#State Prison

[coolthingsguyslike]

[detroitlib]

View of the dining room at Michigan State Prison in Jackson, Michigan, showing rows of tables set with plates and bowls. Printed on front: "Jackson, Mich. State Prison, interior view of dining room, showing tables set for dinner." Printed on back: "The Hugh C. Leighton Co., manufacturers, Portland, Me., U.S.A. 8600. Made in Germany." Handwritten on back: "Jackson. [undecipherable] your card was rec'd was pleased to hear from you. Am fine and dandy! How are you? Will write more next time. Yours, Carl Schneider." Card is postmarked August 20, 1908.

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

[mus1g4]

Hey, I’m turning 18 soon and am thinking of going to the jail, my question is for my role play character, all I know I want to be a punk put in my place by the guards and inmates. But I don’t what my story should be like I’m a college freshman who got a little too drunk and now has years to be spent behind bars, or a Juvie inmate being moved up to adult prison, you got any ideas?

Nice to meet you!

How exciting for you! I would be happy if you shared your first experience with us.

Definitely NOT a punk. You need to be the spoiled brat who fucks up at a party. You get wasted and have a traffic crash. You kill one of your fraternity brothers who was riding in your car. You get sentenced to 7 years of hard labor because the judge wants to "send a message" to other brats like you.

This is the little brat I am thinking about!

You end up doing hard labor behind razor wire!

How's that?? I hope you will reply back.

Question about Hampton Jail Role Play Scenario

[knight-in-sour-armor]

[architecturethroughouthistory]

[thegodofhellfire]

Pep (c. 1923 – 1930) was a black Labrador Retriever who was falsely accused of murdering a cat. On August 31, 1924, Pep was sent to the Eastern State Penitentiary, where he received inmate number C-2559 and had his mugshot and paw prints taken. His log into the prison ledger indicates life sentence for murder, a tongue-in-cheek gesture that prompted widespread outrage. Pep was given as a gift from Maine governor Percival Baxter, to Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot who was inspired by Baxters use of dogs in Maine. Pep was only brought to prison to boost inmate morale.

Upon Pep's incarceration, international newspapers seized upon the murder reported in Pep's police record and publicly declared him "cat murderer." Governor Pinchot and his wife Cornelia adamantly denied Pep's murder accusation, calling it a "slanderous and unjustified attack on his reputation" and a "wretched tale." The governor received hundreds to thousands of letters from as far as the Philippines protesting Pep's unfair incarceration and demanding Pep's freedom. Governor Pinchot assured the public that Pep was not a prisoner and lived a good life at the penitentiary running the grounds, chasing rats through prison corridors, and fulfilling his life's mission of becoming a friend to all.

He was put on a diet in 1927 because inmates gifted him too much food. When he became old and tired, he moved to the Graterford Prison Farm, where he was allowed to spend the rest of his days at the home of a retired guard who begged for leave to care for him in his old age. Pep died in May or June 1930 and was buried in a flower bed on prison grounds. A wooden marker was placed on the grave but was later swept away in a flash flood.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Halban tells the story:

One night we deposited our valuable consignment for safe keeping in the State Prison at Riom. The place in the prison which was most secure from introduction was the death cell, which was cleared for the time being to make room for the water bottles. The dislodged convicts under sentence of death themselves carried the heavy containers into the cell. Next morning the Governor of the prison, probably already in fear of the new masters, refused to release the deposited articles. Dautry's special commissioner had to threaten him with a drawn revolver before he would give them up. Then we were able to continue our journey.

"Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists" - Robert Jungk, translated by James Cleugh

[luulapants]

We talk about prison "abolition" and not prison "reform" not because we believe it's possible to create a system where no incarceration is necessary. We say "abolition" because we want to create systems that allow the establishment of a new reparative justice structure, which uses incarceration as little as possible, and which is not a reform of the current incarceration structure, which does not repair or do justice. We do not believe the current structure can be reformed.

Reforming our current incarceration system into a justice system would be like reforming a dog fighting structure into a dog training structure. (And before anyone accuses me of comparing people in prison to dogs - no, I'm not, but I am saying that people who run prisons treat people like dogs.) Dog fighting structures were never designed to train dogs. The people that run them aren't qualified to train dogs for anything but violence (and are incentivized to continue training violence). The incarceration system creates violence and antisocial behavior. It is incentivized to continue doing so. It was never meant to repair social harm.

Prison abolition means, piece by piece, cutting off the supply of bodies to the incarceration structure.

