PRISON PRACTICES BETRAY TUTWILER LEGACY

From the CRIMSON WHITE
http://cw.ua.edu/2014/04/23/prison-practices-betray-the-tutwiler-legacy/

Prison practices betray the Tutwiler legacy
in News / by Taylor Manning / on April 23, 2014 at 12:00 AM /

The University of Alabama’s Julia Tutwiler Hall residency received its namesake from the proponent of educational, prison and women’s rights reform, but another building off a busy Wetumpka highway carries her name as well: the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.

Julia Tutwiler was a renowned innovator of Alabama’s educational system in her lifetime. But she is not remembered just for her impact on education. She became known as the “Angel of the Stockade” while advocating for humane prison conditions throughout Alabama.

Today, however, a prison that carries her name has some of the worst conditions for a correctional facility in the entire state.

Throughout a long career of teaching, activism and educational leadership, Tutwiler was closely involved with the founding of the institutions that became the University of Montevallo and the University of West Alabama.

“She had a personality that was somewhat interesting,” said Marcia Synnott, professor of history at the University of South Carolina. “She was called ‘Miss Jule,’ and the students liked her, but she did have her quirks. She could be somewhat demanding, she was considered impulsive and had strong moral convictions.”

(See also “Addressing sexual assault in college“)

The Tuscaloosa native also had deep family ties to The University of Alabama. Her father, Henry Tutwiler, accepted the position of the University’s chair of ancient languages in 1831. He later married Julia Ashe, daughter of the university steward Pascal Ashe. Her uncle, Carlos G. Smith, also served as a former UA president.

Today, the prison that carries the famous reformer’s name faces allegations of “unabated” staff-on-inmate sexual abuse and harassment, as reported by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Julia Tutwiler would be rolling over in her grave to think of what has happened in a space that bears her name,” said John Archibald, a columnist for The Birmingham News. “She really did a lot to help change and reshape Alabama’s prison system. So when this happens now, you can’t help but look at the irony.”

In a 36-page letter to Gov. Robert Bentley earlier this year, the DOJ summarized the results of an April 2013 investigation of the prison, declaring conditions to be unconstitutional. According to the DOJ’s findings, instances of sexual misconduct by prison employees include rape, sodomy, fondling, voyeurism, sexually explicit verbal abuse and other offenses.

“For nearly two decades, Tutwiler has had a sordid history of sexual abuse and harassment of prisoners that has included rape and pregnancies,” the letter stated.

(See also “Youth have to hold UA accountable for sexual assaults“)

The document also notified officials that the DOJ would be expanding its investigation of the prison.

Despite having known since at least 1995 of sexual abuse and harassment risks to prisoners, Alabama Department of Corrections and Tutwiler officials “failed to take reasonable steps to protect the women in their custody,” the report continued.

A number of legislative and institutional changes have since been implemented, including a $24 million increase in funding for ADOC for the 2014 fiscal year. ADOC Public Information Officer Kristi Gates said the money was used to install cameras within the prison, to hire additional corrections officers and to pay for renovations at the Wetumpka Women’s Facility that will expand and house more inmates from Tutwiler.

Archibald said the culture of the ADOC itself must change first for there to be any lasting improvement. The vast majority of past charges against prison staff were pleaded down to misdemeanors, which speaks to an institution that looks the other way, he said.

Paul Pruitt Jr., a special collections librarian at the UA Bounds Law Library, said Julia Tutwiler would be sad and disgusted if reports of sexual misconduct proved true, but not necessarily surprised. He said Tutwiler, who campaigned for the separation of male and female prisoners, likely knew of similar abuses during her lifetime.

“Tuscaloosa was the site of her first big public reformist action,” Pruitt said. “She discovered the jail in Tuscaloosa was unheated, it was poorly looked at, and the prisoners were suffering from colds, poor food and general neglect.”

With assistance from the Tuscaloosa Benevolence Society women’s group, Tutwiler launched her first prison reform mission. She energized the movement and called for a survey of all Alabama jails that indicated similarly poor conditions throughout the state, Pruitt said. Backed by group members, she pushed a bill through the legislature that required better treatment for prisoners, including heating and free clean water for county jails.

Tutwiler sought to end the state’s convict lease system and advocated for the separation of adult and youthful offenders. She also established schools for prisoners, many of whom were illiterate, Pruitt said.

