I write regularly about the intersection between prison and food. This weekend I came across another interesting connection between food and the prison industrial complex.

A Muslim Death Row prisoner filed a lawsuit alleging that his religious freedom was being abridged because Ohio Prisons refused to serve him Halal meals while they did provide Kosher meals to Jewish prisons.

In response to the suit, Ohio prison officials decided to eliminate pork from all meals served to prisoners in the state. Well this decision does not sit well with Ohio's pig farmers:

Ohio’s pork farmers and processors are vowing to fight the state’s decision to remove pork from prison menus in response to a lawsuit by Muslim inmates.

Dick Isler (IHS’-ler), executive director of the Ohio Pork Producers Council, says the news is especially disappointing because his group fought to have pork placed back on the menu in 2009.

This is another instance that illustrates what we mean when we discuss the prison industrial complex. Pork producers are depending on the business that prisons provide to them in order to make a living. They have a vested interest in the existence of prisons.

The Usual Suspects

Black Male, 6.2”, 28, wearing drooping baggy jeans,
patterned boxers, tan work boots. May be carrying
a gun
Black Male, 16, dark blue sweats and skullcap. Last seen running
south on Main.
Black Male, 30, red Chicago Bulls tank top and matching
shorts. Arrested on the corner with other Black Males ages
32, 27, 19, 12
Black Male, 42, unkempt beard, dirty clothes, no
permanent address. Has not bathed in weeks.
Black Male, driving late model car. Reason for detention:
Busted tail light, weaving/unsure driving, possible expired
tags or license, no reason for him to be in this neighborhood
at this hour anyway
Black Male, 19, dreadlocks, oversized clothes
claims to be a “rapper”
Black Male, 30, says he is “a poet.” Beat him into
silence. Rap them blind
Black Man, 50, says he is a college professor. See
how well he grades papers handcuffed in a cell
Black Man, 57. Occupation: jazz musician. Has clippings
in pocket as quote-unquote proof. Burn them
Black Man, 39. Protests he has no interest in, would never rape
a woman. Says he’s gay. Mention this when throwing him
in cell with other inmates. If not one now, he will be
once they’re done
Black Man, height 5’8”, 5’7”, 4’9”, 6’1”, 6’3”, 6’5”, 7’4” –
A 6’9” Senior from the University of North Carolina
Black Man, weight 150, 195, 210, 200, 260, 190, 300 –
Weighing in at two twenty-five, pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world
Black Man, age 27, 32, 48, 73, 16, 17, 18, 8 –
aged 13 and 9 respectively, under arrest for attempted murder,
have been charged as adults (charges later dropped)
Black Man Black Man Black Man Black Man Black Man
Black
Man

By Reginald Harris (Baltimore)
Source: Bum Rush the Page Edited by Tony Medina and Louis Reyes Rivera (2001).

by Art Hazelwood

I’ve mentioned before that I am working on a lot of police related projects at this time. In fact, my organization is basically focusing on issues of police violence through 2012 and likely beyond. One of the main reasons for this is because the young people who we interact with want to talk about the police. This is a ubiquitous topic of conversation. Yet I am not feeling particularly well-equipped to offer anything transformational to the youth. It is not enough to address the “problem” without also providing some historical context for it as well as thinking through a way out of the police state.

So we are embarking on several projects that we hope will provide us with a better way to engage with young people around conversations about the police. We have launched a new participatory action research project called “Chain reaction: alternatives to calling the police.” We are working on a wiki project about Chicago police brutality and I am working on developing a curriculum about the history of police violence.

I was at a restorative justice conference in Madison, Wisconsin for most of the past week. I learned about a new measure called the “urban hassles scale” which is a tool to assess the daily hassles experienced by urban minority youth. An article that presents the scale offers some definitions of urban hassles:

“Lazarus (1984) defined daily hassles as “experiences and conditions of daily living that have been appraised as salient and harmful or threatening to the endorser’s well-being” (p. 376). Hassles have also been defined in the literature as irritating, frustrating everyday experiences arising from the transactions between the individual and the environment (Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, & Lazarus, 1981).”

