Victoria Law's Blog, page 4

Sexually Assaulted? Go Straight to Solitary

Forgot to post a link to my follow-up piece on SolitaryWatch:

It seems absurd that a person who has been sexually assaulted would be punished for speaking up, especially since prison policy prohibits sexual contact between staff and the people whom they guard. Yet, in many women’s prisons, those who report rape and other forms of sexual assault by prison personnel are often sent to solitary confinement.

WARNING: Contains descriptions (not graphic) of sexual assault and abuse.

You can read the entire article at
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/12/12/w...

New on Solitary Watch: Women in Solitary Confinement: “The Isolation Degenerates Us Into Madness”

My newest piece on women & solitary confinement (part 1 of 2) is now up on Solitary Watch:

A mass prisoner hunger strike rocked California’s prison system this past summer, drawing international attention to the extensive use of solitary confinement in the United States. Increasingly, solitary is finding its way into the mainstream media and onto activist agendas. Nearly all of the attention, however, has focused on solitary confinement in men’s prisons; much less is known about the conditions and experiences inside women’s prisons...

...Dolores Canales has a son who has spent thirteen years in Pelican Bay’s SHU. Canales has also had firsthand experience with solitary confinement. While imprisoned at CIW, she spent nine months in Ad Seg, where she was confined to her cell twenty-two hours a day. “There, I had a window. The guards would take me out to the yard every day. I’d get to go out to the yard with other people,” she recalled. But the isolation still took its toll: “There’s an anxiety that overcomes you in the middle of the night because you’re so locked in,” she described. Even after being released from segregation, Canales was unable to shake that anxiety. She broke into a sweat and panicked each time she saw a group of officers even though she had broken no rules. “I just can’t forget,” she stated years after her release from prison.

Although the spotlight on solitary has focused largely on California, every women’s prison has a solitary confinement unit. Florida’s Lowell Correctional Institution for Women has a Closed Management Special Housing Unit (CM SHU) where women are confined to their cells 23 to 24 hours a day. “There is no free movement or social interaction,” reported one woman. “We just sit locked in a concrete and steel room the size of a small residential bathroom.”

Read the whole article here:
http://solitarywatch.com/2013/12/11/w...

73-Year-Old Grandma Says She Was Put in Solitary Confinement for Wanting Decent Medical Care

My newest post is up on Bitchmedia:

What happens when states contract with private, for-profit companies to both run their prisons and provide prison health care? Carol Lester, a 73-year-old grandmother, found out shortly after arriving at the New Mexico Women’s Correctional Facility in Grants.

According to a lawsuit Lester recently filed against the private companies that run both the prison and provide medical care, Lester arrived in December 2010 after being sentenced to three years imprisonment for embezzling from her employer to feed a gambling addiction. During her medical screening, staff noted that Lester had thyroid cancer and required the synthetic hormone Levoythyroxin each day. The screening also revealed that Lester did not use illegal drugs or have a history of illegal drug use.

Lester had brought a month's supply of her prescription medications, which she gave to the intake staff. However, prison medical staff prescribed new medications, which caused diarrhea and vomiting. In response, staff prescribed her Zantac to treat her stomach problems. Lester's condition did not improve and she began having fainting spells—Zantac is also known to cause false positives for methamphetamine

Luckily, Lester had family who wrote letters to the prison, the state Department of Corrections, and state legislators complaining of the prison's failure to provide proper medical care. In September 2011, in response to these letters, a delegation of legislators visited the prison to talk with Lester and other women about their medical concerns.

Shortly after, the prison gave Lester a drug test. Lester, who had been prescribed Zantac by the prison, tested positive for methamphetamine. She was placed in solitary confinement for over a month, where she was still not given her prescribed medications.

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/73-year...

How Does Obamacare Impact Women of Color and People in Prison?