Present day reform efforts involve the state’s 2014-15 General Fund Budget, which will allow the Governor’s Office to create an ombudsman position to address concerns of female inmates in the system, Gates said. The ADOC also hired The Moss Group, a national consulting firm that specializes in criminal justice management and sexual safety in confinement.

“The Moss Group has worked in all 50 states and is known for being progressive when it comes to sexual safety responses,” Gates said. “The group will help ADOC further the reforms listed in DOJ directives and our own recommendations and help ADOC enforce the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.”

(See also “Art supports sexual assault victims“)

The Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit watchdog for the criminal justice system, issued a press release in May 2012 stating it had filed a complaint to the DOJ citing widespread sexual abuse at the prison. Following this complaint, ADOC Commissioner Kim Thomas requested an audit from the DOJ’s National Institute of Corrections branch in June 2012, Gates said.

In January 2013, Thomas implemented a directive of 58 recommendations at Tutwiler, examples of which included adding panel doors in bathroom areas to enhance inmate privacy and discontinuing the process of strip searches of inmates returning to the facility, Gates said.

Pruitt, who described Tutwiler as the ultimate pragmatist, said her push for reform was frequently an uphill battle.

“What happens when an institution that is reformist in nature falls off in that reformism?” he said. “If you are a reformer, what you have to do is get back in there. You have to argue the same points, persuade them if you can, shame them if you must. It never stops.”

 

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ALONE IN A PRISON CELL WITH A TINY WINDOW – TONIGHT PBS –

“Solitary Nation” is about as hopeless an hour of television as you can imagine, which is exactly the reson to watch it.”

 

Mentally Ill, and Jailed in Isolation at Rikers Island

About New York
Mentally Ill, and Jailed in Isolation at Rikers Island
By JIM DWYER
Published: November 19, 2013

From the annals of Rikers Island comes a document titled, “Three Adolescents With Mental Illness in Punitive Segregation in Rikers Island.” Punitive segregation means solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Schoolwork, if it comes, is passed through a slot in the cell door. Toothpaste is available once a day.
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Rikers Island exists to make the rest of New York City seem blissful; there, troublemakers, troubled people and the unlucky are hidden behind a cloak of invisibility. It is a campus of jails for people arrested and awaiting trial, or others serving sentences of less than a year. Also, it is the basket into which society drops the disruptive mentally ill.

More than most jail systems, New York City has made extensive use of “punitive segregation” in recent years. Of the people put into solitary confinement, a high percentage have mental illness. On July 23, for instance, 102 of the 140 teenagers in solitary were either seriously or moderately mentally ill, according to a consultant’s report prepared for the city’s Board of Correction.

Few government agencies are subjected to candid oversight, but the city’s Correction Department is an exception. It faces a board that includes mayoral appointees but is controlled by no single politician. The board’s reports are blunt and lack the sanitized spin of most government documents.

The board’s staff prepared the report on the three mentally ill teenagers, each of whom was doing more than 200 days in solitary. Such segregation is a measure most often used to protect other detainees and prison staff when a person is dangerous or violent. But it comes at a steep cost: Even for people with no history of mental health problems, the prolonged isolation can lead to hallucinations, the consultants stated. Among those who are already ill, solitary accelerates existing psychiatric problems and makes treatment very difficult.

One of the three teenagers in the report was a detainee identified only as “Matthew,” 17, with bipolar disorder. He had been sentenced to 250 days in punitive segregation for punching a correction captain in the face. Four other members of his immediate family were also found to have bipolar disorder. The father’s only known job was drug dealer. His mother was a home health aide who worked two jobs. After two months in solitary at Rikers, Matthew had gone to two individual therapy sessions. He did not make other appointments for the following reasons, the report found: a search was underway for contraband in his area; no mental health escort to bring him to the therapy room; multiple floods; an episode involving “use of force” in the area; his refusal on one occasion to leave the cell.

An 18-year-old detainee, “Carlos,” who had depression, was also profiled in the report. He arrived in jail owing 150 days in solitary from a prior incarceration — time that remained on his account when he was released. On his return, Carlos was paying it backward.

“He and his family have had multiple encounters with the criminal justice system,” the report stated. “His earliest memory of the police goes back to his fourth birthday party, when police raided the family’s home to look for his father and drugs. Carlos said that his father did not attend his fourth birthday party because a police officer had tipped him off to the scheduled raid.”

When he was 8, his father was sent to prison, and his mother told him that he was gone “because he was a construction worker doing post-9/11 construction at ground zero.”

