MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
www.prisoncensorship.info is a media institution run by the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons. Here we collect and publicize reports of conditions behind the bars in U.$. prisons. Information about these incidents rarely makes it out of the prison, and when it does it is extremely rare that the reports are taken seriously and published. This historical record is important for documenting patterns of abuse, and also for informing people on the streets about what goes on behind the bars.
Being confined in this new millennium has caused me to wonder about the
intelligence of prisoners who receive benefits from the theft,
conversion and criminal actions of those charged with enforcing laws,
rules and regulations. Here you have prisoners who accept from
correctional officers magazines, books, and other items of value that
belong to other prisoners and smile and grin saying they came up.
Basically at the expense of another prisoner. It’s the same old practice
used by law enforcement time after time on unsuspecting prisoners they
see as potential sources of intelligence and are used until they have no
further use and are tossed back to the lions with the customary
amusement.
I can not, for the life of me, understand why a prisoner will go out of
his way to provide correctional staff and officials intelligence that
establishes that a prisoner has membership or association with a prison
gang, street gang, or other disruptive group which automatically
requires special attention and placement considerations which could
include being indefinitely confined in a security housing unit until
that individual rats out his comrades, dies or paroles, yet there seems
to be new acceptance.
It’s amusing to me when I see some of these characters bragging and
boasting being validated by the prisoncrats as a gang member while
making it a point to ask others, typically around the picklesuits, “are
you active”. It’s as if the new concept of the penal system is to not
only tell on yourself but trick others to tell on themselves! It’s as if
prison agent provacateurism has gained tacit acceptance, and some new
status symbolism.
When asked if I am active, I have to ask “active in what?” Since as with
so many other English language concepts the word has been coopted into
supposedly meaning one thing for the dumb down prisoner but in reality
meaning something significantly more onerous to the prisoncrats. And
it’s no secret but many in the prison population have yet to understand
or realize the significance and these concepts and ideas are becoming
interwoven into the fabric of prison social structure, forcing many real
men to adopt anti-social positions in order to stay out of the cross.
Being a general population prisoner of consciousness, I do not miss
much. However I have noted that there are so many idiots who are
sycophants to an old concept that has morphed and changed into something
that is truly malevolent. One has to go back to the number one concept
of “trust no one” with anything of any import. Those who are real you
will be able to tell, and those who are not will eventually expose
themselves. Educate yourselves and pay attention is all I can advise you
in this CDCR trap in which many do not seriously consider the reality of
the struggle, but instead practice acceptance.
Greetings comrades! I am writing to you today to first and foremost
thank your organization for all the work being done to educate the
sleepers.
I received your notice and letter about the pigs refusing the literature
you sent to me. I was not even issued a copy of the rejection slip by
the prison mail room. They are by policy required to notify prisoners of
any and all mail refused by the facility, but following policy is not of
concern to the oppressors! I am glad to have received ULK #7. There was
plenty of good info in there and I have passed the newsletter around to
others.
In regards to money being made by the prison, I am a witness to the way
prisoners are performing cheap labor in this hell hole as the prison
gets contracts with outside corporations. For example, UCI (Utah
Correctional Industries) employs prisoners to make products for any
corporation including the united states military. The prisoners are paid
anywhere from 90 cents to $5.45 to work for UCI an hour. They must give
back 60% of their total pay to the prison. So each prisoner is roughly
making $1,144.50 a month, but they only bring home roughly $400 bucks
after the prison gets their cut off top.
Then the prisoner must turn around and buy food off of commissary, which
is extremely overpriced. So the prison is again making money. The UCI
job is the best one as far as pay, that a prisoner can get.
The section jobs (in house stuff like food handler, section cleaner)
only pay $62 a month. These jobs are what keep the prison functioning
and the pay is a joke to say the least. There are not enough pigs to
fill the positions prisoners hold and if the convicts would stand in
solidarity to demand higher pay it would make some changes have to be
made or the institution would not function.
Yet problem number one is the lack of solid convicts who will stand as
one against the oppressors. Number two is that only a handful of
prisoners have any income from family or friends, so they must work and
accept the low pay, just to purchase general needs such as soap,
deodorant and other hygiene.
