Angela Davis Speaks Out on Prisons
Democracy Now! | 29.12.2006 09:21 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Repression
Human Rights Abuses
Humanitarian Crisis
Scholar and former prisoner Angela Davis was in New Orleans this month to speak out against human rights violations and demand amnesty for those imprisoned during Hurricane Katrina. We hear from her keynote address at the event "Amnesty for Prisoners of Katrina: A Weekend of Reconciliation and Respect for Human Rights."
Former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards has entered the 2008 presidential race -- one day earlier than he intended. On Wednesday, Edwards’ campaign inadvertently posted the news of his candidacy during a test-run on its website. Edwards had intended to make the announcement today during a speech in the 9th Ward district of New Orleans.
Scholar and former prisoner Angela Davis was also in New Orleans recently. Her visit to the city was in recognition of International Human Rights Day. After Hurricane Katrina hit, many in New Orleans were arrested for looting, left to drown in locked jail cells and held past release dates. As many as 85% of defendants in the 3,000 criminal court cases still pending in New Orleans qualify for representation by a public defender. An untold number of them have yet to see a lawyer.
Angela Davis went to New Orleans to speak out against human rights violations and demand amnesty for those imprisoned during Hurricane Katrina. She gave the keynote address at a series of events organized by the prison-abolition group - Critical Resistance. "Amnesty for Prisoners of Katrina: A Weekend of Reconciliation and Respect for Human Rights" - took place in New Orleans earlier this month. In her speech Davis referred to Merlene Maten - a 73-year-old New Orleans grandmother - who spent 16 days in prison for allegedly looting $63 worth of food from a deli a day after Hurricane Katrina hit. Here is an excerpt of Angela Davis’ speech.
Angela Davis. Activist, author and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her most recent books are "Abolition Democracy" and "Are Prisons Obsolete?"
ANGELA DAVIS: I wanted to—I wanted to focus our attention for a minute on three cases, three incidents in this country recently. I’m talking about the shooting of that young brother, Sean Bell in New York on the mother of his wedding. The 50 gunshots that the police admit were shot that day? I am talking about what’s his name Michael Richards. Did you see—did you see, did you all see it? Cause you can actually go on line and you can see it. It was much, much worse than anything I had ever imagined. Okay, I’m not going say anything, because that was really upsetting, and he says, I don’t know where it came. [laughter]
And then there’s another instance I wanted to mention. And that involved, it’s something that happened in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. And it involved a Kenyan writer by the name of N’ Gugi Wa Thiong ’o. Now, I don’t know how many of you have read his work, but he is one of the most revered writers in Africa, on the continent of Africa. He has published -- maybe some of you know his--have heard of his book, Decolonizing the Mind? Okay, that’s N’ Gugi Wa Thiong ’o. He just published a new book which is really great. I'm reading it now, it’s called, Wizard of the Crow.
He’s been on tour with that book and came to San Francisco from Irvine, California, where he’s now teaching. And was staying in a hotel, Hotel Vitali, which is one of those boutique hotels. You know one of those kind of swanky, sort of small hotels. But, Random House was paying for it, right his publishing company. And, so he’s sitting there one morning, reading the newspaper and this employee of the hotel walks over to him and says to him, I am sorry, but only guests are allowed to use this space. Now Gugi is, I think he is—he’s probably about 64 or 65. He may have had a sweatshirt on, you know. But, if a white person had a sweat shirt on, nobody would ever assume that he wasn’t or she wasn’t registered in the hotel. And so Gugi said, he says to the guy, what makes you so certain that I am not a guest at this hotel? And the employer wouldn’t listen to him. And he said he said it again and finally, they had to go over to registration.
And, well now there’s a big campaign and the hotel manager has apologized, this is San Francisco after all. And you know this boycott of the hotel got started really quickly on the internet. And so, the manager is saying he will donate money to anti-racist organizations, and he will do this and he will do that. [laughter] But, the thing is, I spoke to Gugi about this. And he said, I kept asking him what makes you so certain? Because I saw this absolute certainty.
Now, the man didn’t say "you’re black." He didn’t say, you know, black people don’t belong here. He was just certain the he could look at this man and tell that this man didn’t belong there. Just like the cops who shot Sean Bell could look at this young brother and his friends in the club and he could tell that they dealt in drugs, they were criminals, that they deserved to be shot.
VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: They felt threatened.
ANGELA DAVIS: Exactly. So, I want us to think about this certainty. This self certainty as a way in which racism expresses itself. It doesn’t have to be about the fact that the person—or it doesn’t have to be-- there doesn’t have to be anything explicit about the race of the person. It’s just, I know you should not be here. It’s like your sheriff said when Nagin accepted the prisons and hospitals and a couple of other categories from the evacuation order, apparently, at the press conference, the Sheriff, Gusman, was asked to answer the question as to why the prisoners were exempted and he said, we need to -- something to the effect, we need to keep them here because that is where they belong. This is where they belong. They are prisoners, this is where they belong.
So, I want us-- I want us to think about this question of racism and this self certainty. I want us to ask, where--where does racism live today? Where did it reside in the past? And, how do we identify those spaces the are so haunted by racism today? So, we can actually talk about migrations of racism. Cause, you know, we used to be able to understand it. We used to say exactly what was racism, what wasn’t. And now, it’s not that easy. And that is because racism itself changes. It--it moves, it travels, it migrates, it transmutes itself.
Now, when Hurricane Katrina struck, over 6000 human beings were locked up in Orleans Parish Prison. And you know, that this is one of the largest city jails in the country. And, so actually, I have this quote that Sheriff Gusman said. When it was announced by the prisons would not be evacuated he said, we are fully staffed, we are under our emergency operations plan, we’ve been working with the police department, so we are going to keep our prisoners where they belong.
And this is that same certainty, the certainty of racism, the certainty that appears to be colorblind, but is actually where attitudinal racism has migrated. I think we can discover racist attitudes in that certainty. Orleans Parish Prison was where prisoners belonged under any and all circumstances. The belonged out of sight, away from view. As one of the children said who was removed their from the juvenile facility, we were "treated like trash." Sheriff Gusman was saying, basically, prisoners belong in a trash can with the top closed shut.
And so there was this disaster within a disaster. As the ACLU, National Prison Project put it, a disaster that we could not see. A disaster that went unrecognized because few people thought that prisoners deserved to be treated as human beings. Because few people recognized prisoners as having rights, as having human rights. And so prisoners were locked in their cells and the flood waters were rising and there was no way to get them out. There was no clean water, they were forced to drink water with feces floating around in it.
We heard about the horrible conditions at the superdome and at the convention center and they were horrendous. And it’s interesting that both of those places were considered to a certain extent, places of incarceration for a largely black population. But we did not hear about the people being forced to remain in the flooded spaces of the OPP. We did not know that children had been taken there. And, if you look at the ACLU's report called Treated--I think it’s called Treated Like Trash.
VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Abandoned and Abused.
ANGELA DAVIS: Abandoned and Abused. If you look at the ACLU’s—No I’m talking about—I’m not talking about the ACLU. You’re right. That’s the report about OPP. I am thinking about the juvenile -- that was called Treated Like Trash.
And then of course another 700 or so people were arrested during the hurricane, and Merlene Maten was one of them. And then they called Burl Cain, you know I was shocked that he was still the Warden of Angola. You know, cause I saw The Farm that documentary and I read Tom Burgess book, God of the Rodeo. And read about the way in which Burl Cain tried to get him to share the profits from the book with him before he would agree, you know, before he would sign the consent form. Well, anyway, yeah. If any of you know anything about Burl Cain, you know that, well, at least in that documentary, he gave the impression that one of his favorite activities was conducting executions at Angola. But, holding the hands of the people who were being killed in order to usher them on their way to god. I mean, I know some people in Louisiana are -- [laughter] anyway, okay don't let me get started there.
But yeah, Camp greyhound when he came to run the jail that they called camp greyhound because they turned the greyhound bus station into a jail, right. And when I heard about that, I immediately thought about Guantanamo. I immediately thought about camp x-ray in Guantanamo. It seems that the authorities here were more concerned with questions about confinement and control, and law and order, and with security in the negative sense; more attention was devoted to possible breaches of the law than to anything else. And, in this sense, you might say that what we saw during Katrina was a local manifestation of the military practices and policies guiding the bush administration's approach to Iraq. [applause]
And to the whole so-called War on Terror. Just as anyone who looks Arab or Middle Eastern or who was known to practice Islam is a potential terrorist? A potential enemy combatant? You know, think of all the people who are still locked up in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and all these prisons all over the world because they are suspected of being enemy combatants. Just as Merlene Maten, was suspected of being a looter, because she is black and—
-break-
ANGELA DAVIS: When you think about the fact that the sheriff would not even consider the possibility of evacuating the prisoners before Katrina hit land, it was the same kind of racist certainty. He, when he was confronted with accounts of prisoners of the OPP, Gusman denied their claims altogether, and he said that you don’t, and I’m quoting, "rely on crackheads, cowards, and criminals to say with the story is". It was the same kind of racist certainty. He didn’t say black crackheads. [laughter] He didn’t say black cowards, he didn’t say black criminals, but each one of those words is a carrier of racism. And so, it seems to me, that it might be important for us to think about how the prison industrial complex contributes to and nourishes itself from and lives on racism.
Now, I was asked to talk a little bit about the prison industrial complex, but you know--you know what the prison industrial complex is, don't you? You do, don't you? I mean, it is not just all of those prisons that we see all over the country, jails and prisons. It’s all of the connections. Right? It’s the connections that we begin to see in the 1980's, when the social programs begin to be dismantled and when globalization of capital begins its ascent. And so capital money, instead of being focused on the needs of people increasingly goes into profitable areas. And, so there’s no resources for health care, there’s no resources for housing subsidies, so then what happens is that these huge surpluses of—of—of populations who have no place any more, because there are no jobs for them. A lot of the factories have gone abroad, gone to the global south. And so people have no way to make a living. And so, I mean, it is not as if there was a conspiracy, but it was a kind of systematic conspiracy without people actually deciding this is what was going to happen.
And so, the idea is to build more and more prisons to serve as receptacles for those people who no longer have a place because there is no longer jobs for them, there’s no longer education for them, there’s no longer welfare for them, there’s no longer health care for them.
