MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with their grievance procedure. Send them extra
copies to share! For more info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses listed on the petition, and below. Supporters should send
letters on behalf of prisoners.
Click to download a PDF of the Oregon grievance petition
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies
to share! For more info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Director of the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) 2575 Center
Street Salem, OR 97301
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
PDF updated May 2012, July 2012, July 2014, and October 2017
I read over
the
letter from our Polunsky comrades. This is what I recommend. Often
it helps to attach an I-60 with your Step 1 grievance and ask the
Grievance Officer for the processing number of your grievance. If you
have this number you will have a direct reference to track a grievance.
This helps discourage grievances being “misplaced.” It’s also handy when
you write Administration Review & Risk Management (ARRM) about the
unit not addressing that particular grievance. For important and serious
grievances it is useful to start them like this:
I file this grievance to exhaust all administrative remedies as required
by the Prison Litigation Reform Act to bring forth action under section
1983 of Title 42 of the United States Code.
It basically says: I’m going to sue you! It’s not a guarantee but
such an intro may make the grievance officer take it more seriously.
In regards to the officers who confiscate personal property and then
destroy them, I’d like to direct our comrades to the
Texas
Grievance Guide, in particular the part concerning filing criminal
charges against officers. If an officer takes a prisoner’s property
without giving a confiscation form stating the reason for confiscation,
then that is legally theft. It is also a violation of your civil right
to due process (which is also a criminal offense). Of course you will
need some kind of proof that the item existed and was taken. Get
prisoners to write affidavits and reference any camera numbers (if there
are any). The criminal charges may not stick because pigs don’t eat
pork, but it may give them a wake up call and make them think twice.
I agree that our grievance petitions are having no effect with the
people we are currently sending them to. I feel it more beneficial to
send them to ACLU Texas or the DOJ. Our grievances and complaints are
systematically neglected and denied. It is an Orwellian system, a
labyrinth of closed loops, a facade. We need to push for the TDCJ
Independent Oversight Committee which will place our grievances before
an unaffiliated organization with the ability to monitor TDCJ to ensure
that it abides by statutory law and its own policy.
We shouldn’t hope sending the grievance petition alone to the DOJ or
ACLU is enough. We must promote and campaign this proposed bill to our
freeworld friends and family. I see no other way to break these closed
loops.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Write to us for a copy of the Texas
Grievance Guide. While we agree with this comrade that a TDCJ
Independent Oversight Committee would bring progress for Texas prisoners
in their fight against abuse and injustice, this too is not enough. We
must learn from history that reforms like this one are followed by DOJ
tricks and adjustments to work around the new policies and continue the
same old abuse and repression. While we should still fight for these
reforms, and use the battle to educate and unite people both behind the
bars and on the streets, we must do this in the context of the broader
struggle against the criminal injustice system. We should never mislead
people to think that one reform or one house bill will make the change
we need to see to create a true system of justice.
We here on Polunsky Unit are receiving the ULK and copies of
the grievance petition. We are engaged in the fight on a very small
scale. Hundreds of petitions have been sent to the central grievance
office, Administrative Review and Risk Management Division (ARRM),
Executive Director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ),
and recently TDCJ Board Chairman Oliver Bell, but to no avail.
Grievances are not submitted and grievance investigators claim to not
have received them. Those that do get processed/submitted are not
properly investigated and receive the standard response of “insufficient
evidence to substantiate your allegation.”
The KKKlantation Warden Gary Hunter is in collusion with grievance staff
to trash/destroy any grievance/appeal that may get action if we proceed
to the Step 2 level, that is if the Step 2 does not land in the hands of
Regional Director Richard Alford who has been Assistant Warden and Head
Warden on this KKKlantation within the 12 years that I’ve been here.
There is another struggle against Helen Sheffield (Sgt. of Safe
Prison/Extortion). She confiscates personal property of offenders
accused of extortion, running gambling businesses, stores, inappropriate
relationships with female guards, etc., and destroys property if the
offender refuses to snitch for her. This is all done under the watchful
eye of Senior Warden Hunter and Assistant Warden Kenneth Hutto.
If any comrades in Texas can assist us in our fight against
Sgt. Sheffield and her theft and unlawful destruction of offender
property, please feel free to engage in this struggle.
To all comrades of USW in Texas, we must come up with a new direction to
take this grievance campaign (new addresses, etc.) to send grievance
petitions to because all the former names/addresses have failed us. My
suggestion is the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) or ACLU Texas. We
comrades on the Polunsky KKKlantation have chosen to forward our
petitions to the DOJ.
