ACLU Applauds Supreme Court Decision Protecting Prisoners from Racial Discrimination

ACLU Applauds Supreme Court Decision Protecting Prisoners from Racial Discrimination
February 23, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union today hailed a Supreme Court decision rejecting the use of racial segregation as a routine method of prison administration. The Court first held that racially segregated prisons were unconstitutional in a 1968 case brought by the ACLU.

"Today's ruling upholding prisoners' protection from racial discrimination is a triumph for prisoners and the disproportionate number of minority men and women that this country chooses to incarcerate," said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. "Protecting prisoners from racial discrimination is critical to maintaining public confidence in a criminal justice system that is often criticized for its mistreatment of racial minorities."

At issue in the case was California's longstanding policy of racially segregating its prisoners during an initial classification period when they first arrive in the system or are transferred to a new facility. Although no other state has adopted a similar policy, the lower courts in this case held that California's decision to segregate prisoners by race was entitled to deference rather than the strict judicial scrutiny that would normally apply to racial classifications in other settings.

"We rejected the notion that separate can ever be equal. . .50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education, and we refuse to resurrect it today," said the Court in a 5-3 majority decision authored by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (Chief Justice Rehnquist did not participate). "Compliance with the Fourteenth Amendment's ban on racial discrimination is not only consistent with proper prison administration, but also bolsters the legitimacy of the entire criminal justice system."

In its amicus brief filed on behalf of California prisoner Garrison Johnson, the ACLU cited a 1997 Gallup poll finding that 72 percent of black respondents believe blacks are treated more harshly than whites in the criminal justice system. Among white respondents, nearly half believed that blacks are treated more harshly. "There is no area of our national life in which the perception of continuing racial discrimination is more widespread," the ACLU said in its brief.

"Racial segregation is not the solution to the problem of prison violence," added Steven R. Shapiro, the ACLU’s Legal Director.

Today's ruling by the Supreme Court was in the case Johnson v. California, 03-636. The Court’s decision is online at

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/23feb20051045/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/04pdf/03-636.pdf

The ACLU's amicus brief in the lawsuit is online at http://www.aclu.org/court/court.cfm?ID=16397&c=286

Protesting Prisons: Rights and Reforms by Kirsten Anderberg

Protesting Prisons: Rights and Reforms
By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)

Jail is a place where dehumanization is high on the agenda of the state
and guards, and thus humane interactions from the outside are greatly
needed for the preservation of prisoners’ sanity. This necessary jail and
prison support can take on many forms. You can visit prisoners, organize
legal help, write press releases, send prisoners books, phone cards, money
and letters, organize rallies, help translate testimonies, and more. A
wide variety of organizations are devoted to prison abolition and reform,
and prisoner support. Just as there are many ways to help prisoners, there
are many distinct populations with specific problems in jail, as well.
Mothers with children may have special needs, gay partners have troubles
penetrating the immediate family visitation rules, reintegrating into
society after serving a long sentence requires help, translation issues
need more attention, prison conditions themselves are an issue, as well as
scams within prisons, such as those that overcharge prisoners for phone
usage.

The Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) Network
(http://www.anarchistblackcross.org) is a warehouse of information on
defensive and offensive jail support. They define defensive support as
educating the community about the problems within prisons and the legal
system, as well as working with prisoners through legal teams and support
groups. They define offensive work as direct challenges to the prison
conglomerate, which includes protesting prison conditions, and getting as
much press as possible focused on these issues. The ABC says its goals are
“struggling to expose injustice, corruption and oppression; supporting
prisoners who (consciously or unconsciously) are combatants against the
state; providing advice and support to activists who put their bodies on
the line in defense of freedom and revolution; and seeing our continued
activism, campaigns, etc. in the larger picture of prison abolition and
revolutionary change -- as well as our own experiences in creating
conditions for change.”

