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Solitary Confinement: Torture?

9 Jun 2009

I’ve made my views on prisons in the U.S. pretty clear since I’ve been blogging at VL. I don’t think prisons help to solve crime, and 99% of the time, I think they make crime worse. I also think that the prison industrial complex is highly racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, abelist, nationalistic and any other horrible ‘ism it could possibly be. Which leads to not just high rates of imprisonment of legitimate criminals–but high rates of innocent people as well. Far too many black men (for example) “look” guilty and therefor must be. So I’ve definitely got my issues with the U.S. prison system and work towards its abolition.

But while I work towards prison abolition, it’s important to question what prison conditions are like *now* in the real world. Which leads to this question that this organization poses: Is solitary confinement torture?

Again, I’m posed to say yes, without even listening to the arguments for or against–but I must say, after having listened to “pro” arguments, I think even my libertarian next door neighbors would give pause to think about it a little. One of the stories highlighted by the Project was the story of Timothy Joe Souders, a mentally ill man that was thrown into solitary confinement.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Souders, 21, spent most of his last four days naked, without physician or psychiatric care, his arms and legs bound to a steel bed in four-point restraints. He was in a bare, all-steel isolation cell about the size of a walk-in closet.

He went to the cell Aug. 2 because of unruly behavior. He lay in urine — “agitated, disoriented, psychotic” — as the cell felt close to 106 degrees at times, according to a report written by a federal monitor assigned to scrutinize medical care for Jackson prisons.

Souders was found dead on his bed around 4 p.m., two hours after staff had removed his shackles. The death of the severely mentally ill inmate is a glaring example of a troubled state prison health care system, riddled with misdiagnoses, delayed or denied treatment and inadequate accommodations for people with disabilities.

The Jackson prison complex, including the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility where Souders died, has been under federal oversight for more than 20 years.

As his mother says on the National Radio Project, only the nation/state could shackle a human being, leave that person to urinate/defecate on him/herself, offer no food or water, and then call it an ‘accident’ when the person dies. If one citizen had done that to another citizen, it’d be called torture.

But of course, it’s possible to dismiss solitary confinement as “acceptable” and an “accident” because in this society, people believe that when you wind up in prison you “get what you deserve.” Or that prison is “not supposed to be fun.” Which, of course, is based on the very convenient dehumanization of human beings–it’s cheaper, easier, and makes us all feel really self-righteous and good to “stick it to” prisoners. Because there will never ever be a day when *we* are in the position of Timothy Souders, will there? We’re too good for that, right? So let ‘em suffer!

What do you think about all this? Should human beings be locked into solitary confinement? Is there ever a justifiable reason for it?

Latinos the Target of Kidnappings in San Francisco

11:05 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Cities|crime|Immigration|San Francisco|society · Comments Off

5 Jun 2009

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Some disturbing news out of San Francisco. In the city’s Mission District, Latino neighborhood par excellence, Latinos are reportedly being forced into cars and kidnapped. SFist has the frightening story:

Mission Loc@l reports that there have been three documented cases this month of Latinos being forced into a vehicle with the intent of mugging them, while walking in isolated parts of the Mission late at night. Police speculate that day laborers might be the target both because they carry cash and are often undocumented and are afraid to go to the police for fear of being deported.

The most recent attack occurred on Friday around 1 a.m., in which a 27-year-old Latino male was picked up near 20th and Bryant streets. He refused to give the assailant’s money, was hit over the head with a blunt object, and dropped off at 25th and Vermont Streets. Instead of going to the police, the victim went to San Francisco General Hospital, where a staff member then reported it to the police. Luckily, his injuries were not life-threatening.

Assailants are reportedly also using tasers to attack victims and steal their valuables. What pathetic excuse for a person preys on vulnerable people too afraid to report the crime to police? I’d like to know.

Via / SFist

Latino Gang Suspected in California Hate Crime

10:50 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · crime|Los Angeles|race|society · Comments Off

4 Jun 2009

A family in Pasadena, California thought they were moving into the home of their dreams. African-Americans who had no qualms about moving into an all-Latino neighborhood called Duarte, the Davy family they thought both the home and the area had everything they were looking for. That is, until their house was destroyed from top to bottom in an allegedly racially-motivated attack. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Davy never thought about the fact that they would be the only black family on the mostly Latino block — until someone reminded her in a way that still makes her eyes tear and her stomach twist.

On May 8, Davy opened the door to her home and was greeted by a barrage of spray-painted racial epithets. The hardwood floors, the mirrors, the televisions, the dressers — the vandals had turned the entire place into a canvas for that six-letter word used for decades to scare and scar African Americans.

