Decarcerating America

by Ernest Drucker

  Thousands of often self-educated law librarians and jailhouse lawyers dedicate all the time allowed by their obligatory prison work schedules to researching, counseling, and fighting to uncover and reverse wrongful convictions—their own and those of others in prison with them. It is, after all, thanks to people such as the prison-educated Earl Gideon, who insisted that poor people should have the right to representation by a lawyer, that this right exists today.14

  Why, Then, Are These Programs the Exception Instead of the Rule?

  First, we have to recognize that this heartening work could happen only because some women and men had the courage to challenge the prevailing narrative. Punitive criminal justice models reinforce and are reinforced by racism, unequal distribution of social and economic goods, and political power. Together, these lead prison officials to view people in prison as less rational and less capable than others, as people to be “corrected”—in short, as the problem itself. The notion that incarcerated people could be part of the solution, that they could make a positive difference in a worldwide crisis such as AIDS, is inconceivable to most correctional authorities, as well as to the broader society.

  Prison life is predicated on most administrators’ views that society has given them a mandate to maintain absolute security, which they take to mean absolute control. Initiatives by and empowerment of incarcerated people are seen as threats to that mandate. Although prisons are theoretically designed to carry out the mission of incapacitation, deterrence, punishment, and rehabilitation, the emphasis is always on punishment. In the age of mass incarceration, the goal of supporting personal growth, referred to as “rehabilitation,” has largely disappeared.

  The conditions that people live in, even in prisons where more initiative is allowed, create obstacles and disincentives. They are filled with constant humiliations, disrespect, and the ever-present threat and reality of violence: beatings, fights, and rapes by prison guards, all of which create an atmosphere engendering violence among those who are incarcerated. Occasional news stories provide a glimpse: beatings by guards, overcrowding leading to people sleeping three to a cell with one on the floor, the elimination of programs.15 Things that happen every day lead to enormous stress, frustration, hopelessness, and violence among the people in prison, directed at themselves.

  But these news items can’t capture the routine humiliations. You are a number. You are counted several times a day. Told when to be where. Subject to cell searches in which the guard throws your sheets, your toothbrush, your legal papers, and a photo of your son together on the floor as you stand outside and watch, and then announces: “No contraband found. Clean up your cell.” Had a privilege—say, education—threatened by a misbehavior report for having an extra piece of underwear.

  And then there is the large number of mentally ill people, who receive little or no help in prison but instead, when they are in crisis, are sent to solitary confinement, which challenges the stability of the most level-headed. Plus the impunity of corrections officers—just another fact of life in prison. The reality is hard to communicate, perhaps best done by stories or poetry.16

  Mass incarceration, brutalization, solitary confinement—it doesn’t have to be this way. Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway, among other countries, do not increase the punishment beyond that of separation from society.17 Their goal is to treat people as human beings with dignity and respect so that when they return to society they can build successful lives.

  Change the Narrative

  The narrative about people in prison is not just developed by the prison administrations and personnel. It is based on a narrative from the broader society. To move beyond defining people as “offenders” and “ex-offenders” requires dealing with racism, the history of white supremacy, and the legacy of slavery, all of which has been a key factor in dehumanizing people throughout our history—one result being mass incarceration. A history of toxic racism reinforces media images, academic theories, and policies that contribute to stereotypes of black boys and men (and, increasingly, black girls and women) as somehow threatening or dangerous to white people. When instead of shared humanity and empathy there is merely the chasm of race, punishment is the easy answer. We must increase awareness that we live in the grip of a racialized punishment paradigm and not just in the criminal justice system. Look at the punitive and disciplinary approach in schools in low-resourced neighborhoods, resulting in the school-to-prison pipeline and in a zero-tolerance approach instead of a problem-solving one.

  In addition to the general view of people in prison, different narratives are used to justify the treatment of women and men. Women are frequently defined as victims of abuse or by deficits such as low education or drug addiction. They are often reduced to a label flowing from the act that brought them to prison: “ho,” “monster,” “man-hater,” “mule,” or “baby-killer.” A narrative about women is often based on the judgment of the “immoral” or “fallen” woman who has betrayed the ideals of the “good woman” or the “good mother.”

  These paradigms tend to render women passive; they focus on a woman’s weaknesses or limitations rather than on her strengths. This ignores a greater truth about women in prison. Women in prison are filled with ideas, energy, dreams, and possibilities. Women in prison can be critical agents of their own change, including facing responsibility for our acts and the damage caused. They can inspire and help other women to change; they can tackle the social problems that they confront inside the prison, and upon going home, they can help change the social conditions that plague society.

