In fact, as was said earlier, the Klan has been organizing within some unions such as the guards' union in New York state prisons. The call for white supremacy is louder and clearer. The Klan went to the International Women’s Year convention in Houston as part of its campaign to win white women to its program of white supremacy. It promotes genocidal sterilization for Third World women and fights against legal abor tion for all women. The Klan is working to defeat the ERA and has supported the anti-gay forces led by Anita Bryant.

The renewed Klan activity is only part of the resurgence of white supremacy during the past few years. ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) has organized clandestinely and in full view of the public to fight school integration in Boston and Rosedale, Queens. Like the Klan, ROAR has committed acts 6f violence against Black people. In Rosedale, the home of a Black family was fire-bombed and in Boston ROAR-led "anti-busing,/ rallies have resulted in the stoning of Black children. The Aryan Brotherhood in

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SUSPECTED KLAN GUARDS AT NAPANOCH

THE FOLLOWING IS A PARTIAL LIST OF GUARDS AT EASTERN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY- NAPANOCH - WHO ARE SUSPECTED OR KNOWN MEMBERS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN. PRISONERS ESTIMATE THAT THERE MAY BE AS MANY AS 4. GUARDS AT NAPANOCH WHO ARE MEMBERS OF THE KKK.

C.O. GLEN WILKINSON 本

SGT. GARY TAVORMINO

SGT. FRANK SLUkAtt

C.O. L. QUICK

SGT. BUDDM SGT. DONNAL SPARLING SGT. DENNIS CONROY LT. THOMAS RYAN C.O. FRED RICH SGT. GARY TAVORMINO C.O. CARL MEYERS C.O. RONALD HAZELTINE C.O. DISTEL C.O. RICHARD CONSTANCE C.O. DONALD COOK C.O. HOWARD GREEN C.O. PAUL I. BORKO C.O. HAVLIN

C.O. PHILLIP MC CONNELL LT. LIVIO GALAZZO SGT DENNIS CONROY SGT RONALD KURTZ C.O. RONALD WYNKOOP C.O. JOSEPH BADSTEIN C.O. GEORGE MECHLER C.O. LARRY HAIGHT C.O. CHRJSTOHPER MOSHER C.O. CHARLES "CORKY" KROM C.O. WIPPERSILL C.O. BUCKMAN C.O. PONDI C.O. CHARLES LANAHAN

C.O. DEPHEW

The following guards have been transferred to other NY State prisons: C.O. WILLIAM LOTHROP - Otisville C.O. GARY LOTHROP - Otisville C.O. DENNIS LAURIA - Green Haven

t Corrections Officer Wilkinson is listed on the New ^York State incorporation papers as one of the officers of the Independent Northern KIANS. ^^The removal of these two Corections Sargeants was a major demand of the August 8th rebelion at Napanoch.

Eight to Three

The Prison Issue

EDUCATEï‫׀‬

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EASTERN BRANCH

AGITATE..,. 娜迎Z

CHANGE

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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE BOX R NAPANOCH, NEW YORK / 0258

F O R I M M E D I A T E R E L E A S E --- N A A C P --- F O R I M M E D I A T E R E L EASE

PRISON NAACPe r s SAY KKK IS GROWING, FIGHT MUST BE WAGED '!

•

Executive committee members of a prison NAACP Branch claim that the Ku Klux Klan is "waging a campaign of terror" and na national effort must be The members are prisoners of the Eastern Correctional Facility, mounted11 to stop it. a racially troubled state prison In Napanoch, NY which has been the scene of Klan activity.

In March, 1975, Earl F. Schoonmaker, a civiliam teacher atthe prison, was exposed as the New York State Grand Dragon of the エ ndependent Northern Klans, Inc., and was fired. The Klan is headquarter ed in the neighboring town of Pine Bush• In early M a r c h , 1975, the prison NAACP branch initiated two federal suits charging racial abuse of its members and leaders: one suit cites the Pine and prison guards and administrators whom they allege to be Klan Bush Chapter of the Klan members and sympathizers? the other suit cites NY State prison officials and tne same Eastern prison authorities, alleging that they sympathize with the Klan and have allowed it to operate in the prison, with impunity.

The NAACP chapter was chartered to confront abuse of Black and other Third World prisoners in an organized way. We have been aware for years that the Klan has been functioning here and in the prison system all over the state. Schoonmaker worked here for over five years himself,but in 1972 the Klan surfaced to suppress openly our efforts to start an NAACP branch. They started burning our cells, locking us up, threatening us ••• our harassment has continued and intensified• The-Klan*s intimidation extended to the white coordinator of prison programs, Ms. Nancy D. Loorie, who received hate letters signed nK K K . M s • Loorie eventually resigned her post due to threats, vandalism of her car and officef and what she described as fear for her life.

We are now concerned about the growth of the Klan and what has been public indifference toward it. We feel that what we have begun with the law suits should be taken up by groups and people on the outside• Organized racism is not something we can take lightly. What we*ve uncovered here is a monster that is growing every day. New chapters have sprung up in Orange/ Newburghf a n d Middletown - - they have the prisons virtually surrounded* State authorities have taken no action. News reports detail with which the Klan supplies its members. Prison authorities deny the arsenals of firearms the Klanfs presence within the prisons hnt n 只 n thev deny that Corrections Officer Charles Holland of V7alkill Prison provided the Klan . with the land for a KKK rally and cross burning?

Or that Corrections Officer Casey of Comstock Prison wears a tie-clip bearing the initials "KKK" and.is known •throughout the prison system as a member of the "secret order?11 Or that Corrections Officer Joseph Curie of Elmira Prison has a police locker full of Klan posters O r that Corrections Officer Glen Wilkinson right here at*. Napanoch has and paraphernalia? his signature affixed to the Klan incorporation papers?

State authorities have had this hard and fast information for up to 2 years. Supposedly alarmed at open KKK activity in the prisonsf the State Inspector investigation• That investigation is now completedf but has yet General authorized an to be released. The report is rumored to expose known members of the Klan among prison guards at Napanoch and other state prisons, and is apparently being suppressed by officials.

We want an all-out effort to be made to denounce racism and smash the KlanI Our law suits will be a starting point. They will be going to trial during the and should be supported en masse by every individual and group in summer in New York City the state who disagrees with the Klan's ideology. David Duke travels around like a one-man sideshow; he's on TV more than Archie Bunker. Every time he speaks out in favor of racism, someone should be there to speak out against it. Concerned groups must form alliances to meet the Klan head-on -as long as the Klan is growing, resistance to the Klan should grow.

M a y , 1977 Napanoch, NY

Eight to Three

The Prison Issue

Amber Rose Howard, Executive Director at CURB

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Interviewed by Alexis Wong

California has had some hard won successes pushing prison reform forward in the last few years.

Many of these successes are due to Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB). Amber Rose Howard explains how CURB and their partners work together to advocate for change, manage the implementation of new laws in these communities, keep lawmakers accountable, and educate people across the country to make sure that prison reform work doesn’t stop.

Howard and I discuss how recent measures found their way onto ballots and how organizations like CURB got them there. While sharing her thoughts on this imperative work she uses political and historical reference points to show how CURB creates pathways for change by addressing specific problems one-by-one.

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

November 6, 2018 11:00 am PST

Howard

So, CURB was founded in 2003 and it was founded because the opportunity to close a prison in California came about. So a few different organizations including Critical Resistance, which was co-founded by Angela Davis, and then an organization called Justice Now, All of Us or None.