“It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make
circumstances.” - Karl Marx in the German ideology
Can we say that a new phenomenon is brewing behind these walls? We can
all see the new level of political consciousness in California prisons,
where prisoners are resisting the repressive policies of the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in a more collective
manner. Change has been slow, but progress is evident. The root of this
is us prisoners with a little political and legal education to enlighten
others and at the same time inspire others to participate in progressive
action.
The California hunger strikes weren’t spontaneous demonstrations against
injust human rights violations in the Security Housing Units (SHUs), but
rather carefully laid out plans to get outside attention and assistance.
It was years of suppression that brought a few together to gather many
in a common purpose that serves all of our interests. Some men are
mentally broken while others carry on in these SHU conditions.
This is but a simple dialectic; or two sides of a contradiction forming
a unity. On one hand we have those who deteriorate under these
conditions and seek any way out, while on the other hand we have those
prisoners who adapt and at the same time find ways to better themselves
by educating themselves in law, reading good books, or picking up
hobbies to keep themselves occupied. It is through these individuals who
know the conditions in the SHU who are capable of creating campaigns for
abolishing its policies, especially the gang validation policies that so
many prisoners fall victim to.
Exposure and propaganda play a vital role on our behalf. This is where
USW comrades come in, not just as advocates for human rights, but as
advocates of an overall anti-imperialist campaign, as everything is
connected to the imperialist system. The SHUs within CDCR are an aspect
of imperialism, utilized for social control. And the oppressive
conditions within are nothing more but to assert more social control
behind prisons. It is through current events that this new phenomenon is
manifesting a wave of politically conscious prisoners creating new
circumstances. More validated prisoners are leaving the SHUs but more
are taking their place. It is possible that one day through a collective
effort the gang validation will be dismantled entirely and a SHU cap may
be part of our future. I think it is.
The Texa$ Board of Criminal (in)Justice implemented new prisoner
Correspondence Rules on 1 October 2013 restricting indigent prisoners to
5 one-ounce domestic letters per month. The previous policy allowed 5
letters per week. This is a clear attack on prisoners’ access to the
outside world, and in particular
impacts
politically active prisoners who use the mail to expose the
brutality and abuse going on behind bars in Texas. In response to this
new policy United Struggle from Within initiated a
grievance
campaign, organizing prisoners to appeal this restriction. Below are
several new updates to the campaign:
Successful Grievance Against Limits on Legal Mail
From Hughes Unit: “I won my grievance due to interference from the
department law library which deals with offenders who are indigent. They
were saying five letters a month for everything and they were trying to
stop my legal mail from going out to the courts. There is no limit on
legal mail! They were also trying only to give us supplies like 25
sheets of paper, one pen, five envelopes a month. But an indigent
offender who is doing legal work can have this once a week, and mail out
as much legal work he or she wants.”
One prisoner from Allred wrote Step 1 and Step 2 grievances requesting
additional stamps. Because of his need to use his 5 indigent mail stamps
to pursue legal research this prisoner was unable to write to family and
friends and so requested additional stamps from the Warden. The first
request prior to the grievances stated “I need to mail 5 more letters
this month using indigent [mail]. … This unit law library is giving me
the run around having me write and ask everybody under the sun. They
don’t know about the 83rd Legislature House Bill 634 by Farias of Texas.
It’s the holidays, I need extra 5 letters this month.” The response from
the Warden: “That doesn’t meet any legal requirement and I don’t have
the authority to allow you extra postage for that.” Responses to his
grievances following up on the Warden’s denial included denying the Step
1 for “excessive attachments.” The attachments were copies of his
initial attempts to resolve the issue without filing a grievance.
Based on the victory from the prisoner in Hughes Unit, we encourage
prisoners to appeal their access to stamps for legal mail separately
from the restriction on personal mail.
Restrictions on Receipt of Stationary
A comrade in Eastham Unit reported: “Each year the big wigs running
Texas prisons decide on what to take from the prisoners next. This year
it involves indigent mail and stationary sent in from the outside.
Prisoners who have no money on their trust fund account are able to
receive supplies (paper, pen, envelopes) and send out letters through
the indigent mail. Before this March prisoners could send out five
letters a week, now it’s just five letters a month… What’s worse is that
we’re charged for indigent mail services. Whenever we get money on our
account, the cost for every letter mailed and each supply is deducted.
“Prior to March our friends and family could have stationary from an
outside store sent to us. This was eliminated, and now our only option
is purchasing stationary from commissary, and paying their prices. Like
any oppressor, TDCJ enjoys coming up with new ideas and ways to make
life more difficult for their captors. There’s strength in numbers. The
more of us who write grievances, send letters to state politicians, and
get the word out to our family and friends, the better chance we have of
telling our oppressors that we’re not going to take this lying down.”
