Exile to the Desert: 3 more years of CCA abuse.

Shame on the state of Hawaii for continuing this contract after all the abuses (including torture and the sexual assault of a prisoner by a guard) that have occurred in Saguaro Correctional Center in the prison town of Eloy under CCA's watch. The people of the Islands should oppose this vociferously...your prisoners are just in for more abuse at the hands of Arizonans - especially your Indigenous. In fact, following this news article is a link to a decent piece by a friend of mine, Frank Smith from Private Corrections Institute, who's an expert on the private prison industry. He did some extensive research into the experience of Native Americans in private prisons - it's worth reading.

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

State Signs New Three-Year Arizona Prison Deal

Hawaii Reporter

June 23, 2011

BY JIM DOOLEY – The state has signed a new, three-year contract with Corrections Corporation of America to house up to 1,900 prison inmates at private prisons in Arizona.

The price carries a one per cent increase over the current contract with CCA, which expires at the end of the month. The Department of Public Safety will pay CCA $63.85 per inmate per day. The old rate was $63.22.

CCA is believed to have submitted the sole bid for the contract.

The new deal, which carries two possible one-year contract extensions, was signed as Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration is making plans to end the longstanding policy of imprisoning Hawaii inmates in out-of-state facilities.

Public Safety officials are drawing up a plan for the return of out-of-state prisoners, but its completion is sometime in the future and will depend on construction of new correctional facilities here and development of new community-based programs for men and women now locked behind bars.

The Hawaii State Auditor said in a report issued late last year the total cost of the private prison program more than tripled since 2001, from just under $20 million to more than $60 million.

The per-day charges under the new contract would total some $44.3 million, although there are millions the state must pay in associated costs which the contract with CCA doesn’t cover.

The actual number of Hawaii inmates now held at CCA’s Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy, Arizona is now believed to have dropped under 1,800 as the state has stepped up efforts to bring certain categories of prisoners home.

Some 60 Hawaii inmates are also being held at CCA’s Red Rock Correctional Facility, next door to the Saguaro complex.

--------------------------Native Americans in Private Prisons------------------

Native Americans in Private Prisons.

Arizona Prison Watch
Friday, December 3, 2010

The following is the intro to a piece written by my friend Frank Smith, an expert on private prisons with the Private Corrections Working Group (where I dig up all those rap sheets on prison profiteers). Here's the testimony he gave to the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons several years back - which makes some good points still relevant to the violence and abuse of prisoners at CCA's Idaho Correctional Center, among other places.

Follow the link for the full text of the article, which I found posted to a great website on Lenape (Delaware Indian) culture and issues. The article was originally published as a chapter in the book "Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization and Human Rights" (Elizabeth Alexander, et al), a worthwhile text for any library on crime and punishment.

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

Incarceration of Native Americans and Private Prisons
By Frank Smith

Introduction

There are currently slightly over two million inmates in local, state and federal jails and prisons. Of these, some 1.6 percent are Native Americans and Hawaiian Natives; in Federal institutions, Native Americans constitute 2 percent of the population, since the U.S. government is involved in criminal justice enforcement on reservations. Because approximately 6 percent of all U.S. inmates are held in private prisons, the total number of Native Americans in these for-profit prisons is comparatively rather small. For that reason, this article presents a picture of the conditions in which Native Americans are held given that limited experience.

Historical Perspective

In order to achieve an informed understanding of the current situation with regard to Native Americans in prison, it is necessary to place it within a larger historical and sociological context. While most residents of the US have the notion their country was founded on the principles of justice and freedom, closer examination reveals that perception is not accurate, particularly in the case of Native Americans.1

The more progressive of our founding fathers whom we remember so fondly as protectors of these ideals include Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. Paine consistently referred to Indians as "savages", and used them as a negative comparative stereotype. Jefferson considered his contemporary Indians to be hindrances to colonial progress. The US only granted Natives citizenship in 1924, five years after women and 59 years after Black males were allowed to vote.

African Americans have undoubtedly been pervasively discriminated against in US history--their dehumanization was even embodied in the Constitution. Schoolchildren learn of the more egregious Supreme Court-approved violations of the rights of Blacks such as the Dred Scott decision or Plessy v. Feurgeson,2 and that the Civil War was fought in part over slavery.