My latest post on Bitchmedia looks at the intersections of race, gender and incarceration when examining the impact of the Affordable Care Act:

When Mercedes Smith (above) first came home from prison, she was able to sign up for Medicaid. Then she got a part-time job, which pushed her over Medicaid's low-income guidelines. Unable to afford insurance even after getting a second part-time job, Mercedes has gone without health care for the past three years. When she needs urgent care, she goes to the emergency room. Otherwise, health care is a luxury she can't afford.

Mercedes is not the only person in this Catch 22 situation. According to a new report by the Center for American Progress (PDF), women of color account for more than half of uninsured women in the United States. Mercedes, who is African-American, is part of the one in four African-American women who are uninsured. One in four Asian-American women are also uninsured and more than one-in-three Latinas also lack health care coverage.

How will the Affordable Care Act (ACA) change this? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services predicts that more than 8.5 million women of color will gain the ability to access affordable or subsidized health care through the Health Insurance Marketplace, including 4.6 million Latinas, three million African-Americans, and 970,000 Asian-Americans.

You can read the rest at http://bitchmagazine.org/post/how-wil...

2 new on Truthout: solitary confinement & Marissa Alexander

I've got two new(ish) pieces up on Truthout that I forgot to re-post here:

1 Month After Hunger Strike, Legislators Hold Hearings on Solitary Confinement

"Tell us the truth, even if it’s not pleasant," State Assembly member Tom Ammiano told California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials, advocates, formerly incarcerated people and family members.

On Wednesday, October 9, the California legislature's Public Safety Committee held the first of several hearings about the use of solitary confinement in California’s prisons. These hearings were prompted by a 60-day hunger strike that rocked California’s prison system this past summer.

Read the whole article at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19...

and then one on efforts to free Marissa Alexander, whose conviction was overturned late last month. If you don't know who Marissa Alexander is, you can find out here: http://t.co/Igf5WFG2cy

We Need to Stop Shackling Pregnant Women in Prison—Now.

Last week, Washington DC councilmember David Grosso introduced a bill that would keep jails from shackling women during any point of their pregnancy and for six weeks after they've given birth.

“I have introduced this legislation because it is an important human rights issue that must be addressed in D.C.," said Grosso.

Washington DC has one of only a handful of American jail and prison systems that prohibits shackling during childbirth, but only after incarcerated women filed a class action lawsuit. In 1996, a district court ruled in their favor, banning the practice as cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district continues to shackle women during the early parts of pregnancy, though. The new bill would change that.

Read the entire article at We Need to Stop Shackling Pregnant Women in Prison—Now.

CookiePuss: 1996 to 2013

One morning, in either October or November 1996, a tiny kitten showed up on the doorstep of ABC No Rio. Someone opened the door and there she was. She waltzed in as if she had every right to be there and the person, rushing out to work or wherever, didn't stop to try to shoo her out.

Later that night, one of the people who lived above No Rio came home to find this tiny kitten very much at home in her bed. She kept the kitten and named her CookiePuss (after the Beastie Boys' song, not the Carvel cake).

Cookie stayed at No Rio since then. In 1997, the City of New York made a deal with the volunteers, Board members and people who lived above No Rio: If ABC No Rio could raise the money to renovate its falling-down tenement building, it could buy the building for $1. The caveat was that the city had no program for a mixed residential/community facility. It had to be all community use or the deal was off the table. The people living above No Rio (whom the city viewed as squatters & I guess technically they were) agreed that having a full-fledged community center was better than having the entire building be evicted and the ground floor turned into a Blockbuster Video (yes, this was the 1990s when we still had video stores).

CookiePuss stayed. She became the last remaining squatter. She visited punk shows, improvisational music gigs, zine librarians, photographers using the darkroom, artists making t-shirts & posters in the silkscreen shop...Heck, she even sneaked across the rooftops to the matzoh factory!

During her time at No Rio, she received postcards from around the world--from every continent except Antarctica. Even people who never met her sent her postcards.

Cookie passed away this past Thursday night. The building seems quieter without her (even with a hardcore/punk show downstairs). We all miss her.

http://abcnorio.tumblr.com/post/62439...

