CCA Eloy: Transgender prisoner sues over sexual assault by guard

CORRECTIONS CORPORATION OF AMERICA:

Sadly, the following press release comes as little surprise...good for the ACLU-AZ for picking this case up and seeing the victim through - they've been busy with our state prisons of late, too.

For those who haven't been paying attention to all the glory and acclaim that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has brought to the prison town of Eloy, recall the lawsuits alleging torture of 18 Hawaiian prisoners, as well as the sexual assault of a prisoner by a guard (who was subsequently prosecuted). Then there are the problems with their California prisoners - and what happened in Idaho...

Needless to say, anyone thinking about having CCA move into their backyard (and take over their town council) should really think twice: their leadership clearly fails to set and demand professional - or even humane - standards of treatment for prisoners.

---from the American Civil Liberties Union----

ACLU of Arizona Files Lawsuit on Behalf of Transgender Woman Sexually Assaulted By CCA Guard

December 5, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

PHOENIX – The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona today filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of a 28-year-old transgender woman who was intimidated, harassed, and sexually assaulted by a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) guard while she was in immigration custody at the CCA-owned and operated Eloy Detention Center. CCA is the largest operator of immigration detention centers in the country and detains almost half of the 33,000 people in federal custody on any given day.

The lawsuit, filed against CCA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, and the City of Eloy, charges that local and federal officials failed to protect Tanya Guzman-Martinez from abusive male staff members at the facility in Eloy, even after being notified about the sexual attack and ongoing harassment by staff and other male detainees.

“Tanya left Mexico to seek refuge from the persecution she suffered because of her gender identity, and was exposed to even greater trauma at the hands of immigration officials who failed to take appropriate measures to protect her while she was in their custody,” said ACLU of Arizona Immigrant Rights Attorney Victoria Lopez.

During her 8-month detention at Eloy, one of the largest ICE facilities in the country, Guzman-Martinez was sexually assaulted twice. One incident occurred on December 7, 2009 and involved a detention officer who after repeated harassment, maliciously forced Guzman-Martinez to ingest his ejaculated semen and threatened to deport her back to Mexico if she did not comply with his demands. Guzman-Martinez immediately reported the assault to detention staff and the Eloy Police Department and the detention officer was later convicted in Pinal County Superior Court of attempted unlawful sexual contact.

Despite this attack, immigration officials did nothing to protect her from further abuse. In a separate incident that took place on April 23, 2010, Guzman-Martinez was sexually assaulted by a male detainee in the same all-male housing unit where she was subjected to the first assault. She didn’t report the assault to local police until about a week later because she feared retaliation by detention staff and other detainees. Soon after she reported the second assault to the police, Guzman-Martinez was released from ICE custody.

Although Guzman-Martinez was released from detention more than a year-and-a-half ago, she still suffers from the emotional pain she endured while at Eloy.

“When we tout our country as a beacon of freedom, fairness, and individual liberties for all, the United States, as well as state and local governments, and the people and entities with whom they routinely contract, must live up to those values, especially for those people who seek refuge in this country because of those values,” added ACLU of Arizona cooperating attorney Kirstin Story of the law firm of Lewis and Roca LLP. “Unfortunately, that did not occur in the Tanya Guzman-Martinez case and in many others. We hope that this lawsuit is a step toward remedying these failures.”

Today’s lawsuit alleges that CCA, Eloy, and ICE personnel failed to take basic steps to protect Guzman-Martinez’s physical safety and emotional well-being, to properly train and monitor the staff at the center or to implement best practices to house transgender detainees and prevent the sexual assault of vulnerable populations.

Incidents of sexual abuse in immigration detention, particularly among vulnerable women and LGBTQ detainees, are widespread, the ACLU said. In October, the ACLU of Texas filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of three immigrant women who were sexually assaulted while in ICE custody at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center in Taylor, Texas. The lawsuit was filed following the release by the ACLU of government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that confirmed 185 allegations of sexual abuse of immigration detainees jailed at detention facilities across the nation since 2007 alone. According to those documents, 16 allegations of sexual abuse were lodged in Arizona facilities – the third largest number of allegations after Texas and California. Of those 16 allegations in Arizona, 8 were from the Eloy Detention Center. In addition, the ACLU of Arizona documented five cases involving transgender or gay detainees who were sexually assaulted or treated in an abusive manner while in detention in Arizona facilities. The case examples are highlighted in the ACLU-AZ report entitled "In Their Own Words: Enduring Abuse in Arizona Immigration Detention Centers," which includes an entire section highlighting the array of problems confronting LGBTQ detainees.

Despite mounting documentation of widespread sexual abuse in immigration detention centers, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has proposed a rule that explicitly excludes immigration detention facilities from coverage under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). Congress enacted PREA to protect all persons in custody by setting standards for preventing, detecting, and responding to sexual abuse. “Without PREA's protection, immigrants in detention such as Tanya Guzman-Martinez, remain vulnerable to abuse,” added Lopez.

In response, the U.S. Congress will hold a briefing on December 7th titled: the Prison Rape Elimination Act and the Crisis of Sexual Abuse in Immigration Detention.

Lawyers on the case, Tanya Guzman-Martinez v. CCA, et al., include Daniel Pochoda, ACLU of Arizona Legal Director, and ACLU of Arizona Cooperating Attorneys Kristina N. Holmstrom and Kirstin A. Story of the law firm of Lewis and Roca LLP.

Click here to read the complaint.

The ACLU of Arizona’s detention report is available here.

Undoing Borders: A Queer Manifesto

From the San Francisco Pride At Work Migrant Justice Workgroup.

Undoing Borders:

A Queer Manifesto

(blog here)

Queer Injustice: Punishing gender nonconformity.

(The following selection is excerpted from "Caging Deviance," a chapter in Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. The authors highlight the specific instances in which the penal system punishes gender nonconformity and queerness not only through disciplinary prison regulations, but the denial of health care to queer inmates, particular those living with HIV/AIDS.)

(as posted at Women & Prison.org)

Caging Deviance
by Joey L. Mogul and Andrea J. Ritchie

ENFORCEMENT OF GENDER CONFORMITY THROUGH PRISON REGULATIONS

Beyond placement decisions enforcing gender binaries and punishing gender nonconformity, prisoners' gender identity and expression are denied and suppressed in innumerable ways through prison regulations.

First, the criminal legal system as a whole refuses to recognize transgender prisoners' chosen names and gender identities. As a result, transgender people are routinely referred to by the names assigned to them at birth on their badges, medical records, and other identifying documents throughout their incarceration, and they are addressed by guards and prison officials in a manner dictated by the gender assigned to them at birth. Far worse, many transgender prisoners are called "that," "it," "faggot," and other homophobic and transphobic slurs by prison officials.

