To whom it may concern,
My father, X, recently sent my name and address to you so that I could be put on your mailing list for your newspaper. Since then, you've mailed me the paper, but the mailroom censor determined that material in your paper was considered to be "forceful, violent and threatening." I was told that such material would not be allowed. Your paper is not the only one that I subscribe to that is not allowed and steps are being taken to correct this problem.
This is a new prison and the rules and regulations are still changing....[Please write] letters of concern to our warden Gail Lewis. Ask for the exact reasons why this prison is so different from the other 33 California prisons, that inmates should not be allowed to read news articles similar to those in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Being an "alternative" paper, such as MIM Notes, it seems to me that Pleasant Valley State Prison is being discriminatory to disapprove your paper!
Thank you for your time in this matter. I felt you should know that for some strange reason your paper is not allowed in this prison, yet. I wish to remain on your mailing list and I anxiously await a response from you. Have a great day and please continue the good work! Respectfully yours,
--a California prisoner, April 15, 1996
Letters of protest can be sent to: Warden Gail Lewis, Pleasant Valley State Prison, PO Box 8503, Coalinga, CA 93210.
KENTUCKY PRISON CENSORS MIM NOTES AND MAOIST SOJOURNER
The item establishes probable cause to believe that information contained within constitutes a threat to institutional discipline or security (i.e. contains racist or gangster material).
--Frances Cooter, Mailroom Staff, May 2, 1996.
Letters of protest can be sent to:
Luther Luckett Correctional Complex, PO Box 6, LaGrange, KY 40031.
ARIZONA SENDS BACK CENSORED MIM NOTES AFTER ONE YEAR
On June 6, 1995 the following [MIM Notes No. 100, May 1995] was received in the mail at the Arizona State Prison and is considered to be contraband.
Mail/Publication contains material which, in the Warden's opinion, pose[s] a threat to the safe, secure and orderly operation of the prison. Inmate has the right to seek review of the decision to restrict his mail by contacting his unit's grievance coordinator.
-- Duran 694, Mailroom Officer, [postmarked May 19, 1996! --MIM]
Letters of protest can be sent to: D.W. Bourgeous, Deputy Warden, Arizona State Prison Complex, PO Box 4000, Florence, AZ 85232.
WOMEN PRISONERS ARE DYING AT CHOWCHILLA SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN FOR COMPASSIONATE RELEASE!
Four women prisoners with full-blown AIDS are dying of AIDS-related complications in the infirmary at the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) (across the street from Valley State Prison For Women.) These women should be granted compassionate release. Yet, in each case, either the prison doctors, the Department of Corrections or the Board of Prison Terms are holding up the process. CCWF does not have an infectious disease specialist on staff or any support services for women locked away in the infirmary.
WHO ARE THESE WOMEN?
+ Patty Contreras, W26443, has no CD4 cells, suffers severe weight loss, has a hard time walking and can't keep food down. The medical staff will not put her on a special diet.
+ Linda Cortez, W40993, has a low CD4 count, night fevers, sores all over her body and can't walk.
+ Miriam Jones, W54091, has a low CD4 count, recurring pneumonia and pneumocystis carinii. She has suffered weight loss and weakness.
+ [Anonymous] also has a low CD4 count and has suffered severe weight loss.
All of these women have families anxious to take care of them or hospices willing to house them in the community.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Write, call or fax Dr. Gwendolyn Dennard, Chief Medical Officer, CCWF, P.O. Box 1501, Chowchilla, CA 93610-1501; phone (209) 665-5531; fax (209) 665- 7158. Demand that [Anonymous] and Linda Cortez be immediately medically evaluated for compassionate release. Send copies to Warden Teena Farmon (at the same address).
Write, call or fax Director James Gomez, California Department of Corrections, P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento, CA 94283-0001; phone (916) 445-7688; fax (916) 327-1988. Demand that Miriam Jones be approved for compassionate release immediately. Director Gomez recently refused her compassionate release request.
Write, call or fax Executive Officer Ted Rich, Board of Prison Terms, 428 J Street, 6th Floor, Sacramento, CA 95814; phone (916) 445-1539; fax (916) 445-5242. Demand that Patty Contreras be approved by the parole board for compassionate release. The Board has turned her down three times! Send copies of your letters to the HIV/AIDS in Prison Project of Catholic Charities, 433 Jefferson Street, Oakland, CA 94607 and they will be forwarded to the women prisoners. Also send copies to any state legislators or media that may be helpful.