The system is well designed to stay with a full belly at the expense of
the poor, oppressed prisoners it houses. Prisons are huge money makers
for somebody, and its time for the people to come to power and take
control of our environments to live righteous lives!
Keep up the good work MIM!
P.S. Here’s a list of some more jobs that prisoners perform to keep this
place running: laundry services, food prep, grounds keeping, plumbing,
and the UCI makes all clothes issued to prisoners and for purchase of
commissary.
by MIM(Prisons) April 2009 permalink[edited for language and spelling - 12 January 2018]
Issue 8 of Under Lock and Key takes on the topic of Amerikan
prison economics and prisoner labor. Prisons in the United $tates are
funded by the states and the federal government, and they are quite
expensive. The United $tates spends about $60 billion a year to house
over 2.3 million prisoners and yet, as readers of Under Lock and
Key well know, these expenditures result in no reduction in crime
rates. Instead this is the high price tag for the most elaborate prison
system of social control in the world.
Prisoners are useful as workers because they can be paid very low wages
or none at all, they are always available and can be employed when
needed without the difficulty of having to lay off workers in downturns,
and they are literally a captive workforce who can be punished if they
refuse to work. In many respects prisoners are similar to migrant
workers who take the jobs that Amerikan citizens don’t want except that
migrant workers are at least free to move on or go home at night or pick
between jobs.
There are many aspects to the topic of prison economics and prisoner
labor, but they all tie back to the question of who is making money off
all the prisoners who work for free or for very little money, and the
bigger question of whether there is profit to be made off prisons in
general. The main position that we challenged in ULK 2 was that
the prison boom is motivated by a system of modern day slavery that is
exploiting the masses through forced labor. In this issue we will
further demonstrate that exploitation in prisons is not a source of
private profit and discuss how profiteering on mass incarceration really
evolved.
Profiteering Follows Policy
The importance of our point that prisoners are not generally exploited
for economic profit is in understanding the real motive force behind the
U.$. prison boom. Fundamentally, prisons are a money losing operation.
It costs more money to run prisons than is generated from prisoner labor
or any other aspect of the “industry.” If prison labor was a gold mine
for private profiteers, then we would see corporations of all sorts
leading the drive for more prisons. On the contrary, though the fifth
largest prison system in the United $tates is the private Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA),(1) the government still runs over 95% of
the prisons overall.(2) So if Amerikans didn’t build the largest prison
system in the history of humynkind for slave labor profits, then why did
they do it?
As a parallel example, consider the war-profiteering of Halliburton and
KBR through the military industrial complex; it was the government who
started wars, and then the contractors appeared. In fact, the stories of
most of these contractors start with people with political connections,
not with any particular interest or knowledge of the product or service
in demand.(3) War was created for the overall economic benefit of the
imperialist system, but not by the companies that most directly
profited. Once the profits start flowing, the intertwining of interests
between politicians and their private benefactors creates conflicts
between the imperialist interests abroad and those who are just trying
to make a quick buck. Hence, we see some backlash against Halliburton
and, their former subsidiary, KBR’s corruption within the White House
and the Senate (including the Senate hearing on May 4, 2009).
Similarly, the prison boom originated in government policy, and then new
companies formed to profiteer, or in the case of telephone and
commissary, old companies adapted their product to a specific
opportunity. Prisons serve U.$. imperialism in controlling the local
population, while placating the demands of the oppressor nation as a
whole. Only now, with the emergence of mass incarceration, the demands
of Amerikans for more prisons are more economically oriented, rather
than just social. And most of that economic interest is among state
employees and unions, not private corporations.
In Ohio, the Department of Corrections had to go to the state Supreme
Court in order to close prisons over the protests of the guard union.(4)
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, notorious for
being the strongest in the country, has applied similar pressures
preventing the state from cutting anything from the CDCR budget except
for education programs in recent years.
Private industries are making lots of money off prisons. From AT&T
charging outrageous rates for prisoners to talk to their families, to
the food companies that supply cheap (often inedible) food to prisons,
to the private prison companies themselves, there is clearly a lot of
money to be made. But these companies’ profits are coming from the
States’ tax money, a mere shuffling of funds within the imperialist
economy. Some companies like AT&T or some of the prison package
services are selling goods or services directly to prisoners at
drastically increased prices from what you’d get on the street. But even
then, they are not exploiting the prisoners’ labor, they are merely
extorting their money. The private prisons are the only example where
prison labor that is used to run the prisons may come into play in
determining corporate profits.