Transgender prisoners are also deprived of access to clothing matching their gender identity. Frequently, transgender women are deprived of bras, even when obviously medically necessary, with potentially serious health consequences. In some circumstances, the mere possession of a bra may subject a prisoner in a male facility to discipline. It is also routine for transgender women confined in men's institutions to be denied makeup and other cosmetics generally provided to other female inmates of the same security classification. Transgender men housed in women’s institutions are forced to wear "feminine" attire, a practice they experience as profoundly violative. One transgender man housed in a California prison reported that "at one point I was being made to wear a dress, despite the fact that no one else was forced to. It was just to humiliate me.” Moreover, many transgender people report they are forced to groom their beards and cut their hair or nails to conform to traditional male and female gender presentations.

The rigid enforcement of gender norms, as well as the use of segregation and denial of even basic needs, as a means of regulating prisons as queer spaces, extends to the provision of- or failure to provide- medical care inside penal institutions.
DENIAL OF PRISON HEALTH CARE

The poor quality of health care in U.S. prisons is well documented. Where the lives of queers and HIV-positive prisoners, who may or may not be LGBT, are concerned, provision or denial of health care is used as an additional location of punishment through institutional forms of derision, dehumanization, abuse, and erasure of humanity. For instances, the vast majority of state and county penal institutions deny transgender prisoners access to hormone treatment necessary for the maintenance of their gender identity. Although the generally accepted standards of care for what the American Psychiatric Association characterizes as “gender identity disorder” (GID) in the DSM-IV dictate that access to hormone therapy can be medically necessary, penal authorities insist on denying transgender people such treatment on the grounds that it is merely “cosmetic.”

In very few states, and in federal prisons governed by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), transgender prisoners can receive hormone treatment, albeit under very limited and restrictive conditions. In most cases it is the official policy that prisoners can only continue to receive hormone treatment in prison where they can demonstrate they were prescribed and were taking such medication prior to their incarceration. Not only is this the only condition for which individuals must prove they were receiving treatment prior to incarceration in order to obtain treatment in prison, in many cases, this is an insurmountable obstacle. Due to lack of affordable medical care, absence of insurance coverage for medical treatment related to gender identity, and the discrimination and humiliation transgender people face in the medical establishment, many transgender people are only able to obtain hormones through unregulated means, and therefore have no documentation to prove they were prescribed these medications on the outside.

In such cases, despite the presence of physical characteristics evidencing longstanding hormone treatment, as well as prior administrative recognition of medical treatment affirming gender identity by way of legal name changes and adjustments to gender markers on identity documents, transgender inmates are denied medical treatment necessary to maintain their gender identity in prison. Even in instances where an individual is approved for such treatment, it is often provided sporadically, inconsistently, at inappropriate doses, and without accompanying psychological support, thereby endangering transgender inmates’ health and wellbeing. The denial of access to hormone treatment has profound effects, including extreme mental distress and anguish, often leading to an increased likelihood of suicide attempt, as well as depression, heart problems, and irregular blood pressure.

Linda Patricia Thompson's experiences exemplify the trauma many transgender women experience while incarcerated. Prior to her incarceration, Thompson had been living as a woman for a number of years and had legally changed her name. However, she could not afford gender reassignment surgery or medically approved hormone treatment, which would have required approval by two physicians and one psychiatrist to obtain a prescription. She did, however, obtain hormones by other means, and had been taking them continuously for a significant period of time. Once incarcerated, Thompson was housed in a male facility and denied access to hormone treatment. In the throes of the profound depression and psychological distress that ensued, she took matters into her own hands. On two separate occasions she attempted to amputate her own genitalia, "nearly bleeding to death in the process." According to her attorney, Bruce Bistline, "That sort of self-mutilation is not extraordinary in the transgender prison population. The level of desperation is just that high." The Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for treatment of GID confirm that the rapid withdrawal of hormone therapy can lead to the severe psychiatric symptoms and self-injurious behavior exemplified in Thompson’s case. It can also have less catastrophic, but nevertheless distressing physical side effects, leaving incarcerated transgender people “trapped in a netherworld between manhood and womanhood.”Additionally, lack of access to medical treatment unrelated to maintenance of gender identity can have profound effects on transgender prisoners. For instance, transgender women who are incarcerated are disproportionately low-income women of color who also suffer increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, sickle cell anemia, and undetected breast cancer due to limited or nonexistent access to medical care on the outside. Transgender people also suffer from long-term health effects of hormone therapy, including an increased risk of cancer, liver damage, depression, hypertension, and diabetes, which are only complicated by irregular or interrupted access to hormone treatment while inside prisons. As a result, without proper medical treatment, transgender inmates face severe detrimental health consequences. Unfortunately, neglect and intentional denial of medically necessary treatment to transgender people is but one aspect of the medically mediated punishment of sexual and gender nonconformity.

Another is the treatment of prisoners with HIV/AIDS, a health condition inextricably associated with queerness in the public imagination. The turbulent mix of fear, rage, and hysteria characterizing the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis has been magnified inside the controlled and retributive world of penal institutions. As a result, what Kunzel calls “indentifying practices” mark all HIV-positive prisoners- both queer and heterosexual- as criminally different, dangerous, and diseased.

At Limestone Correctional Facility in Alabama, the loathing associated with the archetype of the disease spreader embodied in HIV-positive prisoners was distilled into a physical structure—a drafty, leaky warehouse that served as a segregated unit for male prisoners with HIV/AIDS. The prisoners sequestered in this crowded, vermin-infested unit—many of whom were poor and suffered from multiple chronic health conditions—lived, ate and slept in a situation so wretched that is was characterized as “lethal abandonment.”

After a series of staphylococcus infections broke out, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) filed a class action suit on behalf of the HIV-positive prisoners housed at Limestone against the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) and the private company it contracted with for prison health services. Dr. Stephen Tabet, an infectious disease specialist, reviewed the medical treatment prisoners had received, and concluded that almost all of the forty-three HIV/AIDS-related deaths at Limestone between 1999 and 2003 were “preceded by a failure to provide proper medical care or treatment," and that most patients died of preventable illnesses. Many who died were malnourished, suffered from "wasting syndrome,” a preventable, AIDS-related involuntary, significant weight loss, chronic diarrhea, or weakness and fever. He also found that coinfections, such as tuberculosis and hepatitis B and C, and opportunistic infections such as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, were often simply not diagnosed, or if they were, not appropriately treated. Tabet took particular note of the disproportionate suffering of prisoners with physical disabilities in a setting so hostile to their needs that they had no access to appropriate bathing facilities. Despite litigation efforts until 2006 and the ADOC’s termination of its contract with one private medical care provider, the treatment provided to HIV-positive prisoners at Limestone—while improved as a result of legal action—continued to be problematic.

Likewise, Dormitory E in Alabama's Julia Tutwiler prison for women served as a segregated for HlV-positive women, where prisoners were subjected not only to involuntary disclosure of their HIV status, but also prohibited from working any jobs or attending any educational and rehabilitative programs, as well as many religious and recreational activities. Years of litigation and organizing efforts by the ACLU and others were necessary before the ADOC abandoned rules prohibiting HIV-positive prisoners’ participation in work-release programs in 2009, but some aspects of segregation of HIV-positive prisoners remain.