The ABC website says that the Anarchist Red Cross was formed in Tsarist
Russia to organize support for political prisoners of the Cossack Army.
Then during the Russian civil war, they changed their name to the Black
Cross to avoid being confused with what is now known as the Red Cross. The
Black Cross has died down and resurfaced several times. The site says the
North American sector of the Black Cross started in the early 1980’s. The
ABC focuses primarily on anarchist and class war prisoners. Their website
provides an extensive list of anti-prison support resources. ABC
organizations exist all over the world. Some of the countries with
organizations listed on the central ABC site are: Australia, Mexico,
Canada, Denmark, Germany, the UK, Greece, South Africa, Sweden, France,
Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Brazil, and the U.S.

Many prisoner support groups exist for different jailed sectors. For
instance, there is support for anarchist prisoners
(http://www.breakthechains.net), as well as vegan prisoners, Chicano
Mexicano prisoners (http://burn.ucsd.edu/~udb/cmpp/index.html), Earth
Liberation activist prisoners (http://www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk), gay
prisoners (http://prisonactivist.org/ooc), parent prisoners
(http://www.inmatemoms.org), juvenile prisoners
(http://www.angelfire.com/al4/juveniles), etc. There are also specific
support groups for individual prisoners, such as the support networks in
place for Leonard Peltier (http://www.leonardpeltier.org), Jeff Free Luers
(http://www.freefreenow.org), and Mumia Abu-Jamal (http://www.mumia.org).
There are groups that work for the abolition of prison, such as the
Coalition For The Abolition of Prisons, Inc.
(http://www.noprisons.org) and Critical Resistance
(http://www.criticalresistance.org/). Excellent prison activism resources
exist online, such as http://www.homesnotjails.org,
http://www.prisonactivist.org/, http://www.celldoor.com, and
www.prisonsucks.com. Pen pal programs exist, and there are also
organizations that help prisoners sell their art, such as Prison Art
(http://www.prisonart.org/).

Books for Prisoners programs are very important. An Ohio books for
prisoners program reports that the most requested books, that they cannot
keep up with the demand for, include dictionaries, health books, books on
Native American and Black studies, and books by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Louis Lamor and Anne Rice. The types of books the Ohio
books for prisoners organization needs are GED and college level
educational materials, legal texts, history books, especially on struggles
of peoples, art books, fiction, skill/trade books, revolutionary writings,
and medical texts. The Anarchists Black Cross site lists books for
prisoners programs in PA, WA, LA, CO,  MD, GA, OH, NY, IN, OR, MA, NC, CA,
and MN. They also list programs in Canada.

Once you are in prison, your choices are so limited. You rely on people
outside for your freedoms in so many ways. You rely on help to place phone
calls that are expensive, to mail letters that take stamps, to reach the
press and legal aid; it all takes more than one prisoner’s arms and legs,
and money. We often take our freedom to walk outside when we want for
granted, yet we also acknowledge that injustice is rampant within the
criminal justice and prison systems in America. It is frightening to think
of the people in prison for crimes they did not commit. There but by the
grace of God go you or I in that situation! And political prisoners,
again, it could have been me, and it may be me before we are through. I
think any time invested in prison activism is time well spent. And it is
something you know you would want someone to do for you, if you were in
prison.


--
You can receive Kirsten's articles, as they are written, via an email list
called "Eat the Press." Go to http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/eatthepress
to join the list.

Human Rights Watch Film Fest in Boston

Folks,

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is going to be in Boston this coming weekend. Please note there are two films being shown that would be of interest to supporters, volunteers and staff of Prison Book Program. Here are the descriptions from this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix:

Rivaling suspected terrorists as personae non gratae are juvenile offenders. Surely the country grows safer when underage offenders are tried, convicted, and sentenced as adults for major felonies? Not only is that untrue, argues documentarian Leslie Neale in Juvies (2004; January 29 at 5 and 7 p.m., January 30 at 8 p.m., and February 1 at 9 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with filmmakers Leslie Neale and Traci Odom present at the January 29 and 30 screenings), but this get-tough system has resulted in grotesque injustices. With voiceover narration from former juvie Mark Wahlberg, the film intercuts the fates of a handful of youths undergoing trial and sentencing with observations from experts and officials. Sixteen-year-old Duc, for example, was driving a car when a passenger in it shot at someone. No one was hurt, yet with no prior record and no gang ties, Duc got 35 years hard time. His case is typical. "It is a slow genocide," one spokesman concludes.