SUPPORT ASSEMBLY BILL 3093--THE COMPASSIONATE RELEASE BILL For more information, contact Catholic Charities' HIV/AIDS in Prison Project at (510) 834-5656, ext. 3150.
--Catholic Charities' HIV/AIDS in Prison Project, June 10, 1996
SOUTH CAROLINA PRISONER SUPPORTS WOMEN PRISONERS' STRUGGLE
This letter is to inform MIM that I am continuously receiving MIM Notes uninterrupted, so please continue to send it to me. I am writing this in response to the letter written in the 111 issue of MIM Notes. This letter in the 111 issue, ["Silent Deaths, Beatings and Rapes at Dwight..."] was submitted by a woman in an Illinois prison and dated December 25, 1995. This woman really got to me because of the way she explained the death and mistreatment of the women in that prison. I never really thought of the treatment of women in prison to be anything like what was stipulated by this woman.
I ask myself how can this treatment go on without anyone aiding in keeping up with the women's medical rights, health and training. I am really angry because this Beautiful Woman took her time out to explain in informative details the atrocities that go on in her present, and the strength it took to write.
We are caring human beings who should not allow this treatment to continue . We must constantly let these savage pigs know that when you deliberately mistreat a woman, and it doesn't matter what she has done, when she is punished by the law then you do not have the right to continually punish them.
You who subject women to cruel inhuman treatment have lost all link with reality. Hell, you probably think you are performing some royal duties, with your insignificant lives. The type that do these sort of things to get recognition from your weaselly peers, you are nothingness and a misrepresentation of a man.
I wish that there was something I could do to make a difference, "Illinois Prisoner." However, stay strong. You will make it out of there. Stay strong for as long as you fight, you can count on another alongside you!!!
--A South Carolina prisoner, May 9, 1996
THE WELL DESERVED DEATH OF VITAPRO
The following article is reprinted from Prison News Service 54, Spring 1996.
James A. "Andy" Collins was the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), which is the largest prison system in the world. According to his peers he was the most respected figure in national "corrections". He was power personified, and to more than 40,000 employees in over a hundred prisons he was god. He had been with the TDCJ for nearly 24 years and his $120,000 a year salary plus benefits seemed to be enough to get him by, but it is said in toilets all over Texas, wherever prisoncrats meet, that ol' Andy was one never to let an easy buck escape his greedy grasp.
VitaPro was one of those little bird nests on the ground that Andy was so good at pouncing upon. The contract he made for VitaPro was one of those no- bid, under-the-table, let's-make-some-money deals that Andy loved, and if it hadn't been for a Collins henchman by the name of Patrick H. Graham, who got busted with both hands stuck in the cookie jar, Texas prisoners would still be eating the garbage.
But first, let me tell you non-Texas prisoners about VitaPro. It all started one day in November '94 when I went into the chow hall hungry as hell. I had been working since 6 a.m. and it was now 12 noon. As I entered the dining room there was an evil smell not unlike about 5,000 dirty socks, each with its own personal stench. I thought how I wished I had eaten breakfast, but breakfast for Texas prisoners takes place at 3 am and I don't do nothin' at 3 a.m. but sleep. The closer I got to the serving line the more I realized it wasn't dirty socks at all, but a new, so-called "food" Andy Collins had wanted us to eat, called VitaPro. Manufactured in Canada from a soy base, it was nasty, it stunk and it was inedible. Many of us wouldn't eat it at all, but for over a year you either ate VitaPro or tried to exist on spoonfuls of beans, carrots and greens. When we wouldn't eat it, they gradually cut down all food, trying to starve us into eating it.
They have a chain gang without chains in Texas and they call it the line. Guys working the line are picking cotton or hoeing the hard ground in the blistering Texas sun all day, and in order to survive they had to eat VitaPro. Many of the ones who were eating it began to sicken. They were stricken with rashes, boils, diarrhea and chronic fatigue when, lo and behold, on January 4, 1996 a good ol' boy in the Texas prison business (who was Andy Collins' business associate) got busted in the parking lot of an On The Border restaurant in Houston, just as he was stuffing 15 bundles of cash - each bundle containing 10 thousand dollar bills - into his hungry briefcase. The money was to be a down payment on the half million dollars Mr. Collins' road-dog wanted to engineer the escape of a former millionaire, still a rat, wife-murderer doing 75 years in a Texas prison.