While Limestone's segregated unit may have been uniquely Dickensian, and Alabama insisted on segregating prisoners with HIV/AIDS long after many states abandoned the model, the dehumanizing treatment of HIV-positive prisoners remains widespread. Also, according to Mary Sylla, founder and director of policy and advocacy for the Center for Health Justice, "HIV treatment in most U.S. prisons and jails lags behind treatment provided in the broader community."

Some jurisdictions require mandatory HIV testing for prisoners, others do not. The Centers for Disease Control and public health advocacy organizations argue that people who are incarcerated should be able to “opt out” of institutional testing programs, begging the question of whether it is truly possible for people whose entire lives are under the control of penal authorities to freely consent to or decline testing without fear of negative consequences. Moreover, anonymous testing, considered a best practice on the outside, is not available inside prisons. Violation of a medical confidentiality for prisoners who are tested is commonplace. Waheedah Shabazz-El learned she was HIV-positive during a routine examination while incarcerated in Philadelphia’s Cambria Correctional Center. “The tester blurted out that I was HIV positive in a busy hall area.. Everyone walking by could see me. I sobbed and wanted to kill myself.”

Once prisoners are diagnosed as HIV-positive their medical care is often erratic and inadequate. For example, the timely and regular provision of HIV combination therapy, commonly known as the cocktail, in which three or more anti-HIV drugs are administered in a specific regimen, is essential to many prisoners with HIV. Failure to administer the medications properly not only impedes the efficacy of treatment but also can create resistance to the drugs being used. Some prisons do not maintain adequate supplies of HIV medications and run out for weeks at a time. In other circumstances, prisoners with HIV/AIDS fail to receive their daily drug regimen due to transfers within the prison system, attendance at court dates, or, ironically, visits to a medical clinic. As Waheeda Shabazz-El reports, “On numerous occasions, I received my medications late.”

Antonio O., a thirty-three-year-old, openly gay, HIV-positive man from El Salvador and a lawful permanent resident of the United States was transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) San Pedro Service Processing Center (SPSC) in California after an arrest on a minor drug offense. In 2007, he told HRW that throughout his incarceration he had great difficulty staying on his medication regimen: jailers tried to reduce the number of medications he was taking, and then, upon arrival at SPSC, officials confiscated his medications for several days. “[The guards] look at us as if we’re inferior, not only because we’re gay but because we’re immigrants,” he said. “To them, we’re nothing but maggots from another country that need to be swept out.” That same year, Victoria Arellano, a transgender woman detained in SPSC’s facility for men, died shackled to her bed after being denied appropriate HIV/AIDS medication and treatment, despite, “increasingly desperate requests for urgent medical attention made by Arellano and [her] fellow detainees as [her] conditions deteriorated in the weeks prior to [her] death.” An investigator from HRW, arriving in the wake of Arellano’s death, learned that less than twenty-four hours prior to the visit, more than twenty detainees who witnessed the events leading up to Arellano’s death were transferred out of the Los Angeles area. According to one survey, 38 percent of correctional medical-care providers reported that an HIV specialist is never available to prisoners. An emphasis on cost cutting usually means significantly lower pay for medical staff in prisons and jails, making it difficult to recruit and retain highly qualified staff. In another cost-cutting move, more than half the states are expanding their use of “telemedicine,” or videoconferencing, for physician consultations with prisoners, further reducing the quality of care. Judy Greenspan, of the HIV-Hep C in Prison Committee of California Prison Focus notes bluntly that “there’s a lot lost in the translation” when a physician peers at the prisoner through a video screen, trying to determine what tests to order based on a digital image and computer records.

As is the case for queers in general, the stigma associated with HIV-positive status in prison extends beyond punitive segregated housing conditions and denial of appropriate medical care to being subjected to heightened surveillance and punishment. For instance, Joseph Bick, chief medical officer and director of HIV treatment services at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, acknowledged that HIV-positive prisoners may be punished more severely for sexual activity or fighting, and may be denied access to work and educational opportunities that could lead to reduced sentences.

Despite the lack of any political power and control over their existence, prisoners, including many who are LGBT, creatively resist the daily onslaught of violence and repressing they endure, acting alone or collectively, in open or secretive ways. Still, the violence and degradation that are integral to prisoners’ live experiences demand that we ask ourselves what can be done to prevent the myriad human rights violations perpetrated on millions of people warehoused in U.S. penal institutions.

Over the past two centuries, reformers, advocates, and activists have waged campaigns to reform prisons—a cause mainstream LGBT groups have largely ignored. Nonetheless, a growing number of progressive queer groups, including SRLP, TGJIP, the Transformative Justice Law Project (TJLP), and Project UNSHACKLE, place the lives and needs of prisoners who are queer in the center of their vision. Working with other advocacy and human rights organizations, they seek to force penal officials to respond to their needs, most recently joining with others in issuing a Call for Change to address sexual violence suffered by queers in prison.

While these ongoing efforts may produce changes for individual prisoners of facilities, systemic and transformative change has proven elusive. The violence and punishment visited on LGBT prisoners “are not anomalies,” and they cannot be eradicated through reform. They are deeply embedded in the fabric of the prison system, and perpetuated through queer criminalizing archetypes. Not only have prisons failed to deter crime and produce safety, they are sites where the safety, dignity, and integrity of all prisoners, including LGBT prisoners, are eviscerated, begging the question of whether freedom from violence for LGBT people—indeed for any community—can be purchased by the continued institutionalization of such inhumanity and brutality.

Notes

An additional excerpt, from the chapter titled "The Ghosts of Stonewall: Policing Gender, Policing Sex," can be accessed here.





Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance makes visible women's experiences in the criminal justice system. Documenting these stories is integral to this project of resistance. The stories are supported by a collection of resources, such as organizations, reports, essays, and links to a wide range of information on women and prison. The contents of this website are fluid and constantly changing. We expect to add stories, articles and resources on a regular basis. Your feedback and contributions are welcome.

This site serves as a dedicated space for prisoners, those previously incarcerated, activists, students, academics, and everyone who strives for social justice. Through the use of this website, we hope to promote strategies and actions that challenge the system and the ways that it reproduces all forms of discrimination, violence, and social injustice in the treatment of women and their families.

The invisibility of women's perspectives in discussions of the growing prison industrial complex constitute a serious gap, given that the numbers of women in this system are rising at an alarming rate. Moreover, by making women more visible, we expand the analysis, vision, and strategies being developed to seriously challenge the prison system. The incarceration of women is linked to a multitude of interconnected issues facing poor women, drug-addicted women, women of color, lesbians, and women in prostitution, including interpersonal and state violence, poverty, racism, reproductive rights, homophobia, harassment, lack of quality healthcare, homelessness, and more. Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance aims to make connections among these issues. By drawing attention to the interconnectedness of issues and strategies, we hope to further develop the grounds for coalition and alliance across organizations and movements.
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Criminal Damage: Surviving a Death in Custody.