Between 2007 and the end of June 2013, the consultants reported, the number of punitive segregation beds increased by about 62 percent, to 998 from 614. For the last year, the board has been critical of the increase, and the city correction commissioner, Dora B. Schriro, said she was working to shift detainees into better spaces. By September, though, the board decided that rules limiting the use of solitary were essential: It voted 9 to 0 in favor of the rules. This week, the city reported that it had reduced the number of solitary cells by 17 percent in October, and was continuing the reduction into November.

As it happens, the city has drastically reduced the Police Department’s use of the stop-and-frisk tactic under pressure of a lawsuit. “What went on in Corrections looks very similar,” Dr. Bobby Cohen, a member of the board, said.

The department spokesman did not respond to messages Tuesday seeking comment. But the reductions in solitary, Commissioner Schriro said, was the fruit of long-planned strategies.

“Whatever the reason is,” Dr. Cohen said, “I’m glad they’re reducing the numbers.”

Email: dwyer@nytimes.com

Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

 

Sotomayor questions Alabama death-penalty process

By Robert Barnes, Published: November 18 E-mail the writer

Justice Sonia Sotomayor called Monday for a new look at whether judges should be allowed to overrule juries to impose death sentences, saying that elected judges in Alabama “appear to have succumbed to electoral pressures” in making such decisions.

Although three states allow judges to override jury recommendations that a killer receive life in prison — Florida and Delaware are the others — only judges in Alabama are using the power, Sotomayor wrote.

She was joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer in dissenting from the court’s decision not to hear a case brought by an Alabama death-row inmate who killed a Montgomery police officer. Four of the nine justices must agree to hear a case, but the court’s other liberals, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, did not agree to do so.

Sotomayor noted that the court approved Alabama’s death-penalty procedure 18 years ago. “In my view, the time has come for us to reconsider that decision,” she wrote.

In a statistic-filled opinion, Sotomayor said that since 2000, 26 of the 27 cases in which judges imposed death sentences over the recommendations of juries came from Alabama. The other was from Delaware, but the state’s supreme court overruled and converted the sentence to life in prison without parole.

What makes Alabama different? Sotomayor asked.

“There is no evidence that criminal activity is more heinous in Alabama than in other states, or that Alabama juries are particularly lenient in weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances,” the justice wrote.

“The only answer that is supported by empirical evidence is one that, in my view, casts a cloud of illegitimacy over the criminal justice system: Alabama judges, who are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to have succumbed to electoral pressures.”

In recent years, some states, including Maryland, have abandoned the death penalty. Of the 32 that allow the sentence, 31 allow for some sort of jury participation. And in 27 of those, Sotomayor wrote, if the jury decides on a life sentence for the crime, a judge cannot disturb the judgment.

In Alabama, as in most states, the jury considers aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and if the latter outweigh the former, the jury is required to recommend life imprisonment. A life-without-parole verdict requires a majority of the 12 jurors; a death sentence requires 10 votes.

But the judge need only consider the recommendation and is free to hear other evidence and make a different decision.

In the case of Mario Dion Woodward, who was convicted of shooting and killing Officer Keith Houts in 2006 after a traffic stop, the jury voted 8 to 4 to recommend life imprisonment. The judge, who Woodward’s petition notes was up for reelection in two years, sentenced him to death instead.

Sotomayor said that since 1982, 95 defendants received the death penalty despite a jury’s recommendation of leniency, and in 12 of the cases, the jury’s vote for a life term was unanimous. She listed the cases in an appendix to the opinion.

“Today, Alabama stands alone: No other state condemns prisoners to death despite the considered judgment rendered by a cross-section of its citizens that the defendant ought to live,” Sotomayor wrote.

The case is Woodward v. Alabama.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/idealist/dc-books-to-prisons_b_3803705.html

This story, written by Kristin Stadum, originally appeared on Idealists in Action.
Letters
Letters from prisoners requesting books. (Photo via Kristin Stadum.)

I hate Wednesday.

I really hate Wednesday. The day wrecks me. I end up cold, tired and hungry, except in the summer I end up hot, tired and hungry because after work on Wednesday, I spend hours with DC Books to Prisons.

When a couple of friends mentioned the group, I started volunteering and in no time at all, I found myself wrapped in the cogs of this purely-volunteer organization that seemed almost organic in nature, surviving despite itself, because of itself, without rules, without structure, to put books in the hands of prisoners.