They may have read the Emancipation Proclamation and even the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The sordid history in America of slave owning, in the north and south, of lynching, of Jim Crow, is discussed in most schools. The role of such historic figures as Frederick Douglas or Sojourner Truth is widely recognized. Martin Luther King Jr., is certainly better known than many mediocre presidents. Selma, Alabama, and Little Rock, Arkansas are familiar mileposts, as is Brown v. Board of Education. Students may even understand the meaning of racial profiling, of the immensedisparity between sentencing for crack cocaine, more prevalent in inner-city neighborhoods, and powdered cocaine, more favored by wealthier uburbanites.

They may possibly be aware that a Black adolescent has perhaps a 50 times greater chance of being placed in an adult penal institution than a white youth who has been charged with exactly the same crime,3 and that perhaps one of three young Black men has been subjected to some criminal sanction, such as probation, parole, jail or prison.

Yet how many Americans, young or old, fully understand that this same disenfranchisement; this same disproportionate treatment by the criminal justice system, has affected Native Americans since the Articles of Confederation were signed? How many realize that broken treaties have been the order of the day for over two hundred years? Do they know that the early settlement of this nation involved pushing indigenous peoples into ever smaller, less habitable reservations?

How many school children are taught the cruel facts behind the genocidal removal of the inhabitants of the post-Revolutionary Southeast? There is hardly a Native American tribe that does not have a history of broken treaties and persecution. What this long, troubled relationship between European Americans and Natives constitutes is deliberate disregard for and discrimination against Native culture. Theft of lands, exiles, dispossessions, and a prevailing condemnatory and paternalistic attitude provide the background for the problems of Native Americans in prisons, both public and private, today. It particularly pervades the conditions of confinement of Indians in private prisons...

(follow for the full text)

City of Hospitality: Globe's Prison town ballot initiative.

The Globe community group "Citizens Opposed to Becoming a Prison Town" just put out this press release today....Congrats to Jim and the rest of the gang out there. Save that little city from becoming another hell like Eloy, known for preying on and abusing prisoners...many of whom happen to be indigenous peoples far from their homes. That's got to be bad Karma for that community.

"Caging Arizona"
Arizona State University, NEEB Hall
Tempe, AZ (May 5, 2011)

Remember, people of Globe: in the end, all that you have is your soul. Please don't let the economic development people ever convince you that selling it would be a boost to your town's character or a blessing to your future and your youth...

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

Date: June 21, 2011


Press Release: 1,000 Signatures Collected on Ballot Initiatives --- Will Let Voters Decide the Prison Issue


From: Ballot Initiatives Campaign Chairman, Jim Moss



Update: As of Monday, 6-20, just under 1,000 signatures have been collected by community Volunteers to place TWO Initiatives on the ballot at Globe's next regular election in March, 2012. The two Initiatives deal with any new prison project proposed for the Globe community.



1. One Initiative will require Voter approval for any new prison project built within Globe City Limits.



2. The other Initiative will require Voter Approval for ANY Municipal money, resource, or infrastructure to be used in any way for a new prison project located inside, or outside, of Globe City Limits.



The minimum number of signatures required to place these Initiatives on the ballot was 582.



Citizens Opposed to Becoming a Prison Town launched a 10-Day Campaign over a week ago. Tomorrow they will submit 1,000 Official Petition Signatures for Each Initiative, to Globe's City Clerk, to begin the Certification process. The signatures must be validated to make sure signers are registered to vote AND reside within Globe City Limits. The Volunteers who collected signatures were careful about making sure these criteria were satisfied, so the Campaign Committee is confident that a very high percentage of the signatures will be validated.



The number of signatures collected represents approximately 25% of registered voters residing within Globe City Limits. If the Campaign had been extended for a couple more weeks, the number of signatures collected could have easily doubled to 2,000. Very, very few Globe residents opted not to sign when given the opportunity. Hundreds of disappointed area residents living in the Canyon, or just outside the City limits, wanted to sign the Initiative Petitions. In fact, many were downright upset that their voice could not be counted. But, since these two Ballot Initiatives will appear on a Municipal Ballot, only City residents were eligible to sign.



