Former Prisoners Denied Re-integration Through Discrimination

An American blog providing advice to former prisoners who are trying (against all odds) to find work and move on with their lives.  I really like the idea of allowing people to write in directly and get a response directly on specific situations encountered.  These sorts of services are few and far between.  

Making this blog an especially important service is the fact that employment or rather lack of it, is the number one factor preventing people from escaping the revolving door of the legal system.  In fact, given the enormous barriers to escaping the prison system, one can reason that the powers that be, prefer to keep the powerless right where they are.  Without marketable skills, without close family ties, without hope.  Marcs referred to these folks and others  similar to them as surplus labour.  Their existence goes a long way to driving down labour market wages, benefits and to discouraging people from organising, forming unions, and demanding improved working conditions.

How does that work some of you are asking.  People working in lower paying, precarious forms of employment, or people who dont yet have permanent resident status, etc are afraid that the retributive hand of the government will come down on them next.  And there are plenty of examples.  Immigration programmes are designed to ensure workers are kept in the most precarious of working conditions with the ever present threat of separation from families, incarceration and deportation.

The USA and Canada less so (so far) have found ways to make prisoners themselves a commodity to be used for the express benefit of corporate America.  Prisoners are contracted out to the lowest bidder on construction or materials production contracts.  And prisoners are paid no more than 5.00 a day and often nothing at all.  They are forced to participate in some of the most dangerous forms of work, iwthout proper safety training or even adequate safety equipment (similar trials faced by immigrant, and trafficked women and children) Think the BP oil spill.  Prisoners who refused to work lost good time, yard time, reduced shower, phone, and visitation "privileges".
Trading in the bodies of those deemed as less than "worthy" is but one form of prison comodification which has come to be known as the prison industrial complex

I have a personal quip however with the usage of the word "Felon" in the title.  Or the words "offender" and "ex offender" throughout the content.  I'm not sure what the thought process has been around this - perhaps a reclaiming of the language the criminal legal system uses?  In any case I'm completely against using the language of the oppressor.  Its something we've been tuaght to do and without question.  As though this type of language is based within the fact of the situation and it simply has nothing to do with fact based language, and everything to do with "othering" those outside the status quo.

Forgive me if I'm coming across in a judgmental fashion.  My intention is simply to speak my mind and get others thinking about this issue - how and why we use language.  When I first started doing writing around criminal legal issues, I found that i was continuously coming across language that made me cringe, but did'nt have alternatives in my immediate repertoire.  

So I decided to ask my self, "what is the truth of the topic/situation I'm talking about?"

For instance 'criminal justice system"  Never does this system render justice for anyone.  I saw some people using "injustice" system.  This was the truth but didn't fit for professional writing.  So what is really happening here, what is the truth of this situation?  Its not a criminal justice system - It is a criminal legal system.
The criminal, offender, felon (this last is a word we dont really use in Canadian context anyways)..What do these words mean?  If we consider the fact that crime is a social constuct, then it seems inappropriate and even detrimental to refer to a person this way.  Who are we to decide if something is "criminal"?  And "offender" is intended to dehumanise, to render other, less than, different from "us".

So this brings us back to my original critical questions on language in the criminal legal complex.
"what is the truth of the topic/situation I'm talking about?"

What is really happening here?  What do we mean when stating that someone is a criminal, has committed a crime?  How can I phrase this situation honestly in my writing without needing to use a paragraph or more to explain/be honest?  I chose to use "lawbreaker", "person who has broken the law, person who the law has come into conflict with.

Inmate is another no-no.  People who are forcibly confined against their wills in jails and prisons are prisoners.  But that is not all they are.  None of us can be defined so narrowly.  So what about "person in prison".  Try to think from an anti-oppression, anti-racist theoretical framework.  Person living with a disability.  Person of colour.  Woman who stays at home/works at home. etc.

Now I've gotten completely of topic.  I think 

How felons can get jobs 

is a blog well worth looking at, even from Canada.  Many of the issues to overcome in seeking work with a criminal record are similar here in Canada as in the USA.  And where issues differ, perhaps this is an opeing for someone to take on a project such as this from the canadian perspective!

Prison(er) Advocacy and Activism Series: How to do prisoner advocacy. Reaching inside and resisting the Prison Industrial Complex. (PIC)

How to do prisoner advocacy.  Reaching inside and resisting the Prison Industrial Complex. (PIC)

Two very different forms of prisoner advocacy which I've found inspiring, both coming from the USA, but could just as easily be replicated in a Canadian context!

