Muncy State Prison
September 12th, 2024
Thursday
“We have chosen each other
And the edge of each others’ battles
The war is the same
If we lose
Someday women’s blood will congeal
On a dead planet
If we win
There is no telling
We seek beyond history
For a new and more possible meeting.”
–Audre Lorde
September 13th, 2024
Friday
Letter to the Judge:
Prisons and jails have become America’s largest psychiatric facilities. According to a 2014 Treatment Advocacy Center report, over 350,000 individuals (souls) with severe mental illnesses were held in U.S. prisons and jails in 2012, while state psychiatric hospitals held just 35,000 patients.
I am one of these individuals with a severe mental illness. I have Bipolar I Disorder with Psychotic Features and Schizoaffective Disorder, which occasionally make me act erratically and have psychotic episodes. It is because of one of these psychotic episodes that I am currently imprisoned in SCI-MUNCY.
Before this instance, I was fully in compliance with the terms of my parole, and I have no technical parole violations. The reason I am on parole in the first place is due to another psychotic episode three years ago. I have done everything in my power to prevent these episodes from happening and mitigate their effects. I was seeing a therapist every week and a psychiatrist monthly. I was taking my prescribed medication. I have put in an action plan with all of my friends and family in the event of a future psychotic episode that includes calling CRISIS instead of the police and hospitalization at Clarion Psychiatric Facility for stabilization.
I had a job working to Tioga Publishing as a correspondent reporter that I hope to return to upon being re-paroled. My only request is that I not be further punished with house arrest upon parole. My job does not have regular hours, and I cannot predict when news happens in Potter County. Please take this into consideration when imposing a sentence on me. I have done the very best I can to prevent this from ever happening in the future, and I am very sorry for any harm I caused while I was psychotic.
I’d like to close with a quote by Dr. Stuart Grassian, M.D., a nationally renowned solitary confinement expert:
“There’s a tremendous pull toward seeing everything that you’re looking at as bad behavior that needs to be punished, rather than recognizing that it’s actually a response to mental illness. The paradigm in the prison system is if you punish bad behavior enough, it’ll get better. That’s obviously a paradigm that doesn’t work.”
We’ll see how that goes.
September 14th, 2024
Saturday
Criminal Legal News: Published by the Human Rights Defense Center/Sept. 2022 Vol. 5 No. 9
Inextricably Intertwined: The Practice of Negotiated Pleas and the Rise of Mass Incarceration in America by Casey J. Bastian
“America is the world leader in rates of incarceration. This country consists of only 5% of the world’s total population, yet it houses about 25% of the world’s prisoners. As of 2021, there were actively more than 2.1 million people in jails and prisons in the U.S. Is America truly the land of the free?…
The incarceration rate in this country exceeds that of Western European democracies by an astounding 700%. America’s rate is 665 per 100,000 people; much higher than ‘authoritarian’ nations such as Russia (402), Iran (284), and Saudi Arabia (197). The U.S. imprisons more people for much longer periods for reasons that have nothing to do with divergent rates of crime….
The why is likely a result of negotiated pleas in criminal cases. Although it is often referred to as plea ‘bargaining,’ there is rarely any bargain in it for either the defendant or society writ large. America leads the world in plea bargaining and is more dependent on this prosecutorial mechanism than any other nation in the world…
To examine this disturbing phenomenon more closely, Albert W. Alshuler wrote ‘Plea Bargaining and Mass Incarceration’ (‘Study’). Alshuler is a Julius Kreeger Professor Emeritus a the University of Chicago Law School, publishing this latest study in the NYU Annual Survey of American Law in 2021…
The study notes that of those 2.1 million incarcerated at the time, 97% of all federal felony convictions, and 95% of state felony convictions, are the result of guilty pleas. As such, negotiated pleas are a primary of mass incarceration for a variety of reasons. When you combine this mechanism with new sentencing laws and developments that have increased prosecutorial power, it produces ‘skyrocketing imprisonment…’
Worse, negotiated pleas have proliferated more severe sentences as well. Many defendants plead guilty for a variety of reasons, but the primary reason is a belief that they will receive a ‘reduced’ sentence. And if you consider the reality of the ‘trial penalty,’ there is reason for them to believe it. Specifically, in federal courts, the imposed sentence is generally one-third that of those imposed after trial…
Post-trial sentencing is often so severe as to dissuade the next defendant from exercising their constitutional right to have the government prove its case.
