A Personal Story: Behind Jailhouse Walls

On Monday, my daughter, Denise, who lives in Las Vegas, received a Facebook message at 5:07 AM (PST) from her daughter, Erica, who lives NYC.

Erica had received a disturbing call from her father about her twin brother, Eric, under detention at the Manhattan Detention Complex (MDC), know as “The Tombs” for parole violation and other new charges.

Eric tearfully told his father that a captain (and other correction officers) had harassed him and threatened to “pull the pin on him.” Translated: beat him up. (The events that led up to the incident are not known.) He was afraid.

Needless to say, with her son several hundred miles away, Denise was frantic and helpless. What could she do? Who could she call for advise?  

In New York, Erica and her father rushed over to the jail. Once there, Eric told them that he had been left  in his cell for  24 hours without food.

As a result, he felt had become dizzy, fallen, and hit his head. He was taken to the infirmary, but after a six-hour wait, he had not see a doctor and missed his court appearance

He told them that he was in pain and wearing a back brace because he had hurt his back on the bus en route to GMDC. He requested pain medication but says he did not receive any.

Eric’s anxiety was heightened by the fact that while incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York correction officers had beaten him. Later, he said, a psychiatrist told him that he probably suffers from PTSD and would need medication to help him sleep.

A little over a year ago, I posted three blogs ( “Coming Home: The First 30 Days”; “Coming Home (2); “Coming Home (3)) about Eric’s release from prison on April 10, 2014 with $1500 in savings and guarded optimism about his future.

Not surprisingly, after a few months the money ran out, and he did not have a job. Consequently, he lost his rented room in the Bronx and moved in with a friend.

In addition, he stopped reporting to his parole officer, who issued a warrant for his arrest. For several months, we knew very little about his whereabouts except for an occasional telephone call to his siblings.

Then, on May 23, 2015, he was arrested for assault in the 3rd degree, robbery in the 2nd degree, and possession of marijuana.

The family was disappointed yet not surprised that his plan to create better future (especially with his 9-year old daughter, A,) had evaporated.

He had no resources, no support system, and no prospects.

Although  we have little information about of what actually occurred at MDC, we are very much concerned for his safety since he was recently transferred to the George Motchan Detention Center on Rikers Island, with its sordid history of abuse of detainees and inmate suicides:

• June 10, 2015: Federal prosecutors charged three correction officers with beating death of 52-year old Ronald Spear, who had kidney problems and walked with a cane.
• June 9, 2015: 18-year old Kenan Davis, with no history of mental illness kills himself.
• January 1, 2015: 35-year Fabian Cruz, who should have been on suicide watch for depression kills himself.

With these tragedies in mind, our fear is not unwarranted.

The NYC Department of Correction’s mission is “…the care, custody, and control of individuals charged with a crime in NYC…” It seems, however, that control takes precedence over care.

Those inside jails and prisons need our vigilance and action to assure that inmates pay for wrongdoing but not brutalized.

Don’t let the worry kill you

First posted in February 2013.

Having a son in prison is not easy. As mothers, we know the personal histories, problems, and weaknesses, which, in part, contributed to our sons’ poor choices. Society, however, often deems them lost causes; thus we become their supporters and advocates.

Mostly, however, mothers of inmates struggle with a mix of emotions: guilt, sadness, depression, or anger. In the long-term, this toxic brew of feelings can negatively affect your mental and physical health

Hopefully, these tips will help you cope with the consequences of having a loved one in prison.

• Acknowledge and respect your emotions.These feelings are inevitable: however, do not let them dominate your life.
• Find a group–online or in your city–that can provide support or assistance to families of inmates. Prison Talk offers many resources, including support groups and organizations, prison statistics, and ex-offender employment programs. (http://www.prisontalk.com)
• Enjoy family gatherings or other fun activities without guilt or sadness because your loved is locked up and unable to share them with you.
• Spend only what you can afford on clothing or other items for an inmate. Do not saddle yourself     with debt.
• Ask others to share responsibility for visiting, sending packages,or receiving collect calls.
• Write as often as possible. Inmates who have regular contact with their families are less likely to get into trouble while in prison.
• Know the rules of the facility, so you do not waste money on packages or foods that are not allowed.
• Give up the idea that you can make incarceration easier for your loved one. The most we can do is provide support and encouragement.

Additional resources:

Mothers of Incarcerated Sons Society, Inc.

 

Through the Camera’s Lens: Prisons

Most Americans will never see the inside of a prison.

Movies and TV shows provide the only glimpses they will ever get into a mysterious world based on stereotypes of dangerous, disturbed, or devious inmates and corrupt or cruel prison guards (more accurately, correctional officers).