Over the years, I have picked and packed books, established a data repository, taken packages to the post office and fought to find a fiscal sponsor. Photography, writing, fundraising — whatever the group needed, I tried to do, but it wasn’t until I spearheaded a holiday fundraiser that I realized how wildly unpopular prison issues could be.

The project doesn’t have a steady source of income. The group survives on meager grants and responses to letters of appeal. The only real costs are the cost of the website, the mailbox and shipping (media mail), which continues to rise. Even operating with such lean overhead, the organization struggles to survive.

Over the holidays, a local bookstore gave us the opportunity to tie together our skills — books and wrapping — by gift-wrapping customers’ purchases for donations. The first year, I worked eight of the nine shifts we had, serving as the public face of DC Books to Prisons.

We don’t have a charming mascot, color or theme. We send books to an underserved and incarcerated population. A lot of people have problems with that. Very few are likely to wear our name on their sleeves and raise funds for prisoners. Many believe that prisoners just ought to be punished.

“Why?” a man asked as I wrapped his books. “Why do you care?”

While I quoted statistics on the current rate of incarceration (higher in terms of both sheer volume and per capita than anywhere else in the world), all I really wanted to say is that I care because somebody has to.

Our system is broken. Our justice system claims rehabilitation as a goal, not punishment, but in a world of diminishing resources, prisoners suffer. Libraries are cut, as are educational programs, and recidivism is high. Those who enter prison on minor drug offenses walk out as hardened criminals without skills, resources or hope for the future, with criminal connections, without an education and literacy helps stop that from happening. Showing basic human decency helps stop that from happening.

“Maybe in a way it’s a form of hope, which is nice considering all this negativity,” a prisoner from California recently wrote, expressing his wonder, “to actually know that there are people out there who can do what they want, anytime they want and still donate and volunteer their time, raise money… now that has an effect on a person to make him stop and think.”

The (mostly) men who write us don’t extoll their innocence. We don’t ask them to. We read their letters, try to find books that match their requests and include a brief note wishing them happy reading.

Even such brief notes reach their readers. Sometimes, I feel more than vaguely uncomfortable with the letters I get in response, the ones calling me an angel, a savior, a princess, the ones asking how many bedrooms I have, the ones offering information about impending parole dates. We don’t sign our full names or give personal addresses but we would not be hard to find, any of us, and I do get a lot of letters.

A lot of letters.

For some reason, though, I keep going on Wednesdays. Wrecked. Uncomfortable. Unsure of my own motivation but for the fact that someone needs to care. Then, something happens to remind me why I volunteer.

The day before Christmas, with a broken water heater at home and plans for one final giftwrapping shift, I found myself engaged in a conversation with the plumber’s assistant. In the July just past, he was exonerated of a crime he did not commit and released after serving 23 years of someone else’s sentence, someone identified through DNA evidence, someone who would never be tried because the statute of limitations had passed.

What do you do after 23 years behind bars? How do you move from 1989 to 2012 without climbing the steps in between? Cameras, music and communication in pocket-sized computing devices with far too much information about everyone ever met with people checking in, checking out and checking their email all at the same time.

How do you explain a 23-year gap in a resume? How do you develop a relationship after 23 years on the inside? How could you ever go back inside any building ever again with the sun shining and a breeze blowing? I gave the man my attention, some cookies and a book on exoneration from my own shelves at home; then, I went to raise money for the project.

Since 1999, DC Books to Prisons has been answering individual inmates’ requests for reading material — fiction and nonfiction — with requests from all 50 states. Volunteers work with a donated library in borrowed space (from a local church) to pick and pack books. Requests range from dictionaries, drawing books and westerns (all incredibly popular), to history, psychology, woodworking and electronics. Some of the prisoners are lifers, on death row or “in the hole” (solitary confinement) looking for a mental escape while others hope to learn a marketable trade for after their release.

Most of the prisoners who write us weren’t wrongfully convicted. They very well might deserve the sentences received, but the ones who write us have nothing, no family or friends for support, no money, no options. We are their last resort, and whatever they did, they are serving their time. We can afford them basic human kindness and maybe a chance to learn, and so every Wednesday, cold, tired and hungry (except when I am hot), I send books to prisoners.

—

Kristin Stadum lives and works in Washington DC, volunteering regularly with DC Books to Prisons as well as The Reading Connection where she reads books to (and encourages a love of reading in) children at a domestic violence shelter. In her free time, she travels, writes, walks and raises money and awareness for breast cancer research.

