Under Lock & Key

Intensificando la amenaza de pandillas peligrosas con “súperpredadores.” Usando informantes confidenciales, tatuajes, y apariencia para catalogar personas como “pandilleros.” Usando esa conexión de pandilla para encarcelar y torturar a la gente. Estos métodos draconianos son familiares a lectores de ULK, y para esos que han pasado tiempo en cárceles estadounidenses en general. El régimen de Trump ha echo esta noticia para el país entero.

En las semanas recientes, cientos de venezolanos han sido deportados de los Estados Unidos a una megacarcel en El Salvador. El régimen de Trump ha justificado esto con La Ley de Enemigos de 1798, que permite la deportación de no ciudadanos durante tiempo de guerra, y fue usado durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial para deportar los alemanes y italianos y juntar los japoneses en campos de internamiento, apoderándose de sus activos para los euro-amerikanos. Trump reclamo que estas personas fueron parte de una pandilla conduciendo “guerra irregular” en los Estados Unidos, pero no hay evidencia que Tren de Aragua es una organización amplia y funcional aquí. En febrero, el Departamento de Estado estadounidense designaron Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), y una lista de carteles mexicanas como “organizaciones terroristas extranjeras.”

Una corte federal ha ordenado una pausa a estas deportaciones, pero el Departamento de Justicia esta desafiando la orden. Una batalla legal continua, mientras el poder ejecutivo continua a desafiar las cortes.

Venezuela ha sido un objetivo consistente del imperialismo estadounidense desde que obtuvo poder Hugo Chávez en 1999.(1) De resultado casi 600,000 venezolanos han sido aceptados en los Estados Unidos con Estatus Protegido Temporario (TPS). Trump intento a cancelar el TPS para los venezolanos, pero una corte federal ha determinado eso como un acto ilegal. Sin el TPS, muchos de Venezuela, Haití, Ucrania, Sudán, Afganistán y otros lugares no podrían continuar a trabajar en los Estados Unidos legalmente y podrían ser deportados legalmente.

Kilmar Armando Ábrego García esta recibiendo atención especial de que la administración de Trump admitió que su deportación fue un error, y que no lo pueden regresar de la custodia salvadoreña. Esto es a pesar de que había una orden del la corte que prevenía su regreso a El Salvador, donde se había escapado de violencia pandillera cuando era joven. Ábrego García no tiene cargos criminales, si sirve de algo, pero fue catalogado como un miembro de MS-13 por un puerco mencionando un “informante confidencial” cuando estaban acorralando trabajadores hace algunos años. Como resultado, Ábrego García ha sido desaparecido de su familia y mandado a una unidad de tortura en el mero país que huyo por razones de seguridad.(2)

El ACLU obtenido una copia del “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” siendo usado para deportaciones. Después de establecer que alguien es mayor de los 14 años, de origen Venezolano y sin ciudadanía estadounidense, un sistema de puntuación es usado para “validar” pandilleros. Un tatuaje de “TdA” te da 4 puntos mientras 8 puntos son requeridos para calificar como validado. La guiá del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional muestra una lista de imágenes de tatuajes como coronas y estrellas que son “TdA”. También, poniéndote mercancía de los Chicago Bulls y Michael Jordan está en la lista. Cuando fue la ultima vez que has visto alguien con un tatuaje de una estrella y portando Air Jordans?

Persiguiendo Activistas Estudiantiles

Instituciones educacionales desde Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York hasta es sistema de la Universidad de California están esforzando la represión fascista en sus campos, de expulsando estudiantes durante la presidencia de Biden, a haciéndolos desaparecer de las calles y de sus hogares bajo el régimen de Trump. Estudiante de Tufts University Rümeysa Öztürk esta detenida por escribiendo un articulo criticando el genocidio en Palestina causado por los Estados Unidos y Israel y el campamento estudiantil propalestina el año pasado, contó su historia en una declaración reciente del 18 de Marzo 2025:

“Me llamo Mahmoud Khalil y soy un preso político. Les escribo desde un centro de detención en Luisiana… Fui detenido el 8 de marzo por unos agentes del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS, por sus siglas en inglés). Se negaron a aportar una orden judicial y nos abordaron a mi esposa y a mí de manera agresiva cuando regresábamos de cenar.…

“Mi detención fue una consecuencia directa de ejercer mi derecho a la libre expresión, ya que abogaba por una Palestina libre y el fin del genocidio en Gaza; genocidio que se reanudó con fuerza el lunes por la noche. Con el acuerdo de alto al fuego que se pactó en enero ya roto, los padres y madres de Gaza vuelven a mecer mortajas minúsculas en sus brazos y las familias se han visto obligadas a escoger entre la hambruna y el desplazamiento forzoso o las bombas. Es nuestro imperativo moral persistir en la lucha por su libertad absoluta.”

“[La Universidad de] Columbia me fichó por mi activismo y abrió una dictatorial oficina disciplinaria con el fin de saltarse el debido proceso y silenciar a los estudiantes criticando a Israel. Columbia ha cedido ante las presiones estatales, proporcionando expedientes académicos de sus estudiantes al Congreso y acatando las últimas amenazas de la administración de Trump. Algunos ejemplos claros de esto son mi detención, así como la expulsión o suspensión de al menos veintidós estudiantes de la Columbia —algunos despojados de sus títulos pocas semanas antes de graduarse— y la expulsión de Grant Miner, presidente del sindicato Estudiantes Trabajadores de Columbia (SWC, por sus siglas en inglés), en la víspera de las negociaciones contractuales.”

“En todo caso, mi detención es un testimonio de la fuerza del movimiento estudiantil para cambiar la opinión pública hacia la liberación palestina…” (4)

Otros estudiantes que han sido perseguidos se han escondido. A la misma vez, estudiantes por todas partes del país están uniéndose para apoyar y defender los que puedan ser destacados después. Elogiamos la solidaridad que estamos viendo. Escuelas y prisiones son realmente únicos en nuestra sociedad dado de las identidades de sus poblaciones y sus habilidades a organizar. Con los anuncios recientes del régimen de Trump que van a deportar ciudadanos estadounidenses con récord criminal al Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo en El Salvador, prisioneros tienen que estar preparados para confrontar el enemigo juntos en la manera que lo están aprendiendo a hacer los estudiantes. Aunque hay muchos ejemplos recientes que dice lo contrario, hay una historia larga de prisioneros estadounidenses apoyándose debido a la consciencia del grupo que viene con confrontando un opresor común cada día.

Fascismo De Regreso a su Hogar

Los Estados Unidos ha usado el régimen de aislamiento de largo plazo por décadas a un nivel no visto en cualquier otra parte en la historia humana. Médicos para los Derechos Humanos (PHR por sus siglas en inglés) salieron con un reporte en 2024 exponiendo el uso del régimen de aislamiento en los centros de detención en contra de las direcciones del gobierno para limitar su uso cuando es absolutamente necesario. Documentaron alrededor de 14,000 casos de personas siendo puestas en aislamiento por ICE de 2018 a 2023. El régimen de aislamiento tardaba por un promedio de 27 días, con 42 casos tardando mas de un año. En 2024, ICE detuvo mas de 35,000 personas, ahora siendo el sistema de detención inmigratoria mas grande del mundo.(5)

Condiciones probablemente son peor para los que son transferidos a El Salvador, donde el Presidente Bukele ha declarado que la única manera que los pandilleros pueden salirse del Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) que construyo en 2023 sera en un cajón. Con una capacidad de mas de 40,000, hay 65 a 70 prisioneros mantenidos en cada celda. “Prisioneros de CECOT no reciben visitas y nunca están permitidos a salir. La prisión no ofrece talleres o programas educativas para prepararlos a regresar a la sociedad después de sus sentencias.”(6) Bukele ha estado promocionando fotos de pandilleros con la cabeza rasurada, vestidos de todo blanco, siendo maltratados por guardas enmascarados por linea desde que abrieron la prisión. Esta campaña de propaganda ha apelado a los elementos profascista de Amerika. Y con ese apoyo, Trump esta incorporando esta prisión en el sistema internacional de prisiones amerikanas y mandando cienes de personas ahí de los Estados Unidos. Este es un cambio cerca de la casa del interconexión de sitios oscuros, y prisiones famosas como Abu Ghraib y Guantánamo, que fueron usados para torturar y aguantar preso sin juicio personas oprimidas al través del mundo Musulmán.

La mayoría de la prensa están reportando que los amerikanos pagaron $6 millón dólares para que 238 prisioneros sean puestos en CECOT, que algunos señalan que es mucho menos de lo que costaría a encarcelarlos en los Estados Unidos. Pero es una cantidad que va a ayudar El Salvador inmensamente para que puedan fundar su monstruosidad de cárcel. No tiene sentido que los imperialistas están pagando para que aguanten a estos prisioneros, pero después reclamen que no pueden regresar personas como Ábrego García de regreso a sus familias.

