Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program for May 7, 1999

This is Under Lock and Key

An organization of Pennsylvania prisoners calls for a phone boycott in May

California's "Three Strikes" law is not linked to drop in crime

A new film documents the centrol role of prisons in rural towns

Historian Howard Zinn speaks on Amerikan slavery in the 20th Century

Mumia Abu Jamal asks: "Is the Death Penalty the poor's prerogative?"

Massachusetts Supreme Court is weighing prisoner DNA databank

An organization of Pennsylvania prisoners and their families is protesting the high 
surcharges of prisoner's collect phone calls. They are calling for prisoners to 
boycott the phone system for the month of May.

In recent years, many state prisons have instituted new phone systems, which often 
place restrictions on who prisoners can call and require that calls be made collect. 
Worse still, is that the surcharge for collect calls from prison is much higher than 
on regular collect calls, with the Department of Corrections benefiting from this 
extortion.

In the hopes of forcing the Department of Corrections to renegotiate the contract 
with AT&T, Voices Behind the Walls is asking prisoners to boycott the thirteen hundred 
phones in the state's prisons during the month of May. 

VOICE

RAIL insists that the restriction on prisoners phone calls shows that the U.$. 
injustice system is not concerned about crime. One of the few things that affects 
recidivism is the amount of contact a prisoner has with their family, and by high 
phone fees, the system wants to cut prisoner & family communication.

Prisoners come from the poorest families who already pay taxes to support the 
prison system. But on top of that, the state wants to tax these families again through 
the phone charges.

Since the installation of new phone system, we have learned of a number of phone 
boycotts organized by prisoners. The planning of this effort speaks well to the 
boycott's potential of success. The prisoner's action may have an even greater impact 
by disrupting an already existing income stream for the DOC. 

MUSIC

Data on California's crime rate and draconian "Three-Strikes" legislation 
shows that there is no connection between crime and imprisonment rates. 

NEW VOICE

Under California's "Three-Strikes" law, any person convicted of a third 
felony may receive a sentence of 25 years to life. This has led to such 
injustices as a man being sentenced to 25 years for stealing a piece of pizza, 
another for stealing a pair of blue jeans, yet another for stealing a bottle of 
aspirin, and on and on.

Whether or not to try a particular felony as a third strike is up to the 
discretion of the prosecutor. The rate of "Third-Strike" convictions in 
Sacramento is 12 times that of San Francisco. However the crime rate in San 
Francisco dropped more in San Francisco than any other city in California. 

As we discussed in a previous program, the drop in the crime rates across the 
u.$. is likely due to the temporary upturn in the economy, and perhaps a decrease 
in the trade in crack cocaine.

[pad out show to 15 minutes with middle of California Uber Alles by 
Disposable Heroes ideal length 1min]

Yes, In My Backyard is a new film by Tracy Huling

VOICE 

This film is a valuable resource for anti-prisons activism because it describes 
the extent to which prisons have become an asset to the u.$. economy. The film's 
strength is in showing the extent to which the prisons industry encourages its 
employees, their dependents, and players in regional economies to think of prisons 
only as an economic boon. People whose family's bills have always been paid by the 
prisons have no incentive to question the rehabilitative value of the prisons, or to 
ask if increased imprisonment has any effect at all on the crime rate for which it is 
supposed to answer.

Yes, In My Backyard is about Coxsackie, a small Hudson River-side community in New 
York whose local economy is based on two state prisons. Describing the character of 
Coxsackie and towns like it, the filmmaker said part of the reason she wanted to make 
this film is that the prisons are central to the town's existence. In these towns 
everybody knows people who work there, and most families depend on the prison for 
their livelihood Ñ but nobody will talk about what this means in public. 

The major difference is that twenty or thirty years ago, there were not nearly as 
many prison towns in this country. And half a century ago, prisons were not a central 
growth industry in the united snakes. Amerika's status as an imperialist country gives 
its citizens the luxury to work in non-productive jobs. But the 1970s brought the 
beginnings of a boom in prisons, and with it tremendous growth in the number of people 
directly employed in the business of military control of the oppressed nations. A 
retired Corrections Officer interviewed in the film explains the job security prisons 
provide:

[worst/better in jail/job 10 sec]

3-2-1

Prisoners at Greene are shown doing farm work in Yes, In My Backyard; the prison 
has a milk and dairy farm run by a local farmer. In one unnarrated scene, an unseen 
guard yelled at a Black prisoner working in the dairy farm to pull his pants up. The 
same scene was repeated without the yelling one or two more times during the film. Our 
best guess is that this scene was evidence of the general harassment of the oppressed 
nationalities that goes on in the prisons. In Michigan where RAIL saw this film, 
wearing sagging pants and other Black urban styles is classified as the mark of a gang 
or Security Threat Group (STG) member. We assume the white rural guards in New York 
State are as intolerant and repressive of Black culture as the white rural guards in 
Michigan.

