RESEARCH SOURCES
Beginning early in 2008 I started collecting news articles and statistics (from both paper and online sources) to establishing some facts, perspective, and context for the crisis of the US criminal justice system, the prison industrial complex, and juvenile justice in particular. I also collected stuff that linked performance to prison or crime, including films (Lilies, Marat/Sade, West Side Story). We invited Omar Khalif, ombudsman at SF’s Youth Guidance Center aka Juvenile Hall. I attended lectures (from Zizek to Robert King, a recently released political prisoner, 1 of the Angola 3) and some of the cast went to CR10, a national gathering of prison abolition activists. My notes from Omar Khalif and Robert King follow immediately and then excerpts and examples from several articles, essays, and other sources.
OMAR KHALIF, NOTES FROM INTERVIEW
In early September we invited Omar Khalif, ombudsman at SF’s youth jail, aka Juvie aka Youth Guidance Center, to speak with the cast. Omar is an amazing storyteller whose tales of work intersected with his own personal story, including raising four girls in the Bayview. When we asked him how many of his clients/contacts at YGC are African American he suggested that we rephrase the question to ask how many white youth he deals with. This has prompted much discussion around how we address institutional or systematic racism. Where should we focus? What are the questions to ask? Why does justice seem so distant? This meeting was important to the group and became a point of reference for many of us.
Intergenerational. Cousins kill cousins but don’t even know they’re related.
Share cereal at breakfast. Kill each other that night.
Compounding factors: low education level, drug influence, mental health.
Church, school, liquor store.
Weed house, crack house, jail house.
Q: How many whites in Juvie?
A: None. OK a few mentally disturbed guys & females who came in on prostitute charges.
Kumbaya – the sign of fake unity.
Intentional arrest for health care, a bed in winter, hide from conflicts in the street.
Jorge – yah, my uncle didn’t want to leave cuz he wanted his teeth fixed.
Then the parents, I mean mother (there are no fathers)… He talks about the issue of being influenced only y women. Boys can’t fight, aren’t physically strong, and can only shoot guns.
Moment of the gun – a first moment of power.
Q: SF has more do-gooders (white liberal activists, social service non-profits) than anywhere. Why can’t we do good?
A: Privilege blinds people from recognizing the overwhelming selfishness of their mission.
Q: Any successes in the system?
A: No. Girls get pregnant and live on welfare. Boys have bad jobs or none and no family.
Count the heads in 2nd grade special ed classes to make 20 year projections in prison population.
Parents: You ain’t gonna grow up to be shit!
Q: What can we do?
A: We should stop having people believe that we can all be president. Appreciate everyone for what they are and what they can be. Get involved with children’s lives.
We need to do for our (black) children what we’re doing for the spotted owl.
Imagine the energy/effort to protest the war focused on saving the school system.
ROBERT KING, ANGOLA 3
Notes from a talk at Green ? Bookstore, Sep ?
I got a thing about other people telling my story.
I came into the system at a very young age. And they started writing about me and it didn’t match my perspective.
I spent 31 years in prison 29 in solitary confinement.
My other two comrades are still in. 36 years. Still in solitary.
I was in prison but prison was never in me. I knew that I could live. I learned the language. I couldn’t escape so I had to find other ways to escape.
I learned the law by accident.
I am free of Angola but they are not free of me. They will never be free as long as I live.
Going to this event was not only deeply moving but also fortuitous in connecting with other prison activists. I connected with Rigo, a political and conceptual artist with longstanding solidarity with Black Panthers and political prisoners. I told him that I’d been imagining big mural/banners based on his work, Inmate & Classmate in his now classic/iconic One Way signs. He immediately said he’d be glad to get involved. Also, I met a guy who works for Critical Resistance who offered to help the project. He was responsible for referring Kate Berrigan, who gave valuable research support on the Ugly Facts.
MORE RESEARCH SOURCES, EXAMPLES, EXCERPTS:
LACK OF EDUCATION SERVICES TO JUVENILES
SF Gate, Feb 28, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/28/MNGG7OCLJB1.DTL
The state's largest juvenile prison provides virtually no education services to its wards, allows them to keep makeshift ropes in their cells and keeps most of them locked up 22 hours a day, according to a report Tuesday by the state inspector general.
The report, issued more than two years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to improve conditions inside youth prisons, concludes that the environment is so bad at the Herman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino that wards could be especially prone to violence or suicide.
MILITARY RECRUITMENT & CRIMINAL HISTORY
SF Gate, Oct 1, 2006
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/10/01/ING42LCIGK1.DTL
In 2004, the Pentagon published a "Moral Waiver Study," whose seemingly benign goal was "to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success." That turned out to mean opening more recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records.
In February, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was "a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct' in their background" -- a category that included "aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats." From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent.
ABUSE & OVERCROWDING
Books Not Bars, Ella Baker Center website
http://ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=18&contentid=5
Books Not Bars had several resources, articles and videos that we used as part of our research. In rehearsal we watched a video called System Failure (13min version). The following article is one example of Books Not Bars’ thorough and effective activism:
California’s notorious Department of Juvenile Justice (more commonly known by its original name, CYA or California Youth Authority) is a hotbed of abuse. Young people are locked in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement for months at a time. They are confined to four-by-four cages during class time. Five young people have died in less than three years. With a 91 percent recidivism rate and a cost of $160,000 per ward, per year, CYA is the nation's most expensive, least effective juvenile justice system.