On the other hand, prison dramas frequently fall back on familiar stock characters to evoke empathy: the wrongly accused, the illiterate, or the mentally ill. Think: The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins as banker Andy Dufresne accused of a double murder for which he professes his innocence. He suffers years of abuse at the hands of the warden and a sadistic guard but after years in prison triumphs.

Graphic depictions of rapes, assaults, and killings so common on television (Oz, HBO 1997-2003; Prison Break, Fox Broadcasting 2005-2009) and in film fascinate viewers for the same reason that onlookers gawk at a horrific traffic accident–they are smugly sure that such bad things will not happen them.

What makes real prisons so intolerable for real inmates are isolation (from family and friends), numbing monotony, and grinding boredom. Likewise, bad food, limited or no programs, grim surroundings, and hundreds of seemingly petty rules make serving time a spirit-destroying experience.

Not surprisingly, the threat of violence is exacerbated among inmates forced to live in close proximity to so many others.

It takes very talented writers, directors, and actors to capture the essence of prison life in an empathetic, but honest, way and to reflect the range of personalities and mindsets of those who society deems irredeemable–murderers, drug abusers, rapists, swindlers, gangbangers, and thieves.

Netfix’s Orange is the New Black, Season Two (which in the interest of self-disclosure I admit I have never viewed), seems to fit this criteria in its hit series about life in a women’s prison. In the July 2014 edition of The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum writes:

If the show had a mission statement, it was to restore the humanity of women so often portrayed as monsters or as lurid victims… (and) it’s more uncompromising about its characters, at once more nuanced and more damning.

It is unlikely that prison reform will ever become a national priority until public misconceptions about prisoners (influenced by movies and television) are grounded in truth.

Perhaps then, citizens will demand that correctional institutions focus equally on the “care,” as well as the “custody” aspects of their missions. After all, what happens to inmates largely affects how they return to society–either hateful or hopeful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rates of state imprisonment declining

For the last  30 years, news about swelling prison populations–fueled by New York State’s draconian Rockefeller drug laws enacted in the 1970s under Republican Governor John D. Rockefeller–has been grim.

These laws required minimum mandatory sentences of 15 years to life for possession and/or sale of small amounts of drugs. These laws were in response to what was considered an epidemic of drug use, especially in the black community.

Soon, other states passed similarly harsh laws for drug offenses. The result was that low-level, nonviolent offenders received about the same sentence as someone convicted for second-degree murder leading to “mass incarceration.”

Since 2007, imprisonment rates have dropped in many states according to a March 2014 press release by the PEW Charitable Trust: 

 Over the past five years, imprisonment rates fell in 31 states.¹ California, which was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce its prison population, led the way with a 26 percent drop, though many state inmates are now held in local facilities. Fourteen other states reduced their imprisonment rates by 10 percent or more from 2007 to 2012.

New York State’s rate of imprisonment is down 24 percent since 1999.

Yet, other factors have contributed to this downward trend in imprisonment:

• fewer felony drug arrests
• use of alternatives to incarceration for drug offenders such as treatment programs
• strong public support for reducing prison populations
• tight state budgets
• research that shows alternatives to prison cost less than prisons
• reduction in drug sentences

While prison advocacy groups applaud this reversal, the need still exists for prison reform in many areas.

A July 2014 report by The Sentencing Project cautions:

There is…no reason why a reduction of 25% should be considered the maximum that might be achieved. Even if every state and the federal government were able to produce such reductions, that would still leave the United States with an incarceration rate of more than 500 per 100,000 population –a level 3-6 times that of most industrialized nations.

 

Trends: NYC’s Rikers Island to end solitary confinement for juveniles

We have all seen movies that depict the horrors of prolonged solitary confinement on inmates–disorientation, panic, and mental instability.

Imagine then, the effects on juvenile offenders, 16 and 17 years old. Just ask Kalief Browder who spent three years in solitary confinement at NYC’s Rikers Island without being tried, convicted or sentenced after his arrest for robbery.

Jennifer Gonnerman, freelance writer, who has covered the criminal justice system for 15 years, spoke to NPR’s Robert Siegel on “All Things Considered” yesterday about her interview with Browder, released from Rikers 16 months ago. Asked how he is doing now, Gonnerman says:

“You know, he’s been out of jail now for 16 months, but you can still see the toll that jail, and particularly solitary, took on him. You know, he told me recently that he’s still having flashback to his time on Rikers Island and that in some ways, they’re becoming even more frequent.