En los 1980s, los Escuadrones de La Muerte patrocinados por los Estados Unidos, entrenados en la Escuela de las Américas en Georgia, mataron y desplazaron muchas personas en América Central que estaban luchando por el socialismo y por poder sacar el imperialismo de sus países.(7) Muchos niños de esta guerra en El Salvador fueron desplazados a Los Angeles donde se unieron a Barrio 18 o crearon la nueva Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), fueron perseguidos por el estado, y después mandados a regreso a El Salvador. Reportamos sobre los esfuerzos en haciendo paz entre estos grupos en 2013, que coincide con la inversión por USAID y el desarrollo de las prisiones en El Salvador inspiradas por los Estados Unidos.(8) Pero las condiciones para la gente de El Salvador no mejoraron, y votaron por el Presidente Nayib Bukele que utilizo las organizaciones lumpen en su organización política y después los traiciono como un chivo expiatorio por el mal del país en una campaña fascista de represión.(9)

La lucha contra el fascismo en este país depende en la reunión de personas para defender las poblaciones migrantes y estudiantes que están siendo atacados en este momento. En cuanto el fascismo continué a subir, vemos las campañas de grupos como el ACLU acercándose mas a los de MIM(Prisons). Mientras están pasando batallas legales importantes, también vemos el reconocimiento extendiendo que no podemos depender en las cortes para que nos salven. Debemos de tener un plan B. Debemos de crear nuestro plan B.

<sup>Notas:
1. Soso of MIM(Prisons), January 2019, Imperialists Push Coup in Venezuela to Secure Oil for Amerikans, Under Lock & Key 67.
2. Democracy Now!, 2 April 2025.
3. https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador
4. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/a-letter-from-palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalil
5. Physicians for Human Rights, 6 February 2024, https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador.
6. Aleman & Cano, 17 March 2025, “What to know about El Salvador’s mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there”, Los Angeles Times.
7. MIM(Prisons), June 2009, FBI Arrests Peacemaker, Under Lock & Key 9.
8. MIM(Prisons), March 2013, One-Year Anniversary of Peace Treaty in El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 31.
9. Badgreen of MIM(Prisons), September 2023, 8,000 Military and Police Deployed in Cabanas Province, El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 83.</sup>

Oakland, CA – Organizations came together on March 29 for a caravan from East Oakland to City Hall promoting the Artivists Ending Hostilities (AEH) street program. Initiators included a number of former prisoners who participated in the 2011 and 2013 hunger strikes in California, as well as the organization of currently incarcerated people P.E.P. Talk - Pre-Entry Platform. Former prisoners of CDCr spoke at the rally on the need to bring the message of peace from the original AEH (Agreement to End Hostilities) to the streets. Organizers distributed and read the text of original AEH and a recent message from Cellblock 2 Cityblock.

Kat Brooks of the Anti Police Terror Project was one of the speakers who really got to the heart of things:

“The state creates the conditions in our communities that they know creates violence.”

Ey went on to condemn Amerikan koncentration kamps as a form of violence, saying the carceral state is the most violent institution in the world. Another comrade read from/paraphrased the intro of the Communist Party of Aztlán’s essay on homelessness, making the connection that homelessness is also a form of violence that we must come together to end.

Of course, it is up to the oppressed to change our conditions. Youth from Lulu’s House participated in the event, speaking on their own recent transformations from petty criminals to active community members. One said:

“We gotta push the movement too, it starts with us.”

While another pointed out:

“If you’re scared of the youth you’ll never understand them.”

One of the adults present who wasn’t scared to help these youth change was a BART cop (Bay Area Rapid Transit). This “officer friendly” approach is a well-known counter-insurgency strategy of the occupying forces. They hire cops to do community work, who aren’t involved in the violent repression work, but do intelligence gathering for the state while helping to divide the occupied community.

Independence is one of the principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons for this very reason. There is no progress towards liberation in the united front if it is working with the very imperialist state that is oppressing us.

Minister King X echoed this principle of independence when speaking about learning from the elders released from prison while the U.$. government is smashing the Department of Education. We must learn from the struggles of oppressed people.

Minister King X was one of the MC’s and organizers of the event, representing the Artivist Kadre trying to engage the youth and the oppressed in the movement through artistic expression. Ras Kass was also there representing the Artivist Kadre from Los Angeles. They were sporting patches promoting the New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist (N.A.R.N.) ideology and the AEH. The Artivist Kadre are working with P.E.P. Talk, BOSS (another release support program) and others to address racism, fascism, sex trafficking and more in California.

Hyping up the threat of dangerous gangs of “super-predators.” Using confidential informants, tattoos, and appearance to label people “gang members.” Using that gang affiliation to imprison and torture people. These draconian methods are familiar to readers of ULK, and to those who’ve spent time in U.$. prisons in general. The Trump regime has made this headline news for the whole country.

In recent weeks, hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported from the United $tates to a supermax prison in El Salvador. The Trump regime justified this with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the deportation of non-citizens during wartime, and was last used during WWII to deport Germans and Italians and roundup Japanese in internment camps, seizing their assets for Euro-Amerikans. Trump claimed these people were part of a gang conducting “irregular warfare” in the United $tates, but there seems to be no evidence that Tren de Aragua is even a widely functioning organization here. In February, the U.$. State Department designated Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and a list of Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

A federal court has ordered a halt to the deportations, but the Department of Justice is defying the order. A legal battle continues, while the executive branch continues to defy the courts.

Venezuela has been a consistent target of U.$. imperialism since the rise of Hugo Chavez to power in 1999.(1) As a result almost 600,000 Venezuelans have been accepted into the United $tates with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Trump attempted to cancel TPS for Venezuelans, but a federal court has deemed the move illegal. Without TPS, many from Venezuela, Haiti, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan and elsewhere could no longer legally work in the United $tates and could be legally deported.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is getting special attention as the Trump administration admitted eir deportation was a mistake, and that they can’t get em back from Salvadorean custody. This is despite a court order that prevented em from being sent back to El Salvador, where ey had fled gang violence as a youth. Abrego Garcia has no criminal charges, for what that’s worth, but was labelled a member of MS-13 by a pig citing a “confidential informant” during a round up of day laborers some years ago. As a result, Abrego Garcia has been disappeared from eir family and sent to a torture unit in the very country ey fled for safety reasons.(2)

The ACLU obtained a copy of the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” being used to deport people.(3) Once establishing someone is over 14 years old, of Venezuelan origin and without U.$. citizenship, a point system is used to “validate” gang members. A “TdA” tattoo gets you 4 points while 8 points are required to qualify as validated. The Homeland Security guide lists photos of tattoos like crowns and stars that are “TdA”. In addition, wearing Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan athletic wear are listed. When was the last time you saw someone with Air Jordans on and a star tattoo?

Student Activists Targeted

Educational institutions from Columbia University in New York to the University of California system are enforcing the fascist repression on their campuses, from expelling students during Biden’s Presidency, to disappearing them off the streets and from their homes under the Trump regime. Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk is being detained for writing an article criticizing the U.$.-I$rael genocide in Palestine. Mahmoud Khalil, who was a respected negotiator between Columbia University and the pro-Palestine student encampment last year, told eir story in a recent statement from 18 March 2025:

“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana… On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. …

“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”

“… Columbia [University] targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

“If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. …”(4)

Other targeted students have gone into hiding. At the same time, students across the country are coming together to stand with and defend those who may be targeted next. We commend the solidarity being shown. Schools and prisons are somewhat unique in our society due to the collective identities of their populations and their abilities to organize. With the recent announcements from the Trump regime that they will be deporting U.$. citizens with criminal records to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, prisoners need to be prepared to stand together as students are learning to do. While there are many recent examples to the contrary, there is a long history of U.$. prisoners standing up for one another due to the group consciousness that comes with facing a common oppressor every day.

Fascism Coming Home

The United $tates has been using long-term solitary confinement for decades on a scale not seen elsewhere in humyn history. Physicians for Human Rights released a report in 2024 exposing the use of solitary confinement in ICE detention centers contrary to government directives to limit its use to absolute necessity. They documented at least 14,000 cases of people being put in solitary confinement by ICE from 2018 to 2023. Durations in solitary averaged 27 days, with 42 cases lasting over a year. At the time, in 2024, ICE held over 35,000 people, making it the world’s largest immigration detention system.(5)

Conditions are likely worse for those sent to El Salvador, where President Bukele has stated that the only way gang members will leave the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) ey built in 2023 is in a coffin. With a capacity of over 40,000, there are 65 to 70 prisoners held per cell. “CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.”(6) Bukele has been promoting images of shaved gang members, dressed all in white, being warehoused and man-handled by masked prison guards online since the prison opened. This propaganda campaign has appealed to the pro-fascist elements of Amerika. And with that support, Trump is incorporating this prison into the Amerikan international prison system and sending hundreds of people there from the United $tates. This is a shift closer to home from the network of dark sites, and infamous prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, that were used to torture and hold without trial oppressed people across the Muslim world.

Most press sources are reporting the Amerikans paid $6 million for 238 prisoners to be held in CECOT, which some point out is much less than what it would cost to imprison them in the United $tates. But it is an amount that will greatly help El Salvador to fund their monstrosity of a prison. It doesn’t make sense that the imperialists are paying to have these prisoners held, but then claim they cannot return people like Abrego Garcia back to their families.