When drug users get medical care instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house drug users. When the mentally ill are given medical care instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the mentally ill. When homeless people are given housing instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the homeless. When impoverished people are given welfare and food benefits instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the poor. When youth are given opportunities outside of gangs, prisons have fewer gang members to house. We shrink the system, and we keep shrinking it. Next we create systems to reduce the population of domestic abusers. Next we tackle sexual assault. Every time it shrinks, we look at the remaining population and figure out what population we can tackle next.

That's how prison abolition works.

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued a mass pardon of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday morning [June 17, 2024], one of the nation’s most sweeping acts of clemency involving a drug now in widespread recreational use.

The pardons forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people in what the Democratic governor said is a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown people. Moore noted criminal records have been used to deny housing, employment and education, holding people and their families back long after their sentences have been served.

[Note: If you're wondering how 175,000 convictions were pardoned but only 100,000 people are benefiting, it's because there are often multiple convictions per person.]

A Sweeping Act

“We aren’t nibbling around the edges. We are taking actions that are intentional, that are sweeping and unapologetic,” Moore said at an Annapolis event interrupted three times by standing ovations. “Policymaking is powerful. And if you look at the past, you see how policies have been intentionally deployed to hold back entire communities.”

Moore called the scope of his pardons “the most far-reaching and aggressive” executive action among officials nationwide who have sought to unwind criminal justice inequities with the growing legalization of marijuana. Nine other states and multiple cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of old marijuana convictions in recent years, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Legalized marijuana markets reap billions in revenue for state governments each year, and polls show public sentiment on the drug has also turned — with more people both embracing cannabis use and repudiating racial disparities exacerbated by the War on Drugs.

The pardons, timed to coincide with Wednesday’s Juneteenth holiday, a day that has come to symbolize the end of slavery in the United States, come from a rising star in the Democratic Party and the lone Black governor of a U.S. state whose ascent is built on the promise to “leave no one behind.”

The Pardons and Demographics

Derek Liggins, 57, will be among those pardoned Monday, more than 16 years after his last day in prison for possessing and dealing marijuana in the late 1990s. Despite working hard to build a new life after serving time, Liggins said he still loses out on job opportunities and potential income.

“You can’t hold people accountable for possession of marijuana when you’ve got a dispensary on almost every corner,” he said.

Nationwide, according to the ACLU, Black people were more than three times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana possession. President Biden in 2022 issued a mass pardon of federal marijuana convictions — a reprieve for roughly 6,500 people — and urged governors to follow suit in states, where the vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place.

Maryland’s pardon action rivals only Massachusetts, where the governor and an executive council together issued a blanket pardon in March expected to affect hundreds of thousands of people.

But Moore’s pardons appear to stand alone in the impact to communities of color in a state known for having one of the nation’s worst records for disproportionately incarcerating Black people for any crimes. More than 70 percent of the state’s male incarcerated population is Black, according to state data, more than double their proportion in society.

In announcing the pardons, he directly addressed how policies in Maryland and nationwide have systematically held back people of color — through incarceration and restricted access to jobs and housing...

Maryland, the most diverse state on the East Coast, has a dramatically higher concentration of Black people compared with other states that have issued broad pardons for marijuana: 33 percent of Maryland’s population is Black, while the next highest is Illinois, with 15 percent...

Reducing the state’s mass incarceration disparity has been a chief goal of Moore, Brown and Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, who are all the first Black people to hold their offices in the state. Brown and Dartigue have launched a prosecutor-defender partnership to study the “the entire continuum of the criminal system,” from stops with law enforcement to reentry, trying to detect all junctures where discretion or bias could influence how justice is applied, and ultimately reform it.

How It Will Work

Maryland officials said the pardons, which would also apply to people who are dead, will not result in releasing anyone from incarceration because none are imprisoned. Misdemeanor cannabis charges yield short sentences and prosecutions for misdemeanor criminal possession have stopped, as possessing small amounts of the drug is legal statewide.

Moore’s pardon action will automatically forgive every misdemeanor marijuana possession charge the Maryland judiciary could locate in the state’s electronic court records system, along with every misdemeanor paraphernalia charge tied to use or possession of marijuana. Maryland is the only state to pardon such paraphernalia charges, state officials said...

People who benefit from the mass pardon will see the charges marked in state court records within two weeks, and they will be eliminated from criminal background check databases within 10 months."

