Tag: prison

Prisons Allow Private Companies to Cut Off Communication With Loved Ones

Leave a comment

Some states’ departments of corrections are outsourcing to private companies their decision-making about who can and who cannot communicate with people in their prisons. These decisions cut families and loved ones off, sometimes permanently.

The Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) has said it does not maintain any records of who has been blocked from communications with people incarcerated in the state. According to the department, these lists are maintained by the private company Securus, which manages phone, e-messaging and video calls for the state.

In a denial of an open records request submitted by Truthout, the department said: “The records you request from the Securus messaging system are not public records, created, used or maintained by the department and; therefore, are not disclosable under the Public Records Act, RCW 42.56. You may submit your request directly to Securus.” Neither Securus nor its parent company Aventiv responded to any requests from Truthout for further information.

As a private company, Securus is not subject to open records laws in Washington State or anywhere else in the U.S. Prisons are public agencies, and increasing privatization of communications options has contributed to decreased transparency.

My latest piece at Truthout is up now. This is part of my ongoing investigation into how prisons block people (like me!) from communicating with their loved ones. If this has happened to you or anyone you know, please get in touch.

They Served Their Time. But They May Still Die in State Custody.

Leave a comment

Eliseo Padrón is a 50-year-old Mexican American man from St. Paul, Minnesota. Padrón told The Appeal he grew up surrounded by gang culture. He spent his early adulthood in and out of prison. 

“Living that lifestyle led to me doing a lot of things that I regret,” Padrón says. He was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in 1995. 

After he violated his parole terms by returning late to the halfway house in 2012, the state sentenced Padrón to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP), a “treatment” facility operated by the Department of Human Services. The building shares a campus with the Moose Lake prison, complete with sally ports and razor wire. 

Moose Lake is one of two facilities where Minnesota holds people indefinitely, long after their prison sentences have finished, and often for the rest of their lives. Minnesota, along with 19 other states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government, allows for the civil commitment of people convicted of sex offenses after they’ve completed the terms of their incarceration. 

My first piece published with The Appeal is up now. Sex offense civil commitment is an issue that calls our attention because if some people can be imprisoned for indeterminate amounts of time in order to prevent their future crimes, than we are all subject to the whims of the state. Read the full piece here: https://theappeal.org/sex-offense-civil-commitment/

After Writing About Prison Censorship, I Got Blocked From Messaging My Sources

Leave a comment

Afew months ago, I logged into my online Securus account to send an electronic message to a friend in a Washington State prison. To my shock, I found the word “blocked” on my account and I was not able to send any messages. The block came just a few weeks after I had published an article with Truthout on censorship inside of prisons and had sent the finished article to some of my sources over the e-messaging system. It’s hard to know for sure, but the block is either the result of my journalism, or it is a result of facilitating a book club that connects people inside with those on the outside. Since my Truthout article was about how difficult prisons make it to access information, especially for LGBTQ+ people, the block seems ironic, to say the least.

People in prison do not have direct access to the internet or to any standard email services, nor can they generally receive phone calls. Instead, any communication other than paper mail (which is increasingly rare) takes place over services managed by for-profit companies like Aventiv, ViaPath and IC Solutions. If one of these services chooses to implement a block on an account, as in my case, an outside user cannot send e-messages, put money on a loved one’s books or pay for phone calls — for anyone who lives in a prison, anywhere in the United States, that uses the service that has implemented the block.

The only remedy for this is apparently to appeal to the state Department of Corrections (DOC), but unsurprisingly, there is no obvious method for such an appeal available to an outside family member or friend. Figuring out how to appeal required several calls and emails, and in the end, did not yield any change to my situation. This block is inhibiting my ability to do my work, and more than that, it’s isolating my friends in prison from contact with the outside world.

My last article of the year was this op-ed for Truthout, about a problem I’ve been dealing with for the second half of 2024. Make sure you take your blood pressure pills before reading, because the prison system is shameless in its cruelty and the results are enraging. Read the rest of the story here: https://truthout.org/articles/after-writing-about-prison-censorship-i-got-blocked-from-messaging-my-sources/

Anti-LGBTQ Censorship Is Endangering Trans People Behind Bars

Leave a comment

The rampant banning of texts about queer and transgender people has been in the news a lot recently, but nowhere is book banning more of an issue than in prison. Trans people, in particular, suffer from prisons’ arbitrary restrictions. Sophia Alexsandra Brett Laferriere, a trans woman living in a Washington state prison, told Truthout via the prison’s online messaging system, “Most of the information we ask for doesn’t get to us, or staff steal it or write over it. They block it from us.”

