San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

The formerly incarcerated face uphill battle with education and work

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The formerly incarcerated are often relegated to the lowest rung of the educational ladder, a recent report concludes. 

Prisoners and former prisoners “rarely get the chance to make up for the educational opportunities from which they’ve been excluded,” according to “Getting Back on Course: Educational exclusion and attainment among formerly incarcerated people,” published in prisonpolicy.org. 

“Education is especially critical for people seeking employment after release from prison,” the report stated. 

The October 2018 report is based on data from the National Former Prisoner Survey. It “revealed a staggering 27 percent unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated people…and the outlook is particularly bleak for people of color. ” 

The report was produced by Lucius Couloute, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 

The “overly punitive disciplinary policies and practices contribute to the criminalization—and ultimately, incarceration—of large numbers of youth,” the report said. 

Twenty-nine percent to 41 percent of Black and Brown men and women, who were formerly held in prison, do not have a basic high school diploma or GED. The rates of unemployment of formerly prison-bound White, Black and Brown people without a high school diploma range from 25 percent for White men to 47 percent for Hispanic women. 

Organization helps newly released find jobs

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A Michigan organization is working to help former prisoners succeed when they are released, flintside.com reports. 

“Prejudice against formerly incarcerated people makes it nearly impossible for them to get a job or rent an apartment,” said Leon El-Alamin, founder and executive director of MADE Institute. 

“A lot of what people think they know about the criminal justice system is outdated or just misguided, and that harms formerly incarcerated people who are trying so hard to turn their lives around,” El-Alamin said at the annual meeting of Safe & Just Michigan, a statewide organization that promotes criminal sentencing reform. 

The October event in Lansing, Michigan, drew 200 people with its theme, “Moving hearts and minds toward justice.” 

MADE Institute helps train the formerly incarcerated for employment and to find housing. 

El-Alamin has served time in prison. He told the group: “There’s dignity in being able to work and put food on the table.” 

The event also featured Ellen Buchman, vice president of The Opportunity Agenda in New York. Safe & Just Michigan was founded in 2000 as Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending. In 2018 the name changed to Safe & Just Michigan. 

Tennessee prisoner makes ultimate decision in how he wants to die

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Death by lethal injection or death by electrocution was, for Edmund George Zagorski, the last major life decision he would make. 

He was 63 years old when he was executed Nov.1 by electric chair for the murder of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter over a sale of 100 pounds of marijuana in l983. 

Zagorski shot, stabbed and robbed Dotson and Porter, then stole their truck. The two men died at the scene.

Zagorski chose electrocution because he knew experts were speaking out against lethal injection, believing it caused cruel suffering prior to death. 

He wanted to avoid what medical experts were calling “torture” of the condemned, as reported in the Nashville Tennessean. 

He was part of a group of 32 Death Row offenders who sued the state of Tennessee over its use of lethal injection. The court decided against them in a 4-1 ruling. 

They cited the pain-filled, torturous lethal injection death experience of Billy Ray Irick, as characterized by doctors who reviewed his Aug. 9, 2018 execution. With Irick’s death, experts said the drug midazolam did not render him unconscious before the other drugs began shutting his body down, as was intended. 

The doctor who reviewed Irick’s death said the execution caused great pain and feelings of “…drowning and burning alive.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor said, “Capital prisoners …are entitled to humane deaths. The longer we stand silent amid growing evidence of inhumanity in execution methods like Tennessee’s, the longer we extend our own complicity in state sponsored brutality.” 

Zagorski was the 134th person the state of Tennessee put to death since 1916, the second execution in Tennessee in 2018 and the first electrocution in that state since 2007. 

His last words were, “First of all I want to make it very clear I have no hard feelings…Let’s rock.”

Zagorski spent 34 years on Death Row.

John Dotson’s widow, Marsha Dotson, said, “I’ve come to realize that it’s not my place to condemn somebody, to let them die.” 

State v. Gregory ruled unconstitutional

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Abolition of the death penalty is likely in the near future, a constitutional law professor says.

“The American death penalty lurched one step closer to its eventual demise” because of a Washington State Supreme Court decision in October, Garrett Epps wrote in an article for The Atlantic.

“In State v. Gregory, the state court held that the death penalty, as imposed in the state of Washington, was unconstitutional because it was racially biased,” noted Epps, a faculty member at the University of Baltimore.

Epps pointed to a ruling from the Washington Supreme Court, which found in October 2018 that death penalty sentencing in that state was “…arbitrary and racist in its application.”. This ruling gives Epps hope the death penalty is moving to “…its eventual demise…”

The court’s decision was based on two studies which gave evidence that in Washington, “Black defendants were four and a half times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly situated White defendants.”

“Washington’s death penalty is administered in an arbitrary and racially biased manner…”. This is a violation of the Washington State Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel punishment,” the court concluded. 

Epps said the U.S. Supreme Court’s management of capital punishment cases over the past half century to be “miserable.” 

It was 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court placed a moratorium, (15 years), on death sentences in Georgia, finding that state’s capital punishment laws, “cruel and unusual,” in violation of the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

The concern was that an argument could be made that Georgia’s judicial processes for capital crime could statistically be shown as “arbitrary or racially based,” said Epps. 

Further he wrote that in 1987 when McCleskey v Kemp came before the court, once more from Georgia, the criminal defense claimed a “dual operating system” was in play in that state which gave greater penalties for Black defendants compared to White. Handing out penalties based upon race is “a clear violation of the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment” and of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the equal protection of the law. Justice Powell cast the deciding 5-4 vote, writing for the majority in which the ruling went against McCleskey and his criminal defense. But years later, retired Justice Powell told his biographer he “…would change his vote in McCleskey…”

Private Companies tend to relocate prisoners further away from home

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For-profit prison companies are moving more prisoners far away from their homes and families, Bloomberg News reports.

“It’s a business and the prisoners are the cogs in that machine, …It’s not about what’s best for the prisoners; it’s about how do you run a profitable (prison) enterprise,” said Michele Deitch, senior lecturer at the LBJ School and the School of Law at the University of Texas, Austin.

Moving prisoners far from their homes makes it more likely they will commit crimes again, Deitch said. “Prisoners allowed in-person visitation are 25 percent less likely to commit a criminal offense post-release, according to a 2016 study by researcher at Sam Houston State University,” the story reported.

Bloomberg noted the for- profit prison company Core-Civic. Inc. has moved prisoners from Puerto Rico to the mainland. Puerto Rico prisoners must volunteer before being transferred out of the territory, said Eric Rolon, secretary of Puerto Rico’s Department of Corrections.

In 2012 inmates from Puerto Rico were transferred to a CoreCivic U.S. location, and there was clashing between them and local prisoners, the story said.

While government clients see for-profit prisons as a means to ease overcrowding and save money, the prisoner’s experience is of being far away from home, family and legal counsel. An example is Puerto Rican Giovannie Marrero, who is doing a 20 year term for domestic assault.

He will be transferred to a CoreCivic facility in Mississippi, 1,800 miles away from his home. What is a “real opportunity” for clients is a negative experience for prisoners and their families.

Bloomberg News reported most state prisoners are jailed 100 miles from their home, while prisoners from Puerto Rico face being transferred 1,800 miles across the waters of the Mexican Gulf.

CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said the company’s anti-recidivism efforts provide for education, job training, addiction counseling and reentry programs — all of that beyond the requirements of their contracts.

For Puerto Rico, sending their prisoners to a for-profit facility will save the bankrupt commonwealth island money, Bloomberg noted. According to Secretary Rolon, this could mean as much as $50 million annually.

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