 

Handmade Holiday Event Fundraiser – Deadline For Applicants – Oct. 15

APPLICATION FOR SPACE AT THE FOURTH ANNUAL HANDMADE HOLIDAY EVENT
! DEADLINE TO APPLY IS OCTOBER 15, 2013 !
NOVEMBER 2, 2013
St. Mark United Methodist Church/1421 McFarland Blvd. Northport, Al. 35476
Set up 8:00 a.m.*** Start of Event 9:00 a.m.*** End of Event 4:00 p.m.*** Vacate premises by 5:00 p.m.
Welcome to the Handmade Holiday Event hosted by Books to Prisons.
Books to Prisons relies solely on donations to cover the costs of postage and supplies. A donation is not required to participate in the Handmade Holiday Event; however, we are requesting a suggested donation of $25. This amount will allow us to send books to approximately 10 very grateful prisoners and help us sustain this program at its current level. You have no idea how much good was done by your contribution last year. Again, all donations are voluntary, but insufficient funding could result in the cancellation of the Handmade Holiday Event.

Name: _________________________________________________________________________________
Address: _______________________________________________________________________________
Phone Number and Email: ________________________________________________________________________
Website for products or enclose pictures please: _____________________________________________________
City of Northport business license number: 201302772/Books to Prisons, AL. expires 12/31/2013
Sales tax will be collected on site. Please see “more” tab at Handmadeholidayevent.weebly.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TABLES ARE NOT PROVIDED
Handcrafted/embellished/vintage goods only – no commercial vendors, please
*Donations should be made payable to the Washington Peace Center and mailed to
12112 Northside Rd. Berry, Al. 35546
C/o Mary Ann Robbins we will provide you with a tax deductible receipt

 

SEEING – AND HEARING – THAT VOICE BEHIND THE BARS

http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/4947762-seeing-and-hearing-that-voice-behind-bars?utm_medium=email&utm_source=author_blog_post_digest

Seeing – and hearing – that voice behind bars
The other day I was thumbing casually through a brand new collection of poems, observations, and very brief essays by incarcerated Vermont women, “Hear Me, See Me,” when I found myself sitting upright, unexpectedly moved. I had just read a brief essay, “Junky Mom,” and saw this parenthetical beside the author’s byline: “Deceased 2012.” Last year. The author, KH, had ended her piece, “There is only time left to care about my children and not myself, and that means doing what it takes to keep my family together.”

I called Marybeth Christie Redmond, who edited the collection with Sarah W. Bartlett, to ask about KH. Redmond told me that she had died of a heroin overdose soon after her release from prison.

KH was one of about 150 female prisoners with whom Redmond and Bartlett have worked on their writing over the last three and a half years. The pair meets weekly with a dozen or a dozen and a half women at a time at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington. The purpose of the evening exercise isn’t to turn the prisoners into award-winning poets; rather it is, according to Redmond and Bartlett in their introduction to the collection, “empower voice and celebrate change.” The pair hope the collection will help readers “to hear, and therefore truly to see, the real person behind the rap sheet.” In other words, although these women are doing time for assault, drug dealing, robbery, theft, and even murder – they are indeed criminals – many have also suffered greatly from domestic violence, rape, incest, substance abuse, and mental illness. Many were victims before they victimized others.

But if the book has pieces in it that will leave you devastated, such as that essay left behind by the mother who died soon after her release, there also are poems that will leave you inspired. When Redmond told me her favorite poem in the collection, I realized it was the very same one that I had marked with a Post-it note because of the writer’s utter capitulation to her God: “I am here, broken before you,” begins the second verse.

“It was a powerful moment in which this brash, in-your-face Vermont woman I had known for three years faded, and before me stood a humble woman calling out to her God for mercy and healing,” Redmond said, recalling when the prisoner first shared the poem in the support group. “In that moment, I saw her complete surrender, an understanding that she needed to let go and ask for some kind of larger universal help. The writing exercise and then reading aloud her words had a profound change on her. She wasn’t the same after that.”

The writer, a woman named Tess, has now been out of prison for three months and works as a landscaper. Redmond and Bartlett still meet with her weekly – these days at a Winooski café – to check in and offer advice.

Redmond said that she and Bartlett never planned for their work with prisoners to wind up in a book. But a publishing friend read some of the inmates’ writing that the pair were sharing on their blog, http://www.writinginsidevt.com, and told them he would champion the idea – and thus the book was born.