In the 1980s, U.$.-sponsored death squads, trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia, killed and displaced countless people across Central America that were fighting for socialism and to remove imperialism from their countries.(7) Many children of this war in El Salvador were displaced to Los Angeles where they joined Barrio 18 or formed the new Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), were persecuted by the state, and then exported back to El Salvador. We’ve reported on efforts at peace between these groups in 2013, which coincided with investment by USAID and the building of new U.$.-inspired prisons in El Salvador.(8) But conditions for the people of El Salvador did not improve, and they voted for President Nayib Bukele who both utilized the lumpen organizations in eir political organizing and later turned on them as a scapegoat for the ills of the country in a fascist repression campaign.(9)

The struggle against fascism in this country relies on the coming together of people to defend migrant populations and students currently under attack. As fascism rises, we see the campaigns of groups like the ACLU coming closer to those of MIM(Prisons). As important legal battles are taking place, we also see the spreading recognition that we can’t rely on the courts to save us. We must have a plan B. We must build our plan B.

<sup>Notes:
1. Soso of MIM(Prisons), January 2019, Imperialists Push Coup in Venezuela to Secure Oil for Amerikans, Under Lock & Key 67.
2. Democracy Now!, 2 April 2025.
3. https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador
4. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/a-letter-from-palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalil
5. Physicians for Human Rights, 6 February 2024, https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador.
6. Aleman & Cano, 17 March 2025, “What to know about El Salvador’s mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there”, Los Angeles Times.
7. MIM(Prisons), June 2009, FBI Arrests Peacemaker, Under Lock & Key 9.
8. MIM(Prisons), March 2013, One-Year Anniversary of Peace Treaty in El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 31.
9. Badgreen of MIM(Prisons), September 2023, 8,000 Military and Police Deployed in Cabanas Province, El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 83.</sup>

I used to read your papers and think of how crazy some of the stories from other prisons were. Now I have witnessed firsthand how the K2 has changed prison.

Not long ago, I was relocated to a unit full of gang members. I don’t have a ton of money but I have more than the everyday prisoner. Shortly after getting unpacked and walking the unit to look for familiar faces, I was approached and asked was I in a gang and my answer was “no”. They watched me for a few days, then one morning around 8:30 AM, I was in my cell cleaning like I do every morning and someone came into my room and asked a few random questions. The next thing I know five or so others stormed in and began assaulting me and demanding money. They took my music equipment, commissary, and other belongings and left. They said that if I sent them money I could have all my stuff back. I sent one thousand dollars and they demanded more money so I just said to hell with the property. I purchased a prison made knife that same day.

The very next day I was in my cell cleaning with the cell door locked this time and suddenly the door opened. I went to the door with the knife ready and good thing I did, because it was more gang members. They had the officer open the door. I tried to walk out of the cell and they were trying to push me back into the cell. I pulled the knife and they ran away from the door. I told them if we’re fighting let’s do it out in the open as I walked out into the day room. They wanted no parts of me as long as I had that knife in my hand. The officer walked right past as all of this was going on and said nothing. I decided not to use the knife so I threw it down and asked the officer to let me out of the unit.

I went to prison operations and asked to be moved and they said “no”. I asked again and told them if I don’t get moved someone will end up hurt. They asked why and I told them. At first they didn’t believe me until they watched the cameras. Then they moved me to P.C. and allowed the same gang members to pack my property and they took everything.

When I got what was left I complained about my missing property and they said “file a grievance”. I filed the grievance and the grievance chairperson refused to file it and sent it back. So I had my family call the warden. All he said was to file it again, which I did. It has now been almost a month and no one has said anything.

I’ve had my family calling the prison and now they won’t answer the phone anymore. So I had my family call the prison headquarters and they said they are launching an investigation but still I have heard nothing. The truth of the matter is they don’t care at all. I’ve been incarcerated 14 years and this has never happened before. These prisons are dangerous and nothing is being done about it. It’s like they want us to harm and/or kill each other in here. Now I’m trying to plan my next move because this is all new for me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I have 48 months left on a 21 year sentence so violence isn’t the answer. The prison needs to be held accountable for letting this happen. If you are reading this please be aware and thanks for reading. Thanks MIM for giving me a voice to get my story out.

MIM(Prisons) adds: More and more people are realizing this system doesn’t serve them. We’ve had it relatively easy in this country, even some of us in prison have seen the benefits of living in the heart of empire. But the empire is changing. And we need to change with it, or get chewed up by it.

My intentions here isn’t to give a dialectical and historical context of the relationship between today’s Lumpen Organizations (gangs) and past revolutionary movements, although there is an inextricable link between the two. The origins of today’s Lumpen Organizations (L.O.s) were strongly influenced by the original Black Panther Party (BPP) and other similar organizations. They were formed to uplift and protect their communities from outside threats, threats that were typically imposed by law enforcement and the U.S. government.

With the destruction of the BPP, combined with the influx of drugs and firearms within their already oppressed communities, members of these organizations were lured into “gang-bangin’” against each other and a fratricidal and suicidal criminal lifestyle that resulted in the abandonment of the ideals and principles that were brought forth and established by the organizations’ founders. Ideals and principles that were often influenced by those of the BPP and the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Today there are a limited few who diligently impress upon their “homies” the importance of espousing the organizations founding ideals and principles. Overall, a majority have been derailed from the organizations initial revolutionary path, which has been detrimental to the youth who romanticize today’s “gang” culture and their communities. Moreover, the absence of these ideals and principles has engendered a culture of disunity, violent competition, and the romanticizing of the “gang-banging” mentality, which renders us incapable of redressing the conditions we find ourselves subjected to within these razor-wire plantations.

There is no silver bullet or magic wand that can be used to magically expedite the transformation that must be made. Transforming the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality is a protracted process that demands accountability and rigorous educating.

i am dedicated to assisting with this transformation any way that i can. One way is to shed some light on the draconian policies and procedures that governs those of us who have been labeled “gang members,” labels known as Security Risk Group (SRG) or Security Threat Group (STG), so we can begin to seek redress to said policies and procedures.

Gang Validation Process

Those of us who have been validated as SRG/STG often suffer significant unfair prejudices due to the officers who are responsible for the validating opinions often basing these opinions on sweeping generalizations and stereotypes about “gang members” generally, unreliable methodology, and/or the officer’s racial bias.

Here in North Carolina the Department of Adult Corrections (DAC) has “certified” twenty-one alleged prison gangs as Security Risk Groups. Prisoners are validated as members of SRG’s by Prison Intelligence Officers (PIO) who are usually white, whose discretion reigns supreme in determining who is validated as SRG members and who isn’t. These subjective decisions lead to disproportionate validations of New Afrikan prisoners and those from other oppressed nations. A stark example of the racially uneven application of SRG validations is evident in the percentage of “white” prisoners who have been validated compared to New Afrikan prisoners. White prisoners make up 1.9% of the prisoners validated in NC prisons.

Around the world gangs are studied by those with specialized training in areas such as ethnography, anthropology, and psychology. In these fields, researchers are often subjected to ethical standards that warn against manipulating data to advance their personal objectives and required to employ social science field research best practices in relation to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The officers responsible for validating prisoners are not held to any such ethical standards and lack the fundamental knowledge to determine if a prisoner is actually a SRG member or not.

The degree of specialized knowledge for these officers to be qualified as “gang-experts” is particularly lacking. An officer can be qualified as a “gang-expert” after having only a couple months on the job, as long as they have some formalized training. You would think these “gang officers” would be required to demonstrate a basic overstanding of the complicated dynamics at issue where gang membership and behavior are concerned beyond stereotypes and prototypes, being that these validations subject prisoners to indefinite sanctions and restrictions that not only affect the lives of the prisoners but also the lives of the prisoners’ families.

These “gang officers” employ a worksheet which lists seventeen criteria for determining gang involvement, each of which is assigned a point value. Prisoners may be labeled as “suspects/associates” or “members”. A qualifying score is not difficult to achieve: prisoners bearing tattoos “thought” to signify gang affiliation and who socialize with “confirmed” gang-members may be regarded as members themselves.

False positives are likely to arise under this criteria, because while they may indicate a correlation with gang membership, they do not establish causation. Because gang membership cannot be reliably inferred from the factors aforementioned, these “gang officers” should not be allowed to opine about gang membership based on these factors alone.

Completed validation worksheets are forwarded to the NCDAC’s Chief of Special Operations, Daryll Vann, who reviews the worksheet, confirms that “relevant” documentation is attached, and validates the identifications. Prisoners who wish to contest the validation are not afforded the opportunity to do so. Prisoners receive no notice of their validation, no procedural due process, nor a periodic review that would enable the prisoner to have the validation removed. Therefore, prisoners who have been validated, remain validated for the duration of their incarceration and irrevocably are subject to SRG policy deprivations.

There are only two ways to have the SRG validation removed. There is a SRG program that’s accessible to a limited number of prisoners. It is a 9-month program at Foothills Correctional, a prison located in the rural mountainous region of Western NC. The staff employed there are exclusively white, live in race segregated communities and are out of touch with the cultures of the prisoners they oversee.

