“Bad training is instilling bad behavior,” said one criminal justice reform advocate.
Archive for category: Prisons/Police
Fox News host Jesse Watters amplified a rogue Florida sheriff who advised people to take gun safety classes to shoot burglars more efficiently, saying “you’ll save the taxpayers money.”
Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson had this message for all constituents in his county.
“I guess they think that they did something wrong, which they did not,” Johnson said. “If somebody’s breaking into your house, you’re more than welcome to shoot them in Santa Rosa County. We prefer that you do, actually.
“Come see us. We have a gun safety class we put on every other Saturday. And if you take that, you’ll shoot a lot better and hopefully you’ll save the taxpayers money.”
Florida defense attorneys were furious, as you can imagine.
However, Sheriff Johnson sent The Five into a frenzy of glorified murder rage after they played a clip of Johnson’s press conference.
As usual Watters was the worst.
Jesse explained how guns used to freak him out, but no longer because everybody’s packing and no criminal would ever, ever, ever commit a crime under those circumstances.
“I think that’s a good thing,” Watters said. “I like the fiscal responsibility angle here and you know better than anybody (pointing to Geraldo) if you wound a guy, or the guy gets out of it, they collar him.”
Announcing the International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners on June 11th, 2022.
As time moves on and the seasons change, we approach once again the June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners. Another year has passed, and many of our dear comrades remain captives of the state, subject to its daily subjugation, isolation, and brutality. June 11th is a time to stop the ever-quickening rush of our lives and remember.
Remember our imprisoned comrades. Remember our own histories of revolt. Remember the flame – sometimes flickering, sometimes blazing – of anarchism.
WE ARE ALL POTENTIAL PRISONERS
With June 11th, we desire to deepen a critique of prison that challenges the distinction between prisoner and supporter. For us, these differences are conditional: we, as anarchists, see ourselves as potential prisoners. Some of us have been, some of us will be. This is the basis of our solidarity – a recognition of ourselves in the plight of those in prison.
Stickers are in! Let us know if you would like some mailed to you at june11th at riseup dot net pic.twitter.com/uLnl2bq3vv
— June 11th (@june11dotorg) April 21, 2022
The continuum of prisoner and supporter can only be seen as tenuous if one looks to the examples of imprisoned and formerly-imprisoned comrades: Marius Mason’s activity with the Anarchist Black Cross, Bill Dunne’s liberation of an anarchist prisoner, Pola Roupa’s attempted helicopter rescue of anarchist prisoners, Claudio Lavazza‘s actions to liberate prisoners. The connections deepen when one considers that numerous anarchist prisoners are locked up for attacks on prison, judicial, and police institutions; and that others connect us to prisoner uprisings from California and Alabama to Greece and Italy.
SOLIDARITY MEANS…
We have always said that “solidarity means attack,” but we must recognize that slogans do not offer us a way forward in our struggles. If “attack” becomes confined to a restrictive set of activities, we cut ourselves off from a more expansive vision of anarchist struggle. If we move beyond mere repetition of fetishized actions, what possibilities open up to us? Solidarity means attack, yes, but what else does it mean?
In this vein, we’d like to offer our suggestion: instead of doing what you always do for June 11th, try something new. If your focus is usually on offering material aid to prisoners, take up action against some tentacle of the prison system in your town. If you’re usually out in the night taking action, try doing something to directly support an anarchist prisoner. The point is not to further entrench the false dichotomy between direct action and care work, but to challenge our ossified roles. By trying new things, we may come to recognize that the walls that separate the dedicated supporter and the dedicated saboteur were always illusory, that our imaginations are more expansive than we thought, and that we individually and collectively are capable of more than we give ourselves credit for.
