Federal Prisons

Recently I received the ULK No. 6, January 2009. This issue had many items of interest that are very familiar to me. First, I would like to speak towards the gender oppression situation. This is a sad fact both in prison and outside of it. I am a 53 year old male in Greene County Correctional Facility which is a state prison aka South MS Correctional Institute. In this gulag the majority of our warders are female. The reason for this is given as men are apt to have a criminal background or a poor credit rating, possibly both. Poor credit supposedly makes the males more apt to take bribes. Hence, a great security risk.

In this prison the female wardens observe all of the bodily functions from showers, to excretion of bodily wastes. During shakedowns they observe our being strip searched by male warders. Placement in the holding tanks for minor infractions, one is usually stripped down before being locked inside the cage. Females wander by and eyeball the prisoner while making derogatory remarks. At times while exiting our dining hall I have seen females strip males in the open, in front of the entire population, supposedly looking for smuggled food. This is contemptible.

In the Florida Department of Corrections there is a program called close management which is a control unit. It has 3 levels that you can be placed on and once you complete each level without any disciplinary reports you are eligible to move forward to the next level within six months. I am currently being housed on close management II here at Florida State Prison which holds about 1,285 prisoners. Only the prisoners who are housed on CM III are permitted to work, which is about 205 prisoners. And they are limited to certain jobs without pay, such as houseman and laundry, which is totally different from general population because there is only one job that actually rewards you for your labor and that’s canteen. All the canteen operators who are employed by FDOC are paid $65 a month. Other than that one specific job the remainder of the jobs such as inside-ground, plumbers, law clerks, electricians and cooks are employed without pay.

I’ve been housed at 3 of the 4 control units that are available and open to prisoners in the State of Florida:
1. Florida State Prison, 7819 NW 228th street, Raiford FL. 32026 (1285)
2. Charlotte CI, 33123 Oil Well Rd, Punta Gorda, FL 33955 (1500)
3. Union CI, 7819 NW 228th Street, Raiford, FL 32026 (1300)

I am currently being housed at Florida State Prison control unit. There are about 1,285 prisoners housed here. Only part of the prison is a control unit and that’s the main unit. Out of the 1,285 prisoners, about 750 are Black, 390 are Latino and the remainder are white. Prisoners are sent to control units in the state of Florida for a variety of things: assault, attempted assault, cell phones, escape, too many disciplinary reports, and anything else they choose. Because it’s said in Florida that close management isn’t a punishment, it’s a program. But we suffer daily in the control unit.

I don’t know when any of the control units opened, and I don’t know if they expanded them since they opened. However, the state of Florida is in the process of opening another one which is a Supermax control unit. The rumor is that the control unit is going to house thousands of prisoners and once you get released off of the supermax part it’s mandatory you spend at least 5 years on their compound. They are now transferring a few officers over to the new control unit. It’s also being said that you do not have to come out for showers or rec because it’s going to be a roll around shower head that steps in front of each cell door, and the back of the cell has a door that opens to a fenced in rec yards. That’s about all the information I have about this new control unit.

Revolutionary greetings, comrades. I consider myself to be a conscious brother. I’m also a realist. I can’t help but notice that prisoners are writing in, complaining about issues that are minute. And/or of no interest to Us that are dedicated to and about the struggle (total liberation of Our people mentally, spiritually, and physically).

Take for instance the problem with censorship. True, it’s a problem that needs attention. However, complaining over magazines such as Vibe, XXL, and King is ludicrous. These publications don’t give a damn about these concentration camps we’re housed in. As long as that capitalistic business receives our $12.99 they are straight. Let’s support those that support us such as MIM(Prisons).

Also comrades, we’re all held in an institution that breeds injustice. We’re all aware of this fact. OK, let’s start fighting this beast with the resources we have. Educate yourself with the law. Know how to attack the grievance system that’s a part of this corrupt system. We have to have comrades on the outside that are willing to harass these slave-holders and let them know that you have family/friends that care and are wiling to fight until justice is done. Without that we’re on our own and must unite and fight until justice is done. We must want for our brothers/sisters what we want for ourselves.