To: Sgt. Mark Schweikert; Detective Diane Rowe
Phoenix Police Department


Attached is more evidence of my crimes, with a witness list for this confession. I'm going to make the most of that tool in the coming weeks and months. You all get to preview what just became my next blog post... I must really have an ego in order to be such an exhibitionist. If I didn't have such a healthy shot of grandiosity, so many people with the power to really hurt me may not be subjected to my constant irritation, but then no one would know there's a problem in the prisons but the families of the dead and the dying.

In any case, I won't wait for the next dead prisoner to come along for me to paint on the sidewalk before I escalate again; I feel like I've failed now with each one. I have to touch base with two mothers and a sister today alone - survivors of a suicide, a homicide, and an apparent overdose on psych meds...they call the latter an "accident" at this point. It's probably the most important yet most painful thing I do, talking to those families...I would guess you can relate, if you've been cops for long. I hate it, but I have to keep letting them know what's going on - they more than anyone want to see change.

The homicide was in Buckeye - Lewis prison. Stiner. It was Dana Seawright - early last July. It was a gang hit, and hate crime (bet the state never called it that, though). "Unsolved" (they know full well who did it, I believe. The gangs run that prison in particular). The killers are probably on the streets again, like one of Pete Calleros' murderers already is. I think I told you about Dana - he was only 26. He was reportedly a self-admitted member of the West Side City Crips, and got caught being friends with a Mexican. They told him in the aftermath of this relationship becoming known that he had to hit a member of a Mexican gang to prove his loyalty - he didn't do a good enough job, though. Dana didn't really want to hurt anyone - he basically faked it, according to both the investigative records and the guards who narrated his days to his mom as he lay dying. For his defiance, Dana was bludgeoned into unconsciousness; his mother took him off life support five days later...


The state couldn't find a single guard to watch that kid's back even from a distance in there, but they had two on him all the time while he was chained to a bed in a coma. What brave public servants we have. Glad they have their priorities straight.

Kini Seawright's life slowly fell apart after her only child's murder. Her health and mental status deteriorated, her attendance and performance at work suffered, and she got laid off from the job she'd been progressing steadily at for years. She made good after prison years earlier herself, but was forced this year to turn to unemployment and AHCCCS, both of which are now compromised by budget cuts. She could be waiting months yet to hear back on her Social Security disability claim - I don't believe she told them about her mood disorder being exacerbated by the trauma of the murder, because her back and legs are such a source of trouble as it is, so she may face more denials and appeals.

In the meantime, Kini just received a notice from her landlord that she has to pay up back rent or move out in five days - which I think arrives on Wednesday. Kini says the guy's been gracious and understanding for a long time, but I guess a few people owe him and the bank is coming after his properties - or is threatening to.

I'm honestly in the middle of trying to vacate my own apartment in the next week or so, and have no idea what to do for either of us. If I had the money, then the answer for now would be easy. But instead I have to ask for help - or rather, she does - which is just inviting more abuse from the state, frankly. When her son died, the Department of Corrections gave her 24 hours to get his body under threat of burying him on prison grounds. They couldn't even help her find the $300 she needed to bring him home.





Crime victims and their survivors have certain rights under the Arizona State Constitution - and privileges under a number of programs we've set up - except for those victimized while "in custody for an offense". I think that was a loophole to let cops and governments off for abusing and neglecting the rest of us, when we're supposed to be the most under their control. So when Kini called the Arizona Attorney General's Office Victims Services people for referrals on Friday, she was ultimately told that she didn't qualify for any assistance as a crime victim or survivor because her son was in custody at the time of his death - he doesn't count as human under the victim's rights' amendment, you see, while entities such as "the state" and WalMart do.

Now, doesn't that just mess with your head, when you think about it? Really. Whatever happened to "the People?" As cops in Arizona, you have more constitutional duty to serve a corporate "person" who has been stolen from - or vandalized - than you do the very real mother of a young man who was brutally beaten down by the West Side City Crips.

That must hurt to think about, if you really care about protecting and serving us.

Dana's homicide was actually a double hate crime, you know. We set him up for that kind of death long before he even went to prison, simply by cultivating that kind of garbage in this fine state - then we buried him by decimating his rights in custody. Anyone who truly hates racism, homophobia, gangs, and violence - not to mention prisons - should be on this "unsolved" homicide, our screwed up constitution, and the way Dana's mom is being treated if you're getting any of what I'm saying at all.

We diminished Dana's humanity - along with Marcia Powell's, Shannon Palmer's, Brenda Todd's, Susan Lopez', and every other victim in custody - by withholding from him and his loved ones the same constitutional rights we grant everyone else whose lives are so shattered by violence perpetrated by not only convicted criminals but also the state officers in charge of their punishment and safety.

Of all places in society - especially a nation which so prides itself on the nobility of its law enforcement personnel and the primacy of order - can we not keep our vulnerable prisoners safe within the confines of the most fortified institutions we erect? We can't even protect the tough young guys like Dana. We owe it to him and his mom to do everything we can to direct the resources we've allocated to assist violent crime survivors in times of need to her now.

That's my SOS to all of you today - beginning with those of you "In Blue", so to speak. It'll be up by the end of the day.

As for the alley - the vandals all running for office have claimed the fences for their ugly signs - the streets I still claim as ours. I'll be here to prosecute tomorrow - help a real crime victim instead today. It can be as simple as making a phone call to a community service agency to make a contact for Kini (she's a Chandler resident, for what's it's worth), or even passing a hat around your office, dropping a Safeway gift card anonymously in the mail, or letting me know if you can lend some other kind of hand (480-580-6807) - of those (hands), I need many.

And please don't take too long to think about it; time ran out for Dana's mom already.


Thanks,

Peg

--

Margaret J. Plews, Editor
Arizona Prison Watch
P.O. Box 20494
Phoenix, AZ 85036
480-580-6807


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Queer youth and prison violence.

'I Was Scared to Sleep': LGBT Youth Face Violence Behind Bars

The Nation / Daniel Redman / June 21, 2010

Over the phone, Krystal has a calm and lilting Southern accent. She identifies as a woman now, but when she entered Louisiana's juvenile justice system at 12 years of age, she presented herself as a boy and used male pronouns. Today, she's 18 and was just recently released from the system. Being closeted about her gender identity was never an option for her. "It's very obvious with me because of how I walk, talk, the way I do things," she says. And while her sentencing judge had told her that she wouldn't be in prison for long, it was five years before a sympathetic counselor made a formal request for her release. In her letter to the judge, the counselor mentioned in passing that Krystal had confided in her that she was probably transgender, and that she was in a romantic relationship with another boy at the facility. On the voicemail he left in response to the counselor's report, the judge openly laughed and called the recommendation a joke. He said that based on those facts, he would absolutely deny the request for a release hearing. "Many judges in rural Louisiana still conflate sex offenses with sexual orientation and gender identity," says Wesley Ware of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. It was months before Krystal was finally set free.

Across the United States, the brutal and dysfunctional juvenile justice system sends queer youth to prison in disproportionate numbers, fails to protect them from violence and discrimination while they're inside and to this day condones attempts to turn them straight. Antigay policies aren't just a problem in the Deep South or rural regions. According to Jody Marksamer of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of co-authors of a recent report on LGBT youth in the juvenile justice system, "These things happen in every state."

