This law, known alternately as the “Justice and Innocence Bill” and the “32(f) law,” was passed in 2010 but has been on hold since 2012 due to a Superior Court ruling challenging its constitutionality. If you have never been put on probation in Rhode Island, the law might seem obscure. But if you are like the tens of thousands of people who have been sentenced to probation, this bill means something very important. It means a meaningful chance to fight a false accusation.

Prior to 2010, the law allowed people to be imprisoned for a crime for which they had been acquitted, and this Supreme Court ruling reinstates the legislation intended to end that practice.  That 2010 bill, sponsored by Representative David Segal and Senator Rhoda Perry, required what would seem on its face value to be a common sense reform–that if someone is acquitted of a crime, they be released from prison.

The Segal-Perry bill was the result of a four year legislative campaign, which involved many spokespeople telling their story, strong opposition from the Attorney General and the police, an initial veto by Governor Carcieri, and eventual passage with overwhelming, bi-partisan support. In the final campaign, the legislation even received support from former Attorney General James O’Neil.

This seven minute video (recommended for anyone interested in this issue) features a description of the probation violation system’s lack of due process as explained by former Superior Court Judge Stephen Fortunato, who states “In practice, if you  can get someone arrested, you can probably get them convicted as a violator.” It also  features an interview with the late and esteemed John Hardiman, former Chief of the Public Defender, who states, “If you had all the evidence at a violation hearing you had a trial,  chances are maybe the person wouldn’t have been violated, and that is the importance of  this bill.” This was a grassroots struggle, with organizers from OpenDoors and DARE  at one point covering the statehouse with thousands of ribbons with the names of people on probation in the state.

John Prince, a long-time advocate and community organizer with DARE, has a story that is integral to the passage of this legislation.  John has not only spent nearly a decade fighting for this reform, he has spent over 30 years waiting for it, ever since he was falsely  imprisoned in 1982 for four years.  While on probation, he was charged with a Breaking & Entering, and despite compelling evidence that he was falsely accused, he was essentially railroaded by a system too quick to convict.  I say he was falsely accused, because I have spoken directly to witnesses (who are also interviewed  in the advocacy video) and talked to the person, one of the real perpetrators of that crime years ago, who falsely accused him.

As John’s case illustrates, the reform has the potential to have a broad impact but the extent is not entirely known. While there are very few, potentially no, people who are currently incarcerated for violations who were also acquitted at trial, every probation revocation and plea bargain negotiation is influenced by the fact that the defendant knows they have no recourse through trial.  There are no doubt other cases out there like John’s, cases which disappear due to the expediency of probation revocations. These cases may see the light now. This legislation and Supreme Court ruling are thus systemic reforms, with a multiplied impact due to the large use of probation in this state (the fourth highest rate in the country). In some neighborhoods in Providence, over half the adult African American men are on probation, so this reform is a unique realignment of the justice system for those communities.  In fact, no other state in the country follows the laws now in place in RI with this reform (with Illinois being the closest there is).

However, at the same time that this is a fundamental reform, it will also have a measured, limited effect.  It is not a get out of jail free card.  The actual defendant in this case, Robert Beaudoin, was not acquitted at trial until April, 2013, only one month before his two year sentence expired anyway, meaning that had the law been implemented it still would have had only a small impact on him.  Even with this reform, the state can employ a number of strong practices to protect the public whenever there is any indication a person on probation might not have kept the peace, which include holding the defendant without bail, prolonging the time until trial, and using the leverage granted by the often very long suspended sentences.  This reform only affects an individual whose case falls into a specific range of doubt—there is enough evidence to revoke their probation at a hearing but not enough evidence to convict them at trial.  Yet, even then, the actual effect of this reform will largely be to shorten incarceration periods for potentially innocent people, not free them carte blanche.

Reducing mass incarceration is ultimately a vital goal.  This was the subject of the  mass incarceration symposium last year, widely attended by policy makers across the state, and is a key goal of the Governor’s Justice Reinvestment Working Group.  And as was heard at that symposium, the main drivers of mass incarceration are that, compared to the past, we are more quick to incarcerate and more likely to incarcerate for longer.  The results of this historical policy shift are stark in Rhode Island, and the crime control benefits are not wholly demonstrated.  As we look to identify what reforms can restrain this system, it makes sense to look at an important type of change—reducing the prison sentences for people that may very well be innocent.  That was the goal of the many who instituted this reform in 2010, a reform which will hopefully now finally be implemented.