This comrade is right on about the strength in numbers. We have a number
of prisoners across the state working on this campaign to end the
restrictions on correspondence in Texas, and we’ve come up with a few
key
steps for prisoners and supporters to take.
Some jailhouse lawyers have created guides to fighting this injustice as
well as a broader
grievance
guide for Texas, and we are seeing an influx of prisoners requesting
these resources. We look forward to the results of this growing activism
in this state with the largest prison population and one of the highest
incarceration rates in the country.
For this indigent mail campaign in particular, we have a sample step 1
grievance for prisoners to use as well as a sample step 2 grievance for
those whose step 1 is rejected. Write to us for a copy of the indigent
mail campaign guide.
I recently wrote to you inquiring about how I can contribute to the
struggle within, possibly by joining forces with USW. A few solid
brothers and myself are in accordance with the 5 basic key
principles/ideas that the
United Front
for Peace in Prisons represents. However, at Perry Correctional
Institution (where I am currently confined), the consciousness is low
amongst the masses due to the oppressor’s effective psychological
warfare tactics being enforced at all angles (fear, divide &
conquer, rewards, isolation, etc.). This specific prison is designed to
be the “breaking camp” for prisoners, where they train prisoners to be
more “obedient” to further assist the oppressor’s aim for control and
financial advancement.
There are a lot of prisoner violations that occur at this plantation,
but one in particular is the grievance system. South Carolina Department
of Corrections (SCDC) has recently implemented a procedure where you
must first submit a request form to the appropriate officer/supervisor
attempting to informally resolve your issue. The officer is then
provided 45 days to respond to your request, which most officers refuse
to do. If you are lucky enough to receive a response, then you are given
only 5 days, including weekends, to submit your grievance after your
request form has been answered. Then to add insult to injury, many
grievances are never returned and the grievance officials feign
ignorance as to what happened to it.
The grievance process/system within South Carolina Department of
Corruption is substandard and blatantly violates prisoners’
constitutional rights. I am unsure whether South Carolina is covered by
the grievance campaign or not, but we are definitely experiencing
similar issues in our grievance process and I would like to join this
campaign. Please keep me updated in the decisions or proposals for
combatting the grievance system and let me know what is needed of me and
my comrades here.
Also, please provide any material available which may assist me in
awakening the masses of how to fight against the oppressor and how to
unite on a common ground with individuals in different groups. I will
strive to become a ULK Field Corespondent for South Carolina in the
future, whatever I can do to assist the struggle.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We commend these comrades in South
Carolina for coming together around the United Front for Peace
principals and doing the work to identify the critical campaign needs in
their prison. The grievance campaign is not yet active in South Carolina
but we look forward to working with these folks to customize the
grievance petition for that state and get the struggle moving forward
there. To work on this campaign in your state, write to MIM(Prisons) for
a copy of the petition, and if one does not exist for your state you can
help by modifying the petition for use there.
Although the law says we can aid others (illiterate or unskilled) on
appeals and legal work, we can no longer legally pass papers “cell to
cell,” so now we can only help others verbally. (Thanks to Assistant
Warden Robertson).
In addition, the 2011 CDCR rules limit all grievance appeals to one
single issue appeal per 14 days. If we “Abuse” this abuse of our 1st
amendment right to file grievances on the government, it is cut to one
per 30 days. When I got here (in 1983) it was 2 appeals per week
(104/year). Then cut to 1 per week (52/year), then 1/2 per week and 1/30
days if you exercise your 1st amendment rights. I’m on my second year of
the limit to 1 per 30 days because of my work exercising my legal
rights.
I’m fighting this under 42 USC 1983. “Judge” Rogers keeps stalling but I
got her sleazy and false dismissal reversed.
UPDATE February 2016: This case has entered court as Clark v.
Jeffrey Beard CV-11-03520. The comrade fighting this has reported that
Judge Rogers has thrown out all testimony from M.L. Davis (Appeal boss
of San Quentin) on 4 perjuries and 1 faked document, Davis has since
retired to keep his pension rather than be fired.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This limit on grievance appeals is a blatant
example of the Amerikan criminal injustice system restricting prisoner’s
legal rights. Grievances are one of the only opportunities for prisoners
to fight abuse and illegal policies and restrictions. Often these
grievances are ignored or “lost”. Because of these practices, and
restrictions like the ones described here, United Struggle from Within
initiated the grievance campaign,
first in
California and now in ten states across the country, with petitions
for these states that prisoner’s can use to demand our grievances be
addressed. Write to us for a copy of the petition for your state, or to
help create one if you do not live in a state where this has already
been done.
