Induced Failure, An Article by Siddique Abdullah Hasan

S. A. Hasan

The current penal system in America is not working. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that it predisposes prisoners to recidivism (a relapse into a life of crime). Since man is ultimately a product of his environment, the current system's products speak for themselves: failure. The system's practices set its occupants up for exclusion from the mainstream success stories of society.

Except for the families, friends, and loved ones of prisoners and ex-prisoners, most Americans have not really considered their plight and daily struggles. Though various studies show that from one-half to two-thirds of parolees return to prison for violating the conditions of their release, or for re-offending, few (taxpayers, prosecutors, politicians, or CEOs of corporations) seem to have really pondered the critical question: Why is this colossal recidivism taking place on our soil?

Reintegration Circle in CA

Have the citizens of this great industrious nation become so detached and desensitized that they could care less about prisoners' lives? I hope not, because prisoners desperately need your assistance in reintegrating back into society and upholding the anticipation that they will become an asset to their respective communities. According to Richard Gustafson, a columnist and retired teacher who taught 30 years at Miami Valley Career Technical Center, "National statistics indicate that recidivism is cut in half with support from the community."

It is my unyielding belief that recidivism is also tremendously reduced when the system pursues its once-desired effect: rehabilitation. However, rehabilitation is a thing of the past. It was in 1790 that the first penitentiary in this country opened its doors to house criminals. The purpose of this new creation was to place criminals in a confined area, where they might ponder over their crimes, repent, and reform themselves. Hence, the term "penitentiary." Much has changed in the last three decades due to the influences of tough-talking, opportunistic politicians who reduced funding for rehabilitative programs to almost nil. So much so that rehabilitation, or producing a repentant person, is no longer the desired objective.

 

...The current objective is to warehouse prisoners and deliberately create the circumstances for their failure. 

This crude objective is being perpetrated to perpetuate "job security" for parole officials, individuals in corporate America, and the like, who benefit financially from the prison boom, which currently incarcerates 2.1 million people in our nation's prisons. This new trend of merely warehousing and punishing prisoners is not conducive to the security and stability of this nation. All it does is mentally crush prisoners' wills and doom them to inevitable failure.

As a result of this new trend, prisoners are being released with no skills, no education, no support system, no job, and only a few dollars in their possession to try to make it in this dog-eat-dog world. Indeed, a recipe for disaster. It's implausible for ex-prisoners to survive under these bleak conditions. Let us not forget that unemployment, poverty, exclusion, and a lack of education and guidance are the ingredients which led to their imprisonment. So how can the system, or any rational human being, expect ex-prisoners to succeed when they're still caught in a catch-22 cycle?

Although a job is an essential means of support that helps people acquire the things they need, trying to secure a job is an ex-prisoner's greatest obstacle. Except when family or friends have been able to secure them employment, ex-prisoners are refused work due to their criminal history, something they can't change. With this revolving door being slammed in their faces, how do we expect them to react when they're stuck between a rock and a hard place? They then end up adopting the only culture they know: survival of the fittest. In plain old English, they resort to exploiting their old ways of living -- that is, victimizing others to survive. Because of this induced failure, I share the below sentiments of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz a.k.a. Malcolm X: 

"I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that crush[es] people and penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight."

Yet, it is my yearning hope that society will come to realize that in spite of their crimes, prisoners have the same tools, the same potentials, the same basic human desires, and the same capacity for change and positive development which all other citizens possess. They just need assistance in effectively developing their latent potentials. People change -- even I have changed. In fact, life itself is a process of transformation.

With this said, it is my prayer that people will call on their elected officials to push for rehabilitative programs in prisons, as well as re-entry programs in society, that will help prisoners reintegrate in their communities and become law-abiding citizens.

In the struggle for prison reform,

Siddique Abdullah Hasan 

 

ABOUT: Siddique Abdullah Hasan is the founding editor of Compassion, a newsletter to develop healing communication between capital punishment offenders and murdered victims' families. The respected Sunni Muslim prison Imam was sentenced to death for his alleged leadership in the 1993 Lucasville prison rebellion. 
WHERE: He is currently on death row at Ohio's supermax prison, in Youngstown, and is appealing his sentence. 
WHY: For more on his case, see Staughton Lynd's Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising (Temple University Press, 2004). 
CONTACT: To contact Hasan about writing a column on issues relating to incarceration and prison life, send inquiries to:

Siddique Abdullah Hasan (Carlos Sanders) / # R 130-559 / OSP/ 878 Coitsville Hubbard RD / Youngstown, OH 44505

This was read at OSU's Take Back the Night

RedBird was asked to speak on prison abolition and how it relates rape culture and sexual assault. Here's the reading.

*  *  *

     Hi, I'm Kate and I'm part of a group called RedBird Prison Abolition here in Columbus. We support prisoners in Ohio. And I'm here because I love taking things back. I wanna take this night back. I wanna take it back to my mom and grandma and say look at this bad ass shit we're doing, (except I wouldn't swear, because they don't like that.) I wanna keep having nights like this, and I want to hold them up to rapists as a threat and as an example of the power that us here have to not only defend ourselves but take the offensive against a culture that's been steeped in rape for so long that some of us are way past bitter. Because we deserve a hell of a lot better, and you bet we can get it.