Shaken, she immediately left and called police. And aside from one trip back to pick up some clothes, Davy has refused to return to a scene authorities believe was created by members of a local Latino gang.

“As far as hate crimes go, it’s probably one of the worst ones I’ve seen in my career,” said Sgt. Tony Haynes of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Duarte station. “They trashed the furniture and tossed drawers — there was pretty much no room left untouched.”

Chanisse discovered this terrifying scene upon coming home from picking up her daughter from day care. Since then, the Davys have been living in a hotel and are afraid to return to their home.

The LA Times reports that interracial shootings have happened in the past in Duarte, but no one in the community seems to have been prepared for something of this magnitude.

Earlier this week, Latino and Black victims of hate crimes in Pasadena, including Chanisse Davy, came together to demand an end to the violence.

Via / LA Times

Doctor Who Provided Abortions Shot to Death at Church

3:53 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · crime|Women · 5 Comments

31 May 2009

arttillerkake While I was in church this morning, Dr. George Tiller was shot and murdered inside the church he worshiped at in Wichita, Kansas. Dr. Tiller was killed because he did something legal, he provided abortions.

Tiller, 67, was one of the few U.S. physicians who still performed late-term abortions. He survived a 1993 shooting outside his Wichita clinic.

At this time it appears that someone is in custody and it’s being reported that some parishioners recognize the suspect as someone who has protested the doctor. This story is developing.

What I have never understood, is how people who hate “murder” so much, have no problem using it themselves carrying a bible in one hand and a gun in the other.

If Tiller was slain because of his work, he would be the fourth U.S. physician killed by abortion opponents since 1993. In addition, a nurse at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic was maimed and an off-duty police officer was killed in a 1998 bombing by Eric Rudolph, who included abortion among his list of anti-government grievances.

If?

Via / CNN

Blast Rocks NYC Starbucks

12:45 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · crime|New York City|society · 4 Comments

25 May 2009

539w1 It might have been a small one, but it was indeed a bomb that shattered windows at a Starbucks on New York’s Upper East Side today. And some are linking the explosion to some recent consulate blasts we are all familiar with:

A “low-order improvised explosive device” exploded after being left on a wooden bench in front of the coffeehouse, Kelly said. The blast could be heard many blocks away, according to CNN affiliate WABC-TV of New York.

Seven people were briefly evacuated from the building above the Starbucks, Kelly said, but no one was injured. The interior of the Starbucks sustained no damage.

It’s too early to tell whether Monday’s incident is connected to other minor explosions in New York City in recent years, including ones at the British and Mexican consulates and another in Times Square, Kelly said

I wonder what’s going on here. Earlier this month, a Starbucks in California was evacuated when a suspicious device was found there. That one turned out not to be a bomb, though what it was was never ascertained.

Via / CNN

Image via Boston.com

Abuse in Irish Catholic Orphanages

9:05 am By la Macha · children|Controversia|crime|Religion|Violence · 1 Comment

21 May 2009

IRELAND CATHOLIC ABUSE The following article about abuse in Irish orphanages followed all too familiar patterns: colonized nation, defenseless kids with no family or little contact with family, Catholic church, sexual and physical violence. But even as we can make generalities about the patterns that inevitably present themselves in cases like this, there is no way to escape the horrible singularity of the pain and trauma survivors deal with on a daily basis:

Buckley, the daughter of an unwed mother, said the orphanage was closed to the outside world and the children inside lived a life of slave labor manufacturing rosaries. She said there was no way to escape the ritual humiliation, beatings and rape regardless of whether the children achieved their quota of producing 60 rosaries per day.

She didn’t track down her parents, an Irish mother and Nigerian father, until her 40s, when she became one of the first to demand justice for her stolen youth.

“I didn’t have a childhood,” said Buckley, who recalled being constantly cold, hungry and thirsty as the nuns denied children water to keep them from wetting their beds. She was severely beaten by a nun for trying to smuggle out a letter detailing the abuse.

The Catholic religious orders that ran 52 workhouse-style reform schools from the late 19th century until the mid-1990s apologized after the report’s release, speaking of their shame and regret. Abuses also took place at 216 other church-run institutions for children, which included orphanages, hostels, regular schools and schools for the disabled.

Over and over stories of abuse come out–every where in the world it seems–Canada, the U.S., Australia, Europe. The only area where investigations never seem to quite follow through is Latin America. Are we to believe that violence and sexual abuse ran rampant in church run facilities throughout the entire world, with the exception of Latin America?

How is Latin@ history intertwined with church sanctioned sexual abuse?

