San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Rural prison locations make visiting more difficult

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Families visiting incarcerated loved ones throughout the country have to go through numerous challenges just to see a prisoner, according to the Marshall Project.

Those without transportation, as well as with those who drive, have difficulty getting to the prison sites because of where the prisons are located, usually in remote areas, the Dec. 18, 2019 report noted.

In the 1980s the need for more prisons across the country became apparent as more people were being sent to jail and more remote areas’ economies needing new life.

“The rural prison boom in the United States really coincided with the farm crisis and the loss of manufacturing in rural America,” said Tracy Huling, founder of the Prison Public Memory Project, which studies the history of rural prison towns.

“Siting prisons was an apparent quick fix. The land was cheaper, and people either wanted them because they were so desperate for anything to keep their communities from collapsing, or it was easier to overcome opposition in a small place, with fewer people and fewer connections to power.”

One parent, who goes to see her son as often as she can, stated that visiting him requires a 10-hour trip. The son is in prison in another state, so she has to change her work schedule, drive three hours to an airport, catch a plane for a three-hour trip, then rent a car to drive to a hotel. The next day she drives an additional hour to the prison site.

Once at the prison, if not attired properly, she can be turned away without seeing her son. This happened on her first trip when she wore a dress with black and khaki stripes. One of the prohibited colors at that prison is khaki.

“Most of these prisons are out in the middle of nowhere, so you can’t run out and get a new outfit,” she told The Marshall Project reporters. “You learn really quick to fill your trunk with clothing.”

Having to travel so far to see loved ones and encounter rejection or humiliation before you see them is extremely frustrating for most families. This is why only a small percentage of those incarcerated receive regular visits.

It can be particularly discouraging for Blacks and Latinos visiting their incarcerated relatives, the report said. There is the ordeal of traveling to remote locations, where they may be looked upon with disdain by staff or White residents of the town. This can weaken family ties, the report noted.

Most prisons do not have public transportation nearby, so a lot of families try to rideshare. It is not uncommon for the incarcerated to be as far as 500 miles or more from where they were sentenced.

The Marshal Project reported some advocacy groups are working with public agencies to create low-cost transportation options so that more prisoners can receive visits from their families and friends.

Lawrence Bartley leads new Marshall Project endeavor

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Lawrence Bartley

The Marshall Project publishes stories about the experiences of those impacted by the penal system. It does so in the one place most incarcerated people don’t have access to: online.

That changed when Lawrence Bartley returned to society after serving 27 years in prison. He’s now the producer of Inside News Magazine, which shares stories, published on The Marshall Project website, in print form for people in prison.

Bartley hopes incarcerated people engage with the articles he’s compiled– about legal developments, prison programs, hope, social science and life inside– and build off them as he eventually did.

Bartley on stage preparing a pitch

Sentenced to life when he was 17, the Jamaica Queens, NY, native started out blaming others for his predicament. Eventually he learned to take accountability and sought an education at Sing Sing, a prison just outside of New York City. Due to the fact that private funding has taken over where the Pell grants ended, Bartley managed to earn a master’s degree in professional studies.

In college at Sing Sing, he learned a valuable lesson: to always have a pitch ready.

Jim Ziolkowski, CEO of BuildOn, an international non-profit, visited Bartley’s class at Sing Sing. Ziolkowski had a great discussion with the class and left. Bartley said afterward, the professor “cursed the class out.”

“I brought this dude in here who’s been all around the world and none of y’all had a pitch ready,” Bartley quoted his professor as saying.

Bartley took the lesson to heart.

While at Sing Sing, Bartley also helped put together a TEDx Talk and, along with a small group of others, he invited legislators into the prison to discuss laws.

Lawrence Bartley speaking with NBC’s Lestor Holt

“The rate of parole releases doubled since our Senatorial meeting in 2011,” Bartley said. “I’d like to think we made some moves toward making that happen.”

Because of the positive moves Bartley made, the administration at Sing Sing called on him and his group of about five men whenever a VIP guest visited, which included Warren and Doris Buffett, ??? Usher, Harry Belafonte, Ice T, the department of probation and the chief of police.

Despite the success gained for incarcerated people, other residents called them a “secret society.”

“We made moves to put people down with it, and they weren’t ready to do the work,” Bartley said. “We never ostracized anyone though; we kept giving them chances.”

It was Bartley’s struggle to make parole that helped get him a job with The Marshall Project. Denied five times by the board, he wrote about his experience and sent the story to The Marshall Project, which published it in its “Life Inside” section. After he made parole on the next try in 2018, he walked through the doors of The Marshall Project’s offices to talk about his experiences and landed himself a job.

The lesson he learned in prison about pitching led to the creation of Inside News. Bartley prepared a pitch with help from colleagues Andrew Epstein and Alex Tatusian to get The Marshall Project into dozens of prisons.