That remark could apply equally to the situation described in Katy Chevigny & Kirsten Johnson’s documentary Deadline (2003; January 30 at 12:30 and 6 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre). Back in 2002, outgoing Illinois governor George Ryan, a conservative Republican, shocked the country by ordering an investigation into his state’s capital punishment system. The inequities and errors uncovered moved him to order a blanket commutation of all death-row cases to life imprisonment. The filmmakers chronicle the anguish and the soul searching behind Ryan’s decision, and they give equal time to the harrowing testimony of victims’ families and the tales of narrow escapes and ruined lives of those wrongly sentenced to death. They put this raw material in the context of the recent history of capital punishment and commentary mostly by anti-death-penalty spokespersons. The conclusion? The death penalty kills innocent people, demoralizes the justice system, and provides no deterrent. "Let’s offer victims something other than revenge," says Ryan as he makes the final commutation official. Fat chance that other pols might follow in his footsteps. Ryan was, after all, leaving office the same day. And as Deadline reminds us, in 1992, Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Bill Clinton executed a retarded man so as not to appear soft on crime.

Kudos to volunteers

Thanks to the folks from People Making a Difference and other volunteers on January 8, 130 packages were sent to inmates.

Not to be outdone, the students and faculty from the Boston Latin Academy Classics Club sent out 163 packages- a new half day record!

Thanks to all for your valiant efforts!

An Inmate Blogger Describes the Trials of Getting Books in Prison

My first run-in with the mailroom occurred last year when they rejected 'Security Analysis', which is a hard-back book containing over 1,000 pages. The 'Mail Rejection Notification' stated that the book was not a book, but actually a 'weapon'.

Shaun Atwood is a British stockbroker serving a 9.5 year sentence at the Arizona State Prison at Buckeye. Shaun is keeping a blog about his experiences including the above quote from an entry on the trials of getting books in prison.

Life in Prison Recorded in Audio Diaries

In 2000, the NPR show All Things Considered, created "Prison Diaries, An Intimate Portrait of Life Behind Bars." For several months over the course of a year, inmates, correctional officers and a judge in North Carolina and Rhode Island recorded their thoughts on tape recorders. The audio diaries include sounds and scenes of everyday life behind bars - including everything from shakedowns to monthly family visits to quiet moments late at night inside a cell.

The diaries were edited down to 30 minute segments. You can read more about the series and listen to the edited segments on the NPR website.

Prison Population Grows by 5.8% in 2003. Number of Women in Prison Hits Record High

Some interesting factoids from new Bureau of Justice's most recent report on the 2003 prison population:

• the number of women in prison increased by 2.9% in 2003 for a total of 101,179 people. This is the first time that the female prison population has topped 100,000. Women still account for only 6.9% of the total prison population
• the Federal Prison System grew by 5.8% (approx 9500 people). State prisons grew by 1.6 percent (approx 200,000 people)
• most prisons (both state and federal) were operating at capacity or up to 39 percent over capacity.
• Among the 1.4 million inmates sentenced to more than one year at year-end 2003, an estimated 44 percent were black, 35 percent white, 19 percent Hispanic and 2 percent of other races. The percent of inmates who were racial or ethnic minorities has changed little since 1995.

For more information and links to the actual report, see the Bureau of Justice's press release.

The Sacramento Observer also ran a story on the report. This may be available for a limited time.