An Unjust Justice System

Seven people were stabbed to death while 22 others required hospitalization at the Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina on April 15, 2018. While these numbers are alarming, deeming this event the deadliest incidence of prison violence in 25 years, they could have been prevented.

In a news conference that took place the next day, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections Bryan Stirling attempted to justify the situation, mentioning that there was a clash between rival gangs over “territory, contraband, and cell phones.” Stirling continued, claiming that his main priority after the incident was to stop all illicit cell phone use across the state’s prisons. Throughout the news conference, Stirling chose not to mention the fact that corrections officials had made the decision to place these rival gangs within the same dormitory and inflict increasingly punitive policies that raised tensions. What’s worse is he refused to talk about how the riot took place in a span of over seven hours with no officers harmed because they were all unwilling to stop the fight. Instead, Stirling defended his agency’s actions, stating that the low morale and lack of workers in his agency and South Carolina prisons are positively correlated with their low salaries.

In response to how poorly the South Carolina Department of Corrections chose to react to the situation, a series of demonstrations took place on August 21. The protests lasted for nearly three weeks until September 9, the anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971, one of the most significant uprisings of the prisoners’ rights movement. Within this time, inmates across an alleged 17 states in the U.S. refused to work and eat in an attempt to raise attention about the poor treatment of the incarcerated, making the protest one of the most extensive of its kind in American history.

Prior to the onset of the protests, one of the organizations leading the demonstrations, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), created a set list of 10 demands to improve incarceration conditions. Among the 10 demands listed was one calling for higher wages for imprisoned workers as many today view the conditions within American correctional facilities as modern-day slavery. And with little to no pay and long hours of working grueling jobs, it is understandable why that is viewed that way.

With more than 2.2 million people imprisoned across federal, state, and local correctional facilities, the U.S. holds the record for the largest prison population across the world. Because of mass incarceration, which has resulted in a spike in costs for imprisonment, a toll is taken on inmates and their families. An investigation done by the Prison Policy Initiative found that state and federally imprisoned workers earn an average of 86 cents per day—a seven cents decrease from 2001. And in states like Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, incarcerated workers aren’t paid at all.

Though many believe that the 13th Amendment completely abolished slavery, an exclusion was written which explicitly mentioned that the amendment does not apply to convicts. Therefore, it is completely legal for the incarcerated to receive involuntary servitude and to be punished if they resisted.

And while prisoners may be housed and provided with food and clothing, they continue to struggle to pay for other services such as phone calls, which cost 50 cents per minute in some institutions, and items like toothpaste. However, the real issue with their pay is what happens after they leave the facility. Many of these people are the primary breadwinners of their families, and because of the incredibly low and sometimes nonexistent pay, they are often left penniless and struggling to find employment when they leave prison.

According to USA Today, over 2000 prisoners have voluntarily chosen to fight off the raging wildfires in California. These inmates are willingly choosing to risk their lives, yet they are only paid an alarming wage of $1.00 per hour while the professional firefighters they are working alongside earn nearly $74,000 a year.

But even with the first-hand firefighting experience that these inmates have, they often cannot become firefighters even after being released from prison. The majority of California’s counties require firefighters to become licensed emergency medical technicians (EMTs), which is a qualification that can be denied to nearly anybody for merely having a past criminal record. Because of the rules of the state’s licensing boards, hundreds of occupations making up approximately one-fourth of California’s workforce can prohibit past inmates from obtaining a certain profession.

On top of this, laws that would defend workers outside of prison do not always apply to those who are in prison. According to The Washington Post, if prisoners get injured or die while working, they do not get covered by workers’ compensation, and their chances of receiving compensation in court are extremely low.

In addition to a demand for higher pay and better safety, many of the strikers are fighting for more equal rights, and, in particular, the right to vote. Once convicted and sometimes even after serving their time, prisoners in every state except Maine and Vermont are prohibited from voting.

With the protest having come to an end only recently, it needs to come to our attention that these prisoners want rights that will recognize them as who they really are—humans. The first demand on the list created by the IWOC states that inmates want “improvements to the conditions of prisons and prison policies that recognize the humanity of imprisoned men and women.” With that being said, many of the requests by the organization come from the unequal treatment compared to that of the liberated.

Inmates are just as human as we are. They deserve to have the right to vote, proper workers’ compensation, reasonable pay for the work they do, and rehabilitation. And most definitely, they deserve to have better, more viable living conditions. But just because they have offended, prisoners are often barred by law from receiving the same treatment as the liberated. Therefore, by renouncing various regulations that have been created to explicitly prohibit the incarcerated from having the same rights as we do, inmates will be more satisfied with the conditions in which they have been put under.

For instance, lifting the Prison Litigation Reform Act would enable any grievances that prisoners have to be denied on fewer bases, thereby making it easier for prisoners to file lawsuits in federal court. And by rescinding the Truth in Sentencing Act and the Sentencing Reform Act, imprisoned people have a greater chance of getting rehabilitation and parole.

But in spite of the lagging justice reforms the incarcerated deserve, the prison strike has proven to be effective. A press release revealed that at least 20 prisons across the country were partaking in the strike on August 28, with prisoners from Burnside County Prison in Canada even striking in solidarity. Though the demonstration has undoubtedly received more attention than the 2016 U.S. prison strike, many of the events pertaining to the protest have still gone overlooked and unnoticed.

For the demands to be granted and for the desirable policies to be implemented, the first step toward change is to raise more awareness more about this strike and the purpose behind it. Krystal Rountree, the director of iamWE Prisoner Advocacy Network, stated that in order to truly make a difference toward achieving more rights for prisoners, “The long-term goal is really about bringing awareness to the issues.” And by spreading recognition of the issue across various platforms, the incarcerated will be another step closer toward reaching the reforms needed to better their time both in and after being released from prison.