“I lined up all my ducks on how we gonna do it, how much it was gonna cost, what pilot facility I was gonna use and laid out my pitch,” Bartley said.

The pitch Bartley gave was accepted, and he has rapidly expanded Inside News from one pilot prison to 38 and counting.

Just 14 months after coming home on parole, he bought a house in Connecticut for the wife who stuck with him through his incarceration and their kids.

However, 90 days later, New York parole hadn’t approved his transfer, so he had to stay in New York.

“I was used to not being around my family in prison, but it’s totally different when you’re around them everyday,” Bartley said. “The system is supposed to be there to help you when you’re doing good.”

Bartley has to wait to rejoin his family, but in the meantime, he is happy that they will get a good education in the upper middle class Connecticut neighborhood.

“I’m most proud of my children’s education,” Bartley said.

Fear of the outdoors – one result of long term solitary

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Frank De Palma spent more than 40 years of his life inside Nevada’s state prisons for second-degree murder, grand larceny, battery, and attempted murder. Twenty-two of those years were spent in solitary confinement, where he developed acute agoraphobia as a result of the prolonged time alone, reports The Marshall Project.

While serving time at Ely Maximum Security Prison, De Palma was sent to solitary for his own protection. While there, he assaulted a prison guard, so he was kept there. During his confinement in solitary, De Palma slowly began to experience what he called “the opposite of claustrophobia.” He began to fear leaving his cell even to exercise.

“It was suddenly like all the air around me became a pressure force…I couldn’t breathe. I started banging on the door to the yard to go back inside,” he said.

He began to have panic attacks. He experienced tightening in his chest that resembled a heart attack. He stopped taking showers because he feared having too much open space around him. When light began to bother him, he covered up his one window. He lived in darkness as much as possible; only then did he feel safe.

As the years passed, his psychosis grew to the point that when he began to suffer toothaches he used strong nylon string from his mattress to perform crude extractions in his cell rather than go see a dentist. His behavior did not go unnoticed by the guards. They would tease him by threatening to pull him out of his cell.

During this time, as a cop- ing mechanism, he created his own fantasy world. He’d imagine shopping in a grocery store, tapping melons to see if they were ripe, meeting ficti- tious people—scenarios that sometimes led to romantic re- lationships.

De Palma experienced these fantasies so often that reality and fantasy became blurred. The memories of his real life began to fade. “I literally forgot that I had a family,” he told the reporter from The Marshall Project.

Eventually a psychologist, the warden, and a couple members of the emergency response team came to encourage him to exit his cell. De Palma assumed this was because he was due to leave prison soon. During these first encounters he could barely speak. It had been so long since he actually uttered words that his speech was gar- bled. It took the prison team more than several hours to coerce De Palma out of his place of refuge.

A guard told him, “Just keep your eyes closed, and hold onto me,” and led him out of his cell while De Palma clutched the guard’s belt.

De Palma was transported to Northern Nevada Correctional Center for psychiatric aid. During the several-hour trip, he continued to keep his eyes closed. To pass the time, he concentrated on the pain caused by the tight handcuffs that had been placed on his wrists.

Upon arrival, he asked to be sent back to Ely, a request that was denied. De Palma stayed in the psychiatric ward getting treatment for his acute case of agoraphobia for 10 months He began to understand that the behavior he displayed was in no way human or normal.

De Palma had a gradual ascent out of acute agoraphobia. It began with short durations of time outside, until he was able to be moved back into the general population.

He was finally released from prison after serving a total of 42 years, 9 months, and 15 days. Transitioning back into society has been hard because he still suffers somewhat from agoraphobia. While wearing a hoodie given to him by a friend, De Palma thought he saw some- one closely behind him. In a panic, he quickly turned his body towards the person, causing him to fall to the ground. There was no one behind him, only the hoodie attached to his shirt. On another occasion he walked into a Walmart and noticed himself on one of the big screen TVs. He was horrified, fearing somehow they’d put him into a computer.

To relax, he went to a bathroom stall and locked himself in for 15 minutes until he regained composure. He realizes that a part of him still craves a dark, safe abyss.

De Palma revealed to his interviewer that he is troubled by thoughts that prison has been his whole life, and he questions, “Am I going to make it out here? Am I too damaged to ever belong?”

Former prisoners working where once housed

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The women of the first Culinary Arts Management program with their instructor

The women of the first Culinary Arts Management program with
their instructor

Across the country, former prisoners are finding jobs in the prisons where they were once housed yet still run into employment obstacles, according to the Marshall Project.

At least 30 states have hiring policies for former inmates. New programs, such as the New Mexico Returning Citizen Program, are being created to help the transition from inmate to state employee. “At the beginning it wasn’t easy,” said Cindy Stubbs, after doing time in a North Carolina prison. “Some people in society feel when someone is able to come out of prison and make a good salary and a good position, they don’t feel like you are deserving of it.”

