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By the Prison Outreach Project
The Triangle Foundation
The fact that the FBI has reported a dramatic rise in crime should surprise no one. As a society we have done everything possible to both create criminals and to make them worse. (Must verify that this rise in crime has also occurred in Michigan). This has been accomplished by:
1) Limiting access to friends and family.
Dr. Kupers, in trial testimony, stated:
"Prisoners with any length of sentence who had three people, who they had quality and continuous contact during their entire term of incarceration, were 1/6th as likely to be back in a prison a year later."
Limiting access to friends and family is accomplished by…
Housing prisoners as far from home as possible. (Especially Effective with Poor People = EEPP)
Making collect toll calls home to friends and family very expensive. It costs almost $20.00 for a 15 minute collect phone call out of state. It costs just under $8.00 for a 15 minute collect phone call from Jackson, Michigan (517 area code) to Grayling (989 area code). (EEPP)
Design pre-set spending limits on the amount the call recipient can spend on calls from their loved ones regardless of their ability to pay, or in some cases, especially with poorer phone clients, make them pay in advance. (EEPP)
Make inmates wait for up to 6 months before allowing them to add names/phone numbers to their approved phone list (which, incidentally, is limited to 20 phone numbers).
If an inmate is lucky enough to have a job, make him/her work ˝ day to make enough to purchase a postage stamp. For others, don't give them a job at all.
2) Limit job training and educational opportunities (that have proved to have worked in the past) to almost non-existent levels.
Remove almost all college and university training. Even for those few who can afford educational opportunities out of pocket, make the approval process difficult, cumbersome, and lengthy. Also, require multi-tier approvals from the facility to Lansing.
Eliminate all sources of educational funding, e.g. PELL grants, state and federal funding, to prisoners.
Limit the vocational opportunities to a select few, and then create waiting lists that are sometimes over 2 years in length.
If the prisoner is lucky enough to enter vocational training (after waiting a year or two on a list), limit him to only one vocation. Prisoners are not allowed to obtain dual skills, such as auto-mechanics and computers.
Eliminate job training at almost all of the state institutions.
3) Extend court imposed sentences well beyond what the sentencing judge had in mind when he pronounced sentence. Michigan's Constitution requires "indeterminate sentencing". Prison sentences are set with a minimum and a maximum range, e.g. 1 ˝ to 20 years or 1 to 5 years.
Sentenced to 1 ˝ to 20 years? Make the offender serve 20 years and then justify this by saying "If the judge didn't want him/her to serve 20 years, he shouldn't have sentenced him like that." This "rational" completely ignores justice and Michigan's legislative sentencing scheme.
Extend sentences beyond the minimum sentence date. This allows the innocent more time to become criminals and the criminals to become better criminals.
Provide increased opportunities to networks with other criminals on the outside.
4) Treat prisoners unfairly.
According to one psychologist, few human emotions are so difficult to handle as injustice and unfairness. Unfairness is an even more difficult emotion to deal with than, for instance, death. With death there is closure and finality. With injustice and unfairness there is no closure. Only a lingering cancer which invades the persons psyche.
Allow prisoners to be taunted and abused by guards and, when caught, allow the guards to go unpunished. At one prison, guards were accidentally caught on video tape urinating and spiting on inmates held in "the kennel". The guards were given one month off with pay as punishment. (Reward?)
Respond to grievances (the established dispute resolution mechanism) with answers that do not address the merits of the complaint. More often than not, the administrative responses are "cookie cutter" pre-designed blurbs which seldom, if ever, address the issue grieved.
If the prisoner has a valid legitimate grievance, simply ignore the grievance entirely. Michigan's grievance system is certified by the US Attorney General. As part of the certification process, Michigan must have grievance responses completed within 90 days of the date of filing. Once Michigan obtained certification, they no longer endeavor to meet the 90 day deadline. When Michigan is audited for compliance, they only produce documentation favorable to compliance protocols.
5) For gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered prisoners life is even more difficult. The men and women are frequently "outed" during the court proceedings. This now becomes public information. The family of the prisoner now has not only a convicted felon in the family, but also a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered son or daughter.
Prison administration and guards continually attempt to shame prisoners by taunting them or informing their cellmates that the prisoner "lays that way."
Place homosexual checkboxes on forms so that everyone will know and the inmate can't hide.
Refuse to allow books inside that help the prisoner to cope with outing issues, i.e. overcoming shame or being raped. The award winning book, ^Coming Out of Shame, ~written by two Michigan State Universities' PhD's, is on the Michigan Department of Corrections "Restricted Publication List". Prisoners are not allowed to read this book.
At hearings used to determine whether the prisoner will be paroled, ask them "Are you a homosexual?" even though the information is already contained on numerous Departmental forms. The Parole Board freely admits they consider sexual orientation in considering a prisoner for release.
2 Upon release from protective custody, regard the prisoner as being a "woose" and a "snitch". Expect physical and financial retaliation from other prisoners.
3 At parole, view "protective custody" as an inability to cope and, therefore, negative.
Treat HIV+ prisoners with outdated and archaic treatment regimens. When HIV+ prisoners are paroled or discharged from prison, provide them with only 30 days of the lifesaving medications they have been taking to combat the illness. (See e.g. MDOC Operating Procedure APA 03.04.120 "HIV Case Management Discharge Plan".) Rarely can the released person obtain a doctors appoint in the free-world community before the prescriptions run out.
7) When released, place the person on the streets, penniless, with no marketable job skills, and with no chance of success.
Convince them that being a busboy is the best that they will ever be.
Only have 2 transitional half-way houses statewide and feed them on 64˘ a day. This will help to increase the prisoner/parolee's sense of despair (while keeping them hungry and malnourished). Return the money "saved" to the pockets of the administrative staff in the form of a yearly bonus.
Make them walk or borrow a bike to get to their job (if they can find one - being a felon, they are not readily hired).
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