The road to incarceration begins in pretrial detention, before the youth even meets a judge. Laws and professional standards state that it's appropriate to detain a child before trial only if she might run away or harm someone. Yet for queer youth, these standards are frequently ignored. According to UC Santa Cruz researcher Dr. Angela Irvine, LGBT youth are two times more likely than straight youth to land in a prison cell before adjudication for nonviolent offenses like truancy, running away and prostitution. According to Ilona Picou, executive director of Juvenile Regional Services, Inc., in Louisiana, 50 percent of the gay youth picked up for nonviolent offenses in Louisiana in 2009 were sent to jail to await trial, while less than 10 percent of straight kids were. "Once a child is detained, the judge assumes there's a reason you can't go home," says Dr. Marty Beyer, a juvenile justice specialist. "A kid coming into court wearing handcuffs and shackles versus a kid coming in with his parents—it makes a very different impression."

Once adjudicated and sent to secure care, LGBT youth often face abusive peers. "I was scared to sleep at night because I didn't know if I was going to wake up in the morning," writes one incarcerated youth at Louisiana's Swanson Center for Youth. One 15-year-old who was shuttled back and forth from group homes and secure facilities in Shreveport, New Orleans and Baton Rouge reports that staff did nothing when he reported a rape because he "reported it too late," that he was "whipped with a clothes hanger" for rule violations and that the abuse from staff and other youth was so bad that he tried to kill himself. Two of Krystal's gay friends were raped in prison by other youths. One of them was assaulted so viciously that the injuries required internal stitches. Staff put Krystal's other friend in isolation to protect him from further assault.

Krystal reports that she was physically attacked by other youth nearly every day that she was in the system. Shortly after arriving, Krystal found her shoes in the trash, covered in urine and spit. Frequently, youths attacked Krystal for refusing to perform sex acts. Other queer youth in the facility had similar experiences. "We're all in the same category," she says. And there was nowhere to hide. "It was basically like a big dorm—one big room where everybody sleeps, that's what's going on," Krystal says. "Sometimes you would get sent to lockdown for fighting back, but there's nothing else you can do." Krystal reported the abuse to staff, but "they would just wait till things happened. Sometimes the staff would tell the other youth to stop. Sometimes they wouldn't."

When Krystal was 13 or 14, the bullying and violence became so bad that staff placed her in protective custody, where she remained for a month. But even after what she had experienced, lockdown was so painful that she requested to be returned to the dorm. Sending LGBT victims of violence into isolation, instead of punishing their attackers, is common practice across the country, even though a federal court has held the practice to be unconstitutional and the American Psychological Association opposes it. And once the youth are put on lockdown—whether to punish or to protect—they miss out on crucial educational opportunities. In 2006, a bisexual youth in California petitioned the court to be removed from his facility because staff members had kept him in isolation for twenty-three hours a day. At 20 years old, he had missed so much schooling that he was only halfway to his high school diploma.

Besides using isolation to purportedly protect queer youth, guards also use lockdown as punishment. "We had one kid who wouldn't go to school because he was afraid" of the other youth in the facility, says Wesley Ware. And because he was on the mental health unit, a certain amount of social interaction was required as part of his rehabilitation program. For refusing to leave his cell, he was put on lockdown for noncompliance, and his chances for release diminished yet again.

Often, queer youth face as much hostility from prison guards as they do from peers. When a youth faces bullying or violence from another kid, staff can be reluctant to intervene. "The staff views it as [the kid] deserves it, or he's asking for it—so they don't intervene or they'll egg it on," Ware says. They view it as "good for the kid—gotta teach him and have it beat out of him. Then when the gay kid finally breaks, then he faces the disciplinary consequences."

Guards are often bullies themselves. Krystal reports that staff called her "a disgrace to mankind," a "punk" or "fucking faggot" on a daily basis and threatened her, saying, "I'll beat your fucking ass." When staff called Krystal "faggot" or other names, sometimes she talked back. "Sometimes I would even say, I'm proud to be that," Krystal says. She would receive more tickets for talking back.

There are even reports of staff members sending youths to attack other kids. "When it happened, it was something all the youth knew," Krystal says. "Basically, someone would be left out there in the open." This is not unique to Louisiana. A 16-year-old gay man in Los Angeles interviewed in 2008 reported that staff members used other youth to intimidate him. Another child in the California system reported that "a female staff member set up a bisexual youth and let straight guys into his room to beat him up. I woke up and saw blood on the walls and on the ground."

LGBT kids are often targeted for sexual assault. A 2009 Department of Justice report shows that across the country, LGBT youth are twelve times more likely than straight youth to report being sexually assaulted by a fellow inmate. In Louisiana alone, 10 percent of all youth—gay and straight—reported abuse by a staff member. Krystal reports that she was propositioned twice by guards when she was 14. When she refused, she was verbally abused and called a "bitch."

An LGBT youth's problems with the law frequently begin at home. "LGBT youth are more likely to be arrested than straight youth because they're more likely to be pushed out of their homes," says Dr. Beyer. And "family rejection is a direct pipeline to the juvenile justice system," says San Francisco State University researcher Caitlin Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project. While only 3-10 percent of Americans are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, LGBT youth make up 15 percent of the prison population. Indeed, one-quarter of all LGBT youth are kicked out of their homes or run away. Compared to their heterosexual peers, incarcerated LGBT youth are twice as likely to report abuse at the hands of family members, homelessness or state-ordered foster placement. A shocking estimated 20-40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT.

Courts and law enforcement officials often fail to recognize the factors that drive LGBT youth into the system. Of a 16-year-old client who was a runaway, Picou says, "Everybody refused to allow him to be in a group home or foster care home. He was in super-custody like he's a terrorist. Nobody asked him why he ran away or whether he was prostituting to stay alive." And while a toxic home life leads LGBT youth to live on the street, an unwelcoming school system leads many to avoid school altogether, leading to truancy.

Until 2007, gay and gender non-conforming youth in Louisiana's juvenile justice system were regularly subjected to "sexual identity confusion" counseling. At 14, Krystal went through this process herself. Though she emphasized again and again that she was not confused and had no desire to change her sexuality or gender identity, counselors grilled her for five sessions. Remarks ranged from emotional appeals ("This is not who you are; I don't want you to be like that") to psychobabble ("Maybe you like boys because you're around them so much") to veiled threats ("You're making a distraction in the unit; while you're here, this is how you need to act because it's drawing attention to you"). For other kids, these threats translated into consequences. One feminine gay youth was sent to lockdown for having his hair up. When a male-to-female transgender youth wished to use a female name and pronouns, the counselors refused and advised staff to force her to wear male clothing.

More blatant and brutal antigay conversion efforts have taken place across the country. In an East Coast state that's the subject of an ongoing investigation, prison authorities permit religious volunteers to enter a youth facility to lead explicitly antigay Bible classes. Lesbian youths who refuse to attend the programs have had their sentences extended from nine to upwards of thirteen months. In Mississippi, a judge—with parental approval—sent a lesbian youth to a private hospital for two weeks to cure her homosexuality. In Pennsylvania, a counselor handed out antigay religious tracts to youth in her facility. In Georgia, when a child who had never committed a sexual offense came out as transgender, she was sent to a facility for youth likely to commit sexual offenses against children. Every major mental health, pediatrics or child welfare organization strongly condemns these practices.