They came together for this opportunity, and the prison that they were going to close - it’s called CRC – California Rehabilitation Center and it’s here in Norco. But the opportunity ended up falling through and the prison didn’t close so the people from these organizations that came together were like, ‘Hey, we should put this together and build a statewide movement to actually start to shut down prisons anyways.’

And so that’s how it was founded. CURB’s mission was built on the idea that we need to close prisons. Folks realized, when they came together, that California opened up 30 prisons between 1980 and like 2001. Like 30 different prisons popped up…It’s like, ‘Well what do we need to do?’

First we need to get people out, so that’s mission number one. So, reduce the number of people in prison, then reduce the amount of prisons that we have, and then capture the savings from closed prisons to reinvest into community supported systems that would prevent the idea or need for prisons or jails in the first place. So that’s how the mission came about.

Wong

Okay.

Howard

So, the work that we do is largely based on policy and budget advocacy because we realize that in order to reduce the prison and jail population, a lot of that has to come through policy. In that period of time where we saw 30 prisons popup we saw that in order to fill those prison beds and those jail beds, policies were created that set the tone for extreme sentencing. And that criminalized more things so that folks were arrested at higher rates. So the reason why CURB focuses on policy advocacy is because we try to reverse and breakdown those policies that would extend sentencing and that would criminalize for trivial things.

Wong

Could you explain what you mean by “capturing funds”? What does that look like? How do you do that?

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Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

Howard

Governor Jerry Brown approved the Public Safety Realignment Act which shifted the responsibility of low-level, nonviolent offenders from the state to local counties. Naturally, this decreased the state’s prison population but increased the state’s jail population, as Howard mentions.

And that’s honestly the most difficult piece to the mission, of course. For example in L.A. county they have a campaign called Reimagine 109. What we saw happen in 2011 is that the state had a federal mandate to reduce its prison population. The prison population was over 150 of the design capacity, so the Feds said, ‘Ya’ll gotta reduce it to 137.’ Well, Governor Brown thought he was clever.

Instead of actually reducing the amount of people behind bars he shifted the responsibility of some folks from the state to local county jails. And [the] folks that were moved out of prison had to have non-violent, non-sexual, non-serious offenses and then they were removed from state prison to county jail. When that shift happened, there also has to be a dollar amount that was shifted to county jails. So what we saw was that instead of the money being shifted to counties so that they could build supportive systems for people who would be coming out of jails or they could build up the communities that these jails are being built or expanded in, 90% of those dollars ended up going to law enforcement agencies, to probation, to sheriffs, to the police. So, that gave us an opportunity to start a campaign where [we] fight for 50% of those funds to go into communities. Now the issue with getting money out to community based organizations that have the supportive services and the solutions that we think are right for our communities is that they want community based organizations to have a certain capacity. They have all these different requirements so organizations are blocked from actually grabbing those dollars because of all the tight restrictions and requirements that they have for people to apply. So it’s a difficult process but we have different kinds of reinvestment campaigns they’re actually divestment campaigns. We’re always talking about reducing the amount of money that [is given] to sheriff departments, probations, DA’s, all the law enforcement agencies. Divest those dollars, and put them into communities. So that was just one example of a campaign that we’re running to try and grab those dollars. We’ve been successful at stopping dollars from being put into jail expansion, prison expansion…we block those dollars from going out, but then actually redirecting those funds is a whole other story. This year we saw the governor give more dollars to re-entry and reinvestment into the community than ever. So it’s a slow process, but that’s how we do it.

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In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its prison population by 13.7% (or 40,000 people) over two years.

The deadline was later extended to February 28, 2016.

In order for California to comply with the Supreme Court mandate, the state sends about 9,000 prisoner out of state and about 2,000 prisoners to private facilities within the state.

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

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Wong

So the city has its idea of what is an appropriate organization to fund, but how do you guys go about assessing which organizations are good to partner with?

Howard

We listen to communities. Our organization is made up of several, mostly grassroots organizations, we truly believe that the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution. We put out a large survey in L.A. county that we shared with our grassroots organizations so that they could ask the people who are affected on the ground, ‘What are the needs?’, ‘Where do you go when you need services?’, ‘Who’s giving you those services?’, ‘Which organizations are working for you?’. So we put our ear to the ground and ask community members where they go and where they’re finding the most help when they need something and then those are the organizations that we connect with to help get dollars to.

Wong

How would your average layman, someone like me, go about assessing what organizations are doing the “right” work?

Howard

To be honest it’s the same answer. It’s never about finding some organization online or talking to people who are in the same sort of privileged spaces [as you], its literally about people, everyday people, going out on the ground. Even connecting with people who are incarcerated - connecting with people who are directly impacted.

Wong

Howard

What ignited your commitment to these issues and the communities that are affected by them?

I’m part of the community - I’m formally incarcerated. I caught a felony when I was 18 and [while] going to college and receiving a degree I realized that there are consequences to having a felony conviction. All these years later I’ve learned that there are actually 48,000 gainful opportunities that I’m barred from for the rest of my life. And after graduating college and realizing that I still couldn’t get into the type of work that I wanted to [get into] because of a felony that I had received [over] ten years before - that’s what really activated me to get into the work. Because I was like, ‘Okay, this is dumb. I have to break this down otherwise it’ll be like this forever.’ And looking at someone who has my story, there’s just no way that I should have ever received a felony. I realized that its easy, number one, for people who are from my area, my community, to receive a felony.

And then I realized, on top of that, that it’ll last for the rest of your life. And so that’s really my path to getting into the work.

The 48,000 jobs fall under these categories LAW ENFORCEMENT (FBI, POLICE FORCE, ETC) GOVERNMENT RUN EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES PEOPLE WITH FELONIES CANNOT RECEIVE LICENSES ISSUED

BY STATE GOVERNMENTS WHICH INCLUDE LICENSES FOR: ACCOUNTANTS, BARBERS, ARCHITECTS, INTERIOR DESIGNERS MOST STATES BAN PEOPLE WITH FELONIES FROM WORKING IN THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY THE PRIVATE SECTOR HAS THE ABILITY TO SELECT THEIR OWN EMPLOYEES AND OFTEN EXCLUDE PEOPLE WITH FELONIES FROM THE HIRING PROCESS

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

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Wong

I have found it difficult to explain the importance of activating around prison reform to people who are unconvinced they should care. How do you approach these conversations? Especially with people who aren’t directly touched by the prison system.

Howard

Yeah, I mean, I think it should be important to everyone.

Number one, because more people are impacted than we think. I think folks don’t realize only 30% of people with felonies actually go to prison. So, we’ve got folks right here in our communities, even in privileged spaces, who have been arrested or have convictions, and we just don’t talk about it. So, so many people - and even on a larger scale, so many folks have family members who are impacted and we don’t talk about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into a legislators office at the state capital and, their legislative director starts to breakdown in tears because we’re in there talking about prison reform and they end up saying, ‘Well my dad’s been incarcerated since 1992.’ Or, ‘My favorite uncle got arrested when I was 18.’

So, first of all, so many of us are touched by this. And then secondly, I tell folks all the time, ‘Listen, California in particular,’ using this as an example, ‘right now has built at least six new jails in the inland empire in the last three years.’

Wong

I did not know that!