And I asked him, you know, what is an example? What kind of flashbacks are you really having? Is it when you see a police car drive by or a prison show on TV? And he said no, it could be anything. It could be his mom handing him a plate of rice and beans. And then he starts thinking about how he had that meal when he was locked up in solitary on Rikers and he thought about how lonely, hungry, depressed he was when he was there. And suddenly, he’s, you know, in his mind he’s just right back there in solitary confinement.”

Gonnerman details Browder’s story (“Before the Law”) in the October  6, 2014 edition of The New Yorker magazine.

Nonetheless, Browder’s ordeal is not an uncommon occurrence at Rikers Island. The use of solitary confinement for juvenile offenders at Rikers led the Justice Department to harshly criticize the policy.

In the September 29, 2014 article for Huffington Post, Jake Pearson writes:

“Last month, a scathing Department of Justice review of how 16- to 18-year-old inmates are jailed on Rikers found that among other things, they are too often subjected to solitary, which is called punitive segregation in New York but referred to by inmates and guards as The Bing.”

Consequently, NYC Jail Commissioner Joseph Ponte sent a memo to Mayor Bill de Blasio stating that by December 2014, the policy of punishing 16 to 17 year olds with solitary confinement will end.

Gonnerman, however, remains skeptical.

“And, you know, the overuse of solitary in the New York City jail system has been a huge problem for years. And so while the rest of the country seems to have woken up to the fact that solitary can create very, very serious sort of mental health problems and has moved away from it, New York City has, until recently, been moving in the opposite direction. So they have a lot to sort undue in terms of their sort of culture of excessive solitary confinement and this is the very first step.”

Browder currently has a lawsuit pending because of his ordeal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“One Mother’s Voice”….back again

After a too-long hiatus, this blog is back.

In the online world, absence does not make hearts grow fonder or attract followers.

So, I will re-double my efforts to post daily.

Future blogs include :

• “The Crazy Costs of Crime and Punishment” with excerpts from “The Cruel Poverty of Monetary Sanctions,” written by Dr. Alexes Harris, an associate professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Washington. Published in March 2014 by the online social science site, The Society Pages, it documents the extent and effects of fees and penalties paid by persons–mostly low-income–snagged in the criminal justice system. Dr. Harris is working on a book, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as a Permanent Punishment for Poor People, scheduled for publication in 2015.
• A review of Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America by Jonathan Simon, Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley (New Press August 2014)

Comments Wanted

As the mother of an inmate (who died in prison in 1999), I did not realize the impact my son’s incarceration had on my life and emotions until after his death. Rarely did I share my fears for his safety, my frustration with his constant demands, or my sense of helplessness when he was depressed or angry.

Consequently, I understand when mothers of inmates suppress their anxieties or suffer in silence.

In two previous blogs, I offered this space for mothers of inmates to share their feelings and experiences. Of course, to protect your privacy, you can remain request anonymity.

If you wish to avail yourself of this forum, send e-mails to wistajeannejohnson@gmail.com. Please provide a telephone number in the event, I have questions or need clarification about your comments.

 

Criminal Justice Crusader: Michelle Alexander

 Michelle Alexander, author, civil rights attorney, and legal scholar is on mission to bring attention to the mass incarceration of African Americans. In her acclaimed book, The New Jim Crow Alexander describes how current policies and trends in the criminal justice system keep prisoners forever stigmatized and second-call citizens. This book review first appeared on my website, “Inside/Out:Where Families of Inmates Meet.”

 Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (The New Press)

If you have a loved one in prison, read this book. If you want to understand why so many black men are in prison, read this book. If you think incarceration is personal rather than political, read this book.

Author Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and litigator, argues that from arrest and sentencing to the privatization of prisons to assigning fees (for administrative, court or legal costs), police, prosecutors, judges and politicians support a “new caste system” that “discriminates against (black men) in voting, employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service” and guarantees that time in prison marks inmates as societal outcasts for the rest of their lives.

“(A) criminal freed from prison (today) has scarcely more rights and arguably less respect than a freed slave or black person living ‘free’ in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow,” writes Alexander.”

Although Jim Crow laws no longer exist, says Alexander, beliefs and attitudes about prisoners and ex-offenders, most often stigmatizes, even demonizes, African American males. 

In some states the war on drugs, waged primarily in communities of color, has led to “black men…admitted to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men.” 

“The disturbing phenomenon of people cycling in and out of prison, trapped by their second-class status, has been described…as a ‘closed circuit of perpetual marginal.’ The New Jim Crow provides a wealth of historical, scholarly, and social science data on the causes and effects of mass incarceration on individuals, communities, and the nation.
 
This book is a must-read for inmates and their families affected by criminal
 justice policies and procedures as well as concerned individuals who work within the system. 

http://newjimcrow.com/
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