Prison Abolition and Survivors of Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence

 image from CARA

I really want prisoners to weigh in on this issue, and they've made an invitation by accommodating entries in handwriting and encouraging the distribution of this call-out in print, so if you have loved ones in jail or prison who are survivors of violence, please print this up and send it to them. If they mail their submission back to me (Arizona Prison Watch/ PO Box 20494 / PHX, AZ 85036) I'll turn it in. 

DUE DATE: APRIL 15, 2012

Some really good resources on anti-violence and the prison industrial complex are available at:

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence 

CARA: Communities Against Rape and Abuse - Seattle. 

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ANTHOLOGY CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

Working Title: Challenging Convictions: Survivors of Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Writing on Solidarity with Prison Abolition.

Completed submissions due: April 15, 2012.

Like much prison abolition work, the call for this anthology comes from frustration and hope: frustration with organizers against sexual assault and domestic violence who treat the police as a universally available and as a good solution; frustration with prison abolitionists who only use “domestic violence” and “rape” as provocative examples; and, frustration with academic discussions that use only distanced third-person case studies and statistics to talk about sexual violence and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). But, this project also shares the hope and worth of working toward building communities without prisons and without sexual violence. Most importantly, it is anchored in the belief that resisting prisons, domestic violence, and sexual assault are inseparable.

Organizers of this anthology want to hear from survivors in conversation with prison abolition struggles. We are interested in receiving submissions from survivors who are/have been imprisoned, and survivors who have not.  Both those survivors who have sought police intervention, as well as those who haven't, are encouraged to submit. We are looking for personal essays and creative non-fiction from fellow survivors who are interested in discussing their unique needs in anti-violence work and prison abolitionism.

Discussions of sexual assault, domestic violence, police violence, prejudice within courts, and imprisonment cannot be separated from experiences of privilege and marginalization. Overwhelmingly people who are perceived to be white, straight, able-bodied, normatively masculine, settlers who are legal residents/citizens, and/or financially stable are not only less likely to experience violence but also less likely to encounter the criminal injustice system than those who are not accorded the privileges associated with these positions. At the same time, sexual assault and domestic violence support centers and shelters are often designed with certain privileges assumed. We are especially interested in contributions that explore how experiences of race, ability, gender, citizenship, sexuality, or class inform your understandings of, or interactions with cops, prisons, and sexual assault/domestic violence support.

Potential topics:

·      What does justice look like to you?
·      Perspectives on police and prisons as a default response to sexual assault
·      What do you want people in the prison abolition movement with no first hand experiences of survivorship to know?
·      How did you overcome depression/feelings of futility when dealing with these systems?
·      Critical reflections on why the legal system has or has not felt like an option for you
·      Perspectives on the cops/PIC participating in rape culture
·      Restorative justice and other methods for responding to sexual violence outside of the PIC? (if you are a settler be conscious of appropriations of indigenous methods)
·      How have you felt about conversations you’ve had about the PIC?
·      How sexual assault inside and outside of the PIC is treated by organizers against sexual assault, domestic violence, and the PIC
·      Police and prison guards as triggers
·      Responding to sexual assault and domestic violence when communities weren’t there for you
·      What the legal system offers survivors and what it doesn’t
·      Rants at manarchists, the writers/directors of televised cop dramas, and communities that let you down
·      Survivor shaming for reporting and for not reporting to police

Please submit first-person accounts, critical reflections, essays, and creative non-fiction to survivorsinsoli@gmail.com by April 15, 2012 with “Submission” as the subject line.

Please:

·      One submission per person;

·      English language (American spelling);
·      Pseudonyms welcomed, as are name changes in the written piece.

If you have access to a computer:
     ·      12 point Times New Roman font;

·      Submit as an attached document (.doc files preferred).

Passing this on to someone without computer access:
·      We accept scans of hand written letters (please include contact info for the author);
·      Contact us if you require a mailing address.

Early submissions are encouraged. First time authors encouraged.

If you have questions, we welcome emails to survivorsinsoli@gmail.com with “Question” in the subject line. We are looking for both shorter pieces of writing and longer pieces, but if your piece is more than 20 pages consider sending us an email to run the idea by us.

Please attach a short biography that you are comfortable sharing with the editors (200 word max.). This is not about your credentials, but getting to know you and where you are coming from. All information you provide will be kept confidential.

About selection and editing: Submissions will be reviewed by a group of readers who will consider if and how each written piece could contribute to the finished project. Each piece will be read by at least two readers who will contribute to the decision to accept/reject/edit the piece. Some of us working on this project have been made to feel alone as both survivors and abolitionists. Some of us have managed to carve spaces within these communities. Now we are looking to open the conversation and hear from people we’ve never met, who have struggled to practice politics in a rape culture and police state. We believe that the needs of survivors matter in these movements, and we don’t need someone else to speak for us or about us as case studies and numbers. We want to hear from you.

For more information please visit: http://survivorsinsoli.blogspot.com/

Please distribute widely.

Dismantling California's Division of Juvenile Justice

Here's what they're doing with juvenile corrections in California. Governor Brewer has been wanting to dismantle the AZ Department of Juvenile Corrections and privatize more services, too. I'm all for abolishing the entire criminal justice system and staring anew, but I don't think we have the same motives or ultimate vision in mind. 

I think the worry that youth will be tried as adults more often - absent state prisons for children - is legitimate, but can be addressed with legislation restricting juvenile transfers. We already know that youth tried as adults are more, not less likely, to re-offend, and we have an idea of what types of evidence-based practice can reduce juvenile delinquency.

In any event, this is worth following. In the meantime, don't be surprised to hear more soon about the AZ Department of Juvenile Corrections downsizing, consolidating resources, increasing privatization of services, and ultimately being dissolved. I think that's precisely what Director Flanagan was hired to do.

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Fight ahead over bold California move to close state-run youth prisons
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
Susan Ferriss January 28, 2012

This story was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity
 
California, often a trendsetter, could make history if it approves Gov. Jerry Brown’s bid to close all state-run youth prisons and eliminate its state Division of Juvenile Justice.

Much depends, though, on whether the state’s politically influential prison guards, probation officers and district attorneys can be convinced — or forced by legislators — to agree to Brown’s proposal. That won’t be an easy sell, due to both public-safety arguments and sure-to-surface haggling over just who pays to house juvenile offenders.

Vowing to restructure government more efficiently, Brown, a Democrat, wants to close the last three of 11 youth prisons that have long been attacked by critics as “expensive failures.” If the state phases out the last three of its aging detention centers, all future young offenders would be held, schooled and treated by California’s 58 counties.

This is the second time since taking office last year that Brown has proposed closing the state juvenile division, which is part of its corrections system. The division’s responsibility has already been slashed dramatically from 10,000 wards in the mid-1990s to about 1,100 in state custody today. Their numbers may be few, but the cost for keeping those youth in state custody runs about $200,000-a-year for every ward.

A host of agendas

The drop in numbers of youths in state custody is due in part to a decline in juvenile crime in California, but also to state legislation in 2007 that blocked counties from sending nonviolent youth offenders to state-run detention centers.

It was a move driven, some argue, largely by California’s massive budget deficits and the desire to lower ballooning incarceration costs. But the decision also dovetailed with an emerging national philosophy favoring locally-based rehabilitation programs over state-run facilities that have been plagued with records of neglect, danger and sexual abuse.