Over the past 10 days, the City of Globe witnessed democracy in action. This year's July 4 Celebration will have an extra special meaning for all who participated in this community endeavor!

Prisoners Post: to the CEO of CCA, Damon Hininger.

This is a courageous, frank letter from a prisoner of the Corrections Corporation of America and the City of Eloy out at the Saguaro Correctional Facility (where 18 prisoners are suing for torture, and one is suing a guard for sexual assault).

I sure hope Thad was right when he guessed that the CEO may actually answer his letter, though, if he's right about all this, then they'll be sure to send someone to his cell to harass and write him up, at the very least.

Keep us posted on how you're faring in there, Thad. We still want to see you make it out of there soon. He makes a hell of a lot of money off of prisoners like you behaving yourselves, so I'd think he' could afford the grace to listen...

- Peg

"Prisoners Have Families, Too".
Maricopa County Jail: Tent City.

Phoenix, AZ. (April 6, 2011)

PS: Here's the follow-up post to this letter. Thad got harassed alright - he was hit for another year by the parole board after they had already given him an out date, thanks to a personal call from the good warden at Saguaro after this post went up. As far as I'm concerned, they're corrupt through and through in Eloy, Arizona: the City of God.

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



To The CEO of CCA:
Damon Hininger

Corrections Corporation of America
10 Burton Hills Boulevard
Nashville, Tennessee 37215
Phone: (615) 263-3000; (800) 624-2931
Fax: (615) 263-3140

GEO Group, the Townwrecker: NPR, Part II.

Signs of the Times: "Homes not Prisons"
Phoenix Public Library, Central St. Bus Stop.
November 15, 2010.

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

Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble

by John Burnett

March 28, 2011

NPR

Second in a two-part series on private prisons

The country with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States — is supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in the prison business.

More From This NPR News Investigation

Part 1: Town Relies On Troubled Youth Prison For Profits

Are profits distorting the mission of rehabilitating inmates at Mississippi's Walnut Grove prison?

What Is GEO Group?

It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.

For eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.

Shortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since.

A Hard Sell

"Maybe ... he'll help us to find somebody," says Littlefield City Manager Danny Davis good-naturedly when a reporter shows up for a tour.

John Burnett/NPR

The 372-bed Bill Clayton Detention Center is a medium-security prison that is currently sitting empty in Littlefield, Texas.

For sale or contract: a 372-bed, medium-security prison with double security fences, state-of-the-art control room, gymnasium, law library, classrooms and five living pods.

Davis opens the gray steel door to a barren cell with bunk beds and stainless-steel furniture.

"You can see the facility here. [It's] pretty austere, but from what I understand from a prison standpoint, it's better than most," he says, still trying to close the sale.

For the past two years, Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to pay the note on the prison. That's $10 per resident of this little city.

A Resident Burden

Is the empty prison a big white elephant for the city of Littlefield?

"Is it something we have that we'd rather not have? Well, today that would probably be the case," Davis says.

To avoid defaulting on the loan, Littlefield has raised property taxes, increased water and sewer fees, laid off city employees and held off buying a new police car. Still, the city's bond rating has tanked.

The village elders drinking coffee at the White Kitchen cafe are not happy about the way things have turned out.

"It was never voted on by the citizens of Littlefield; [it] is stuck in their craw," says Carl Enloe, retired from Atmos Energy. "They have to pay for it. And the people who's got it going are all up and gone and they left us ... "

"... Holdin' the bag!" says Tommy Kelton, another Atmos retiree, completing the sentence.

The Declining Prison Population

The same thing has happened to communities across Texas. Once upon a time, it seems every small town wanted to be a prison town. But the 20-year private prison building boom is over.

Some prisons are struggling outside Texas, too.

Hardin, Mont., defaulted on its bond payments after trying, so far unsuccessfully, to fill its 464-bed minimum security prison. And a prison in Huerfano County, Colo., closed after Arizona pulled out its 700 inmates.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

The Texas Legislature, looking for budget cuts, is contemplating shedding 2,000 contract prison beds. Statewide, more than half of all privately operated county jail beds are empty, according to figures from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

"Too many times we've seen jails that have got into it and tried to make it a profitable business to make money off of it and they end up fallin' on their face," says Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the commission.