This begins in the 1980's. The industrialization process, right? And we see it happening right now in the global south. We see it happening in Africa. We see it happening in Latin America. You can go to countries where the poverty is so extreme because the IMF or the world bank has decided you get a loan only if you can put it into a profitable sector. Not if you want to use the money for schools, or not if you want to use the money for housing. And so what happens is that there are increasing numbers of people and countries in Africa, in Latin America and in Asia who have become, or who are considered to be garbage now. There is no place for them.
And so, they're building prisons all over. And in some countries, you see abject poverty. And against the backdrop of that abject poverty, you see the shiniest new prison using the most advanced and most sophisticated new technology. Now, something is wrong, something is seriously wrong. And it seems to me that we can see those contradictions right here in New Orleans.
And perhaps you’ve heard about the connection the people often make between the prison industrial complex and slavery? Right? You know about the 13th amendment, right? We all talk about the institution of the prison being haunted by slavery. Actually, I have heard a lot of talk about ghosts in New Orleans since I have been here. Apparently, the hotel where we are staying is haunted? But, I really believe in ghosts. I do. But I believe in the ghosts of history and I don’t know if we recognize those ghosts. I see that OPP, and Angola, and CYC, or YSC are haunted by slavery. Anybody who has seen the film The Farm cannot help making those connections. But, there is something about the ghosts of slavery that I want to talk about this evening, especially as a way of understanding why black people are so easily labeled criminals, so easily identified with--as the threat to law and order.
Now, we know that the 13th amendment abolished slavery. Right? At least that’s what they say. I just can’t believe, that we believed it. Like, one little statement in the Constitu--an amendment is going to abolish this huge, complicated institution. And the 13th amendment doesn’t even tell us what slavery is. So it doesn’t even say what it abolished. It just says slavery and involuntary servitude. But slavery was a lot more than involuntary or coercive labor. You know, what are they talking about? Abolishing slavery as being based on human property or being based on--on social death? Or being based on racism? Cause the racism is definitely still here.
And the vestiges of slavery are definitely still here, but there is one vestige especially I think we should be aware of this evening. And that is the extent to which black people, even though we assume that slaves were not recognized as legal personalities, were not recognized by the law. Because you know, slaves could never file suit, or could never testify against anyone. But, there were ways in which every single slave was recognized as legally accountable and that is when a slave committed a crime. Now, if property commits a crime -- [laughter] do you see what I am saying? It can’t be morally accountable, it can’t be legally accountable. And the fact that there was so many different punishments, punishments for black people who were slaves that were far more severe than for white people who had committed to the same crimes.
So, if you look at that accountability, that has always been there. And you look at the fact that there are more black people in prison than any other group of people in this country, it seems like somehow or another, we have allowed ourselves to believe that--that there was a due process there. And there are reasons why they're so many people in prison. But it seems to me, that --when black people became recognized as full citizens, or recognized as having standing before the law, it is the same standing that we already had during slavery and that is that kind of negative standing, the standing of guilt, the ability to be found guilty.
And so now racism expresses itself under the sign of equality. Under the sign of due process. The negative affirmation of a legal personality of black people continues to hold sway today. And the proof of the participation of black people in US democracy is precisely the fact that they have received due process before being sentenced in such disproportionate numbers to prison. But the prison is the negative side of democratic freedom. Just as slavery -- slavery used to furnish the evidence of freedom to people who weren’t slaves.
Slavery was a way of letting people know who weren’t slaves that they were free. Right? And in a lot of ways, that--that was the only way they knew they were free, that they weren’t slaves. Now, the prison does the same thing. We know that we are free because we are not behind bars. And besides, imprisonment has become so profitable. But I think I need to end now, because I think I'm still on California time and I'm going over a little bit the time that was allotted me.
Let me conclude by saying that we want amnesty for all the prisoners of Katrina. [applause] We want amnesty, we want amnesty for everybody who is doing Katrina time, for everybody who is doing Katrina time. We want all municipal state and federal records of prisoners of Katrina expunged. These records should also be expunged from credit and employment agencies, no one should be tried, sentenced, fined, imprisoned, jailed, detained, involuntarily relocated or deported. We call for amnesty to challenge how the prison industrial complex is used in times of disaster, while structural disasters like racism and poverty continue to be ignored.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/1450208
Conflict in Somalia: Islamic Courts Abandon Mogadishu as UN Warns of Humanitarian Crisis
Hundreds of people are feared dead as fighting between Ethiopian forces backing Somalia’s government and militias loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts intensifies. Islamic fighters have abandoned their stronghold in the capital Mogadishu as the UN is warning of an impending humanitarian crisis. Who are the key players in this conflict? What is the US role? We host a roundtable discussion with three Somalia experts.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/1450201
Former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards has entered the 2008 presidential race -- one day earlier than he intended. On Wednesday, Edwards’ campaign inadvertently posted the news of his candidacy during a test-run on its website. Edwards had intended to make the announcement today during a speech in the 9th Ward district of New Orleans.
Scholar and former prisoner Angela Davis was also in New Orleans recently. Her visit to the city was in recognition of International Human Rights Day. After Hurricane Katrina hit, many in New Orleans were arrested for looting, left to drown in locked jail cells and held past release dates. As many as 85% of defendants in the 3,000 criminal court cases still pending in New Orleans qualify for representation by a public defender. An untold number of them have yet to see a lawyer.
Angela Davis went to New Orleans to speak out against human rights violations and demand amnesty for those imprisoned during Hurricane Katrina. She gave the keynote address at a series of events organized by the prison-abolition group - Critical Resistance. "Amnesty for Prisoners of Katrina: A Weekend of Reconciliation and Respect for Human Rights" - took place in New Orleans earlier this month. In her speech Davis referred to Merlene Maten - a 73-year-old New Orleans grandmother - who spent 16 days in prison for allegedly looting $63 worth of food from a deli a day after Hurricane Katrina hit. Here is an excerpt of Angela Davis’ speech.
Angela Davis. Activist, author and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her most recent books are "Abolition Democracy" and "Are Prisons Obsolete?"
ANGELA DAVIS: I wanted to—I wanted to focus our attention for a minute on three cases, three incidents in this country recently. I’m talking about the shooting of that young brother, Sean Bell in New York on the mother of his wedding. The 50 gunshots that the police admit were shot that day? I am talking about what’s his name Michael Richards. Did you see—did you see, did you all see it? Cause you can actually go on line and you can see it. It was much, much worse than anything I had ever imagined. Okay, I’m not going say anything, because that was really upsetting, and he says, I don’t know where it came. [laughter]
And then there’s another instance I wanted to mention. And that involved, it’s something that happened in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. And it involved a Kenyan writer by the name of N’ Gugi Wa Thiong ’o. Now, I don’t know how many of you have read his work, but he is one of the most revered writers in Africa, on the continent of Africa. He has published -- maybe some of you know his--have heard of his book, Decolonizing the Mind? Okay, that’s N’ Gugi Wa Thiong ’o. He just published a new book which is really great. I'm reading it now, it’s called, Wizard of the Crow.
He’s been on tour with that book and came to San Francisco from Irvine, California, where he’s now teaching. And was staying in a hotel, Hotel Vitali, which is one of those boutique hotels. You know one of those kind of swanky, sort of small hotels. But, Random House was paying for it, right his publishing company. And, so he’s sitting there one morning, reading the newspaper and this employee of the hotel walks over to him and says to him, I am sorry, but only guests are allowed to use this space. Now Gugi is, I think he is—he’s probably about 64 or 65. He may have had a sweatshirt on, you know. But, if a white person had a sweat shirt on, nobody would ever assume that he wasn’t or she wasn’t registered in the hotel. And so Gugi said, he says to the guy, what makes you so certain that I am not a guest at this hotel? And the employer wouldn’t listen to him. And he said he said it again and finally, they had to go over to registration.
And, well now there’s a big campaign and the hotel manager has apologized, this is San Francisco after all. And you know this boycott of the hotel got started really quickly on the internet. And so, the manager is saying he will donate money to anti-racist organizations, and he will do this and he will do that. [laughter] But, the thing is, I spoke to Gugi about this. And he said, I kept asking him what makes you so certain? Because I saw this absolute certainty.
Now, the man didn’t say "you’re black." He didn’t say, you know, black people don’t belong here. He was just certain the he could look at this man and tell that this man didn’t belong there. Just like the cops who shot Sean Bell could look at this young brother and his friends in the club and he could tell that they dealt in drugs, they were criminals, that they deserved to be shot.
VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: They felt threatened.
ANGELA DAVIS: Exactly. So, I want us to think about this certainty. This self certainty as a way in which racism expresses itself. It doesn’t have to be about the fact that the person—or it doesn’t have to be-- there doesn’t have to be anything explicit about the race of the person. It’s just, I know you should not be here. It’s like your sheriff said when Nagin accepted the prisons and hospitals and a couple of other categories from the evacuation order, apparently, at the press conference, the Sheriff, Gusman, was asked to answer the question as to why the prisoners were exempted and he said, we need to -- something to the effect, we need to keep them here because that is where they belong. This is where they belong. They are prisoners, this is where they belong.
So, I want us-- I want us to think about this question of racism and this self certainty. I want us to ask, where--where does racism live today? Where did it reside in the past? And, how do we identify those spaces the are so haunted by racism today? So, we can actually talk about migrations of racism. Cause, you know, we used to be able to understand it. We used to say exactly what was racism, what wasn’t. And now, it’s not that easy. And that is because racism itself changes. It--it moves, it travels, it migrates, it transmutes itself.
Now, when Hurricane Katrina struck, over 6000 human beings were locked up in Orleans Parish Prison. And you know, that this is one of the largest city jails in the country. And, so actually, I have this quote that Sheriff Gusman said. When it was announced by the prisons would not be evacuated he said, we are fully staffed, we are under our emergency operations plan, we’ve been working with the police department, so we are going to keep our prisoners where they belong.
And this is that same certainty, the certainty of racism, the certainty that appears to be colorblind, but is actually where attitudinal racism has migrated. I think we can discover racist attitudes in that certainty. Orleans Parish Prison was where prisoners belonged under any and all circumstances. The belonged out of sight, away from view. As one of the children said who was removed their from the juvenile facility, we were "treated like trash." Sheriff Gusman was saying, basically, prisoners belong in a trash can with the top closed shut.
