The crime and safety statistics of New Orleans, the most incarcerated city in America, is practically unremarkable. While still having one of the higher crime rates among 100 cities, and a bloated murder rate, it does not make anyone’s “Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities” listings. Despite this, the answer to nearly every social or public health problem is a cage, tasking the likes of our District Attorney, Sheriff, judges and public defenders with solving addiction, homelessness, mental illness, lack of education, and unemployment. It is no mystery why these solutions systemically elude us. Prior to the Civil War, there was no need for convict labor for large public projects such as the levee system. There was also no need to disenfranchise massive numbers of people when elections came down to contests between wealthy white men. The slave system maintained the status quo for as long as historically possible. Too long, of course. And where power is threatened, the powerful will generally take action to assure threats are eliminated. In 1868, Louisiana expanded the class of convicted people who were denied voting rights. It went from the white men who were convicted of forgery, bribery, and perjury to barring all men (Black or white) who were “under order of imprisonment.” Meanwhile, the labor force continued nearly uninterrupted because the 13th Amendment allowed slavery to continue as long as people were convicted of crimes. As one plantation owner famously remarked, “before we used to own them. Now we just rent them.” The equation is simple: Conviction + Disenfranchisement = Hard Labor – Political Power to Change. This arrangement went largely untouched for 150 years. Along the way, Louisiana became the most notoriously creative in ways to suppress Black voting while also building up the disproportionately largest gulag in the world. Poll Tax, Grandfather Clause, Understandings Clause, and outright murder were some of the most well known tactics to maintain power, but people should recognize that Louisiana is one of only two states that allow a non-unanimous jury for convictions. The Fear of a Modern Slave Rebellion  When Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and Robert King were organizing in the early 1970s to ease the oppression of legally enslaved people at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, when they were organizing under the most logical banner of the Black Panthers, their demise was practically assured by history. Surprisingly, they were not outright murdered and joined a long lineage of activists that did not begin with Dr. King, Malcolm X, or Fred Hampton. And just as surprisingly, they survived the initial backlash to a wrongful accusation of killing a prison guard, unlike Emmit Till, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, or Tamir Rice (none of whom were accused of killing a law enforcement officer). Miraculously, they overcame horrid conditions of oppressive incarceration, unlike Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, and Gynnya McMillen- none of whom, mysteriously, even made it past the police station. It is amazing that they were not gunned down in the prison yard like George Jackson, a Black Panther incarcerated in California, that led to the 1971 Attica Prison Riot in New York. Every part of the Angola 3 achieving delayed justice, and release, defies gravity in America- especially in Louisiana. The release of Albert Woodfox, following King and Wallace, is a testament to their bond of purpose, their will to persevere, and the growing public intolerance of injustice. The Right to Defend Against Government Accusations One can look back at the early 1970’s and reasonably conclude that Woodfox, Wallace, and King never had a chance. What we need to know, however, is would they have a chance today? Woodfox had a second trial, a second one where the state acted so unfairly it was also thrown out by reviewing courts. Today politicians use a budget crisis as a reason to underfund the constitutionally mandated right to counsel, and yet the government is not using that same crisis to close down prison and jail cells. Those wondering why the ACLU is suing the Orleans Public Defender and the state body that funds the public defenders need to realize it is actually a person denied counsel who is suing. Such a person is the only one with a right to sue, as the right attaches to the person accused of a crime. As it happens, this plaintiff’s claim impacts us all. Will we get a lawyer? Will the 300 people, whose childhood sentences of Life Without Parole were recently thrown out, get lawyers? Would Woodfox have gotten a proper team appointed for a third trial? One way to keep the equation going is to overwork the defense side and continue the conviction system as originally designed. But it is not all static, of course. Slave labor may not be the needed outcome of the equation anymore, as it has some new variables: (Accusation – Funded Defense Team) + (Vigorous Police Investigation x Political Ambitious District Attorneys) = Convictions + Prison Employment + Contracts for Services (Medical, Food, Telecommunications, Sanitation, Transportation) + Incarcerated People Who Are Not “Unemployed” The public defender has no “right to defend,” thus a demand made upon them, to be passed along to the state budget crunchers, must come from the people with constitutional rights: defendants. While Louisiana struggles with a budget crisis, they can think about the multiple millions of dollars spent trying to maintain the wrongful convictions of the Angola 3 (and many others), and the cellblocks dedicated to wrongful convictions, think of the children sentenced to die in prison, along with Orleans District Attorney Leon Cannizaro and Jefferson Sheriff Newell Normand’s recent comments: about how easing marijuana possession enforcement will basically send New Orleans into a murderous crime spree. Rather than tie marijuana to Doritos, as most Americans do, these out-of-touch elected leaders tie this drug (legalized in several states) to guns. Marijuana is a “gateway drug,” but not to some realm of intoxicated violence and