By Lily H-A
From PHN Issue 50, Summer/Fall 2022
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade, stating that the U.S. Constitution does not protect the right to abortion. The new ruling does not restrict abortion on its own, but gives states the unlimited ability to restrict abortion.
Continue reading “Abortion Rights Update: ROE V. WADE OVERTURNED”By Dan Lockwood
From PHN Issue 50, Summer/Fall 2022
Bryant Arroyo is a longtime activist and jailhouse lawyer with expertise in environmentalism, advocacy, and the law. His recent success was helping Mr. Bradford “Bub” Gamble successfully obtain compassionate release. PHN is grateful that Mr. Arroyo has agreed to be interviewed to share his insights so that others can also be granted the same dignity that Mr. Gamble and his family received as a result of his compassionate release.
This information applies to Pennsylvania, but there are similar rules in other states and the federal system that can be found in the prison law library.
PHN: What is compassionate release?
Continue reading “How To Apply For Compassionate Release In Pennsylvania: An Interview With A Jailhouse Lawyer”By PHN Editors
From PHN Issue 50, Summer/Fall 2022
Activists in Pennsylvania have started a coalition to end the $5 copay for medical care in state prisons. The coalition includes FAMM, the Pennsylvania Prison Society, the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), the Institutional Law Project, and Physicians for Criminal Justice Reform—and now Prison Health News has joined too. For those in prison in Pennsylvania, you can help! We need to show the DOC that the copays are truly a hardship for incarcerated people and their families. To do that, you can start using the grievance process when you are unable to afford a copay. The DOC tracks grievances, so seeing grievances over copays will help them understand how often people in prison can’t pay. If you’re not in Pennsylvania, you can do this too, but there is more power in numbers where there is a group of activists taking action together.
Continue reading “A Tool in the Struggle to End Medical Copays”By Anonymous
June 16, 2022
It has been more than a year since the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections vaccinated its inmate population. Mask mandates have been lifted. The unvaccinated have been allowed off quarantine and spread throughout general population. And yet here we are, another year gone, and the pandemic restrictions limiting activity and quality of life within the prisons remain. The PADOC has successfully used a deadly pandemic as a smoke screen to institute many of the wide-ranging and destructive restrictions it’s wanted all along.
Many of us served as “essential” workers during the pandemic, tirelessly disinfecting the blocks, preparing food and distributing trays. We toiled for long hours to keep the prisons running, with the understanding that Covid was an unprecedented situation that required all of us to work together. Besides those few lucky enough to work, the majority of us were stuck confined in our cells for days and weeks and months on end. It was tough on all of us, but we made it through, and to show its appreciation for our cooperation the PADOC has chosen to keep its pandemic restrictions in place indefinitely.
Continue reading “An Open Letter to the Incarcerated of Pennsylvania”
By Rand. W Gould, October 2021
Reprinted with permission from San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper
In early March 2020, the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) declared a so-called “medical quarantine” for influenza, i.e., the flu, that quickly morphed into the COVID-19 “quarantine” still in effect to this day. Just as quickly, MDOC health care provider Corizon Health, Inc., took full advantage of this quarantine to deny prisoners constitutionally mandated health care across the board, including dental, optical, hepatitis B and other vaccines, with all previously scheduled 2020 medical consults and surgeries canceled.
Protesters in Philadelphia demand decarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Joe Piette, shared under Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
by Yosef Robele
Editor’s note: With this thoroughly researched academic article, Prison Health News has the rare privilege of offering scientific data—in addition to our continuing testimonies from people in prison—about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted incarcerated people. We agree with the author, Yosef Robele, that decarceration is the winning strategy we all must fight for.
Yosef is a 2nd year masters student in the Environmental Health Science & Policy Track at George Washington University School of Public Health. He was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. He went to undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in Environmental Science and minored in Physics. He hopes to have a career tackling environmental justice issues from a scientifically informed background.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has done much to reveal structural inequalities in American society. Throughout the pandemic, the Prison Industrial Complex has been shown to be wholly inadequate in protecting incarcerated persons, prison staff and the surrounding communities. As both the incarcerated persons and the staffs have higher rates of chronic disease than the general population (Wildeman & Wang, 2017), this places them at higher risk of an adverse outcome from contracting COVID-19. While the prison population has actually decreased by about 10% for various reasons during the pandemic, (Franco-Paredes et al., 2021) prison reform advocates have called for more radical slashes. This paper will advocate not only for these radical slashes but also for other forms of support for formerly incarcerated people. Over summer 2020 alone, over 500,000 cases of COVID-19 can be attributed to the carceral state (Hooks & Sawyer, 2020). In order to prevent further cases and deaths, it’s imperative that incarcerated people are not only released but released with enough health care and housing to support themselves during the pandemic.