“The project was never about going in and helping wounded women,” she added. “It was about learning from each other and growing in strength and voice – and as a community of women together.”

Indeed. The work isn’t always polished; some of it skirts precariously close to cliché. But then there are those pieces that accomplish everything Redmond and Bartlett wanted: They give voice to a population that, more times than not, has been silenced behind bars.

* * *

 

A Title Wave of Contention: Va. Ban on Prison Book Program Prompts Protests

 

 

 

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All the latest news from the District, Maryland and Virginia/Washington Post

Kay Allison, left, and volunteers help re-shelve books that had been boxed to send to prisoners from Allison’s bookstore “Quest.” (Stephanie Gross – For the Post) Network News X Profile View More Activity TOOLBOX Resize Print E-mail Reprints

By Maria Glod

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 10, 2009  

A Virginia inmate studying for his GED asked for a dictionary, explaining that “there’s a lot of words I just don’t know.” A criminal serving his 18th year wanted Christian fiction and Stephen King books. And a 61-year-old woman behind bars requested a how-to book on crocheting and a book of Bible commentary.

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• VIRGINIA: Prison Officials Reverse Ban on Book Program
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View All Items in This Story

The three inmates are among thousands who have received books from the Quest Institute, a Charlottesville-based nonprofit group that has filled such requests for two decades.

But the group’s popular Books Behind Bars program might have become a victim of its success.

Virginia prison officials banned the program last month, saying that the security risks are too great and that it creates too much work for busy corrections officers.

The sudden halt has prompted protests from prisoner advocates who say Books Behind Bars — which has put as many as a million books in cells statewide — is a relatively low-cost way to help inmates who want to learn.

“All these people would be sitting in their cells doing nothing,” said Kay Allison, 78, the program’s director and owner of Quest Bookshop in downtown Charlottesville. Officials, she said, “are not looking long term.”Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Corrections Department, said the decision was made after a banned item or items made their way into prison in books provided by Quest. He would not provide details, saying it is a security issue. But he said officials worry that someone trying to smuggle an item to an inmate could use Books Behind Bars to do it.

“Because Quest sent books directly to offenders and utilized volunteers to send these books, there was nothing in place to stop someone from attempting to introduce contraband to an offender by secreting it in a book,” Traylor wrote in an e-mail.

Allison said volunteers, who search the books before they are shipped, overlooked two items this spring — a compact disc packaged in a textbook and a paper clip. She said both were found by corrections workers, who examine each package that enters the prison, before they made it into an inmate’s hands. Those two mistakes should not justify killing the program, she said.

Prison officials said Quest can provide books for prison libraries. And inmates who have money can buy books from approved vendors.

But Books Behind Bars supporters said inmates benefit from owning the most frequently requested books: dictionaries, thesauruses, Bibles and Korans. They said that prison libraries have limited collections and that Quest allows inmates with no money to seek specific titles. African American literature and self-help books top the list of sought-after volumes.

Deborah E. McDowell, a University of Virginia literary studies professor and an advocate of the program, said owning a book can encourage inmates to become better educated. McDowell, who has three relatives in Virginia prisons, said that benefits society.

Books Behind Bars traces its history back two decades, when Quest Bookshop received a letter from a convicted killer asking to buy a book on Taoism. Allison wrote back, adding a few fliers about lectures the shop held on Buddhism, self-help and other topics. The inmate responded with a list of questions. He and Allison became pen pals.

Allison, who eventually visited the man in prison, said she met someone “who made a stupid mistake one evening of drinking and shot someone.” During his years in prison, Allison said, the man had become spiritual and wanted to learn. She wanted to help, and Books Behind Bars was born.

Books Behind Bars gets about 500 letters each month from inmates. Churches and other groups donate books and money. John Grisham has given hundreds of copies of his books.

The program’s popularity has contributed to the decision to halt it. Virginia inmates are allowed only 13 books in their cells. Traylor said the steady supply of free books from Quest “led to more staff-intensive efforts of controlling the number of books that an offender had.”

Over the years, several state officials have applauded the program. In a July 1994 letter, then-Gov. George Allen (R) said Quest’s work “benefited incarcerated offenders, corrections staff and Virginia taxpayers.” In a July 2005 letter to wardens, Corrections Department Director Gene Johnson wrote that “it is the belief of both the Department and of Quest Institute that if an inmate is reading, s/he is productively employing his or her time while incarcerated.”

