Oct-Sep 96

News from the Gulags

by Carol Strick , NCX East Coast Correspondent

Ban Stock of Corrections Corp. of America

Corrections Corporation of America, like Wackenhut, is making fortunes on the Nazi strategy of building kamps and then filling them. CCA announced plans for a $44 million Juvenile Center in Virginia. Money that could have been used for jobs and housing will, instead, be used to incarcerate 1400 inmates. They are planning an 868-bed facility in the nation's kapitol and a 400-bed dungeon for youths ages 12-18! In their latest prospectus, this "privatized" company is now "managing" and "building" prisons for the federal company. They do not specify where the money for these projects is coming from. Are we the taxpayers paying for the kamps?

Recently I came across a newsclipping about a Georgia legislator who suggested using the guillotine for executions. He explained that a "swift , clean cut" would leave organs intact for use as transplants. I was wondering how this deranged individual conceived of such a warped idea. When I picked up the Annual Report of Corrections Corporation of America, I decided I knew where it came from.

CCA discusses plans for building prisons in conjunction with governments, but suspiciously omits the source of revenue for this private/government scheme. Are we, the taxpayers, going to be funding CCA-the "largest developer and manager of privatized correctional and detention facilities worldwide"? They proudly proclaim the addition of TransCor, "a nationwide provider of inmate transportation services" and Concept, Inc., "a prison management company" to their stable. This gets worse. They run a prison in the U.K. and two in Australia. To further expand this insane global domination they have "entered into an international strategic alliance with Sodexho, S.A., their French counterpart. From the last fact I realized where the Georgian legislator got his information. His French equivalent must have researched this obscene topic.

Wading through the annual report, we see photos of two guys and a woman in riot gear-Stand tall Amerika!-and a Black guy, unsmiling, viewed through a chain link fence. Are we supposed to view him as "dangerous," thereby justifying this obscenity? (Prisons being disproportionately non-white, this company is probably Klan-inspired.)

We are given a bio of each of the board of directors. They include a "former" Governor of Tennessee (the company is based in Nashville), a "former" Mayor of Nashville, a former warden, and a guy who was the head of the DOC in two states.

But the scariest aspect of the CCA Annual Report is the eleven prisons currently under construction. This is totally sick and cannot continue. Write to Arthur Leavitt, Jr. Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission, 1919 M. Street NW, Washington, DC 20554. Ask him not to allow a second offering of this stock and to take it off the board. Jobs, not jails!

Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles

Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida is keeping a smoldering racial situation in high gear, an ongoing distraction from the national blight of the unequal distribution of wealth. He recently proclaimed the recognition of Confederate Memorial Day! Considering the burst of prison construction in Florida and the disproportionately high incarceration of Blacks and Latinos in Florida, the enormous profits for PRIDE, Florida's private prison slave labor industries, the headquarters of Wackenhut in North Palm Beach (another Nazi company), "build-the-camps-and-then-fill- them" Governor Chiles is sanctioning the traditions of the Confederacy.
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Governor Lawton Chiles of Florida denied using his influence to gain the release of a friend's son. Willoughby Turner Cox III served only two years of a DUI manslaughter sentence. Cox's parents are friends and neighbors of the governor and his wife.

The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You

In the Oct. 28, 1995, San Antonio Express an article entitled "Prison Smoking Ban Ignites Busy Tobacco Black Market" by an anonymous AP reporter explained the various ways in which tobacco was smuggled into Texas prisons. He forgot to mention that the ban has created a flourishing tobacco trade for guards.

The Texas Board of Criminal Justice ruled that "health care costs and rights of nonsmokers" were behind the ban! Right-as if the DOC cares about the rights of inmates in any capacity! The article ends with an assurance that "inmates caught with a small amount of tobacco are punished by a loss of privileges such as access to the day room, TV and commissary. Possession of larger amounts can result in solitary confinement and the loss of good-conduct time."

Two of the "small amount charges" brought the following results. An inmate caught with six rolled cigarettes lost 365 days plus 1 1/2 years of good time. Another inmate was found with the following "contraband" in his possession: 3 hand-rolled cigarettes, 2 sheets of uncut tobacco papers, 24 tobacco papers almost made for usage, plus smoking tobacco in a newspaper." This small punishment resulted in the loss of 180 days of gain time, a reduction in class, and 10 days loss of commissary. The second incident was challenged by the inmate as a plant by a guard who actually wrote up the incident four days before it occurred!