Evidence demonstrates that the typical sentence imposed after guilty pleas are not more lenient; they are just less than post-trial sentences…
Inflating post-trial sentences to induce guilty pleas is not an occasional thing, it is systemic…
Negotiated guilty pleas allow for more cases to be filed; those that would typically end in acquittal and those that are so weak they normally ought not to have been filed at all. This also increases the likelihood of convicting the innocent. In 2016, Alshuler wrote a previous report discussing this issue called, ‘A Nearly Perfect Device for Convicting the Innocent…’
Just on a local and state level, in the early 1980s, spending on jails and prisons was $6 billion per year; by 2013, the cost had ballooned to a staggering $80 billion. Between 1985-2000, state and federal governments were opening one new prison per week on average. America had literally engaged in a ‘race to incarcerate.’
The imprisonment rate in America had changed little from the late 19th Century until 1972. Beginning in 1972, this rate rose six-fold in 36 years, going from 93 per 100,000 to a whopping 536 per 100,000 in 2008.
This is just people in prisons; it does not account for people in jails or detained in other institutional settings. There is not reliable data pre-1970s for jail incarceration rates, but by 2007, including jail populations, increased the overall incarceration rate to 767 per 100,000…
In the 1970 case of Brody v. United States, 397 U.S. 742 (1970), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of [plea bargaining], departing from earlier opposing standards. And in 1971, the Court called it an ‘essential’ and ‘highly desirable’ part of the criminal process ‘for many reasons.’
Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257 (1971)…
In 1964, presidential candidate Barry Goldwater first made crime a national issue. Richard Nixon won election in 1968 by railing against the ‘criminal forces,’ beginning the ‘War on Crime’ siege mentality–pitting lawmakers against American citizens. Nixon was able to transform the Supreme Court with appointees…Congress got in on the act as well. Between 2008-2013, Congress approved an average of 80 new federal crimes per year. The PROTECT Act, RICO Act, Armed Career Criminal Act, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and the infamous ‘1994 Crime Bill,’ just to name a few, broadened federal prosecutorial powers and added to the list of crimes that could be charged federally…In 1962, there were 24,000 federal prisoners and 5,097 criminal trials. In 2017, there were 186,000 prisoners and only 2,123 trials.
The statistics are eerily similar in state-law criminal justice systems. Between 1994 and 2008, in the 34 states that provide reliable data, crime and arrest rates fell. Yet the numbers of felony cases filed by prosecutors rose from 1.4 million to 1.9 million. The Study notes that ‘the number of people admitted to prison rose by about 40% from 360,000 to 505,000 and almost all of that increase was due to prosecutors bringing more and more felony cases against a diminishing pool of arrestees.’ Prosecutors had learned that the leverage of a ‘trial penalty’ sentence can induce nearly everyone charged to plead guilty to something.”
September 16th, 2024
Monday
4:54pm
I’m reading “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Ever since I started reading it I’ve wanted to write, but I feel so down and depressed lately that I feel like I don’t have anything worthwhile to say. Plus I’m sick–lupus flare–turned–respiratory virus sick. Anyway, the book is about Gilbert traveling to Italy, India, and Indonesia in an effort to find both herself and God in the aftermath of a devastating divorce. Here’s what a plumber/poet gave her on a piece of paper after leading her to the top of some tower:
(p. 184-185)
INSTRUCTIONS FOR FREEDOM
- Life’s metaphors are God’s instructions.
- You have just climbed up and above the roof. There’s nothing between you and the Infinite. Now, let go.
- The day is ending. It’s time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
- Your wish for resolution was a prayer. Your being here is God’s response. Let go, and watch the stars come out–on the outside and on the inside.
- With all your heart, ask for grace, and let go.
- With all your heart, forgive him, FORGIVE YOURSELF, and let him go.
- Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering. Then let go.
- Watch the heat of the day pass into the cool night. Let go.
- When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go.
- When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy.
On the radio:
“Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you cannot find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
The rest is still unwritten…”
September 17th, 2024
Tuesday
I have an interview later with Zuko, and I haven’t done one in so long I wanted to brush up on my question. Along with Eat, Pray, Love, I’m reading “Go Ask Alice,” which is the diary of a 15-year old drug user-published anonymously. It’s depressing.
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