Although data is not easily available, there are clues that indicate the severity of these impacts. For example, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, a textbook-like educational resource for trans people, is banned in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin for “obscene material,” and being “sexually explicit,” among other related reasons. In Washington State, prisons keep a copy stocked in the library after legal intervention from the American Civil Liberties Union, but individuals are still not allowed to have a copy, says Dillon.

My latest piece of writing for Truthout is up. Read the rest: https://truthout.org/articles/anti-lgbtq-censorship-is-endangering-trans-people-behind-bars/

GF 1619-2020

2 Comments 
G.F. 1619-2020
by M. L. Graham

Ask
and ask
and then ask
why we can't breathe
why we can't see each other
in 'we'
at least not officially
why whenever we speak of history
it's dotted with caveats
inclusive I's
exclusive we's
narrating our story
while we can't breathe
ask why
grown men holler momma
eighteen months after she's passed
eight minutes before we do, too
which we know thanks to a seventeen
year old --
or so we're told
or so we're shown.
ask why
slave patrols kept their colors
their vicious dogs
their strikes like bloodhounds
unerringly cracking black spines
black kidneys
black arteries
until we can't breathe
Who's in control of the city?
Why we riot whenever we bleed?
Why we get asked to trust
those who've robbed our best,
robbed our breath?
Why black anyways,
isn't that the mark of a slave?
why not call me by my name?
There's nothing black about me
that wasn't left by brutality,
boots, batons, knees,
the hearts of those who refuse to hear my pleas.
ask, and ask why
ask until you hear your voice in
every preacher's cries
ululations, protestations,
hymns
parched and inflected
pitched and hoarse,
ask again
ask why you think riots
are uncalled for
when injustice is ringing
when the police who cleared the
streets
were still writing
false reports in our names
signed by the silent
coauthored by the medic
who backed our killer's tale
before they thought we knew.
I don't want your stores
or their windows
your streets strewn with broken glass
your loot,
we want to breathe,
like Eric Garner, Rodney King,
Philando Castile, Freddy,
Tamir, George, Brianna,
You & Me
Ask why
I had to write this
for 'We the People'
it's not for a cause
it's because 'it' happened again
and again
and again
and I'm not sure what 'we'
means anymore
they want prison for the perps
I want justice for all
they want harsher charges
I want a sweeter liberty
we can't have both
but we can have neither
ask why it seems that's what
we've got.
Ask why you think
peaceful protests are best
we had those three years ago,
at Trump's inauguration
at his appointment of Gorsich,
at the Kavanaugh hearings,
the Mueller findings
the Impeachment proceedings,
and yet Manafort is free,
as is Stone,
Sheriff Arapaio,
Giuliani & Co.,
and of course Trump is
still president
the glory of peaceful protests!
like flowers at a cancelled wedding,
like Floyd's nonresistence.
"Just be calm," he whispered
"I can't breathe," he replied
and peaceful crowds were dispersed
helicopters hovered
tear gas bursting in air
proof through the night
that they don't care.
Burn, New York!
Burn, Baltimore!
Burn, Louisville!
Burn, L.A.!
Burn, Seattle, Minneapolis, St Louis,
Houston, Oakland, Miami,
Burn! Burn! Burn --
with the flame of indignation,
the heat of reprehension,
the fire of compassion,
light up the skyline
with refrains
from Malcolm, Huey,
Angela and Martin
let your silhouettes flicker
to the tune of unrequited memorials
that ask why
through dead black throats
ask why
we can't keep our bowels from releasing
ask why
the EMT can't find our pulse
ask why
when your soul died you took my body
with it
ask why
our eyelids can't lift so we can
stare into the camera,
past the little girl holding it,
into your living room
He killed us!
His stare is still here,
we cannot convict him
he is us
ask why
convicting him is not suicide for you,
for all of you who didn't ask why
just repeated the lies
just retweeted the myths
covered the blows with words
hid the strangle holds behind
other breaking news,
concealed your broken face
behind 'my' facts
ask why
like you've never asked before
so you'll never have to ask again
ask
"Why can't you get in the car, George?"
and ask
"Why won't you be still, George?"
then ask again
"Momma!"
Why can't we breathe

This poem was sent to me to publish by my friend and penpal of 4 years who is currently imprisoned. I am happy to have a space to share with a Black poet, and am honored to call Mr. Graham my friend. Our letters have been a constant source of inspiration, intellectual exchange, and hope over the years. I would say a lot more, in less formal terms, about this poet and our friendship, but for his life being at the mercy of the ever watchful prison.