Behind the policy debate: never-ending negotiations over money. The 2007 initiative included millions in state money to counties to devise and provide more effective treatment closer to wards’ home areas and families. Last year, after wrangling with Brown, legislators approved a deal requiring counties to begin paying $125,000 for each ward they sent to the state, if the state’s revenues didn’t improve.

Sure enough, revenues didn’t improve, and now the counties are balking at having to pay the $125,000 per ward they owe. And Brown isn’t collecting. Instead he has resurrected his idea to shut down the state facilities, and give counties even less than he offered before.

Many, but not all, juvenile justice reformers nationwide are cheering Brown’s announcement this month.
“The same phenomenon is happening on the two coasts,” said Bart Lubow, director of programs for high-risk youth at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. He noted that New York State, too, is shifting care for juveniles more to local custody for cost-control and quality reasons.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget proposal this year includes a deal for New York City to keep most of its offenders locally. Mayor Michael Bloomberg complained in 2010 that it cost New York City $62 million in 2009 to satisfy a requirement that it pay half the state’s costs for jailing, on daily average, fewer than 600 youth offenders from the city.

The state-run jails were far from New York City wards’ families, the mayor argued, and had dubious records, like California’s, with recidivism rates of about 80 percent.

Lubow of the Annie E. Casey Foundation said that if Brown is able to pull off the feat of closing all state facilities, other states will have a model to follow. “California is at the leading edge of a national trend,” he said, “to abandon centralized facilities that are scandal-prone and ineffective.”

What’s best for juvenile offenders?

As it was last year, Brown’s idea is embedded in his proposed 2012-13 state budget announced this month. It will be hashed over publicly and privately before legislators make a decision by a June 15 deadline.

Most legislators in California are Democrats, as Brown is, but they are always under pressure not to appear soft on crime. They are also mindful that California’s correctional workers’ union is a big player in state politics and a heavy donor to campaigns.

This time, given that only three state juvenile facilities remain, legislators are perhaps under more pressure not to overburden counties, which are already coping with fallout from last year’s budget deal.

That deal was considered historic because after years of waffling, legislators authorized a significant shift of certain low-level adult felons to county responsibility. The aim was to cut state costs and satisfy federal court orders to clear California’s overcrowded prisons.

Mark Varela, legislative chairman for the Chief Probation Officers of California, said his group continues to oppose closing the last three state juvenile detention centers, although, individually, there are some probation chiefs in California who favor it and say they are ready.

Varela said opponents’ “concern is that the youth in DJJ [the Division of Juvenile Justice] represent offenders with a high degree of sophistication,“ who could have a “negative impact” on lower-level offenders who might not easily be separated from them in local facilities.

By mixing the populations, Varela said, the more violent youths, some of them incarcerated for murder or sex offenses, could endanger or influence others and undermine their progress.

Hardball in Sacramento

District attorneys, too, are expected to fight Brown’s proposal; indeed, the California District Attorneys Association has already shown it can play hardball on the issue.

In hearings and official letters last year, the association argued that if California youth prisons were no longer on option, it was “inevitable” that for public safety, prosecutors would likely try many more juveniles as adults and send them to adult state prison. District attorneys also argued that if counties had to pay the state $125,000 per ward, more youths would also likely be prosecuted as adults.

Books Not Bars, a prison rights group that backs Brown’s proposal, is preparing to counter the prosecutors’ threat.

The group has crafted a draft bill designed to force counties to pay for minors they send to state prison, Jennifer Kim, a Books Not Bars leader, told the Center for Public Integrity. “We are currently shopping it around the Legislature,” Kim said.

Kim said the bill calls for counties to pay the state the going adult rate — about $52,500 a year — for each minor put in adult prison based on the discretion of a prosecutor.

That’s not as much as the $200,000 a year it costs the state for each ward in existing youth prisons, Kim said. But she said it could help dissuade counties from trying to avoid keeping young offenders by putting them in adult prison.

Kim said that while legislators might be vulnerable to soft-on-crime accusations, they also are under fire after years of chopping education severely, closing parks and stripping down other services. They need to justify, Kim said, spending millions on a system that fails to reform most of its wards, and has a record of documented abuses.

“California could be its own country,” Kim said. “It’s so big. And we can’t figure out how to handle about 1,000 kids? That’s smaller than the high school I went to.”

Like the district attorneys association, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is also opposed to Brown’s idea.

“We’re very disappointed with the proposal. We feel it is an immense disservice to youth offenders,” JeVaughn Baker, spokesman for the correctional workers’ union, told the Center for Public Integrity.

Baker said that instead of a complete closure, the union favors trying to reduce costs per ward, and continuing improvements at the state-run juvenile prisons, which have been operating for a number of years under court decree to improve conditions.

However, Baker said, the union also is willing to talk about a compromise and “wants to be part of the solution.” A meeting is planned in mid-February among union representatives to discuss more steps toward continuing reforms to the state facilities, he said.

The correctional workers’ union contributed heavily to Brown’s election, and continues to have a seat at the table when it comes to prison reforms. But with California reeling from waves of budget cuts, it doesn’t have the clout it used to at the state Capitol and has had to accept changes that cut jobs, said Barry Krisberg, an expert on incarceration policy at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

Krisberg, who is also an appointed monitor reporting on improvements at state-run youth facilities, predicted a tough sell for Brown’s proposal at the Capitol. “I’m hearing there is not much enthusiasm in the Legislature for this,” he said.

Krisberg also has his own doubts that the state government should completely phase out its ability to take custody of minors.

He fears that some counties aren’t bluffing when they argue that they are not suited to handle high-level young offenders.

Krisberg said a total closure “would be the most radical juvenile justice reform in history.” He’d rather see the division shifted to the state’s Department of Education, possibly, and out of the prison system.

He also noted that county systems for youth offenders are not scandal-free. The Los Angeles County Probation Department is under federal order to rein in use of force, including pepper spray, as well as neglect of wards with mental health problems and suicidal tendencies.

In December, a federal report found that the Los Angeles probation department still fell short of improvements it was ordered to make.

Krisberg said that in the end, he’d prefer to see California keep a few hundred beds for juveniles at the state level and enact strong policies and provide adequate funding for monitoring and improving local treatment.
Because many high-level wards are adults by the time they’ve served their sentences, what they critically need, Krisberg said, is help from the state with post-incarceration re-entry to society, including housing, access to mental-health medication and job placement.

Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan group in San Francisco, is a friend of Krisberg, but differs with him on this issue, arguing for a shutdown of state facilities that he says are relics of a failed rehabilitation model.

Besides, Macallair said, the majority of the state’s wards come from only about a dozen counties, out of 58, that have grown reliant on the state, and need to be pushed to develop a better infrastructure locally for rehabilitation. His group’s research, Macallair said, shows that despite claims to the contrary, California’s counties have enough room and the ability to appropriately separate juveniles.

Meanwhile, he said, “you’ve got a state system that’s really hanging by a thumbnail.”

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization focused on investigative journalism.

DAILY KOS: Transforming Justice.

Below is a good piece on models of transformative justice, with a list of resources at the end; a little something we can learn from.