When these “gang officers” walk through the doors of the prison, many of them, knowingly or unknowingly, hold negative biases towards those who have been validated and those who don’t look like them.

The media perpetuates inaccurate narratives of violence, criminality, and dishonesty among racial minorities that many of these “gang officers” unknowingly internalize. It shows in how they interact and deal with the prisoners.

The DAC describes this program as being a program that “targets those beliefs (cognitions) that support criminal behavior ….” and seeks to shift the thinking that supports these beliefs. Prisoners who complete this program must undergo a debriefing and renounce their affiliation, if any, before the validation is removed. This program is not available to prisoners who have been labeled problematic.

The other way to have the validation removed is to complete your prison sentence and be discharged from NCDAC custody. Of the 1,343 prisoners released from NCDAC’s custody last year, 564 were alleged SRG members.

Draconian Gang Policies & Procedures

The ostensible purpose of the DAC’s SRG policies and procedures is to avoid prison disturbances supposedly fomented by gangs. Nonetheless it is obvious these policies and procedures have the effect of incapacitating significant numbers of prisoners and has cultivated an environment opposite from what prison officials claim to be “safer”.

Those who have been validated find themselves subjected to draconian sanctions and restrictions, such as being prohibited from receiving visits from anyone beyond immediate family. This excludes aunts, uncles, cousins, and the mother of your child(ren). If you have no immediate family members to accompany your child(ren) to visitation you will not be allowed to visit with them. Our childrens’ interests are not, as a matter of right, factored into SRG validation determinations. The fact that parent-child visitation can help children overcome the challenges of parental separation and reduce recidivism rates is well-documented. However, prison officials find it plausible to implement such a policy that prevents parent-child visits.

As with the prisoners who have been validated, New Afrikan children are the ones greatly affected by this policy. NCDAC has implemented this policy without any cognizance that such a restriction may implicate the parent-child relationship, which is typically subject to extraordinary protection by the courts. But yet this policy goes unchecked.

During my incarceration i’ve been unable to visit with my daughter due to me having no immediate family willing to accompany her. This has prevented her and i from developing a meaningful relationship. This is something that a majority of us are experiencing.

Moreover, this policy has an outsized impact on New Afrikan families and other members of marginalized communities who bear the brunt of mass incarceration.

Limiting a prisoner’s visitors to immediate family only effectively cuts a prisoner off from family members who may have raised them. As we know in marginalized communities there are an overwhelming amount of fractured families, where grandparents and others play the mother-father role.

Then there are the prisoners who were raised in foster care, who have never had the opportunity to meet their immediate family. There is no exception for foster care parents.

Although these restrictions are sometimes justified, they are being used indiscriminately without individual analysis.

On 19 February 2019, a policy was implemented that prohibited validated prisoners from receiving monetary support from anyone who wasn’t an approved visitor.

Prison officials claimed that this was done to curtail “Black Market” activities and strong arming. It’s not difficult to see how such a policy would increase said activities and, moreover, would create an environment where those who do have means of receiving financial support become victims of strong arming and other acts of violence.

This policy was implemented 8 months prior to now-retired Director of Prisons Kenneth Lassiter requesting more funding for security and control weapons. During these 8 months, violence amongst prisoners drastically increased, i know because a majority of the close-custody facilities were placed on lockdown due to the increased violence.

Validated prisoners are prohibited from attending all educational/vocational programs, compelled to serve idle prison sentences. They are locked in their cells virtually all of the time and otherwise maintained in extremely harsh conditions. Unable to have their custody level reduced to medium or minimum security. And job opportunities are non-existent. Common sense would tell prison officials that there are many reasons to believe that these policies and restrictions will produce unfortunate results both inside and outside of prison.

The Ramifications of these Policies

Motivated by an inaccurate conception of gangs and how they operate, the NCDAC has adopted policies that have enhanced group cohesiveness and the identities of gang-affiliated prisoners. These policies have promoted new gang connections for prisoners who, due to the difficulties inherent in gang identification, inadequate procedures and racial stereotyping, are misidentified. The validated prisoner tells emself “they think i’m a gang member, i might as well be one”. Of course these policies raise obvious moral and ethical questions. However, i would like to focus on how these policies make no sense from a correctional perspective. Even if these “gang officers” are creating or enhancing gang identities, why does it matter? Validated prisoners maintained in these locked down blocks, after all, are effectively disabled from committing acts of misconduct when locked in their cells.

Validated prisoners are denied access to visitation, financial support, transfers to medium or minimum custody, as well as parole. They have nothing more to lose so they are not deterred by any threat of punishment, what else can be taken from them? They have no incentive to refrain from gang involvement?

Aside from prison concerns, the impact of these policies’ ramifications will be felt most profoundly on the streets and communities to which these prisoners will return. As i pointed out, 564 of the 1,343 prisoners released from NCDAC’s custody last year were alleged gang members. In general, 96% of all prisoners return to society. There are recidivism studies focusing on gang affiliated prison releases, that show that gang members may retain their gang identity upon their release. (see: Salvador Buentello et. al, “Prison Gang Development: A Theoretical Model”, The Prison Journal, Fall-Winter 1991, at 3.8.) Thus, these policies not only fail to enhance prison security, they also undermine public safety.

We Have A Responsibility

All across the United $tates, prisoners themselves are subjected to similar sanctions and restrictions under the guide of enhancing prison security. i’ve revealed how these policies target New Afrikan prisoners and others of the oppressed nations and how they affect not only the prison but their families and communities as well. We have the numbers, we have the capability and we have the know how to bring about change. But as Komrade George Jackson expressed:

“We all seem to be in the grip of some terrible quandary. Our enemies have so confused us that we seem to have been rendered incapable of the smallest responsibility. I see this irresponsibility, or mediocrity at best[, as] disloyalty, self-hatred, cowardice, competition between themselves, resentment of any who may have excelled in anything….”

Because of the inexorable nature of our overseers, nationwide demonstrations on the outside and within these walls is presently necessary if we are to correct the correctors.

We have united fronts such as the United Front For Peace in Prisons, the United Struggle Within (USW) and Prison Lives Matter (PLM). PLM is a united front for political prisoners, prisoners of war, politicized individuals behind the walls of these razor-wire plantations and their organizations, as well as any outside formations in union with the struggles of prisoners, that has made it possible for us to address and redress the inhumane living conditions we find ourselves subjected to. It’s on us to initiate the process, it’s on us to communicate and network with one another, to get on the same page, so we can unite a page in the history books.

A Call to Action

As we grapple with an expanding and increasingly repressive prison system here in North Carolina, any hope for change lays in perfecting ourselves – our physical care, intellectual acumen, and cultural proficiency – while simultaneously confronting our overseers. And as i aforesaid, “There is no silver bullet or magic wand that can be used to expedite the transformation that must be made.” We have a personal responsibility to contribute to the confronting that must be done.

Some of us don’t seem to know what side we’re on. We’re obsessed with near-sighted disputes based on race, gang affiliation and so on. We expend our energies despising and distrusting each other. All of this is helping the NCDAC. We permit them to keep us at each others throats. i am calling for unity. We outnumber them. Wake up!!! Put your prejudices, biases, and gang affiliation aside for the purpose of OUR fight with the NCDAC. i’m asking we start by submitting a grievance concerning NCDAC’s SRG policies and procedures (an example has been provided below).

Of course i’m not expecting any redress from submitting grievances. NCDAC’s Administrative Remedy Procedure process is ineffective and honestly a waste of time if you are seeking redress. However, i’ve not asked you to submit said grievance with hopes that NCDAC officials will correct their wrongs.

i’m currently in the middle of litigating a civil suit against NCDAC on behalf of all prisoners who have been validated as a SRG member. By submitting a grievance you will be supporting the claims i have made. Thusly i entrust you take the time and submit the following grievance (and send a copy to MIM(Prisons) if you can):

Free The Land

The purpose of this article is to shine a spotlight into an area where darkness prevails. Now I know Georgia’s prisons are not the only ones with this problem, but I’m willing to wager that Georgia is most likely leading the nation in such instances where INMATES ARE PERFORMING (FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES) THE DUTIES OF OFFICERS.

First off, Georgia’s close security prisons (same as maximum security) are experiencing extreme shortages of correctional officers. It seems as though no one wants to be a part of a very obvious and very well known corrupt system or governmental body.

So now what a lot of prison wardens, administrators, officers, are doing, is becoming very familiar with gang leaders, or high ranking members of gangs, and basically using them and their subordinate gang members to police other prisoners.

Now some may say, I thought you would like this situation, it’s ideal. EXCUSE ME, BUT FUCK NO, IT’S GOT EVERYTHING FUCKED UP! For instance inside the housing units, if you’re a civilian prisoner (non-gang affiliation) you are most likely not going to have access to a cell to sleep in or use the toilet, because gang members want their own personal room.

The gang members are doing a lot of oppressing towards civilian prisoners (robbery, extortion, beatings, stabbing, murdering) and a lot of these acts are done for the sheer pleasure or entertainment of the gangs.