One inmate who had gotten a Books Behind Bars shipment sent a letter to Allison to say he had become the first in his family to receive a general equivalency diploma.

“The free books you send me are a blessing,” he wrote. “I read everyone of them from front to back.” He asked her to send Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway.

Allison, who is appealing the program’s cancellation to the state, said she would limit the number of books sent to each inmate at one time or make other changes. But she is hopeful that the program can continue.

“I can’t imagine sitting in a cell without any books,” she said.

 

We have since heard they reversed this decision – will try to find that update…

 

 

Why Doctors Oppose Force-Feeding Guantanamo Hunger Strikers

 

by Eliza Barclay and Jessica Naudziunas

July 11, 2013 5:27 PM

 

To raise awareness about force-feeding, Yasiin Bey, the musician and actor formerly known as Mos Def, in a video voluntarily underwent the same procedure administered to prisoners who refuse solid food in political protest while they are held in Guantanamo Bay.

Reprieve/Asif Kapadia

For centuries, the act of refusing food has turned human bodies into effective political bargaining chips. And so it’s no surprise that the prisoners desperate to leave Guantanamo after, in some cases, nearly a dozen years there, have turned to hunger strikes on and off since 2005 to try to win their release.

For years, the Pentagon officials who run the detention camp have responded by prisoners. Currently, some 45 of the 104 hunger-striking captives are receiving the procedure, as many people learned this week when a graphic video featuring Yasiin Bey, the rapper and actor formerly known as Mos Def, went viral. While Bey’s performance may be part publicity stunt, doctors say it does help expose the unethical treatment and some of the pain of the Gitmo detainees subjected to force-feeding.

This image reviewed by the U.S. military shows the front gate of the “Camp Six” detention facility of the Joint Detention Group at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

In the , released by the British human rights organization Reprieve on the night before the start of Ramadan, Bey is strapped down while a feeding tube is shoved up his nose, down his esophagus and into his stomach. He resists, whimpers and writhes, and eventually calls for it to stop, breaking down into tears. According to Reprieve, Bey’s force-feeding followed the Pentagon’s Standard Operating Procedure used on the actual detainees.

The Pentagon calls force-feeding a “medical response to [Guantanamo] detainees who hunger strike,” according to a detailing the procedure obtained by Al Jazeera. And President Obama he supports force-feeding, because he does not want to see anyone die.

But the practice is actually at odds with international medical policy on prisoners’ right to refuse nourishment.

In 2006, the World Medical Association, an organization that represents physicians around the world and promotes the highest possible standards of medical ethics, issued the , which states:

“Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially.”

The American Medical Association has also that the practice “violates core ethical values of the medical profession.”

, senior medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, tells The Salt that force-feeding the Guantanamo prisoners is particularly degrading and inhumane.

“These hunger strikes represent the protest of people indefinitely detained and not charged,” says Iacopino, who has examined prisoners at Guantanamo. “Many have been cleared for repatriation.” More than half of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo have been cleared for release, but for a variety of reasons, there’s been no way to transfer them.

Iacopino notes that in other medical contexts — where, for example, patients need feeding tubes because they can’t swallow, and they also don’t resist — it would not be a particularly awful or painful procedure. But many of the hunger-striking detainees, he says, “have ongoing hopelessness over indefinite detention.”

In this context, he says, “I think the pain of breaking their will with force-feeding would be extraordinary. It’s outrageous that there hasn’t been more response from the medical community.”

Cori Crider, a civil rights lawyer for Reprieve, which represents 17 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, says she sees force-feeding as a more general violation of their rights.

“When the military force-feeds these people … I see it as suppressing what these people have to say,” she says, “and withdrawing from them the kind of fundamental thing that makes them human, which is choice.”

Some of the hunger strikers’ lawyers, including those representing Jihad Dhiab, a Syrian who was cleared for release in 2009 but remains in captivity, have petitioned the court to stop the force-feeding, particularly during Ramadan.

While U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said Monday in a that “force-feedings are a painful, humiliating and degrading process,” she dismissed Dhiab’s petition because she said her court “lacks jurisdiction” over Guantanamo “and therefore does not have the authority to grant the relief.”

According to the Miami Herald, the Pentagon that during the monthlong Ramadan fast, medical personnel will only feed hunger strikers after sunset and before dawn.