#Portland knows what’s up! It’s great to see banners like this on #June11 in solidarity with #anarchist prisoners! #PoliticalPrisoners #FreeThemAll @IGD_News @la_abcf @nycabc @phillyabc @AnarchistAgency @june11dotorg pic.twitter.com/Wq9i1FDEEH
— Portland ABC (@PDXABC) June 11, 2021
Central to our vision of solidarity is maintaining the lines that connect us to our companions behind bars. We should keep alive the projects, fights, and movements to which they’ve sacrificed so much of themselves. Our connections with anarchist prisoners start from a point of commonality – that we share a desire to directly transform the world in a liberatory and egalitarian direction. Thus, our solidarity should root itself in bringing prisoners into our projects and investing ourselves in theirs. We want released anarchists to come out into a world of vibrant debate, collaboration, and action; and we want to foster that as much as possible behind prison walls as well. This can be as simple as sending news of local struggles to a prisoner or printing prisoner statements to share at events. As with any aspect of solidarity, we are limited only by our imagination and commitment.
While we should support prison struggles when they happen, we should be careful not to put the burden of struggling against the prison system on prisoners alone. Those in prison – being in conditions of extreme control, surveillance, and restriction – are in many ways the least able to actively fight winnable battles against prison institutions. Those of us living in relative freedom have opportunities to think strategically about what actions and sites of struggle would have the most positive impact on the lives of people in prison and do the most work to dismantle the prison system. As prison is inexorably connected to numerous corporate and state institutions, enemies are everywhere: where can we win?
Supporting prisoners is also a way for different struggles to converge, as the last several decades have taught us. From the Black Liberation Army to the Earth Liberation Front to Grand Jury Resistors to anti-police uprising defendants to land and water protectors, all struggles for liberation will necessarily lead to state repression and imprisonment. By building up support infrastructure and culture, by making prison a less complete isolation and removal, we strengthen every aspect of challenging this society. We also find each other, learn from each other, enrich each other.
PRISONER UPDATES
Marius Mason secured his long-fought-for transfer to a men’s prison, likely being the first trans man to achieve such a transfer in the federal prison system.
Italian prison administrators began censoring Alfredo Cospito’s correspondences in October. Authorities charged him with incitement to commit crimes, citing his writings in the anarchist newspaper Vetriolo. This repression is part of Operation Sibilla, where Italian police have raided numerous anarchist spaces and shut down websites surrounding Vetriolo to prevent the publication and spread of its subversive ideas.
Marios Seisidis went to court in July to appeal charges against him, supported by anarchists who rallied at the court in solidarity.
Claudio Lavazza received a hit of five years to his twenty-five-year sentence. His legal support is trying to secure an earlier parole date.
Eric King went to federal court on charges related to a situation in which he was attacked and tortured by prison staff in 2018. The jury found him not guilty and his legal team is now filing a suit against the prison administration. As of this writing, Eric is the process of being transferred and the continued target of a vindictive prison system.
Michael Kimble was assaulted by a corrections officer in June and then sent to solitary confinement before transferred. He has again been denied parole, the stated reasons being disciplinary citations for refusing to work and an altercation with a corrections officer.
Sean Swain was also denied parole, which he argues is retaliation by prison staff for comments he made and civil suits he has filed against them. He has since been transferred from Virginia back to OSP Youngstown in Ohio. His supporters suspect he will soon be transferred again.
More and more defendants from the uprising of 2020 are getting sentenced, some have been released and other going on to serve their terms. Some are still pretrial and facing lengthy sentences. The effects of this repression will still be felt for many years. May the quality of our support for these defendants make us stronger than we were before.