Peruvians Can Say “Stop! In the Name of the Law!”

4:39 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · crime|Latin America|Peru|society · Comments Off

15 May 2009

50474 Citizen’s arrests always have sounded pretty silly to me and I wonder if anyone really does them the way they are done in movies: “This is a citizen’s arrest, sir, put your hands behind your back…” Well in Peru, authorities apparently believe that they will be affective in fighting growing street crime, and are making citizen’s arrest part of their official policy. Spain’s 20 Minutos reports:

Starting July 1st, any Peruvian will be able to arrest a criminal, as long as [the criminal] is found carrying a “flagrant crime” and as long as the citizen immediately turns him in to the police, according to a new law approved Thursday in the Peruvian congress.

“Flagrant crime” is defined by the new law as: “When the criminal act is current the perpetrator is discovered, chased and captured immediately.”

According to Living in Peru, citizen’s arrests have been effective in hundreds of cases and “have taken place without any reports of abuse.”

I wonder if this could apply to politicians, too?

Via / 20 Minutos

The Denver Chapter of INCITE! and Denver On Fire Respond to Verdict in Angie Zapata Case

8:23 pm By la Macha · crime|GLBT|race|Violence|Women · 9 Comments

13 May 2009

Just received this from the Colorado chapter Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.

This month has seen two first-time events in the history of hate crime law. In Greeley, Colorado on April 22, Allen Andrade was convicted of first degree murder and bias-motivated crime in the killing of Angie Zapata, a transgender woman of color. The verdict marked the first time the murder of a trans person has been legally designated as a “hate crime.” Earlier this month, HR 1913, the first federal hate crime law that includes sexual orientation and gender identity, passed the House on its way through Congress.

During the trial, we as members of the local trans and queer communities and allies were asked to support Angie’s family. Solidarity meant attending the trial and bearing witness to the guilty verdict. We responded to the call for solidarity by sitting in that courtroom and hearing the details of Angie’s murder. We heard the way she and all trans folks were disparaged by the language of the legal system and the hate speech of a murderer. We then watched Andrade get sentenced to a life behind bars.

We understand the joy that many trans people and allies may feel in this verdict. This is one of the first times that a court in the United States has recognized a trans person’s life as valuable and fully human. While this could be considered a small victory, in many ways it actually underscores to what extent the “justice” system is profoundly and fundamentally violent and unjust in its treatment of trans people.

Local organizations did an amazing job supporting the family, calling the queer and trans community together for healing, and taking on the daunting task of educating the media on trans issues. And it is important to note that the amount of attention given to this case by mainstream LGBT organizations has made violence against trans people of color a national issue.

However, we take issue with the way that LGBT organizations and progressive groups utilized Angie’s case in order to campaign for the swift passage of the HR 1913 hate crime law. This politicization has been most present in the rhetoric of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Light a Candle for Angie advertising campaign. The ad campaign and AngieZapata.com website were launched by a coalition of 50 political organizations who advocate for the passing of HR 1913. These campaigns describe hate crime laws as “protections” and “justice,” but given the nature of violence against trans people, we believe there is good reason to examine that rhetoric critically.

Denver On Fire and the Denver chapter of INCITE! acknowledge that we too have a particular lens we are using to respond to Angie’s murder and the trial. Our aims are to spark a deeper and more nuanced conversation and analysis of systematic violence, and to eventually bring an end to the prison system. As prison abolitionists, we know the legal and prison systems to be racist, homophobic, and transphobic institutions that exist to control our communities. A majority of incarcerated populations are there due to a deep-seeded system of institutionalized oppressions. Most of them should not be in prison at all and the prison system does nothing to help them or society at large. It only tends to perpetuate vicious cycles upon poor communities of color. When it comes to the most violent offenders like Allen Andrade, however, how should we proceed?

We also ask whether this trial served the causes of “justice” and liberation. Will putting Andrade in prison end transphobia or transbashings? Given the nature of violence against trans people, will hate crime laws really protect us? Will police, judges, and legislators be the ones that create the worlds we’d want to live in?

Violence Against Trans People

To look for solutions from the government, legal system, and police is to ask for protection from our main oppressor. The State is the central organizer and perpetrator of violence against trans people and especially trans people of color. The most obvious and most violent form of State violence is police brutality—harassment, verbal abuse, excessive force, negligence, sexual assault, and murder. Police officers, border patrol agents, and prison guards daily brutalize folks for the “crimes” of appearing gender non-conforming, being trans, living in poverty, and/or being a person of color. Law enforcement agents specifically target transwomen of color and with great frequency, transwomen who do street-based sex work.

