Solidarity with our South Bay Boston Sisters! RESIST!!

From: NEFAC-New England <newengland@nefac.net>
Date: Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 11:25 AM
Subject: Women in House of Correction in Boston resisting! Call in this week!
To: newengland@nefac.net


CALL TO ACTION - FORWARD WIDELY

Women at South Bay are being served bug-infested food, are forced to live  in flooded cells, and daily face unsanitary and dangerous conditions.  Women are refusing meals and demanding that the situation immediately be  put to rights.

Grievances have been filed about food infested with maggots*; rat  droppings have also been found in prisoners' food.  The late rain may have been an annoyance to some of us, but it was flooding the women's cells in the tower where they are held.  One woman was given a plastic trash bag to deal with the leaks, which bag was soon filled with water.  Another woman took to using her personal property, blankets, towels, sheets, and clothing to stuff up the leaks, all of which was soaked almost
immediately.  Even the ceiling of the visiting room was severely damaged by recent rain.

The facility is fewer than 20 years old.  In response to the complaints, the institutional grievance coordinator declared the food and flooding situations “resolved,” despite the fact that the leaks have not been fixed and the food sanitation situation is merely being “investigated.”

Hidden in plain sight, this Boston facility is right off Mass Ave by Boston Medical Center.  The repulsive conditions at South Bay are bad enough in their own right, but consider that the captive population is much more likely to have compromised immune systems, whether because of
hepatitis C, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, or an array of other conditions.  For people suffering from chronic medical issues, South Bay's filth is nothing short of a threat on their lives.

Call Sheriff Andrea J.Cabral this week at 617.635.1000, ext. 2100 and tell her that she is responsible for the health and wellbeing of those in her custody.  An effective public relations machine is not enough.  Demand that meaningful changes are made immediately with input from those women
most suffering from the issues at hand.  The two most important issues to the women inside right now are 1. the food and 2. the leaky cells.  We encourage people to leave call back numbers and demand a response from the administration.  We also encourage you to write bostonabc@riseup.net and tell how your call went!

A woman wrote, “I just need some help.  No one helps the women here.” Please prove her wrong!

*When one prisoner complained to a guard about the maggots in her food, the guard retorted that it was “protein.”

SOS: Arizona State Prisons. Send Help.

Anyone else hear about these prison units selling already? And the state hospital? This is from the Perryville CO's underground blog, the Lumley Vampire. That's the yard Marcia Powell was on when she died. The lead-in below is just the beginning - hit back there for the rest. The description of conditions is pretty frank and deplorable. I want the DOJ in here. Sounds like the guy who does this blog does, too.  

I'm sure the state figures they can avoid their responsibility for these facilities - and prisoners - by just selling them, and we're going to have a hard time holding those people accountable. We can't even seem to hold the state responsible when they do the job themselves.

Isn't there someone else we can call for help? I'm not very impressed with the DOJ. Every prisoner and family I hear from these days is sending an SOS.

------------- 

"Six Arizona State Prison Units sold to SLUM LORDS

The Lumley Vampire Newsletter 1/15/2010

    Six state prison units at Florence/Eyman have been sold to Slum Lords and leased back to the state. The state pocketed $736 million dollars and will be repaying investors 1.1 billion dollars over the next 20 years for the deal. Death Row was not sold. The state hospital was also sold to investors. Privatization of ADOC is rapidly becoming a reality.

ASPC-Florence is seriously outdated and unsafe for officer's and offenders. The plumbing chases at CB-1, 3, 2 & 4 are caked with dozens of decades of animal urine & feces, which vent directly into offenders cells.  Electrical and plumbing problems including filthy staff bathrooms and unsafe drinking water which exceed federal guidelines for Niacin are just a few of the problems passed on to investors. Some staff bathrooms are so filthy with years of human feces and urine officers are forced to squat on filthy toilet rims to use them. Swamp coolers are still in use at most of the large Florence cell blocks wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. 