The courts have not been silent on this issue. In 2006, in a stunning, first-of-its-kind decision, a federal court in Hawaii held that the facility's "relentless campaign of violence, physical and sexual assault, imposed social isolation and near constant use of homophobic slurs" was unconstitutional. The children who were plaintiffs in that case faced discriminatory and cruel treatment very similar to what Krystal and others have faced. This decision spurred advocates in California, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere to push for reform—with some success.

In the aftermath of the ruling, the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility implemented mandatory training for the entire staff. The experience is instructive for other juvenile justice systems. "There were certain individuals sitting there with arms folded and steam coming out of their ears. They weren't about to have their opinions changed on the okayness of being LGBT," says Dr. Robert Bidwell, a pediatrician who assisted with the training and works at HYCF. The crucial difference, says Bidwell, is that "the training empowered the people who never felt comfortable with that prejudice to hear loud and clear from the director of youth services that this will not be tolerated."

To be sure, even in the worst facilities, gay youth can often find some allies. Krystal told me how in the midst of the terror she experienced, the women who taught school in the facility "were basically another momma to me." One staff member who physically attacked Krystal was ultimately investigated and fired. But at the root of this problem, says Jody Marksamer, is a cold truth. "In the juvenile justice world, even when staff members believe something poses a litigation risk, they'll keep doing it until somebody inside tells them we have to stop doing it, or they get sued."

Queer Injustice: Preying on GLBT prisoners.

I don't know how sentencing judges can live with themselves sometimes, knowing that over 1 in 10 incarcerated children are sexually abused within the first year, guaranteed - and that over 40% of women prisoners are abused by guards. Now that's the real "truth-in-sentencing" that judges and prosecutors need to be made to speak aloud every time they decide to put another vulnerable person behind bars. Then I assure you we'd see both prison and sentencing reform happen in a heartbeat: those are some of the people we need help from the most to push it all through - and right now they're the ones who resist it the most.

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Queer Injustice: The Widespread Sexual Abuse LGBT People Face in Prison
By Kay Whitlock and Andrea Ritchie and Joey Mogul, Beacon Press
Posted on February 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149873/


The following is an excerpt from Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, edited by Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock (Beacon Press, 2011).

SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Since sexual violence is one of the principal weapons of policing and punishing perceived sexual deviance and gender nonconformity on the outside, it may come as no surprise that it’s wielded to even greater effect in the highly controlled and violent environment of modern prisons. Roderick Johnson’s case and similarly horrifying experiences of countless other incarcerated queers illustrate the ways in which sexual violence allows prison authorities to control the queered prison environment as a whole.

Studies indicate that as many as one in four female prisoners and one in five male prisoners are subjected to some form of sexual violence at the hands of prison staff and other prisoners. Numbers vary depending on the methodology used in a study or survey, and many victims do not report instances of sexual violence they endure be- cause they fear retaliation, stigmatization, and isolation. Others fail to report assaults because they have become inured to it after years of abuse and forced sexual encounters. Consequently, reported instances of sexual violence represent only the tip of the iceberg.

The most recent surveys completed by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) extrapolated that 60,500 incarcerated adults or 4.5 percent of the prison population were sexually abused in 2007 alone, while 3,220 or 12 percent of youth incarcerated in juvenile detention centers were sexually violated by a staff member (10.3 percent) or another youth within the first twelve months of their admission.

While sexual violence is, in many respects, part of the daily prison experience for many inmates–whether they are victims, perpetrators, or forced observers—LGBT people are disproportionately targeted by staff and prisoners. It is now generally accepted by prison officials, experts, sociologists, and prison advocates that prisoners and detainees who are, or perceived to be, gay, transgender, or gender nonconforming are more likely to be sexually assaulted, coerced, and harassed than their heterosexual and gender-conforming counterparts. One study of six male prisons in California in 2007 found that 67 percent of the respondents who identified as LGBT reported having been sexually assaulted by another inmate during their imprisonment, a rate that was fifteen times higher than the rest of the prison population.

The first national survey of violence in the penal system, conducted by the BJS in 2003, found that sexual orientation was the single greatest determinant of sexual abuse in prisons, with 18.5 percent of homosexual inmates reporting they were sexually assaulted, compared to 2.7 percent of heterosexual prisoners. Additionally, it appears that rape victims of all sexualities are subsequently framed as gay and thereby become targets for further violence. According to Bryson Martel, imprisoned in an Arkansas prison for a narcotics-related offense, “You get labeled as a faggot if you get raped. If it gets out and then people know you have been raped, that opens the door for a lot of other predators. Anywhere I was, everybody looked at me like I was a target.”

Sexual violence is often used as a tool by staff and prisoners to enforce gender roles and conformity. A male prisoner’s rank in the hierarchical world of prisons is measured by traits stereotypically associated with masculinity, including physical strength and physique, ability to commit acts of violence and self-defense, and the nature of the offense that led to incarceration. As in larger society, masculinity is privileged while traits stereotypically associated with femininity, synonymous with weakness, are devalued. According to Donaldson, “The prison subculture fuses sexual and social roles and assigns prisoners accordingly . . . in my experience confinement institutions are the most sexist (as well as racist) environment in the country, bar none.”

Consequently, transgender women and men who are or perceived to be gay or effeminate find themselves at the bottom of the prison hierarchy, and as such become the targets of sexual abuse. According to Bella Christina Borrell, a transgender woman, “Female transgender prisoners are the ultimate target for sexual assault and rape. In this hyper-masculine world, inmates who project feminine characteristics attract unwanted attention and exploitation by others seeking to build up their masculinity by dominating and controlling women.”

As Alexander Lee, Donaldson, Ristroph, and others suggest, the way to maintain one’s “manhood” in prison is to dominate weaker, less powerful prisoners. Consequently, many prisoners, including some who are openly gay or gender nonconforming, may engage in ruthless acts of sexual or physical violence in order to avoid becoming victims of violence themselves. Femininity is not solely ascribed, and punished, based on sexual orientation or gender nonconformity in male institutions; it can also be associated with youthful age, diminutive size, lack of prior prison experience, and the nonviolent nature of one’s offense, rendering other “gender-nonconforming” prisoners likely targets for sexual abuse and victimization.

The case of Roderick Johnson highlights ways in which penal officials often are complicit and collaborate in sexual violence against prisoners, particularly LGBT prisoners. In some instances, guards promote and foster sexual violence between inmates in order to regulate the prison environment. This creates a system where prison staff are gatekeepers, all too often using sexual violence as a management tool by either allowing or prohibiting it as they wish.