They even kick other prisoners out of the housing units, forcing them to be housed in isolation/segregation. Basically if you’re a non-gang affiliated prisoner, you can’t stay in general population unless you want to sleep in the dayroom/common area. What’s even more absurd is that the gang members don’t even want their so-called brother member to share a room with him.

The gang members are assigned nearly all the prison jobs, therefore they control the whole prison and its movement. The meals are brought to the housing unit, where the gang members distribute out the trays to themselves first and give what they don’t want to the ones remaining. So you’d be fortunate to eat!

The food portions are very very pathetic, not even a kindergarten student would be fulfilled from these small portions. YES INMATES ARE PURPOSEFULLY STARVING OTHER PRISONERS.

HERE’S THE STRAW THAT BREAKS THE CAMEL’S BACK, if for some reason you and an officer get into a heated exchange these same gangsters take the side of the officer against you and will even beat you, stab you, yes even murder you.

The sad thing about all of this is, these inmate officers are not handsomely rewarded for any of these acts! Yeah the high ranking ones have their contraband, and other prison luxuries, but for the most part they don’t have anything to show for their acts. Most are serving a life sentence (must serve 30 years before parole board considers parole for them) or life without parole, or any other combination of lengthy sentences.

Now I respect that some prisoners are working the system to their advantage, but you should never forget that your goal is to get released. So while you working the system to keep contraband shipments coming, and hustling to either provide for family or to save up for attorney fee or both, keep in mind that you’re contributing to the oppression of others and to yourself by helping the wardens, administrators, and officers operate these prisons.

Some prisons in Georgia are even neglecting to open the law library, especially here at Valdosta State Prison. The cell phones have been the biggest gift and curse in Georgia prisons, because these guys allow wardens, administration, officers, HELL THE WHOLE GDC TO VIOLATE U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS SO THAT THE STAFF DON’T COME SEARCHING AND POSSIBLY FIND THEIR CELL PHONE. THINK ABOUT IT prison cell then phone, and you get cellphone, that’s babysitting you in a cell!

Instead of attending to the law library, and trying to find a loop hole with their case to regain their freedom, they’re on social media, or chatting with some chatline girl, instead of using the cellphone as a tool to regain their life. DO YOU GET IT NOW CELL PHONE? PRISON CELL PHONE!

It seems, gone are the times when inmates would stick together regardless of race, organization, affiliations etc etc to reach a common goal or to better their treatment.

They’ve let the powers that be use their differences, along with their frustrating sentence/case circumstances, and their greed for material possessions (commissary food, cellphones and other contraband items) to divide them and place some above others to cause even more division.

In Georgia we’re in prime position to unify and demand some things. Due to the fact that Georgia Department of Corrections is in an extreme shortage of officers.

This what I’m suggesting could be done without violence or breaking the rules. But we have to get the gangs and their purpose and main mission back into the proper perspective, which is to serve and protect civilians/citizens, to stop oppression.

The gangs have been infiltrated by these imposters who’ve gained rank and position only to destroy it from within. So be careful who you follow.

In closing, think deep, find what you and your so-called opp have in common, come together to fight against your common enemy. Don’t allow your oppressors to use you to do their dirty work, by giving you some trinkets so you the oppressed will in turn oppress the already oppressed. We all have the same fight so why not join forces? There’s nothing that a warden, administrator or officer could bring in to me or promise me to trick me into performing his duty. I’ll never perform violence against another inmate for an officer, who when done with me, will turn traitor against me. Again I will not let Dept of Corrections pimp me. While they go home each and every day to their freedom and home and family, while some $50 cellphone keeps me distracted from seeking freedom. These cheap devices are not worth a life!

Refocus, Rehabilitate, Regain.

MIM(Prisons) adds: See page 2 of Under Lock & Key for the 5 principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons and see if you can use them to rebuild unity among the lumpen in your area.

Welcome to the Revolution! This is Alien tappin in with a response to the ULK 83 article titled, ‘Materialist Analysis of the Stop Snitching Slogan: Stop Collaborating!’ In this article 3 questions were asked and I’ll try to answer them, with an article of my own:

• We ask our imprisoned lumpen readers, can snitching really be stopped without independent power from the oppressor?
• What would it mean to be loyal to “your people” or “your folks”?
• Can the principle of anti-snitching be applied to the enemy who it is designed to protect fellow oppressed nations or lumpen from in the first place?

Lumpen as Aspiring Oppressors

First off, I’m not gonna sugar coat shit. We must identify the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressor’, with a concrete analysis, which can get confusing; because the two groups are united under the flag of the 2nd Beast and because the oppressed lumpen in the United $tates of Amerika are struggling to ‘transform themselves’ into the oppressors, so when they look in the mirror their reflections often resemble the opposite; in a political, spiritual, psychological, geographical and sexual essence. Keep in mind that, subjectively and objectively, the U.$. lumpen are in a figurative yacht compared to the canoes of the proletariat and peasants of the Third World, as seen in their past and present conditions. They also sail on entirely different waters, figuratively speaking.

However, neither ship has an arsenal of cannon balls, as does the oppressive Imperial Navy, which is a similarity. The problem is that the U.$. lumpen are trying to arm themselves with cannons inside their yachts, as a means of initiating the Imperial Navy and are aspiring to become oppressors themselves, not as a means of internationally ending oppression/exploitation – it’s the Amerikan nightmare. They are a spitting image of their culture. They want to grow up and get spanked by porn stars, like Donald Trump, with herds of piggy banks to save the day like captain-save-a-rate. The majority of them worship Amerikan Idols, not because they have to, but because that’s what they strive, with blood, sweat and tears, to become.

What use is it for the lumpen of the oppressed nations to wrestle power away from the oppressors only to use that power to restore, or intensify imperialism? Chances of success is less than a gamble, with these people steering the ship, it’s a guaranteed loss, because they only understand bourgeois revolution, not a communist endgame. In a materialist sense, the lumpen have never demonstrated, throughout history, any success in establishing socialism. The lumpen have always failed as a vanguard for very specific reasons, because they are a root of imperialism. And if you don’t uproot the entire plant, from the roots up, then the weeds resurrect, inside of the garden, and we find ourselves in the same situation. It’s a rookie mistake to paint an idealistic picture of the lumpen dictating to the rest of the world; not only that, it would be revisionism for the lumpen to jump the proletariat’s place, as dictators.

The lumpen of the oppressed nations often as not tend to feed into the weed of imperialism, by cheer leading for and supporting the pigsty with its state and federal criminal injustice system. What I’m trying to say is that, even if the oppressed nations establish independent power from the oppressor, they are likely to keep the same police system in place, or worse. So, not only will snitching not ‘really be stopped without independent power from the oppressor,’ snitching will not stop even with independent power from the oppressor. There’s no telling what the lumpen will do, if they get cannon for their yacht, but the way that it looks from my hypothetical perspective is that the lumpen are likely to use cannons to hunt down, loot, rape and sink the canoes of the Third World proletariat, who aspire to eliminate imperialism. Yachts, canoes and the Imperialist Navy represent the material forces keeping each group afloat. Cannons represents an ability to commit piracy, to dominate and sink other ships.

The Other Side

People need to wake up and realize that the reason why the oppressed/exploited have historically been opposed to the oppressors (the pigs, badge-less pigs, rodents of all varieties, who serve the pigs for many flavors of cheese/slop, and reptilian serpents of the Illusionati) is because they were common enemies who openly oppressed along all three strands of oppression (nation, class, and gender). The fucked up part that’s got all of the oppressed clawing at each others’ throats is that the slick ass enemies are disguising themselves as friends and acting out delusional charades to convince the oppressed masses into believing that the united snakes of pigtropolis are friends and not infiltrators.

On to the next aspect of the contradiction; silence versus full disclosure. To this day, the oppressed lumpen do not truly uphold and adhere to a code of silence in a solid, revolutionary way. Originally, the code of silence was meant to bolster organizational unity and loyalty amongst the communities, so that our oppressed nations could grow, struggle and develop internally. Making moves in silence is a powerful organizational strategy and tactic, when applied correctly.

Codes of silence are meant to shield allies, who we are loyal to, from incrimination. They are not to shield enemies, who are not loyal to us, from incrimination. Why would we show loyalty to the enemy? Showing loyalty to the enemy is showing disloyalty to your allies. The problem is that we’ve got snakes and such trying to silently ride with the enemy and apply codes of silence to them, in their defense.

With that said, it’s one thing to disseminate information to the enemy to get should-be allies targeted, but it’s on a whole other level when somebody, who’s claiming to be anti-pig, decides to put in actual work in collaboration with the pigs. The collaborators even go so far as to let these pigs into their L.O.’s, so that they’re official gang members who get to transform at will and exercise their ability to set you up on fraudulent disciplinary reports to get you stuck in maximum security prisons. To get away with murder and police brutality, with manipulating sex-starved prisoners into weird ass situations, with false jacket allies, etc. Cooperating and coordinating with pigs on these types of levels is against the code and should be serious violations for all L.O.’s involved.

