The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: reform

  • Letters from Pelican Bay

    Letters from Pelican Bay

    When I first got interested in the criminal justice system, I began following community leaders throughout the nation who were involved in the reform movement. One person I began following was Glenn E. Martin, founder and president of JustLeadershipUSA and a formerly incarcerated individual. JustLeadershipUSA is an organization committed to cutting the U.S. correctional population in half by 2030. Their mission is to empower the people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. One of their biggest campaigns was #closeRikers, which was a battle to close Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex. It is a facility notoriously known for its brutal treatment and violation of human rights. As Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, stated, “Rikers Island is a whirlpool of poverty, incarceration, and injustice.”

    Throughout Rikers Island history, there have been many cases and controversies regarding conditions and treatment. One case involved Kalief Browder who was arrested for stealing a backpack. Since he was underage during his arrest he was placed in solitary confinement for his ‘protection.’ After serving 3 years, he was released without charge, but it was clear his incarceration had took a toll on his overall well being. He failed his first suicide attempt shortly after his release. Unfortunately, after a second attempt he ended his life.

    While his case is not reflective of all cases, it does serve as an example of the faults at Rikers Island and in our criminal justice system as a whole.

    After years of advocating, organizing, and protesting JustLeadershipUSA celebrated a victory this past Friday, March 21, when New York City’s mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to close the facility.

    “It will take many years. It will take many tough decisions along the way, but it will happen,” de Blasio said at a City Hall press conference.

    While no specifics were given, Mayor de Blasio did say it would take roughly 10 years to close the detention facility and it would require reducing the jail population.

    So why does something that happened across the country matter to us?

    Personally, it serves as inspiration and on a larger scale it provides a model for us to follow. California currently has 123 county jails which are used to house inmates awaiting trial or those who are sentenced to one year or less. Our jails like many across the nation are overcrowded with mentally ill inmates or people awaiting trial simply because they cannot afford bail or solid legal representation. Over 12 million people funnel through our jails annually and if California is rethinking prisons, it must rethink jails.

    Right now, the goal of majority of criminal justice reform advocates along with JustLeadershipUSA is to cut the incarcerated population in half by 2030. That is going to take some serious coalition building and community organizing which the citizens of New York engaged in. Reducing incarceration in jails and prisons requires addressing homelessness, education, public benefits, employment, and the stigmatization of formerly incarcerated individuals. If New York can successfully close down its largest jail, then California can begin to close down its local jails.

  • Letters from Pelican Bay

    Letters from Pelican Bay

    By| Tania Mejia

    As a senior currently applying for graduate school, I have been putting a lot of thought into the future and what is to come. I have spent the past four years studying communication and social advocacy, with an emphasis on the prison industrial complex. But even then I am unsure whether I want to work within the system or go outside the system to bring about change. Beyond that, I keep wondering what will happen to the future of our carceral state and the countless people behind bars.

    According to a 2016 Prison Policy Initiative report, “the American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 942 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories.” It’s evident punishment has infiltrated every aspect of society while impacting individuals, communities, and society. But as Foucault pointed out in Power/Knowledge, “In 1820 it was already understood that the prisons, far from transforming criminals into citizens, serve only to manufacture new criminals and drive existing criminals even deeper into criminality.”

    Prisons as we know them were originally established as a more humane method of punishment, but since prisons have become a site of struggle where society’s already marginalized, oppressed, and vulnerable populations end up. With 2.3 million people behind bars and clear racial and ethnic disparities, we need to be asking if incarceration actually produces safety.

    Prisons disconnect and isolate individuals from their families, communities, and society. The impacts of such disconnection transcend past the incarcerated individual to the 1.7 million children who have at least one incarcerated parent. Having a parent behind bars can have significant impacts on children from mental health to changes in social behavior, which in turn can affect educational outcomes and lead to juvenile delinquency creating a cycle of incarceration. Further, children may feel stigma from their circumstances while experiencing financial hardships as a result of lost income and support.

    What is most problematic about prisons is that we have come to believe that one institution can solve some of society’s most pressing issues from poverty, homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction. The truth is prisons cannot address everything from drug possession to serial murder, which means collectively as communities we will have to come together to figure out what works and how to find alternatives to incarceration.

    Another problem with prisons is that they do not heal or address the needs of victims and perpetrators. Long prison sentences are not the solution, especially when we know prisons provide little to no rehabilitation or treatment. Prisons do not stop violence and it is reflected in the number of people sexually assaulted and raped, as well as suicide rates behind bars. Incarceration exposes people exactly to the things that increase the likelihood that they will harm others.