This year has seen an upsurge of angst in the public sphere surrounding the police. Whether discussing overt police violence (the militarization of the force, the prison-industrial complex, ethnic profiling) or covert violence (the revelations about domestic spying by the NSA via the internet), we are seeing a fantastic debate that has not existed in the mainstream for a generation.

I want to begin this essay with first a rebuttal to the classical liberal/libertarian-capitalist critique of the police, a discussion which I find to be logically deficient in a key aspect. Then I want to offer a discussion of what an alternative would be in a socialist world. I chose to deal with this topic as my opening discussion so to both identify a key point in our society in need of radical reformation while also negating any accusations of Utopian fantasia at the outset.

The typical liberal/libertarian-capitalist critique of the police has always been one based around notions of autonomy and liberty. There are certain Libertarian Party members today who are fantastic in civil rights issues and have great stances on rejection of racism, sexism, and homophobia. They link the rejection of the police to these struggles and will say police target minorities as the state will target women seeking abortion care or queer people engaged in consenting activity, ergo we need less government, beginning with the police.

But what this argument fails to grapple with is the fact police do not exist to protect and serve the people, just as the state in the capitalist world fails to stand of, for, and by the people. Instead, the state and the police that protect its existence are created to protect property. In this sense, the taxpayer always is secondary.

It is also important here to articulate the fact that the greatest trick played on the American worker was the notion of class mobility and that somehow they were members of the middle class. In the post-World War II period, when the Baby Boom and the Keynesian economic heyday was in full force, returning white GIs had the various veterans benefits to depend on to help them pay for a house and hold down a good job (I say white because veterans of color were barred from these benefits in many cases, causing a huge level of structural racism to continue). These vets were made to think that, because they could afford a piece of property to shelter their 2.5 children and go on holiday in the summertime, they were now on the same economic footing as the European middle class.

That is the most brilliant delusions in human history. It is why America has never had a successful socialist movement and why Western Europe’s Communist parties were never successful in parliamentary politics.

Prior to the World Wars, when this delusion began, the middle class was a social group composed of the small business owners who depended on inherited wealth to maintain their social standing. Class mobility was impossible and one did not move out of the working class unless you met Prince Charming and married up, as it was called.

The Marxist Internet Archive defines the middle class in these terms:

[The] Petit-bourgeoisie, the “little people”, who like the proletariat, do real work (private labour), but possibly also employ wage-workers, thereby sharing social interests with the bourgeoisie, but being “little people” are constantly being “done over” by the big firms, and frequently find themselves thrown into the ranks of the proletariat… Bourgeois sociology determines class differently: when people are asked which class they are, the majority always reply “middle class”, just as people used to think the Earth was the centre of the Universe and “the truth lies in the middle”, etc., etc. Despite the fact that identity is often middle-class, class-consciousness among the middle-class is almost a contradiction in terms, as people finding themselves located in the middle, usually identify themselves with one side or the other when it comes to politics.

In the epoch of neoliberalism, we have seen the myth of the middle class break down and the advent of neoclassical economics has recreated the class bifurcation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As a result, we have also seen the growth of the prison-industrial complex which is the vanguard of property rights.

As such, we need to radically redefine our ideas about what the police are for and what is to be done with prisons.

In terms of the police, we must redefine their role in our community, a move which requires a radical reformulation of the curriculum of the police academies. Instead of being protectors and servants of property, they must become facilitators and provide assistance to the people. This sort of logic would see communities controlling their own well-being in a democratic fashion while putting our police forces through a massive demilitarization. There are some instances when police can have some benefit for a community, as in the case when a police officer acts as a crossing guard near a school or directs traffic at a busy intersection. But the dynamic of having a militarized police force has no place in our civil society, it only invites strife.

In terms of what is to be done with prisons, in the black radical tradition, the finest strand of socialist thought in American history, the guidance is to be taken from the prison abolition movement. Here is Ruth Gilmore Wilson explaining the basic logic of the prison abolition movement.

The first step to enact this in Rhode Island is to eliminate the profit motive with the Adult Correctional Institute. According to Human Rights Watch, the inmates at the ACI produce the following:

The industry program in Rhode Island manufactures or performs services related to auto body repair, quick copy, residential/household/dormitory furniture, seating, signage, flags, metal and wood furniture refinishing, janitorial supplies, paint, panel systems, license plates and printing. Work crews are also available to perform the following services: moving; grounds maintenance; exterior and interior painting; rug shampooing; building cleaning; litter cleanup and floor stripping. [Emphasis added]

By replacing the unionized work force that would perform these tasks with cheap laborers provided by the prison, the judicial corrections system ceases to function as a correctional mechanism at all and instead destroys any potential for the recreation of an economic base in Rhode Island. It also adds a motivation to the arrest of individuals that, when combined with the racialized nature of American culture, recreates that chattel slave caste system that our nation had a Civil War because of.