The packages look sweet. A town gets a new detention center without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator finances, constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates pay off the debt and generate extra revenue.

The economic model works fine until they can't find inmates.

In Waco, McLennan County borrowed $49 million to build an 816-bed jail and charge day rates for bunk space. But today because of the convict shortage, the fortress east of town remains more than half empty. The sheriff and county judge, once champions of the new jail, now decline to comment on it.

Former McLennan County Deputy Rick White, who opposed the jail, had this to say about the prison developers who put the deal together: "They get the corporations formed, they get the bonds sold, they get the facility built, their money is front-loaded, they take their money out. And then there's no reason for them to support the success of the facility."

Two of Texas' busiest private prison consultants — James Parkey and Herb Bristow — declined repeated requests for interviews.

The Inmate Market

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

Private prison companies insist their future is sunny.

A spokesman for the GEO Group declined to speak about the Littlefield prison, but he sent along a slew of press releases highlighting the company's new inmate contracts and prison expansions across the country.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong, particularly for federal immigration detainees.

New Jersey-based Community Education Centers, which has been pulling out of unprofitable jails across Texas, issued a statement that "the current [jail] population fluctuation" is cyclical.

One of the places where CEC is canceling its contract is Falls County, in central Texas, where a for-profit jail addition is losing money. Now it's up to Falls County Judge Steve Sharp to hustle up jailbirds: "If somebody is out there charging $30 a day for an inmate, we need to charge $28. We really don't have a choice of not filling those beds," he said.

Another place where they're desperate for inmates is Anson, the little town north of Abilene, Texas, once famous for its no-dancing law. Today, Jones County owns a brand-new $34 million prison and an $8 million county jail, both of which sit empty. The prison developers made their money and left. Then the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reneged on a contract to fill the new prison with parole violators. The county's Public Facility Corp., which borrowed the money to build the lockups, owes $314,000 a month — with no paying inmates. They've got a year's worth of bond service payments set aside before county officials start to sweat.

"The market has changed nationwide in the last 18 months or two years. It's certainly a different picture than when we started this project. And so we're continuing to work the problem," Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin says.

Grayson County, north of Dallas, said no to privatizing its jail. Two years ago, the county was all set to build a $30 million, 750-bed behemoth twice as big as was needed. But the public got queasy and county officials ultimately scuttled the deal.

"When you put the profit motive into a private jail, by design, in order to increase your dollars, your revenues, your profits, you need more folks in there and they need to stay longer," says Bill Magers, mayor of the county seat of Sherman, a leading opponent.

When the supply of prison beds exceeds the demand for prison beds, there are beneficiaries.

The overcrowded Harris County Jail in Houston, the nation's third largest, farms out about 1,000 prisoners to private jails. Littlefield and most other underoccupied facilities in Texas have all been in touch with Houston.

"It really is a buyer's market right now, especially a county our size," says Capt. Robin Konetzke, who is in charge of inmate processing for the Harris County Sheriffs Department. "They're really wanting to get our business. So, we're getting good deals."

Nearby, disheveled and unsmiling men are brought from a holding cell to stand before a booking officer for their intake interviews. The detainees are wholly unaware that they may soon become the newest commodities of the volatile inmate market.

Mose Buchele, of member station KUT, and Aarti Shahani contributed to this NPR News investigation and report

What Is GEO Group?

by Aarti Shahani

National Public Radio

March 25, 2011

Within the $3 billion private prison industry, GEO Group is the nation's second largest for-profit prison operator. One of its prisons, which is the subject of an NPR News investigation, is now being investigated by the Department of Justice, and a civil rights lawsuit alleges that juvenile inmates are being held in "barbaric and unconstitutional conditions."

A Corporate Corrections Giant

On any given day, there are 1.6 million people serving sentences in state and federal prisons. Eight percent of them are in facilities operated by private companies. In the federal detention system, more than 16 percent of detainees are held in private lockups.

This proportion is projected to grow. According to industry leader Corrections Corporation of America, no state has allocated money to build new state-run prisons in the last year because of budget crises. So some state governments are turning to the private sector to house their prisoners. The private corrections industry maintains that it can build and start up prisons faster, and incarcerate inmates more cheaply than state-run facilities.