The first 3 links provide information on the successful closing down of one of the most brutal forms of imprisonment.  That is a whole prison, for the purpose of holding people in long term solitary confinement with no phone calls in some areas and extremely limited visitation.  Some prisoners went in when the place - TAMMS Correctional opened a decade ago and were not heard from again.  These places are referred to as supermax prisons, and created for the purpose of controlling, torturing, and humiliating the so called worst of the worst.  The problem with these horror stories (besides the obvious human rights violations already mentioned) was that there were no parametres for who could or should be sent there.  Rather than imprisoning the most violent or so called dangerous prisoners, those who had beefs with guards or who pissed of the prison administration in some way, were now in for a treat.  As if the state didn't have enough valves to release oceans of pain as it was....Now administrators have the supermax.  

However thanks to a few concerned citizens, those administrators now have one less supermax!

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10898-fight-over-closing-of-illinois-supermax-ends-14-years-of-prisoners-silence-in-solitary-confinement#.UCwvBTHPK8I.email

http://www.resistinc.org/newsletters/articles/struggling-against-torture-illinois-prison

http://www.yearten.org/

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 "Between the Bars" is a US based prisoner advocacy initiative.  Its a blog which allows prisoners to write in to the producer on the outside and have posts put up.  I've never seen anything quite like it and think its a terrific idea for someone to take up this side of the border.  This particular blog posts actual images of the hand written letters, an archiac form of written communication of which prisoners have no choice, denied computer access as they are.
The posts on Between the Bars give a really detailed and at times really disturbing  view of life inside.  Check out the post copied below the next paragraph.

About Between the Bars
"Between the Bars is a weblog platform for people in prison, through which the 1% of America which is behind bars can tell their stories. Since people in prison are routinely denied access to the Internet, we enable them to blog by scanning letters. We aim to provide a positive outlet for creativity, a tool to assist in the maintenance of social safety nets, an opportunity to forge connections between people inside and outside of prison, and a means to promote non-criminal identities and personal expression. We hope to improve prisoner's lives, and help to reduce recidivism"
http://betweenthebars.org/ 








 

Prisoner Speaks Out on the "Club Fed" Myth: Live From the House of the Dead: Lounging in hell

Live From the House of the Dead: Lounging in hell

 By I.M GreNada, Special to The Province July 28, 2012

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Surfing+Satanic+Verses+with+locked+down+literati/6897095/story.html#ixzz22E2ac9il

Finally, after a double decade of drag-racing dust mites on the window sill, I’m feeling a bit of breeze blow through the Big House. Like most breezes, this one has as much to do with hot air as cold. Nary has a week passed in the last 20 where some government minion hasn’t graced the audience with a blustering assurance of “inmate accountability.” And while it’s true that most of us in the clink don’t do so well with the six-syllable nouns, general consensus is that this new buzzword has something to do with a change in prison management. Bye-bye, Dr. Phil — hello, Dr. Mengele.
When the Canadian government recently sank spades on the biggest prison-building campaign since the days of Diefenbaker, the press carped loudly. Crime is lower than it’s been in 30 years, they howled. What no one took note of, though, was the role that Canadian correctional policies played in that. Especially since 1992, Canada has been a world leader in results-driven correctional programs, parole practices that reduce incidents of criminal re-offending, and lower rates of prison violence than any of its G8 partners. Whenever a developing nation needed help implementing a prison system focused on public safety, Canada was the first name in the Rolodex. How the correctional service realized this was by adopting one simple principle: Look south. Whatever the U.S. is doing, do the opposite.
While Americans were embracing “three strikes” legislation and mandatory minimum prison sentences, Canada was curbing its bad puppies with conditional sentencing, specialized aboriginal courts and electronic monitoring bracelets. When American jails were bursting at the seams with overcrowding, drugs and gang-related violence, Corrections Canada eliminated double-bunking, implemented successful methadone treatment and urinalysis programs, and redirected the energies of First Nations gang members (the largest piece of the prison-gang pie in Canada) into specialized programs that addressed aboriginal realities. While American prisons teemed with HIV and hepatitis C, Canadian prisons brought in condoms, syringe-bleaching stations and a prison tattoo program regulated by community health professionals. The result? Tens of thousand of ex-cons (the largest demographic of violent criminal offenders in any western society) coming out of prison healthy, drug-free, educated, supported, monitored and enlightened by correctional programs. Ninety per cent of those did not return to criminal activity — or at least not within five years. If all that seems good, then you’ve probably spotted the problem. It was too good.
Compared with some of Canada’s other human rights partners — like Brazil, Russia, India or China — our prisons are pretty plush. Cable TV, basketball courts and an inmate canteen are just the high notes. We also get fed three times a day. There are hot showers, mail and the ever-contentious practice of inmate pay; until recently, we even had library services and access to a daily newspaper. No armed insurrection. No mass prison rapes. If you’ve never slept a night in the crowbar hotel, it might sound like too much hotel and not enough crowbar. Until you sleep here.
A few years back, a con I knew named Mike was struggling with heroin addiction. He would do OK for a few weeks, and then fall. One time, after he’d been on a two-day bender, I went looking for him — just in case. With addiction, you just never know when a guy is ready to say “uncle.”
I found Mike barricaded in his cage — his 18-inch-wide cell window covered with cardboard. His stereo screeched out something called Cannibal Corpse while, like a hunting hyena, his eyes burned at me from the depths of hell. The only thing missing was the smell of rotting meat. I laughed.
“Are you happy, Mikey?”
The answer, while slow in coming, was sure and deliberate. “Nope,” my dope-sick friend said. “But I am f---in’ comfortable.”
For the first 100 years, Canadian prison was just like every other dungeon in the world. Convicts were whipped, worked to death, hung, starved as punishment, segregated in solitary confinement for years on end, and generally treated worse than animals. And why not? Acting like animals is what brought them here. Did they deserve any better? But in the 1970s, after an unprecedented decade of prison violence, Canadians began asking questions. Why so many murdered prison staff, hostage takings, multimillion-dollar riots? What seems to be the problem?
“There is a great deal of irony in the fact that imprisonment — the ultimate product of our system of justice — itself epitomizes injustice.” This was the salient finding of the 1977 Parliamentary Sub-Committee on the Penitentiary System in Canada. It was that committee’s call for reform — a call supported by all political parties — that changed the Canadian penitentiary from a torture chamber into a place where you just might get your act together; a place where you could start to think about how to live life with accountability. It’s a truth that, in their quasi-religious zeal to reintroduce suffering to the house of detention, Canadians have all but forgotten. So I guess it’s time to get comfortable.
- - - - - - -
I.M GreNada is the pen name of a Canadian prisoner who has been serving life for murder since 1994. The people he writes about are real, but their names have been changed. You can read more about him at theincarceratedinkwell.org.