--------------from the Daily Kos----------------

Criminal InJustice Kos every Wednesday at 6 pm CST

 

Criminal Injustice Kos: Toward Restorative/Transformative Justice
by RadioGirl

Easy Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni are two of the four young South African men who were convicted of the brutal stoning/stabbing death of Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl, white, 26 years old, who had come to that country to study the role of women in transitional regimes.  She was attempting to drive several black friends to their home in the black township of Guguletu in Cape Town, South Africa.  As she slowly made her way through the area, an angry crowd formed, shouting anti-white epithets and slogans; she was dragged from the car and murdered.  

Amy Biehl

 
The year:  1993.  While Nelson Mandela had been released from prison, the government remained in white hands.  Apartheid-as–policy was dying, but it continued to exact a horrific and often lethal toll from black South Africans and their communities.   Not surprisingly, volatile forms of resistance also continued.  

In a tragically ironic twist to the story, Biehl wholeheartedly supported an end to apartheid.  She had developed friendly relationships with leaders in the African National Congress (ANC) and the Women’s League.  Though not a member of either group, she devoted significant time and effort to activities that supported the building of a free and democratic South Africa.  She was learning the Xhosa language in order to avoid demanding that black South Africans speak to her in English.  

The four young men convicted of killing Biehl were sentenced to prison.  Some time later, they requested amnesty from the Truth & Reconciliation Commission,   established in 1995 to help address the impacts of massive violence and human rights abuses on individuals and society as a whole.  Biehl’s parents supported their petition.

The four young men apologized directly to Linda and Peter Biehl for killing their daughter; they were granted amnesty and released in 1998.  We do not know the details of the lives of two of these men, or how – or even if – they dealt with the aftereffects of these events in their own lives in the ensuing years.  

Ntobeko Peni

But Peni and Nofemala and Amy Biehl’s parents came to know each other very well.  It was not possible, of course, to bring Amy Biehl back to life.  Even so, these four people, whose lives collided in the most painful imaginable circumstances, somehow managed to recognize one another as worthy human beings, all touched in terrible and different – but interrelated – ways by the unrelenting white supremacist violence at the center of the bleak heart of apartheid.  

Together, they began to do what they felt they could to build a new path to a better future for the children in the impoverished townships of Cape Town, including Guguletu.  

Easy Nofemela

Today, Peni serves as an administrator and Nofemala helps coordinate sports programs for the Amy Biehl Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Biehl’s parents to help equip children in the area with positive education and opportunities crucial to envisioning and creating better futures for themselves. 

 

But a change in administrations, however welcome, never automatically ushers in a sea change in a culture of violence.  It will take generations and relentlessly persistent political will and community organizing to change the structural violence and poverty that remain in the post-apartheid era.  

In the meantime, the Amy Biehl Foundation offers programs in a variety of sports and music; HIV/AIDS peer education; greening and environment; drama, dance, pottery, beading, and other creative arts; computer literacy; and youth reading role models literacy.  

How on earth is violence transformed into such hope, and advocacy for deeper, more comprehensive personal and societal change?  

Shifting the Lens Through Which We Envision Justice

As this story illustrates, the possibility exists that even terrible wrongs have the potential to be addressed in constructive ways that help reclaim and redeem many different lives touched in varying ways by violence and other forms of harm and wrongdoing.  

Without reliance  - or at least over-reliance – on intensified policing and harsher punishments, the possibility exists that some constructive action may be taken to atone for, and perhaps even to repair, at least some of the harm done to others.

Moreover, justice need not be reduced to a zero-sum game, in which the needs/interests of the direct victims of violence are framed as antithetical to those of the people who commit violent actions.  

And at the same time, we need not overlook the massive violence, dehumanization, and human rights abuses that characterize so many criminal legal systems – including the U.S. criminal legal system.

But to do so, we must shift from an ethos of vengeance and retribution to one that promotes positive, constructive transformation for all those who are harmed by or complicit in violence and wrongdoing. It must promote healing and liberation not only from violence and wrongdoing, but also from a culture/society that promotes and profits from violence, exclusion, and injustice.

A Widening Spiral of Interest in Restorative/Transformative Justice Visions

These are not “new” possibilities.   Many Native American and other indigenous peoples throughout the world traditionally addressed fractures in “right relationship” through cultural and spiritual practices that focus not on retribution and punishment, but on healing for all affected by the harm, including the wider community.  But colonial conquest of this continent - racist, violent, and genocidal in nature – shattered for generations the ability of Native peoples to live according to their own traditions.

The criminal legal system that developed in this country was, and remains, rooted in the violence of conquest and the imposition of the institution of chattel slavery.  Its evolution over centuries has resulted in the creation of an incarceration society, mass incarceration of people of color, continuing forms of punishment for many once their terms of imprisonment have ended, and the creation of a profit-producing prison-industrial complex, a network of public and private officials and entities who tangibly benefit from more policing, prosecution, and punishment.  

But recently – that is to say, over the past 35 or so years – an ever-expanding range of initiatives have emerged that seek to supplement or replace retributive justice practices alternatives intended to be helpful, constructive, and transformative for both victims of violence and those who do harm to others.  

These justice initiatives are called by many names:  restorative, reparative, transformational, healing, community-centered.  Where violence and mass abuses of human rights in entire societies are both encouraged and perpetrated by the state, and the society must both come to terms with this violence and shift to a better future in which the state actively protects human rights, these initiatives often go by the name of  "transitional justice.”

Characteristics of Restorative/Transformational Justice Approaches

There is no monolithic approach to restorative/transformational justice initiatives.

Some initiatives emphasize community involvement and are intended to eventually replace the harsh punishment/expanded policing orientation of the criminal legal system, while others are designed to work wholly within that system, as a more recent feature of it.  There are many "blended" approaches that involve the criminal legal system, but also have components that operate independently.

Some initiatives look beyond individuals to examine and seek to address the social conditions in which violence regularly occurs, while many others do not.

Even so, some values/commitments are largely shared  – but to varying degrees and in different ways.
•    Greater focus on harm/wrongdoing/fracture in positive relationships among individuals and in the community and on impacts of same; less emphasis on lawbreaking as an abstract concept.
•    Focus on repairing harm caused by violence and wrongdoing, to the extent possible.
•    Commitment to short- and long-term safety, healing, and constructive support for survivors
•    Focus on accountability/acceptance of responsibility and positive transformation for people who harm others; less emphasis on “punishment.”
•    Not restricted to courtrooms; survivors and those responsible for harm may voluntarily choose to meet face to face in a mediated/facilitated non-courtroom setting.  Other relevant community members may also have a role in processes.
•    Active rather than passive involvement of all parties in the processes wherever possible; encouraging a sense of agency in ordinary people.
•    Outcome focus on mitigation of harm and prevention of harm, and on positive outcomes for survivors and those who have engaged in wrongdoing.

The earliest and some of the strongest proponents of these non-retributive justice visions have been aboriginal/indigenous peoples reclaiming and adapting traditional practices to contemporary needs as well as religious justice advocates from diverse spiritual traditions, including the historical “peace churches” (Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers), Buddhists, Catholics, and Jews.  Today, even some right-leaning evangelical Christian groups have created restorative justice initiatives.  

Some of the most innovative and exciting work today is being done by activists and advocates working to support new and hopeful community responses to juvenile justice issues and trying to halt the school-to-prison pipeline, and by those organizing new community responses to interpersonal violence (battering, rape, and sexual abuse) and child sexual abuse.