You can imagine how excited I was at discovering this scale. Evaluation is a major part of the work that we do at my organization. It is always easier and better for us if we can find validated measures that we can use in our evaluation tools. So as soon as I returned from Madison last night, I went in search of the “urban hassles scale.” Here are the components of the scale:

1. Take different routes home to keep safe
2. Pressured by friends to join a gang
3. Made fun of because of grades
4. Worried that someone will try to take your clothes, shoes, or money
5. Pressured to carry weapon for protection
6. Must work to help pay bills at home
7. Nervous about gunshots/sirens at night
8. Keeping your fear about safety secret from your friends
9. Offered sex by drug addicts for money

What is GLARINGLY missing from this list of measures? THE POLICE, of course… It is absolutely inconceivable to me that researchers could ignore one of the single most detrimental stressors in the lives of urban youth of color. This is another indictment of academia in my opinion. It underscores the huge gap between theory and practice. I say this as someone who has one foot in academia herself. Just listen to these young people of color describing their experiences of being “stopped and frisked” by the police.

This is the epitome of an “urban hassle.” Someone really needs to revise the scale in order for it to be credible. In the meantime, we will use it while making sure to add something about young people’s relationship to the police (in order to make sure that it reflects their lived realities).

Note: By the way, since I have worked with girls for so many years, I would also add a measure about street harassment and heterosexist public harassment to the scale.

According to a press release that I received yesterday:

“Jake Cronin, a policy analyst with the Institute of Public Policy in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, studied Missouri Department of Corrections data and found that inmates who earned their GED in Missouri prisons were significantly more likely to find a job after prison and less likely to recidivate than inmates who did not. Cronin found the biggest jump in reduced recidivism rates, more than 33 percent, when he looked at inmates who earned a GED and acquired a full-time job after their release.

“Employment proves to be the strongest predictor of not returning to prison that we found,” Cronin said. “Those who have a full-time job are much less likely to return to prison than similar inmates who are unemployed. Recidivism rates were nearly cut in half for former inmates with a full-time job compared to similar inmates who are unemployed. Inmates who take advantage of the educational opportunities available to them in prison are more likely to find a job than those who do not.”

Cronin says these reduced recidivism rates can save the state a substantial amount of money in reduced incarceration costs. He points to a similar study which found that educational programs that reduced recidivism rates saved the state of Maryland $24 million a year, which is twice the amount of money spent on the program. Cronin believes this shows that correctional facility educational programs are a good investment for the state of Missouri.

“If similar results occur in Missouri, which I would expect given the findings of this study, that would mean the state is currently saving more than $20 million a year in reduced incarceration costs as a result of correctional education programs,” Cronin said. “In this political environment, states across the country are looking for ways to save money. This is one program that, in the long run, saves the state money. It is a good investment; an investment that has a high rate of return.”

This is directly relevant to current prisoners. My pen pal Randy Miller who is incarcerated at Indiana State Prison is an advocate for prisoner education. Here is a letter to the editor that he wrote a couple of months ago about this topic:

Recent legislation passed by Indiana law makers eliminated the bachelor’s degree program from all Indiana State Prison beginning in the fall semester of 2011. The reason given by Governor Mitch Daniels and the state legislators for this action, is that it is unfair for tax payers to be burdened with the cost of covering educational expenses for convicted felons. This may be a valid argument, except that financially it is an outright lie.

The cost of college expenses in the 2010 school year for all Department of Correction inmates was $9.06 million, covered by the Obama grant program. Under new legislation, only $2 million will be allocated to the Department of Corrections to cover educational expenses for college. On the surface this appears to be a financially sound move and looks to save tax payers $7 million a year, but let’s look at what it really costs.