The first step being that we ‘get it’. All around us it's like we're standing in the middle of a big connect the dots drawing where the dots are things like the justice system, crime, education, prisons, the war on drugs, rape culture, the military... and the lines connecting them all are colored white for supremacy, are exclusively straight and cis in their direction and happen to be drawn by primarily male and able bodied men. It's despicable. And I hope you all wanna smudge up this drawing as much as I do. (Am I in the right place for this? Yeah? Alright.)

I'm also here as a prison abolitionist because prison is an integral part of keeping those dots connected, of upholding patriarchy and white supremacy. Now you might be like, prison, Abolition, isn't that kind of at odds with halting sexual assault? I mean, what about all the rapists who are in prison? And that is an excellent question cuz the prison and justice system do as much to halt or even diminish sexual assault as a fraternity. What about those rapists? They're coming right back into our communities with less stability and fewer opportunities to do much else than what gets people sent back to prison. And this is of course if they even went to prison in the first place. Often times people, especially white money men aren't even convicted.

Marissa Alexander

Courts deal with rape and sexual assault on an individual level, which is not without it's benefits, though the state daintily steps over acknowledging systemic problems which often result in the severe detriment of survivors. There is the case Marissa Alexander, who in 2010 after giving birth nine days previously to her son defended herself against assault that, from previous experience, she feared may be deadly. She fired a warning shot into her ceiling. The court thought she didn't need to. It also thought her assaulter's history of convictions and testimonies from others were inadmissible. The prosecutor asked for a 20 year sentence, minimum, for Marissa and got it.

There is also the recent case of CeCe McDonald who's assault wasn't specifically sexual assault, but an assault where in court, the assailant's swastika tattoo and three previous convictions for violent assault were ruled inadmissible as evidence that attacks against her were motivated by her race and gender identity. (CeCe is a Trans woman of color.)

CeCe McDonald

To hell with this justice system, police and prisons. We can do better than this.

Cuz here's where it stands now. The criminal court process has a penchant for re-traumatizing people who choose to go that route, and many do not for that very reason. The threat of conviction makes it less likely that a ‘perpetrator’ will get past denial and own up to what they did, which is often what one needs as a survivor to begin moving on.

This increases rates of PTSD and even sometimes ends up incarcerating the survivor themselves.

The prison system does not rehabilitate people, it traumatizes them, presents a sparse few opportunities upon release, save the opportunity to do something that'll put you back in prison. All the administration has to do is sit back and wait. It's quite the racket. Or rather, industry. Ohio is one of the only states left with “rehabilitation” still in its name. Most everybody else has dropped it.

And just a quick fact on prisons and female prisons, nearly 80% of people inside are mothers. Just think of what an effect this has on families. In some states, women give birth to their children while restrained in shackles. Talk about abuse. Women, men and people who prefer neither of those genders get thrown in female prisons for all kinds of reasons, but the fastest growing segment of the prison population is women of color.

 When someone first asked me to take a guess at this percentage (of growth) I failed utterly. The number of women of color have increased in prisons by over 80, no, sorry, 800% in the last 36 years. That's from 1977. And this is NOT because black or latina women commit more crimes than say white women. In fact, studies have shown that with regard to drugs, whites have more of a habit. Communities of color are intentionally targeted (by police and law enforcement) for incarceration-- making them basically shit otta luck when it comes to expecting anything but slow torture from the justice system.

This is the system we're working with now. And I don't want these things to stop us from doing the very best that we can with it when we do use it. Especially when it benefits the survivor and is what they want. But I want us to see it for what it is, as a system that makes money off of actively destroying people's lives. And not just other peoples'. It effects all of us.

And, just to be clear, good riddance to rapists who get locked up per survivors wishes, because this is an accountability. But let's strive to do better than relying on prisons, police and prosecutors that support the very things we're fighting against. People have done better in the past using practices like restorative justice, talking circles, and even societies that utilize vigilante justice deal with harm more satisfactorily than the pervasive violence the prison system wreaks on our communities today. Let's work toward accountability on our own terms and that meets survivors’ needs. Let’s learn to trust one another, as much as we can anyway and take back our night.

Occupy 4 Prisoners Demonstration

On Monday February 20th, the Occupy Movement called for a National Day of Occupation for Prisoners. There were actions all across the country. In Columbus, we had a workshop, delivered some letters, and supported friends inside who went on a hunger strike.

These are videos of the letter delivery action, so the fascists can never say we didn't ask them nicely.

Dinner Theatre Solidarity Fundraiser

[read the reportback from this event here.]


June 11th is a new holiday! It's the international day of solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners.

RedBird Prison Abolition is planning an event to celebrate this holiday in Columbus. Please join us at 64 King Ave, on Sat June 11th for the following activities.


6PM- Discussion Circle, come talk about and take action on making ourselves and our community less dependent on the police and prison system. Continue and join the conversations we had after the last performance of Ad Seg.

Ad Seg reportback...

We performed Ad Seg after the weekly 64 King potluck on Tuesday, and followed with an intentional and fruitful discussion about what we, as a group of people from various backgrounds and social groupings can do to reduce our dependence on police.

There were about 20 people there and we first talked about the play a little, then did a go around sharing stories of times we'd called the police, or avoided calling the police. Meg from CAAC was also there and shared insights about transformative justice and her experiences with CAAC.

Things that came from this discussion include:

• suggestion that housemates/friendship groups have intentional discussions among themselves about things like when they're comfortable or not