Advocates include many fighting against repressive regimes and massive state-sponsored violence in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere, though  today,  “truth and reconciliation commission” processes have also taken place in or are being considered for select U.S. communities, such as Greensboro, North Carolina, where massive racial and economic injustices, often supported by law enforcement and other “respectable” public and private systems, are seen as instrumental in promoting outbreaks of violence.  

Colleges and universities in Minnesota, California, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere now sponsor academic programs, conduct research, and provide technical assistance and support in the general field of restorative justice. Associations/websites focused on particular practices often utilized in restorative justice programs, such as victim-offender reconciliation or victim-offender mediation,  have been created.

International programs exist.  

It is a hopeful and necessary new terrain of justice.

What Are These Programs Like, and Do They Work?

Even the language used to describe these initiatives is imprecise, since many groups combine elements of restorative/transformational justice in an almost limitless variety of ways.  So keep that in mind as you read.  

Restorative Justice programs often include some or all of these approaches: victim-offender mediation/reconciliation processes with trained facilitators; family/community group conferencing that brings a larger group of affected people together to decide how to address harm done and its aftermath; and peace/sentencing circles designed to develop broader ownership of the justice process in ways that meet the needs of all affected parties.  

Both conferencing and circle processes are adapted from aboriginal/indigenous practices.  

Restorative justice initiatives depend on acceptance of responsibility for and acknowledgment of harm done by the relevant parties and is expected to end with agreements on how the person who hurt others or 

engaged in wrongdoing will make amends for/work to repair the harm done to the extent possible.

Transformational Justice initiatives may utilize some versions of these practices, but there often also are components that emphasize community action, healing, and accountability for harm/violence done to people or even entire communities as well as directly challenging the limitations and structural injustices/violence often embedded in state criminal legal system responses.   An explicit goal may be to challenge and transform systems of oppression that are seen to encourage harm.  They also seek to involve survivors and those who do harm, as well as communities, in processes that emphasize healing, accountability, and agency.

Communities themselves, not law enforcement agencies, are given skills and tools to help them build/sustain the capacity to assume increasing responsibility for attending to public safety, the well-being of community members, and protection of human and civil rights.   This is not a vigilante model, but a community-led education/organizing model that explicitly challenges over-reliance on policing, prosecution, and punishment to address trauma, violence, and other harms.  

Effectiveness

 

Programs vary greatly, and so do mechanisms for evaluation, so the data available are useful, but not comprehensive. There is more data for restorative justice programs that also have direct involvement with the criminal legal system than for those that do not – or for transformational justice programs.

In 2006, the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking reported on a limited assessment of data (Restorative Justice Dialogue: Evidence-Based Practice; scroll down page for link)  from “restorative justice dialogues,” which included victim-offender mediation, group conferencing, circles, and “other” practices that involve survivors and those who did harm direct (usually face-to-face) interaction with the help of a facilitator or mediator.  In victim-offender mediation,  8 or 9 out of 10 participants typically report satisfaction with the process/outcomes, though the satisfaction rate is slightly lower for those who do interact with one another, but not directly, face-to-face.  

Satisfaction rates for group conferencing are typically in the range of 73% to over 90%.  Over 90% of survivors and those who did harm would recommend conferencing to others.  

Because circles often involve a larger number of community participants, there are fewer studies.  But again, the satisfaction of those who participate, particularly survivors, is relatively high.  But lingering concerns also were reported, ranging from religious conflict to embarrassment, lack of professionalism on the part of facilitators, etc.

With regard to restitution and repair of harm, agreement rates in these processes are generally high.  The agreements almost always include apologies, and perhaps direct compensation to the survivor, community service work for the person who did the harm, and other forms of support to the survivor.   In general. the restorative dialogue processes produce stronger results for survivors and those who did harm are more likely to fulfill their commitments – including financial compensation – than those in cases processed in traditional justice systems.

With regard to recidivism, results are mixed, though hopeful.  Some studies report a greater reduction of recidivism for youth in restorative programs than for youth in traditional programs, for example.  Where there are new offenses, these tend to be less severe for youth who went through restorative programs.  But a number of other variables affect this outcome assessment factor, making further study essential.

For more information, go here

Challenges, Potential Problems, & Pitfalls.

In 2001, in a publication for the American Friends Service Committee, I wrote not only about the promises of a healing/transformative vision of justice, but why we should evaluate initiatives carefully, on a case by case basis.  

"In too many cases, restorative justice concepts. . .have been grafted onto federal and state criminal justice systems essentially as an embellishment, while failing to alter the system’s foundation of violence, coercion, and retribution.  In such cases – and they are not infrequent – victim–offender mediation programs may open the door to new types of humiliation and psychic battering.  Restitution programs are often added onto long periods of incarceration as an additional form of punishment and may leave offenders with a crushing burden of debt.  ‘Alternatives to incarceration’ may become a backdoor approach to penalty enhancements when criminal justice authorities utilize them as an add-on rather than a true alternative…

“Many of the most prominent advocates. . .are economically secure, largely white reformers.  Usually, poor communities and communities of color are not full partners. . .in defining the meaning of restorative justice or in framing attempts to put this vision into practice. . .In the world of social advocacy, privileges, including economic privilege and white skin privilege, are very real barriers that limit the vision and distort the discussion of any initiative that does not fully reflect the experience, the felt needs, the voice, and the leadership of those who must live with the results.  When professional advocates substitute for the affected constituency, the vision of reform they work toward is most often overtaken by the inexorable logic of injustice, exclusion, and retribution. . .

“Without the active ownership of a much broader constituency, [a healing justice vision] is reduced to an empty husk, a new garment to cloak the intact structures of injustice.”

      ––excerpt from In a Time of Broken Bones: A Call to Dialogue on Hate  Violence & the Limitations of Hate Crimes Legislation (pdf download), American Friends Service Committee, 2001.

Generation FIVE repeatedly stresses the need to create intervention/prevention strategies that have sufficient community capacity and can be sustained over time. But it is a critical step in creating initiatives that is overlooked because it requires community organizing strategies.  Many would simply prefer to lodge a little restorative change in the current criminal legal system and let someone else worry about how to sustain it.

 

Many advocates of restorative/transformational justice ask how we can ensure that we are not so insular in our vision that we neglect working to challenge/transform social and economic conditions that contribute to violence, harm, and wrongdoing.

Many are concerned that without vigilance, the philosophy of restorative/transformative justice will simply be co-opted by others who do not share the values and justice commitments that distinguish these practices from the criminal legal system.  What happens when that system itself is a contributing factor to community violence?

Some programs pay no attention at all to cultural, religious, and status differences present in the communities with whom they work, and this can severely limit the credibility of those programs as well as their effectiveness.  How do we address this?

Countless other questions arise, but they are beyond the scope of this discussion.

What matters most is seeing the possibilities in these alternative justice visions and then working like hell to translate them into community practice in sound, just, culturally sensitive, sustainable ways.  