Excited to have t-shirts available for pre-order from @akpressdistro !! https://t.co/V4abcTd3Hs
— June 11th (@june11dotorg) April 5, 2022
In Chile, anarchist Joaquín García was transferred along with several subversive prisoners to the Rancagua maximum security prison last June. In October, he along with 20 other prisoners were attacked by about 50 guards, after which he was put in solitary confinement for 24 hours. This followed their declaration of solidarity with Pablo “Oso” Bahamondes Ortiz, who was facing weapons and explosive charges, and was subsequently sentenced to 15 years. Francisco Solar, another anarchist locked up at Rancagua, was hospitalized last autumn due to the advancement of undiagnosed diabetes. He and Mónica Cabellero were accused of multiple bombings, after his DNA was surreptitiously taken during a graffiti arrest, and have been in preventative detention since July 2020. In December of 2021 he accepted responsibility for bombing police structures, in solidarity with the revolts beginning in 2019 and those harmed and murdered by the police because, “no one and nothing is forgotten.” Days later, Mónica was in a fight with another prisoner that her family called a provocation set up by the prison. At the time of this writing, information is not yet available on the sentencing or a release date for these two anarchists.
Siarhei Ramanau, Ihar Alinevich, Dzmitry Rezanovich, and Dzmitry Dubousky were sentenced early this year to 18-20 years each for direct actions against Belarusian government targets after preliminary incarceration since 2019. After sentencing it was revealed that they were tortured by guards, resulting in a confession. As anarchism has become criminalized under the ongoing dictatorship, at least two other groups are facing several years each for their dissent.
Russian authorities have sentenced teenage anarchist Nikita Uvarov to five years for a conspiracy to blow up the Federal Security Service in Minecraft (yes, the video game) and constructing small fireworks. Two of his peers received probational sentences for their alleged crimes at the age of 14. Moscow ABC has reported that repression has increased (though there are no new proceedings against anarchists and antifascists there) and they have begun reorienting resources toward humanitarian efforts as Russia continues its murderous invasion of Ukraine.
The Anarchist Black Cross of Dresden, too, has reoriented itself toward providing support to those fighting in and fleeing from Ukraine. This reimagining of their support means helping finance solidarity forces like “The Black Headquarter” that have assembled volunteers to oppose the Russian forces and also attempt to carve out autonomous space in opposition to the Ukrainian state itself. Under the banner of the black flag, Balkan anarchists and anti-authoritarians are uniting against nation-states’ concepts of war and peace. It’s worth noting that chapters of the Anarchist Black Cross were established in Ukraine in 1918 as an adjunct to the Black Army that was fighting both the Soviet and Czarist forces invading from Russia.
In England, Toby Shone was sentenced to almost four years on drug charges related to psychedelics in his possession (during coordinated raids of collective anarchist homes) after terror charges failed to stick, related to the alleged operation of counter-info site 325. Despite the government’s failure to attribute membership to the the 325 collective, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, the Earth and Animal Liberation Front, and involvement in related arsons and writings, he still must fight a Serious Organised Crime Prevention Order that would subject him to a heavily monitored five-year house arrest, expressing the evolution of incarceration by an increasingly digitized state apparatus.
ONWARD
The expansion of home detention and monitoring is not new, but still growing, as the prison society further invades the everyday through technological advances. Warfare too, grows increasingly digital from drone strikes to hacking, while government-sanctioned murder continues in all its finality. We may lack details regarding anarchists struck down or imprisoned in their pursuit of freedom in ongoing struggles in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria – still they also move our thoughts and actions. As the state persists in all its punitive perdition, killing and imprisoning, and we find common ground with those who fight in an effort to grow our power and destabilize those that seek to control us – carrying the fallen and imprisoned with us in our relationships with them and through a persistent conflict with the existent.
We sent out hand-drawn cards, letters, and books to anarchist prisoners all over the world for @june11dotorg like the elephant we never forget our imprisoned comrades! ✊📚💌 pic.twitter.com/rquTKtsZzs
— Midwest Books to Prisoners (@MidwestBooks2P) June 13, 2021
For ideas on potential activities, check out our blog for years of archived reportbacks. Those looking for materials to print and share can find them at the Resources page. And, most importantly: a list of anarchist prisoners to write to.
We eagerly await the events, actions, statements, and other contributions to this year’s June 11th.
For anarchy!