And so there was this disaster within a disaster. As the ACLU, National Prison Project put it, a disaster that we could not see. A disaster that went unrecognized because few people thought that prisoners deserved to be treated as human beings. Because few people recognized prisoners as having rights, as having human rights. And so prisoners were locked in their cells and the flood waters were rising and there was no way to get them out. There was no clean water, they were forced to drink water with feces floating around in it.
We heard about the horrible conditions at the superdome and at the convention center and they were horrendous. And it’s interesting that both of those places were considered to a certain extent, places of incarceration for a largely black population. But we did not hear about the people being forced to remain in the flooded spaces of the OPP. We did not know that children had been taken there. And, if you look at the ACLU's report called Treated--I think it’s called Treated Like Trash.
VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: Abandoned and Abused.
ANGELA DAVIS: Abandoned and Abused. If you look at the ACLU’s—No I’m talking about—I’m not talking about the ACLU. You’re right. That’s the report about OPP. I am thinking about the juvenile -- that was called Treated Like Trash.
And then of course another 700 or so people were arrested during the hurricane, and Merlene Maten was one of them. And then they called Burl Cain, you know I was shocked that he was still the Warden of Angola. You know, cause I saw The Farm that documentary and I read Tom Burgess book, God of the Rodeo. And read about the way in which Burl Cain tried to get him to share the profits from the book with him before he would agree, you know, before he would sign the consent form. Well, anyway, yeah. If any of you know anything about Burl Cain, you know that, well, at least in that documentary, he gave the impression that one of his favorite activities was conducting executions at Angola. But, holding the hands of the people who were being killed in order to usher them on their way to god. I mean, I know some people in Louisiana are -- [laughter] anyway, okay don't let me get started there.
But yeah, Camp greyhound when he came to run the jail that they called camp greyhound because they turned the greyhound bus station into a jail, right. And when I heard about that, I immediately thought about Guantanamo. I immediately thought about camp x-ray in Guantanamo. It seems that the authorities here were more concerned with questions about confinement and control, and law and order, and with security in the negative sense; more attention was devoted to possible breaches of the law than to anything else. And, in this sense, you might say that what we saw during Katrina was a local manifestation of the military practices and policies guiding the bush administration's approach to Iraq. [applause]
And to the whole so-called War on Terror. Just as anyone who looks Arab or Middle Eastern or who was known to practice Islam is a potential terrorist? A potential enemy combatant? You know, think of all the people who are still locked up in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and all these prisons all over the world because they are suspected of being enemy combatants. Just as Merlene Maten, was suspected of being a looter, because she is black and—
-break-
ANGELA DAVIS: When you think about the fact that the sheriff would not even consider the possibility of evacuating the prisoners before Katrina hit land, it was the same kind of racist certainty. He, when he was confronted with accounts of prisoners of the OPP, Gusman denied their claims altogether, and he said that you don’t, and I’m quoting, "rely on crackheads, cowards, and criminals to say with the story is". It was the same kind of racist certainty. He didn’t say black crackheads. [laughter] He didn’t say black cowards, he didn’t say black criminals, but each one of those words is a carrier of racism. And so, it seems to me, that it might be important for us to think about how the prison industrial complex contributes to and nourishes itself from and lives on racism.
Now, I was asked to talk a little bit about the prison industrial complex, but you know--you know what the prison industrial complex is, don't you? You do, don't you? I mean, it is not just all of those prisons that we see all over the country, jails and prisons. It’s all of the connections. Right? It’s the connections that we begin to see in the 1980's, when the social programs begin to be dismantled and when globalization of capital begins its ascent. And so capital money, instead of being focused on the needs of people increasingly goes into profitable areas. And, so there’s no resources for health care, there’s no resources for housing subsidies, so then what happens is that these huge surpluses of—of—of populations who have no place any more, because there are no jobs for them. A lot of the factories have gone abroad, gone to the global south. And so people have no way to make a living. And so, I mean, it is not as if there was a conspiracy, but it was a kind of systematic conspiracy without people actually deciding this is what was going to happen.
And so, the idea is to build more and more prisons to serve as receptacles for those people who no longer have a place because there is no longer jobs for them, there’s no longer education for them, there’s no longer welfare for them, there’s no longer health care for them.
This begins in the 1980's. The industrialization process, right? And we see it happening right now in the global south. We see it happening in Africa. We see it happening in Latin America. You can go to countries where the poverty is so extreme because the IMF or the world bank has decided you get a loan only if you can put it into a profitable sector. Not if you want to use the money for schools, or not if you want to use the money for housing. And so what happens is that there are increasing numbers of people and countries in Africa, in Latin America and in Asia who have become, or who are considered to be garbage now. There is no place for them.
And so, they're building prisons all over. And in some countries, you see abject poverty. And against the backdrop of that abject poverty, you see the shiniest new prison using the most advanced and most sophisticated new technology. Now, something is wrong, something is seriously wrong. And it seems to me that we can see those contradictions right here in New Orleans.
And perhaps you’ve heard about the connection the people often make between the prison industrial complex and slavery? Right? You know about the 13th amendment, right? We all talk about the institution of the prison being haunted by slavery. Actually, I have heard a lot of talk about ghosts in New Orleans since I have been here. Apparently, the hotel where we are staying is haunted? But, I really believe in ghosts. I do. But I believe in the ghosts of history and I don’t know if we recognize those ghosts. I see that OPP, and Angola, and CYC, or YSC are haunted by slavery. Anybody who has seen the film The Farm cannot help making those connections. But, there is something about the ghosts of slavery that I want to talk about this evening, especially as a way of understanding why black people are so easily labeled criminals, so easily identified with--as the threat to law and order.
Now, we know that the 13th amendment abolished slavery. Right? At least that’s what they say. I just can’t believe, that we believed it. Like, one little statement in the Constitu--an amendment is going to abolish this huge, complicated institution. And the 13th amendment doesn’t even tell us what slavery is. So it doesn’t even say what it abolished. It just says slavery and involuntary servitude. But slavery was a lot more than involuntary or coercive labor. You know, what are they talking about? Abolishing slavery as being based on human property or being based on--on social death? Or being based on racism? Cause the racism is definitely still here.
And the vestiges of slavery are definitely still here, but there is one vestige especially I think we should be aware of this evening. And that is the extent to which black people, even though we assume that slaves were not recognized as legal personalities, were not recognized by the law. Because you know, slaves could never file suit, or could never testify against anyone. But, there were ways in which every single slave was recognized as legally accountable and that is when a slave committed a crime. Now, if property commits a crime -- [laughter] do you see what I am saying? It can’t be morally accountable, it can’t be legally accountable. And the fact that there was so many different punishments, punishments for black people who were slaves that were far more severe than for white people who had committed to the same crimes.
So, if you look at that accountability, that has always been there. And you look at the fact that there are more black people in prison than any other group of people in this country, it seems like somehow or another, we have allowed ourselves to believe that--that there was a due process there. And there are reasons why they're so many people in prison. But it seems to me, that --when black people became recognized as full citizens, or recognized as having standing before the law, it is the same standing that we already had during slavery and that is that kind of negative standing, the standing of guilt, the ability to be found guilty.
And so now racism expresses itself under the sign of equality. Under the sign of due process. The negative affirmation of a legal personality of black people continues to hold sway today. And the proof of the participation of black people in US democracy is precisely the fact that they have received due process before being sentenced in such disproportionate numbers to prison. But the prison is the negative side of democratic freedom. Just as slavery -- slavery used to furnish the evidence of freedom to people who weren’t slaves.
Slavery was a way of letting people know who weren’t slaves that they were free. Right? And in a lot of ways, that--that was the only way they knew they were free, that they weren’t slaves. Now, the prison does the same thing. We know that we are free because we are not behind bars. And besides, imprisonment has become so profitable. But I think I need to end now, because I think I'm still on California time and I'm going over a little bit the time that was allotted me.
Let me conclude by saying that we want amnesty for all the prisoners of Katrina. [applause] We want amnesty, we want amnesty for everybody who is doing Katrina time, for everybody who is doing Katrina time. We want all municipal state and federal records of prisoners of Katrina expunged. These records should also be expunged from credit and employment agencies, no one should be tried, sentenced, fined, imprisoned, jailed, detained, involuntarily relocated or deported. We call for amnesty to challenge how the prison industrial complex is used in times of disaster, while structural disasters like racism and poverty continue to be ignored.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/1450208 Conflict in Somalia: Islamic Courts Abandon Mogadishu as UN Warns of Humanitarian Crisis
Hundreds of people are feared dead as fighting between Ethiopian forces backing Somalia’s government and militias loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts intensifies. Islamic fighters have abandoned their stronghold in the capital Mogadishu as the UN is warning of an impending humanitarian crisis. Who are the key players in this conflict? What is the US role? We host a roundtable discussion with three Somalia experts.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/1450201
Democracy Now!
Additions
Race, Prison and Politics in Australia
02.01.2007 00:27
The following article by Angela Davis raises fundamental issues in relation to current trends in imprisonment in Australia. These insights need however to be placed within the context of the specific relationship which exists between Indigenous people and the criminal justice system in Australia. Davis draws our attention to the racialized assumptions about criminality prevalent in the US. In the Australian context, racialized assumptions about Aboriginal inferiority have been fundamental to the way Indigenous people have been treated by the colonial state: from the denial of Indigenous sovereignty, to imprisonment on reserves and the stealing of children, to current criminal law and practice which undermines Aboriginal governance and rights to self-determination. In contemporary Australia, racialization has enabled the massive criminalisation and imprisonment of Indigenous people throughout the country.
Prison privatization is a major issue in Australia too, as demonstrated by the announcement in early 1999 that the US Corrections Corporation Wackenhut is to build a new prison in Western Australia. Yet we should not ignore the fact that public prison construction also goes on unabated. In June 1999, it was announced that two new public prisons in New South Wales are to be constructed.
We should however note that there is no necessary direct correlation in Australia between States with high levels of Aboriginal imprisonment and high levels of privatization – yet. Victoria, for instance, has the highest level of privatization, but a relatively low rate of Indigenous imprisonment compared to Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.
Prison numbers are influenced by both penal and sentencing policy, and particular sentencing policies can have foreseeable discriminatory impacts on political and racial minorities. We can accurately predict that the type of mandatory imprisonment legislation introduced in the Northern Territory[1] will disproportionately impact on Aboriginal people because they are more likely to have a previous record and are more likely to be arrested for the types of offences defined in the legislation (such as property damage). Interestingly, fraud was excluded in the Northern Territory as a property crime punishable by mandatory imprisonment.