75% are rearrested within three years after leaving CYA.
ABUSE OF JUVENILE INMATES UNDER-REPORTED
Associated Press, March 2, 2008
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
# 18: “13,000 Abuse Claims in Juvie Centers”
Author: Holbrook Mohr
In states across the country, child advocates have harshly condemned the conditions under which young offenders are housed—conditions that involve sexual abuse, physical abuse, and even death. The US Justice Department (DOJ) has filed lawsuits against facilities in eleven states for supervision that is either abusive or harmfully negligent. While the DOJ lacks the power to shut down juvenile correction facilities, through litigation it can force a state to improve its detention centers and protect the civil rights of jailed youth.
Lack of oversight and nationally accepted standards of tracking abuse make it difficult to know exactly how many youngsters have been assaulted or neglected.
In a nationally conducted survey, the Associated Press contacted each state agency that oversees juvenile correction centers and asked for information on the numbers of deaths as well as the numbers of allegations and confirmed cases of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by staff members since January 1, 2004. According to the survey, more than 13,000 claims of abuse were identified in juvenile correction centers around the country from 2004 through 2007—a remarkable total given that the total population of detainees was about 46,000 at the time the states were surveyed in 2007.
The worst physical confrontations have ended in death. At least five juveniles died after being forcibly placed in restraints in facilities run by state agencies or private facilities with government contracts since January 1, 2004.
… The article continues with details of the beatings and restraint techniques that resulted in the deaths of males aged 13-17.
… A follow up article includes the following:
Among conditions currently found in California county juvenile halls are the following:
- Severe overcrowding, with teen-agers sleeping on floors;
- School is often the exception rather than the rule;
- Teen-agers are held in isolation cells for over 23 hours a day and months straight;
- Hall staff use excessive force, including beatings and pepper spray;
- Violence and gangs are endemic;
- Mental health care and rehabilitative programs are virtually nonexistent; and
- Inappropriate administration of medications is a serious health risk.
BROTHER TO BROTHER: WORDS FROM THE HEART
JOSEPH BEAM
I shared an excerpt by black gay writer Joseph Beam about his experience writing to a prisoner he didn’t previously know. We read it together. Here’s a taste:
In the fall of 1980, I did not know that one of every four Black men would experience prison in his lifetime. Nor did I know that my motivation for writing to prisoners arose from a deep sense of my captivity as a closeted gay man and an oppressed Black Man, rather than as an act of righteousness. Finally, I had no idea that such correspondence would become an integral part of my life and a place for dreaming.
He apologized profusely in that first letter about how contrary it was to prison etiquette to read someone else’s mail and even ruder to respond to it. Almost four years, and forty letters later, it seems ironic that this friendship, one of the most important in my life, is the result of a such a chance occurrence. More ironic and sadder is that we probably would not have met any other way; we are that different.
(pp 28-29)
THE ACTORS ARE EX-CONS – THEIR MESSAGE IS BLUNT
Globe and Mail, Elizabeth Renzetti
Want to scare kids away from knives? Call in the ‘big, ugly guys’
This is the second headline for an article about Any Which Way, a play by David Watson and performed by an ensemble of mostly ex-prison inmates with the Only Connect theatre company. The work is a “polemic against the wave of knife crime in London (England), which has increased in the past year.”
IT TAKES A THUG TO SAVE A THUG
United Playaz give back to the community
http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/bamma/008610.html
by Alyssa Martinez
An article about ex-gang member Rudy Corpuz Jr., founder and director of United Playaz, a violence prevention and leadership development program for SF youth.
CR10
In late September, Critical Resistance (CR), a prison abolition organization, hosted a weekend gathering ex-prisoners and prison activists. Three of the cast was able to attend some of the workshops and talks. My perspective on prisons, both analysis and abolitionist vision, is heavily influenced by and in solidarity with CR.
Excerpts from the CR10 materials:
CR 10 is a national organizing project in celebration of Critical Resistance’s 10th anniversary. CR10 provides an opportunity to assess the successes and challenges of the movement to abolish the prison industrial complex (PIC) during the past ten years; to examine how the PIC has adjusted to meet the challenges our work has posed to it, and what we must do to gain ground over the next 10 years. The project includes lead up events in cities around the country, dialogue and education, strategy and activation.
CR works to support genuinely sustainable, healthy communities that do not rely on imprisonment and policing to respond to harm. We call this vision “abolition.” We take the name abolition purposefully from those who called for the abolition of slavery in the 1800’s. Abolitionists believed that slavery could not be fixed or reformed – it needed to be abolished.
Why Abolition?
We work for PIC abolition because we do not believe that any amount of imprisonment, policing, or surveillance will ultimately make our communities safer or more self-determined, prevent “crime,” or help repair the damage that happens when one person hurts another. We believe, instead, that access to basic necessities like food, shelter, meaningful work and freedom as well as alternative systems of accountability create the conditions for healthier, more stable neighborhoods, families, and our wider communities.