Patrick H. Graham, the man who was selling escapes on the installment plan, was a builder of prisons with a shaky past. He told the wife-murderer's girlfriend he was a top prison official named Harold Robert, and demonstrated on several occasions that he had inside connections with Andy Collins. The plan called for her boyfriend to be transferred to a hospital, and then be re- classified for minimum security so he could work as a trusty on an outside detail. Graham would pick him up in a car, whisk him to the airport, and fly him to Costa Rica in his private plane. But the part that delivered us from VitaPro was the fact that Graham had a business card on him saying that he was a representative of VitaPro. hee hee hee.
Because Graham and Collins were associates, and because the escape plot wouldn't have worked without Collins making the re-classification and transfer, and due to the fact that Graham and Collins had appeared together inside a prison to visit one of the players in the escape plot, questions were flying in the media and investigations were being launched and the links between Graham, Collins and VitaPro were exposed to the light of day. Even Governor George Bush, Jr. expressed his shock and outrage that one of the members of his gang would make 6 million crooked VitaPro dollars without him being in on it.
The initial VitaPro contract was for $6.7 million which would buy 17 metric tons of beef and chicken- flavored VitaPro each month for five years. No competitive bidding. It got so good for them that they later jacked it up to $33.7 million. The plot was for Texas Corrections Industries (TCI) to become exclusive distributors in North America excepting Georgia, Louisiana and 7 federal prisons that were already using VitaPro. Texas would be paid 15% commission on any sales made. Mathematicians among us will note that the first contract made someone just over $1 million, and the larger one made those same someones more than $5 million. There were, however, several slight problems: (1) Us convicts wouldn't eat it. (Just say no! to VitaPro! was the watchword of the day.) (2) They couldn't sell it (at a product demonstration in California, the VitaPro meal came out so pasty it stuck to the spoon. And when Missouri officials opened a bag shipped to them for a test meal, they spotted a dead mouse inside). And then (3) the great escape plot got busted, causing investigations into just about everything, especially VitaPro. And somewhere in a rusty cage an old deer could be heard chortling far into the night.
The VitaPro deal was brought to Collins by Charles Terrell, a Dallas insurance executive who went into the private prison business after he stepped down as Chairman of the Board of Corrections in 1990.
In February '94, Collins called all his top aides to a meeting where VitaPro was pitched by Terrell and Azie Morton, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary who was peddling VitaPro. They stressed that it was cheaper than meat, it required no refrigeration so it was cheaper to store and ship, and it is fat- free so as to give the prisoners a healthier diet (they're worried sick about our health, that's the reason they took our cigarettes), and all you have to do is add water and cook and it is tender, succulent and delicious. Yummy!
So the executive director leaned favorably in VitaPro's direction and, of course, all his underlings leaned with him. Within weeks, the prison system opened competitive bidding for a test. Two companies made bids:
VitaPro at $62,000, and an Indiana company whose price was roughly a fifth of that amount. They rejected the low bid because it did not meet their specifications(?!). In a memo that surfaced they also acknowledged that VitaPro's bid did not offer a cost saving when compared to real meat and chicken.
Instead of a second round of bidding they awarded the contract to VitaPro, invoking a little-known provision in state law that allows Texas prisons to buy materials without competitive bids for the Prison Industries program. In order to get this together, Collins had to cut the head of Texas Corrections Industries, Larry Kyle, in on the deal by giving him a $13,200 annual pay raise and promoting him to deputy director, bringing his pay up to $75,744. (Kyle has since been suspended pending the outcome of the investigations.)
They planned to resell it to their own food services departments plus other prison systems. This repackaging business caused the prison grapevine to go wild with rumors that VitaPro was animal food from Canada, and that it was being repackaged because the original packages said "Not for Human Consumption". These were great rumors and I loved them, but unfortunately they are quite untrue. But that they were, we could all be rich by suing for damages caused by that armadillo food.
Yank Barry, the CEO of VitaPro, has complained that the prisons fed it once a day instead of three times a week. He also said that the water to mash ratio was too high. Janie Thomas, assistant director of food services for TDCJ said that Andy Collins ordered her to "rewrite" the menus to place VitaPro on every prisoner's plate once a day. So Yank is right about that. But on the ratio complaint , Ms. Thomas said she developed a chart showing how much water should be mixed with VitaPro and sent it to Yank Barry for approval before she sent it to prison cooks. She said Barry approved the water to mash formula. So go figure.