The move towards mandatory sentencing in Australia has been mild compared to the types of mandatory sentences imposed in the USA for drug offences and other ‘three-strike’ classified offences. Yet the movement towards this type of sentencing is gathering speed here at the very time that it is being questioned in the US because of its extraordinarily unjust and racist outcomes.[2]
Over the last decade in Australia we have seen a seemingly inexorable rise in the number of Indigenous people in prison.[3] Imprisonment rates for non-Aboriginal people have increased as well – but not nearly so rapidly. We have also witnessed further penetration of international corporations into the economies of the Australian prison.[4] Although Victoria stands as an example of a highly privatised jurisdiction (with nearly half of its inmates in private facilities), we have still not gone as far down the road as the US in terms of integrating the prison system into the broader capitalist economy. Nor have we embarked on the same level of punitive sentencing policies. But the signs are there for anyone who cares to see.
Chris Cunneen is Director of the Institute of Criminology at the Sydney University Law School.
Prison privatization is a major issue in Australia too, as demonstrated by the announcement in early 1999 that the US Corrections Corporation Wackenhut is to build a new prison in Western Australia. Yet we should not ignore the fact that public prison construction also goes on unabated. In June 1999, it was announced that two new public prisons in New South Wales are to be constructed.
We should however note that there is no necessary direct correlation in Australia between States with high levels of Aboriginal imprisonment and high levels of privatization – yet. Victoria, for instance, has the highest level of privatization, but a relatively low rate of Indigenous imprisonment compared to Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.
Prison numbers are influenced by both penal and sentencing policy, and particular sentencing policies can have foreseeable discriminatory impacts on political and racial minorities. We can accurately predict that the type of mandatory imprisonment legislation introduced in the Northern Territory[1] will disproportionately impact on Aboriginal people because they are more likely to have a previous record and are more likely to be arrested for the types of offences defined in the legislation (such as property damage). Interestingly, fraud was excluded in the Northern Territory as a property crime punishable by mandatory imprisonment.
The move towards mandatory sentencing in Australia has been mild compared to the types of mandatory sentences imposed in the USA for drug offences and other ‘three-strike’ classified offences. Yet the movement towards this type of sentencing is gathering speed here at the very time that it is being questioned in the US because of its extraordinarily unjust and racist outcomes.[2]
Over the last decade in Australia we have seen a seemingly inexorable rise in the number of Indigenous people in prison.[3] Imprisonment rates for non-Aboriginal people have increased as well – but not nearly so rapidly. We have also witnessed further penetration of international corporations into the economies of the Australian prison.[4] Although Victoria stands as an example of a highly privatised jurisdiction (with nearly half of its inmates in private facilities), we have still not gone as far down the road as the US in terms of integrating the prison system into the broader capitalist economy. Nor have we embarked on the same level of punitive sentencing policies. But the signs are there for anyone who cares to see.
Chris Cunneen is Director of the Institute of Criminology at the Sydney University Law School.
Chris Cunneen
Masked Racism:
02.01.2007 00:29
Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort for far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems are often veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category 'crime' and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.
Prisons thus perform a feat of magic. Or rather the people who continually vote in new prison proposals and tacitly assent to a proliferating network of prisons and jails have been tricked into believing in the magic of imprisonment. But prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business.
The seeming effortlessness of magic always conceals an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. When prisons disappear human beings in order to convey the illusion of solving social problems, penal infrastructures must be created to accommodate a rapidly swelling population of caged people. Goods and services must be provided to keep imprisoned populations alive. Sometimes these populations must be kept busy and at other times - particularly in repressive super-maximum prisons and in Immigration and Naturalisation Service detention centers - they must be deprived of virtually all meaningful activity. Vast numbers of handcuffed and shackled people are moved across state borders as they are transferred from one state or federal prison to another.
All this work, which used to be the primary province of government, is now also performed by private corporations, whose links to government in the field of what is euphemistically called 'corrections' resonate dangerously with the military industrial complex. The dividends that accrue from investment in the punishment industry, like those that accrue from investment in weapons production, only amount to social destruction. Taking into account the structural similarities and profitability of business-government linkages in the realms of military production and public punishment, the expanding penal system can now be characterized as a 'prison industrial complex.'
The Colour of Imprisonment
Almost two million people are currently locked up in the immense network of US prisons and jails. More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color. It is rarely acknowledged that the fastest growing group of prisoners are black women and that Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita. Approximately five million people-including those on probation and parole-are directly under the surveillance of the criminal justice system.
Three decades ago, the imprisoned population was approximately one-eighth its current size. While women still constitute a relatively small percentage of people behind bars, today the number of incarcerated women in California alone is almost twice what the nationwide women's prison population was in 1970. According to Elliott Currie:
[t]he prison has become a looming presence in our society to an extent unparalleled in our history-or that of any other industrial democracy. Short of major wars, mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social program of our time.
To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality - such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children - and on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Colored bodies constitute the main human raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the major social problems of our time. Once the aura of magic is stripped away from the imprisonment solution, what is revealed is racism, class bias, and the parasitic seduction of capitalist profit. The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners.
As prisons take up more and more space on the social landscape, other government programs that have previously sought to respond to social needs - such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families - are being squeezed out of existence. The deterioration of public education, including prioritizing discipline and security over learning in public schools located in poor communities, is directly related to the prison 'solution.'
Profiting from Prisoners
As prisons proliferate in US society, private capital has become enmeshed in the punishment industry. And precisely because of their profit potential, prisons are becoming increasingly important to the US economy. If the notion of punishment as a source of potentially stupendous profits is disturbing by itself, then the strategic dependence on racist structures and ideologies to render mass punishment palatable and profitable is even more troubling.
Prison privatization is the most obvious instance of capital's current movement toward the prison industry. Government-run prisons are often in gross violation of international human rights standards. However, private prisons are even less accountable than governments ones. In March 1999, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest US private prison company, claimed 54,944 beds in 68 facilities under contract or development in the US, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Following the global trend of subjecting more women to public punishment, CCA recently opened a women's prison outside Melbourne. The company recently identified California as its 'new frontier.'
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC), the second largest US prison company, claimed contracts and awards to manage 46 facilities in North America, UK, and Australia. It boasts a total of 30,424 beds as well as contracts for prisoner health care services, transportation, and security. The stocks of both CCA and WCC have done extremely well recently. Between 1996 and 1997, CCA's revenues increased by 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million. Its net profit grew from $30.9 million to $53.9 million. WCC raised its revenues from $138 million in 1996 to $210 million in 1997. Unlike public correctional facilities, the vast profits of these private facilities rely on the employment of non-union labor.
The Prison Industrial Complex
But private prison companies are only the most visible component of the increasing corporatization of punishment. Government contracts to build prisons have bolstered the construction industry. The architectural community has identified prison design as a major new niche. Technology developed for the military by companies like Westinghouse are being marketed for use in law enforcement and punishment.
Moreover, corporations that appear to be far removed from the business of punishment are intimately involved in the expansion of the prison industrial complex. Prison construction bonds are one of the many sources of profitable investment for leading financiers such as Merrill Lynch. One American telecommunications company charges prisoners and their families outrageous prices for the precious telephone calls which are often the only contact prisoners have with the free world.
Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor power can be as profitable as third world labor power exploited by US -based global corporations. Both relegate formerly unionized workers to joblessness and many even wind up in prison. Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as 'Prison Blues,' as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is 'made on the inside to be worn on the outside.' Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.
'For private business,' write Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans (a political prisoner inside the Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin, California) 'prison labor is like a pot of gold'. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers' compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie -all at a fraction of the cost of 'free labor.'
Devouring the Social Wealth
Although prison labor - which ultimately is compensated at a rate far below the minimum wage - is hugely profitable for the private companies that use it, the penal system as a whole does not produce wealth. It devours the social wealth that could be used to subsidize housing for the homeless, to ameliorate public education for poor and racially marginalized communities, to open free drug rehabilitation programs for people who wish to kick their habits, to create a national health care system, to expand programs to combat HIV, to eradicate domestic abuse, and in the process, to create well-paying jobs for the unemployed.
Since 1984, more than twenty new prisons have opened in California, while only one new campus was added to the California State University system and none to the University of California system. In 1996-97, higher education received only 8.7 percent of the State's General Fund while corrections received 9.6 percent. Now that affirmative action has been declared illegal in California, it is obvious that education is increasingly reserved for certain people, while prisons are reserved for others. Five times as many black men are presently in prison as in four year colleges and universities. This new segregation has dangerous implications for the entire country.
By segregating people labeled as criminals, prison simultaneously fortifies and conceals the structural racism of the US economy. Claims of low unemployment rates-even in black communities-make sense only if one assumes that the vast numbers of people in prison have really disappeared and thus have no legitimate claims to jobs. The numbers of black and Latino men currently incarcerated amount to two percent of the male labor force. According to criminologist David Downes:
[t]reating incarceration as a type of hidden unemployment may raise the jobless rate for men by about one-third, to 8 percent. The effect on the black labor force is greater still, raising the [black] male unemployment rate from 11 percent to 19 percent.
Hidden Agenda
Mass incarceration is not a solution to unemployment, nor is it a solution to the vast array of social problems that are hidden away in a rapidly growing network of prisons and jails. However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work. Racism has undermined our ability to create a popular critical discourse to contest the ideological trickery that posits imprisonment as key to public safety. The focus of state policy is rapidly shifting from social welfare to social control.
Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian youth are portrayed as the purveyors of violence, traffickers of drugs, and as envious of commodities that they have no right to possess. Young black and Latina women are represented as sexually promiscuous and as indiscriminately propagating babies and poverty. Criminality and deviance are racialized. Surveillance is thus focused on communities of color, immigrants, the unemployed, the under-educated, the homeless, and in general on those who have a diminishing claim to social resources. Their claim of social resources continues to diminish in large part because law enforcement and penal measures increasingly devour these resources. The prison industrial complex has thus
created a vicious cycle of punishment which only further impoverishes those whose impoverishment is supposedly 'solved' by imprisonment.