By Walter Rodney, November 1971 To most readers in this continent, starved of authentic information by the imperialist news agencies, the name of George Jackson is either unfamiliar or just a name. The powers that be in the United States put forward the official version that George Jackson was a dangerous criminal kept in maximum security in Americas toughest jails and still capable of killing a guard at Soledad Prison. They say that he himself was killed attempting escape this year in August. Official versions given by the United States of everything from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to . . .
The post George Jackson: Black Revolutionary appeared first on Hood Communist.
Washington – America’s largest arms companies are increasingly finding lucrative new ways of profiting from the prison industrial complex; in many cases, weapons of war are directly manufactured using coerced prison labor. A new MintPress News study of the 100 largest private Defense Department contractors found that 37% of them were also profiting from incarcerated Americans, either in prisons and jails, or in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) camps. This proportion rose to 16 of the top 25 largest arms manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman. The complete list of top corporations profiting from mass incarceration, displayed in order of value of Department of Defense contracts received, is as follows…
The post One In Three Big Defense Contractors Profits From US Prisoner Suffering appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
The following essay is taken from “Wildpunk: Black against Civilization,” the first English-language translation of writings by Elany, a Black anarchist from Switzerland. The entire zine is hosted and readable/downloadable at 1312 Press.
Unfortunately, the Swiss government kidnapped Elany while “Wildpunk” was being translated. She has been incarcerated since January 9 of this year on suspicion of sabotage and arson. The state has denied her medication, restricted her contact with the outside world, and forced her from veganism onto a prison diet of meat and grains.
We urge solidarity with Elany and all incarcerated in the shared struggle against the oppression of civilization. Updates on Elany’s case and opportunities to aid her can be found at feralfire.noblogs.org and the hashtag #FreeElany on Twitter and Mastodon. There is also an email you can contact, freeelany@riseup.net
While one part of the Earth is ravaged by fires and the other part struggles against being flooded, we are threatened from another angle: Covid-19. But the still-ongoing Corona Pandemic is really just the beginning of a new Era of Pandemics.
As climate change and demands for environmental protection become ever more “Mainstream,” the urgency of pandemics has increased. The current situation has taught the people a clear lesson: deathly pathogens are an equally big and global threat to human and other beings.
Over 15 years ago, the sociologist Mike Davis pointed out that due to mass livestock farming we are on the way to a global age of pandemics and it will lead us to catastrophe. Industrial livestock production is a sort of particle accelerator. More bodies in less space means more chances for the emergence of mutations or hybrid viruses and for their spread, regardless which virus it is. Global supply chains of giant transnational corporations with branches in half a dozen countries and markets in a thousand cities, alongside urbanization, do the rest. The most threatening ones are the Bird Flue Viruses, and we know today that we are only a single mutation away from one of the deadliest strains of Bird Flu becoming pandemic. These epidemics, created and spread by agroindustry, finally strike with particular devastation in the places which have already sunk into poverty through colonialism and capitalism. The combination of a lack of healthcare and high urbanization eventually leads to serious distress, in which pandemics can wreak devastation with full force.
Speaking of devastation: the consequences of climate change are being felt with full force all around us. The toll of the devastation is endless. Forests are turned to lumber, after which greater and more intense heatwaves lead to a rise in forest fires, droughts, and desertification. Soil is eroded and farmland is turned into desert. Fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides contaminate the food supply. Landfills overflow with synthetic waste. Power plants fill air, land, and sea with cancerous particles. A chemical smog fills the streets in the cities and poisons human and other beings at every turn. Plastic waste breaks apart into billions of tiny microscopic pieces, infecting every living organism. Chemicals are dumped in the oceans, seas, and rivers. Toxic waste oozes into the ground water. The rise and warming of the seas leads to stronger rainfalls, more powerful floods, more frequent mega-storms, and the inundation of coastal regions.