Howard

Yes, ma’am. Los Angeles right now has a $3.5 billion jail expansion plan where they’re replacing men’s central jail with a new jail, and then they’re building a jail in Mira Loma that would house women from L.A. county. So I tell folks, ‘Listen, even if you’re not touched by incarceration right now, they’re building all these new cages. Crime is not on the rise. There are no statistics whatsoever, there is no research whatsoever that proves that crime is on the rise.’ In fact, we’ve passed so much criminal justice reform in this state over the past five years that actually crime has dropped, its decreased, and prison and jail capacity has decreased. So I ask folks who are “not impacted”, ‘Who do you think they’re building those cages for? If you don’t care, and you do not start to think about who they’re building those cages for, then it will be your very own children who fill those cages up.’ It’s about getting folks to realize how practical this system is in the way that its looking at population and thinking.

Its literally going to capture all the folks who claim they’re not touched now, it’s going to capture your children. We also see with these new cages popping up, we find that there are more laws that would criminalize people.

“But the larger population who also have felony convictions face many of the same types of stigma that come with having been incarcerated - lack of access to jobs, lack of access to housing and welfare support - without necessarily having had the experience of spending time behind bars,” – Sarah Shannon

From the published study, The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010.

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

We find harsher laws for drug use and drug possession and public intoxication, and all these little things folks are being more strongly criminalized for. So for me it’s about really getting people to see how easily, if they’re not touched, how easily they can be touched. And how the system has planned for their children to be impacted.

Wong

You mentioned that California has passed a lot of legislation in the last couple of years that have benefited criminal justice reform. Can you tell me a few of the ones you think were the most impactful?

Howard

I think one of the most significant criminal justice reform measures that was passed is Proposition – I’ll speak to Proposition 64. Proposition 64 did legalize marijuana in the state of California for folks who are over the age of 21. And beyond it legalizing marijuana, what it did was it actually revoked all of the convictions that people had received for marijuana when it was prohibited. That mostly affects Black folks and brown folks. Because of the way sentencing is set up, if you’ve had prior convictions then they give you more they give you extra time if you get new charges. So they give you sentence enhancements. A lot of folks were serving time for marijuana charges, [or] they had extra time because they have previously had marijuana charges. Well those folks right now are being sent back to court automatically […] to be resentenced for lesser time because now these marijuana convictions are being wiped off of their record.

You know, folks are on the streets who have marijuana charges from years ago and are stopped from being nurses, stopped from being street sweepers, all the 48 hundred opportunities that you’re barred from in California if you have a marijuana conviction. We now have folks who are freed up […] we basically dropped the shackles from those folks.

Those convictions are wiped away completely. So that’s one of the biggest ones. And then also in 2017 the state passed legislation for the very first time that repealed a sentencing enhancement. There was a sentencing enhancement on the book that would give someone an extra three years for every previous drug conviction that they had. We know that in the War on Drugs folks were being arrested and convicted for drug possession and stuff like that. Repeatedly. So we had folks sitting in county jail on an 18 year sentence for a simple drug possession because they’ve had 15 extra years in enhancements thrown on top of a three year maximum term. Well, now, because we’ve repealed that you can no longer give someone an extra 15 years for previous drug convictions. So I think that is one of the most significant ones. But I will just mention one more! I think its super amazing - It passed this year.

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Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

7

Wong

Yeah!

Howard

There’s a law, Senate Bill 1437 , [it] got passed this year and it reforms the felony murder accomplice rule. So there’s a rule on the books that says if a murder happens in a crime everybody who was involved in that crime goes down for that murder, even if they are not the killer. So if you’re in the driver seat on a burglary and someone got killed inside the bank, the driver in the car - the getaway driver - also goes down for that murder. If you were three blocks away and you were looking out on the corner, you go to jail for that murder. So that has been the law for the past 50 years. We have so many folks who were criminalized and deemed as murderers but they actually never murdered anyone. Well this year there was a law passed that reversed that law, and it’s made retroactive. So all the people who are currently serving time under the felony murder rule will now, starting in January [2019], will automatically have their cases sent back to court to be reviewed so that they can be resentenced without that murder charge.

Howard

So its anyone who’s been convicted of that throughout history. If you’re still serving time under the felony murder rule, starting January 1st, 2019 they’re going to review your case. The only folks who are excluded from that is if [there was] an officer killed during the crime.

Wong

How are counties going back and reviewing all of these cases? Like, what does that look like right now, because that’s a big undertaking, so who is monitoring that process to make sure it runs smoothly and no one’s case slips through the cracks?

Howard

Sure, sure. That’s a really good question. Once we get these laws passed our number one goal is to figure out what implementation looks like. So what we’ve done is we actively go after the players that we know can make the resentencing happen. We’re in constant conversation with the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, we’ve talked with them about what their process looks like, and the practical steps of having it done. What they’re doing is writing a report to make sure that [they have] all the names of all the inmates across the state who are serving time under the Felony Murder rule, and they will automatically start sending those folks’ files back to the courts where they were sentenced, to be reduced. In order to make sure that they’re doing that, we are connected with people who are currently incarcerated.

The Felony Murder Rule was signed into law September 30th, 2018

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

So for example, right now we have about 300 people who’ve written us since some of these laws were passed in October, who were like, ‘Yup, I’m impacted by this. I’m serving time under that.’ So we’re keeping track of that and as we look to next year we’re going to be able to stay in communication with people who are inside serving time under those enhancements who should be having their cases reviewed. They’re giving us the information of their loved ones on the outside so that we’re constantly in contact with their outside advisers so that we, all together, stay on top of the CDCR’s head, making sure that they’re doing what they said they’re going to do with resentencing. So it’s all about community accountability. We have to know what’s going on with the people who are in power so that we can hold them accountable to what they say they’re going to do.

In addition to that there’s a law that was modified, there’s a penal code, in penal code 1170, section D1, there’s a rule there that says that the state can send folks back to court for resentencing based on a few things: if a law changes while you’re in the process of going to court and you haven’t been convicted then the state has the right to not apply those enhancements, or however the law changed, they’re allowed to move with that weight, [and] if it’s been 120 days since you’ve been sentenced and a law changes then a court has the right to take it back for resentencing under the new law.

So this year it was modified so that anyone who has been convicted of something, if that law has changed, then they can apply to the state to be resentenced. So even if the CDCR has not counted certain laws in their plan that would not automatically resentence folks, this particular rule has been modified so that we as a community can help people write their own petitions and send those back to the state to get resentenced on their own. So it kind of covers everyone.

Wong

Are there other organizations besides CURB who are helping take on this influx of cases?

Howard

Yes, absolutely. The special thing about CURB is [that] we’re a coalition of organizations. So we’ve got folks all across the state. One of the major players that’s helping us do the implementation work is the Ella Bakers Center for Human Rights, they’re up in Oakland. We’ve got a group called Tides Advocacy, which they were traditionally a funding group but now they have an advocacy section to their organization, so they’re on board with us. We have an organization, the Drug Policy Alliance, who’s been onboard with us in getting these laws passed. Another key one is the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, they’re one of our partners in the implementation work.

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Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

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There’s a group called Initiate Justice, one called Pillars of the Community – these are the players that actually co-sponsored the legislation that we passed this year and we’ve all committed to staying together until we see that implementation is growing and rolling smoothly. And that’s the way that CURB is structured and set up - to answer your previous question - we are not a hierarchical organization… we answer to the membership.

Wong

It seems like California has taken steps forward in prison and criminal justice reform. Have you noticed California’s success influence other states?