At this point in time, it is clear that the prison must be abolished and that it is worthwhile to support these efforts so to one day reach another world. To achieve this, the Providence Industrial Workers of the World have recently begun efforts that readers are encouraged to engage with. They can be contacted at Providence@IWW.org with an e-mail subject line of Incarcerated Worker Organizing Committee, or IWOC. For more information about these efforts, visit the IWOC webpage at https://iwoc.noblogs.org.

Reverend Joyce Penfield, of the St. Peter’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Providence, has been fighting for racial and social justice her entire life. “It’s been my calling since I was 13,” she said.

Her father was a leader of the local Lutheran church in Phylo, Illinois – “I lived in a cornfield, honestly,” she said, by way of describing Phylo’s rural character – and the congregation decided it didn’t want to rent out a church property for fear of potentially attracting a black tenant. “But you raised me to love everyone,” Penfield remembers arguing with her father at the time.

“I believed what they taught me about Jesus,” Penfield told me, “that you are supposed to love everyone – especially those who have been left behind.”

She graduated high school in 1964 and became active in the Civil Rights Movement. She became a minister and considered studying at the Chicago Theological Seminary, where Jesse Jackson was educated. She joined the Peace Corp and did several stints, over the years, in Nigeria. She married a Nigerian man and became active with the NAACP when their biracial children experienced discrimination from the police in New Jersey.

When she moved to Rhode Island in 2001 she became the Episcopal minister at the ACI, and immediately realized a need for post-prison rehabilitative programs. The recidivism rate at the time, she said, was about 65 percent.

“If you have a product that is successful only 35 percent of the time, that’s not very good,” Penfield said. “But nobody cares about prisoners because they create jobs. I began to see the real problem. There wasn’t any place for them to go and there wasn’t any help for them. There are so many roadblocks people encounter when they first get out of jail. They might have lost friends, they probably lost their job.”

So in 2004, she created The Blessing Way, a halfway house for homeless former inmates trying to stay sober.

“We’re a bridge to integrating back into the community,” Penfield said. “We’re almost like a shelter, but a little bit better. We help people fly on their own.”

Physically, the Blessing Way is a three-story apartment building on the property of the St. Peter’s and St. Andrew’s Church where Penfield preaches. Rooms are rented to former inmates in exchange for staying sober, finding work and putting their lives back together – all of which the Blessing Way offers help with.

“We have life skills classes, financial management, emotional development,” Penfield said, describing some of the services Blessing Way offers its clients. There are job skills training sessions and a program that puts people to work in the community as day laborers and carpenters. Last year DARE spoke to residents about the Ban The Box law that prevents employers from asking about arrest records on job applications. Residents are required to attend drug counseling, and random drug tests.

“There are myriad roadblocks people encounter when they get out of jail,” she said. “Anyone would be weighed down. If there are addiction troubles or mental illness, it’s a miracle when people can do it on their own.”

A zero tolerance policy on drugs is necessary, Penfield said. “You must be severe and they have to leave … they trigger everyone else around them.” And, she added, “the next day you’re going to have everyone in prison thinking you’re a crack house.”

From 2006 to 2012 153 people have gone through the Blessing Way program, Penfield said, and 61 percent of men graduated as did about 58 percent of the women. She assumes men do better because the availability of manual labor jobs makes it easier for men to find post-prison employment.

The beds aren’t always full at the Blessing Way. That’s partly because of the strict no drugs or alcohol policy, and partly because it can’t always afford to take in new residents. The program operates on a very small budget, and only some of the staff take a paycheck. Penfield does not, but there are a few former residents who earn a small stipend for helping out. Penfield has housing through the church but only gets paid for 10 hours a week. She’s essentially experiencing the same poverty as are the residents of the Blessing Way.

But rather than give up, she’s expanding her focus. Penfield told me recently she looks forward to working more directly on matters of racial justice and police brutality. Today, she is speaking at a Stop the Violence prayer vigil with “faith, community and law enforcement leaders” who “will lead us in a prayer and share a commitment to justice, safety, respect and dignity for everyone,” according to a press release.