GRIM CONDITIONS AT YOUT PRISON
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/28/MNGG7OCLJB1.DTL
08/28/2007
Report calls Chino facility lax, dangerous, 2 years after governor vowed to fix system
The state’s largest juvenile prison provides virtually no education services to its wards, allows them to keep makeshift ropes in their cells and keeps most of them locked up 22 hours a day, according to a report Tuesday by the state inspector general.
The review brought on harsh criticism from advocates for juvenile offenders who noted that the state has missed court-ordered deadlines to implement reform plans it agreed to when Schwarzenegger settled a lawsuit in 2004 over unconstitutionally conditions inside youth lockups.
“Nothing has change,” State Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said. “We’re dealing with an organization that is impervious to change.”
The report reiterates many of the problems cited in 2004 throughout the youth prison system, when Schwarzenegger held a news conference at N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton to announce the settlement of a class-action lawsuit. The suit had accused the system of warehousing juveniles in prison-like facilities instead of providing education, counseling and mental health care.
STOP THE SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE CAMPAIGN
This was one of the workshops at CR10 attended by some of the Delinquent cast. A project of FFLIC, Families & Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, the goal is to expose how school suspensions and expulsions and eventual incarceration disproportionately affect poor youth of color, mostly African American. Their goal is to educate parents and youth, advocate with school boards and government agencies, and improve services both after school, and after incarceration. Materials from the session were shared with the cast. Much of what we read reiterated what we had been learning from other sources, and that mirrored personal experiences, that prison populations were not made up of individuals as much as systematically chosen groups of people, with high school dropouts as the biggest common trait and disproportionately racist statistics at every level of the criminal justice system. We were reminded of what we learned from our visit with Omar Khalif, ombudsman at San Francisco’s Youth Guidance Center (aka Juvenile Hall): that prison populations 20 years from now can be estimated based on the population in 2nd grade special education classes!
THE GANG INJUNCTION
During the summer of 2007, notices of the gang injunction were posted throughout the Mission neighborhood. The injunction informed “The NorteÒo Criminal Street Gang (and all of its members, affiliates, associates, and recruits)” that they were banned from a designated “Safety Zone,” made up of specific streets where they often gathered. The result was that any of the identified NorteÒo’s (or anyone that might seem, to the police, connected to them) could be arrested simply for being in public space. I tore down a few of the notices and saved them, knowing that sooner or later I would find a use for them. I was pretty disturbed and my ideas for Delinquent started to crystallize in response. In my research files I found not only the notices but also an article in a neighborhood paper debating the injunctions, both of which I shared with the cast.
US PRISON STATS RECORDED BY BBC
BBC NEWS, 2008/02/29 14:40:49 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7270607.stm
US jail numbers at all-time high
A new study of US prisons has found that numbers of people in jail are at an all-time high, with more than 1% of the adult population behind bars.
The Pew Center report calls the US the global leader in the rate at which it imprisons its citizens. Over 2.3 million people were being held this year, it said - far ahead of other countries with large prison populations like China, Russia and Iran. The report called for fewer low-risk offenders to be sent to jail.
Soaring costsIt claims that the growing prison population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford, and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime". With 750 inmates per 100,000 people, imprisonment cost the 50 states more than $49bn last year, up from less than $11bn 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was found to be six times greater than for higher education spending.
Rates of Incarceration:
USA: 750 prisoners per 100,000 people
South Africa: 341 per 100,000
Iran: 222 per 100,000
China: 119 per 100,000
According to the Pew Center study, the higher rates of incarceration did not reflect a similar increase in crime, or in population, but tougher sentencing measures.
Some states, though, such as Texas and Kansas, have acted to slow their prison population growth, with greater use of community supervision for lower-risk offenders, and sanctions other than prison for minor probation and parole violations.
Disproportionate numbers
The numbers were "especially startling", according to the Pew Center report, for some groups in the population.
"While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."
The total of 2.3 million adults held in prison - or one in every 99.1 adults - puts the US far head of other countries.
China, with its far greater population, has 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia has 890,000.
MICHAEL MEADE – THE KOURES SYMPOSIUM
Michael Meade is an activist who works with storytelling, drumming, and experiential workshops. A key figure with James Hillman and Robert Bly in the early years of mythopoetic men’s work, Meade continues to work with men and boys on issues of violence, war, the need for mentors and positive force of a creative imagination.
In the mail I received a pamphlet titled, Creative Mentoring: Impatient Youth of the Sun, which introduced Meade’s work with youth. The following excerpts were like affirmations for the work that I had instigated with Delinquent. I’m not sure if I shared them in rehearsal. I think I read them to a couple people but not all.
“The violence, depression, and alienation of many youth reflect a “recession” in cultural imagination.
“Despair at finding meaning and becoming meaningful becomes an undercurrent which disturbs youth and threatens adults.
“Genius waits fro an intensity of circumstances to draw it out.”
The Koures Symposium is a community based project that engages youth, mentors, and elders in the essential work of re-imagining culture and helping to regenerate nature.