  Men in prison are more often categorized as dangerous. In New York State, when the three men initiated the idea of an AIDS peer education and counseling program, the first in the state, one was quickly transferred. The program began anyway, but with real limitations. A former corrections official said that when women got together to initiate a new privately funded college program in prison, the organizing process was more acceptable because they were women; once that program was up and running, it was less threatening when men did the same. The racism that was used by politicians, the academy, and the press to fuel public opinion and the growth of mass incarceration follows men into prison. Demagogic language of fear, such as “super-predator,” reinforced the police war on youth of color, resulting in gross increases of extreme sentencing and in extreme racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Hysteria about crack cocaine and the rhetoric of war contributed to racial disparities in arrests, passage of laws mandating life sentences without parole, and the increased use of solitary confinement. Men of color are defined as “perpetrators,” presented as a permanent unchanging and unchangeable object of fear and hatred. Yet these very same men convicted of crimes of violence have so often themselves been victims of violence. The divide between “perpetrator” and “victim” is a destructive binary. Just as with women, such stereotypes must be thoroughly challenged and overturned.

  Returning Citizens

  People returning home face continuing punishments, stigma, and exclusion. Almost all will have stories about being turned down for jobs and apartments, having to check boxes and explain their past, paying money for parole supervision and required programs when they have a minimum-wage salary, not being allowed to vote, and the general stigma of having been in prison. Defining people as “ex-offenders,” “ex-felons,” or “ex-cons” results in a continuing collapse of individuality into the crime. And they return to the same community conditions that they lived in before going to prison. It is not surprising that the return to prison is as common as it is: within three years approximately two-thirds of the people returning from prison are rearrested.18 And yet, in spite of these conditions, those who are able to survive the challenging conditions often contribute in many ways. People figured out during their years inside how to get things done and that they want their lives to be part of making change.

  Continuing the Work from Inside on the Outside

  Often people continue the work
they did inside, but in new forms. When a number of men sentenced to the death penalty or to life without parole as juveniles finally were released in Illinois after decades in prison, they helped others by exposing the torture that had led to their coerced and false confessions; they continued their struggle to expose Police Commander Jon Burge and the other police officers under his command in Area 2 and 3 police stations. They spoke to the media, organized rallies, and went to court, now as free men. Ultimately, not only did Burge end up convicted and sentenced to federal prison for perjury, but the City of Chicago, thanks to a campaign for reparations, finally agreed to a historic reparations settlement. The city apologized to the one hundred African American torture survivors, paid each of the men $100,000, committed to providing a free community college education to the survivors and their children and grandchildren, committed to having this history taught in the Chicago public school curriculum, financed a Center for the Victims of Torture in the Southside neighborhood of Burge’s Area 2 police station, and commissioned a sculpture or monument to remember the history of Chicago police torture.19

  When women who had been part of the HIV/AIDS program at Bedford Hills came home, they founded and staffed the Coming Home Program in a New York City hospital to support men and women returning from prison in need of health care. The men involved in the Think Tank at Green-haven Correctional Facility went on to create NuLeadership, an organization founded by formerly incarcerated men who initially built a base in a college, developing curriculum and educating the public, and went on to be a community-based organization in Brooklyn.20 Former director Eddie Ellis, in a now well-known “letter to friends,” publicly initiated a campaign about the power of language, arguing that those in prison should be referred to as “people,” not “felons,” “cons,” “ex-felons,” or “offenders.”21 Recently, fifteen years after this initiative began, the New York Times ran a supportive editorial.22 Some of the men involved in creating the college program at Sing Sing went on to create Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, which developed college programs in additional prisons and became a national advocate for higher education in prison.23

  Meeting the Survival Needs of Those Coming Home and Contributing to the Broader Community

  An entire “reentry”/“reintegration” set of services and organizations, both private and governmental, has grown up to meet the needs of the 650,000 people who return home every year from prisons and jails.24 Many of those working in organizations providing housing, counseling, health care, mentoring, and job searches are themselves “returned citizens.” In the experiences of people who staff organizations such as the Fortune Society, the Osborne Association, or the Coming Home Program, it is the connection to a trusted peer that helps people make the transition, start building a new life, cope with the stigma they face, and not give up. Many of those participating in the Oakland conference were directors or creators of organizations that fit this pattern. People returning from prison could be employed on a massive level to support each other to return to society. This would provide employment, draw on the strengths of people who want to help their peers, and reduce recidivism by providing jobs, meaningful work, and the self-esteem and emotional rewards that come from peers helping peers. Still, in some states, parole regulations prohibit people on parole from having contact with each other, aggravating the isolation, stigma, and lack of resources to cope with everyday living.

  People returning from prison contribute to the broader community in many other ways as well: as educators in universities, writers, health professionals, social workers, artists, youth workers, executive directors of housing development organizations, government officials, and family and community members.

  Changing Policies and Strengthening the Role of the People Impacted by Mass Incarceration

  People who have come home from prison have initiated national and local campaigns to change a range of criminal justice policies and to challenge the basic premises of mass incarceration and criminalization of communities.