Therefore, as the emphasis of government policy shifts from social welfare to crime control, racism sinks more deeply into the economic and ideological structures of US society. Meanwhile, conservative crusaders against affirmative action and bilingual education proclaim the end of racism, while their opponents suggest that racism's remnants can be dispelled through dialogue and conversation. But conversations about 'race relations' will hardly dismantle a prison industrial complex that thrives on and nourishes the racism hidden within the deep structures of our society.
The emergence of a US prison industrial complex within a context of cascading conservatism marks a new historical moment, whose dangers are unprecedented. But so are its opportunities. Considering the impressive number of grassroots projects that continue to resist the expansion of the punishment industry, it ought to be possible to bring these efforts together to create radical and nationally visible movements that can legitimize anti-capitalist critiques of the prison industrial complex. It ought to be possible to build movements in defense of prisoners' human rights and movements that persuasively argue that what we need is not new prisons, but new health care, housing, education, drug programs, jobs, and education. To safeguard a democratic future, it is possible and necessary to weave together the many and increasing strands of resistance to the prison industrial complex into a powerful movement for social transformation.
Angela Davis is Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California and is also a former political prisoner and long-time prison activist. She visited Australia for the first time in May last year as a guest of the Sydney Writers Festival. On her trip, she also visited Mulawa Women' Detention Centre in Sydney and met a group of Indigenous women active in prison reform. She is currently working on a history of the penal system which will also discuss prisons in Australia.(see (1999) 4 (21) ILB 31. Angela Davis' article is reprinted from the US magazine Colorlines.
[1] National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Bringing Them Home (1997) 528. Cf also George Zdenkowski, 'Mandatory Imprisonment of Property Offenders in the Northern Territory', (1998) 4 (17) ILB 15; 'New Challenge to NT Mandatory Sentencing' (1999) 4 (18) ILB 16; C Thomson, 'Preventing Crime or "Warehousing" the Underprivileged? Mandatory Sentencing in the Northern Territory', (1999) 4 (26) ILB 4.
[2] M Tonry, Malign Neglect (1995).
[3] C Cunneen and D McDonald, Keeping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People Out of Custody (1997) especially Chapter 2.
[4] See the special issue on prisons and privatization in Australia in (1999) 11 (2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice.
www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/2000/113.html
Imprisonment has become the response of first resort for far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems are often veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category 'crime' and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.
Prisons thus perform a feat of magic. Or rather the people who continually vote in new prison proposals and tacitly assent to a proliferating network of prisons and jails have been tricked into believing in the magic of imprisonment. But prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business.
The seeming effortlessness of magic always conceals an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. When prisons disappear human beings in order to convey the illusion of solving social problems, penal infrastructures must be created to accommodate a rapidly swelling population of caged people. Goods and services must be provided to keep imprisoned populations alive. Sometimes these populations must be kept busy and at other times - particularly in repressive super-maximum prisons and in Immigration and Naturalisation Service detention centers - they must be deprived of virtually all meaningful activity. Vast numbers of handcuffed and shackled people are moved across state borders as they are transferred from one state or federal prison to another.
All this work, which used to be the primary province of government, is now also performed by private corporations, whose links to government in the field of what is euphemistically called 'corrections' resonate dangerously with the military industrial complex. The dividends that accrue from investment in the punishment industry, like those that accrue from investment in weapons production, only amount to social destruction. Taking into account the structural similarities and profitability of business-government linkages in the realms of military production and public punishment, the expanding penal system can now be characterized as a 'prison industrial complex.'
The Colour of Imprisonment
Almost two million people are currently locked up in the immense network of US prisons and jails. More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color. It is rarely acknowledged that the fastest growing group of prisoners are black women and that Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita. Approximately five million people-including those on probation and parole-are directly under the surveillance of the criminal justice system.
Three decades ago, the imprisoned population was approximately one-eighth its current size. While women still constitute a relatively small percentage of people behind bars, today the number of incarcerated women in California alone is almost twice what the nationwide women's prison population was in 1970. According to Elliott Currie:
[t]he prison has become a looming presence in our society to an extent unparalleled in our history-or that of any other industrial democracy. Short of major wars, mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social program of our time.
To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality - such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children - and on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Colored bodies constitute the main human raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the major social problems of our time. Once the aura of magic is stripped away from the imprisonment solution, what is revealed is racism, class bias, and the parasitic seduction of capitalist profit. The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners.
As prisons take up more and more space on the social landscape, other government programs that have previously sought to respond to social needs - such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families - are being squeezed out of existence. The deterioration of public education, including prioritizing discipline and security over learning in public schools located in poor communities, is directly related to the prison 'solution.'
Profiting from Prisoners
As prisons proliferate in US society, private capital has become enmeshed in the punishment industry. And precisely because of their profit potential, prisons are becoming increasingly important to the US economy. If the notion of punishment as a source of potentially stupendous profits is disturbing by itself, then the strategic dependence on racist structures and ideologies to render mass punishment palatable and profitable is even more troubling.
Prison privatization is the most obvious instance of capital's current movement toward the prison industry. Government-run prisons are often in gross violation of international human rights standards. However, private prisons are even less accountable than governments ones. In March 1999, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest US private prison company, claimed 54,944 beds in 68 facilities under contract or development in the US, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Following the global trend of subjecting more women to public punishment, CCA recently opened a women's prison outside Melbourne. The company recently identified California as its 'new frontier.'
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC), the second largest US prison company, claimed contracts and awards to manage 46 facilities in North America, UK, and Australia. It boasts a total of 30,424 beds as well as contracts for prisoner health care services, transportation, and security. The stocks of both CCA and WCC have done extremely well recently. Between 1996 and 1997, CCA's revenues increased by 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million. Its net profit grew from $30.9 million to $53.9 million. WCC raised its revenues from $138 million in 1996 to $210 million in 1997. Unlike public correctional facilities, the vast profits of these private facilities rely on the employment of non-union labor.
The Prison Industrial Complex
But private prison companies are only the most visible component of the increasing corporatization of punishment. Government contracts to build prisons have bolstered the construction industry. The architectural community has identified prison design as a major new niche. Technology developed for the military by companies like Westinghouse are being marketed for use in law enforcement and punishment.
Moreover, corporations that appear to be far removed from the business of punishment are intimately involved in the expansion of the prison industrial complex. Prison construction bonds are one of the many sources of profitable investment for leading financiers such as Merrill Lynch. One American telecommunications company charges prisoners and their families outrageous prices for the precious telephone calls which are often the only contact prisoners have with the free world.
Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor power can be as profitable as third world labor power exploited by US -based global corporations. Both relegate formerly unionized workers to joblessness and many even wind up in prison. Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as 'Prison Blues,' as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is 'made on the inside to be worn on the outside.' Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.
'For private business,' write Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans (a political prisoner inside the Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin, California) 'prison labor is like a pot of gold'. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers' compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie -all at a fraction of the cost of 'free labor.'
Devouring the Social Wealth
Although prison labor - which ultimately is compensated at a rate far below the minimum wage - is hugely profitable for the private companies that use it, the penal system as a whole does not produce wealth. It devours the social wealth that could be used to subsidize housing for the homeless, to ameliorate public education for poor and racially marginalized communities, to open free drug rehabilitation programs for people who wish to kick their habits, to create a national health care system, to expand programs to combat HIV, to eradicate domestic abuse, and in the process, to create well-paying jobs for the unemployed.
Since 1984, more than twenty new prisons have opened in California, while only one new campus was added to the California State University system and none to the University of California system. In 1996-97, higher education received only 8.7 percent of the State's General Fund while corrections received 9.6 percent. Now that affirmative action has been declared illegal in California, it is obvious that education is increasingly reserved for certain people, while prisons are reserved for others. Five times as many black men are presently in prison as in four year colleges and universities. This new segregation has dangerous implications for the entire country.
By segregating people labeled as criminals, prison simultaneously fortifies and conceals the structural racism of the US economy. Claims of low unemployment rates-even in black communities-make sense only if one assumes that the vast numbers of people in prison have really disappeared and thus have no legitimate claims to jobs. The numbers of black and Latino men currently incarcerated amount to two percent of the male labor force. According to criminologist David Downes:
[t]reating incarceration as a type of hidden unemployment may raise the jobless rate for men by about one-third, to 8 percent. The effect on the black labor force is greater still, raising the [black] male unemployment rate from 11 percent to 19 percent.
Hidden Agenda
Mass incarceration is not a solution to unemployment, nor is it a solution to the vast array of social problems that are hidden away in a rapidly growing network of prisons and jails. However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work. Racism has undermined our ability to create a popular critical discourse to contest the ideological trickery that posits imprisonment as key to public safety. The focus of state policy is rapidly shifting from social welfare to social control.
Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian youth are portrayed as the purveyors of violence, traffickers of drugs, and as envious of commodities that they have no right to possess. Young black and Latina women are represented as sexually promiscuous and as indiscriminately propagating babies and poverty. Criminality and deviance are racialized. Surveillance is thus focused on communities of color, immigrants, the unemployed, the under-educated, the homeless, and in general on those who have a diminishing claim to social resources. Their claim of social resources continues to diminish in large part because law enforcement and penal measures increasingly devour these resources. The prison industrial complex has thus
created a vicious cycle of punishment which only further impoverishes those whose impoverishment is supposedly 'solved' by imprisonment.
Therefore, as the emphasis of government policy shifts from social welfare to crime control, racism sinks more deeply into the economic and ideological structures of US society. Meanwhile, conservative crusaders against affirmative action and bilingual education proclaim the end of racism, while their opponents suggest that racism's remnants can be dispelled through dialogue and conversation. But conversations about 'race relations' will hardly dismantle a prison industrial complex that thrives on and nourishes the racism hidden within the deep structures of our society.
The emergence of a US prison industrial complex within a context of cascading conservatism marks a new historical moment, whose dangers are unprecedented. But so are its opportunities. Considering the impressive number of grassroots projects that continue to resist the expansion of the punishment industry, it ought to be possible to bring these efforts together to create radical and nationally visible movements that can legitimize anti-capitalist critiques of the prison industrial complex. It ought to be possible to build movements in defense of prisoners' human rights and movements that persuasively argue that what we need is not new prisons, but new health care, housing, education, drug programs, jobs, and education. To safeguard a democratic future, it is possible and necessary to weave together the many and increasing strands of resistance to the prison industrial complex into a powerful movement for social transformation.
