Invest in People Not Prisons: Fight Toxic Prisons Convergence

Prisoners Continue to Strike in the Aftermath

The organizing abolitionist space is alive and robust in the United States and I’m excited to have witnessed some of the incredible work happening in the organizing space in Gainesville, Florida. Florida led the country with the passing of Amendment 4 that rein franchised hundreds of thousands of formally incarcerated citizens. The Flight Toxic Prisons Convergence (Friday June 14 – Monday June 17, 2019) was four days packed full of workshops, panels and discussions that included educating activists on how to register citizens that were reefranchised by Amendment 4 and conversations with currently incarcerated activists via phone. The convergence ended with a rally outside of the Alachua County Jail in Gainesville Florida. 

Need to Come Together

It is essential that prison abolitionists come together to discuss the related issues. Often as abolitionists we find ourselves isolated from those who see prisons as necessary to societal order. We even find ourselves ostracized from individuals in the reform movement who find our ideas too radical. With prisons striking across the country, prison abuse has become a popular topic of discussion but the average person is completely unaware of how to address the critical situation of prison abuse across the nation. The purpose of a convergence is to exchange ideas between like minded individuals, build networks and strategize towards a common goal. Some workshops from the FTP Convergence schedule include Ecosystem Approaches to Abolition: How Policing, Surveillance and Incarceration Harm the Natural Environment and Beyond Borders: Immigrant-Led Resistance Criminalization, Detention and Deportation

Alan Shultz and Amani Sawari holding a banner that reads, “Burn Prisons” outside of Alachua County Jail in Gainsville, Florida

Radicals are Essential to the Reform Conversation. Reformists, like prison advocates, believe that the prison system is essential in order to maintain societal order. They believe that there are changes that can be made to the prison system that can make it optimal in its effectiveness. Reformists often propose revisions to prison policy that they feel would provide a solution. In contrast, abolitionist do not believe that there is any type of reform that would adequately resolve the countless human rights offenses that the United States prison industrial slave complex is built upon. Knowing the the prison system is an act of warfare against black and brown US citizens that’s been used by white supremacist culture to control ‘minority’ populations and hinder wealth growth, it is an institution that needs to be abolished entirely. 

Limestone Correctional Facility Prisoners Protest of Abuse and Corruption

The routine abuse that occurs in our nation’s prisons must come to a stop. To do this we must support prisoners in any and all of their efforts that draw attention to the abuses that they suffer. On Saturday, June 22, organizers from local and national prisoners’ rights and abolitionist groups will join with family and friends of incarcerated individuals outside of Limestone Correctional Center from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. For those that are interested in joining, protestors will meet at 9:30 am at Fairview Baptist Church (27550 Nick Davis Rd, Athens, AL 35613) for a press conference prior to their arrival at the prison. This event was called in collaboration with Free Alabama Movement (FAM), Unheard Voices O.T.C.J., Kinetik Justice, Swift Justice, and the FAM Queen Team. In order to amplify the call for change, several individuals incarcerated at Limestone Correctional Center have been on hunger strike since June 14 including: Kenneth S. Traywick, AIS 177252 (began his strike on June 12); Derrick V. Mitchell, AIS 206713; Joseph Agee III, AIS 275782; Travonte Keon Butler, AIS 281434 and Melvin Lewis Jr., AIS 209031.

The demands that the mobilization is pushing for are:

  1. Immediate action in the form of a Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit for all 8th Amendment Violations uncovered in the DOJ investigation;
  2. No new prisons;
  3. Corrupt Limestone administrators must be removed;
  4. Any and all retaliation against prisoners following “bucket detail” exposure must stop;
  5. A commitment to instituting true rehabilitative and good time programming; and
  6. An end to the abusive use of solitary confinement.

Across the nation we see these abuses normalized because those who are responsible for protecting and providing for the incarcerated population are not held accountable when abuse occurs. According to Attorney Richard Rice of Birmingham, “The problem lies not with the facilities themselves but the officials running them, the institutions shielding them from accountability, and the individuals that continue to profit from incarceration and prison labor.” Inmates, family members and allies have been vocal about their criticism of Corrections Departments but officials remain silent despite the severity of the issue. Going further, officials continue to increase funding to abusive Corrections Departments. Governor Ivey remains committed to a nearly $1 billion prison construction plan that organizers insist will only exacerbate the problem of violence and corruption in the ADOC. Studies have shown that private prisons are sites of the worst examples of human rights violations, but state facilities are not at all innocent. We must commit to a complete overhaul of this depressed and desperate system.  

Readjusting Our Investment

An investment in people requires the recognition of their humanity. The largest problem with US prisons is the lack of humanity that is recognized of those who are convicted of crimes. As a result people in transition, labeled as inmates, are treated as animals in countless ways from being herded in small crowded cages to being served inedible food. An refocus into investing in the people trapped in our criminal justice system would revolutionize our societal mindset through supporting incarcerated individuals in reaching their full potential by making prisons places where people who didn’t have access to the resources that they needed to succeed on the outside to come into contact with those resources while their inside. This would guarantee their success once they’re released. We need to remember that the tactics that prisons depend on as behavior deterrents, like longer sentences, solitary confinement and the death penalty are ineffective in deterring crime or improving behavior. As we readjust our focus to invest in people over sentencing and the use of solitary conferment should no longer be accepted as adequate methods in operation. 

We will begin to see the effects of the adjustment of our investment when we see people a decrease in the number of people in prison, institutional divestments from the prison industrial slave complex an a reduction in the number of facilities  in our country. Until we see these changes take place then as a whole we are still more focused on investing in prisons and the people who own them then into the impoverished and oppressed people who are held captive within them. The idea of redirecting investment is one that we need to see in all areas of our society. Because the united states is a capitalist democracy our society sees success in economic development at the expense of residents’ well being. Not everything in our country can be decided like a business decision. When we think of government as a business there are dire consequences, like the state of our nation’s public schools, Flint water crisis and underpaid essential professions like public educators, social workers and public defenders. Once we see this happen for the most marginalized in our society, incarcerated citizens, then we will see the same happen for other oppressed groups. 

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