Texas is one of the worst states to do time in. We have no phones, don’t get paid a red cent to work, and we damn near make everything that’s sold in the commissary. However that can’t break the spirit of a warrior who is dedicated to uplifting my people.

The time is now to unite.

MIM Responds: This comrade is right to assert that the publishers of Vibe, XXL, and King probably only care about their dollar. We’ve tried communicating with Harris Publications a number of times about the racist censorship of their magazines in amerikan prisons but have still received no response. MIM(Prisons) is against all censorship in prison and would align with the publishers of magazines like XXL, if they were interested. So far they haven’t been, but we will still uphold these as examples of the racist censorship policies in u$ prisons.

In Texas, every general population prisoner is required to work. They either work in the service of prison upkeep (i.e. maintenance, food service, field labor, support service inmate, etc.) or they work in one of the various factories owned by TCI (Texas Correctional Industries).

TCI is not part of the state. It is not part of the prison system. TCI is a private conglomerate which contracts with the state for prisoner labor. They operate metal fabrication plants, stainless steel works, meat packing plants, furniture factories, computer restoration plants, and many others throughout the 130+ prison units around the state. These industries do indeed provide products which the prison system needs for itself, but these products are also sold to other states for their prisons and jails at prices greatly marked up. The profits come from the fact that the prisoner labor is free.

Texas prisoners do not get paid for working.

Now there are a couple of pilot programs which started a couple of years ago, that do pay their workers a tiny bit. But these programs employ less than 1% of the 150,000+ prisoner population, and there are no plans to extend or expand these programs.

When general population prisoners in Texas attempt to involve the U.$. Department of Labor, OSHA, or other labor organizations concerning the exploitation of prisoners, we are told that prisoners in Texas “volunteer” to work, and are therefore not entitled to any support. They fail to mention that if a prisoner refuses to work, he is subject to disciplinary action, loses commissary and recreation privileges, has his good time credits taken away, gets locked up in administrative segregation - all of which has a negative effect on chances for parole. So the Catch 22 is: either work for free, or suffer the consequences.

Oh, they tell us that our good time credit is our pay. But good time only affects non-3G prisoners. It means nothing to the rest of us.

Furthermore, the extent of embezzlement within TCI is outrageous. The managers and department heads, even the foremen, are ripping off the tax payers with their thefts. I personally have witnessed many such incidences. For example: the maintenance department receives a new pump which it does not need at the time, so it is put into storage. Three weeks later I can’t find that pump. A month after that, the supply truck delivers another pump which has the exact same serial number as the first.

Another example: just before Thanksgiving, the meat packing plant receives a truckload of frozen turkeys. The plant closes on Friday evening, and come Monday morning there are 120 frozen turkeys missing. The official ruling is “inmate theft.” But no prisoners are at the plant on weekends.

And again: the stainless steel fabrication plant makes the round circles which are used for the seats we sit on at the chow hall tables. I saw a bill for 24 of those seats, the price? $40,000 for 24 one foot circles of stainless steel.

The factories build all the bars, the bunks, the toilets and sinks, the steel doors, etc., using prison labor. Then TCI sells all that to the contractors who build the new units at an unbelievable mark-up. The contractor then builds the prison, and sells it back to the state for an even more exaggerated price. Meanwhile, briefcases of cash keep changing hands. How else do you think the state gets away with telling the tax payers that a new prison costs $64 million when the outside of that prison is all pre-fab, and the inside is all prisoner built? Where is the oversight? Where is the accountability? The nature of bureaucracy allows these things to go on. Hell, they learned it from the feds, there’s no one left to tell. Those officials who are supposed to look out for these things just take their share too.

The nature of capitalism ensures that the abuses of prisoner labor and the rape of tax payers in Texas will continue unchecked while the imperialistic standards thrive.