  •Education Inside and Out spearheaded a nationwide campaign to reinstate government support for higher education inside prisons, cut off as part of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill.25

  •All of Us or None began a national campaign to remove the box on employment applications requiring a person to check it if they have a felony conviction, because it stigmatizes and creates an obstacle to employment. Campaigns are now being carried out in cities around the country and extended to college applications.26

  •JustLeadershipUSA is training formerly incarcerated people throughout the United States to be advocates and to develop a national network to be a force for change. JustLeadershipUSA is leading a campaign to close Rikers Island and advocating to cut incarceration by half by 2030.27

  •A group of formerly incarcerated people have worked with the Federal Reentry Council setting up meetings between federal officials and formerly incarcerated people to develop and implement change in housing, education, and employment policies.

  •In New Orleans, formerly incarcerated people have initiated voting rights campaigns, including Voices of the Experienced (VOTE), to end felony disenfranchisement.28

  The women’s voices increasingly involved in the struggle to end mass incarceration go beyond women who are incarcerated; they include women in communities who must hold together families and community life while the men are in prison. Today, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, an organization that stands on the shoulders of many previous efforts to build and express the voices of women, is developing a national network.29 In New York, formerly incarcerated women are part of the Women’s Building project, transforming the former Bayview prison for women into an international women’s center.30 In Los Angeles, A New Way of Life, created by a formerly incarcerated woman, operates five safe homes that provide a lifeline to hundreds of formerly incarcerated women and children.31

  Although these organizations and many others raise specific women’s issues, they also contribute to a culture of community, family, and relationships for the movement as a whole.

  Legitimate Hope: The Long-Termers and Their Unique Role

  Long-termers, people with long sentences, are a particular and growing group within the larger population of people in prison. Inside, everyone—incarcerated people and administrators alike—knows that long-termers serve a vital function.32 Wardens throughout the country have confirmed that they count on them because when long-termers settle and mature, they invest in the prison community to create a life with meaning in spite of facing brutal and humiliating conditions. Long-termers created and led many of the programs described in this article both inside and outside prison: the AIDS programs, the Think Tank, the college programs at Sing Sing and Bedford Hills, the organization of women in California prisons for domestic violence reform, the Pelican Bay hunger strikes. And when long-termers come home they often play key roles in changing policies: NuLeadership, All of Us or None, Ban the Box, and Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP).33

  Long-termers are usually people convicted of a violent crime. And, as a result of the “tough on crime” decades and the ongoing punishment paradigm that defines the criminal justice system, they are held in prison beyond the minimum of their already lengthy sentences by laws, regulations, and policies that result in denials of parole, compassionate release, clemencies, and work release, as well as exclusion from sentencing reforms.

  There is a lack of investment in long-termers on the inside. Scarce resources—programs, education, opportunities for work—are limited either to those without violent offenses or to those with proximate release or potential release dates. Waiting lists for programs often give priority to those with earlier release dates.34 For example, the recent amendment to the new Pell grant proposal excludes people with more than five years before their next parole date. Given the role that long-termers played in developing college programs when government support was withdrawn, and their general role of
leadership and stabilizing the community, this is cruel and shortsighted.

  A narrative exists among policy makers, the general public, and many in the prison reform movement, reinforced by media, that divides people in prison into the good (nonviolent) and the bad (the violent). When President Obama spoke at the NAACP convention in 2015 about the need to end mass incarceration, he assured his audience that his modest reforms, such as sentencing reductions and clemency for nonviolent first-time drug offenders, would not lead to the release of the “murderers, the thugs.” When people hear “murderer” or “convicted for a violent crime,” they see a person who is defined by that one act, frozen into that act. They don’t see a person with a story, someone whose life was impacted by social and economic conditions of disadvantage, a person who can change and does change—a person who often becomes a leader in prison and frequently a leader for change when she or he comes home. This narrative reinforces people’s fears and supports inhumane treatment inside prison as well as the determination to hold people in prison for as long as possible.

  Since coming home after I served twenty-two years for felony murder, I have spoken with many people who fully support criminal justice reform yet can’t imagine that this applies to those convicted of violent crimes, including murder. They don’t know that long-termers are a special group within the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated in their role as change agents. They never heard of Mujahid Farid, who at the age of forty-five completed the first fifteen years of his fifteen-to-life sentence for attempted murder—and by that time had also completed two bachelor’s degrees and two master’s degrees, initiated a peer HIV/AIDS program, and worked as a brilliant law paralegal in the law library. For the next eighteen years, he was denied parole over and over, until he finally went home at the age of sixty-three. When he was released, Farid created RAPP, supported by a Soros Foundation Justice Fellowship. RAPP advocates for the release of elderly people in prison who face parole denials because of a crime committed twenty, thirty, or even forty-five years ago.35 These supporters of criminal justice reform do not know about Sharon, sentenced to eight and a half to eighteen years for the death of a man who raped her, and who came home and earned her master’s degree in social work and now is the director of a homeless shelter for the Women’s Prison Association. They don’t know about Malachi, given a life sentence at fifteen, who helped create an organization for other juveniles sentenced to life in California. They don’t know how he and others supported one another, mentored new young people coming into prison, and created projects such as the annual fund-raiser to put together one thousand backpacks filled with health-related products for homeless youth, nor that after coming home Malachi has worked to build restorative justice among Oakland youth.