Based in Boca Raton, Fla., GEO — formerly Wackenhut Corrections -— is competing with CCA for new contracts. Since 2009, GEO has acquired 7,600 new prison beds, a growth of 10 percent, according to a GEO annual report.

Expansion By Diversification

GEO — which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange — is diversifying more than its competitors, seeking international contracts for prisons in Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. At home, it's also following the money into new lines of the corrections business.

The current trend in American criminal justice is to move away from incarceration toward cheaper alternatives like supervised release and treatment. So GEO is buying smaller companies with contracts in psychiatric care, civil immigration detention and electronic ankle monitoring for low-level offenders.

After borrowing cash for each new purchase, GEO's debt grew to $1.5 billion by January, and its credit rating was downgraded to B+.

NPR requested an interview with GEO to discuss its performance, but Pablo Paez, vice president of corporate relations, said in an email that the company declined to comment.

Assessing Its Acquisitions

In August, GEO bought Cornell Companies, America's third largest private prison operation. The acquisition included the troubled Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Mississippi, which is the focus of the NPR report.

GEO has had a rocky reputation in the youth prison business. In 2007, the Texas Youth Commission canceled a contract with GEO to manage the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center after auditors conducted an unannounced visit and found rampant mismanagement.

Barclays Capital, an investment firm that tracks the private prison industry, advised GEO on the Cornell purchase. Manav Patnaik, an analyst at Barclays, says GEO did not necessarily want the Mississippi youth facility. "If they could acquire Cornell without it, they would have. They got it because it was a package deal," he says.

But Patnaik also calls the purchase a "no-brainer" because it included existing revenue streams.

Lawsuits and Justice Department investigations, such as those focused on Walnut Grove, aren't more than a "headline risk," he says. At worst stocks dip on the day of bad press, just to float up again.

Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble

by John Burnett

National Public Radio

March 25, 2011

Second in a two-part series on private prisons

The country with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States — is supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in the prison business.

It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.

For eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.

Shortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since.

A Hard Sell

"Maybe ... he'll help us to find somebody," says Littlefield City Manager Danny Davis good-n aturedly when a reporter shows up for a tour.

John Burnett/NPR

The 372-bed Bill Clayton Detention Center is a medium-security prison that is currently sitting empty in Littlefield, Texas.

For sale or contract: a 372-bed, medium-security prison with double security fences, state-of-the-art control room, gymnasium, law library, classrooms and five living pods.

Davis opens the gray steel door to a barren cell with bunk beds and stainless-steel furniture.

"You can see the facility here. [It's] pretty austere, but from what I understand from a prison standpoint, it's better than most," he says, still trying to close the sale.

For the past two years, Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to pay the note on the prison. That's $10 per resident of this little city.

A Resident Burden

Is the empty prison a big white elephant for the city of Littlefield?

"Is it something we have that we'd rather not have? Well, today that would probably be the case," Davis says.

To avoid defaulting on the loan, Littlefield has raised property taxes, increased water and sewer fees, laid off city employees and held off buying a new police car. Still, the city's bond rating has tanked.

The village elders drinking coffee at the White Kitchen cafe are not happy about the way things have turned out.

"It was never voted on by the citizens of Littlefield; [it] is stuck in their craw," says Carl Enloe, retired from Atmos Energy. "They have to pay for it. And the people who's got it going are all up and gone and they left us... "

"...Holdin' the bag!" says Tommy Kelton, another Atmos retiree, completing the sentence.

The Declining Prison Population

The same thing has happened to communities across Texas. Once upon a time, it seems every small town wanted to be a prison town. But the 20-year private prison building boom is over.

Some prisons are struggling outside Texas, too.

Hardin, Mont., defaulted on its bond payments after trying, so far unsuccessfully, to fill its 464-bed minimum security prison. And a prison in Huerfano County, Colo., closed after Arizona pulled out its 700 inmates.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

The Texas legislature, looking for budget cuts, is contemplating shedding 2,000 contract prison beds. Statewide, more than half of all privately operated county jail beds are empty, according to figures from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

"Too many times we've seen jails that have got into it and tried to make it a profitable business to make money off of it and they end up fallin' on their face," says Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the commission.

The packages look sweet. A town gets a new detention center without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator finances, constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates pay off the debt and generate extra revenue.