Angela Davis is Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California and is also a former political prisoner and long-time prison activist. She visited Australia for the first time in May last year as a guest of the Sydney Writers Festival. On her trip, she also visited Mulawa Women' Detention Centre in Sydney and met a group of Indigenous women active in prison reform. She is currently working on a history of the penal system which will also discuss prisons in Australia.(see (1999) 4 (21) ILB 31. Angela Davis' article is reprinted from the US magazine Colorlines.
[1] National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Bringing Them Home (1997) 528. Cf also George Zdenkowski, 'Mandatory Imprisonment of Property Offenders in the Northern Territory', (1998) 4 (17) ILB 15; 'New Challenge to NT Mandatory Sentencing' (1999) 4 (18) ILB 16; C Thomson, 'Preventing Crime or "Warehousing" the Underprivileged? Mandatory Sentencing in the Northern Territory', (1999) 4 (26) ILB 4.
[2] M Tonry, Malign Neglect (1995).
[3] C Cunneen and D McDonald, Keeping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People Out of Custody (1997) especially Chapter 2.
[4] See the special issue on prisons and privatization in Australia in (1999) 11 (2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice.
www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/2000/113.html
Angela Davis
The Prison Industrial Complex in Indigenous California
02.01.2007 00:30
The Prison Industrial Complex in Indigenous California
I write this chapter from the position of a California Indian woman, a tribal woman, recognized as a member of the Tule River Yokuts tribe, also Kashaya and Lake County Pomo. I also write as an ex-prisoner of the state of California housed at the California Rehabilitation Center, located in Norco. While there I was influential in the forming of the prison's first American Indian Women's support group, along with the first women's sweat lodge built at a state prison in California. I am also a survivor of colonization by the European powers, against the original peoples of these lands and especially the indigenous nations of the state of California. This history of colonization is a tragic one and native people still suffer the ramification to this day.
The colonizers brought with them two tools of mass destruction, the bottle and the bible, both which were forced upon Native people. The outcome of this was the erosion of Native peoples' language, culture, life-ways, religion, land base and lives. Even their traditional ways of behavior and conduct became illegal. Since the beginning of colonization, Native people of these lands were imprisoned as a form of social control, which could only be described as deliberate genocide.
With these increased attacks on Indian sovereignty and culture, imprisonment became the government's principal means of intimidation and punishment. With the enforcement of these "foreign" laws Native people began to be "locked up" in many different kinds of institutions such as; Military forts, Missions, Reservations, Boarding schools, and today, increasingly, in state and federal prisons. It is seen that historically, the most brutal methods of social control are directed at a society's most oppressed groups. The people most likely to be sent to jail and prisons are poor people and women of color. In North America, a very high proportion of this group are American Indians and for them the use of incarceration functions as an extension of the history and violent mechanisms of colonization.
Angela Davis argues that the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is about racism, social control, and profit. This mechanism/ process/ reality is not new to the Native people of these lands as illustrated in the numerous laws that have been passed against them without their knowledge or their consent. In this article I will show that the (PIC) was built right on the ancestral lands and the very lives of the Indigenous people of this continent.
My People/Our Lands:
My Indian heritage is Yokuts and Pomo, both of these tribes are indigenous to the lands now known as California. We have creation stories that will always connect us to these lands of our ancestors. We still continue to live on these lands.
The Pomo people occupied approximately seven widely separated localities. The Pomo had an area lying in the coastal ranges north of San Francisco Bay the main area included parts of Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma countries The Yokuts held the most fertile land in California. In their three hundred miles of range, the Yokuts were the most extensive as they were perhaps the most populous of the many diverse nationalities of aboriginal California. "The Yokuts tribes once held the whole floor of the San Joaquin Valley, plus much of the adjoining foothill belt on both sides, three hundred miles of range."1
Of all the Native cultures, Native California is the most diverse in ecology, society, and history. California had the largest aboriginal population with the most diverse groups of any area in North America. California Indians lived in deserts, on mountains, along the coastline, in the great central valley, on lake shores, side of rivers, and in the lush foothills. The Indians of California were the most highly skilled explorers of North America along with the knowledge of their environment and their cultural life they had developed through the thousands of years and made their home in the region we now call California.
The Natives of California lived in a well ordered society before the encroachment of the Europeans, the seat of their society and their governing bodies, resided in their tribes, in their people. The people were guided by relationships which fixed the status and the position of every member. Every part of the tribal society was enriched and maintained through their religious laws and traditions. "Religion was the primary method of social control, and conflicts were handled through sanctions more often than through confrontation and warfare." The Indigenous Nations of California were nations of laws. "The law had been established over hundreds of years, and perhaps longer, so law became known, in song and oral histories." There was no police force and no courts to enforce these laws and obligations because there was a strong belief and support from the people. Everyone accepted the laws, knowing that it meant survival. "There were no codes, no written laws, no constitutions put into writing, and laws became customs and as customs were ingrained in the very lifeblood of the people."2 When violations occurred, the rule was restitution instead of retribution. Exile from the tribe was an extreme penalty.
Out of Sight/Out of Mind:
In the warmth of my fantasy
I awake to the cold gray walls
Of my reality
These were the words that thundered in my mind as the Judge read the sentence "Ms Ogden you are sentenced to 5 years which will be served at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco." My reality is becoming dangerously more common among the women of the United States. Women represent the fastest growing segment of prison and jail populations. "It is estimated that 3.2 million women are arrested yearly."3 The reality of incarceration is especially likely to be yours if you are a poor woman, woman of color and/ or an American Indian woman.
According to a report compiled in October 2000, there are currently an estimated 950,000 women in custody through the criminal justice system in jail, prison, probation, or parole. The number of women in prison has increased 138% in the last ten years and the majority of these are in prison for economic crimes and it is estimated that 80% of the women in prison are the mothers of children under 18.4 As the number of women behind bars grows, the detrimental effects are felt by a whole generation of children. How many children are we looking at? An estimated 856,000 children in California have a parent currently involved in California's adult criminal justice system.5 "Children whose parents have been arrested and incarcerated face many unique difficulties such as feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, depression, and quilt."6
Women suffer different traumas than men do in going to prison. Their needs and the problems they have coping with prison life are much different and their emotional reactions are also quite different. To understand the emotional difficulties that affect many women prisoners there is a need to consider their backgrounds, the obstacles they face as mothers in prison, the medical and mental needs they have as women, the kind of harsh conditions and discipline they are forced to endure and the sexual harassment that goes along with being a women prisoner.
According to an article released by the Prison Activist Resource Center, "The State of California now has the distinction of having the most women prisoners in the nation as well as the world's largest prison. The Valley State Prison for Women and the boarding Central California Women's Facility, together house almost 7,000 women."7
When trying to gather information on the number of American Indians in prison, especially numbers of women, I found that it was almost impossible to obtain an accurate count. To quote American Indian activist Reed, "The American Indian segment of the population of people?. is the forgotten segment; the segment that is so small in other racial and ethnic groups warehoused in American's prison that it is insignificant" 8 The major reason for this "forgotten segment" is that the prison classification system that exists in the majority of U.S. prisons considers prisoners to be White, Black, Hispanic, or Other.
Located outside the door to my room was a small white 8x5 card that listed my last name, Ogden, my state number, W-20170, and my ethnic classification, Other. Every morning as I left for my job assignment, I would cross out Other and write American Indian. Then each afternoon when I returned for count there would be a new card with Other written on it. This went on for a few days when finally the Correctional Officer approached me, "next time Ogden it will be a write-up and a loss of good time." The next morning, before work, I found a permanent laundry marker, tore the card off the wall, and wrote, American Indian.
All women in prison are fighting to maintain a sense of self within a system that isolates and degrades, a system that is designed to punish, but, for American Indians, we must also fight for our identity, on the very lands of our ancestors.
Another problem that I found while incarcerated was not being able to get reliable health care or mental health care. This is a major concern for all female prisoners. Women are afraid that the incompetent medical attention that they often receive is more dangerous than their condition if left untreated. The reality of psychiatry in prison has everything to do with control and management, and nothing to do with effective treatment.
Most of the women that I knew while I was in prison were on some sort of medication "to calm them down." This is a dangerous practice when you take into consideration that many of these women were addicted to drugs and alcohol before they were locked up. In addition, there is the risk that such medication will dangerously impact a person if she takes them through the process of alcohol or drug withdrawal. I was medicated the entire time I was in county jail.
"During my time in county jail, before I was sentenced, the doctor prescribed for me daily the following, Elavil twice daily and Mellaril three times daily. These medications made me sleep most of the day and night. I would wake only to go to ?chow-hall' and to take a shower. Since this was county jail we never were allowed any yard time. The only day light we saw was when we were being transported back and forth to court. These meds were given to me for the 9 months that I was there. By the time I left for prison the pills had affected my speech. I had a hard time speaking, the thoughts were there but I had a difficult time getting the words out. My mouth and skin were dry and I was weak from constant sleep. Upon arriving at prison I was given Thorazine for two weeks, I was a walking zombie from these medications. Speaking with the other Indian women I found out that many of them were also given high doses of these medications. I had just returned a few hours before, after being sentenced to 5 years at the California Rehabilitation Center upon returning to jail I was given a med packet with a small pill inside.
"What is this for, I asked the Guard as she locked my cell door." "It came from the doctor this morning when he found out that you were being sentenced; take it Stormy it's just to calm down." The next thing I remember was my celli shaking me as I was sitting on the floor watching my cigarette burn a hole into my night gown. "What did they give you Storm?" "I am not sure what it was, I said to her with slurred speech, all I know is that it was small." "Must have been Thorazine, was her reply, the doctor gives that to all of us women, especially the Sisters that get sentenced to prison."
My younger Sister was incarcerated at Northern California Women's Facility in Stockton. When she wrote me she would tell me of her fear of going to counseling, even though she knows that she needs it, because she does not want to be put on medication that would make her a zombie, especially when her kids come to see her.
I am sure that many women feel this way and choose to suffer in silent instead of becoming "zombies in a house of madness."
In the Utmost of Good Faith:
The American criminal justice system in Indian country is complex and highly difficult to understand let alone explain. Its governing principles are contained in hundreds of statutes and court decisions that have been issued randomly without the knowledge or consent of the Indian Nations. Almost every aspect of the internal and external relations of Indian people has been subjected to the unrestricted jurisdiction of the United States government. Subsequently, the Native people of these lands have more frequent contact with the criminal justice system and at a much earlier age than other Americans.