LEARN MORE!  INITIATIVES & RESOURCES

CIK cannot vouch for all that you will find on these sites or in documents available through them.  As always, we encourage you to read carefully and critically

Aboriginal/Indigenous Initiatives

 

Diary by Ojibwa on "Aboriginal Justice in Canada"

Native American/Indigenous/First Nations Resources available through RealJustice, a program of the International Institute for Restorative Practices

Resources on Aboriginal Justice, Centre for Restorative Justice, Simon Fraser University

Youth Initiatives

Project NIA (Chicago):  working to "dramatically decrease the number of children and youth in Chicago who are arrested, detained, and incarcerated; emphasis on development of community support networks and creation of community-focused responses to violence and crime. See also Project NIA's See also Project Nia's Rogers Park Transformative Justice Center Initaitive

Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth - This unique program works to interrupt the school-too-prison pipeline for youth of color who are disproportionately impacted by punitive school discipline and juvenile justice policies.  People of color predominate in terms of staff and board membership.

Restorative Justice for Youth: American Humane Association

Addressing Child Sexual Abuse & Interpersonal Violence (battering, rape, etc.)

Generation FIVE – working to end child sexual abuse within five generations. Be sure to read (and you can download it from this page) GenFive's remarkable  Toward Transformative Justice: A Liberatory Approach to Child Sexual Abuse and Other Forms of Intimate and Community Violence.

Creative Interventions - providing information, tools, and links for those working to develop and sustain collective/community responses to interpersonal violence.

Transitional Justice

International Center for Transitional Justice

General Resources

Howard Zehr’s Blog  (Zehr is often referred to as "the grandfather" of restorative justice programs outside of indigenous/aboriginal work.)

Restorative Justice:  Eastern Mennonite University

RealJustice, a program of the International Institute for Restorative Practices

Various Definitions of Restorative Justice:  National Institute of Justice

Caution: The most prominent restorative justice website, Restorative Justice Online, is operated by Prison Fellowship International and Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, founded by Chuck Colson, former counsel to President Nixon who was convicted of Watergate-related offenses.  

While CIK has no reason to doubt the sincerity of Colson’s commitment to restorative justice, we feel obligated to call reader attention to this CIK diary about faith, prisons, profiteering, and proselytizing.  Colson’s prison ministries promote explicitly anti-LGBT and anti-Islam materials and viewpoints; they also promote rigid gender role conformity.

The People, United: Resisting Arizona's prison industrial complex.

For those of you who only have a cursory awareness of Black Panther Party history and the story of George Jackson (if any at all), Angela Davis is more than a legendary-black-militant-turned-professor from that era. She's the contemporary visionary whose scholarly work - dating all the way back to her incarceration and study of women's resistance to slavery - has been the foundation of much of my own decision to embrace the politics of prison abolition.



I'd encourage anyone interested in the issue of criminal justice to read Davis' work and catch a lecture or two on Youtube. Her message this evening was consistent with her written words and strong on principles of abolitionism; Google it if you want more, though. Something more awesome happened in Tempe, AZ tonight than Angela Davis' talk that I need to write about. It's been unfolding all along, really....


I showed up at NEEB Hall early today - somewhere around noon, I think, to scope it out and chalk the walk. There's a great canvas out in front of the place - it was a great spread, though my camcorder photos are all grainy and I didn't pull out my 35mm...in that respect my work was lost. There was hardly any traffic until the event, too, so I didn't have much chance to interact with curious on-lookers, as I usually do. I killed a lot of time in the heat, and started to get bummed.


But as the hour approached and more people began to arrive, I found myself surrounded by friends, old and new. Anarchists, former prisoners, loved ones of those passed, ASU students, members of the immigrant rights' community, and even a few Wobblies (yep - the IWW folks) have all been showing support for prisoner rights' actions of late, organizing and standing in solidarity where our paths overlap - I seem to be in the middle of many of those intersections right now.



Anyway, as a result of all my comrades' assistance, I had a ton of t-shirts with prisoner mug shots floating among the standing-room-only crowd this evening: at least 15 victims of prison suicide, neglect or violence were represented. Again, I was slow on the draw with my camera, but at one point after the lecture everyone was milling around the AZ Prison Watch banner out front: God, I hope someone out there had the presence of mind to take pictures of them. I was just kind of stunned, really - seeing these folks gather from a distance in all those shirts, I realized how much power we actually have among us, within us, and behind us...


So, I have no doubt that what we have together far exceeds the power against which we fight. I'm not just talking about pushing through some feel-good legislation or coercing the ADC to make a few reforms. Prison abolition is not a losing battle, not even in this forsaken place. That's going to help me sleep a little better tonight. Thanks all.



And thanks, Professor Davis, for coming to town today.

Angela Davis, May 5, 2011: The Future of Democracy.

<-- printable flyer!!! make lots!!!

ANGELA DAVIS
COMING TO TEMPE ASU!!!

NEEB HALL

THURSDAY, May 5, 2011

5pm

Activist Angela Davis poses question: Education or incarceration?

ASU News April 18, 2011

Noted scholar, activist and author Angela Y. Davis, who once spent 18 months in jail herself in the early 1970s, will discuss her ideas about incarceration during a free lecture at 5 p.m., May 5, at Neeb Hall, Arizona State University.

Davis’ talk is titled “Education or Incarceration? The Future of Democracy.” It will be followed by a question-answer session moderated by Gregory Sale, whose exhibition "It's not just black and white" is currently on view at the ASU Art Museum. There will be a reception following the lecture at the ASU Art Museum, and Davis will sign copies of her newest book, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”

Davis gained fame – and notoriety – in the late 1960s and early ‘70s when she was involved in the black power politics of that era. She joined the Communist Party when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. She was active with SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the Black Panthers. She was arrested as a suspected conspirator in the abortive attempt to free George Jackson from a courtroom in Marin County, Calif., and was eventually acquitted of all charges.

Since then, Davis has taught at universities such as UCLA, Vassar and Stanford, and is a professor emerita of history of consciousness, an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, and professor of feminist studies.

Davis also has been involved in the nation’s quest for social justice. She has written eight books, and her most recent theme has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination.

She currently works with Justice Now, which provides legal assistance to women in prison, and engages in advocacy for the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant strategy for addressing social problems. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, a similar organization based in Queensland, Australia.

"In thinking about the possible obsolescence of the prison," Davis writes, "we should ask how it is that so many people could end up in prison without major debates regarding the efficacy of incarceration."

Davis argues that “the very future of democracy depends on our ability to develop radical theories and practices that make it possible to plan and fight for a world beyond the prison industrial complex.”

The lecture is sponsored by Project Humanities in conjunction with the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Trailer from Quad Productions "Mountains that Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama

Big Daddy comes to town: ACLU National Prison Project

ACLU-Arizona: "Demolish the Prisons"

Ringed by the names of those who have died in AZ State custody

of neglect, suicide, and violence since Jan 2009.

Phoenix, AZ (April 25, 2011)

The National ACLU's David Fathi and the Prison Law Office's Don Specter are in Phoenix this week, finally. As I write, they should be wrapping up interviews of prisoners at the AZ state supermax facility in Florence, ASPC-Eyman.


The National ACLU had already made the misuse of isolation and detention for managing symptoms of mentally ill prisoners a national priority, so this shouldn't be a surprise for the ADC...nor should the fact that they're interviewing some of my correspondents. Apparently their arrival is causing quite a stir, though - the guards are the ones who called Fathi "Big Daddy". They had a bit of cleaning up to do for their arrival, I imagine.