Howard

Oh yeah, absolutely! I think when we saw Prop 47 – that’s the proposition that the voters passed in California in 2014 which reduced six felonies to misdemeanors, and they’re low-level felons so like drug possession, check fraud - all these kinds of things - burglary, anything that was under $950 is now reduced to a misdemeanor. When we saw that, we kind of saw that replicated in several different states like [New] Jersey; [and] New York has a thing. The Ban the Box policy, which [removed] the question, ‘Have you been convicted of a felony?’, off of job applications applications to certify for nursing, things like that - we not only said, ‘Yes remove the question from the application, but you can’t even ask the question until someone has been given a conditional offer.’ Until you’ve said, ‘Okay we like you, you’re good to go. We’re going to hire you’, now you can ask someone for a background check or ask them about their records. When we passed that in California we saw those policies jumping off in [New] Jersey, New York, Florida, Virginia, just all over the place. And of course they all look different. Some of them aren’t really effective, some of them are. But we definitely see a ripple effect. Most recently we actually passed a very bad bail reform policy in California and we already know that New York is about to implement their own bail reform policy. We know that in Georgia, they’ve already implemented a bail reform policy that is much better looking than ours. So definitely we see that when California makes a step in criminal justice reform, other states follow.

Six Reduced Felonies 1. Shoplifting items worth up to $950 2. Grand Theft of property worth up to $950 3. Receiving Stolen Property worth up to $950 4. Forgery of a check, bond or bill for up to $950 5. Possession of controlled substance including cocaine, prescription drugs, heroin, and methamphetamines 6. Writing a bad or fraudulent check worth up to $950

Wong

When I talk to people who are critical of the prison system they often point to stronger rehabilitation initiatives and programs as the way we can break the cycle of recidivism. I wanted to know if you share this assessment.

The California Money Bail Reform Act was approved August 28, 2018. Under this law people who are arrested and charged with a crime will not have to borrow money or come up with the funds to pay for their release from jail. Now, the local courts will decide who to keep in custody and who to release while they are awaiting trial.

The decision will be made by an algorithm created by the court.

Cash bail affects individuals who cannot afford to pay, which is why groups have advocated to get rid of it. If you are unable to pay your bail, then you remain in jail while awaiting trial. This law is supposed to even the

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

Howard

Absolutely not, absolutely not. Even jails that are not considered mental health institutions, which L.A. county jails are considered mental health institutions – but like on the prison level they’re not necessarily considered mental health institutions, they’re considered rehabilitations centers. To me that’s an oxymoron. I don’t care how much counseling you give me, how much education you give me, how much college you give me. If I have to return to a cell at the end of the day and be locked in a cage and sleep on a cold slab of concrete with no blanket, with no pillow, and my toilet is next to my bed, and I’m sharing this space with another grown ass person, then whatever type of rehabilitation that you gave me, whatever AA classes, all that shit goes out the window. You can’t help someone fix their mind, heal from their trauma and move into healing spaces and healing practices, in a cage. I just had a conversation actually, with a very close friend of mine last night. She did seven years at Chino Women’s and she’s like, ‘Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I look at the ceiling and I can’t believe that I’m not in jail.’ And she’s been out for seven years.

She’s been out for the same amount of time that she did inside, but she still has these conditions that confine her. She still has all these different coping mechanisms [for] being out in this world, because of the trauma of being incarcerated. So I tell folks all the time, the amount of rehabilitation or services that you give inside of prison is never going to reverse the effect that it has on our community because we need more rehabilitative services or social structures and social solutions to happen on the outside. We need that stuff to be in place on the outside, and to be consistent so that folks won’t find themselves inside in the first place. And we need to release people who are inside to organizations and spaces that have those community based solutions where people can actually find true healing. That’s what I believe.

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justice-playing field for those who are wealthy and can afford to avoid awaiting trial in jail.

Now, the local courts will decide who to keep in custody and who to release while individuals await trial. The decision will be made by an algorithm created by the court. Although, the use of algorithms has been shown to result in inconsistencies and unjust recommendations that often fall along race lines. …Want to learn more?

Check out the Crazy/ Genius podcast episode, “Should we be afraid of AI in the Criminal Justice System?”

Wong

I was under the impression that rehabilitation happens after people leave prison. And, if that’s not the case then what services or are there any services offered on the outside to people who have been released from prison?

Howard

Actually that’s part of the problem - we don’t see enough.

Like people label them reentry services - reentry is a hot term now. Reentry services currently look like: Okay, you pick someone up from when they’re released, you give them a room to sleep in, usually they’re sharing that room with someone, which is kind of reminiscent of a prison cell because you don’t have your own space. You help them get an ID, maybe. You give them bus tokens, maybe. And then you give them a list of places to figure out where to get a job from. You give them used clothes or borrowed clothes, or donated clothes or whatever, and then you help them get county services so they can feed themselves.

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

That’s what reentry currently looks like. What you’re saying makes more sense - people should come out to, not to a space where you have to share a room in the first place, but maybe upgrade to sharing a house because it’s difficult to get folks their own apartments and stuff when they come out. But to come out, to have your own room so that you can start to get familiar with your own self and your own personal space again, to give you money and maybe take you shopping some place that’s affordable so that you can pick out your own style once again, right? You’re not left to choosing from whatever donations are there but you can start to personalize yourself again, become an individual. It should look like not just giving you a list of places to go look for a job, but actually helping you figure out and assess your skills. If you don’t have any, help you get some, and then actually helping you find job placement that way. It should look like daily counseling. So that you have someone that you can trust and talk to, that maybe has lived your experience, that can help guide you. It looks like having a mentor in the community that will take you - not just give you bus tokens - but take you around the city, take you to places that were there that have changed since you left the community and returned. And also have different, like non-traditional healing, right? Because a lot of what mental health looks like on the outside, everywhere actually, looks like diagnosing someone [with] whatever it is and then giving them pills. Well, we know that indigenous and ancient practices for Black and brown folks don’t look like that. Healing for us looks like maybe sitting down, meditating and burning sage. Sometimes it looks like having an alcoholic beverage with five or six people sitting in a circle having community and talking about it. Sometimes it looks like taking a jog with friends. Sometimes its acupuncture, sometimes it’s a writing workshop, sometimes it’s a painting workshop. So what we imagine rehabilitation and reentry looking like, it’s all of those things. But unfortunately of course it still looks like sending someone to a medical clinic and giving them pills and just the basics of what they may need to function in society. We definitely need to reimagine what reentry looks like. We need to reimagine what people need. Also, the family reunification piece is missing. Folks are coming out and a lot of times a lot of your family members are dead - people die when you’re in prison, life continues for folks out here while it’s paused for folks inside. So what does it look like to actually reunify someone with their loved ones?

What does it look like to help someone rebuild family and trust with people who are out here? Because now all of their friends and loved ones remain inside. A lot of folks return to society with survivors remorse, or survivors guilt because the people that they’ve spent the last, however many years with, are still in that prison and they’re out here alone.

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Interview with Amber Rose Howard

Wong

What kind of support or pushback have you received during your conversations with policy makers on the issues you bring to their desk?

Howard

We get all the nasty rhetoric that is familiar. They never have any new arguments. They basically are all stuck on a ‘Tough on Crime’ rhetoric. ‘They deserve to be in prison.

They deserve to not have anything when they come out.