The economic model works fine until they can't find inmates.

In Waco, McLennan County borrowed $49 million to build an 816-bed jail and charge day rates for bunk space. But today because of the convict shortage, the fortress east of town remains more than half empty. The sheriff and county judge, once champions of the new jail, now decline to comment on it.

Former McLennan County Deputy Rick White, who opposed the jail, had this to say about the prison developers who put the deal together: "They get the corporations formed, they get the bonds sold, they get the facility built, their money is front-loaded, they take their money out. And then there's no reason for them to support the success of the facility."

Two of Texas' busiest private prison consultants — James Parkay and Herb Bristow — declined repeated requests for interviews.

The Inmate Market

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

Private prison companies insist their future is sunny.

A spokesman for the GEO Group declined to speak about the Littlefield prison, but he sent along a slew of press releases highlighting the company's new inmate contracts and prison expansions across the country.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong, particularly for federal immigration detainees.

New Jersey-based Community Education Centers, which has been pulling out of unprofitable jails across Texas, issued a statement that "the current (jail) population fluctuation" is cyclical.

One of the places where CEC is cancelling its contract is Falls County, in central Texas, where a for-profit jail addition is losing money. Now it's up to Falls County Judge Steve Sharp to hustle up jailbirds: "If somebody is out there charging $30 a day for an inmate, we need to charge $28. We really don't have a choice of not filling those beds," he said.

Another place where they're desperate for inmates is Anson, the little town north of Abilene, Texas, once famous for its no-dancing law. Today, Jones County owns a brand-new $34 million prison and an $8 million county jail, both of which sit empty. The prison developers made their money and left. Then the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reneged on a contract to fill the new prison with parole violators. The county's Public Facility Corporation that borrowed the money to build the lockups owes $314,000 a month — with no paying inmates. They've got a year's worth of bond service payments set aside before county officials start to sweat.

"The market has changed nationwide in the last 18 months or two years. It's certainly a different picture than when we started this project. And so we're continuing to work the problem," Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin says.

Grayson County, north of Dallas, said no to privatizing its jail. Two years ago, the county was all set to build a $30 million, 750-bed behemoth twice as big as was needed. But the public got queasy and county officials ultimately scuttled the deal.

"When you put the profit motive into a private jail, by design, in order to increase your dollars, your revenues, your profits, you need more folks in there and they need to stay longer," says Bill Magers, mayor of the county seat of Sherman, a leading opponent.

When the supply of prison beds exceeds the demand for prison beds, there are beneficiaries.

The overcrowded Harris County Jail in Houston, the nation's third largest, farms out about 1,000 prisoners to private jails. Littlefield and most other under-occupied facilities in Texas have all been in touch with Houston.

"It really is a buyer's market right now, especially a county our size," says Capt. Robin Kinetsky, who is in charge of inmate processing for the Harris County Sheriffs Department. "They're really wanting to get our business. So, we're getting good deals."

Nearby, disheveled and unsmiling men are brought from a holding cell to stand before a booking officer for their intake interviews. The detainees are wholly unaware that they may soon become the newest commodities of the volatile inmate market.

Aarti Shahani contributed to this NPR News investigation and report.

Hawai'ian prisoners may be doomed to more CCA abuses.

Here's my blog today from Hawai'i Prison Watch...

The article below is from the Honolulu Star Advertiser - they've been doing good follow-up to the on-going story on state prisoners, particularly those in Arizona.


Heads up, Hawai'i: Corrections Corporation of America still wants your prisoners here even though they just rape, beat, and otherwise abuse the ones they already have. Think again about whether or not you really want to commit your most vulnerable people (who are in with all the real thugs) to the care of a community such as Eloy. That whole community is feeding on the misfortune of your prisoners and their victims alike, and cares not one bit about your public safety.


The more endangered you are or think you are, in fact, the more prisoners they all get paid to warehouse. Eloy and CCA are are quite happy with your crime rate, I'm sure - try to kick it up a little, and they'll probably throw a party in appreciation. They don't care who you ship to them or why - just keep the warm bodies and dollar bills coming. The same people are trying to get the legislature to criminalize all of us, too.