Stubbs manages 22 male prisoners in a North Carolina prison Braille plant. She learned to translate books into Braille while in prison. She interviewed at the plant prior to release.

Stubbs had to adjust to being back in a place she was desperate to leave. A place she was directed to “Stay behind the yellow line” or responded to staff with a “yes sir or no sir.” One day an administrator had to remind her “You are not an inmate anymore,” according to the article.

“It’s not a coincidence that Louisiana also has the highest incarceration level in the country and the second-highest wrongful conviction rate, according to the National Registry of Exonerations,” concluded Reason. According to Reason, 85 percent of criminal defendants in Louisiana qualified for a public defender in 2016. Due to a lack of resources, 33 of the state’s 42 public defender offices began turning away cases.

“The Disappearing Sixth Amendment” by C.J. Ciaramella in Reason magazine June 2017

California does not employ ex-offenders in positions where sensitive information, such as access to personal or medical information on inmates and staff, is available. Texas limits hiring of ex-offenders to positions of substance abuse counselors and construction workers. Yet, former prisoners convicted of certain sex crime are disqualified.

“He’s going to be interacting with the same inmate population he served time with”

“I really want them to know there is hope out there,” said Larry Vene, a former Washington state inmate, who now trains inmates in wastewater management. “They listen to me because I’ve lived what they’re living.”

David Van Horn found a job working inside a prison through the New Mexico Returning Citizen Program, after spending 20 years in prison. 

“I was very apprehensive” said Van Horn, who was  hired to work in the officer cadets’ cafeteria.

Van Horn was paid $17 an hour, prompting some prison officials’ outrage with the former inmate being hired.

“He’s going to be interacting with the same inmate population he served time with, while earning more than the officers who protect him,” said Robert Darnell, a union chapter president. “It’s a bridge too far.”

Van Horn is no longer working there, according to the article.

In Wyoming, former inmates have to wait five years after release to be hired. Minnesota has a one-year waiting policy.

Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) began hiring formerly incarcerated prisoners under a new law.

“We knew that as we were going out every day talking to the business community and asking them to hire our parolees, that it would be hypocritical if we wouldn’t hire them ourselves,” said Chris Gautz, a Michigan DOC spokesman.”

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Black incarceration on the decline

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The percentages of Blacks and Whites being incarcerated are converging. Nationally, Black incarceration rates are dropping, while Whites are on the increase, according to a Marshall Project analysis of yearly reports by the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The report found that between 2000 and 2015, the imprisonment rate of Black men dropped by more than 24 percent. At the same time, the White male rate increased slightly.

The narrowing of the gap between White and Black incarceration rates is “definitely optimistic news,” John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University, told The Washington Post.

Among women, the trend is even more dramatic. From 2000 to 2015, the Black female imprisonment rate dropped by nearly 50 percent. During the same period, the White female rate rose by 53 percent.

The racial disparity between Black and White women’s incarceration was once 6 to 1, according to the Sentencing Project. Now, it’s 2 to 1.

“If we want to continue or accelerate [that trend], we need to acknowledge it and figure out why it’s happening,” said Adam Gelb, director of the public safety performance program at The Pew Charitable Trusts and an expert on prison data.

“Tennessee is 17.1 percent Black, but Blacks make up 69 percent of all drug-free school zone offenders…”REASON Magazine, January 2018

Prison system experts attribute the narrowing gap between Black and White incarceration to a number of reasons, including a general decline in crime and arrests; a significant drop in violent crime, which means fewer substantial prison sentences; a shift away from crack and marijuana toward meth and opioids in the war on drugs; and, the fact that criminal justice reform has occurred in cities, where more Black people live, while less progressive change has occurred in rural areas.

Another possibility: White people have faced declining socioeconomic prospects, leading to an increase in law-breaking among that population. From 2000 to 2009, Black incarceration for property offenses fell 9 percent, while White incarceration for those crimes increased 21 percent.

“African American families comprise 42 percent of welfare recipients…but are 59 percent of poor people shown on television are African American.” “Sustaining Stereotypes” by Lanien Frush Holt in QUILL Summer 2018 www.spj.org/quill

Even so, racial inequality in the prison system remains a serious issue. At the current rate, the disparities would not fully disappear for many decades, according to the Washington Post.

“Until we learn the true value of the lives we have wasted, and until we truly reckon with our nation’s history,” Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) told the Marshall Project in 2015, “… we will find ourselves in an endless cycle of reform and retrenchment—periods of apparent progress followed by the creation of new systems of racial and social control.”

http://sanquentinnews.com/optionb-org-support-group-overcoming-effects-incarceration/

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