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Surfing+Satanic+Verses+with+locked+down+literati/6897095/story.html#ixzz22E2W9000

Update and Petition on Ron Smith Getting Death Penalty

Once again I am stunned by the penchant of the political right for cruelty and a total lack of empathy.  I simply cannot understand how being a human being oneself, it can be so impossible to feel empathy for another human being, even one who has made the enormous mistakes Ron has.  Ronald has admitted to killing 2 men 30+ years ago.  And if true, it is the most serious of damage one person can do to another and to their respective families.  I'm not sure what the answer is when these circumstances occur, what is an appropriate manner for those responsible to accept responsibility and to make whatever amends possible.  But I feel quite certain about this, 30 years in the hole and then being put to death by the state which writes laws against killing - is wrong.  It just is.  

Sign the Petition to support Ronald and stop his execution.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-ronald-allen-smith/sign.html#se

Are there any people in Canada working on this issue from a community level?  Please leave a comment or send me an email - j-sheryl@hotmail.com

Baird slammed for 'cynical' clemency plea

Double-murderer Ronald Smith asks to be spared death penalty

 By RANDY BOSWELL, Postmedia News January 21, 2012

 Opposition critics and one of Canada's leading opponents of the death penalty are denouncing Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird for sending a brief letter to the Montana parole board in which he appears to only half-heartedly request clemency for convicted killer Ronald Smith, the only Canadian on death row in the United States.
Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International-Canada, described the letter as "deeply disappointing."
The federal NDP's justice critic, Jack Harris, called it a "deplorable" indication of the Conservative government's stance on capital punishment, and Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc said the "weak" and "cynical" letter could effectively sink Smith's bid to avoid death by lethal injection.
In the letter, Baird prefaces his request by noting that the government was ordered to lend its support to Smith by the Federal Court of Canada. He then states that the government "does not sympathize with violent crime" and that Canada's formal request for clemency "should not be construed as reflecting a judgment on Smith's conduct."
The letter from Baird was included this week in Smith's formal application to have his death sentence for killing two Montana men in 1982 commuted to life imprisonment.
The request is expected to prompt an investigation by parole board officials, a formal hearing within the next four months and eventually a non-binding recommendation from the board to Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer on whether Smith deserves to avoid execution.
The 19-page application for clemency - accompanied by two other lengthy and impassioned letters of support for the 54-year-old Smith from a Catholic priest and prison educator - detailed Smith's record as a model inmate at the Montana State Prison, the failure of his first lawyer to accept a 1983 plea bargain that would have spared Smith's life, the abusive childhood Smith suffered growing up in Alberta and his "heartfelt remorse" over the crimes he committed nearly 30 years ago.
"Clearly, a more robust letter conveying detailed and forceful support would be constructive, including laying out the reasons why (in addition to a court order) the government believes Mr. Smith deserves clemency," Neve said.
"There are many such reasons."
Neve acknowledged that having Canada officially "on the record" as backing the clemency bid is "obviously welcome" - even if the Conservative government's support is, at best, lukewarm.
"It's very, very cynical to begin a letter to the Montana parole board by saying 'Look, I don't really want to do this, but I've been forced to,'" said LeBlanc. "If we think it's wrong to impose the death penalty on Canadians in Canada, we should have a consistent application of that principle when foreign jurisdictions are subjecting Canadians to that potential sentence."