For instance, according to TGJIP executive director Miss Major, who was incarcerated in a state facility in the late 1970s, transgender women were classified as mentally ill and therefore generally housed in the prison infirmary. Prison officials would at times take them, highly medicated with psychotropic drugs, and place them in cells with violent or troubled male inmates for the night. According to Lee, “A Louisiana prison guard described the situation inside as ‘sex and bodies become the coin of the realm,’ where prison staff trade sexual access to some prisoners for favors from other prisoners.” Guards may also promote coercive sex to recruit informants, in exchange for payoffs, or to destroy the leadership of an articulate prisoner.

The sexual assault and abuse of women, including lesbians and gender-nonconforming individuals, in women’s institutions has not prompted the same degree of attention and outrage as sexual violence in men’s prisons. Yet “sexual abuse and assault of prisoners by prison staff is commonplace and pervasive.” It appears that, compared to male prisoners, incarcerated women are more likely to be sexually abused by staff than by other prisoners. One study completed by sociologists Cindy and David Struckman-Johnson found that “41 percent of women prisoners, compared to 8 percent of the men who responded to surveys were victimized by prison staff.” Amnesty reports that “lesbians and other women who are seen to transgress gender boundaries are often at heightened risk of torture and ill- treatment” and that “perceived or actual sexual orientation” is “one of four categories that make a female prisoner a more likely target for sexual abuse.”

Furthermore, women, including transgender women, suffer from additional forms of sexual degradation and harassment from penal officials who routinely subject them to excessive, abusive, and invasive searches, groping their breasts, buttocks, or genitalia, repeatedly leering at them while they shower, disrobe, or use the bathroom, and generally, in the words of Human Rights Watch (HRW), creating an environment that is “highly sexualized and excessively hostile.” Vicki, a transgender woman, informed SRLP that prison guards “frisk as [a] means of harassment, with all their friends watching. After frisking me they say, ‘I need a cigarette now.’” Some transgender women reported being subjected to strip searches and frisks four to five times a day.

Often such searches are conducted merely to satisfy a guard or medical staff’s curiosity regarding a person’s genitalia, but ostensibly justified as necessary for determination of appropriate placement in sex-segregated facilities. Victoria Schneider, a transgender woman arrested for prostitution in 1996, was subjected to an un-necessary and degrading strip search in the San Francisco County Jail that included an inspection of her genitalia while she was forced to bend over and cough.

In 2002, a transgender woman of color held at the same facility was ordered by a sheriff to “strip naked, masturbate, and show him her body and dance for his arousal.” According to Judy Greenspan, cofounder of Trans/Gender Variant Prison Committee (TIP) in California, transgender men also “face a lot of oppression on the part of guards . . . When they’re strip-searched, many FTMs [female to males] who have had their breasts removed or take hormones are put on display. It’s psychological brutality and they’re demonized.”

Beyond violent sexual assault, both men and women prisoners also must often submit to nonconsensual sex acts with guards or with other inmates for safety, to be free from disciplinary punishment or further harassment, or in return for drugs, commissary items, or other survival needs.40 For example, a gay inmate in a male institution who described himself as “a free-world homosexual that looks and acts like a female” reported to HRW that he had no choice but “to hook up with someone that could make them give me a little respect . . . All open Homosexuals are preyed upon and if they don’t choose up they get chosen.” As Sunny, a transgender woman in a male prison in New York, told advocates from SRLP, “If you’re not fucking somebody, you’re gonna get fucked by everybody.”

The response Roderick Johnson received to his repeated pleas for help illustrates how indifference to the plight of queer prisoners often shown by penal officials derives from beliefs that gay men and trans- gender women, particularly those of color, are sexually degraded, inviolable, and more likely to be sexual predators than victims. Ac- cording to Linda McFarlane, deputy director of JDI, “We’ve heard multiple times about officers openly expressing a belief that gay and transgender inmates cannot be raped, that they deserve to be raped due to their mere presence in the environment, or that if they are raped it’s simply not a concern.”

Carl Shepard, a gay Mississippi man serving time for larceny and a narcotics offense, who was anally raped by his cell mate during a prison lockdown, tried to report the rape to a unit administrator, a major, and a warden. “When those three were questioning me, they actually made fun of me. The major said that I was gay, the sex must have been consensual. He said I got what I deserved.” Shepard had previously been denied medical attention even though he was bleeding from his anus. Timothy Tucker, a gay HIV-positive man raped by another male inmate in a federal prison in Virginia, reported, “After I was raped they asked me if I had learned my lesson . . . [Guards] said that since I am gay I should have enjoyed it.” An inmate in Florida told HRW, “I have been sexually assaulted twice since being incarcerated. Both times the staff refused to do anything except to lock me up and make accusations that I’m homosexual.”

Prisoners and inmates who report sexual violence not only fail to receive protection, they are frequently subject to retaliation from penal officials and other inmates for reporting the abuse. For instance, LGBT victims of sexual violence are often written up for violating the rules banning consensual sex, which leads to disciplinary action. In many institutions, when a prisoner reports he or she was raped, they are placed in solitary confinement under the pretense that penal officials are providing them protection during the investigation. Instead, it sends a message to inmates that reporting the assault will only lead to further punishment. Inadequate grievance procedures also make LGBT prisoners who report the sexual violence vulnerable to future attacks.

Amnesty states that “very few [abuses] are reported because of the tremendous stigma involved and because the life expectancy of a ‘snitch’ behind bars is measured in minutes rather than days.” As one legal advocate informed SRLP, “My clients have been punched, choked, thrown against walls, threatened with murder, framed with contraband . . . and threatened with all of these acts in retaliation for receiving a letter or a visit from me or my colleagues or for filing a grievance.”

The grim reality is that even though prison policies prohibit all sexual activity and violence, in practice prison officials not only allow and count on forcible sex, but use it to reinforce their own authority. Not only is forcible sex currency in prisons, but the prison system itself is predicated upon it. As a result, sexual violence is an entrenched and intractable feature of prison life. Defying efforts to suppress sexuality altogether, it serves the dual purpose of simultaneously queering prisons and punishing queerness and gender deviance. And because prisons are deemed to be queer spaces, it also serves to produce and strengthen queer criminal archetypes.


Support AlterNet by purchasing your copy of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States through our partner, Powell’s, an independent bookstore.

Joey L. Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University’s College of Law. Andrea J. Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City. Kay Whitlock is a Montana-based writer, organizer, and consultant working for progressive social change.

Black and Pink: Queer Prisoner Support

This is how they do it in Massachusetts - awesome group; excellent analysis...check out their site for their monthly newsletter - download, print and share!

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BLACK and PINK: STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Black & Pink is an open family of LGBTQ prisoners and “free world” allies who support each other. Our work toward the abolition of the prison industrial complex is rooted in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people. We are outraged by the specific violence of the prison industrial complex against LGBTQ people, and respond through advocacy, education, direct service, and organizing.

CURRENT PROJECTS

1. An online pen pal program where LGBTQ prisoners can list their name, address, and 25-word (non-sexual) ad describing what they want from a pen pal.

2. A monthly newsletter made up of stories, poetry, art, and essays by currently and formerly incarcerated LGBTQ people. Currently incarcerated folks are encouraged to share their stories with Black & Pink so we can put them in the newsletter and nurture a sense of connection between LGBTQ people incarcerated around the country.