She said this tack is part of another new chapter for her.

“I think god is calling me to work with our white brothers and sisters, to help them become more aware of how we’ve unconsciously held onto our privileges,” Penfield said. “Call it white supremacy if you will, that’s really what it is.”

But she isn’t trying to shame anyone, not even the police officers she works closely with on these and other issues. In fact, she seems to approach the topic of police brutality with the same compassion and convictions that she practices with her Blessing Way work.

“I try to see every person as a beautiful flower,” she said, “and maybe some of us just need some watering.”

Proud of the ability of students to express themselves appropriately. Proud to be able to offer CCRI courses to the offender population. Proud of the quality and scope of educational services within the RIDOC. Proud of the commitment of not only Ms. Kallman, but of the entire faculty and staff associated with RIDOC education programs. Proud to be part of a team committed to providing quality educational services to the offender population.

Introductory Sociology was but one of several CCRI programs offered to offenders. HVAC, Culinary Arts, Plastering and Dry Wall, and Computer Literacy are a sampling of CCRI vocational offerings. The RIDOC Education Unit also has Adult Basic Education and GED classes offered in all facilities. During Fiscal 2015, there were 196 GED’s earned and 13 AA degrees were awarded by CCRI.

Do the participants appreciate what we do for them? In my heart of hearts, I believe the answer is a definite yes. I don’t have data to answer this question, so why do I say yes?

Recently, GED teacher Angie Barboza passed away unexpectedly. The outpouring of sympathy and support expressed by the inmates as I walked through the yard was moving and sincere. The appreciation of all that she did for them as a teacher was touching.  While my own heart breaks over this loss, the outpouring of supportive comments reinforced the pride I feel in all that they do – faculty, staff, and students.

Before the severity of Angie’s illness was known and her return was expected, one of her students wrote, “You taught me all kinds of math. Even though I was going to give up, you would talk me out of it…You give me hope for trying to achieve my GED.”

I believe that education is the key to hope for a better life. This belief is supported by data. (Read a recent study by the staff of the Correctional Education Association, the US Department of Education, and the Indiana Department of Correction on the benefits of correctional education programs.) I am grateful for the commitment of the RIDOC in its support of educational and vocational programming for the offender population consistent with its mission. The Education Unit strives to offer high quality programs on a daily basis.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
  • Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
  • Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
  • Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson
  • Post prison services would stem system’s revolving door – Michael Wheelock
  • You’re vote doesn’t matter as much as your money – David Brown
  • How schools emulate prisons, and prepare students for them – Richard Pimiental
  • Cars that are good for society – David DeGrasse
  • PTA involvement instead of prison mentality in schools – Mustapha Bojang
  • Prison is about re-socialization, not corrections – Christopher Marsich

Right off the bat, the ex-inmate is socially and economically disadvantaged. Secondly, without the direction provided by prison, life outside can quickly become chaotic. Hard tasks of finding and maintaining work, affordable housing, dealing with pre-existing problems, such as drug addiction, mental health, and disgrace of past incarceration lead most to return to drugs to self-medicate themselves right back to prison.

The problem is so bad that the RIDOC and many prison systems are better known for their revolving doors than their rehabilitative services. The inmate goes out and comes right back – over and over again – because they lacked the structure to adjust to the reality of post-prison life. It’s very expensive to keep an inmate locked up in prison. Helping one stay out of prison would surely be cheaper and keep the public safer from crime.

I propose that the RIDOC should offer to provide inmates with post-prison “aftercare.” They should work toward supplying the inmate with a stable environment and structured lifestyle upon release. But don’t stop there. Assist the ex-inmate with initiating a plan and providing support throughout the process.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
  • Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
  • Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
  • Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson

But is slavery dead, or has it been reborn in a new form? I believe slavery is still alive and is in fact thriving. Slavery has adapted to the times. Modern mental slavery imprisons the mind while the body appears free.

Now ask yourself how does one come to have a slave mentality? It runs deep. This country is built on slavery and all the policies keep minorities in an oppressive state. Here’s a little history on the slave trade and its wonders. It was the interest and business of a slave owner to study human nature. They were good at breaking men and making slaves. They all had different ideas and methods they used to keep the slaves more efficient and submissive to their every command.

The ultimate goal was to create a method or system that could keep the slaves basically enslaving themselves. Virginia in the year of 1712 had a British slave owner by the name of Willie Lynch, who created the system that would enslave African Americans for generations.