They shouldn’t’ve done it.’ Yeah that’s the same argument we get all the time. The opposition, which is law enforcement agencies, the DA, the Sheriffs – their lobbyists come in and they’ll tell stories of the most extreme cases so that they can get support from lawmakers. They’ll come in and tell the one story about the one guy who raped 13 people back in 1964. So it’s our job to present the facts on what people are actually locked up for, what those stories look like, what those cases look like, because they always come with the tough on crime rhetoric - that’s their only argument. And its outdated and its really unsupported by statistics to this day.

“The “get tough” policy that has emphasized the use of incarceration for more offenders for longer periods has not reduced the crime rate..”

E.R. Jones, Failure of the “Get Tough” Crime Policy, University of Dayton Law Review Volume 20, Issue 2, Winter 1995, Pages 803-808

Wong

Did the National Prison Strike that happened over the summer have any effect on the work that CURB was doing this summer?

Howard

It does, it does. I’m connected with folks who [were in] support with the hunger strikers and it helps too because they keep us informed on what’s needed. And, when folks are organizing on the inside that way, it strengthens movement organizing on the outside. It’s a pushback against the system. If we have folks in there who are unified and organized in a struggle then it means they’re not focused on the prison politics that will get them extra charges and keep them locked up longer. It means that they’re moving away from certain traps by the soul chains that the system puts on people, and it means that more folks are sort of focused on the type of work that we’re doing. So, definitely, any kind of organizing that folks are doing on the inside, strengthens the organizing that we do on the outside and it really directs us.

George Jackson, who is one of the [most] badass revolutionaries of all time, [who] started the Black Guerilla Family on the inside. What most folks don’t realize is that the Black Guerilla Family actually united all the races on the inside to fight against the harm that the correctional officers were putting forward to them and it started to breakdown the prison politics. They wanted, of course, for the Whites and the Blacks and the Mexicans and the Asians, and everybody to beef with each other. But, [the] Black Guerilla Family broke down those prison politics and started to unite folks against the correctional officers. It strengthened what folks were doing on the outside because it’s like, if folks inside, in those conditions, can organize and be unified and have strategy and communicate, it’s only going to inform what we do on the outside. Because they’re [in a] worse condition to even organize in the first place.

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Interview with Amber Rose Howard

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Wong

Is policy the change CURB is suggesting an alternative to building new jails and prisons? Is it specifically focused on policy initiatives or do you have other strategies?

Howard

I think it’s the most tangible thing that we do, the most physical thing that we do to pushback and to try and change the prison industrial complex. But it’s not the only tactic that we use. I think one of the most important tactics that we use is political education. In our statewide coalitions we try to get in spaces all across the state to teach folks. For example, a lot of folks don’t realize that there were 30 prisons built in [the last] 15 years in California. Folks don’t realize that the Inland Empire is actually the largest geographical county in the state of California and it has the most prisons and jails. People don’t realize that LA is the largest – LA county jail serves as the largest mental health institution in the entire world. When Michelle Alexander wrote the New Jim Crow, she links a lot of the incarceral issues to slavery, right? Like it’s an overspill from slavery into a new system.

But Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other geographical area in the entire world. And so if incarceration is a spillover from slavery, and there was no slavery issue in Los Angeles, how the hell did Los Angeles become the hub for incarceration? And we have those answers because we work with folks [like] Kelly Lytle Hernandez [who] has a really great book called City of Inmates that puts a lot of that down. But we work with our organizations and [are] doing workshops and presentations that would educate communities about themselves so that they then have the power to look at the system differently and then challenge it and question it. For me, that’s what I think is the real work - the political education on the ground [and] getting folks to see the system for what it is. And from there, community members themselves are able to build strategies and tactics and figure out what they want, and what they need. You have to hit the system from all different ways.

Wong

What in the world makes prisons mental health facilities? How did they get that designation?

Howard

So the nasty thing about it is that when the prison boom started to happen around the late 70s, early 80s, simultaneously mental health facilities closed. They started to shut down mental health facilities and build up county jails. Mental health was seen as a health issue [but] once they started to tear down all the facilities and release folks, we saw policies pop-up and the social narrative change [saying] mental health is a criminal issue not a health issue.

Instead of putting people into mental health facilities they started locking them up in county jails and criminalizing them for their mental health behaviors. And [when] they started to build up jail capacity from mental health, [they] hired staff that had [a] certain type of nursing credentials, or certain type of credentials to where they could say,

The Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles was slated to be renovated into a mental health treatment and rehab facility, but in August 2019, this plan was voted down. Mental health professionals were outspoken stating that people who need mental health treatment shouldn’t be sent to jail, even if its sanctioned to focus on their treatment.

Individuals who fall under this need end up in jail because services within the community are not provided to them.

Each year 2 million people with mental illness are put in jail. The Los Angeles Times reported that 70 of the county’s jail population were physically or mentally ill. And, people with mental illness tend to stay in jail longer than others.

Mental health facilities were deinstitutionalized nationally during this time because of the invention and widespread optimism of psychiatric drugs. At the same time, politicians supported closing state funded hospitals to save the State government money.

Eight to Three

Interview with Amber Rose Howard

‘Well this percentage of our staff are mental health advisers, so this is a mental health facility.’ Also, building up new county jails under the guise of mental health made it easier for the public to swallow jails being built up in their towns.

Which throughout history, ever since the 1800s, that’s actually how they got the public to start to swallow the idea of jails - by calling them mental health institutions.

Wong

Since L.A. does not have a very direct history with slavery, why is the prison system the way that it is here? What answers do you have for that?

Howard

Yeah, and it’s a harsh answer but it’s the most honest answer. So folks think of the prison industrial complex as a profit driven system often times and they think that if we get rid of the profit sector then we can get rid of this incarceral system, but that’s not true. We should never let white supremacy and colonialism off-the-hook when we’re talking about incarceration. Manifest Destiny says that European land owners were going to push out as far west as possible.

Well, Los Angeles is the western-most point in this country so once they got to pushing folks out of this land, eventually it was like, ‘Well we’ve killed enough. Now what are we going to do with these people?’, ‘We’ll build facilities and lock them away, we’ll eliminate them.’ So, we believe that Los Angeles became the hub for incarceration because [of] the eye that’s on Los Angeles. It became the space for Hollywood and it became the space where stories were coming from - it was the hot spot. It was the place where people wanted to come and live. You couldn’t just slaughter folks like you did in the South, quietly, anymore. People would not be able to build their empires or their industries, so they had to build jails to eliminate people and take the land. And we know that that is still true because we tied gentrification into incarceration. When you’re locking up fathers and breadwinners of the families and then you turn around and you lock up mothers, and you spread their children out in the foster spaces, that’s how you’re able to gentrify the land.

Look at Inglewood right now. Most of the folks that used to live in Inglewood are incarcerated and shipped off to places in the Central Valley and Northern California. They’re spread out to places like Victorville and Palm Dale and San Bernardino. The elimination had to be modified from slaughtering people to eliminating them by putting them in cages.

Wong

I had always wondered why, even in modern history, in the 90s, a modern metropolitan city like L.A. had these very violent racial eruptions. There were racial tension everywhere but, what happened in L.A. at that time seemed different.

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Interview with Amber Rose Howard

Howard

Law enforcement actually helped with those violent tensions.

We’ve learned so much now looking through the 90s and the stories coming from folks who were incarcerated, or who were involved in gangs. They started their gangs because they needed protection from law enforcement. Once the factories and jobs were taken out of the communities and that stuff was replaced with liquor stores, and guns and drugs were brought in, that’s what created the violence.