Each year the big wigs running Texas prisons decide on what to take from
the prisoners next. This year it involves indigent mail and stationary
sent in from the outside. Prisoners who have no money on their trust
fund account are able to receive supplies (paper, pen, envelopes) and
send out letters through the indigent mail. Before this March prisoners
could send out five letters a week, now it’s just five letters a month.
Going from twenty to just five letters a month shows how indifferent and
uncaring towards our family members and friends the prison
administration really is. What’s worse is that we’re charged for
indigent mail services. Whenever we get money on our account, the cost
for every letter mailed and each supply is deducted.
Prior to this March our friends and family could have stationary from an
outside store sent to us. This was eliminated, and now our only option
is purchasing stationary from commissary, and paying their prices. Like
any oppressor, TDCJ enjoys coming up with new ideas and ways to make
life more difficult for their captors. There’s strength in numbers. The
more of us who write grievances, send letters to state politicians, and
get the word out to our family and friends, the better chance we have of
telling our oppressors that we’re not going to take this lying down.
MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade is right on about the strength in
numbers. We have a number of prisoners across the state working on this
campaign to end the restrictions on correspondence in Texas, and we’ve
come up with a few
key
steps for prisoners and supporters to take.
Some jailhouse lawyers have created guides to fighting this injustice as
well as a broader
grievance
guide for Texas, and we are seeing an influx of prisoners requesting
these resources. We look forward to the results of this growing activism
in this state with the largest prison population and one of the highest
incarceration rates in the country.
When a prisoner writes the TDCJ Executive Director it will always be
forwarded
to the Ombudsman. They (Ombud) will always reply that they do not
respond to prisoner complaints and that the grievance procedures should
be followed. It’s a “closed loop” to prisoners.
The Call to
Action that I wrote which included the contacts were primarily for
our family and friends to put pressure on authorities so that our
grievances are more effective - eg. our families should contact the
Executive Director and Ombudsman to file an official complaint about the
policy change.
I got my Step 2 back around November and I sent it to the Texas Civil
Rights Project to see if they would be interested in representing this
issue in a lawsuit. I am yet to get a response from the Texas Civil
Rights Project. It could be worth while if someone could contact them
(TCRP) about this issue to prompt a response to my correspondence to
them as I know they get piles of mail every week.
We not only need to file grievances but also strongly encourage our
freeworld friends and family to contact all the contacts on the
Call to
Action to put a lot of pressure on the Texas Board of Criminal
Justice to repeal the policy.
I believe it is futile to send the Texas Grievance Petition to the
Executive Director because of the closed loop with the correspondence
being forwarded to the Ombudsman. It could be worthwhile for freeworld
people to send a version of the petition to the Exec Dir but I think
prisoners need to start directing the petition to someone else.
I also want to mention that this mail restriction should not affect
legal/privileged correspondence - prisoners should still be able to send
5 per week.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We received information from another
prisoner on this same issue:
Comrades in Texas, do not send your petitions to the Executive Director
or Central Grievance office because they are not working in our favor.
They only forward the petitions to departments that don’t address these
issues, who contacted me and said “address this grievance related issues
on a unit level with the grievance investigators.”
We on the Polunsky plantations are sending our petitions to: ARRM
Division, Administrator, PO Box 99, Huntsville, TX 77342-0099. I suggest
that all Texas prisoners do the same so that we will be in solidarity.
Let’s flood their office with our complaints. If this doesn’t work we
will flood the DOJ in Washington DC. Let’s work in solidarity!
We agree with these comrades’ recommendations that prisoners focus
sending their grievances to somewhere other than the Executive Director.
We suggest the following addresses:
ARRM Division, Administrator PO Box 99 Huntsville, TX
77342-0099
Senator John Whitmire PO Box 12068, Capitol Station Austin, TX
78711
Oliver Bell Chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice PO Box
13084 Austin, TX 78711-3084
We also now have a sample Step 2 grievance available to those who had
their Step 1 on this issue rejected. Write to us if you need a copy of
this.
We know this campaign is not going to change the criminal injustice
system in any significant way. But restrictions on mail access is
equivalent to cutting many people off from the outside world. And for
those who are engaged in educational and organizing work, this is a
significant problem. For this reason, focusing a campaign on
restrictions on indigent correspondence is important to our broader
organizing work.
