11.01.2008

what i'm reading: committing journalism

I'm finishing up Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog, co-authored by Dannie Martin and Peter Sussman. My earlier post about the book is here.

It's a very good book, illuminating both important First Amendment issues and conditions in the massive domestic prison gulag that exists in the United States.

The First Amendment battle arose when the US Bureau of Prisons' attempted to silence convict-writer Dannie Martin, both by trying to make it physically impossible for him to write (which failed only because of publicity and support from outside the prison), and by trying to restrain the newspaper from publishing his writing.

It was a classic case of an agency trying to control what the public knows about it. The court's job was to balance the prison's need to control its population with the public's right to know, a newspaper's right to control what it publishes, and a citizen's right to expression, despite his incarceration. I think the legal questions would be interesting to anyone concerned with free speech issues.

But what makes the book absorbing is the insight into prison life and the prison system. Some of the prison essays are humourous tales of folkways or bureaucracy run amok. But much of it involves the unseen fallout of the US's obsessive so-called "war on drugs," which gave rise to bizarrely long prison sentences - so first-time drug offenses are often punished more harshly than rapes and murders - and massively overcrowded prisons. There are revelations of conditions so inhumane as to amount to torture, such as the use of solitary confinement and forced psychotropic drugs.

The "tough on crime" crowd says that criminals get what they deserve, and insist on the myth that prisoners are "coddled" in country-club-like conditions. But first, who is locked up? What actions are deemed criminal, while other crimes go unpunished or barely punished? (Enron? Mountaintop removal? Iraq?) And should a conviction of any offence mean the suspension of all rights? Does a drug deal or a bank robbery nullify all humanity?

From a purely utilitarian perspective, overcrowded and inhumane prison conditions breed criminality. People crowded into inhumane conditions for most of their lifetimes will later be released. And they'll be dangerous.

I'll post two excerpts from the book, both Dannie Martin columns that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Meanwhile, here's a bit you might enjoy. It comes after Dannie is put in "the hole" - solitary confinement - as punishment for writing a column critical of prison policy.
When Dannie was finally able to communicate with the outside world, he revealed that the detention order he had been handed on his second day in the hole informed him that "Inmate Martin is under investigation for possible attempts at encouraging a group demonstration" — a charge that had not been announced to inquiring reporters. The detention order added as an afterthought that "he is also under investigation that there may be a threat to his safety if left in open population."

The "possible" group demonstration charge remained baffling, because there never was such a demonstration and the prison spokesman told the Chronicle's reporter on June 22 that "there is no indication that there is any riot in the offing" at Lompoc.

Dannie later told me that among prisoners, to be locked in protective custody is "a real shame on your name" — a signal that the convict is a snitch, a child molester, a homosexual, or someone who won't pay his debts. Those are the people who generally need protecting in a prison. Dannie said that prison officials know this and sometimes apply the "protective custody" label to besmirch a convict's reputation among his buddies.

Usually, before placing a convict in protective custody, prison officials offer him the opportunity to sign a waiver denying he is in any danger on the mainline. Dannie asked to sign such a waiver when he was brought to Isolation, but his appeal was ignored until his ultimate release from special confinement.

Dannie was later quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, "In a place like this there are a lot of things that can threaten your safety more than writing a newspaper article."

The Bureau of Prisons' ploy of putting an outspoken convict in the hole "for his own safety" did not originate or end with Dannie. In one now-celebrated case just four months later — four days before the 1988 presidential election — the BOP placed Brett Kimberlin in solitary confinement and out of reach of the media hours after it was revealed that he was prepared to announce he had repeatedly sold marijuana to vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle years earlier. That action came from the top - BOP Director J. Michael Quinlan — and followed complaints from high-level officials of the Bush-Quayle campaign. The reason given for putting Kimberlin in solitary was that his life was in danger. No such threat was ever verified, and the prison later determined that he was not in any danger.

It all sounded so familiar.

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