They compare the process of breaking a horse to making a slave. Cardinal principles were to break you from one form of life to another. Reduce them from their natural state in nature. The focus was on the female slaves and their offspring. Everyone knows mothers will do whatever it takes to protect their children. So you prey on that to break the will to resist.

In doing so they would get the toughest, meanest male slave, and viciously beat him in front of the other female slaves and their children, and then kill him to put fear in them. After witnessing something like this, what do you think the mothers will teach their children? The male children to be mentally weak and dependent, and the females to be independent. So take away the fathers and leave the female to raise and break the offspring in the early years of development with her natural protective nature.

Does any of this sound familiar?

What race has the most single-parent households with the mother all alone to raise young men and women? Single, independent black women. I know you heard that term before. Psychologically, the effect that slavery had on our culture runs deep. We went from overseers on a plantation, which was someone who harassed and watched over your every move, to officers in the streets. You see it every time you turn on the news.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas

I was watching the news the other day and there were covering some of the unjust and discrimination that African Americans endure. And the news reporter asked a young African American woman who was a mother what she would tell her son about the young African American teenager that was gunned down by a police officer for allegedly showing aggression. The young mother said she wouldn’t tell him anything; she said she would teach him that when he sees a police officer, take his hands out of his pockets, be polite even if the officer is not, and to comply with everything he says no matter what he says, because I just want my baby to come home. Motherly instinct at its best.

Some of you reading this are probably thinking no way. Slavery is morally inhumane and it’s been abolished in this country. It says to in the constitution, the 13th Amendment was the act to abolish and outlaw such a dehumanizing thing as slavery.

Read carefully the exact words of the oh-so-important 13th Amendment so you don’t misunderstand: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

So in other words, according to this so-called punishment clause, if you get arrested, no matter how minor or major the offense, and get convicted, there’s nothing in that 13th amendment to ensure you can’t be enslaved by your state. This clause is being used to reinstate slavery under another guise.

No wonder America’s quick to criminalize everything and lock you up—it’s big business. They hole slave trade was based on economical gain. Now ask yourself, what groups of people come to jail the most? You guessed right if you said minorities and the lower class. Think about that.

If you owned a business, what would you do to keep it running? Keep your supply and demand up, right? If you owned a prison, you would keep your customers coming back. American locks up half a million more people than China, whose population is 5 times greater than that of the United States. Statistics show America holds 25% of the world’s prison population, and only 5% of the world’s people. What does that tell you?

The prison system is big business; it’s estimated that prisons make over $3 billion yearly and that number is growing. Statistics show that black men are incarcertated six times the rate of white men, and government studies also found that black men are at a higher chance to being searched, prosecuted, and convicted more than white men, and serve longer prison sentences.

Constant social injustice and inequalities have a major influence on black males’ psychological development and life course trajectories and transitions. Mass incarceration is a new way of reimposing the Jim Crow laws to segregate. By definition, slavery goes far beyond the actual removal of freedom; it denies the humanity of the enslaved.

Racially imbalanced enforcement also means that minorities are more likely to suffer consequences that outlast their prison sentences, like difficulty finding jobs and housing, lost access to government benefits and in some places disenfranchisement. The prison system makes so much money that it encourages racist practices in the American criminal justice system.

At the economical height of slavery there were approximately four million African American slaves. Today there is approximately six million African Americans in some form of incarceration or “correctional supervision”: prison, probation, or parole. That’s more people locked up than were slaves at its highest peak.

Or is it just slavery adapting to the times? The prison system is among the most profitable industries in the United States. Despite our nation’s self-perception as a bastion of freedom, we lock up more people than anyone else in the world. But we have songs about the “land of the free”. What an oxymoron.

What’s more important to you: schooling for higher education, or mass incarcerations? Like minds will say education, because our children are most important right? You see, there’s a question mark because if you were interested and cared about something like education, you would show it in every way possible by your actions and concerns, but that’s not the case. It seems as if mass incarceration is more important.

The money that states spend on prisons has risen six times the rates of spending on higher education. What does that tell you? It seems to me they’d rather put you in prison than through school. In urban communities, they cut all funding for after-school programs, recreation centers and other extra-curricular activities. What’s left for these kids to do to occupy their time? If kids are the heart and soul of this country and hope for the future, wouldn’t it be in our best interest to help them be all they can be? What do your schools look like? Are they clean? Are the books and curriculum and the teachers teaching up-to-date? Some of you reading this might think, “who has schools like that?”, while for others this is the norm.