In my experience, these L.O.’s typically police the prisons and streets more so than the actual pigs, with detective investigations full of incriminating ass pig-questions and their violent enforcing of childish rules, laws, codes, etc. Different names for the same shit. The key word is enforce. When they enforce laws, that makes them law enforcers. Their game of dress-up comes with the same biased and prejudiced judgments that lead to sentences which are much more oppressive than the pigs prisons and jails. These sick mfer’s are liable to force innocent people into physical and sexual torture chambers, where they do fucking weirdo shit to em, on an intense level that happens in prisons. They use coded lingo like pigs, they wear uniforms and badges like pigs they hide behind numbers for protection like pigs and they get paid to do evil ass shit like pigs.

It sucks if I hurt anybody’s soft, mushee-gushee, sensitive ass feelings, but I’m not going to refrain from speaking the truth in criticism.

Our Tasks

What I’m wondering is why do we even maintain a code of silence towards any of these piggly-wiggly ass L.O.’s, when they ride with the enemy against us on a regular basis?

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that, in order for the oppressed to win power and keep our feet down on the necks of those who prayed on our downfall, we’ll need an independent intelligence network of our own. So, technically we just need to redirect intelligence gathering apparatuses in our favor and win them over to our side of the fight, so as to counteract the counter-revolutionaries and others of their ilk. And by this, I mean that snitching isn’t to be stopped when we have our own independent institutions of the oppressed but that we have to look at this aspect of the contradiction in a different light. We have to call it something positive instead of a hackneyed, connotative phrase that’s been abused and distorted since its conception and use it to our advantage against our enemies, who seek to use such tactics and strategies against us. It’s impossible to support an emerging socialist government without an agency that specializes in this field of work. What I’m saying is that we need to police the police.

In the meantime, we can locate the enemy’s snitches, show em mercy and recruit em to our side without letting the enemy know. Then, we flood the imperialists with double-agents who feed the imperialists misleading or false intel. I mean, one way to look at this is that if we try to “kill all the rats/pigs,” we’d have to kill almost the entirety of every imperialist country. We can’t kill the entire world.

Oppression is a contagious disease that is transmitted through imperialist society like an opioid addiction with withdrawals and cravings. Once one contracts the disease, ey becomes desensitized, individualistic and apathetic towards society. Voluntary and involuntary participation in capitalist society is the cough that spreads this disease. This sickness has an infinite array of symptoms, but the main symptoms that pertain to this article are disloyalty, disunity and the inability to distinguish ally from enemy. The oppressed nations have maxims such as ‘it’s not about what you know, but who you know.’ The oppressed seek to make friends with the powerful oppressors as a means of rising from oppression to become oppressors themselves, and these oppressed people will turn over all kinds of incriminating info (‘what they know’) to these powerful enemies.

Successful socialist revolution is the medicine for the ailment. Under communism, there are no pigs for rats to snitch to and no pigs to police us. So if you wanna liquidate rats, pigs and serpents thus ending snitching, socialist revolution welcomes you into the rank-and-file with open arms.

The next question (one of my own) that I’ll explore is “what strands of oppression are keeping snitching and policing alive?” Oppressed nations don’t ‘keep snitching and policing alive’, per se. And from an amerikan perspective one would automatically assume that the bourgeois males of the white oppressor nations are the only ones to slam. Nevertheless, snitching existed long before capitalism-imperialism and long before white people had a nation. Despite what these ‘white power’ lunatics think, ‘power’ (snitching/policing being what ‘white’ people do with ‘power’) is colorless. Ultimately, societal oppression itself, in all three strands, is what fuels snitching/policing, because it concocts an opportunity for all government of society to incentivize oppressed people to desperately find a way out of said oppression through cooperation with the oppressors, who have the power to lift the oppressed up to their level. So if you end oppression altogether, there’s no logical reason to snitch on anyone. Those who advocate for the imperialist sources of oppression are to blame for keeping snitching and policing alive. The criminal injustice system created oppressive consequences for those who oppose their power structure and they feed scooby snacks to the mystery-gang members who assist them in targeting their enemies. Basically, it’s not the ‘strands of oppression’ that keeps snitching/policing alive, but the oppressors who create oppression that encourage people of every class, nation and gender to sell each other out.

Snitching and policing will remain if current society remains. Only under a communist society will snitching and policing end.

MIM(Prisons) responds: While these harsh critiques of lumpen organizations do not apply to all L.O.s for all time, they certainly will ring true for many. And while we look to the imprisoned lumpen in this country as one of the most oppressed groups, which has historically produced some dedicated and effective revolutionaries, it is true that they are not the proletariat. And they/we all must transform ourselves and combat the class (and often nation and gender) interests that we are born into.

As this comrade points out, L.O.s power often comes from their willingness to act outside what is normally allowed. “The ends justify the means” is one version of this. This is why Tupac and Mutulu Shakur worked together to develop the THUG LIFE code to promote among the oppressed nation lumpen via Tupac’s music. They recognized the progressive capacity of the L.O. rejection of the imperialist code, but the anti-people tendency of the L.O.s that no longer had a code of their own, or had a very reactionary one.

This comrade gets to the heart of it when ey says we need to use the tools that work to build an independent path for the oppressed towards socialism. Just as the imperialists have intelligence operations, so must we. Though our intelligence cannot mimic the pigs like so many L.O.s do that use torture, sexual abuse, and other anti-people behaviors to promote fear among the masses.

“Snitching”, or sharing information, is a tool that goes both ways. You can tell the imperialists on the revolution, or you can tell the revolutionaries about what the imperialists are up to. The real crime is collaborating with the imperialists in either direction.

i want to begin with a sort of disclaimer or qualifier, due to the fact that many speak on the realities of the lumpen, particularly the street gang elements, who’re not cut from that cloth, if you will.

Although i am now a committed New Afrikan Freedom Fighter, i was initiated into what is now the Forum Park Crips, in Houston, Texas, when i was in my early teens. My life in the streets was one of tribal animosities and strife, territorial beefs, and a survivalist level of hustling and scheming. i did everything one does in the street life from selling narcotics, to thievery, burglary, armed robberies, pimping, and of course ‘sliding’, as they say nowadays.

As a result of this lifestyle and my social ignorance, and lack of firm identity, purpose and direction, by age nineteen i found myself wanted for capital murder, and by twenty-one sentenced to life without parole for said murder, while holding strong to the key principle one was taught in the lumpen sub-culture, ‘No Snitching’!

Prior and during my prison stint i operated as a makeshift hystorian, and due to my persynal background i’ve paid much attention to the historical development of the lumpen in North amerikkka in general, New Afrika in particular, and the lumpen-organizational development specifically. This along with my adherence to historical dialectical materialist philosophy, i believe, qualify me to speak with a certain level of knowledge, wisdom and understanding on the subject.

The Foundation

At the moment in time of the founding of the original Crips, one of its co-founders, Tookie Williams(Ajami Kiamke Kamara) states plainly, “The crips mythology has many romanticized, bogus accounts.” i believe We in revolutionary movements take these and other similar ones too literally and therefore misrepresent the origins and hystorical functions of the Crips and others within the class and national liberation struggles. In this realm we often promote an idealized, non-materialist perspective.

Mr. Kamara(Williams) continues,

“Another version[ of Crip mythology] incorrectly documents the Crips as an offshoot of the Black Panther Party (BPP). No Panther Party member has ever mentioned the Crips(or Cribs) as being a spin-off of the Panthers. It is also fiction that the Crips functioned under the acronym C.R.I.P, for Community Resources Inner-City Project or Community Revolutionary Inner City Project.(words like ‘revolutionary agenda’ were alien to our thuggish, uninformed teenage consciousness.) We did not unite to protect the Community; our motive was to protect ourselves and our families.”

i’ve begun this ‘Foundational’ part of this piece within these words from the late Mr. Kamara, because We too often, and too easily romanticize the beginnings of the urban amerikkkan street organizations. Now that i’ve clarified that the Crips weren’t exactly founded with a revolutionary or progressive intent it makes it clearer why the Crips have largely stagnated in their operations for so long now.

The late Malcolm X once said that ‘prison is the poor man’s university’, and proving his maxim true, it was many of the first generation of Crips who populated the prisons in California, being influenced by the politicized culture in the prison established by those who came before them, who began an effort(s) to improve the imagery, and provide meaning to what Mr. Kamara himself even called, ‘a causeless cause’.

When the imprisoned Crips began to become more culturally aware in the 80’s and onward they sought to stir the crip force in another direction by establishing a constitution, which was largely influenced by the BGF constitution, they functioned under acronyms like C.R.I.P, for Community Revolution In Progress, and other similar ones, brothers began becoming Afro-centric and instituted speaking ki-swahili. Also, many around those times became radical and politicized. Some formed orgs like the Black Riders Liberation Party, a new generation Black Panther Party that was formed in the 90’s by former Crips and Bloods. Others formed more groups like the C.C.O.(Consolidated Crips Organization) which was to be de-tribalized, more centralized and politicized version of the Crips street gang. Many of these brothers had intentions of changing the various communities and ‘Crip turfs’ they represented upon their release from prison. More often than not their efforts were not effective enough to curtail or re-focus the self-destructive culture that had by then turned southern California upside down.

