People, Not Prisons - Stories, Poems, Songs, Heartbreak

 ACLU Alaska's The Alaska Prison Project Action Network (PRAN), hosted a People, Not Prison night a bit over a week ago.  

PRAN Goals
Substantially reducing the incarcerated population, especially among people of color, people with mental disabilities, and other vulnerable populations.  The human and financial costs of mass incarceration are staggering, and the burden falls disproportionately on the poor, the ill, and people of color.  However, the current fiscal crisis, overcrowding issues, and growing understanding about the correlation between rehabilitation and improved public safety create the best opportunity to challenge Alaska’s addiction to incarceration.  Increasing public accountability and transparency of jails, prisons, and other places of detention.  Because places of detention are inherently closed environments housing the unpopular and the politically powerless, external oversight is critical to guard against mistreatment and abuse.  The business of detention, which creates financial incentives for both increased incarceration and harsher conditions of confinement, has made public accountability even more important.  The federal Prison Litigation Reform Act and flimsy state public records laws have significantly reduced judicial oversight of prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities, and resulted in serious abuses going unchecked. Ending cruel, inhuman, and degrading conditions of confinement.  Far too many incarcerated people are held in conditions that daily threaten their health, safety, and human dignity.  Denial of adequate medical and mental health care, basic sanitation, and protection from physical and sexual assault are all too common.  Across the country, tens of thousands of prisoners are held in long-term solitary confinement, a disturbing practice used in Alaska all too often.  The devastating effects of such treatment, particularly on persons with mental illness, are well known.  Expanding prisoners’ freedom of religion, expression, and association.  Prisoners’ rights to read, write, speak, practice their religion, and communicate with the outside world are often curtailed far beyond what is necessary for institutional security.  Not only are these activities central to the ability of prisoners to retain their humanity, they also contribute to the flow of information between prisons and the outside world and thus provide a vital form of oversight of these closed institutions. Expanding access to justice for incarcerated Alaskans. Access to justice is an essential right for all victims of abuse, especially those who have been abused while incarcerated. But all too often, the prison system creates barriers to counsel and legal resources. The Alaska Prison Project works to assist incarcerated people seeking relief from abuse by fighting to limit new policies further restricting prisoners’ access to the courts and counsel, assisting prisoners in understanding the processes by which they must pursue relief for any harms they have suffered, and representing classes of prisoners seeking relief from abuse.

There were several several other partners - Keys to Life, the Learning Inside Out Network (LION) -and probably some others I missed.  Keys to Life is

 "Dedicated to Empowering, Creating and Strengthening an Inclusive Community through Rich Arts and Cross-Cultural Experiences."

Storytelling is a big part of what they do.  For the People, Not Prisons night they highlighted their Lullaby Project where they work with women prisoners, talking to them, getting them to write, and then pairing them up with a musician who works with them to take their words and put them into a song, which is recorded and given to their child(ren).    The women pick the style of music they want.  That evening a band and vocalists played four or five of those songs.  

The LION project had a box that generated poems.  Their overall goal is:

"The Learning Inside Out Network supports education and creative collaboration between people who are inside and outside of Alaska’s jails and prisons. As a grassroots group, we catalyze community wellness projects and advocate for individuals and families affected by incarceration."

There were also art pieces.  We were told that the prisoners cannot get paid for the work they do in prison, but they had agreed to donate any proceeds to the Prison Project Action Network.  I understand reasoning that would keep prisoners like Michael Cohen from profiting by writing a book about his years with Trump, but in this case it seems petty and even counter productive to rehabilitation goals.  

And there were also stories and poems that prisoners had written and paper where readers could leave notes for the prisoners.  Here are a couple.  These are high resolution images so if you click on them they'll get larger.

And there were live stories told by ex-prisoners.  Trevor Stephano told about being imprisoned as a juvenile and how the structure of the prison system puts pre-trial people who could not get out on bail with seasoned criminals who know how to take advantage of them and recruit them into prison gangs.  (It's been a little over a week and I may not be conveying it quite like he said it.)  If I remember correctly, Trevor has gotten a college degree and is working at a law firm now.

Jacqueline Shepherd wasn't a prisoner, but was caring for some children of prisoners and visited a number of prisons to see their fathers.  She talked about experiences getting in to see prisoners.  Her very first visit she had on a tank top and a work suit jacket.  She was told she could only wear one layer.  She felt the tank top was inappropriate, but so was the suit jacket with nothing underneath.  But the rules were the rules.  She also had a parka and ended up wearing that with nothing underneath.  She told another story about a woman with a month old baby in line in front of her.  The guard said she couldn't bring in the baby bottle with milk.  The woman only spoke Spanish.  She had a four hour visiting slot and the baby couldn't go that long without eating.  Sorry, no liquid.  Eventually they worked out that she could bring in dry formula and as she was getting it out, some spilled onto the floor.  She was given a broom to sweep it up.  

I'd had a somewhat different frustrating experience.  I flew to Oregon to visit a friend who was in prison.  We'd gone through all the paper work and he'd been told I was approved to visit.  But when I got there, they didn't have the paperwork and I couldn't visit.  Had to fly back to Alaska and come down another time.  

Dimitrios Alexiadis talked about the difficulties for prisoners getting out of prison.  How hard it is finding housing that will take an ex-con, and the same with employers.  

It was both difficult and uplifting hearing first hand about the problems with our prison system and the work that people are doing to help individual prisoners and to change the system itself.  The timing made it doubly meaningful because I had just posted about how corrupt and ineffective prisons are.   

One other event of the evening was the reading of the names of people who have died in Alaska prisons this year.  I got the list so I could post it here for us all to think about.  

Lawrence Lobdell

Luke Dennis

Kitty Douglas

Leefisher Tukrook

Jarvis Sours

James Wheeler

Austin Wilson

David Bristol

Nastashia Minock

RobertVann

Bernie Alexia

James Keith Rider

The point was made that when prisoners die, their obituaries highlight their worst mistakes.  We were admonished to consider what our obituaries might look like if we had to highlight our worst mistakes.  

Prisons are expensive and effective only to the extend that they keep dangerous people away from the rest of the population and they employee guards and make a profit for private prison companies.    We have these prisons because 

• people believe prisoners are bad people and deserve to be punished
• they are out of sight so we don't see how demeaning, dehumanizing they are
• we are fed a regular stream of scare stories from the media - usually fed by law enforcement public relations offices - and so politicians campaign on being tough on crime
• because we don't spend the money up front on education, helping poor families, and physical, mental and emotional health

This list could go on and on, but these are a few of the reasons