No deal is done yet - they're still just exploring the evidence and talking to possible litigants and witnesses, as far as I know. They need to see that there's a social movement here that will support their intervention, so step up with the actions and agitation. Remember to come to the following events:

Today, April 26, 2011

5:30-7:30

MI in the CJ System Roundtable:

Punitive or Restorative Justice?

ASU Art Museum
1th St/Mill Ave
Tempe

Sunday, May 1: May Day Rally.

REALLY, REALLY FREE Store 11:30

Speakers 1:30

Margaret T. Hance Park

south of the Phoenix Public Library, Central St, Phoenix

PRISONER RIGHTS ARE WORKERS RIGHTS!!!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

5:00 pm

ANGELA DAVIS

Neeb Hall, ASU-Tempe

Those of you in prison but not at Eyman, take heart - we've got a whole lot going on both out here and behind bars now, and you won't be left behind. Be persistent keeping me posted about how things are in there - but by all means, direct your eyewitness correspondence about conditions of confinement to the ACLU-AZ (PO Box 17148, Phoenix, AZ 85011), not me, right now. I have the ACLU's assurances that they won't lose any letters, and they'll no doubt try to help me find solutions to the things they can't address, to the extent that such a role is appropriate for them.



Learn to grieve things properly, and keep the frustration and violence down. Help each other out more than usual; you need to not only get through this, but you need to be vocal and visible, now that there's a light shining in there, and responsible with your complaints.




Thanks go out to the prisoners willing to put themselves out there for the rest of the folks right now, as well as to Dan Pochoda and Darrell Hill at the ACLU-AZ, and Mary Lou Brncik, Carl Toersbijns, Patti Jones, and Ken Jacuzzi, especially, for being such aggressive advocates for prisoners with serious mental illness.

Politics, prisons and the AZ legislature's priorities.

From the political playbooks of Senators Ron Gould and Russ Pearce and Rep John Kavanagh: This is largely why our state spends so much more on our people's incarceration and detention than on children's education.

The Prison Abolitionist and the Light in Marcia Powell

"Free Marcia Powell" Phoenix New Times.
December 17, 2009

Just came across these old blog posts about prison abolition and Marcia Powell from when I first started blogging. I thought they were worth resurrecting as this state continues to exterminate the lives of those we've collectively degraded and deemed less-than-worthy of medical care or the other basic necessities of life with Jan Brewer and Chuck Ryan at the helm. This should be enough to keep you busy for awhile.


There are a lot of misconceptions about exactly who's in prison in America, unfortunately, and what happens to them there. There are a few really bad guys, yes - but not everyone in prison is evil, nor is every bad guy behind bars (as evidenced by Russ Pearce's liberty). The law enforcement community even has to manipulate data to justify their funding by frightening people because the truth is on our side, not theirs.


Witness the Phoenix PD bullshitting the feds about our kidnapping rates (that's fraud, among other things), and the AZ Prosecuting Advisory Council trying to convince us that 95% of AZ state prisoners are REALLY dangerous criminals we can't have on the streets (by lumping stats on repeat drug and property offenders with the violent ones). They seem to have no problem letting abusive cops and guards slide, though, as long as their only victims were prisoners.


The high recidivism rate - one symptom of our corrections' system failures - has been twisted into a sign of law enforcement's success instead, as so many of our criminals are now presumably beyond reform - the best we can hope to do is catch and imprison them. Recidivism can be reduced by prison programs like substance abuse treatment, though - which could make a world of difference since 75% of AZ prisoners are assessed at intake as having substance abuse disorders. The ADC plans to add 8,500 more prison beds through 2017 and resists sentencing reform, but they only provided substance abuse treatment services to over 1,000 of the approximately 60,000 prisoners they confined in 2010 - and that includes people sent there for everything from DUI's to manufacturing meth!


I bet there were far more prisoners with dirty urines than in drug treatment at the ADC in 2010 - and more resources spent surveilling and punishing drug use throughout the system than preventing or treating it. In FY2010, three prisoners died of accidental drug overdoses; only one died of AIDS.


So WHAT are they doing with the rest of the addicted prisoners and all that treatment money, then? Clearly not rehabilitating them with it. And they sure aren't counseling all those addicts with Hep C in the hopes they clean up and undergo interferon treatment before returning to the community. After all, if they didn't test dirty for drugs in prison the ADC might have to consider providing them with real health care. Where would they ever get the money? So they're just letting people die. About a third of all AZ prisoner deaths are secondary to Hepatitis C. That's an epidemic that no one is talking about.


Anyway, law enforcement's argument that we NEED more prison beds for the sake of public safety is contradicted by other facts. By the Arizona Department of Corrections' own report, out of approximately 40,000 prisoners in their custody, over 16,000 are housed in minimum security. Those are people who the department thinks pose so little threat to the rest of us that the only time they really need to be locked up is when they sleep...now that sounds like someone is just collecting steep rent ($20,000/year), not protecting and defending us from monsters. Much of the lower security confinement is done by private prisons, too.


Hmm.


Could there be a profit motive for someone to imprison petty offenders? Are prosecutors and judges getting brownie points for the number of years they put people away for, or for reducing crime rates in the community? How do we extract our collective justice from offenders and their families - is it in a way which perpetuates victimization or helps eradicate crime? Those are some of the questions I've been asking myself these past two years, examining the prison landscape up close.


Think real carefully now about whether or not you've ever done anything stupid or criminal enough to land a less-fortunate soul in prison - like one or two nights driving home with too many drinks on board. Few Americans have really been that squeaky clean. Know that the people behind those walls are a lot like most of the rest of us just trying to get by in this world: they just happened to have been successfully prosecuted (which isn't even to say that they're all guilty).


The main difference between defendants who get prison time and those who don't is whether or not they have the resources for a private attorney and power on their side, not whether or not they're truly despicable human beings - or that they even did what they were sent to prison for. Plenty of despicable human beings are wearing the badges and guns in this place, in fact, and too many decent souls - like Marcia Powell - are still ending up dying in chains at their hands...


- Peg

"Anarchy!"
SB1070 sidewalk protest.
Phoenix, AZ (May 30, 2010)


-----------The Prison Abolitionist Archives------------------

Until Every Desert Cage is Gone

Saturday, May 23, 2009

I hope you found your way here because you share a desire to abolish the prison industrial complex, or are at least curious about what prison abolition is. It took me a number of months of research and feedback from a couple of professors who are abolitionists to figure out what the movement was about, and to clarify what abolition meant to me.

I fell into this first through taking a class on capital punishment, taught by a former judge who had once helped author Arizona's post-Furman death penalty statutes. The weight of the evidence that capital punishment was so often applied in a racist, classist way (which not surprisingly catches the innocent) ultimately compelled him to change his position on the death penalty - something I found out only after the semester was over, as he didn't want to sway students by articulating his own position. He did a good job of just presenting evidence for both sides of the argument. Presenting both sides is not my intent here, however.

I understand the impulse for vengeance and retribution, and have heard the case that state executions still serve as a deterrent to potential murderers, but I don't know how any thoughtful American could examine the institution of capital punishment - I mean, really dig into Supreme Court cases (including dissents) and law journals - and not commit themselves to ending it.

At the same time I was getting deeper into my research (which focused primarily on the death penalty and the Bible Belt) I was taking a class on Social Movements and another class on Wealth Distribution and Inequality. From these I learned more about race and class in the broader criminal justice system, COINTELPro, political prisoners, and the PIC Abolition Movement. I not only read work by abolitionists such as Angela Davis, Joy James, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, but I also read some of the works that seemed to originally radicalize some of them.