the bloody business of unregulated commerce. It is a gateway drug to the criminal justice system, where someone gets a “strike” or probation status that forever erodes future constitutional rights. Peeling Back 150 Years of Construction Taking a public health approach to the problems our criminal justice system has helped create and exacerbate will not happen overnight. It will come through changes both modest and bold. We need a combination of increased rights, services provided, inspiration, and reducing the punishments. In some cases, punishment needs to be outright eliminated. Louisiana, Minnesota, and Florida are currently moving towards a citizenship dilemma that will never go away until resolved: When will people living in our communities, on probation or parole, have voting rights- the most basic element of citizenship and democracy. Until this mass of people (over 70,000 in Louisiana) have this tenet of citizenship we will always feel excluded, and be excluded. This exclusion extends to our children, into our friendships, and impacts our workplaces. Maryland’s legislature recently voted to override their governor’s veto, restoring citizenship to all people who are outside of prison and living in the community. Kentucky, however, has restored then reversed voting rights by executive orders; proving the tenuous nature some view this fundamental cornerstone of democracy. Those who oppose voting rights don’t believe in democracy. They are simply un-American. While very fundamental questions linger about allowing people back into the community from where we come, some make moves on reducing punishments. It is not possible for the 80 million convicted Americans to undergo the brutality, including decades in torturous solitary confinement, suffered by the Angola 3. The taxpayers cannot afford it, the communities cannot absorb it, and the individual families cannot survive it. President Obama recently eliminated solitary confinement for children in federal custody. Acknowledging that sensory deprivation amounts to torture is a significant moment in mainstream political history, and hopefully our leaders will soon recognize that torture should not be tolerable on our adults. Hopefully state leaders will follow federal leaders, who should be incentivizing such reductions in brutality in the same way federal dollars contributed to the massive spending boom required to build mass incarceration as we know it. The federal government is close to passing a sentencing reform act that would apply to their federal prisoners. It is important for people to understand that such federal initiatives DO NOT apply to people in state custody, as each state has its own set of independent state laws that are only limited by the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of “cruel and unusual punishment” and protected rights of defendants. Those who wonder what each of the latest federal bills “will do,” they should be asking the interpretations by impacted people- those who have a stake in the actual success of the litigation beyond claiming victory in its passage. As one would expect, federal legislation often doesn’t begin by asking for too much and typically gets watered down further in the process. If a bill has a modest, but genuine, impact it should be embraced as such rather than over-hyped in a manner that leads people to wash their hands and proclaim a job “well done.” The federal Fair Sentencing Act will immediately impact some people, and represent a downward trend in sentencing laws, but will not go much further in producing lasting reductions in mass incarceration. Reducing the mandatory minimum on 1kg of heroin / 5kg of cocaine / 280g crack / 50g meth (from ten years to five) will only help the few people who may be serving under ten years for such a major amount of hard drugs. Similarly, the reduction on 100g of heroin / 500g of cocaine / 28g of crack / 100 marijuana plants / 5g of meth (five years minimum to two) will only help those few people where the judge would have given them less. Doing What You Can, Where You Can As VOTE’s executive director Norris Henderson always says, “Get in where you fit in.” Some will work on citizenship while others on sentencing. Some gravitate to addiction services and others need to build homes, but ultimately we need to be building our community in ways that involves us all, that puts us all in it to win it, collectively ensuring injustice does not occur. Welcome home Albert Woodfox. May you live a long and peaceful life full of all the things you hold dear.  Rest in power, Herman Wallace. May your spirit guide us along the arc of humanity, the one that bends towards justice.  Keep fighting for justice, Robert King. May you grow ever stronger through vindication.  by Bruce Reilly, VOTE Deputy Director  Norris Henderson testifies regarding solitary confinement standards at the ACA conference in New Orleans. Torture by another name
When I walked into a New Orleans conference room for a public comment session on torture standards in United States jails and prisons, the vice president of the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America was speaking. His testimony captured the ‘feel good’ spirit of a fraternal group, a group of over 100 men and women that could have been addressing a mundane corporate challenge in shipping or customer service. Things used to be pretty bad, but they’re getting better. There is less violence in prisons and we are reducing incarceration. He could have written the talking points for a politician wanting to move on to a different issue. The American Correctional Association (ACA) was there to revise standards regarding what they refer to as “restrictive housing,” but many others will know it as solitary confinement, the hole, segregation, SHU, CCU and other names. In fact, one of the primary revisions is changing the reference from "segregation" to "restrictive housing." Perhaps the next euphemism will be "extremely affordable housing," when all people in prison are charged $5 per day to forcibly rent a room. The ACA has accredited 500 prisons and other entities across America, including well-known local