In addition to warming, the ocean is experiencing acidification and a loss of oxygen. A deadly trio which is steering us towards a sixth mass extinction of life on our planet, one where the rate of species extinction is 1000 times faster than usual. As the oceanographer Sylvia Earle held: “Our lives depend on the living ocean – not just the rocks and the water, but stable, resilient, diverse living systems that hold the world on a steady course favorable to humankind.” The ocean covers some 70% of the Earth and is central to enabling life. Aquatic plants produce half of the breathable oxygen in the world. If the ocean dies, we die too.
Agroindustry doesn’t just destroy communities, it spreads into the wild, destroying the diversity and balance of the natural ecology and replacing it with vast monocultures. Half of the habitable land on Earth is today used for agriculture, joined every year by millions more hectares. A majority of this cultivated area is used to produce feed for hundreds of millions of pigs, cows, sheep, and poultry, fattening them up for the world-spanning logistics chains.
Alongside this come ever greater social, economic, and political aggravations. Famines and water shortages. Heat-sickness and death. Epidemics and the destruction of more vital habitats. Wars over disappearing resources and usable territories. Climate change destroys livelihoods, strengthens sickness, and scatters people. Together with the Era of Pandemics, a global cascade of suffering results.
Wherever we find ecological destruction, we find industry. Industry is not neutral and there can be no adequate solution for climate destruction so long as industry still exists. Ending the suffering requires the complete collapse of industry. Or as it was aptly expressed in 2019 in the 43rd issue of Revolte, an Anarchist newspaper in Vienna: “For the destruction of Industry, Work, and Exploitation! For Sabotage and Direct Attack!”
Sustainable, Green Industry?!
While habitat destruction strides onward, industry (which is responsible for all of this suffering) wants to sell us the answer: sustainable and renewable energy.
At this point of ecological, social, and bodily catastrophe we need to critically question green solutions like the falsely named Renewable Energy Revolution and identify them for what they really are: a perpetuation of the status quo. Supposedly green energy sustains ecological devastation and global inequalities.
The destruction of human and non-human habitats is implied in the mass-production infrastructure of “renewable energy,” whether solar, wind, bio-fuel, hydro, nuclear power, or other alleged renewable energies. One destructive norm is replaced by another. These energies, like fossil fuels, have their roots in colonial extractive raw material industries. Once again the “solution” is exactly the problem.
For battery technology we can look to Bolivia (Lithium) and Congo (Cobalt). With both resources, the ecological and humanitarian costs are inexcusable: the destruction of habitat, child slavery, and death through dangerous work. Naturally, the E-waste is scattered everywhere in South America, Africa, and Asia. Lithium is today called “white gold” and its extraction requires massive quantities of water, drastically shrinking the available supply for Indigenous communities and wildlife. Vast quantities of toxic tailing are also produced. Chemical leaks have poisoned rivers, and with them humans and non-humans, time and again.
Massive dams for hydroelectric power have in the past likewise had catastrophic consequences on Indigenous peoples and their lands.
Industrial wind-parks, whose blades hack up migratory birds in the sky, require colossal resources for their production and implementation. Not just for the wind turbines but also the infrastructure. They destroy migrating wildlife like bats and birds, which are important for a healthy ecosystem and some of which are endangered.
Solar energy requires the erection of massive solar industry complexes, which lay bare the land by clearing out human populations and the migration routes of animals and people for giant solar fields, substations, and access ways. All of these require unusually high-carbon concrete. Wind and solar energy as well as the production of bio-fuels all require 100–1000 times the land area as the production of fossil fuels.
Fuck the Chinese subsistence farmers who have carcinogenic industrial waste dumped on their lands everyday from those solar panel factories. They’re just not thinking ecologically enough. And forget the Ghanaians who complain when worn-out solar panels are piled into mountains in their backyards with the rest of the West’s obsolete tech. They are just impeding ecological progress.
Whether oil wells, coal power plants, or megalithic “green” projects – all are rooted in an unprecedented destruction of habitats for human and other beings. Therefore it cannot be the goal to replace one destructive technology with another. The goal should be a massive and radical reduction in energy consumption.