Some activists see opportunity in the current capitalist crisis; perhaps
states will be forced to listen to arguments claiming that prisons are a
money pit for tax funds. However, Governor Quinn of Illinois responded
to the crisis in his state last month by canceling plans of the previous
governor to close Pontiac Correctional Center, citing “fiscal
responsibility” and the protection of 600 local jobs and $55.4 million
in local revenue.(5) Pennsylvania is continuing down its path of prison
expansion with plans for 8,000 more beds in the next 4 years for the
same reasons.(6)
These governments could generate jobs and revenue in countless ways. The
reason that prison guards are generally funded over teachers is
initially a question of the government’s goals and priorities. While
there is much public pressure to fund schools over jails, this battle is
one for the labor aristocracy’s unions to fight out. Revolutionaries
have no significant role to play in such debates. We can combat national
oppression with institutions of the oppressed, not by more jobs for
Amerikans in one government sector or the other.
Meanwhile, the capitalist will invest in operations based on where the
funding goes, so it is not really the evil corporations that are
directly to blame for the U.$. prison boom. The government decides
whether prisons are built. The U.$. government serves the overall
interests of the imperialist class first and then must answer to its
Amerikan constituency. It is the combination of these two interests that
have led to the largest mass-incarceration in history. Currently, the
strategy to dismantle this massive humyn experiment must recognize these
two forces as the opposition, and then mobilize forces that have an
interest in countering both imperialism and Amerikanism.
Prisoner Labor
After publishing an article entitled
Amerikans:
Oppressing for a Living, we received some criticisms from comrades
of our position that corporations are not profiting from prison labor in
a significant way. We then made a call to our correspondents on the
ground across the United $tates to research this issue further. Not only
did we receive much data to back up our position, but many wrote in to
say that our analysis was right on.
In this issue of Under Lock & Key we are printing data on the
prison labor going on in New York, Texas, California, Florida, Colorado,
Oregon, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Washington, Utah and the
Federal system. These systems represent over half of the U.$. prison
population, so we feel confident that our conclusions are fairly
accurate for the system as a whole. We still welcome reports from
correspondents in other states and prisons for future research.
In summary, all states have industries that produce goods for sale. Most
if not all of those products are sold back to other state agencies,
mostly within the Department of Corrections itself. Workers in these
industries usually make more than those doing maintenance and clerical
work, with a max of a little over a dollar an hour. While we don’t have
solid numbers, these are generally a small minority of the population
and not available at most prisons.
Maintenance workers are also universal across all prison systems. Even
most supermax prisons have lower security prisons adjacent to them,
providing a labor source for running it. In many places such work is not
called a job, but “programming.” In some states, like New York, your
programming can be pseudo-educational or rehabilitative programs instead
of labor. Programming is often required. When it is paid it is usually
less than fifty cents an hour.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has one of the largest prison industries
selling goods outside of the prison system, but it is selling mostly to
the Department of Defense – another government agency.(7)
The UNICOR annual report boasts the benefits of prisoner labor: “With an
estimated annual incarceration cost of $30,000 per inmate, FPI’s
programmatic benefits represent significant taxpayer savings, while
restoring former inmates to a useful role in society.” They claim “a 24%
lower recidivism rate among FPI participants.”(8) There is no
information on how this number is calculated but we suspect that it is
flawed because the selection of UNICOR workers from the general prison
population is not random. On the other hand, we do know that there are
few opportunities for prisoners to acquire any useful skills prior to
release. If UNICOR training truly reduces recidivism, this should be an
obvious and compelling argument that prisons need more such programming.
It does not have to be tied to low pay and forced labor.
Jobs related to running the prisons (cleaning, library, administrative
roles, etc.) help reduce the costs of running prisons but clearly don’t
create any new wealth. UNICOR and its parallel industries in the state
systems merely allow the Departments of Corrections to obtain money from
other state agencies that they were going to spend anyway, or directly
benefit the DOC by providing it with supplies. Even with requirements
that state agencies purchase from such programs, they do not come close
to covering prison expenses.