Now, if confronted with inconsistencies, the DOC immediately retaliates with the charge of "lying to staff." Who is writing up the "staff lying to inmates"? Who is writing up the "prisoncrats lying to the public"?
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Another Alert. Another prisoner's life in danger! Robert A. Magoon has been beaten up by guards and snitches with a horrifying frequency. Both he and his mother fear for his life. Please write to Warden West, Rt. 4, Box 1500, Beaumont, TX 77705. Write letters of support to Robert Magoon, 599317-same address. Robert is strip-searched and beaten constantly, humiliated, degraded. This must stop.

Special Prisons
More Financial Scams

Certain prisons, such as FMC Carswell, a women's medical facility in Fort Worth, Texas, are in special category. "Special" means expensive, a greater burden on taxpayers. Carswell is supposed to be for women who are mentally or physically sick. The prison houses 500 or 600 women. The mental unit-relatively small-is overcrowded: the 40 women there are nearly twice as many as are supposed to be there. Some women in the mental facility have nothing wrong with them and are committed to Carswell for disciplinary infractions, which are purposely misinterpreted as "mental problems."

Everyone in the mental unit is diagnosed as "sick" in order to justify their "treatment." The "treatment" consists of megadoses of mind-altering, psychotropic medication 4 times daily at 9:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., and 8:30 p.m. Victims are rigorously sedated. The unit manager in Carswell believes in forced drugging. If necessary, shackles and restraints are used to medicate/sedate, and we, the taxpayers, are paying for this snake pit. "Studied" women who have not yet been sentenced are part of the mental unit. The judge/doctor/psychotherapist has recommended the "study." Women in the "study" are part of the 4 times-a-day drugging, even though they have not been evaluated and do not have psychotherapy.

Being transferred anywhere in the B.O.P. or D.O.C. means $$$-Carswell is an expensive transfer in a scam that has nothing to do with "treatment." ("This 'medication' is going to stop the voices you hear. But you may continue to hear the voices.") This would be comical if it weren't so tragic. A young girl is sexually abused. She is a house without a foundation. She never had a chance. Abuse is heaped on abuse. She ends up on drugs, finds herself in prison, has more abuse heaped upon her, and ends up in Carswell! This is a civilization? When will this nightmare end? When will victims no longer be forced into drugged stupor? When will the state lose the power to desensitize the public to human suffering?

Ziyon Yisrayah's Execution

Ziyon Yisrayah, recently executed in Indiana, was a comrade of Shaka Shakur and Akono and Lorenzo Stone-Bey and others in that system. Shaka faces 5 years in a maximum security facility because of his part in prisoners' silent protest against the execution.

Ziyon, murdered by lethal injection, seems to have been the victim of a police and state vendetta, enduring an unfair trial and possible withholding of evidence. As an eye witness to this tragedy, Jackie Austin reports that the medical technicians and doctors bumbled and fumbled trying to kill him, couldn't get the needles in right, took 80 minutes to accomplish the task, and when the window shades were opened for the witnesses to see, Ziyon appeared to have already gone or to be completely sedated beyond consciousness-the state's effort to sanitize the whole sordid business. Ziyon had refused sedation up to the very end.

Letters from Inside

"Dear sister, there is so much tension at this prison that anything is subject to happen at anytime. They are steadily fighting one another, cutting off fingers, taking eyes, busting heads, sticking up one another, but I believe when the lids blows, it will go completely off."

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From a brother inside who lost a testicle, having been kicked and beaten by five guards who kept yelling the N- word at him while spitting tobacco juice in his face: "Carol, you have never been lonely in your life until you've built some time in a prison like this. It's a loneliness that eats at you day and night. Some of it comes from the people who don't write or visit. Some of it comes from the way these guards talk to you like you're nothing but pure shit, like you're not good enough for people out there to mess with again. Some of it comes from the cold walls and the iron doors. Outside you can always think that tomorrow will be better when you're feeling low, but not in here. In here you know that tomorrow isn't going to hold anything that the day before didn't hold. The people are going to be the same, except some come and some go. I was taught early that suffering is inevitable and necessary for a hustler, pimp, drug dealer or just a poor mother-f- compelled to become a four-way whore for this white collar establishment but I was never prepared for this loneliness."

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"Dear Carol, this new kamp is a shocking nightmare. It was only recently opened. There is nothing here but housing units and a small rec field with 2 benches for lifting weights. They count and lock you up about 15 times a day. To get from point A to point B, you need a pass from the officer on duty. You've got to go through one fence at a time. Without air conditioning in South Florida, it's unbearable. There is constant, useless shakedowns every night and day, even though we are locked in here 24 hours a day. How could anyone possibly have any contraband from anywhere (except what the guards bring in) unless they're looking for small stones that are all over the compound. I have a friend here from El Salvador. They gave him a D.R. (disciplinary report) because he doesn't know how to speak English!