Anarchists who only struggle to free industry from capitalism must finally face the brutal reality. Down with industry, down with work. To use the words of the Indigenous Anarchist ziq: Seize the Means of Destruction! And fucking burn it to the ground…
What comes next depends on what we do. The necessity of getting active has never been so great as today.
Originally from Chicago, Ill, George L. Jackson grew up in California. In 1961, a young Jackson convicted of armed robbery for allegedly stealing $70 from a gas station. Outrageously, Jackson was sentenced to one year to life, despite assurances from his attorney of a favorable deal if he plead guilty.
Statement linking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with a call to support the ongoing hunger strikes happening within Rikers Island and Santa Rita jail.
Hunger Strikers still striking!
Today, January 27, 2022/25th Sh’vat 5782, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps, where so many of our ancestors were incarcerated and enslaved, raped and robbed, maimed and murdered.
We are an anonymous collective of Jewish New Yorkers who are striking this day, across the five boroughs of NYC/across occupied Lenapehoking, in solidarity with the hunger strikers at Rikers Island and with all who are resisting this genocidal regime.
*Hunger Strike on Rikers Island*
Sound on to listen to an inside organizer announce the strike, list demands, and recount inhumane and deadly conditions in the RNDC jail. pic.twitter.com/Sp6D5zvcor— Outlive Them NYC (@outlivethemnyc) January 18, 2022
This is a regime which took the lives of 15 fellow New Yorkers last year alone – a number which has continued to rise in the new year. Add that to the 44+ incarcerated people across New York State who perished after becoming infected with COVID in custody. We know a death camp when we see one, and Rikers Island is a death camp.
90 years after Rikers Island Correctional opened its doors, more New Yorkers than ever are waking up to the horrors which continue to be inflicted every single day upon the more than 4,000 detainees (at least 90 percent of whom are Black, Brown, and/or Indigenous) held captive in this 21st-century concentration camp.
Solidarity with hunger strikers at Rikers Island! #FreeThemAll #ShutEmDownhttps://t.co/Ui8QBNVEsA
— RevAbolitionNYC (@RevAbolitionNYC) January 11, 2022
We are the bearers of an abolitionist tradition, steeped in the spirit of militant resistance to fascism in all its forms. In our time, there is nowhere that fits the bill quite like Amerikkka’s prisons, precincts, jails, juvie halls, and detention centers.
Amerikkka’s ruling class will never close the death camps of its own good will. All of us, wherever we are, whether inside or outside the walls of Jericho, must do that ourselves. Together we can tear down the walls once and for all, along with the investments in police and prisons that make them possible and profitable for the 1%.
Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we can hear our one million dead cry out for justice: for decarceration and for liberation, for abolition and for revolution against this genocidal regime (a regime which formed part of the inspiration for the Nazi system/the Final Solution in the first place).
*STRIKE AT RIKERS* Incarcerated individuals are still striking at Rikers. Their demands need to be met NOW. *Share widely* (format updated)@RAPPcampaign @LegalAidNYC @paroleprepny @nonewjails_nyc @NYCCoronavirus @AOC @IWOC_NYC @NYCMayor pic.twitter.com/FjqF0WMbzm
— MACC NYC (@macc_nyc) March 23, 2020
OK PEOPLES
Time to throwdown for the hungerstrikers!
Family have already been calling the county supervisors and want some help.Put aside some time this Friday to takeover their phonelines!
Please BOOST!
All details here and in THREADhttps://t.co/nhdl89v8GD pic.twitter.com/OhxKw9wU5l
— Oakland Abolition & Solidarity (@OaklandAboSol) January 26, 2022
As Comrade Baldwin wrote in his open letter to Comrade Angela, published 1/7/1971:
If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own – which it is – and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.
In solidarity with prison rebels everywhere, from Rikers to Santa Rita!
Close New York’s death camps, abolish the Department of Correction!
Stop killing Black people, abolish the New York City Police Department!
Close Rikers NOW! No New Jails! Free Them All or Else!
