19. E.A. Wang, C.S. Hong, S. Shavit, R. Sanders, E. Kessell, and M.B. Kushel, “Engaging Individuals Recently Released from Prison into Primary Care: A Randomized Trial,” American Journal of Public Health 102, no. 9 (2012): e22–e29.
20. M.E. Domino, E.C. Norton, J.P. Morrissey, and N. Thakur, “Cost Shifting to Jails After a Change to Managed Mental Health Care,” Health Services Research 39, no. 5 (2004): 1379–401.
21. U. Aviram, “Community Care of the Seriously Mentally Ill: Continuing Problems and Current Issues,” Community Mental Health Journal 26, no. 1 (1990): 69–88.
22. A. Searing and J. Hoadley, “Medicaid Expansion: Driving Innovation in Behavioral Health Integration,” Health Affairs Blog, July 5, 2016, http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2016/07/05/medicaid-expansion-driving-innovation-in-behavioral-health-integration.
23. J.P. Morrissey, H.J. Steadman, K.M. Dalton, A. Cuellar, P. Stiles, and G.S. Cuddeback, “Medicaid Enrollment and Mental Health Service Use Following Release of Jail Detainees with Severe Mental Illness,” Psychiatric Services 57, no. 6 (2006): 809–15; J.P. Morrissey, G.S. Cuddeback, A.E. Cuellar, and H.J. Steadman, “The Role of Medicaid Enrollment and Outpatient Service Use in Jail Recidivism Among Persons with Severe Mental Illness,” Psychiatric Services 58, no. 6 (2007): 795–801.
24. D. Mancuso and B.E.M. Felver, “Chemical Dependency, Public Safety: Implications for Arrest Rates, Victims, and Community Protection,” Washington State Department of Social and Health Services Research and Data Analysis Division, February 2009, www.dshs.wa.gov/sites/default/files/SESA/rda/documents/research-11-140.pdf.
25. J.D. Morenoff and D.J. Harding, “Incarceration, Prisoner Reentry, and Communities,” Annual Review of Sociology 40 (2014): 411–29.
26. Patel et al., “Integrating Correctional and Community Health Care.”
12
Come Close In
Voices of Survivors of Mass Incarceration
KATHY BOUDIN
In September 2016 I attended the first national conference of the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People and Families Movement in Oakland.1 We were more than six hundred people from thirty-six states. Some walked with limps, used canes, and had spent more than forty years inside. Others were mothers, sisters, and brothers—lifelines who had supported family members in prison and returning home. Old friends hugged, tears flowed. We were home, together, celebrating a new life, and organizing for change. People crowded into the large meeting room, women and men, and listened to one another on panels; they sat on the benches at tables outside the meeting room sharing their lives and their work: getting the vote, banning the box on employment forms and college applications, securing housing for people returning from prison, and challenging the mass incarceration and mass criminalization system. They spoke of their efforts to run organizations to develop housing, their attempts to make health care accessible for people returning home, and their policy work to bring higher education back into prisons. Chants resounded: “All of us or none”; “Those closest to the ground are closest to the solution”; “Nothing about us without us.”2
For years, lawyers, advocates, activists, policy makers, service providers, health workers, and others have devoted themselves to improving the lives of people impacted by incarceration. And substantial numbers of people in prison and those who have returned home have worked at advocacy and change even as they struggle to survive. However, this is the first time that people who were in prison, together with those who are supporting loved ones inside, are becoming a national organized voice. More than two million people are currently incarcerated, and between seventy million and a hundred million people—one out of three Americans—have criminal records.3 It is estimated that six hundred thousand people will return from prison each year. And tens of millions of people are enduring the consequences of felony convictions. There is a growing willingness to come out of the shadow of stigma and the shame to proclaim our humanity and be actively engaged in change. These new voices turn out to be those of your neighbors, co-workers, parents, elders, students, and friends. As with the AIDS epidemic, when the very people who are dehumanized and stigmatized struggle against dehumanization and stigma, they can change social attitudes and culture, policies and laws.
Who Are the Change-Makers?
Some years ago, I attended a conference on prison reform where I realized that almost none of the speakers spoke about the role of those inside prison in contributing to change. From my seat in the audience, I asked: “Does anyone here think that people in prison or home from prison make a contribution to changing the system?” There was a dead silence. Finally one panelist said from the podium, “I think they do. They help humanize the situation.”
I was grateful for his comment because the humanizing is critical. But the answer missed what I knew from my own experience in prison about how people inside and those who have returned play major roles in creating change. The Oakland conference revealed how they have become a significant force against mass incarceration and all its devastating human consequences. It is important to recognize this, not only because the formerly incarcerated show the human face of mass incarceration but also because they bring practical solutions based upon their own experiences, as well as a commitment to a better society because of what they have endured.