I considered whether or not I was really an abolitionist myself, or just a reformer. That question got into some deeply held beliefs and buried traumas that were necessary to confront before I could answer it. Bottom line, after I did all my research, is that the question I had to ask myself was whether I was just another white liberal who didn't condone (or actively work against) racism or classism, or if I was an anti-racist who fought against it in all its forms - beginning with racism's manifestation in me.

I came out an abolitionist, and signed up for a class on Prison Social Movements.

Most of us can agree, I think, that prisons are an extraordinarily expensive way to deal with manifestations of drug addiction, the consequences of poverty, and the fear of people who act on political or religious beliefs outside of the "mainstream" (white middle-class America). I suspect that those of us who abstain from "criminal activity" do so not because of what the state might do to us, but because we grew up believing it was morally wrong to steal, kill, cheat, and so on. Christian or not, most of us have some version of the Golden Rule in our conscience, and we strive to get through life without hurting others - an impossible task, given all the levels of hurt there are. But we try.

When one's ethical standards are compromised by trauma, mental illness, addiction, grief, desperate economic conditions, and fear we collectively respond with police to remove that person from our presence, instead of confronting them with a community norm on non-violence and proceed to exemplify it by helping them find other ways of meeting their needs, instead of subjecting them to the terrifying potentials of state violence.

For example, Marcia Powell, a 48 year old mother diagnosed with manic depression and treated with psychotropic drugs was sentenced to 27 months in prison for prostitution. 27 months. That seems extreme, even with prior offenses and a history of addiction. What actually happened to her was worse.

I never would have known about Marcia and her prison sentence except that she died this week after 4 hours in an outdoor, unshaded chain-link cage (like a dog pen) in midday desert heat. AZ corrections officials assert that the cage was solely being used as a temporary holding place for prisoners being transferred, implying that her involvement in a disturbance just necessitated segregation, perhaps for her own protection - and explicitly denying that she was caged under the Arizona sun as a form of discipline. According to a volunteer there, prisoners complain that punishment is precisely what the cages are used for.

Arizona's prison policies actually allow the use of such outdoor cages (though not for discipline), so long as prisoners are provided water (shade is not required) and stay out no longer than 2 hours. Ultimately she died within 20 feet - within eyesight - of the air conditioned prison guards responsible for monitoring her through their window.

One of the linked articles did note that though she was diagnosed bi-polar she was on medications "used to treat schizophrenia". There's often an overlap of symptoms and treatment regimens for those illnesses. In any event, such medications (psychotropics) almost always warn of an elevated risk of heat stroke. People being treated with these drugs shouldn't even be left in the sun for two hours. The fact that the Perryville prison complex incarcerates a number of folks with mental illness suggests medical malpractice on the part of a prescribing physician if he/she failed to advise against caging prisoners in the sun. This is basic pharmacy 101 - the link I provided to that info isn't even a medical site.

My first response to Marcia's death was outrage - I wanted those responsible from the guards on up to be prosecuted and punished for their "reckless disregard" for human life. I wanted them imprisoned for at least the 46 years that the leader of a local burglary ring got for stealing rich people's possessions (so far as I know he never assaulted them). Then I thought, if a new way of responding to violence doesn't come out of this, then what will it take for me to really change? What would justice for Marcia look like? And what would it mean to those responsible for her death and their families? And would it keep this from happening again?

Justice doesn't begin and end with prosecution and punishment. As convenient as it may be to see this incident as an aberration - like we thought Abu Ghraib was, until more evidence of torture emerged - it's not uncommon. And it's not all about the guards or prison administrators, I figured; it's about us, too.

What is it we do as a society that reduces those we select for removal, isolation, and confinement to subhuman status in the eyes of their keepers, and the minds of the rest of us. Every news article about this woman showed her dissheveled, terrified mug shot, described her troubled life, identified that her kids (if they acknowledged her motherhood at all) are "lost" in the foster care system - their abandonment is presented almost as another of her long list of crimes, which presumably justify her incarceration and being subject to abuse.

Marcia's picture exposes her fear, poverty, confusion, despair, shame, and a host of missing teeth suggesting a history of victimization. Her eyes are windows to a soul who looks as if she's been trapped behind bars, walls, and locked doors most of her life; never really free - never really safe - whether on the inside or out. She sure wasn't free and safe selling herself for survival.

Sadly, we never did right by people with severe mental illness even before de-institutionalization. 40 years ago Marcia would have probably been getting neglected or abused in a state psychiatric facility instead of a prison. Maybe she was. We can learn from that era of de-institutionalization - if we don't do abolition right, then deviant and desperate people just go from one oppressive institution to another. That's called transinstitutionalization. We don't want to go back to what used to be called psychiatric hospitals.

So I asked myself what I could do to help get justice for Marcia, and for all those other folks - people's moms and dads and kids and siblings locked away - who suffer and die in the custody of the state. Rally outside the prison with mental health activists? Lobby local legislators on jail alternatives for the mentally ill? Demand the prosecution and incarceration of those responsible, so that they might know the feelings of helplessness, humiliation and dehumanization prisoners endure? So that they might be raped, beaten, drugged, murdered or - for their own protection - placed in solitary confinement for years and go mad?

In other words, does going from one bad option to another really set people free? And does inflicting the same kind of harm on Marcia's killers that the PIC inflicted on her constitute justice? And does not invoking the full force of the PIC against DOC employees mean that they're "getting away" with her murder? Won't it embolden other corrections officers and cops if there's no criminal charges filed for their extreme indifference to human life?

Or is there something, perhaps, that the community can do to find out how this happened, challenge the policies of the department of corrections, and hold the individuals involved responsible for coming up with solutions - alternatives to putting people in cages - and for pouring their blood, sweat and tears into making prison alternatives work. "Sentencing" them to the years of hard labor it takes to restore run down housing so people like Marcia can live in it is hardly typical "community service", because it's not just about hammers and nails - it's about zoning ordinances and business opposition and people worried about more crime and neighborhood resources being inadequate to support high needs individuals - whether they're 'criminals' or ordinary senior citizens.

Going through something like siting a supported housing program (which can take years of 60-hour work weeks) can change a person in a fundamentally more positive way than rotting in prison for manslaughter. It forces one to make personal sacrifices, to take a stand for social justice, and to interact with other social justice activists. That kind of work sure changed me. And I think it would be a better way to make amends to the community than putting Marcia's killers in prison. It's too late for them to make amends to her.

If they succeed, we will all be the better off for it, and they will have perhaps evolved beyond the point where they might abuse power like that again. By thinking outside the narrow confines of what we've been told is justice, we could not only eliminate the use of these cages and promote systemic life-saving reforms, but we could use the need for 'offenders' to make restitution and some kind of reconciliation by creating more safe places for the vulnerable people in our communities. Prison sentences may satisfy a certain amount of vengeance and make us think we're safe, but they were never designed to allow for restitution and reconciliation (even when judges order restitution, prisoners make pennies a day - they can't support their own children, much less compensate for the loss of someone's property, freedom, limb, or life.)