There were many points at which if the government had acted the Jan. 6 insurrection might never have happened.
Leading up to the failed coup every alarm was ringing. Capitol Police knew a violent invasion was in the works, the Department of Homeland Security knew, the FBI knew, warning of “war at the Capitol.” Hundreds of security officials at 80 Fusion Centers set up after 9/11 to combat domestic terrorism knew. They shared “an avalanche” of warnings about violence beginning at “1 p.m., U.S. Capitol, Jan 6.” Nonetheless, the police allowed the invasion to happen.
If armed right-wing mobs who invaded state capitols in Idaho, Michigan, and Oregon before Jan. 6 were held accountable, support for the coup might have been squelched. Instead, ProPublica reported, Trump supporters learned “it was possible — even easy — to breach the seats of government to intimidate lawmakers,” they would find sympathizers on the inside, and police would treat them with kid gloves compared to Black Lives Matter protesters.
Years earlier, if the government acted against the Bundy family, who allied with far-right militias and white supremacists to use violence for political ends, Jan. 6 might have been averted.
The Omicron variant of COVID-19 presents a unique public health threat as the highly contagious virus drives infection rates to record highs, but a dearth of data on COVID in jails and prisons across the United States is leaving researchers, incarcerated people and the public in the dark about outbreaks that put everyone at risk.
The law school at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) tracks the pandemic in jails and prisons, where rates of COVID infection and death are often multiple times higher than in the free population. Jails and prisons have reported 451,000 COVID infections and nearly 7,000 deaths among incarcerated people nationally as of January 1, but Josh Manson, a spokesman for UCLA’s COVID Behind Bars Data Project, said researchers think the actual number of infections is much higher.
Manson said hard data on infections, deaths and vaccinations among incarcerated people and prison guards are inconsistently reported, manipulated and even hidden by the sheriffs and prison officials. Jails and prisons across the country restricted access to COVID data in 2021 or stopped public reporting altogether. This is especially troubling, according to researchers, because advocates, policymakers, incarcerated people and their families rely on this data to gauge health risks and hold prisons accountable.
“It was hard to get good data before Omicron, and it’s harder now,” Manson said in an interview. “Prisons and jails generally, and especially jails, have been a block box for data and especially health data, so it’s been really frightening throughout the whole pandemic to not know what’s going on inside.”
Prisons and jails are not prepared for Omicron, researchers say, putting many more people at risk as deadly outbreaks spread from behind prison walls to surrounding communities and contribute to millions of infections. The latest variant is incredibly contagious and, though it often causes milder symptoms among the vaccinated, vaccination and testing regimes at jails and prisons vary widely between facilities and from state to state. The same goes for reporting COVID data to the public, making Omicron behind bars extremely difficult to track.
If incarcerated people and guards are not tested regularly, they will unknowingly spread the virus in the confines of jails and prisons, where health care is notoriously inadequate, living conditions are poor and crowded, and solitary confinement — a common response to COVID infections — leaves thousands of people with long-term physical and mental health problems.
“I am personally worried that there are lot of asymptomatic and mild cases of COVID that are not being tested for and spreading in jails and prisons right now,” Manson said.
Using available data from state prisons, researchers estimated that one in three prisoners had tested positive for COVID-19 in February 2021, before vaccines reached many prisoners and the Delta and Omicron variants emerged. Today, it appears that the number of infections in state prisons has dropped — but the public only has access to data that prison officials are willing to report, which is often outdated, incomplete or missing.
Manson said many local jails do not report case totals, and prisons in several states are not reporting the cumulative number of cases either. Louisiana, for example, only reports current active cases. The data we do have on infections is only as good as testing is widespread, and Manson said testing practices are often “abysmal.” Many sites of incarceration do not report cumulative test results and positivity rates. Of course, there is an unknown number of cases that are not detected by tests.
Vaccination is considered the best defense against COVID, but data on vaccinations is “scarce and incomplete” across state and federal prison systems, according to a recent review of available data by the Prison Policy Initiative.