Wong

Do you see the problems with our prisons or criminal justice system as a uniquely American problem?

Howard

Oh, yes. I think it’s a uniquely American problem because no other system of incarceration looks as bad as ours. Even in foreign countries, even though their jails are really crazy, they still don’t lock up as many people as the U.S. does, and they don’t lock them up for as long as in the U.S. either.

We just have the craziest and the most extreme punishment system ever, and people actually criticize the U.S. for our incarceration system. My older mentors who’ve been doing this work a lot longer than me have visited places like New Zealand, and Australia, and looked at their incarceral systems and they all shake their heads at us. Their prisoners live in essentially their own, kind of, apartment spaces. They grow their own food, they can have family come and have dinner with them, they can shop for their food in their community, to reconnect with the community. It just looks so different, and completely humanized. They actually focus on rehabilitating someone and helping someone feel connected to society rather than further isolating them and making them feel like criminals, you know? So yeah, I think it’s a uniquely American problem.

Wong

And, for those of us who have loved ones in prison or jail, what suggestions do you have for how we can better support them?

Howard

Awesome. I think the first thing you could do is to actually just stay connected with them. I think because folks are so forgotten, that one of the things that we all, on the outside, can do are like letters, and writing to these folks - it means so much to them. And actually listening to them. Tell them about what you did today, what you ate, and where you drove past and what school was like. And tell them about your life on the outside because that’s actually what they’re missing, what they want to hear. And it opens up the space for them to create trust with you and I think that’s when the conversations can happen, where they’ll tell you about what the system looks like inside. You know, certain policies that you hear about, you can write your loved ones and say, ‘Hey, I learned about this Felony Murder rule thing,’ and ‘I learned about this enhancement repeal. I’m not sure if that affects you, but did you know that these policies were happening?’ and then also tell them like, ‘Hey did you know that

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Interview with Amber Rose Howard there’s 100s of organizations out here fighting to reform criminal justice? They’re fighting to get people out of prison.’ Because a lot of folks don’t know that this work is happening. So sometimes supporting them looks like telling them, ‘Hey, people care about you. You’re not forgotten.

People are actually fighting to break this whole system down.’ And that can change someone’s perspective on hope inside.

Wong

How can the public support and push forward change and, more specifically, support you guys?

Howard

Right on. I think that the number one thing that the public can do is to [shut] down stories that demonize folks and criminalize folks. To constantly be involving yourself in spaces where folks are being humanized. So as far as when people are putting stories out in the paper or stories out in different online journals that talk about folks who are touched by incarceration, sharing that with your community, with folks who may not ever think about prison. Or, who think about prisoners in a negative way. Sharing those stories to help us shift the narrative in society is key. And to actually be involved in our advocacy. When we’re passing policies, the way that we get those passed, of course by the legislators vote, right? And a lot of time, to get those votes, we have to sit in their offices and go advocating for them.

So as we move through legislative cycles, and we’re going to board of supervisors and we’re doing those things, we need folks in communities that don’t look like our communities, we need folks that are living in white spaces to go visit their legislators. Because those folks will always tell us, ‘Well people in my community don’t care about this.’ It looks like people in the public actually [being] advocates for us in those spaces. That’s how we can increase the momentum and continue to change criminal justice reform. If folks continue to just like clap their hands for us doing the work and then walk away, we’ll be stuck in the same space. We need folks to actively jump in, to write your legislators when we ask for letters, to visit them when we ask for people to go into offices, to share stories with classmates and with family members, to have the conversations that are difficult, even to help setup spaces. If folks told me like, ‘I’m having a family meeting and I’m going to have about 30 people over at my house, can you come do a quick 20 minute talk on incarceration?’ Yes, I’m coming through. So it’s about folks in the larger public space engaging with us [who] are doing the work, and then all year long we can tap you in and tell you how you can support.

Wong

And, speaking of legislation, is there anything up for vote today that touches these communities, these issues, that voters should look out for?

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Interview with Amber Rose Howard

Howard

Not particularly - there’s no policies or anything. But just as far as the State, with these midterms it is helpful when we don’t have Republicans in seats. They just never vote for criminal justice reform. So, people paying attention to who they’re putting into these elevated seats. And that’s the most important thing I think that people can do. And of course housing, the rent control, Prop 10. I’m telling everybody to vote ‘Yes’ on that. It totally helps out people who are criminalized in our communities because they end up homeless or struggling. Or, too many people live in one house and chaos happens. And all those things happen because rent is too high, right? So that’s like something that will indirectly affect the way that people are able to live and avoid being caught up in the prison system.

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The Prison Issue

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Primary Document: California State Assembly Bill No.32, Chapter 739

2019

Assembly Bill No. 32 CHAPTER 739 An act to add Section 5003.1 to, and to add Title 9.5 (commencing with Section 9500) to Part 3 of, the Penal Code, relating to detention facilities.

[Approved by Governor October 11, 2019. Filed with Secretary of State October 11, 2019.]

legislative counsel’s digest

AB 32, Bonta. Detention facilities: private, for-profit administration services.

Existing law establishes the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and sets forth its powers and duties regarding the administration of correctional facilities and the care and custody of inmates. Existing law, until January 1, 2020, authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to enter into one or more agreements with private entities to obtain secure housing capacity in the state or in another state, upon terms and conditions deemed necessary and appropriate to the secretary. Existing law, until January 1, 2020, authorizes the secretary to enter into agreements for the transfer of prisoners to, or placement of prisoners in, community correctional centers, and to enter into contracts to provide housing, sustenance, and supervision for inmates placed in community correctional centers.

This bill, on or after January 1, 2020, would prohibit the department from entering into or renewing a contract with a private, for-profit prison to incarcerate state prison inmates, but would not prohibit the department from renewing or extending a contract to house state prison inmates in order to comply with any court-ordered population cap. The bill would also prohibit, after January 1, 2028, a state prison inmate or other person under the jurisdiction of the department from being incarcerated in a private, for-profit prison facility.

This bill would also prohibit, with exceptions, the operation of a private detention facility, as defined, within the state.

The people of the State of California do enact as follows: SECTION 1. Section 5003.1 is added to the Penal Code, to read: 5003.1. (a) On or after January 1, 2020, the department shall not enter into a contract with a private, for-profit prison facility located in or outside of the state to provide housing for state prison inmates.

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Ch. 739

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—2—

(b) On or after January 1, 2020, the department shall not renew an existing contract with a private, for-profit prison facility located in or outside of the state to incarcerate state prison inmates. (c) After January 1, 2028, a state prison inmate or other person under the jurisdiction of the department shall not be incarcerated in a private, for-profit prison facility. (d) As used in this section, “private, for-profit prison facility” does not include a facility that is privately owned, but is leased and operated by the department. (e) Notwithstanding subdivisions (a) and (b), the department may renew or extend a contract with a private, for-profit prison facility to provide housing for state prison inmates in order to comply with the requirements of any court-ordered population cap.

SEC. 2. Title 9.5 (commencing with Section 9500) is added to Part 3 of the Penal Code, to read: TITLE 9.5. PRIVATELY OWNED AND OPERATED DETENTION FACILITIES 9500. As used in this title, the following terms have the following meanings: (a) “Detention facility” means any facility in which persons are incarcerated or otherwise involuntarily confined for purposes of execution of a punitive sentence imposed by a court or detention pending a trial, hearing, or other judicial or administrative proceeding. (b) “Private detention facility” means a detention facility that is operated by a private, nongovernmental, for-profit entity, and operating pursuant to a contract or agreement with a governmental entity.