Before I heard about Marcia I had learned that there are impoverished city blocks in sections of New York on which the state spends 1 million dollars a year on keeping residents from those neighborhoods in prison. New York is but one state that spends more on incarcerating people of color than it does on educating them. I wondered what that money could do if invested directly in the community, and how things would look if the community took direct responsibility for creating alternatives to "criminal justice", like Neighborhood Watch groups that serve not to catch or surveille potential criminals, but that instead serve as back-up support for neighbors who have no food, families facing foreclosure, youth exploited by the drug and alcohol industries, former prisoners shut out of work and educational opportunities, latch-key children, and all those most vulnerable to becoming victims of both interpersonal and state violence - the young, the old, the homeless, the disabled, the poor, women, and people of color.

Abolition isn't just about closing prisons and turning molesters and murders out on the streets - I too would have a problem with that. It's about local control over public funds that improve public safety, implement options for reconciliation, restitution, and treatment for those who harm others, assure that basic needs (housing, food, safety, health care, etc.) for community members are met, educate all ages on non-violent conflict resolution approaches, and transform our seige mentality about crime into an understanding of the complexities of human needs and behavior and an earnest sense of responsibility to eradicate the physical, social, and ideological structures that perpetuate both individual and state violence in American society.

At least that's what PIC abolition means to me right now. I still have a lot to learn, and am aware I need to be changing my thought patterns and language when referring to parties and institutions affected by or constituting the prison industrial complex. Reading abolitionist literature helps - much of it is quite scholarly and sound. Critical Resistance (see links) has been a fabulous resource for developing an abolitionist consciousness and concrete tools. Many of the "books to prisoners" projects are organized by anarchists and other abolitionists, rather than libraries, and my correspondence with some of these groups has been quite eye-opening. I'm considering trying to form such a collective here in Tempe (hence my email, 'radicalreads'), which would serve not only as a mechanism for filling book requests from prisoners, but also as a way of gathering with like-minded people over our shared humanity with prisoners to figure out how our community can stop depending so much on cops with guns locking scary people up in cages.

So, if this is your calling too, I'd love to hear from you - my email is at the top of the page. In the meantime, I'll try to keep current on posts about Marcia Powell's life and death and where we go from here.

Peace.

Posted by Prison Abolitionist at 10:25 AM

----------------------------

The Light in us All

Monday, May 25, 2009

This is the photo that the Department of Corrections had posted on their website in Marcia's record at the time of her death, which was so widely circulated in the press. She appears frightened, traumatized, disheveled, and likely very depressed. It may evoke pity - and apparently contempt among some - but it doesn't invite empathy, or leave open the possibility for most that Marcia could have just as easily been their mother, daughter, sister, or friend.

I've been reading chats about her today that appear to be written by people too ashamed of their comments to use their real names. Yet many seem to be enough at home with eachother in their chat rooms that they don't hesitate to ridicule a dead woman for falling victim to circumstances few of us could have endured for 48 years. I haven't blogged all day just because I've been so sick from what I've read.


This photo below, now on the ADC website (but not in the press), appears to be from several years earlier, before decades of addiction, poverty, and mental illness began to take their toll. Perhaps had the press used this photo, fewer people would be so quick to speak about her as if she were trash, or of less significance than a dog. She was once a vibrant woman whose smile belied the trauma she'd already endured. She was a living soul, and in both images, if we look beyond what we've been told, it's not that hard to see the light of God in her, as the Quakers are fond of saying.

The Light of God.


I don't consider myself religious, but I do think that life is sacred and the Mystery that causes our hearts to beat, our faces to smile, our arms to hug, our stomachs to turn, our eyes to tear, our minds to open or close, our souls to grieve, and the deepest part of our being to long to be better than we are is not a Power to take lightly. Whether or not her life was worth saving shouldn't even be up for debate. How we respond to this tragedy ultimately says nothing about Marcia; it says everything about what kind of people - what kind of community- we are.

Fortunately not everyone is so callous or cruel - I know there are folks out there who would do something if they could to set justice right for Marica and all those who struggle each day just to survive. There's actually a lot we can do; it's worth repeating.

Contact elected officials and demand an independent inquiry.

Write letters to the editor expressing your outrage and sadness over her death - don't bury it in a chat or a blog.

Organize or attend a vigil or memorial with members of your community. Vigils for prisoners who died at the hands of the state give permission to the frightened families of other prisoners to open up to their neighbors, speak about their experience, and stop living in shame.

Make a donation in Marcia's memory to a prisoner support or a prison abolition or reform program.

Let the Department of Corrections know that some of us expect prisoners to be treated better than that - we want them to come out healthier and saner than when they went in, not more disturbed or despairing. We need them at their best if they're going to come home to our neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. Otherwise, what's the point of putting them away in the first place?

And don't bother arguing with those who are just entertained by your concern. They aren't likely to abandon their bigotry, especially if it's the only thing that makes them feel superior to others. Talk instead to open minds and compassionate souls who just need a little encouragement to take constructive action - to be the change.

Finally, we must all insist that they tear down those cages in the sun.

-------------------------

Just Listening

Friday, May 29, 2009

If I've seemed unusually quiet the past few days, it's because I've been trying to listen, processing what different people have had to say in the past week about Marcia's death and where we might go from here.

I'm still trying to map the terrain out here; there's so much I don't know, from who runs the community center around the corner to just what an abolitionist would do to keep society safe from cannibalistic pedophiles and corporate sociopaths. I'm still not sure how to answer that, though the INCITE! Anthology has a really good piece on reconciling anti-violence work with abolition work, written along with folks at Critical Resistance.

A number of people have been touched to some degree by this tragedy. Even in chat rooms where people are a little more free to be cruel, the majority have expressed some sense of injustice at Marcia's death. What concerns me about the tone of it, though, is that most of those also express the expectation that even this incident won't result in substantial reform.

I've heard the same thing from politicians, journalists and seasoned advocates here as well. The struggle has gone on a long time; I'm sure it gets discouraging. When I look at the movement, though, I can't help but believe that another world is possible. This past week, in the course of developing this blog, I've dropped in on abolition projects and radical scholars, discovered new sites for prisoner artwork and writings, and taken comfort in the compassionate response of the peace and justice community to the life and death of Marcia Powell. Local people working on prison reform and abolition have come more clearly into view across disciplines and sectors of the community. I have no worries that Marcia's death will be swept under the rug with people like them around. They won't let it happen.

More importantly, perhaps, people ordinarily not concerned with prison conditions have taken notice and taken stands against cages and excessive sentencing. Politicians are trying to articulate some of the systemic flaws that led to Marcia's criminalization instead of to community treatment. Mainstream media outlets are publicizing the details of Marcia's memorial service, suggesting that her death is news that a broader segment of the community might be interested in. Today the AZ Department of Corrections formally suspended use of the uncovered outdoor cells. I'm not sure how encouraging the news is that they'll be "retrofitting" them with roofs and water instead - I have a visceral reaction to the use of cages at all. But it's a start. I don't know what took them so long.

None of this is to say that I think we're on the brink of radical systemic change. And I'm well aware that some progressive agendas still tend to accommodate oppressive institutions, putting off the day when real transformation can finally be brought about. I hate the idea of making inhumane systems function "better" when they simply need to be eliminated. But we also can't just leave people to die while trying to overthrow the carceral regime.

Posted by Prison Abolitionist at 1:33 PM