Simultaneously the Crips and other similar groups were spreading throughout the north amerikkkan continent, what wasn’t spreading however was the more refined and socially aware sectors or versions of the Crips entity. So instead of ’hoods across amerikkka emulating a Conscious Crip, they were emulating cats who were Crip Crazy, and this subsequently intensified elements of self-destruction among the New Afrikan nation in amerikkka.

Building On The Foundation

As the 21st century came and settled in, the spread of the Crips to every corner of the kkkountry resulted in different locales placing their own unique cultural traits and adding on to the hystory of the original formation Mr. Kamara and Raymond Washington founded along with Mac Thomas. Therefore, many people, and groups Built of the Foundation.

i’ll preface the following by stating that lumpen organizations have repeatedly showcased the capacity to turn away from basic parasitic criminality. However, they’ve done this in two similar but unique ways. One way is progressive in terms of its break from basic criminality, yet it is reactionary in terms of its benefit to the revolution. The other way is progressive in that it provides the break from the criminal mentality, and is also revolutionary in that it seeks to join the revolutionary forces in collective war against the state and its enemy institutions.

We’ve seen examples of the first way numerous of times. One which may be familiar to some is the 1966 arranged truce between the then Blackstone rangers and the East Side Disciples, which was instigated by the promise of the $930,000 in grant money from the federal government through the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). The grant was based on a deal that the two street organizations would cease their beef and come together to prevent uprisings, which had become common throughout heavily populated New Afrikan enclaves throughout the kkkountry.

Local politicians in the Chicago Democratic Party and the Southern Democrats in Congress did not approve of these particular elements being provided with Grant money from the government, and the grant was cancelled a year later(1967). In 1968 the Chicago BPP was founded and these same lumpen orgs were enlisted or attempted to be enlisted by the federal government to prevent the rise in influence of the BPP and its revolutionary line. The Rangers and the Conservative Vice Lords opted for the former way, and were showered with grant money from the bourgeoisie(Clement Stone of Combined Insurance of America; Sears; First National Bank of Chicago, among others). These lumpen moved toward Black Capitalism, and filled the vacuum in what was then a new non-profit sector instituted to remove the teeth from the revolution and the revolutionary potential of the lumpen particularly.

On the other hand, the East Side Disciples changed their name to the Black Disciples (identifying as Black instead of negro was a culturally progressive action at the time) and formed an alliance with the Chicago BPP.

So as this hystorical account illustrates, the lumpen are a vacillating class. We can flow whichever way the wind blows, but Our life experience under monopoly capitalism and imperialism, suggested that absent a form of ‘class-suicide’, We will do like the Rangers and take the capitalist road, which will have us cozied up with the bourgeoisie, making love with our enemies and murdering our friends.

Within the Forum Park Crip experience there has been an evolution and a certain level of class struggle, and ideological struggle (which is one in the same thing). To quote Malcolm X, again, ‘Prisons are the poor man’s university’. One member of the Forum Park Crips (FPC) spent time incarcerated and chose to apply himself.

He learned somethings from the cats like myself who have been politicized while in captivity and he began to develop a New Vision for our street tribe. Upon release, he began to institute the New Vision. See everyone and every entity has a basic Identity, Purpose and Direction, and as evolution takes place it takes place within the nature of these three elements of the entity in question. So upon release the first step was to apply a New Vision to what the Identity of a FPC was/is.

Like the brothers in California decades ago with their C.R.I.P.(Community Revolution In Progress), the homie strove to fine tune the image, by establishing Forever Protecting the Community(FPC) as an official community organization dedicated to mentoring youth, minimizing gang violence, and empowering the community.

Because of the numerous influences, and illegitimate capitalism being foremost among them, FPC in its beginning stages turned down a similar road as Jeff Fort’s Rangers in 1960’s Chicago. FPC received grants from the city and used them along with other similar formations to fund a purchasing of acreage to start community gardens, promoting food sovereignty, a memorial tribute to victims of police and gun violence. Prior to the grants FPC provided school supplies and thousands of backpacks, sponsored summer kids’ festivals, and mentoring school children by doing speaking engagements at local schools.

As i’ve pointed out, these efforts are progressive in the sense they’re a long way from the parasitic criminality the homies had been involved with prior. However, it can be reactionary in the sense that absent any sense of revolutionary orientation, this amounts to nothing more than mere community service, and never did at the root of the systematic problems that cause the surface level expression of the oppressive social contract.

After discussing this somewhat with some of the guys plans have come to fruition to establish a campaign that attacks a particular vestige of genocidal culture in the Forum Park area. This being the out of control open-air sex trafficking that de-values our community and makes it uncomfortable and unsafe for elements in Our community. The campaign will create a class struggle for unity both within the community and the organization, and will make the bond between the org and the people. Moreso, it will begin to establish what will hopefully become a distinct line of demarcation between the local government, and the rest of the non-profit sector, who’ve become entranced with utilizing the plights of the people as a stepping stool to gain economic upliftment. As FPC and other similar formations move out of that mode of operations, and begin to call others out on it and for their deceitful service to the people, it will create unity within classes apart of the local class struggle.

In closing, i’ve found the observation of comrade Jalil Abdul Muntaqim to be true,

“Beneath the Black working class are the subculture lumpen-proletariat, the unskilled and menial laborers whose primary means of subsistence is based on hustling(stealing, selling drugs, prostitution etc), marginal employment, and welfare. For the most part the socioeconomic provision within the subculture are maintained by the ‘illegitimate capitalist’ activity of the lumpen-proletariat. In accordance with their aspirations to fulfill the social values of the bourgeoisie, they employ business acumen in criminal activity for subsistence and profit. As they seek material wealth and social status of the bourgeoisie within the confines of the subculture, they are in many ways politically reactionary, unconcerned with anything other than personal survival and individual gain. It is only when the lumpen-proletariat are educated and become politically aware of their socioeconomic condition, that the possibility exists for them to become staunch supporters of the revolution, recognizing their dire standard of living is based wholly on the system of oppression they are desperately trying to emulate…”

As has been routinely stated, the revolutionary forces must ingratiate themselves within the activities of the lumpen organization. Specifically once they’ve already reached a certain level of collective social awareness and activity. And then, influence the development of their social awareness and activity by providing political education, by conceptualizing programs that are pertinent to the particular lumpen community one is seeking to organize. The lumpen is a vacillating class, that can and often does see-saw between revolutionary and reactionary activities. There are some socially aware and nationalistic elements, particularly among the oppressed nations of north amerikka, who can be coached towards full support of the revolution, the choice between serving the people heart and soul, and the reactionary road are ultimately up to the lumpen themselves. i’ll leave with a word from Comrade George:

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of the situation, understand that fascism is already here. That people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your life in revolution. Pass on the torch, join us, give up your life for the people.” - George L. Jackson

<sup>SOURCES:
1. Blue Rage Black Redemption, Stanley Tookie Williams
2. Ibid.
3. Vita Wa Watu #11, Spears & Shield Publications
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. We Are Our Own Liberators, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, ‘National Strategy of FROLINAN’
7. Blood In My Eye, George L. Jackson</sup>

Intensify The Struggle for Class Unity

In the last month we have seen the state of Georgia bring RICO Act charges against Rudy Giuliani and others who worked with Donald Trump to steal the 2020 U.$. presidential election, as well as activists who were doing things as simple as handing out fliers opposing the construction of Cop City in Atlanta.

The Federal Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was enacted in 1970 as a tool to charge people with crimes when they were having other people do their dirty work for them. Each crime charged under RICO can add years to ones prison sentence. The Georgia RICO Act of 1980 covers more crimes than the federal version. The Georgia Act makes Racketeering a felony in the state.(1) Historically, we have had multiple readers who were victims of RICO Act charges brought during the Giuliani years in New York City, and more recently in the Atlanta area, for their leadership roles in lumpen organizations, the more typical target of RICO.

Rudy Giuliani earned fame as a federal prosecutor for getting Mafia bosses in New York City convicted on RICO Act charges. He then used his reputation to become a “tough-on-crime” mayor of New York City known for “cleaning up” the city. It was during Giuliani’s time as Mayor of NYC that the infamous case was brought against King Blood (aka Luis Felipe) under the RICO Act. King Blood was charged for murders committed while ey was already in prison and received the inhumane and unprecedented sentence of life in solitary confinement. All of King Blood’s First Amendment rights to communication were denied, allowing only communication with eir lawyer and immediate family. This was not typically something a judge could sentence, but was justified via the racketeering statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(d).(2) Decades later, King Blood still sits in a torture cage in ADX Florence, isolated from the world. While the RICO charges against Giuliani may provide some cathartic humor, the 79-year-old will not be facing anything like King Blood is doing.