It is a dangerous proposition to tie financial benefits to prisons as
this gives those who profit an interest in growing the prison
population. However, at this point in time only a small minority of
prisoners are actually employed, so prisoner labor does not appear to be
a major drive behind the ongoing rapid growth of the U.$. prison
population.
Modern day slavery or exploitation?
Many prisoners raise the question of whether forcing prisoners to work
for no pay violates the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.
The 13th amendment abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime.”
The
article
by some New York prisoners in this issue of Under Lock &
Key does a good job of explaining the history behind this
exception.
Slavery is a system characterized by the capture or purchase of humyns
for the purpose of exploiting their labor. As Marx explained “As a
slave, the worker has exchange value, a value; as a free wage-worker he
has no value; it is rather his power of disposing of his labour,
effected by exchange with him, which has value.” Marx is clarifying the
distinction that slaves, as objects to be purchased, have exchange
value. While capitalist workers are not purchased, they are selling
their labour instead.(9) While prison labor is similar to slavery in
that it involves workers who are receiving virtually no pay for their
labor but are being provided with housing and other basic necessities,
there are a few factors in prison labor that distinguish it from slavery
as we use that term to define a system of exploitation. First, states
have to pay other states to take their prisoners, implying they have no
exchange value. Prisons are used as a tool of social control, with the
use of prisoners’ labor only as an after thought to try to offset some
of the operating costs. Which leads to our second point: there is no net
profit made off the labor of prisoners - because of the cost of
incarceration, the state is only able to offset a portion of the cost of
providing for a prisoner by using his/her labor. Because of these
features of prisoner labor, we do not call it slavery.
Even if prisoner labor is not slavery in the economic sense of that
term, it is still possible that prisoners are exploited. Exploitation
means that someone is extracting surplus value from the labor of someone
else. The profit or surplus-value arises when workers do more labor than
is necessary to pay the cost of hiring their labor-power. This is the
way that capitalists make a profit – they pay people less than their
labor is worth and then sell products for their full value. The
difference is the profit.
In the United $tates, the imperialists are paying workers more than the
value of their labor. They can do this because of the tremendous
superprofits stolen from exploiting the Third World workers. And they
want to do this because it maintains a complicit population at home
which has a material interest in imperialism and keeps capital
circulating with its excessive consumption. Amerikans support their
imperialist government because they benefit from it. They may not all
earn the same as the big capitalists, but even in a recession they can
look to the Third World and see that they don’t want to share the wealth
around the world evenly because that would mean a step down for First
World workers.
There are some notable exceptions within U.$. borders: non-citizens are
often forced into jobs that pay far below minimum wage (or often don’t
pay them at all) as they are in a shady sector of the economy. Many
migrants in the United $tates are exploited, but they make up a very
small portion of workers in this country.
Using the term exploitation to describe prisoner labor is complicated.
Prisoners certainly earn very little for their labor, but we also have
to include the cost of providing prisoners all of their necessities
(although with very poor quality that leads to many unnecessary deaths).
Of course much of what is being provided “for” prisoners is not part of
their cost of living but rather part of the cost of keeping them captive
and providing a high standard of living for their captors.
It is fair to say that prisons are stealing the labor power of
prisoners. They have made it impossible for prisoners to refuse to work
and the actual pay prisoners receive is far less than the value of their
labor. By stealing labor power, the U.$. prison system also prevents the
self-determination of the Black Nation and First Nations whose people
are vastly over-represented in the system.
To the extent that the states can’t continue to run prisons on tax money
they don’t have, prisoner labor is a valued part of the money going to
the many labor aristocrats working in the prison system. An offset to
the cost of running prisons is useful, even if that offset does not come
close to covering even the cost of those prisoners doing the work. But
it’s important to remember that this labor is only useful because
expensive prisons existed first.
Solutions
A number of articles in this issue include calls from prisoners to take
actions against the prison industries that are making money off
prisoners, and to boycott jobs to demand higher wages. All of these
actions are aimed at hitting the prisons, and private industries
profiting off relationships with prisons, in their pocketbook. This is a
good way for our comrades behind bars to think about peaceful protests
they can take up to make demands for improved conditions while we
organize to fundamentally change the criminal injustice system.