Continue reading “Prison Decarceration in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic “
April 28, 2022
One of our beloved Advisory Board members for Prison Health News, Aaron Maxwell Hanna, filed a lawsuit last year against the Oregon Department of Corrections for not enforcing its own rule that prison employees must wear a face mask to protect those inside the prisons from COVID-19. It’s widely known that prison guards are the most common way COVID gets into prisons from the community. After filing the lawsuit, Max got COVID earlier this year. At his facility, Two Rivers Correctional Institution, 1,287 others have contracted COVID; across the state, 45 people in prison have died of it.
Due to his tireless advocacy, Max won a preliminary injunction on March 21 in federal court that requires the prison authorities to enforce their own mandate for staff to wear face masks. After Max won the injunction, guards allegedly pressured a gang member to take Max’s life, but Max was able to use the support he has from other prisoners to reach this gang member, who is now testifying for Max. We are awaiting the next court hearing, which will be May 10 and cover the alleged retaliation by prison guards against Max and others.
Max requested that we share this note from him on our website, along with a copy of the preliminary injunction:
I am fighting the good fight and standing up against an entire prison staffed with right-wing Republicans who don’t care about me or anyone serving a sentence behind these walls. You have no idea how big, how red and bright this target is on my back, but I don’t care because I am doing the right thing for everyone! This is what matters to me, and how I want to be remembered.
With what I am writing to you, I hope to encourage all of you who are prison activists, who want to protect the lives of those that can’t or won’t stand up for themselves. Please keep all of us in your thoughts and prayers. If you want to email me with words of encouragement, please do so at: MaxwellH7019@gmail.com and I’ll get those from you. I’ll even respond to you if you let me know that you want me to do so.
Stay strong, brothers and sisters!
Max
You can read the preliminary injunction here: https://prisonhealthnews.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/max-hanna-mask-injunction-2022.pdf
July 2020
Dakota Rose Austin
Kern Valley State Prison, California
Ms. Dakota Rose, a trans woman incarcerated in California, asks for help to stop the violence against LGBTQ people housed in the Sensitive Needs Yard, a place intended to keep them safe from homophobic and transphobic attacks. Various populations at risk of harm are placed there, not just LGBTQ people. For more information, see this resource written by currently and formerly incarcerated trans activists.
“My Cup of Tea”
To all of my incarcerated trans-sisters/brothers and non-binary identifying individuals, what’s Gucci! I am Dakota Rose, an incarcerated trans-woman, African Am. who was privileged to read my sis-in-solidarity, Fatima M. Shabazz’ submitted article regarding “transgender housing in prison.” Instinctively, I felt a sense of pride, compelled to interject my perspective and push for out (LGBTQ) advocacy, activism and overdue civil recourse.
Currently I am housed at Kern Valley State Prison, a max security level IV (180 design) SNY/NDO (sensitive needs yard/non-designated) in which a vast majority of the population are identified by CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] administration as STGs (security threat group/gang members). CDCR administrators, such as Sec. Scott Kernan in conjunction with C. Pfeiffer, K.V.S.P. warden, have knowingly condoned a perilous homophobic and transphobic culture, which has subsequently led to various hate crime acts of violence, discrimination, sexual harassment and assaults upon the LGBTQ population.
Continue reading “LGBTQ Prison Testimonies: Dakota Rose in California”
Prison Health News is honored to share these testimonies from inside State Correctional Institution (SCI) Fayette, one of Pennsylvania’s 24 prisons. While many prisons force people to live in environmentally toxic and unsafe conditions, the case of SCI Fayette is shockingly severe. We hope these testimonies encourage everyone reading this to get involved in the fight to shut down SCI Fayette. For more info, please check out Abolitionist Law Center’s report, No Escape: Exposure to Toxic Coal Waste at SCI Fayette. To get involved in the fight to finally shut this prison down, reach out to the Human Rights Coalition at salenacoca (at) gmail (dot) com or write to Human Rights Coalition, Attention: Toxic Prisons Committee, PO Box 34580, Philadelphia, PA 19101. Continue reading “Survivors of SCI Fayette’s Toxic Water and Coal Ash Speak Out”
By Suzy Subways
A national coalition led by the Working Group Against COVID-19 Death Chambers is forming to fight for controlled evacuations of incarcerated people—and it needs you.
For the past year, loved ones of incarcerated people and other activists have pressured states to release large numbers of people from prisons in order to prevent massive loss of life. But very few people have been released, and as a result of prison conditions, one in five incarcerated people have gotten COVID-19. According to the UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project, at least 2,368 incarcerated people have died in the U.S. from the virus so far.
Continue reading “Louisiana Activists Launch National Coalition to Demand Controlled Evacuations of Prisons During the Pandemic”
Prison Health News 