9501. Except as otherwise provided in this title, a person shall not operate a private detention facility within the state.

9502. Section 9501 shall not apply to any of the following: (a) Any facility providing rehabilitative, counseling, treatment, mental health, educational, or medical services to a juvenile that is under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court pursuant to Part 1 (commencing with Section 100) of Division 2 of the Welfare and Institutions Code. (b) Any facility providing evaluation or treatment services to a person who has been detained, or is subject to an order of commitment by a court, pursuant to Section 1026, or pursuant to Division 5 (commencing with Section 5000) or Division 6 (commencing with Section 6000) of the Welfare and Institutions Code. (c) Any facility providing educational, vocational, medical, or other ancillary services to an inmate in the custody of, and under the direct supervision of, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or a county sheriff or other law enforcement agency. (d) A residential care facility licensed pursuant to Division 2 (commencing with Section 1200) of the Health and Safety Code.

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—3—

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Ch. 739

(e) Any school facility used for the disciplinary detention of a pupil. (f) Any facility used for the quarantine or isolation of persons for public health reasons pursuant to Division 105 (commencing with Section 120100) of the Health and Safety Code. (g) Any facility used for the temporary detention of a person detained or arrested by a merchant, private security guard, or other private person pursuant to Section 490.5 or 837.

9503. Section 9501 does not apply to any privately owned property or facility that is leased and operated by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation or a county sheriff or other law enforcement agency.

9505. Section 9501 does not apply to either of the following: (a) A private detention facility that is operating pursuant to a valid contract with a governmental entity that was in effect before January 1, 2020, for the duration of that contract, not to include any extensions made to or authorized by that contract. (b) A private detention facility contract renewed pursuant to subdivision (e) of Section 5003.1.

SEC. 3. The provisions of this act are severable. If any provision of this act or its application is held invalid, that invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application.

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The Prison Issue

San Francisco, California November 9, 2019

Chesa Boudin was elected as the District Attorney of San Francisco, California, winning on a progressive platform and promising sweeping criminal justice reform. His stated goals during his term are to find alternatives to incarceration, to decriminalize sex work, hold the police accountable, and address the existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Boudin has garnered the support of figures like Senator Bernie Sanders and outspoken activist and prison abolitionist, Angela Davis.

District Attorneys are an integral part of our local and national justice system. The outcomes of these county DA races and the current move towards more progressive ideologies stand to greatly impact our prisons and jails. A nationwide study called “The Effects of District Attorneys on Local Criminal Justice Outcomes” (published January 3, 2019), by Sam Krumholz, shows that in the two years after a Republican DA is elected there is an 18-21% increase in incarceration rates.

When they looked at the same two year outcomes by race they found that when a Black or Latino DA was elected, there was a 10% reduction in incarceration rates. It’s important to note that following these elections police arrested the same amount of people they had prior to these DA election cycles.

Therefore, they were able to conclude that the differences and patterns seen in the incarceration rates are associated with how Republican DAs often seek harsher sentences for drug offences.

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District Attorney

A district attorney is elected by their constituents to make justice decisions for their county, over a minimum four year term. DAs investigate evidence, decide whether to prosecute, offer plea bargains, carry out trials, litigate appeals, Attorneys determine the amount and type of bail a person will receive on a case-by-case basis and conduct grand jury investigations - work that directly impacts who enters prison.

They are responsible for a staff of prosecutors, deputy district attorneys (DDAs), and assistant district attorneys (who serve as supervisors of the office). In smaller counties, teams of this size are not necessary but, often times, prosecutions are delegated to DDAs, while the DA focuses on the more important cases.

How do they assert their influence?

Every state has a District Attorney Association (or a group like it) that offers District Attorney’s a pathway to not just enforce, but also create laws. These associations are not-for-profit groups that lobby, petition and file lawsuits in order to block or push bills through in the interest of DAs. A majority of DAs and other prosecutors across the country are a part of these associations in their state. And due to the influence their members have, legislators find it hard to ignore District Attorney Associations.

In the last few years there have been a number of popular progressive DA campaigns. It might not be as easy as we think to spot a progressive platform when it comes to DA races so we offer a few short synopses of a couple of the races and DAs we think are noteworthy.

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District Attorney

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From Least Progressive to Most Progressive Steve Kunzweiler In 2015, Steve Kunzweiler (R) was elected as district attorney for Tulsa County, Oklahoma. Like most DAs (especially if they are Republican), he prefers to take a “tough on crime” stance, backing laws like mandatory sentencing.

Throughout his term, he has called members of the police force into accountability for their actions, ultimately weakening his relationship with the department and going against the often mutually beneficial relationship Republican DAs have with police departments. He charged and convicted Reserve Deputy Robert Bates of manslaughter for shooting and killing an unarmed man and charged policewomen, Betty Shelby, with first degree manslaughter for killing unarmed, Terence Crutcher – the jury would ultimately find her not guilty.

Larry Krasner

Rachel Rollins On November 6th, 2018, Rachel Rollins (D) was elected as the District Attorney for Suffolk County, MA, winning 80% of the vote. Unlike other DAs, she believes in being “smart on crime” rather than “tough on crime”. She wrote out her vision for progressive prosecution which is starts with dismissing nonviolent or low-level offences and crimes or finding other ways to atone for these wrongdoings without jail time. Rollins has found that the root of these non-violent crimes are generally crimes of addiction, mental illness, and poverty. She aims to provide people with the services they need to address their condition or situation on a caseby-case basis. Rollins considers the accused a part of the community as well, telling reporters, “I represent not just the victim, but the defendant and the community.” Although she has received pushback from the media, judges, and law enforcement, she remains steadfast.

On May 16, 2017, Larry Krasner’s (D) election as the District Attorney for Philadelphia was regarded as an underdog victory.

Krasner has made moves to end the prosecution of marijuana possession and has suspended the bail requirement for certain misdemeanors and nonviolent felons. He has also instructed prosecutors to offer shorter prison sentences in plea deals. Krasner is committed to keeping pharmaceutical companies accountable and has filed a lawsuit against them for their role in the opioid epidemic. His relationship with police is tense as he holds both prosecutors and law enforcement officials responsible for their actions. Lawmakers in Pennsylvania passed legislation giving the state’s attorney general authority to prosecute certain firearms violations in Philadelphia (this legislation doesn’t include any other city in Pennsylvania) as a way to block Krasner’s ultra progressive work in this regard. Judges have rejected his appeal to reduce life sentences for juveniles. Krasner is one of the most progressive prosecutors in elected office and has come under fire from other Democrats and the Democratic party, highlighting the schisms that exist between conservative and progressive Democrats.

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The Prison Issue

Deep Dive: Prison Abolition

In 2018, the United States made up about 4.4% of the world’s population, yet it was home to 22% of the world’s prison population. This is to say that for every 100,000 people living in the U.S., about 655 are incarcerated. These overwhelming numbers are unmatched by any other western society.

The world has made incredible technological advances and ideological shifts and as society changes, so must our institutions. Prison abolitionists believe this means getting rid of an institution altogether. I reached out to activist and prison abolitionist, Stephanie Keene, to get an idea of what it might look like if we were to divorce ourselves from prisons.