State-by-State Info
Florida
Prisoners are employed by the DOC, and most do maintenance and clerical
work. No Florida DOC inmates are paid for work, with the exception of
inmates assigned to work in the inmate canteens(making $65 a month) or
the few locations in the state where they have PRIDE factories, which
are manufacturing-type businesses run by DOC to make goods for
correctional use (clothing, cleaning supplies, etc). Even these inmates
are paid a few cents an hour.
Colorado
Denver Women’s Correctional Facility has a capacity of 900. Everyone is
assigned for work unless they have medical excuses. Those not assigned
to a job make 25 cents a day, 7 days a week. Those assigned to standard
prison work make 60 cents a day, 5 days a week. Prison Industries jobs
are a sewing factory, print shop, and dog training program. These jobs
may pay up to $40 per month. All salaries are automatically docked 20%
if restitution, court costs, or child support is owed.
Pennsylvania
SCI Fayette has about 1800 to 2100 prisoners, of those 1200 to 1400 work
for the DOC doing various work assignments. Jobs are related to running
of the facility, such as maintenance, commissary, grounds crews,
schooling, laundry, barber shop, library and janitors. Some also work
for “Correctional Industries.” The pay scale is as follows in
$/hour:
Step A
Step B
Step C
Step D
Class 1
0.19
0.20
0.21
0.23
Class 2
0.24
0.25
0.27
0.29
Class 3
0.33
0.35
0.38
0.42
People usually work from 120 to 160 hours per month, so top pay would be
$50.40 to $67.20. Correctional Industries (CI) makes 51 cents or about
$81.60 a month. Like similar programs that exist in all 50 states,
Pennsylvania Correctional Industries produces things such as furniture,
clothing and personal care products primarily for purchase by state
agencies.
Washington
Washington State Penitentiary holds about 2240 people. Of those around
250 work for correctional industries . Most of those sew clothes for
inmates, the rest do welding of furniture for cells and make license
plates. They pay up to $1.10/hr.
“Inmate duties” pay from $35 to $55 a month, and include cooking,
cleaning, serving food and washing clothes.
Connecticut
In MacDougall-Walker CI only about 25% of prisoners have jobs here. Some
pay rates here are:
job
$/2 weeks
dishwasher
$10.50
barbers, laundry, cooks
$17.50
school
$7.50
small engine repair
$25
making uniforms/clothes
$25
Oregon
Industry jobs pay between $100 to $175 a month and all the rest pay
between $25 to $75 a month. see
Prison
Labor at Oregon State Pen
Texas
In Texas, every general population prisoner is required to work. They
either work in the service of prison upkeep (i.e. maintenance, food
service, field labor, support service inmate, etc.) or they work in one
of the various factories owned by TCI (Texas Correctional Industries).
There is no pay for work.
For wages between 8¢ and 34¢ an hour prisoners do normal maintenance
work as well as produce clothing, food, bedding, cleaning products,
tables, chairs, modular offices, license plates and the tags that go on
them for the state.
Wisconsin pays for programming including educational programs, prison
maintenance and Badger State Industry jobs. The pay ranges for
non-industry work are: 12 cents ($9.60 every 2 weeks) to 42 cents
($33.60). At Green Bay CI, with about 1050 prisoners, about 300 work
maintenance and only 18 prisoners work industry, which makes from 79
cents to a dollar an hour. They make clothing for outside vendors and to
sell to prisoners around the state.
Utah
Utah pays $7 a month and has thrown out a lot of work positions that use
to be available. The prison does manufacture houses in their carpentry
program, and UCI commisary has convicts making sweats and shorts down in
Gunnison, then selling these products back to the U.$ and community.
Federal
In Coleman II, 90% of prisoners work, most of them do facility
maintenance for $12 a month to work 8 hour, 5 day workweeks. A minority
get to work for UNICOR.
The private industries run by UNICOR employ 21,836 prisoners across the
country, with pay ranging from 23 cents to $1.15 per hour. In 2007
UNICOR showed profits of over $45 Million, with most of their products
being military supplies for the Department of Defense.
I am a Vietnamese immigrant. I’ve been living in Amerikkka since 1985. I
came to this country when I was a kid. My father passed away so I grew
up in a foster home. My life is not colorful, I had my ups and downs.
This is the second time that I’ve been locked up. My life is changing as
I grow older.