    As I have previously written about, prisons further stigmatize and disenfranchise people through felon labels making reentry a punishment of its own. Unfortunately, our prison system has built a reputation of failing people, doing little correcting (whatever that means) and rehabilitating. If incarceration actually produced safety, we would have the safest country in the world and that’s not what we have as shown in our crime and recidivism rates.

    This goes without addressing the costs behind prisons, private contracts, white collar crime, how prisons create a black market, lack of educational, mindful, and vocational programs, or racial inequalities within the criminal justice system. So, if not prisons then what? What about the murderers and rapists as I am always asked when proposing prison abolition? Well, let’s remember they only make up a small percentage of our incarcerated population, and, regardless, most will return to society.

    The #cut50 movement is a national bipartisan initiative to safely and smartly cut our incarcerated population by 50 percent over the next 10 years. There are many alternatives to imprisonment from drug courts, mental courts, halfway houses, community service, treatment, public housing, and so on. Ultimately, we need radical changes in the status quo. Similarly, to Baz Dreisinger, author of Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World. 

    “I envision a system that is grounded in community courts, reparative systems, truth and reconciliation commissions, and ‘facilities,’ insofar as absolutely necessary, which is always involving a really small number of people.”

  • Letters from Pelican Bay

    Letters from Pelican Bay

    By| Tania Mejia

    By now, most of us know there are 2.3 million people behind bars, and that the U.S. makes up 5% of the world’s population while housing 25% of the world’s prison population. Unlike other political topics, there seems to be bipartisan agreement that our criminal justice system is an urgent need of reform. Unfortunately, most of these cries for change are happening as a result of the $80 billion price tag, instead about the peoples lives who have been and are being impacted by this system. 

    Our society seems to be unable to forgive people and it manifests in the way we treat people behind bars and upon their release. In his, “Re-humanizing Inmates” TEDx talk, inmate, Anthony Wyatt states, “As prisoners, we’re automatically presumed to be less than civilized, and so less than equal. Less than equal, and so less than worthy. A segment of the population, undeserving of your respect, and basic human rights cause we’re considered less than human. I know it sounds extreme, but how else can we account for society’s clear lack of concern for the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated lives?”

    I have repeatedly came to the same conclusion as I read letters by my prison pen pals, walkthrough prisons, and talk to formerly incarcerated people. It is hard not to wonder how did we get here at the approval of so many people. Of course, politicians “tough on crime” rhetoric, media portrayals, and people’s fears were a driving force, but more than that, I think it became an us vs. them. It is no secret that our criminal justice system disproportionately locks up people of color and people who are poor, yet many of us keep the system out of sight, out of mind while falling into the false narrative of who these men and womyn are. I think society as a whole has negatively dehumanized and desensitized our incarcerated brothers and sisters that many people simply do not care about their conditions, rights, and treatment behind bars. 

    As mass incarceration begins to scale down, which it will, we have begin a re-humanization process of inmates and prisoners. It is simply not enough to release people behind bars back into society when being labeled a felon puts you in a category, which Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, identifies as a racial caste system equivalent to slavery and Jim Crow. Being labeled a felon carries consequences with it, which make reentry into society a punishment of its own. People with a criminal record can’t receive financial aid, can’t apply for food stamps and welfare, can’t apply for business loans, can’t earn some professional licenses/permits, can’t apply for public housing, can’t own guns, can’t vote, can’t sit on a jury, can’t apply for some jobs, and if, they are able to they face the “Have you been convicted of a felony?” question on job applications. 

    So how do we begin this rehumanization process? We have to begin by challenging our own beliefs and attitudes. Ask yourself, what images come to mind when you hear the words criminal, felon, inmate, prisoner, or convict? We have to stop making prison jokes such as “don’t drop the soap,” which as Anthony points out in his TEDx talk, “since when is the rape or assault of any fellow human being funny?” We have to stop supporting TV programs who profit from the violence in jails and prisons. We have to stop calling people behind bars by the labels given to them by the oppressor (e.g. inmate, prisoner, felon, convict, criminal). We have to bridge gaps between the inside and outside world. 

    Most importantly, we have to support them. We know 90-95% of people behind bars are someday returning to society. It’s time to let go of assumptions, prejudices, and stereotypes. 

    Poem by Marcus Armstrong