places such as Angola, Wade, Dixon, Avoyelles, and Rayburn; and notorious facilities across the nation, including Pelican Bay, Folsom, San Quentin, Lompoc, Marion, Cook County Jail, Sing Sing, Attica, and many others. Places where hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have taken turns entering sensory deprivation cages for days, weeks, months, and years on end. The ACA may not have been expecting input from people who have been held in solitary confinement. Such entities rarely, if ever, explicitly seek the input of directly impacted people. Their staffs and committee members are people who run an industry, not people who come from the impacted community- and prison is possibly the one industry where their only accountability is regarding the deaths of confined people, or (more accurately) how to keep costs down while keeping them alive. I could not possibly speak on behalf of millions of incarcerated people. I could not even speak on behalf of any single other person who has undergone the unique torture process designed solely to break one’s mind and spirit. I could, however, share my experience of having spent roughly 1000 days in solitary confinement during my years of incarceration. To root my all-too-brief ten minutes in grim reality, I was compelled to make a few anecdotal points rather than rattle off my specific editorial comments on the podium in front of me. I am, after all, a legally trained professional. Because I'm known to become passionate about these subjects, I could only hope Norris Henderson would follow up with his calm and wise demeanor- which he inevitably did. Here are ten key points we put out there:
The effectiveness of "restrictive housing." Solitary confinement has been very effective in destroying families that are barely holding on with a visit or phone call. It is very effective in cutting off reading materials and deteriorating physical health. It is an excellent way to break people, and turn them into zombies doing the “Thorazine shuffle,” posing no further concern to the guards or other inmates. They become slow-moving statues, and sometimes go off their heavy doses of medication to wake up in a strange world difficult to navigate or understand. These cages are excellent tools for enhanced punishment techniques, serving the internal needs of the short-tempered, the vindictive, and the sadistic. Restrictive housing is not just another prison wing. Children in adult facilities are typically in solitary confinement, labeled as "Administrative Segregation," and being controlled by guards accustomed to dealing with adults. Transgender people, medically impaired people, and politically unpopular people fill the cages of solitary. It is shameful that Americans can know more about the conditions of Guantanamo Bay than the prisons in their own backyard. It is time for that ignorance to end, and current political candidates to be leaders, and should be seeking the input of people who are currently in those windowless concrete cages. Otherwise, they will be left reading reports by the cagers who will pass a new set of standards over coffee based on actuarial spreadsheets and warden reports.  Norris Henderson and members of FICPFM deliver over 100,000 petitions to President Obama last week. Today, President Obama will sign an Executive Order to Ban the Box for all prospective federal employees. This represents a significant step in the past decade of organizing by directly impacted people. What began as a San Francisco ordinance proposed by All of Us or None, to give people a chance at an interview, has ultimately gone viral. This latest step has been the focus of the Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted People, Families Movement (FICPFM), and received an incredible lift from John Legend's plea for all Americans to sign a Ban the Box petition.
Last week, VOTE Executive Director Norris Henderson and other members of the FICPFM delivered over 100,000 signatures to the White House. The President has promised that this number commands a response, and he held to it. The FICPFM was formed as an alliance of grassroots organizations by leaders who have served time in prison and/or traveled long distances to visit loved ones for just an hour or two. Tens of millions of Americans live under vast interlocking laws that impact every aspect of life, from job opportunities to housing discrimination, education to health care. Where 80 million people have convictions, their families also deal with the lifetime consequences. Norris Henderson and FICPFM members call on President Obama to Ban the Box, one week ago. Details remain to be seen, but as the chief executive of the nation's largest employer, President Obama has followed the path of Koch Industries, Target, and others who have recognized that it is poor public policy (and bad business) to either automatically reject an application with the box checked, ("Have you ever been convicted of a felony?") or to subconsciously plant the seed of rejection by reading that information before making any other assessment of a person's abilities. Although a momentous step in the struggle to restore citizenship and equality after serving punishment for a conviction, considerable work remains to be done. The president should take the next logical step and extend Ban the Box to all federal contractors. If they want to business for America, they need to adopt non-discrimination hiring standards. America needs a cultural shift to pave the way for genuine structural change. President Obama has continued a lineage of George Bush recognizing the need for rehabilitation (Second Chance Act) and Bill Clinton's recent apology that he "made the problem worse" through over-incarceration. Our next president must move towards a more constructive approach to the oppressive punishment regime created over the past half-century. All organizations of the FICPFM remain committed to local, state, and national reforms based on the help our people need, rather than the help someone else wants to give us. |
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Photos used under Creative Commons from JeepersMedia, jerrywielo, MattCC716