Upon discharging my first sentence, I was picked up by INS. A court date
was set, I was ordered deported by a federal judge. While waiting for a
travel visa I was sent to different county jails. I met people who were
waiting for 5 or 10 years just to be deported. Some people can’t go back
to their birth home due to persecution, and yet they can not be released
because they committed crime in Amerika. All of us have to pay our debts
to society.
After a few years I was released back to society with various
conditions. I have to check in monthly, to pay for a work visa yearly,
pay taxes, and go back to my birth home once they have a visa ready for
me. I have children who were born here.
I worked and had a job. Some of the work I did was harsh, only so-called
illegals and non-citizens work at such places. Jobs that are not done by
Americans, yet they sit and cry about us “illegal” and non-citizens
taking up jobs.
Every month I saw INS come through and do a sweep, checking people for
work visas. Those who didn’t have visas were picked up and arrested.
Some were thrown in federal prison because of re-entry. Families are
being torn apart because of these reasons. Some come back because of
family ties. They come back because they want to see their sons,
daughters, mother and father. Some relatives are too old to travel or
too young to understand.
Recently Oklahoma has passed a new law called House Bill 160U. It
specifically targeted “illegal” or non-citizen people in Amerika. We get
pulled over for no reason so that they can check for ID. If any person
or company hires or harbors “illegals,” there will be fines and
imprisonment. Some small businesses are closing down because “illegals”
are afraid to work.
We’re being punished for breaking the law, and punished again by federal
court. We’re guilty for not being Amerikan citizens. Some of us don’t
have a voice. Sometimes I wonder, does kindness have any value in
Amerika?
Here at Utah’s plantation they’ve cut jobs that used to pay $60 a month
to just $7 a month and thrown out a lot of positions. So one guy does
the work of what used to take several. The prison does manufacture
houses in their carpentry program, and UCI commisary has convicts making
sweats and shorts down in Gunnison, then selling these products back to
the U.$ and community. I’ve been out of population for a year now but
the above is what I was seeing at that time.
Since I last wrote to you I’ve been studying with MIM(Prisons) cell
study course and had the privilege of seeing one of these punk pigs here
at the Utah Supermax solitary unit fired. Not only was Feikert fired for
sexual misconduct, but it seems he’s pursuing a lawsuit himself against
the DOC. Let them bite each others swine throats I say. He’s back at
work though on some form of legal matter but hopefully not for long.
The
interview
with Mfalme Sikivu in
ULK 7 was right on
and I respect what he and the UFD are doing. Though the comrade from
Texas’s words were the most heartfelt I believe. I think we should all
try harder to see things for what they really are instead of putting our
own personal slant on issues. Being a realist for sure isn’t the easiest
way to be but it’s the truest.
Take for example my comrades here in UINTA One solitary. Day in and day
out these pigs taunt and seek reactions so they can keep us here longer
or take all our stuff and place us on strip cell. Most comrades are wise
to that approach but it’s when these pigs turn us against ourselves that
most convicts become tricked into acting out.
I don’t see how some people can become friends and sit there talking to
these pigs. You see my friend just hanged himself and the next day I
hear ”I don’t care about you pieces of shit, I never lost a single
moment of sleep over you scumbags” or “Spider went home, 4a, Hoopers on
early release” as they laugh like it’s funny.
To my comrades in neighboring cells no matter if they’re white or black,
I will be beside all you comrades when revolution is necessary. I see
the economic recession as just another sign the U.$. is weakening and I
can feel the anger turned to knowledge in each of your ULK submissions.
I’m glad to be a part of MIM.
Imperialism is the enemy first, all this other shit second but it’s not
time to just wait for a movement. We are the movement, every time one of
us wins a lawsuit or cracks a law or history book we win. Slowly we’re
winning, growing, learning.
Just keep your heads up out there, especially those sitting in these
solitary dungeons. It’s not east-side west-side, it’s the
oppressed-side. We are all family in this and we are going to take the
power back because we speak truth, we bleed justice.
I am alive today because of MIM and the ideals I’ve learned there. The
anger’s not focused inward anymore, but outward towards learning how to
better myself instead of destroy myself. Because they want us to go off,
they want us to die. It’s what they don’t want that scares them, that
gets through to them. They fear real equality, justice and peace. I mean
their minds can’t grasp the possibility of liberty for all. It’s our
jobs to blaze a trail, to show the way.