In all actuality, this should shock and appall you that the environment we teach kids in is not up to Grade A standards. I speak for myself when I say the schools I’ve attended weren’t up to standard. In come from the inner city urban community, a predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood. I remember going to school in the summer and it being hot and going to school in the winter and it being too cold. Try learning under those conditions, with outdated books they used to teach your parents that still says that Christopher Columbus discovered American. If you still believe that, chances are you went to one of those schools.

Schools have adopted this “zero tolerance” policy where anything they presume as deviant will kick you out of school or even worse, lock you up, depending on what you’ve done. My point is this: we’re failing to realize that we’re dealing with adolescent kids that are dealing with emotions or feelings they can’t describe or understand, so they’re confused and don’t know how to express themselves. So instead of a “zero tolerance” policy, how about a “try-to-understand” policy!

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are plenty of teachers that truly care and love their students, but they’re underpaid with not enough resources. I think America should stop trying to criminalize everything and try to find solutions instead of spending all of that money on the “war on drugs” that never seems to be ending, due to the success of mass incarceration and waging a “war on schools”. That to me seems like you’ll get better results from if you really cared about the children. With all this being said I ask one last question: is the system set up against us? Or is it slavery in a more modern form?

This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:

• ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
• Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
• Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
• Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
• Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
• Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas

We know vocational programs reduce recidivism, but I must wait four years before I can enroll in such a program. I can go see the parole board, get parole, and not have learned a trade or skill before re-entering society. Where’s the rehab?

The three-year-and-under policy denies crucial opportunities for job training. When inmates, like everyone, are properly trained, it becomes easier to attain steady employment. This will help us not walk back through this revolving door. By not coming back and working, we can provide for our families and become a positive role model for our children, and also become a better person, father, husband, son, brother, uncle, and law abiding citizen to our family, friends, and community. Vocational programs should be expanded to include electrical, plumbing, welding, culinary arts, fitness training, auto mechanic training.

But the three-year-and-under policy also denies a critical opportunity to show we are ready to reenter society. Parole is sometimes contingent on participation in prison programs, and some inmates aren’t eligible for prison programs until after they are eligible for parole. How else do we show the Parole Board, which represents society, that we are ready to reenter?

Staff members’ efforts are being made within the bounds of the existing policy. A counselor may push for an inmate to participate in some programs, like mine did. Right now I am currently in General Sociology, Men’s Trauma and a few other programs that don’t give so called ‘good time credit’ that anyone may attend. To his credit, Lieutenant Lanoway does a good job at handling the programs, but the three-year- and-under policy makes it impossible for inmates like myself to participate in a vast majority of programs.

This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:

• ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
• Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
• Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
• Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie

Public high schools no longer stress hands on training. Instead, they focus on English, math, science, history, though these subjects are hard pressed to hold a teenagers’ attention for four years. One alternative could be to include more vocational electives within our public schools. This elective – think: autobody repair, cooking, hairstyling, barbering, etc. – would help encourage students to stay in school, because with the completion of the recommended hours in that elective, a student could earn a license as well as a high school diploma.

A trade elective could be mandatory for all students, so long as it granted them choice in choosing what elective to pursue, thereby giving them the hours and experience to obtain their license, to be able to go straight to work upon completion of high school.

Such a program is even more needed for young men who are incarcerated.

Many 18 to 22-year-olds are being released back into society with stable minds but no valid work opportunities to release their positive and renewed energy. So instead they return to their old neighborhoods or life of crime, mostly because there’s not a system in place to reintegrate them back into society. Here in medium security at the ACI, there are 16-20 people released every month. That is a total of about 200 people a year just from this facility alone.

There needs to be more job placement workshops and skills building opportunities for inmates being released. This would especially help the lower class communities because it would also revitalize those depressed economies and rebuild the local infrastructure. It would help rebuild the communities themselves.

There should be more communication between the probation officers and community leaders to develop new programs and ways to keep these kids from returning back to the life of crime that put them behind bars in the first place.

Believe me, kids today, whether in traditional public school or prison, aren’t bad kids. I help teach, encourage, and talk with them daily, and as I listen to what went wrong in their lives and what could have helped them. Most say they didn’t have that father figure, teacher, or leader to guide them, so they committed a crime to get attention. That’s it!

We need to band together to help our youth, regardless of their ethnicity, neighborhood, or criminal history. When it’s all said and done, that could be our son or daughter, nephew or niece, and they’ll end up growing up in a world that we had the chance to change, but neglected to do so.