Police brutality is often framed as officers “overstepping” the law, but their actions are rooted in the law itself. Beginning with the designation of every infant as “F” or “M,” federal and local governments actively designate, track, and manage our sex and gender on paperwork and forms of identification. State violence against trans and gender non-conforming people can be seen as the extension of State power into policing our sexes, genders, and intimate relationships—as the enforcement of legal sex designations. The stories of trans people who have experienced police brutality reflect this policing—especially after arrest, police officers actively “examine” trans people’s genders, often in violent ways, trying to determine the person’s “real” gender.

The legal system extends this impulse to constantly “examine” our genders into the courts. No example would serve better than Andrade’s trial for the murder of Angie Zapata. During the hearing, it was Angie’s gender that both attorneys put on trial, as if Andrade’s innocence or guilt could be determined by examining the details of her gender. The defense attorney relied entirely on a “trans panic” defense—she consistently referred to Angie by the wrong name and pronouns, charging her as deceitful, as “really” male, and hoping to find the jury sympathetic. The DA, in turn, played the gender card by arguing that Angie was easily perceived as biologically male—whether or not Angie could “pass” was turned from a personal issue into a legal strategy.

Meanwhile, something that was never put on trial was the network of systems and institutions that create and perpetuate transphobia. Andrade’s violence and rage did not exist in a vacuum. It was learned and affirmed by living in a culture where courts and police, doctors and priests, teachers and television tell us that transpeople and people of color do not deserve to live.

Hate Crime Law

Andrade was found guilty by the legal system and will be incarcerated most likely for the remainder of his life. He will never serve the extra one-year sentence for the “hate crime” punishment, but many trans people and allies have hailed the hate crime verdict as sending a message that anti-trans violence is not to be tolerated. It is sadly ironic that endemic incarceration of trans people and violent prison conditions are tolerated, and often uncriticized.

In prison, Andrade may share quarters with a transwoman at some time, since the prison system incarcerates trans people at disproportionate rates. The rampant incarceration of trans people stems from social and economic injustice that pushes many into illegal forms of work, after which, gender profiling, sex/gender policing, sex work policing, and discrimination in the legal system land many trans people in prison. Once incarcerated, trans people are housed by assigned sex and are often denied access to gender-confirming clothing, hormones, surgeries, binding, etc. Social and institutional transphobia in prison can lead to harassment as well as physical and sexual violence.

The State creates hate crime laws as a response to calls for protection. However, by putting this protection in the hands of the State, hate crime laws reinforce the legal system and prison system which in turn legitimizes violence carried out by the State. Hate crime laws prosecute individual acts of violence, thus sanctioning the violence that society, institutions, and the State perpetrate against trans people. Additionally, hate crime laws legitimize the legal system as the best response to violence against trans people. This completely ignores community-based responses which are significantly more accountable and respectful. Finally, hate crime law sets up the State as protector, intending to deflect our attention from the violence it perpetrates, deploys, and sanctions. The government, its agents, and their institutions perpetuate systemic violence and set themselves up as the only avenue in which justice can be allocated; they will never be charged with hate crimes.

The rhetoric from LGBT and progressive groups in support of hate crime laws attempts to paint a perpetrator as a “protector,” and speak of “justice” coming from a thoroughly unjust system. We urge broadening the analysis to recognize the systemically violent society trans people live in, and the need to respond independently from the State in order to fully transform society.

Community-Based Alternatives

Although we clearly see the flaws with the criminal justice system, it has been difficult for us to know how to respond to Angie Zapata’s murder. Our communities currently do not have structures in place to transform and hold accountable those who cause harm to us. For us, this trial brings to the fore the necessity to envision and build alternative ways of dealing with the violence our communities face without relying on a system that perpetuates violence against us. To even know where to begin, we need to intentionally create space for visioning processes that allow us to imagine our world without police and prisons.

Community response to violence is a powerful and growing alternative to the false “protections” of the legal system and hate crime laws. In many communities of color and queer and trans communities, people are organizing community-based alternatives to policing. Because these organizations are community-based and independent of State power, they are able to define violence holistically. In other words, violence is both interpersonal and systemic, and it is perpetrated by the State, institutions, and individuals.