The state of Indiana pays the Department of Corrections just under $58 per day, per inmate, or $21,170.00 per year. There are approximately 361 inmates eligible to receive a bachelor’s degree each year within the Department of Corrections. Obtaining a bachelor’s degree cuts two years off an inmates sentence, saving tax payers $42,340.00 per inmate. By eliminating this opportunity for an average of 361 inmates state wide per year, Governor Mitch Daniels and your state legislators have saved you the tax payer $7 million a year in educational expenses to inmates, and burdened you with $15,284,740.00 per year to house inmates who now cannot receive this time cut. These costs do not include the rising rate of recidivism bound to follow these cuts in education.

Governor Mitch Daniels wants to move to technical schooling to teach inmates a trade rather than a general education, even though these trades have been shown and proven to have little to no effect on lowering recidivism rates. As it stands today, the average recidivism rate in Indiana is at 63 percent. A bachelor’s degree cuts that rate to less than 8 percent! Under Governor Mitch Daniels, Indiana has led the nation in prison population growth, with a prison population increase of more than 6 percent per year. Even California, a state who’s prison population dwarfs Indiana’s in comparison, cut it’s prison population by almost 3 percent.

It is time to change the way we think about the Department of Corrections. It is unfeasible to think you can warehouse inmates and ignore the problem, especially when more that 95 percent of those inmates will be re-entering society someday. The single most beneficial tool we have to lower crime rates, reduce recidivism and ensure the success of inmates re-entering society is education. There is absolutely no benefit for anyone in cutting educational funding to prisoners and eliminating the bachelor’s degree opportunity to inmates.

By
Randy Miller #154124
Indiana State Prison
August 6, 2011

I’ve written about chain gangs before. One of the legacies of chain gangs are prison work songs. These songs were often the precursors of what we have come to know as the “blues.” One of the most famous of these prison work songs is “Long John.” This song and many others were recorded by ethnomusicologists John and Alan Lomax. You can see the lyrics and some background for Long John here.

Today kicks off National Youth Justice Awareness Month so it is fitting that I am writing about a young woman who I call Mariah and her recent discovery of a juvenile criminal record. There have been three previous blog posts following her trials and tribulations already. Today, I offer what I hope is the final chapter in her journey.

We arrived at Juvenile Court around 8:50 am yesterday. Mariah’s expungement hearing was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. At around 9:30 am, an assistant state’s attorney came out to the waiting area to inform Mariah that she would have no objection to her expungement petition. She asked Mariah to mark some parts of her petition N/A. She also told her that if the judge approved her petition, it would take 60 to 90 days for the State Police to expunge the record.

About five minutes later she came back out to invite Mariah into the courtroom to see the judge. We were lucky to be assigned Judge Heaston who approved the fee waiver application and the petition itself without delay. All in all it took 3 minutes for him to do this. He directed us back to the Clerk’s office to get a certified copy of the expungement order. He told Mariah that it would take about 45 minutes and that she should keep the order in a “safe place” because the Clerk’s office would make her “jump through hoops” if she lost her copy and needed to get another one in the future.

We went to Dunkin Donuts to get some breakfast while we were waiting to get the certified copy of the expungement order from the Clerk. Once we picked that up, we left and Mariah took a deep breath and exhaled.

You will no doubt be happy to know that Mariah received a letter on Thursday saying that her license had been approved. This process was no doubt expedited by the calls that the office of financial and professional regulations received from two journalists from WBEZ and the Tribune about the matter.

Ceilings of Oppression - by Haley Miglietta - School

I will let Mariah’s own words be the final ones in this saga:

I really feel lucky. I thought this whole process would take much longer. There was poster right next to courtroom 9 that stated today’s choices are tomorrow’s consequences. It had a yellow school bus on it and it reminded me of the stupid choice I made to fight in 8th grade. I’m really seeing the consequences of my choice. It sucks that I had to go through this but I’m glad it’s over and I have my license. Hopefully I can put this all behind me and never have to deal with that incident of the past again. In 90 days this basically “never happened.” I think I can finally move forward.