MIM(Prisons) responds: This is an excellent exposure of the prison labor conditions in the state of Texas and the benefit that private industry is getting for this free labor. The stories of corruption ring true across the whole federal government. See our article on Halliburton/KBR and Blackwater to see parallels in the military industrial complex.

We only disagree with the author in their assessment that the tax payers in Texas are being raped. While it is true that the State is paying ridiculous prices for goods, this is no different than the state paying high salaries to guards: these things actually work to ensure good jobs for those working in the service to imperialism. And the vast majority of taxpayers in Amerika are benefiting from imperialism so we can’t agree that they are being raped. The criminal injustice system is helping to prop up the system of imperialism that benefits the taxpayers, and a little more money exchanging hands to enrich another imperialist institution (TCI) does not change this situation.

Check this out, there are a lot of issues of excessive force jumping off here at this spot with this renegade white Sgt named Deno. He has been dumping whole cans of pepper spray on prisoners when pulling them out of their cells. He then takes them to the mop closet and beats them up.

Guys are writing Prisoner Legal Services about these incidents but no internal investigations are being done by these people. They only send longass questionnaires and after all is said and done their response is always the same “we find no cause to investigate your complaint any further.” Nobody comes to see these guys physically all busted up and stitched up.

This Sgt Deno messed up this one guy’s eyes so bad with dumping too much pepper spray this guy’s vision is permanently altered. He is presently seeing an eye doctor. He has been prescribed medication for his eyes but it’s been 3 weeks and counting and this nursing staff still haven’t given it to him.

Sacred memories painted black on
brokeness of hard times canvases.
Mirrored images of many men confined
who remind me of me in memory.
Souls tear stained with blood of
our ancestors past.
Injustices pain like rain falls forming
puddles around ankles like shackles.
Unwritten script fist clenched against
bad experiences within the penal system.
Too many talented dreamers behind
prison fences.
Prison Central is confinement of the mind
Black life in eyes still shinning but dimming
He went from living to merely existing.

Mental purgatory trapped inside the
matrix
hells aging heaving grabbing at me.
Suicidal mind battles fictional characters
trying to hold on.
I believe I can fly touching the
sky inside my mind zone.
I rather die before I submit to
genocide systemized legalized lynching.
Judicial homicides of the black
strong and gifted.
Invisible teardrops manifested
Obama can’t change this.

I am a Canadian citizen incarcerated in a prison of the Illinois Department of Corrections since December 1999. I am trying to get transferred to a Canadian prison but the transfer coordinator of the IDDL denied my requests for the last six years. They don’t even tell me how long I have to stay in the U.S. The only hint I got is that I have too much time left to do to be transferred right now, and I know this only because I wrote to former Governor of Illinois Mr. Rod Blagojevich. I even wrote to President Barack Obama on his inauguration day about my transfer to a Canadian prison but he didn’t even bother to answer, much less to do something. I also wrote to some Illinois state and federal officials but they didn’t do anything either.

This is just another example of American imperialism. The U.S. likes to swing its weight with citizens of other countries incarcerated in this country by not allowing them to return to their home country, while the U.S. wants to have its citizens incarcerated abroad return home. There is a treaty of prisoner exchange and transfer between the U.S. and Canada, but the U.S. usually does not honor it.

There is nothing left for me to do but stay and suffer in U.S prisons among foreigners. Where is the day of equality among nations with mutual respect? Canada is more humane to its prisoners. The U.S. is far behind for human rights that it claims to promote around the world.

We’re told when we can eat,
We’re told when we can sleep,
We’re treated like animals,
We’re treated like the sheep.

No one really cares,
As long as it’s not them,
Prisons treat us like animals,
Instead of grown-up men.

They open our doors to chow,
We race for it like cattle,
They may have won this round,
But they haven’t won the battle.

We all must stay strong,
Surrender is not a choice,
We will rise up,
We will use our voice!

So let’s be animals,
But not the one’s they think,
Roar like lions,
Let them know their policies stink.

Don’t give up,
Don’t be blue,
Cause’ even though we prisoners,
We’re humans too.