We need to build upon the work of community groups that have already begun this visioning and organizing process. One current example of a gender-liberationist organization working on responding to violence is the Safe OUTside the System (SOS) Collective in Brooklyn, New York. SOS is a collective of lesbian, gay, bisexual, Two-Spirit, transgender, and gender non-conforming (LGBTSTGNC) people of color. “The SOS Collective works to challenge violence that affects LGBTSTGNC people of color. We are guided by the belief that strategies that increase the police presence and the criminalization of our communities do not create safety. Therefore we utilize strategies of community accountability to challenge violence.” (www.alp.org/whatwedo/organizing/sos)

As members the Denver chapter of INCITE! (Women and Transfolks of Color Against Violence) and of Denver On Fire (confronting sexual assault through community accountability), we believe this is truly a historic moment. And we believe that now is the right time for a major shift—away from the legal and prison systems of the State and toward a vision of community accountability and a world without prisons.

Signed,

INCITE! – Denver chapter

Denver On Fire

The Denver Chapter of INCITE! and Denver On Fire Respond to Verdict in Angie Zapata Case http://incitenetwork.wordpress.com/

The Luis Ramirez Murder: A Logical Step in the Process of Establishing a Subhuman Class

13 May 2009

banner165new Seems like every org and their mother want to take the recent injustice in the Luis Ramirez murder case and use it for toned down cries for justice separated from the multiple places that breed the kind of hate and disrespect that led to the crossroads we as a community find ourselves at now. This is why The Sanctuary (of which I am a proud member) hoy draws a line in the sand.

The process of defining a subhuman class and institutionalizing discrimination and violence against that group is not new. How quickly and conveniently some of us allow our collective memory to cover its own tracks. Parasite, diseased, leeching, dangerous, over-breeding, vermin. These terms and this imagery have been deployed for ages, on various groups of people, on various pieces of land, in the service of various endeavors; and always to bring about the same ends. To demonize and dehumanize a group of people so that other people come to understand that the social compact with the demonized group is broken; that discrimination and violence against the dehumanized class now carries no moral consequence. That is the meaning of this latest ruling by an all-white jury in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Racial murder of a Mexican carries the same consequence as walking up to a white person and punching them in the belly: simple assault.

Are you down to make the commitment to radical cambio for our lives? Then read the entire post here.

Is that really the only reason?

12:59 pm By la Macha · crime|race · 5 Comments

12 May 2009

I’m coming to this post a little late (it was posted April 23rd) but I think it’s important to recognize and talk about. Entitled “Why the Jury Had No Trouble Convicting Angie Zapata’s Murderer,” the post asserts that many are worried that Allen Andrade, the man convicted of murderering trans Latina, Angie Zapata, might have his conviction over turned on appeal. The author then goes through a step-by-step legal analysis of why that won’t happen :

The Weld County District Attorney’s Office charged Andrade with first degree murder and a bias-motivated (i.e., “hate”) crime for bludgeoning Angie to death with a fire extinguisher that he found in her apartment. Before the trial began, however, his attorneys asked the judge to tell the jurors that they had the option of convicting Andrade of second degree murder, manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, instead of first degree murder. Much to my surprise, the judge agreed and instructed the jury on all four types of homicide as “lesser included offenses.” (A “lesser included offense” is a crime that contains some, but not all, of the elements of the greater charge, such that it’s impossible to commit the greater offense without also committing the lesser. As long as the evidence supports a conviction on the lesser offense, the Constitution requires that the jury be given the option to consider both the greater and the lesser offenses.)

It’s a good read, one that I recommend. I do have one problem with the essay however. The essay could’ve been much shorter–it could’ve boiled down to one word, actually.

Race.

Allen Andrade was Latino.

Now, before I go on, I have two things to say:
1. Andrade has no sympathy from me.
2. Two white men who kicked and beat a Latino man to death recently were cleared of all charges, even though they too, admitted to the crime.

And as Mamita shows us, killers of Latinos have a *history* of being let go, set free, not charged, openly congratulated.

At the same time however–Latinos also have a history of being targeted, often violently, by the police and court system.

So what do you get when there is no value of Latino life AND there is an active systematic structure of inequality and racism controlling the lives of Latinos?

You get a justice system that congratulates itself for imprisoning a Latino for a hate crime for killing a Latino while letting white men off for killing Latinos.

Nothing complicated about it, no need to go into detailed explanations about the legal system. Every day experiences leave us all knowing that there could be no other result. Not now, at least.

Which leaves those of us looking for meaningful change, radical change, asking what on earth can we do with this Catch 22 of irony we live in? And how on earth do we rejoice in “justice” when we know the racism that went into creating that “justice?”

Like I said, Andrade gets no sympathy from me. I hope he rots in hell. But I can not rest on the naive belief that the reason Andrade is going to rot in hell is because the case against him was so iron clad. There is a reason he is spending the rest of his life in prison and the men who killed Luis Ramierez aren’t.

And we can’t rest until that reason is resolved.

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