So, how do we begin to imagine America without its prison system? Many people believe the prison system is integral to criminal justice as prisons are deeply rooted in American history, the American economy, and our social reality.

After all, if prisons didn’t exist, where would the “bad” people go?

As criminal justice reform gains support it follows that prison abolition would enter justice reform discourse. Prison abolition blatantly affronts our constructed idea of criminality, but when we begin to identify the systems and factors that produce these high rates of imprisonment it becomes difficult to justify our criminal justice system as it exists now.

The reality is that we cannot continue making strides to change our system so that is resembles the humanity we believe we want to see without discussing where we are headed. And, if we support criminal justice reform then we have to ask ourselves - to what end? What do we envision is the broader purpose of these reform initiatives?

Stephanie Keene is a member of a group that meets weekly at a prison in Pennsylvania.

The purpose of the group is to support individuals who are currently incarcerated and those who have previously experienced incarceration.

The group plans monthly workshops and serves as an incubator for members of the group to collaborate on co-writing opportunities and research projects. About half of the members are currently incarcerated and the other half have returned home.

The workshops and meetings cover different topics related to prison, and topics that are important factors in the discussion about the prison structure and incarceration - “Things that can find people or actions criminalized and lead to prison”, Keene explains.

The topics the group discuss include education, healthcare, and drug use. The group has been around for about 15 years, and Keene joined the group three years ago. Because the prison is unaware of the groups’ ties to abolition or the advocacy work that they do, she didn’t share any identifying information.

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Prison Abolition

Stephanie Keene’s Insight on Prison Abolition If you’re grappling with the idea of prison abolition...

Keene Yeah, I think that’s the case for most of us. That’s what

we’ve been conditioned to know, that’s how we’ve been conditioned to respond. This is not a new concept, but…anything that contradicts or interferes with the existing system of capitalism is likely to be attacked and impeded upon.

Because abolition is this sort of imaginative, futuristic sort of thing most folks, or, speaking for myself - I don’t imagine that this thing that I’m imagining comes to fruition in my lifetime necessarily. Its work that I think is important, and that we’re doing piece-by-piece, hoping to get done what we can and then passing it off to other generations.

What can happen when we imagine the alternatives?

Keene …Miller v. Alabama which was a 2012 Supreme Court rul-

ing that [says it] is unconstitutional to impose mandatory life without parole on folks under 18. And that just happened in 2012, and only in 2016 was it ruled to be retroactive for folks who were already serving that sentence. And I bring that up to say that I imagine 20 years ago folks didn’t see that coming or believe that that would be a thing, that 5,000 people in the U.S. would have the opportunity - 5,000 people who thought that they would have to die in prison would have the opportunity to be resentenced and possibly come home from prison. Now in 2019, like 1,000 of those folks have come home. And so it’s that kind of imagination and doing [the] work and fighting for things that you can’t necessarily see a current path for, and don’t have faith in the system [to make] it happen – but [you’re] shining a light on it and talking to people about it and educating folks about it - sometimes we win, and that happens (referring to the successes of Miller v. Alabama case).

What about the victims of crime?

Keene And the system has been sort of constructed in a way that

implies that punishment is somehow some sort of closure or vindication that serves people who’ve been harmed, or their family members, but the system doesn’t actually correct.

You know what I mean? It doesn’t actually provide people with anything. If I’m a victim of a crime and the person who committed that crime goes to prison but the actual system doesn’t give me anything or do anything for me. I’m not given any resources, I’m not given any therapy, I’m just sort of like given that this person got punished.

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Eight to Three

Prison Abolition

Identifying root problems before prisons become a part of the equation...

Keene

So looking at other systems that fail people before prison – health care, education. And, if you look at those things in other countries - where recidivism is lower - they tend to have better approaches to all these surrounding and connected systems than we do. So education, healthcare, housing, different economic structures. So for a lot of folks who believe in abolition, it means addressing those needs.

Decriminalizing some of the things that people are accessing, not out of a need to cause harm but out of a want to supplement needs. You think of a person who robs a corner store – more likely than not, it’s not for fun, likely it’s [out of] a lack of resources. A really great start would be eliminating those sorts of things. Getting citizens to a point of being able to address [their] basic needs.

What does prison abolition work look like?

Keene

And so for a lot of people, that includes like restorative justice practices and principles…actually figuring out what are the root causes of the things that are criminalized and how do we address those. Because the current prison system doesn’t necessarily address those, it just separates the people who have caused harm. So there is nothing that is actually being done for people who cause harm, or for people who have been harmed.

What’s the ultimate goal of prison abolition?

Keene

I think that answer varies depending on who answers it.

But for me it’s to eventually get to a place where we don’t need prisons. So it’s not as simple as letting everybody go and closing all prisons. It’s about, how do we become - or become again - a place that doesn’t need prisons? How do we get to a way of life where people don’t cause the kind of harm that leads to prison?

The difference between Prison Reformists and Prison Abolitionists...

Keene

…we’re more at a reformist kind of stage. I think more and more people are kind of on board with that philosophy, which is important. You know, when you talk about 13th (the Netflix documentary) and other projects like that, that [have] sort of opened the discussion…I definitely think folks are paying enough attention, that folks agree the system does need to be reformed. They may not have specific ideas about what that means, but at least [they’re] at the point of engaging in the conversation.

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Eight to Three

Prison Abolition

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So there’s some ways in which reform can get us closer to abolition. Like there’s some methods of reform I think a lot of us [abolitionists] see as like not helpful on that path, but there’s some that do.”

I think you described it perfectly, and I think that’s what the tension is and that’s what folks who support abolition are always examining. And, I mean, the answer is always different…in the case of education in prison, right? Which is [a] reformists idea or principle and is sometimes seen as something that, yes, makes it more palatable and it’s not - I wouldn’t say - an abolitionist ideal, but it’s not something that’s causing harm. It’s not something that I think would impede. So, sure, it’s awesome for people to be able to be educated while in prison and I know folks who’ve gotten bachelors and master’s degrees while they were in prison…I think [the] answer is: examine it critically and also look at what the state or system has to gain from implementing a particular reform so we might have better information of the way that it might be harmful.

Her remarks on the group’s relationship with the prison...

Keene

Part of why they allow the group to happen is because of the assumption that people make about incarcerated folks.

For the most part the prison thinks we are these educated volunteers coming in to quote-unquote help these incarcerated people. So they know we do workshops but they don’t understand that half of the brilliance of what we’re doing comes directly from folks within the system. Because of how racist and otherwise terrible the system is, they just make assumptions that we are these good-hearted educated people that are coming in to teach. And so that’s why the work is able to continue.

Studies show that incarcerated people who participate in college education programs are 43% less likely to recidivate and that facilities offering these programs have fewer incidents of violence.

VERA Institute Instagram Post, August 20, 2019

In 2011, Risk Reduction Earned Credit (RREC) which included educational classes and treatment programs, attributed to the 21% decrease in returns to prison for violations.

Decarceration Strategies Report by The Sentencing Project, September 5, 2018

Each abolitionist has their own roadmap to abolition. The ultimate goal is to address and take-apart our system in order to create a system that will serve society with more integrity and equality. Keene explains that her work is about creating a society that supports its citizens so adequately that they do not cause the kind of harm that would make prisons necessary. In other words, she desires a society that is so just prisons become obsolete. This work will take time but we all stand to benefit from a society that is this exceedingly just.