-via The Washington Post, June 17, 2024. Headings added by me.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“SUBMACHINE GUNS SUPPLIED TO PEN GUARDS,” Baltimore Sun. October 14, 1932. Page 26.  ---- Weapons Are For Use Of Sentries On Walls Of State Prison ---- RIOT CARTRIDGES TO BE EMPLOYED ---- Firing To Be Resorted To In Emergency Only, Donnell Says ---- Submachine guns, each capable of firing 300 shots per minute, will be carried by guards patrolling the walls of the Penitentiary, Harold E. Donnell. State Superintendent of Prisons, last night announced. There are three sentry boxes on the walls of the institution. Beginning today, each guard will carry one of the guns. 

For many years; guards stationed on the walls have carried sawed-off shotguns. The new armament yesterday was described by Mr. Donnell as "modernization of equipment in keeping with the action of other penal institutions throughout the country." 

To Use Riot Cartridges. Installation of the machine guns, which will be loaded with riot cartridges similar to buckshot, instead of the customary .45-caliber automatic ammunition, followed finding of five pistols and three rope ladders in the last five months inside the Penitentiary. 

At the time of the finding of the fifth weapon, about a month ago, Mr. Donnell said, prison officials had broken the back of what might have been a wholesale prison break attempt. Although no weapons which might be used in such a break have been found since that time, the State's Attorney's office, prison officials and detectives still are investigating. 

For Emergency Use. "The new weapons have not been placed on the walls at present because of any expected trouble within the Penitentiary," Mr. Donnell said, "but to assure more protection and to give less opportunity for inmates to attempt to scale 'the walls of the institution. 

"The men who are to handle the guns will be carefully instructed by a representative of the firm from which they were purchased, and the guns will be used only in cases of extreme emergency." 

Guards who do wall duty have been practicing with the weapons at the Fifth Regiment Armory. Given Federal Approval Mr. Donnell said the same type weapon was being used on the walls. of the New York State institutions, the new Federal prison at Lewisburg, Pa.,. and many other maximum security institutions throughout the country. The gun is approved by the Federal Government. 

"There are comparatively few men who plot most of the escapes within an institution," Mr. Donnell explained, "and it should be made as difficult for these few as it can be to attain their desire. It is our purpose to arm the outposts sufficiently to meet this need in order that more may be accomplished with the men who are desirous of complying with the rules and regulations of our institution."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Flying Logos https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

--

KGBO https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suncorp_Bank_ATM.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[idolomantises]

In all honesty, I kind of predicted this outcome a few weeks ago, so it’s hard to really feel that disappointment and despair I felt in 2016.

I just think “wow that sucks. But I’ll live. I know I’ll survive. I know my family and friends will survive. I’m not going to succumb to despair. It’s not worth it.”

[queerism1969]

[allfor-thegames]

andrew becomes increasingly tense during aaron's trial. neil expected it to be the anticipation of andrew's testimony and cross examination. that day comes and it's horrific, but it ends. andrew remains tense. he exerts more than neil and kevin at night practices, he doesn't sleep, he joins neil on runs.

sentencing comes and andrew is so wound up that neil thinks he could tip andrew over and he'd fracture into thousands of pieces. they stand as the judge enters. andrew grabs neil's wrist hard enough to break the bone. he stops breathing. his eyes are closed.

it's self-defense. aaron is acquitted of all charges.

that night, andrew invites neil upstairs to share the bed, and to neil's surprise, he leans into neil's space and rests his head on neil's shoulder. he is relaxed.

"trial had you nervous?" neil whispers.

"it was enough," is all andrew says back as if every burden he's carried since the start of the trial has been lifted off his shoulders.

[alwaysbewoke]

In 1865, enslaved people in Texas were notified by Union Civil War soldiers about the abolition of slavery. This was 2.5 years after the final Emancipation Proclamation which freed all enslaved Black Americans. But Slavery Continued… In 1866, a year after the amendment was ratified, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor. This made the business of arresting black people very lucrative, thus hundreds of white men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility being to search out and arrest black peoples who were in violation of ‘Black Codes’ Basically, black codes were a series of laws criminalizing legal activity for black people. Through the enforcement of these laws, they could be imprisoned. Once arrested, these men, women & children would be leased to plantations or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor. It’s believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Black people were part of that system of re-enslavement through the prison system. The 13th Amendment declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish the Black Codes.

[the-orange-shit-stain-scam]

On July 18th, 2015, I realized that the Republican Party had left me behind. On this day, while seeking the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump had the following to say about an Annapolis graduate who was shot down, captured and tortured as a POW by the communist North Vietnam regime:

“He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."

This verbal diarrhea came out of the mouth of a man who used his father’s wealth and privilege to dodge the draft five different times due to his “bone spurs”. Donald Trump is a traitor, a repeated draft dodger and the largest fraud in the history of our country.