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Baird+slammed+cynical+clemency+plea/6030715/story.html#ixzz1khfe2m9C

How Can We in Canada Support Canadian on Death Row

If ever there were a prisoner human rights issue for activists to do some advocacy around, the case of Ron Smith is it.  Ron has spent 30 years in an isolation cell in Montana and is now on death row awaiting his final appeal for clemency.  In a usual show of cruelty the Harper government has dug in its heals at every turn and made every effort to not support Mr. Smith!

If anyone knows of ongoing initiatives  ~ Canadian or American to support Ron, please post in the comments section so others can offer their support as well.

Likewise if anyone with experience or determination has ideas about how to begin some appropriate support for Ron....

Any initiatives should happen in conjunction with his defence counsel and perhaps someone has more skills than I do to track and contact them online.  Any supports need to be well thought out and planned for preferably with others who have experience with death row.

Please take a look at Wikipedia for links to articles on Ron's case.                           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Allen_Smith

               

Application for clemency says death row Canadian Ronald Smith a ‘changed man’

Published On Wed Jan 18 2012

Bill Graveland The Canadian Press

CALGARY—Lawyers for the only Canadian on death row in the United States concede their client committed a “terrible offence” when he murdered two young Montana men 30 years ago, but say he doesn’t deserve to die.
Ronald Smith’s clemency application says he is a changed man who suffered through an abusive childhood.
Smith’s lawyers filed the necessary papers Wednesday with the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole in Deer Lodge, Mont.
Smith, 54, has exhausted all other appeals.
“In the face of the harsh circumstances of being locked down in virtual isolation for 28 years, he has nonetheless made a genuine attempt to live a life that exhibits remorse, rehabilitation, a changed heart and mind and a potential for good,” reads the document prepared by lawyers Greg Jackson and Don Vernay.
“We request that you consider and grant this application and commute Mr. Smith’s sentence from death to life without parole.”
The application is supported by a letter from the Canadian government.
“Mr. Smith is a Canadian citizen and is supported in his petition for executive clemency by the government of Canada, who have shown their support through the letter attached to this petition.”
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper initially balked at supporting Smith’s bid, saying he had been convicted in a democratic country. But the federal court forced the government to act on Smith’s behalf.
Smith, originally from Red Deer, Alta., pleaded guilty to two charges of deliberate homicide and two charges of aggravated kidnapping in February 1983 and requested the death penalty. He rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors which would have given him life in prison.
He later changed his mind and asked the District Court to reconsider the death penalty. That has led to three decades of legal wrangling.
Smith was 24 and taking LSD and drinking when he and two friends met up with Thomas Running Rabbit and Harvey Mad Man Jr. near East Glacier, Mont. Smith and Rodney Munro marched the two men into the woods where Munro stabbed one of the victims and Smith shot both of them.
Munro accepted a plea deal, was eventually transferred to a Canadian prison and has completed his sentence.
Smith’s lawyers say his drug and alcohol use impaired his judgment. They also say he received poor advice from his lawyer at the time.
“As a result of the combination of his guilt over the offences, his virtual isolation in a foreign country without consular assistance, and the deplorable actions of his trial attorney, he instead chose to plead guilty and requested the death penalty,” argue Jackson and Vernay.
“Upon being placed in a less isolated environment, he immediately realized both the foolishness and impulsiveness of his actions and sought ... the original sentence offered by the state of Montana, but the state has adamantly refused to consider his request.”
The document says Smith began drinking as early as age 11 and was the eldest of four children who grew up in a violent and dysfunctional household. His father, an oilfield worker, was gone for long periods of time, which left Smith as the de facto man of the house. When his father would return, the violence would continue.
“Dolores Smith (mother) relates entering the room after Ron was abused by his father and seeing blood spatters on the walls from the beating Ron suffered at the hands of his father,” says the application.
“Ron’s sisters kept their suitcases packed, underneath their beds. They both relate that Ron was their ‘protector and confidant.’“
Smith’s lawyers also note that he had no prior history of violence before his arrest in Montana, has expressed remorse and accepted responsibility and had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse with no treatment.
The board of pardons and parole is likely to schedule a hearing on the application sometime this spring. It will make a recommendation either for or against clemency but the ultimate decision will fall into the hands of Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.