3. An art project that sells artwork sent to us by LGBTQ prisoners. All of the money we get for the artwork is put back into the commissary accounts of the artists. The artwork supports prisoners who are exploring their creativity and allows them to connect with “free world” folks who purchase and sell their artwork.

4. Direct advocacy and support for a few select individuals who are experiencing harassment, sexual violence, lack of access to health care, mistreatment, etc. We are not able to do advocacy work for everyone at this time because of capacity, but we do the best we can.

ANALYSIS

Our organizing efforts are guided by a larger goal of collective liberation. We hold strong to a feminist, anti-racist, queer liberationist, anti-capitalist, radical analysis of social, ecological, and economic struggles. We understand the prison industrial complex to be part of a larger system that utilizes systems of oppression to divide people and exploit our individual and collective power. Through movement building and sustained direct action against these systems of violence we will create the world we dream of.

We also celebrate in the beauty of what exists now including our love for each other, the strength of our planet, incredible human resiliency, and all of the power we have to continue existing. While dreaming and struggling for a better world we embody a deep commitment to living in the present.

We understand abolition as not only our end goal but also our pragmatic strategy for action. Any advocacy, services, organizing, and direct action we take will be sure to remove bricks from the system, not put in others we will need to abolish later. We will willingly work with reformist organizations on campaigns we believe are abolitionist, even if they are only small steps at alleviating the suffering caused by the prison industrial complex.

We root our work in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people. To best maintain an accountable relationship to incarcerated people, half of those in the leadership circle are currently incarcerated. We also prioritize the voices of formerly incarcerated people as our “free-world” members of the leadership circle. We know that those most impacted by the violence of the prison industrial complex are best equipped with the knowledge of how to tear it down.

As of today Black & Pink’s “free-world” membership is primarily Boston-based. We commit to supporting one another, sharing the work of our organizing efforts, and nurturing the growth of our family both inside and outside the walls. We intend to expand our national and international membership, creating chapters in other cities, towns, schools, neighborhoods, etc.

TERMINOLOGY

There are many “buzz” words used in our statement of purpose and shared analysis. We wanted to provide a brief glossary of terms to help clarify our intentions behind our choice of wording.

Prison Industrial Complex – The prison industrial complex is a multifaceted construction of control and domination, most commonly seen as the U.S. prison and jail system, the concrete and steel buildings that warehouse individuals. While prisons and jails are a pivotal aspect, the prison industrial complex includes an entire culture of state and corporate collusion to control, discipline, and torture poor/low-income communities and communities of color. The tactics range from police forces to cameras mounted in communities; from the (in)justice system to corporate profiteering from prison phone calls; from immigration enforcement to media depictions of “criminals”; and on and on. (adapted from Critical Resistance)

Abolition – “Abolition defines both the goal we seek and the way we do our work today. Abolition means a world where we do not use prisons, policing and the larger system of the prison industrial complex as an ‘answer’ to what are social, political, and economic problems. Abolition means that instead we put in place the things that would reduce incidents of harm at the front end and address harm in a non-punitive manner when harm does occur. Abolition means that harm will occur far less often and that, when harm does occur, we address the causes of that harm rather than rely on the failed solutions of punishment. Thus, abolition is taking a harm reductionist approach to our society’s problems. Abolition means creating sustainable, healthy communities empowered to create safety and rooted in accountability, instead of relying on policing, courts, and imprisonment which are not creating safe communities.” ~Rose Braz, former director of Critical Resistance

“Free World” – We understand “free world” people to be those who are not currently in prison/jail/detention/etc. We use quotation marks because we understand the terminology of freedom to be deeply complex. There are those who would suggest that none of us are free as there is such heavy surveillance in our communities—the tentacles of the prison industrial complex are expansive. Others would suggest that freedom exists within ourselves and that it can never be taken from us. Regardless of how one understands freedom, in our terminology “free world” refers to those not currently confined in prison/jail/detention/etc.

LGBTQ – This acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. We understand that human sexuality and gender is far more complicated than this acronym. We are striving to find better terminology to include all people who identify outside of heterosexual and gender-conforming boundaries. Other identities people have used when writing to us that we are striving to affirm include same gender loving, homosexual, homophile, transsexual, transvestite, nelly, sissy, and dyke, along with many others.

B&P Family Structure

Members: Members are self-defined individuals who agree with our Purpose and Analysis. These people are free world folks, prisoners, pen-pals, outreach folks, newsletter stuffers, etc. All members can share thoughts about B&P activities. Free world members will be provided information by the e-newsletter and/or website, and can give input by email, phone, or in person. Members in prison will be provided information by the monthly Newsletter, and can respond with general input by mail by writing “Leadership” on the address line. When a vote takes place on a decision, a “B&P ballot” will be sent out with the monthly Newsletter and e-newsletter, and 2 votes will be counted for every person in prison voting and 1 for every free world person.

Coordinators: Coordinators are people who have agreed to coordinate a specific project, committee, chapter, or task, i.e. the art program, or campus outreach, or are contact people for a prison or geographic area. They may be members or part of the Leadership Circle. They have responsibility to make decisions about projects, based on collective input, and are accountable to both the members and the leadership circle.

Committees: Committees are groups of people taking on a specific task or projects, for example outreach or the E-newsletter or accountability. They meet as needed. They will check in with the Leadership Circle and the membership before making big decisions.

Chapters: Chapters can be started by free world and members in prison in order to work on advocacy, education, direct service, and/or organizing projects that are in keeping with the Purpose and Analysis of B&P. Chapters are accountable to the membership of their chapter and the Leadership Circle.

Advisory Group: This is a group of people who have experience with anti-prison and anti-oppression activism. The group will be majority formerly incarcerated people. They are recognized for their amazing and valuable experiences and insight, and are invited to provide input and guidance on the analysis, activities and structure of B&P. They are not necessarily involved in the day-to-day activities of the family and don’t have formal decision making power.

Leadership Circle (LC): Leadership can make decisions about B&P as a family, and is responsible to see that the members and activities follow our Purpose and Analysis. LC can update the Purpose and Analysis. Leadership Circle provides strategic short- and long-term planning for B&P. Leadership Circle will be responsible for raising, managing, and using general B&P funds.

1. The LC will be made up of no more than 10 free world folks and no more than 10 prisoners.
2. To join, members should have spent 3 months volunteering with B&P or received the Newsletter for 3 months.
3. Each LC member needs to make a 1 year commitment.
4. All LC members should agree to the B&P analysis.
5. LC decisions will be made by consensus, which means that everyone agrees to a decision (not majority rule). In consensus, one person can “block” a decision based on principle, but not preference.
6. The LC should be made up of people in different places across the country, in prison and out.
7. Communication between inside/outside will work on a “Buddy system.” Each free world member will be paired with an incarcerated LC member. The free world buddy is responsible for representing the incarcerated person in Leadership Circle meeting/decisions.
8. The free world LC will meet monthly.