Budget cuts here at the USP have knocked indigent envelopes down from 5
a week to just one a week which is hateful. The fact that paper got cut
too from 25 pieces a week to just 5 is a matter I’m grieving (freedom of
expression) because we here in the hole aren’t allowed to buy any
writing materials other than 15 envelopes a week. So we (some of us)
have 15 envelopes but only 5 pieces of paper.
I am a federal prisoner confined to the Coleman II United States
Penitentiary. In most federal penitentiaries there are approximately
1500 prisoners in the general population. Approximately 90% of general
population prisoners hold prison employment working jobs that range from
being cooks in the kitchen, providing janitorial work throughout the
prison, working in the maintenance department as electricians or
plumbers, or in the most coveted of prison jobs: the UNICOR factory.
Prisoners are compelled to work in two ways. First, the administration
utilizes the Financial Responsibility Program to coerce prisoners to
work. All convicted Federal prisoners are assessed $100 per count for
the crimes for which they are convicted. Many others are given fines,
restitution and other “criminal monetary penalties” at sentencing. When
a prisoner arrives to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, s/he is required to
pay these “financial obligations” during incarceration through the
Financial Responsibility Program or face loss of privileges such as
commissary, telephone, visitation access, etc. A prisoner must obtain
prison employment to meet these so-called obligations in order to keep
his/her ability to maintain community contacts through visits and phone
calls and to supplement the horrid diet through the commissary.
The second means of lawful but unjust enslavement of the prison
population is through disciplinary action. A prisoner who refuses to
work is, under prison rules and regulations, “refusing to program.”
Violating this rule also results in loss of privileges but has
additional adverse consequences such as loss of “Good Conduct Time,”
time in disciplinary segregation, impoundment of personal property, and
other sanctions.
It is without doubt that if the federal government had to pay wages to
unincarcerated laborers, the cost of cleaning, maintaining and repairing
prisons would be extraordinary. It is much easier to run the gulags of
America when you prey upon the incarcerated poor and offer them $12 a
month to work 8 hour, 5 day workweeks.
This does not account for the UNICOR laborers. UNICOR, also known as
Federal Prison Industries, manufactures uniforms, kevlar helmets,
furniture, armored cars, and other materials for the U.S. military.
Prisoners are paid a maximum of $125 a month but can make hundreds in
overtime. To the average prisoner such wages are too tempting to pass
up. They don’t realize they are fuel for the capitalist military
industrial complex which saves hundreds of millions of dollars making
military material and products in prisons.
Prisons may not reap profits but they do save costs with prison labor
which, considering the amount saved, is tantamount to profits. It is
certainly a basic tenet of the criminal injustice system and helps the
government run its oppression camps by not having to tax the average
citizen to run these torture chambers. Nothing grabs the attention of
Americans more than taxes, more prison labor means more prisons without
more taxes.
To my komrades at MIMs, I would like to thank you all, firm and true to
our cause members, seeing and making progress with the lumpen and other
oppressed groups. I just received your
Under Lock & Key
March 2009 issue, and I was pleased to read the many different views
and struggles around Amerika (prison system) which not only inspire me
but allow for me to understand that this octopus of a capitalist system
is still at war oppressing people and nations. The revolutionary
mindedness that I have built upon since receiving your publications,
going on two years strong, has given renewed strength and encouragement
not only to me but to all those seekers wanting to be and who are a part
of your movement. My highest respects!
I myself have been reaching to the masses in here and out in the free
world trying to maintain unity and strength and by doing so I’ve come to
see that so many prisoners who are locked up with me don’t have that
kind of support from outside people. So what I have come to do in light
of that has been giving your information so that they may find
encouragement and mental support through your organizational work.
Not everyone I’ve come across understands the oppression that they face
because for some reason they truly believe they are given this life of
pain and slavery behind the choices they have come to make. I try my
best to express to them that it is the fucked up politics of this
government that has us doing these things, and some come to see and
understand and others choose to ignore and accept everything that comes
their way. Man! It’s crazy how some people think in here.