I pray this op/ed is received with clarity, and that the reader will act upon these issues concerning our youth. Regardless of their past, all children deserve the same opportunity for a better tomorrow. Let us parents, taxpayers, and public officials stay vigilant to solutions for a better tomorrow.

This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:

• ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
• Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
• Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz

“All I know is how to put stone in the ground and I guess that was enough,” said Brito Saturday at the graduation of students from Blessing Way’s second landscaping course.

The course is meant to give men and women who’ve spent time in prison or are recovering substance abusers practical skills to help them find work.

For many who’ve been incarcerated, stigma of a prison sentence is hard to overcome. Employers are often reluctant to hire men and women with criminal records, setting up a potential return to prison when work proves elusive and a return to criminal behavior inevitable. Indeed, in 2009, 3,387 offenders left prison in Rhode Island, but within three years nearly half (48 percent) were back in prison with a new sentence.

Helping those newly released from prison to find their footing back in the world has been the mission of the nonprofit Blessing Way since it was established back in 2004. At the time, Joyce Penfield, an Episcopal priest, was working as a chaplain at the R.I. Dept. of Correction. The Blessing Way was her response to that revolving prison door as well as death by overdose among the formerly imprisoned.

The wrap-around services offered by Blessing Way include a place to live, counseling, life-skills training, non-denominational spiritual guidance and job assistance. It’s that last piece that’s gotten more concrete thanks to the landscaping course.

Interested participants need to apply and be accepted. They meet for 20 hours over the course of several weeks and must pass quizzes and a final test in order to graduate. They also are expected to work on a project designed to give them practical experience and they get an opportunity to network with landscape professionals.

Brito is the owner of Brito Landscaping in East Greenwich. At first glance, he seems an unlikely champion of the lowliest of our citizenry. But Brito is all about second chances. As a recovering alcoholic, he’s well aware of both human frailty and the need for people to offer helping hands.

So, he teaches the course and has even taken on one of this year’s graduates to work for him for the season.

Among those who spoke at the graduation ceremony were Providence Mayor Angel Tavares, who urged the men to be active in civic life, including registering to vote, and City Council President Michael Solomon.

Four of the graduates have gotten jobs. The others are looking and could use help. If you have any leads, contact The Blessing Way at (401)709-3697 or blessingwayinfo@yahoo.com.

The bill is hailed as a “prison reform bill,” and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee; a clear indication of the shifting tide on political ideology over the past few years.  This ebbing of the ‘Tough on Crime’ rhetoric includes many people who were bipartisan architects of the prison industry itself, and jibes with Attorney General Eric Holder’s public desire to make the system “more just.”  Of course, this indicates he believes it is currently less just than it should be.  The voices you have heard over the past several years talking “reform” are the result of those of us who have been peeing in the pool long enough to warm it up so everybody can get in.  Even if just a toe, they’re getting in.

This prison reform bill is quite overstated however, and falls well short of what the public is truly calling for- something Senator Whitehouse appeared to be going for with his former bill to create a commission of experts that would propose a national overhaul.  The Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act of 2014 will have no impact on state prisoners, where six times more men, women and children are serving prison terms than under federal law.  Furthermore, it will have no impact on the 722,000 people currently sitting in a local jail- a snapshot of the 12 million who cycle through that system.  Its not easy for the feds to control state crime and punishment under the law, but like anything else: the feds could put strings attached to all the financial subsidies of a bursting prison industry.

What’s in it for Rhode Island?

The bill will impact a few Rhode Islanders and tens of thousands of people nationally who will now gain an opportunity at parole, but what the bill deems “Prerelease Custody.”  They can do this by engaging in what we once considered educational and rehabilitative programming, but the bill deems “Recidivism Reduction” programming.  This wordsmithing is no different than calling oneself a “Pre-Owned Car Dealer” (which is what they do, these days).  To assess the merits, it is important not to be distracted by shiny new things.

The Good Time credits earned by federal inmates are not for everybody, and they are not time off one’s sentence the way they commonly are applied to state custody.  Furthermore, parolees in halfway houses and on electronic monitoring pay for their own incarceration, sometimes to their own financial ruin.  Thus, this is not a handout by any means yet does pose a possibility for the prison system to generate additional revenues from the predominantly low-income and struggling families trying to rebuild a life after prison.