To settle the taste-test business I must refer you to John Kelso who writes for the Austin American- Statesman. What he did was take a mess of VitaPro to three great eateries in Austin. He said in part: "I've decided not to rob any banks in Texas because if I ever eat VitaPro again it will be too darn soon. I took some of the soy-based meat substitute to some Austin restaurants and asked some cooks to prepare it--P.U. But don't blame the cooks. This would be like asking someone to knit a nice sweater out of navel lint."
The first VitaPro test was at the swank Shoreline Grill where executive chef Dan Haverty whipped up a fancy dish he called "Huntsville Chicken". Using the tricks of the master chef, he tossed in dried habanero pepper and guajillo powder. Forming VitaPro into a cutlet, rolling it in bread crumbs and deep-frying it, he laid it on top of a bed of ancho sweet potatoes. He decorated the plate with yellow tomato basil sauce and other colorful items, and set a high dollar bottle of La Grande Dame champagne on the table with it. Kelso says, "He should have sucked down the booze and tossed the VitaPro cutlet in the lake." He said the aftertaste was sidling up on raunchy. Chef Haverty said it was due to all those nine-syllable ingredients mentioned on the bag.
Then he went down to Dirty's hamburger joint just north of the drag, where owner Mark Nemir made burgers out of the beef-flavored burger mix. It wasn't pretty. "It reminds me of a mash my dad used to feed the chickens."
Kelso went on to the Texas Chili Parlor where John Cook prepared beef-flavored VitaPro for tacos. The fake beef while simmering had an odor Cook referred to as "roadkill helper". I still maintain it smells like dirty socks. But the experts generally agreed that VitaPro is best used as a crime prevention tool.
The only good thing about VitaPro is that Yank Barry is one of our own: an ex-convict...ta da! Yank did his time in Canada under his real name, Gerald Falovitch. I, of course, support ex-cons, but in Yank's case I think the support would be one-sided. So I'll just have to go along with my stomach and say, Yank, old bean, you've sure got a shitty product, and I hope you made Andy eat some of it with a straight face when he was trying to peddle it.
Yank runs in some high-powered company these days. Would you believe his pal Andy even ordered him an identification badge that claims Yank is an Official? The most Yank would be entitled to without an ex-con background would be a vendor i.d. badge, which is very limited. With the ex-con thing he wouldn't be able to get any i.d. at all unless it was the kind I wear. Mr. Falovitch says that Collins and Corrections Board Chairman Allan Polunsky both knew he had been in prison. Polunsky, however, hotly denied he knew. Now there is an investigation into badges and who got how many of what kind. Andy offered his resignation in September '95. It became effective January 1, '96 and no sooner did he hit the ground than he had a one-thousand-dollar-a-day consultant job with guess who??? VitaPro. When that hit the papers he quit that job. Now there's a bunch of stuff about no-bid fence contracts, and lying under oath to a senate committee which should keep the man who would be king of VitaPro busy in his retirement years. But the investigation has been taken out of the hands of Andy's prison gang at Internal Affairs of the TDCJ and placed into the capable hands of the dreaded Texas Rangers.
It is ironic that VitaPro came to an end in Texas prisons not because it is garbage not fit to eat, but rather because the keepers of the kept have once again proved to be bigger crooks than the little crooks they keep.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
--a Texas Prisoner, Jun. 10, 1996
U.S. RIGHT TO LIFE VIOLATIONS
Following are some findings by U.N. Human rights investigator Bacre Waly Ndiaye on American death row cases. The report did not provide information on where these cases took place or include hometowns for the people listed.
People allegedly sentenced to death despite their serious mental retardation: Mario Marquez, Roosevelt Pollard, Maurice Andrews, Willie Clisby, Varnall Weeks, Girview Davis, Larry Lonchar, Luis Mata, Robert Brecheen, Barry Fairchild, Frederic Jermyn and Anthony Joe Larette Those said to have been sentenced to death after trial in which their full rights to adequate defense had not been ensured: Alan Jeffery Bannister, Kermit Smith, Calvin Burdine and Robert T. Sidebottom
Those allegedly sentenced to death despite strong indications casting doubts about their guilt: Gregory Resnover, Jesse Jacobs, Nicholas Ingram, Larry Griffin, Joseph Spaziano and Dennis Waldon Stockton.
Those sentenced to death after a trial allegedly marked by racial bias: Hernando Williams, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Thomas Joe Miller-El.
Sentenced to death without any resort to any appeals: Thomas Grasso.
Sentenced to death by a judge overruling a unanimous jury recommendation of life imprisonment: Raleigh Porter.
--an Indiana prisoner, June 1996