Weeks following the Georgia RICO Act charges against Trump, Giuliani, et al., another set of RICO Act charges (and domestic terrorism charges) were made against 61 activists involved in opposing the construction of Cop City in Atlanta. This is a continuation of the state’s warfare against Stop Cop City, including the ludicrous money laundering charges brought against bail support fundraisers we reported on in the last issue of ULK.(3) In the recent RICO indictment, the date of the murder of George Floyd (25 May 2020) is cited as the beginning of the investigations around the so-called “racketeering.” In other words, the state was trumping up these charges against activists before there was a Stop Cop City movement. This is not about stopping any criminal conspiracy, it is about repressing any opposition to the use of lethal police force against New Afrika and oppressed people in general. It is a defense of the state’s right to wage violent war against New Afrika.

In a recent article, a comrade laid out the political nature of the law, debunking the myth that laws were developed as a way to impose morality or address inherent problems in society.(4) Rather law stemmed from the need to manage the division of humyns into classes. With Trump/Giuliani, we see the RICO Act law being used by the bourgeoisie to discipline other bourgeoisie who are threatening the image of bourgeois democracy. And in the case of the 61 activists they are using the same law to discipline youth and oppressed nations who are opposing more violent forms of state discipline.

When we go up against the courts, the police, or even the politicians, we must be prepared for war. The cops murdering us in cold blood is war. The courts and prisons putting us in torture cells for years is war. City governments in Atlanta and San Pablo, California funding cop cities where pigs can play war games is war. These more obvious forms of war, are part of political struggle. There are no rights, only power struggles. To engage in power struggles, requires giving the war two sides.

^*Notes:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_RICO_(Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations)_Act
2. Prison Legal News, 15 March 1999, Judicial Sentence of Life in Solitary Upheld.
3. A comrade, July 2023, “Law and the Courts of Late”, Under Lock & Key No. 82.
4. A comrade of Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support, July 2023 “Atlanta Criminalizes Protest Against Cop City”, Under Lock & Key No. 82.*^

The first topic I’ll like to respond to in Issue 81, is the article that reads “Colorado Prison Censors New Afrikan Literature”. The brother pointed Colorado’s contradictions with allowing certain white reactionary novels as opposed to the Black revolutionary ones. The Wisconsin DOC for a long while was banning books like Know Thy Self by Na’im Akban, Revolutionary Suicide, Soledad Brother, Blood In My Eye, Assata, Seize the Time, A Taste of Power, This Side of Glory, We Want Freedom, Isis Papers, Destruction of Black Civilization, and all of Amos Wilson’s books until the courts got involved and the WDOC reasoning was that the books were inciteful and accusatory towards Amerika and people of European descent. Yet they allowed in all of Donald Goines, ICE Berg Slim and often “hoodbooks” that promote Pimping, drug dealing, Black on Black homicide and anything that glorifies the “Black Criminal Mindset” because it keeps us in Lumpen-criminal-colonial state of mind. This state of mind justifies the mass incarceration of anyone of Alkebulan (indigenous word for the continent commonly named Africa today) diasporan descent, while the Revolutionary mindset poses significant threat to Uncle Sam’s “Economic Station.” The brother who wrote MIM needs to know ICEBerg Slim, Donald Goines and anyone of Alkebulan (Black & Brown) Diasporas descent promoting and glorifying the exploitation of our people and all oppressed nationals are unhealthy and they are just as much enemies to our own people as Adolf Hitler, J.B Stone, David Duke, Richard Spencer, Donald Trump and the like, you dig? I would advise the brother to read books by Black authors who believes and write about the advancement of Black people oppose to the destruction of us. It’s impossible to discuss pimping, drug dealing, gang-banging without mentioning white supremacy, OK.

The next topic from Issue 81 is “ULK 80 Responses on Sex Offenders, Pedophiles, Gunnas and Gangstas”. In it you write that sex offenders don’t practice reactionary thug life politics (drugs, shootings, etc) and that’s completely false. Most sex offenders claim to be part of lumpen organizations (CRIPS, Bloods, Vice Lords, GD’s, BD’s LK’s, etc). I believe sex offenders are irredeemable and permanent enemies of and to the “people”. By sex offender, I don’t mean a 17 year old dude having sex (consensual sex) with a 16 year old girl because I do not consider that rape. Some of these Gunnas who rape other Kaptives are sex offenders, homosexuals and the list could go on, OK. I would argue that both groups are enemies to the people. Those who refuse to abandon the thug mentality for a revolutionary one are enemies of and to the people. I do concur with your assessment regarding how the fascist system use both lifestyles as political points to further the dehumanization of these groups. I’m not against homosexuals, transgenders and what have you, I’m against those who hunt and oppress women and children. Those I do not condone their lifestyles.

I’m not bothered by referring to a transgender man who see’s himself as a woman and a transgender woman who see’s herself as a man as She and He. The problem is that most transgender men-women in prison are sex offenders, they are in for preying on children. I’m a former Black Gangster Disciple (from 1983 to 1998) and I’ll be the first to say that Growth & Development literature reflects Elijah Mohammad’s “Message To The Black Man” and that it was not founded to destroy our communities, yet that’s what it’s doing and I am against it and any gang (its not an organization) that terrorizes its own people or people period. Members of these groups are “Redeemable” and we must not turn our backs on them unless they refuse to open their eyes and do the work of the civilized.

As you know, I am the Founder and Chief Advisor of Freedom Fighters, Inc and we do not condone the distribution nor usage of alcohol and drugs nor any lifestyle that poses a threat to the moral fabric of humanity/the human race. In closing, though I understand the nexus you made with brother Comrade Slaughter regarding drug dealers and sex offenders, I still feel that it’s out of context. The drug dealer and gangbanger is “redeemable”. The sex offender isn’t. I was molested, violently, from the age of 7 to 11 by a female relative who is still alive and to this day, in her 60’s (I’m 47 and have been enslaved since the age of 17 - 1993). She’s still sick.

Even though a sex offender is capable of coming to terms with his or her own sickness, they remain sick in the head and sick in the heart, maybe. Tookie was a byproduct of his environment and when he woke up he didn’t fall back asleep. The sex offender falls back asleep because he or she is innately. The vast majority of sex offenders was never molested or raped, it was in them. I know a lot of bothers/men who were molested and never became molesters themselves. I have never raped nor molested anyone, never even had the thought to do so. I have never sold drugs either, but its different. I’m mentally ill, I was raised in mental institutions (and it could be said that prisons are also Mental Institutions) and I was exploited by the older members of BGD to rob and kill white people and once I came to terms with this, I renounced black racism and I will never rob or kill someone based on race. I was sentenced to life for killing a woman who robbed my guy and charged at me with a machete, and though my actions could be justified, I still partook in the genocide of our people and I’ll never engage in such idiocy ever again. And though I see the nexus you made, I just don’t agree with it. I do, however, respect your position. Disagreement is healthy and we should never tear each other down due to it unless the disagreement becomes detrimental to the organism, you dig?

Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: We welcome critiques of certain “hood” writings as the comrade offers above. Yet we still recognize their biased censorship as part of national oppression, and the struggle against censorship in prisons can make strange bed fellows as we’ve discussed with the struggles around nude and non-nude pictures.

As for the sex offenders issue, this comrade has been debating us on this since back in ULK 64. I welcome the correction regarding sex offenders practicing thuggish anti-people activity as well. There is certainly an overlap between the two behaviors that i was ignoring in my sloppy language in ULK 81.

Next point, no one is arguing that “those who hunt and oppress women and children” are communists or allies. So that’s a moot point. Nor are those who are hunting, killing, poisoning, and oppressing men for that matter! And we seem to have agreement on that, as far as various forms of anti-people activity go. Yet, this comrade echoes the point made by Slaughter that it is only the sex offender that is unredeemable. The argument being that the sex offender is innately oppressive towards other humyns. Yet no evidence is offered to support this. In fact, we can point to statistics that sex offenders have the lowest recidivism rates.(1)

It is also odd that you seem to favorably cite Elijah Muhammad who is a known child predator who never atoned for the abuses he committed against at least 9 young girls and wimmin, and exploited eir cult of persynality to cover up those crimes while using metaphysical interpretations of the Quran/Bible to justify the acts. This was exposed by el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X) shortly before he was brutally murdered for promoting a revolutionary nationalist interpretation of Islam separate from the NOI.

If we look at socialist China we see the virtual elimination of all sorts of crime, drug abuse, prostitution, etc, in a very short period of time. We addressed this in more detail in ULK 59 on drugs.

We are the last ones to say that everyone is a comrade. Usually we are being criticized for being too pessimistic about the revolutionary potential in this country. But we are engaged in the project of uniting all who can be united in the prison movement.

We aren’t saying we can reform all anti-people criminals today. But we are saying that we can under the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is what we are fighting for. And to get there, we need to break down these phony barriers between the oppressed based on idealism.

^{Note: 1. Wendy Sawyer, 6 June 2019, BJS fuels myths about sex offense recidivism, contradicting its own new data, Prison Policy Initiative. In numbers from a 9-year follow-up on people released from state prisons (2005-2014), rape/sexual assault recidivism rates for any crime were less than 67%. This is 20% lower than all other categories. Only about 7.7% were re-arrested for another sex offense.}