I got a hold of your
March 2009 No 7
issue. It was the first time I ever saw a MIM(Prisons)’s Under Lock
& Key newsletter. One of your articles really reached out to
me,
about
the administration being the real gang. I’m in the feds at USP
Florence. I’m currently going through the administrative remedy process
for 2 reasons. #1 is my case manager not doing his job. I was supposed
to be out February 12th but my case manager has messed my paperwork up
so bad, and on more than one occasion, so that I won’t be out until May
14th. The only reason I’m even getting out in May is because my family
on the street applied pressure to the proper offices. And my derelict
case manager doesn’t even have so much as a reprimand in his file. Just
to give you an example of his shoddy work, check this: I’m from
Washington DC, and when Mr. Pacheko presented me with my initial release
papers they were for an address in Southern California.
The second grievance I’m filing is in relation to a shakedown. I’m
currently in SHU on admin-seg. The captain and riot squad came and took
everybody to the rec cage area and made us all strip and spread eagle.
This took place on 3-25-09 when the temp was below 30 degrees. This
strip search was in direct violation of FBOP program statement 5521.04,
the 6th circuit ruling in Cornwell v. Dahlberg, and the 4th amendment to
the US Constitution. Since I’m in SHU I have to wait for a member of my
unit team to respond to get administrative remedies. Since I filed the
first remedy, nobody from my unit team has been to see me. Effectively
they are killing my ability to file anything further.
To any prisoner anywhere who reads this, I want you to know that prison
guards and administrators don’t care if you have a violent outburst to
staff misconduct. That’s exactly what they want you to do. So then they
can gas you, assault you, and then write you an incident report. The
only things these people care about is filing paperwork. I’ve been put
out of two institutions for “disrupting the orderly running of the
institution” because I file lots of paperwork on behalf of myself and
others. Remember, if you do something wrong they write you up. So you
have to write them back up.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We agree with this comrade that it’s
important we use the legal system to fight the abuses of the criminal
injustice system. When you take on the system you can also use the pages
of Under Lock and Key to expose the injustice and publicize your
battles.
I’m writing this letter as a growing New Afrikan prisoner and gang
leader and founder of the NC State East Coast Consolidated Crip
Organization (ECCO) prison group. What prompted me to write this
particular letter was the
March 2008 #7 Under
Lock & Keyinterview
with Comrade Mfalme Sikivu. Even without having an affiliation with
the Ujamaa Field Dynasty, I can agree to their message and that of their
doctrine from what was given in the interview.
I believe there comes a time in our lives for those of us who live our
life illegal, or gang members, prisoners, etc., that we realize what
oppression is and how we take active roles in repressing ourselves and
our communities. Not for all, but for most of us, I’d say it’s natural
to want to contribute to productive change and liberation from what
ignorance has bound us to. I encourage all my comrades in Lumpen groups
to contact the UFD to have a better understanding of the UFD and their
goals as to realize their struggle is our struggle, their liberation is
our liberation. It takes all of us as responsible adults to fight for
what we know is right and to learn from each other.
We can be gang members and still identify with the set and hoods we’re
from while deprogramming ourselves and killing our own for rank and a
name in some cases. There’s no sense to it. Anybody with common sense
should realize violence for any number of reasons normally is responded
to with equal or greater violence. As a Hoover Crip I’ve killed or
harmed more Crips from rival chapters than the United Blood Nation. I’m
not justifying or advocating my actions, I’m making a point from what I
know. We each have the potential to do right, if we make a dedicated
attempt. While I do agree with the statement Mfalme made that lumpen
will not fundamentally change, I do so because I don’t feel we have
enough educated leaders and programs in and out of prison to help us
come to a new understanding.
The Crips and the Bloods have decades of bad relations and bloodshed
between us that has spread all across the United States, Africa and
South America. A 6 month to a year program, half run by capitalist and
police who don’t know or care about us, who in most cases entice us to
kill each other, can’t be expected to change the damage.
Remember, it’s on us to defeat our criminal mentalities and create a
future for our families. No one can break our bad habits for us and for
us as gang members, pimps, drug dealers, etc., to continue down the same
path is self-destruction for us and those who care for us, or depend on
us. Each one, teach one and we will obtain the light we seek. And
support the UFD goals, if not the UFD, learn from them and apply what’s
taught to your own groups to help our communities grow and prosper.