Doesn't Hawai'i find that troubling? You are the hosts for parasitic entities who will cause you more trouble than an epidemic of bed bugs...speaking of, I hope you're testing your prisoners for Hep C, because we have an epidemic of that in our own prisons, and it's being neglected more so than most of the rest of the country. 25% of Arizona's prison population has tested positive for the virus, and they don't even test everyone about 30% of our prison deaths are due to the liver and kidney failure that results from chronic infection. HCV is far more destructive and malicious than most criminals - and goes home with almost all of them to spread insidiously through their own communities. I bet the people of Eloy don't even know what kind of risk their guards and community are at, too.


Don't think there isn't racism involved in your treatment here, by the way. It's tragic enough that Hawai'i incarcerates so many indigenous people - moving them off their homeland and away from their communities in the process - for the profit of the selfish, greedy white men who make their living off of people being victimized. It's even worse that you put them in the hands of Arizonans, of all people... this is, after all, the Deep South of the New Southwest: we collectively hate people of color unless they're doing our bidding, and we criminalize those who resist white supremacy here. The only reason we don't turn around and just lynch our prisoners to be done with them is because Joe Arpaio and Chuck Ryan are killing them off for us. I know this because I've heard from many of their family members. I don't want to start hearing from your devastated survivors, too.


It doesn't matter whose name the prisons are in, if you're going with for-profits: they're all evil. Here, though, Arizonans staff them, and our people are well-known for being unbelievably cruel to "outsiders." We even seem to be proud of it, looking at who we have in office here. Remember that, and if nothing else, at least find a way to get your people out of this god-forsaken state. Even if you bring CCA into your own backyard, at least you can keep an eye on them there, and have Hawai'ians be the ones to administer justice to Hawai'ians.


Let me know if there's anything I can do from this end to help.


Peggy Plews, Phoenix
Arizona Prison Watch

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

Bids sought to house inmates

The state says it does not have the facilities to bring prisoners back to the islands

Honolulu Star Advertiser
By Rob Shikina

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Mar 11, 2011

State prison officials are seeking proposals to house about 1,800 prisoners outside Hawaii after the current prison contract ends in June, despite Gov. Neil Abercrombie's call to bring inmates back home as soon as possible.

"It is very clear at this time that we do not have all the facilities to bring the inmates back," said Martha Torney, deputy director of administration for the state Department of Public Safety. "As the state moves toward bringing the inmates back to the islands, that will determine what our needs are in the future."

The state already has returned some prisoners since Abercrombie said in December that he wants prisoners to stay in Hawaii.

During the quarterly rotation in January, the state brought back about 125 more prisoners than were sent to the mainland, Torney said.

The request for proposals, published March 1, designates a three-year contract, but the state can cancel the contract and remove prisoners at any time, Torney said. The submittal period ends March 31.

One company that plans on submitting an offer is Corrections Corp. of America -- the fifth-largest U.S. prison operator behind the federal government, California, Florida and Texas.

Hawaii has 1,699 prisoners at CCA's Saguaro Correctional Center and 58 inmates at CCA's Red Rock Correctional Center, both in Eloy, Ariz., Torney said.

Brad Regens, CCA's vice president of state partnership relations, said CCA is not lobbying to keep Hawaii's prisoners out of state.

Torney said the Public Safety Department is working on a two-pronged plan to return isle inmates and hopes to have the plan ready for the Legislature by year's end. She said it's too early to discuss any other time line.

The plan includes a re-entry project to get prisoners into the community and out of prison sooner, and a look at expanding the number of prison beds in Hawaii.

Sen. Will Espero, chairman of the Public Safety, Military and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, said he would like to see Hawaii prisoners returned rather than paying a private company $60 million a year to house them. He and Rep. Henry Aquino, chairman of the Public Safety and Military Affairs Committee, said CCA officials expressed interest in running a private prison in Hawaii.

Hawaii's prisoners were sent out of state 16 years ago as a short-term solution to overcrowding and have been under CCA's care since 1998.

Espero said there are many possibilities for returning Hawaii's inmates, such as reopening Kulani Correctional Facility on the Big Island, building a new prison on Maui, introducing electronic monitoring and expanding furlough programs.

"If the governor is serious about this, within his four-year term he should easily be able to bring back 1,000 or 1,500," he said.

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