    The DOJ has looked the other way for decades as offenders are forced to live in tiny cells from the 1940's and 50's standards. Officer's still are required to conduct safety and security checks on dozens of isolation cells in CB-3 & 4 that have not been used or housed offenders since the 1970's wasting more money by the state...."

 

 The Lumley Vampire

ADC: Constituent Services for Friends and Family

I just got off the phone with Betty Cassiano from the AZ Department of Corrections Office of Constituent Services. As I noted in previous posts, her office follows up on concerns raised by friends and families of prisoners which aren't addressed or resolved at the prison complex level for whatever reason. Usually, contacting her office is the final step in the formal process of filing complaints or raising concerns on behalf of prisoners or their families, but she handles many calls in which her office is the first step someone takes. She and her two staff field approximately 3000 calls per month, in fact. In light of that, the amount of time she spent discussing Constituent Services with me so I could pass that on to others was quite generous, considering that I may simply help generate more work for her and her staff.

I was impressed with Betty's candor about the conditions and circumstances that arise in the prisons that require some kind of intervention from her office to resolve. She didn't try to sugarcoat anything, didn't try to discount inmates and families as getting hysterical over small stuff, and validated that sometimes the potential for retaliation at the unit/complex level is real.
Betty was also honest about the limitations of being underfunded, understaffed, having prison over-crowding, and so on. She couldn't promise to satisfy everyone who calls, as some issues are inherent in the nature of imprisonment. But she promised that her office would do their best to prioritize and respond to concerns - even making field visits to specific sites when necessary to witness conditions themselves and make recommendations for changes. She was really quite forthright and seems sincerely committed to helping friends and families cope with the incarceration of their loved ones and empowering them to help make changes in the system or their circumstances for the better when and where possible.

That said, I really encourage friends and families to use her office as a resource when you worry that your loved one may be suffering unnecessarily - whether it's because the air is out, the place is on indefinite lockdown, a particular guard is hassling them, a prisoner's health has declined dramatically - whatever. Being in prison is punishment enough and the need to maintain order and safety has its hardships, but that isn't to say that prisoners should have to endure extreme, inhumane, or unjust conditions. Sometimes shedding light on certain practices or policies that are having a negative effect on people is the only way to bring relief not only for the individual involved in the complaint, but for others as well.

Finally, Betty also directed me to the resources on the Constituent Services section of the ADC website, which includes a manual for friends and family, information about the procedures for addressing concerns about prison conditions or a loved ones particular circumstances, links to other sites that may be useful for families to have, and so on. She also validated the usefulness of information and insight from people who are formerly incarcerated in terms of evaluating policies and strategizing solutions, and has previously had former prisoners active on her Constituent Services Advisory Committee; thus, former prisoners with specific concerns about conditions are also welcome to call.

So, this is one route that friends and family can take to address issues pertaining to the conditions of incarceration with the AZ Department of Corrections. Again, the number for her office is 602-364-3945. The email address is IFFLiason@azcorrections.gov. If friends and families are organized into groups - or want to organize to have her or someone from her office come talk to them - she'd be more than willing to set something up to discuss how Constituent Services can be a resource for them.

As for my part, I hope to refocus my attention on larger systems' issues across the prison industrial complex - highlighting groups and activities in the community who are essentially doing abolitionist work by accommodating terminally ill and geriatric prisoners in the community, reducing the risk of incarceration or reincarceration of more citizens through sentencing reform, legislative activity, working with high-risk youth, changing practices in schools, confronting issues with racial-profiling and law enforcement, organizing Courtwatches to assess the fairness of sentencing so voters can make informed decisions about re-electing judges or district attorneys, exploring the use of alternative sentencing options for offenders with serious mental illness, projects for restorative rather than retributive justice, and so on. I am still willing to be a resource to assist with individual advocacy, but would much rather help friends and families to organize among themselves (and with Betty's office) to work towards what they consider as essential reforms on prison conditions and prisoner rights.