Indian tribes had their own systems of criminal justice long before the non-Indian came to these lands. By storytelling, song, and dance, these rules and laws "evolved through generations of living together, to solve the ordinary problems of social conflict."9 Until 1855 the federal government did not interfere with these traditional tribal systems. This was left solely in tribal hands. Then in 1855 Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C.A. 1153, 10 which infringed upon on the tribe's traditional power to punish its own members for crime. Under this Act, Congress rejected the application of tribal sovereignty to reservation Indians, imposing instead, a policy of forced assimilation, backed by the extension of federal law to tribal Indians for serious offenses. The Major Crimes Act of 1885 has arguably had a greater impact on Indian people then that of all other Acts. This Act originally gave federal courts jurisdiction over crimes committed by Indians against Indians in Indian country, in utter disregard for International law, treaty law, and Article VI of the United States Constitution.
In January of 1895, the largest groups of Indian prisoners to be confined on Alcatraz, a military installation on a harsh island of rock in San Francisco Harbor, was nineteen Hopi "hostiles." Their crimes were that they would not farm as the United States government instructed them to do and they opposed the forced education of their children in the government boarding schools. Even as late as the 1930s the Bureau of Indian Affairs had openly promulgated a law called the "Indian Offenses Act" forbidding the practice of Indian religion-English names were assigned to replace Indian names and even Indian hairstyles were forbidden under the penalty of criminal law.
As the criminal jurisdiction of the United States increasingly imposed itself on Indian nations, "the United States government relied on three arguments to support its claim of a right to assert jurisdiction over Indian country without the consent of Indian nations."11 These three arguments are:
(1) The Plenary Power Doctrine, which means that Congress has absolute power. This power clearly contradicts internal law as well as Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. "Which expressly states that all treaties between Indian nations and the United States government have supremacy over any law congress might enact which unilaterally abrogates a treaty within the consent of the nations-parties to the treaties."12
(2) The Federal-Indian Trust Doctrine, which assigns the unique moral and legal duty of assisting Indians in the protection of their property and rights to the United States Government. This has been devastating for Indian nations. When this doctrine is used to support forced jurisdiction, despite treaty law or international legal principles, it is said to be done in the best interest of the Indian nations. This is where the concept of the Great White Father in Washington comes into play. We are treated as children unable to make our own decisions.
(3) The Doctrine of Geographical Incorporation, in which the courts have convinced themselves that since Indian land (i.e. reservations) are located within the boundaries of the United States, the United States holds title to all of the land. So it is argued that the United States has the absolute right to assert legal jurisdiction over Indian country.
This forced jurisdiction can only be explained as an instrument of racism and a form of social control. It is the reason that, currently, the prisons are filled with Indians and Alaskan natives who have been convicted in the white man's courts for hunting and fishing and subsistence gathering in accordance with their customs which are intruded upon by white man's laws. Those laws violate the treaties and aboriginal rights. "There are also many Indians who have been targeted and sent to prison because of their political activism."13
The Prisonification of the Native People:
Just as alcoholism has touched the life of every Indian person so has the American criminal justice system, in particular the prison system. "It is common for Native people to be involved on some level with the system, to have been incarcerated at some point in their lives, and/or to have relatives who are or have been locked up. Because we are a colonized people, the experiences of imprisonment are exceedingly familiar."14
Beginning with "foreign" laws to criminalize traditional Indian ways of dance, speaking, hunting, and gathering Indians were imprisoned and fined The outcome of this can only be described as genocide when you look at the impact on the Native people of these lands. The Native world has been devastated by the course of the laws that were forced upon them; the number of jailed Natives is a chilling reminder of this fact.
Native people are being "locked up" at alarming numbers on their own ancestral homeland. The criminalization and imprisonment of Native people can be interpreted as yet another attempt to control Indian lands and deny Indian sovereignty.
For the American Indian people, these federal and state prisons are yet another part of the violent colonial mechanism. Indians were colonized on their own lands, the land to which they trace their social, cultural, and religious origins.
Criminalization is yet another tool as were the bottle and the bible, of the American colonial power to control Indian lands and deny Indian sovereignty. One devastating outcome of land dispossession today is the disproportionate rates of incarceration of Native adults and children. For American Indians, these correctional facilities are just another part of the violent colonial apparatus. These facilities commit human rights abuse on prisoners and exploit them for government and private profit.
We have been degraded to criminal status in our homeland and become a people incarcerated
What was my crime, why 5 years in prison?
Less than $2,000 of welfare fraud
What was my crime?
Being a survivor of molestation and rapes
What was my crime?
Being addicted to alcohol and drugs
What was my crime?
Being a survivor of domestic violence
What was my crime?
Being an America Indian woman
1 Latta, F.F. (1949). Handbook of Yokuts IndianBakersfield, CA: Bear State Books, p. v.
2 Costo. pg.20
3 Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.
4 Legislative Hearings on the Conditions of Confinement for California women Prisoners. (October 2000).
5 Simmons, C. W., Ph.D. (2000, March). Children of Incarcerated Parents. California Research Bureau, California State Library. Note Vol.7, No.2. pg.2
6 Simmons, Charlene W., Ph.D. pg. 3.
7 Prison Activisit Resource Center
8 Reed, L. R. (Eds). (1993). The American Indian in the White Man's Prison: A Story of Genocide. Taos: NM. Uncompromising Books, pg. 4-5.
9 Harring L. S. (1994). Crow Dog's Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and The United States Law in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. pg. 10.
10 Canby, W. (1988, June). American Indian Law: In A Nut Shell. Phoenix, AZ. West Publishing Company.
11 Reed, L.R. pg. 25.
12 Reed, L.R. p. 25.
13 Reed, L.R. p. 31.
14 Ross, Luana, p. 1
www.womenandprison.org/prison-industrial-complex/stormy-ogden.html
I write this chapter from the position of a California Indian woman, a tribal woman, recognized as a member of the Tule River Yokuts tribe, also Kashaya and Lake County Pomo. I also write as an ex-prisoner of the state of California housed at the California Rehabilitation Center, located in Norco. While there I was influential in the forming of the prison's first American Indian Women's support group, along with the first women's sweat lodge built at a state prison in California. I am also a survivor of colonization by the European powers, against the original peoples of these lands and especially the indigenous nations of the state of California. This history of colonization is a tragic one and native people still suffer the ramification to this day.
The colonizers brought with them two tools of mass destruction, the bottle and the bible, both which were forced upon Native people. The outcome of this was the erosion of Native peoples' language, culture, life-ways, religion, land base and lives. Even their traditional ways of behavior and conduct became illegal. Since the beginning of colonization, Native people of these lands were imprisoned as a form of social control, which could only be described as deliberate genocide.
With these increased attacks on Indian sovereignty and culture, imprisonment became the government's principal means of intimidation and punishment. With the enforcement of these "foreign" laws Native people began to be "locked up" in many different kinds of institutions such as; Military forts, Missions, Reservations, Boarding schools, and today, increasingly, in state and federal prisons. It is seen that historically, the most brutal methods of social control are directed at a society's most oppressed groups. The people most likely to be sent to jail and prisons are poor people and women of color. In North America, a very high proportion of this group are American Indians and for them the use of incarceration functions as an extension of the history and violent mechanisms of colonization.
Angela Davis argues that the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is about racism, social control, and profit. This mechanism/ process/ reality is not new to the Native people of these lands as illustrated in the numerous laws that have been passed against them without their knowledge or their consent. In this article I will show that the (PIC) was built right on the ancestral lands and the very lives of the Indigenous people of this continent.
My People/Our Lands:
My Indian heritage is Yokuts and Pomo, both of these tribes are indigenous to the lands now known as California. We have creation stories that will always connect us to these lands of our ancestors. We still continue to live on these lands.
The Pomo people occupied approximately seven widely separated localities. The Pomo had an area lying in the coastal ranges north of San Francisco Bay the main area included parts of Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma countries The Yokuts held the most fertile land in California. In their three hundred miles of range, the Yokuts were the most extensive as they were perhaps the most populous of the many diverse nationalities of aboriginal California. "The Yokuts tribes once held the whole floor of the San Joaquin Valley, plus much of the adjoining foothill belt on both sides, three hundred miles of range."1
Of all the Native cultures, Native California is the most diverse in ecology, society, and history. California had the largest aboriginal population with the most diverse groups of any area in North America. California Indians lived in deserts, on mountains, along the coastline, in the great central valley, on lake shores, side of rivers, and in the lush foothills. The Indians of California were the most highly skilled explorers of North America along with the knowledge of their environment and their cultural life they had developed through the thousands of years and made their home in the region we now call California.
The Natives of California lived in a well ordered society before the encroachment of the Europeans, the seat of their society and their governing bodies, resided in their tribes, in their people. The people were guided by relationships which fixed the status and the position of every member. Every part of the tribal society was enriched and maintained through their religious laws and traditions. "Religion was the primary method of social control, and conflicts were handled through sanctions more often than through confrontation and warfare." The Indigenous Nations of California were nations of laws. "The law had been established over hundreds of years, and perhaps longer, so law became known, in song and oral histories." There was no police force and no courts to enforce these laws and obligations because there was a strong belief and support from the people. Everyone accepted the laws, knowing that it meant survival. "There were no codes, no written laws, no constitutions put into writing, and laws became customs and as customs were ingrained in the very lifeblood of the people."2 When violations occurred, the rule was restitution instead of retribution. Exile from the tribe was an extreme penalty.
Out of Sight/Out of Mind:
In the warmth of my fantasy
I awake to the cold gray walls
Of my reality
These were the words that thundered in my mind as the Judge read the sentence "Ms Ogden you are sentenced to 5 years which will be served at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco." My reality is becoming dangerously more common among the women of the United States. Women represent the fastest growing segment of prison and jail populations. "It is estimated that 3.2 million women are arrested yearly."3 The reality of incarceration is especially likely to be yours if you are a poor woman, woman of color and/ or an American Indian woman.