The NYC Board of Corrections & Lois Lowry's The Giver

My daughter recently suggested that I read The Giver. I'd been meaning to read it as part of my Girls of Color in Dystopia blog, but never got around to it. But then my daughter read it over the summer and, before she returned it to the library, suggested that I do so.

This morning, I attended a public hearing of the NYC Board of Corrections. On the agenda was a motion that the Board adopt rules governing the use of solitary confinement in NYC jails. In early June, after rejecting a petition from the Jail Action Committee to adopt rules limiting the length of time and reasons for which a person can be placed in solitary confinement while in NYC jails, the Board appointed a committee to study the practice of solitary confinement.

According to the Jail Action Committee, NYC jails have one of the highest rates of solitary confinement in the country.

At the hearing, I learned that, from 2007 to June 30, 2013, the number of beds in punitive solitary confinement (or segregation) increased from 614 to 998. However, the increase in the use of punitive segregation has not decreased jail violence.

41% of adolescent males in NYC jails are in punitive segregation. The percentage troubled the committee members, who noted that solitary confinement should not be used as punishment for adolescents. The committee chair quoted from the UN Special Rapporteur who has been noted for condemning the use of solitary confinement for more than 15 days as torture. He also quoted from an association of child psychiatrists (the name of which I failed to catch).

The committee chair made a motion that the Board of Correction initiate rule-making regarding solitary confinement.

(At this point, 13 people (nearly half the audience) stood up with signs denouncing solitary confinement as torture. The Board did not acknowledge their presence).

The motion was seconded.

All 7 members present voted in favor of the motion. The Board Chair then stated that rulemaking is likely to be a lengthy process. He urged the Board to carefully weigh the impacts of any rules and regulations about solitary confinement on the jail system. He also urged them to consider the feasibility of alternatives that would be required to replace utilizing solitary confinement.

So what does this have to do with The Giver?

In The Giver, when a rule change is suggested, the idea goes to a committee for study. "When something went to a committee for study, people always joked about it. They said that the committee members would become Elders by the time the rule changes were made...they would simply fret and argue about it themselves for years, until the citizens forgot that it had ever gone to them for study."

Coming back to reality: Today's vote comes months after April 9th, when the NYC Jails Action Coalition submitted a petition asking the Board for rules governing the use of solitary confinement.

Will fact imitate fiction? Did Lois Lowry hit the nail on the head with her description of committees changing long-standing rules (or, in the case of the Board of Correction, lack of rules)? I sincerely hope not. But we shall see...(and hopefully, unlike the citizens in Lowry's futuristic world, we will not forget).

For more info (or to keep up with what transpires), see the NYC Jail Action Coalition site: http://www.nycjac.org/

California Prison Hunger Strike Ends After 60 Days

Thursday, September 5, marked Day 60 of California's mass prisoner hunger strike. It also marked the end of the strike.

The strike began on Monday, July 8, with 30,000 people across California's prison system refusing meals. Some vowed to refuse food until their demands were met or their bodies gave out.

On September 5, both the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, (CDCR) and prisoner advocates announced that the strike had ended.

"Our decision to suspend our third hunger strike in two years does not come lightly. This decision is especially difficult considering that most of our demands have not been met (despite nearly universal agreement that they are reasonable)," read a joint statement by Todd Ashker, Arturo Castellanos, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, and Antonio Guillen, the four designated representatives of the hunger strikers.

Read my entire article at
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18...

now up on Truthout: What Awaits Chelsea Manning As She Begins Her Sentence as the Military's First Openly Trans Woman?

"Chelsea Manning is the only openly trans woman housed at Leavenworth," Aaron Myracle, a former Military Police soldier, told Truthout. "The US Detention Barracks doesn't have a policy in place for how to deal with trans people."

Given that dubious distinction, what can Chelsea Manning expect as she begins her thirty-five year sentence at the US Detention Barracks at Fort Leavenworth?

http://truth-out.org/news/item/18486-...