"The Attorney General of Florida, Bob Butterworth, is proud of legislation recently passed to curb inmates' lawsuits. To back up this further erosion of inmates' autonomy, which, more often than not, protests cruel and unusual treatment, Mr. Butterworth cites a few petty isolated grievances as 'frivolous.'

"Imagine this scenario, sister. A man gets convicted 10 years ago to 30 regular years for a violent crime. When he fell in the system, they took 1/3 off his sentence. That left him with 20 years. During the 10 years he was a model prisoner, staying out of trouble and earning a measly 20 days gain time a month. That left him with 5 years to go. Still earning gain time he would be able to get out in 3 years. But now they're cutting out the gain time retroactively! The 10 years they took off-the 1/3-will be put back. His sentence will be restructured so he will have 15 years to do, day-for-day. That's not fair. That will start some shit around here like they haven't seen in years. It's going to be an emergency disaster, and it's not close to beginning yet. They're talking about taking our TVs and radios. Little by little they are taking away more of our rights. They will not be satisfied until we riot the system and the public will make us out to be the bad guys. We will not riot without reason."

RECOMMENDED READING

Serving Time Together (A Correspondence of Hearts) by Ruth Sanders and Martin Forrest, Element, Inc., P.O. Box 830, Rockport, MA 01966, $18.95. Part II is available in manuscript form from Select books, 1530 W. Madison Street, #P5, Starke, FL 32091. Cost is $8. postpaid. Part II is free to prisoners.

Serving Time Together is about humanity, compassion, spirituality, companionship, understanding, and self-empowerment. Martin is "inside." He is considered dangerous and psychotic. He is neither. Frustrated by his lack of self-empowerment, victimized by racism, poverty, and child- abuse, Martin is where society wants him to be-expendable-but his skills in the prison garment factory are a value and therefore keep him alive.

Ruth is spiritual and good. She corresponds with Martin, and an intensity develops between them. Ruth's encouragement and love allow Martin's true self to emerge. He is not dangerous; he is kind, good, thoughtful, warm, and caring. Ruth was lonely before she met Martin. Now she feels that she has something to live for. This is a rich tale of trust and sharing.

We see Martin's prison from an insider's point of view, "their absolute power and their unquestionable authority;" the "humiliation of a strip search," the behavior of the guards, and the brutal and sadistic conditions. "A prisoner was beaten nearly to death last week and the last I heard he is not expected to live. The guards who beat him claimed their actions were justified due to the prisoner's aggressive behavior. In other words, he refused to be submissive. He refused to accept their physical brutality without trying to defend himself."

Ruth is the perfect complement to Martin. The disparities in their ages, colors, and religions do not exist. They are meshed and blended in thought. "There is so much that is barbaric in these supposedly 'enlightened' times. I am thinking of the cement bed with 4-point restraints and the consciousness of the workers there. . . . they only see your violent side. I see your gentle side."
Part II of Serving Time Together describes a trial in which Martin is accused of assaulting a corrections officer. We are in the courtroom. "My public defender ceased his efforts to conceal that he was working hand in hand with the prosecutor against me. I was standing before the judge, trying to understand, not only in words, but the underlying meaning of them. These people know that the average guy who comes into that courtroom charged with battering correction officers, is no more guilty than they are, but they exhaust the taxpayers' money trying to prove an innocent man guilty."

"I went back to court this morning for sentencing. The judge, prosecutor, and public defender declared me beyond salvage; then the judge sentenced me to life in prison, pronouncing the sentence with a religious venom. I was the only Black face in the courtroom and according to them, the only criminal. I was shackled, but I called out to the judge, "No matter how pious and just they pretend to be, white people, when judging the oppressed, still have their white judgment equal to a lynching."

With the savvy of George Jackson, Sundiata and Mumia, this brother doesn't miss a trick. "I am thinking of the not uncommon corporal abuse inflicted on ghetto kids, especially Blacks. Yes, it had its origins. It is a mixture of fear and frustration manifested into a good lashing of the whip by the old white slave masters. This tradition was handed down from the slave masters to their slaves, from slaves to their children and so on. . . "

Ruth concurs. "These people are villains. They see no double standard in releasing the rich and prosecuting the poor, nor in treating people of different races in different ways, nor in behaving as criminally as any of the inmates they have power over. . . "
Martin and Ruth have meshed in their insights and their hopes. We become part of their story, sharing the pain of Brothers and Sisters locked away in tombs across the nation, waiting for sanity to reign.

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