The fundamental premise of this chapter is that the experience of incarceration and the struggle to reintegrate create a particular knowledge that often combines with a passion for change. Of course it does not assume that just because people have been incarcerated they are clear about causes or solutions, or that they are skilled advocates or policy makers. But when a person’s experience combines with reflection, contributions to their communities, work with peers, knowledge, and self-transformation, change-makers develop among the formerly incarcerated, and they occupy diverse roles in the movement to end mass incarceration and criminalization of their communities.
This chapter begins inside prison because it is during incarceration, despite the brutal conditions, that significant numbers of people emerge as change-makers. It describes the role of formerly incarcerated people when they return back to society. It looks at the role of women, who are often left out of discussions about prison. The final section focuses on long-termers, those convicted of violent crimes, who are usually demonized and removed from criminal justice reform. It advocates for recognition of the complex humanity of those who struggle against being frozen forever into their single worst moment by labels like “offender” and “ex-offender.” And it addresses both the objective conditions and the social narratives responsible for mass incarceration.
Collective Challenges to Prison Conditions: Uprisings, Strikes, Class-Action Lawsuits
The most widely known ways that people in prison have contributed to changes have come through uprisings, protests, and class-action lawsuits. The historic Attica uprising took place in September 1971. The men were driven by the desperation of unbearable conditions inside—constant abuse by guards, medical neglect, lack of showers—as well as inspired by liberation movements outside of prison walls. Most basically, they were asking for an acknowledgment of their humanity: “We are men, not beasts, and we do not intend to be driven as such. The entire prison populace—that means each and every one of us here—has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here.” These words were spoken on September 9, 1971, by L. D. Barkley, who served as a spokesperson during the Attica uprising and who was killed at the age of twenty-one on September 13, 1971.4 The men tried to gain control of the prison and took a number of hostages. Once this occurred, they tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement, including amnesty for those involved in the takeover, educational classes, religious freedom, and fairer disciplinary practices. But Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state troopers to storm the prison. By the end of the assault, thirty-nine people—twenty-nine people who were incarcerated and ten hostages—had been killed by the state police. This insu
rrection changed the entire dynamic within prisons and initiated a national discussion about prison policy and practices. This uprising, brought about by the denial of the humanity of incarcerated people, echoes today. The assertion of their humanity and the fight for that humanity are the most lasting legacy of Attica.
More recently, the incarcerated men at the Pelican Bay facility in California went on hunger strikes to protest the use of solitary confinement. Three hunger strikes—the last one in 2013—involved thirty thousand people in California prisons, supported by the movement among their family members on the outside. This organizing and solidarity achieved a settlement relating to serious abuse of solitary confinement. Unprecedented was the fact that the incarcerated men were part of the team negotiating with the state. They worked in a unified committee across lines of race and ethnicity, traditionally used by corrections personnel to keep people in prison divided.5
And in the summer of 2016, what may be the first nationally coordinated prison labor strike took place, protesting prison labor conditions. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery but left an exception for people who have been convicted of crimes. This means that incarcerated people can legally be put to work for little or no pay. The labor strike, involving more than twenty thousand incarcerated people in at least twelve states, contributes to the growing awareness about the clause in the Thirteenth Amendment that continues to permit slavery in prison.6
Individual and class-action lawsuits have been another form of the struggle for change, relying on the people inside in collaboration with their lawyers, and often family members and community advocates. Class-action lawsuits include but are not limited to medical conditions, parole, solitary confinement, lack of education programs, and violence by correctional staff; in women’s prisons there have been many lawsuits about sexual abuse by the staff.7
Building Programs and Projects Inside the Prison: Collectively and Individually
In less well-known and less likely situations, people in prison have developed programs and projects that touch and change those inside and often reach beyond the prison. Being separated from society requires learning to survive and transform oneself under the most difficult conditions. For many, this means making a contribution to others, in conditions that also include daily humiliations, degradation, and often actual violence.
The following examples profile significant contributions men and women in prison have made to solving problems within prison as well as addressing national problems. They illustrate the talent and lessons available if only we see them for what they are: critical resources in the struggle against overcriminalization and mass incarceration.
Incarcerated Women as Engines of Change
Most people don’t think about women when discussing people in prison. Yet women now account for a larger proportion of the prison population than ever before, with the female prison population today nearly eight times higher than it was in 1980. Though many more men are in prison than women—women are approximately 7 percent of the total prison population—the rate of growth for female imprisonment has outpaced men by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2014.8
During the twenty-two years I was incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security facility for women, we saw ourselves as agents of transformation—always in collaboration with people outside the prison, some extraordinary staff in the prison, and the required permission of the prison administration. But we imprisoned women were key engines of change.