As of December 14, prisons in only four states — Delaware, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota — were releasing data on booster shots for incarcerated people. More recently, Montana’s prison system announced a booster program, and Hawaii began offering cash incentives for incarcerated people to get jabs this week. However, researchers were left with no evidence that boosters are available to incarcerated people in dozens of states.
In August, as the Delta variant reared its ugly head, the COVID Behind Bars Data Project released a scathing report detailing decisions by prisons in states with some of the largest COVID outbreaks — including Florida, Louisiana, Georgia and Texas — to restrict pandemic data or stop reporting altogether. Florida, for example, was a major COVID hotspot in the U.S. and globally for much of last summer, but on June 2 the Florida Department of Corrections stopped reporting data on COVID in state prisons.
While most states report some data in one format or another, Manson said online “dashboards” often go without updates for weeks or are replaced by PDF reports that cause trouble for web scrapers used by researchers. Only three states report data on all five metrics identified by the Prison Policy Initiative as crucial for understanding the pandemic and holding prisons and policymakers accountable, including cumulative counts of tests, vaccinations and cases. Across the country, data that prisons made available while the media focused on the massive outbreaks of 2020 has dried up.
“A year ago — when the information peaked, and before Delta arrived — prisons slowly started reporting less information because they felt it wasn’t necessary, or wasn’t worth their resources, or they thought ‘the pandemic is over,’” Manson said. “Or, they just found an opening and an excuse to start hiding their data.”
For example, earlier this year the UCLA researchers noticed the cumulative number of COVID cases — the number that represents cases over the entire course of the pandemic –reported in federal prisons was dropping, which didn’t make sense. It turned out the Bureau of Prisons was subtracting from its case total when prisoners who had COVID were released, allowing the federal prison system to report fewer overall cases. Only Maryland reports the number of booster shots administered to prison guards, who have refused vaccines at alarming rates and fought mandates in court.
Social distancing is impossible in jails and prisons. In its place, many sites of incarceration have deployed solitary confinement, which is a form of torture.
Incarcerated people continue to report terrifying conditions: An anonymous woman incarcerated at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California, told advocates that there’s no way to avoid COVID in prison.
“I had over a dozen negative tests since they started testing for COVID only to have them move two inmates into our dorm while we’re on quarantine,” the incarcerated woman said in an oral history project earlier this year. “Both arrived complaining of still not having taste or sense of smell, and within a few days of arriving one began to have symptoms, fever and chills but would avoid the daily temperature checks. Within a week two more had fevers, by that time it was too late.”
Across the country, people jailed inside the nation’s vast network of immigration jails reported “unsanitary and uninhabitable living conditions and denial of adequate PPE and COVID-19 safety measures” in calls to the National Immigration Detention Hotline, according to the organization Freedom for Immigrants, which runs the hotline. Incarcerated immigrants say Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its contractors have been slow to make booster jabs available and provide vaccine information in different languages, and civil rights groups recently slammed ICE for failing to implement a national booster program for immigration prisons as of December.
ICE did not respond to an inquiry about booster shots by the time this story was published. Layla Razavi, interim co-executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, said ICE has failed to implement even the most basic COVID safety protocols and ignored court orders to release the medically vulnerable and make room for social distancing. At least 32,244 COVID infections occurred in immigration prisons and at least 11 people have over the course of the pandemic. However, like other jailers, the official tally reported by ICE has been disputed by observers.
“And since President Biden took office, the number of people inside detention has multiplied, placing more immigrants inside at an even greater risk,” Razavi said in an email. “Enough is enough. We call on President Biden to act swiftly and conduct releases before more people perish.”
There is some good news: Manson said vaccination rates among incarcerated people tend to be higher than national and statewide averages. However, it’s unclear if those who initially refuse vaccines can easily access shots if they change their minds.
“I would like to see some evidence that people who initially refused vaccinations are being continually offered it,” Manson said.