Coxsackie opened its first prison early to replace the town's dwindling commercial 
economy. A local historian explains in the film that as a river-town, Coxsackie saw a 
lot of commerce from the Hudson River traffic 100 years ago. But once the highway was 
built and goods transportation switched to road vehicles, the town needed some new 
enterprise. 

Coxsackie is happy with its 2 prisons and wants another one built in their 
community. The mayor -- who is also a prison employee -- explains why he supports 
building more prisons in his town: 

[mayor lobbies for prisons 28 sec]

3-2-1

As a long-term prison town, Coxsackie has a lot of history of the social issues 
and problems that run through many prison towns. The vast majority of wimmin in the 
town's domestic violence shelter are correctional officer's wives and girlfriends. A 
domestic violence official in Albany is quoted in the film saying that the level of 
danger of domestic violence in corrections and criminal justice families is markedly 
higher.  This is not only because corrections and police officers are more likely to 
be violent but because they are trained in methods of physical force that do not leave 
visible wounds.

The fact of domestic violence in correction officer families underscores the sick 
nature of imprisonment in this country. Prisons are supposed to be places of 
rehabilitation Ñ corrections employees should live by higher standards of patience, 
self-awareness and responsibility for others than people in other professions. Yet 
they are trained to inspire terror in prisoners and in their own families. 

VOICE
To RAIL, this illustrates the fact that u.$. prisons will not be reformed to the 
point of being genuine institutions of correction and rehabilitation. While it is true 
that some people who are in prisons today have committed crimes by proletarian 
standards, this does not mean they should summarily be subjected to abuse and torture. 
Those who carry out the abuse have committed far greater crimes and so are in no 
position to exact any form of justice. 

RAIL is happy to see people like Tracy Huling making honest films about prisons 
and their proponents. Working as anti-imperialists, from the vantage point of the 
people who are oppressed under imperialism, RAIL sees that building more prisons is in 
the interests of many people in this country. Employing people to work in the prisons, 
paying money to towns for service to the prisons - these are methods of bribing 
Amerikans to support prisons and other forms of imperialism. There is broad support in 
this country for greater imprisonment because the majority benefits from it. Yes, In 
My Backyard documents this support in government, and in the eyes of corrections 
employees and their community.

Stay turned to the end of this program for information on how to contact the 
filmmaker or to order the film.

MUSIC?

[Howard Zinn track 11. 28seconds]

MUSIC?

[Mumia Abu Jamal asks: "Is the Death Penalty the poor's prerogative?" 
Track 12 MAJ CD length: 2:48]


MUSIC?

In August, we reported that Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein had struck down the 
Massachusetts law requiring the pigs to create a database of prisoner DNA. With 2,500 
samples already stolen from prisoners, a hearing was held on March 1 before the 
Supreme Judicial Court on the issue.

VOICE

All 50 states have laws requiring the police to create DNA databanks for at least some 
types of prisoners. Not all states have yet implemented the laws, and the federal 
government has not yet started.

The Massachusetts law was struck down in the name of "privacy rights" in the Fourth 
Amendment. Judge Borenstein argued in August that "[r]egardless of the state's 
compelling interest, an unjustified random bodily intrusionwithout any indication of 
individualized suspicion is unreasonable and intolerable."

Typically privacy "rights" are reserved for those with power and prestige to protect. 
We emphasized the word "rights" because unlike the bourgeoisie, we don't pretend that 
there are certain rights that people have. Rather, we believe, as Mao Zedong said, 
that "there are no rights, only power struggles." The only thing that we can count on 
in this world is what the masses themselves can fight to gain and retain.

The Bill of Rights in the U.$ Constitution claims to speak for all citizens, even 
though it is rarely that way in practice. But it is a good tactic for progressive 
lawyers to try and get the Bill of Rights to apply to everyone, especially prisoners

The government argued that "if the state can collect a criminal's fingerprints, why 
not their DNA?"

The suing prisoners responded that fingerprints are used for identification purpose, 
while here the government wants to take all prisoners' DNA without any individualized 
suspicion.

VOICE

Yes, In My Backyard was produced by Galloping Girls Productions, Inc. You can 
contact Galloping Girls at Rural Route #1, Box 168, Freehold, NY 12431, Tel: 518-634-
2170