Slavery by another name: Prison Labor

The bill prioritizes an expansion of prison labor, viewed as a form of rehabilitation and method of reducing recidivism.  It is impossible to discount the value of having a prison job for the prisoner, even at 12 cents per hour of income.  However, it is difficult not to think of one ominous phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei” infamously posted over Camp Auschwitz.  Work makes you free.  A prison worker gets time off their sentence, and this bill calls for the Bureau of Prisons to review in what ways the prison labor force can be used to make goods currently manufactured overseas, so as not to cut into the free labor pool.

The use of prison labor is controversial, to say the least.  Some critics have called for a repeal of the 13^th Amendment, which provides for slavery of anyone convicted of a crime.  This provision allowed for the massive “convict lease labor” that built a considerable amount of American infrastructure after slavery was abolished.  The legal framework that is said to have freed Black America also allowed for people to be rounded up and placed, fundamentally, back where, essentially, Black America had been liberated from.

Today, prison labor exploiters capitalize upon incarcerated people’s desire to stay busy rather than sit on a bunk all day.  This sort of macro-management does not take into account the relevance of a worker’s feelings.  People in the system are treated with the callousness of lab rats, which may be all fine in the punishment phase, yet counterproductive when doing anti-recidivism, rehabilitative, or reentry programming.  Does Johnny have a job, a home, or health care?  Check.  The assessments never ask if Johnny is happy.

Reentry programming still being run by those who have never reentered

The Recidivism Reduction and Public Safety Act also focuses on reviewing current reentry programs and developing federal pilot programs based on the best practices.  This is an admirable goal and an obvious step to take.  The challenge is to correctly assess best practices, and then implement what might feel controversial.  For example, many policies prevent formerly incarcerated people (FIP) from affiliating with one another, and yet this bill references mentorships.  It is likely that the drafters visualized a well-intentioned citizen with no criminal involvement and demonstrated success showing the way to someone getting out of prison.  Yet such a person has very little to offer in the sense of mentorship.  An FIP often grows frustrated with social workers, mentors, and probation officers who feign to understand the pressures of post-prison life.  The best mentors are role models, and in this scenario will be FIPs.

This legislation also puts a considerable focus on risk assessment models, as though they are a new pathway to success.  However, these tools have been in use for decades, and nowhere in the bill is there a call to study their individual accuracies.  Rhode Island, for example, uses the LSI-R scoring system.  The irony of in-custody assessments, that take all of forty five minutes to conduct, then a few minutes per year to update, are how a high-risk prisoner can be a low-risk free person.  Conformity in prison does not translate to the attributes required for successful living in free society.  Furthermore, an antagonistic interviewer will likely invoke anti-social responses from a someone, thus along with their past criminal activity, setting the foundation for an entire course of reentry opportunity.

The fundamental flaw in many prison-related programs, particularly after the Bush Administration’s Second Chance Act, is the lack of involvement of affected people.  The roundtable at Open Doors consists of their director Sol Rodriguez, DOC Director A.T. Wall, chiefs of the Providence and State police forces, the federal and state public defenders, Crossroads (a homeless shelter), and possibly someone(s) that Open Doors has been working with.   The stakeholder list is upside down.  Law enforcement does not have a stake in my successful reentry.  In fact, they have a stake in my failed reentry- so yes, they are a stakeholder, but in a perverse manner.  After being punished by a group of people, be it months or decades, there is no trust in place for the punisher to then be the healer.  For the government to believe otherwise only underscores these misconceptions and miscommunications of trying to reposition the pawns on the board.

The second class citizens

The public defender and Open Doors are not run by people who have “been there, done that.”  When efforts like this use those agencies to speak for a disempowered population, it only further delegitimizes people with criminal histories, only furthers the second-class citizenship, and continues to render us without a voice.  Rather than confronting any counter-narrative an FIP presents to policy reform, we are often disregarded as unruly, unmanageable, or uncivilized.  Yet we are the ones seeing our selves and our family members dropping off the map, figuratively and literally, every day.  Reducing recidivism and increasing public safety can only be done by a full restoration of people to being equal and valued members of society, especially the overwhelming number who are (on paper) “citizens” of America.

Efforts like these are akin to watching someone fish without bait.  As expensive a boat, pole, and hook they use… they just don’t realize why the fish don’t simply leap onto the hook.

The Roundtable will be held at 10:30-11:30 am at Open Doors, 485 Plainfield St., in Providence.  There is no open mic, but interested community members might find ways to urge Senator Whitehouse to become even more bold on the Senate floor.