The AIDS Counseling and Education organization was an early example. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, in 1988, almost 20 percent of the women entering the state system were HIV-positive.9 The prison atmosphere was defined by fear, ignorance, and stigma. “Don’t sit next to her,” they whispered, “she’s been to see the nurse a lot.” “Don’t use her tray,” they said, loud enough for people to hear in the mess hall. Corrections personnel knew that both management and public health required change. In most prisons, this meant isolating those infected with HIV.
We knew that in order to foster stability, create humane conditions for those who were infected, and reduce transmission, we needed to transform the culture of fear and stigma to one of caring, support, and knowledge. We became educated, held the dying in our arms, and, when they died, held memorials. We taught workshops about the disease and its prevention. We joined a national movement to raise awareness and support, making quilts and doing our own walkathons around the prison yard. And we supported those with the virus who now spoke out and gave others courage. We changed the face of AIDS sufferers from that of monster to neighbor, friend, even best friend. And in six months we managed to get our program funded by the AIDS Institute.
Within two years, the head of correctional health care came to see our program as a model for all the New York State prisons, and within four years, it had become an inspiration for people in other states and a model adapted by some other prison administrations. In order to share the experience, and the model, we wrote Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison.10 It made the program’s history, activities, and curriculum widely available, and was distributed to prison libraries around the country. The women who founded the program, sat with the dying, and acted as peer educators and counselors, changed, grew, and went home to real jobs, becoming much-needed HIV/AIDS counselors and educators in their own communities.
On another front, in 1986, some women who had been convicted of murder after being subjected to domestic violence participated in public hearings, held in the gym, that were attended by media, judges, and state legislators. They broke a different barrier of silence, fear, and shame by testifying about how the violence in their lives had affected them, raising consciousness about the relation between domestic violence and crime. The issue of “battered women” was also a focus in California, where twenty-five women at California Institution for Women who had killed their abusers mobilized and built a coalition to free women who had been abused, signing a joint habeas corpus petition. The initiative came from the inside and led to an outside coalition that became a significant movement challenging hundreds of convictions of women who had been abused and building consciousness about abuse of women and the need for criminal justice reform.
Parenting was another area where women imprisoned at Bedford took the initiative. With the support of exceptional staff and a model children’s center in the visiting room, women learned to move beyond the guilt and paralysis of the “bad mother” label to support and understand their children. They also went on to teach parenting classes, including prenatal classes, classes about parenting from a distance, and classes about being mothers of adolescents; they became caregivers in the nursery and in the children’s center in the visiting room, and became children’s advocates who worked with mothers, children, and guardians.
Education was a major theme of the work to improve our lives and those of others. In 1995, when Congress ended Pell grants for people who were incarcerated, women at Bedford initiated a process that ultimately brought privately funded college courses to the prison. College presidents began visiting and learned from the women at Bedford about the importance of higher education in helping to redirect their lives. With local community support, one by one the college presidents agreed to donate a professor a semester to a newly established degree-granting consortium led by Marymount Manhattan. In part as a result of this success, privately funded colleges throughout New York State now offer programs to incarcerated people. Veterans of that experience are leading organizations to support men and women returning from prison who want to pursue higher education, and they are advocates for public support for college inside prisons.
And women in prison have tackled problems no one else would even know about. In 1985, women in Central California Women’s Facility, Valley State, and California Institute for Women mobilized to end the barbaric practice of shackling women during childbirth. Their example inspired a mov
ement of women inside and outside prison in New York State that took thirty years to get legislation passed outlawing the practice.11
Men in Prison as Movers
It is often harder to initiate and carry out collaborative work among men in prison because such efforts are more often seen as threats to discipline and order. Despite this, men too have been active and created programs. Men in prison created PACE to meet the challenge of the AIDS epidemic throughout New York State prisons. After the Omnibus Crime Control Act ended Pell grants for higher education for incarcerated people, the men at Sing Sing initiated a program to reestablish college. Soon the community in Westchester joined with the men inside to establish a robust college program carried out by Mercy College.
One of the better-known projects was organized by a small group of men calling themselves the Think Tank at Green Haven prison in 1968. In research that has had a national impact, the men found that more than 85 percent of incarcerated people in the state are black or Latino and—most phenomenal of all—that 75 percent of the state’s entire prison population came from just seven neighborhoods in New York City.
Their work made concrete the connection between poverty and race and prison. There should be investment in housing, schools, health care, and jobs in these communities.12 The work done by the men in Green Haven ultimately laid the foundation for the establishment of the Justice Mapping Center at Columbia University’s School of Architecture, which helps urban centers analyze their cities with the idea of justice reinvestment.13
Even when conditions make organizing impossible, and they often do, men have found ways to make enormous contributions, for both those inside and those outside. Wilbert Rideau not only fought his way off death row at the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, but in the forty-four years before his release founded and edited a prize-winning newspaper, The Angolite, which became a national model. He has gone on to speak and write, contributing to and editing books and documentaries about prisons, justice, and peace education.
Decarcerating America Page 29