According to a report compiled in October 2000, there are currently an estimated 950,000 women in custody through the criminal justice system in jail, prison, probation, or parole. The number of women in prison has increased 138% in the last ten years and the majority of these are in prison for economic crimes and it is estimated that 80% of the women in prison are the mothers of children under 18.4 As the number of women behind bars grows, the detrimental effects are felt by a whole generation of children. How many children are we looking at? An estimated 856,000 children in California have a parent currently involved in California's adult criminal justice system.5 "Children whose parents have been arrested and incarcerated face many unique difficulties such as feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, depression, and quilt."6
Women suffer different traumas than men do in going to prison. Their needs and the problems they have coping with prison life are much different and their emotional reactions are also quite different. To understand the emotional difficulties that affect many women prisoners there is a need to consider their backgrounds, the obstacles they face as mothers in prison, the medical and mental needs they have as women, the kind of harsh conditions and discipline they are forced to endure and the sexual harassment that goes along with being a women prisoner.
According to an article released by the Prison Activist Resource Center, "The State of California now has the distinction of having the most women prisoners in the nation as well as the world's largest prison. The Valley State Prison for Women and the boarding Central California Women's Facility, together house almost 7,000 women."7
When trying to gather information on the number of American Indians in prison, especially numbers of women, I found that it was almost impossible to obtain an accurate count. To quote American Indian activist Reed, "The American Indian segment of the population of people?. is the forgotten segment; the segment that is so small in other racial and ethnic groups warehoused in American's prison that it is insignificant" 8 The major reason for this "forgotten segment" is that the prison classification system that exists in the majority of U.S. prisons considers prisoners to be White, Black, Hispanic, or Other.
Located outside the door to my room was a small white 8x5 card that listed my last name, Ogden, my state number, W-20170, and my ethnic classification, Other. Every morning as I left for my job assignment, I would cross out Other and write American Indian. Then each afternoon when I returned for count there would be a new card with Other written on it. This went on for a few days when finally the Correctional Officer approached me, "next time Ogden it will be a write-up and a loss of good time." The next morning, before work, I found a permanent laundry marker, tore the card off the wall, and wrote, American Indian.
All women in prison are fighting to maintain a sense of self within a system that isolates and degrades, a system that is designed to punish, but, for American Indians, we must also fight for our identity, on the very lands of our ancestors.
Another problem that I found while incarcerated was not being able to get reliable health care or mental health care. This is a major concern for all female prisoners. Women are afraid that the incompetent medical attention that they often receive is more dangerous than their condition if left untreated. The reality of psychiatry in prison has everything to do with control and management, and nothing to do with effective treatment.
Most of the women that I knew while I was in prison were on some sort of medication "to calm them down." This is a dangerous practice when you take into consideration that many of these women were addicted to drugs and alcohol before they were locked up. In addition, there is the risk that such medication will dangerously impact a person if she takes them through the process of alcohol or drug withdrawal. I was medicated the entire time I was in county jail.
"During my time in county jail, before I was sentenced, the doctor prescribed for me daily the following, Elavil twice daily and Mellaril three times daily. These medications made me sleep most of the day and night. I would wake only to go to ?chow-hall' and to take a shower. Since this was county jail we never were allowed any yard time. The only day light we saw was when we were being transported back and forth to court. These meds were given to me for the 9 months that I was there. By the time I left for prison the pills had affected my speech. I had a hard time speaking, the thoughts were there but I had a difficult time getting the words out. My mouth and skin were dry and I was weak from constant sleep. Upon arriving at prison I was given Thorazine for two weeks, I was a walking zombie from these medications. Speaking with the other Indian women I found out that many of them were also given high doses of these medications. I had just returned a few hours before, after being sentenced to 5 years at the California Rehabilitation Center upon returning to jail I was given a med packet with a small pill inside.
"What is this for, I asked the Guard as she locked my cell door." "It came from the doctor this morning when he found out that you were being sentenced; take it Stormy it's just to calm down." The next thing I remember was my celli shaking me as I was sitting on the floor watching my cigarette burn a hole into my night gown. "What did they give you Storm?" "I am not sure what it was, I said to her with slurred speech, all I know is that it was small." "Must have been Thorazine, was her reply, the doctor gives that to all of us women, especially the Sisters that get sentenced to prison."
My younger Sister was incarcerated at Northern California Women's Facility in Stockton. When she wrote me she would tell me of her fear of going to counseling, even though she knows that she needs it, because she does not want to be put on medication that would make her a zombie, especially when her kids come to see her.
I am sure that many women feel this way and choose to suffer in silent instead of becoming "zombies in a house of madness."
In the Utmost of Good Faith:
The American criminal justice system in Indian country is complex and highly difficult to understand let alone explain. Its governing principles are contained in hundreds of statutes and court decisions that have been issued randomly without the knowledge or consent of the Indian Nations. Almost every aspect of the internal and external relations of Indian people has been subjected to the unrestricted jurisdiction of the United States government. Subsequently, the Native people of these lands have more frequent contact with the criminal justice system and at a much earlier age than other Americans.
Indian tribes had their own systems of criminal justice long before the non-Indian came to these lands. By storytelling, song, and dance, these rules and laws "evolved through generations of living together, to solve the ordinary problems of social conflict."9 Until 1855 the federal government did not interfere with these traditional tribal systems. This was left solely in tribal hands. Then in 1855 Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C.A. 1153, 10 which infringed upon on the tribe's traditional power to punish its own members for crime. Under this Act, Congress rejected the application of tribal sovereignty to reservation Indians, imposing instead, a policy of forced assimilation, backed by the extension of federal law to tribal Indians for serious offenses. The Major Crimes Act of 1885 has arguably had a greater impact on Indian people then that of all other Acts. This Act originally gave federal courts jurisdiction over crimes committed by Indians against Indians in Indian country, in utter disregard for International law, treaty law, and Article VI of the United States Constitution.
In January of 1895, the largest groups of Indian prisoners to be confined on Alcatraz, a military installation on a harsh island of rock in San Francisco Harbor, was nineteen Hopi "hostiles." Their crimes were that they would not farm as the United States government instructed them to do and they opposed the forced education of their children in the government boarding schools. Even as late as the 1930s the Bureau of Indian Affairs had openly promulgated a law called the "Indian Offenses Act" forbidding the practice of Indian religion-English names were assigned to replace Indian names and even Indian hairstyles were forbidden under the penalty of criminal law.
As the criminal jurisdiction of the United States increasingly imposed itself on Indian nations, "the United States government relied on three arguments to support its claim of a right to assert jurisdiction over Indian country without the consent of Indian nations."11 These three arguments are:
(1) The Plenary Power Doctrine, which means that Congress has absolute power. This power clearly contradicts internal law as well as Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. "Which expressly states that all treaties between Indian nations and the United States government have supremacy over any law congress might enact which unilaterally abrogates a treaty within the consent of the nations-parties to the treaties."12
(2) The Federal-Indian Trust Doctrine, which assigns the unique moral and legal duty of assisting Indians in the protection of their property and rights to the United States Government. This has been devastating for Indian nations. When this doctrine is used to support forced jurisdiction, despite treaty law or international legal principles, it is said to be done in the best interest of the Indian nations. This is where the concept of the Great White Father in Washington comes into play. We are treated as children unable to make our own decisions.
(3) The Doctrine of Geographical Incorporation, in which the courts have convinced themselves that since Indian land (i.e. reservations) are located within the boundaries of the United States, the United States holds title to all of the land. So it is argued that the United States has the absolute right to assert legal jurisdiction over Indian country.
This forced jurisdiction can only be explained as an instrument of racism and a form of social control. It is the reason that, currently, the prisons are filled with Indians and Alaskan natives who have been convicted in the white man's courts for hunting and fishing and subsistence gathering in accordance with their customs which are intruded upon by white man's laws. Those laws violate the treaties and aboriginal rights. "There are also many Indians who have been targeted and sent to prison because of their political activism."13
The Prisonification of the Native People:
Just as alcoholism has touched the life of every Indian person so has the American criminal justice system, in particular the prison system. "It is common for Native people to be involved on some level with the system, to have been incarcerated at some point in their lives, and/or to have relatives who are or have been locked up. Because we are a colonized people, the experiences of imprisonment are exceedingly familiar."14
Beginning with "foreign" laws to criminalize traditional Indian ways of dance, speaking, hunting, and gathering Indians were imprisoned and fined The outcome of this can only be described as genocide when you look at the impact on the Native people of these lands. The Native world has been devastated by the course of the laws that were forced upon them; the number of jailed Natives is a chilling reminder of this fact.
Native people are being "locked up" at alarming numbers on their own ancestral homeland. The criminalization and imprisonment of Native people can be interpreted as yet another attempt to control Indian lands and deny Indian sovereignty.
For the American Indian people, these federal and state prisons are yet another part of the violent colonial mechanism. Indians were colonized on their own lands, the land to which they trace their social, cultural, and religious origins.
Criminalization is yet another tool as were the bottle and the bible, of the American colonial power to control Indian lands and deny Indian sovereignty. One devastating outcome of land dispossession today is the disproportionate rates of incarceration of Native adults and children. For American Indians, these correctional facilities are just another part of the violent colonial apparatus. These facilities commit human rights abuse on prisoners and exploit them for government and private profit.
We have been degraded to criminal status in our homeland and become a people incarcerated
What was my crime, why 5 years in prison?
Less than $2,000 of welfare fraud
What was my crime?
Being a survivor of molestation and rapes
What was my crime?
Being addicted to alcohol and drugs
What was my crime?
Being a survivor of domestic violence
What was my crime?
Being an America Indian woman
1 Latta, F.F. (1949). Handbook of Yokuts IndianBakersfield, CA: Bear State Books, p. v.
2 Costo. pg.20
3 Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.
4 Legislative Hearings on the Conditions of Confinement for California women Prisoners. (October 2000).
5 Simmons, C. W., Ph.D. (2000, March). Children of Incarcerated Parents. California Research Bureau, California State Library. Note Vol.7, No.2. pg.2
6 Simmons, Charlene W., Ph.D. pg. 3.
7 Prison Activisit Resource Center
8 Reed, L. R. (Eds). (1993). The American Indian in the White Man's Prison: A Story of Genocide. Taos: NM. Uncompromising Books, pg. 4-5.
9 Harring L. S. (1994). Crow Dog's Case: American Indian Sovereignty, Tribal Law, and The United States Law in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. pg. 10.
10 Canby, W. (1988, June). American Indian Law: In A Nut Shell. Phoenix, AZ. West Publishing Company.
11 Reed, L.R. pg. 25.
12 Reed, L.R. p. 25.
13 Reed, L.R. p. 31.
14 Ross, Luana, p. 1
www.womenandprison.org/prison-industrial-complex/stormy-ogden.html
Stormy Ogden