Prison Resources

Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC. Because we seek to abolish the PIC, we cannot support any work that extends its life or scope.

Prison Activist Resource Center

PARC is a prison abolitionist all volunteer grass roots group committed to exposing and challenging the institutionalized racism of the prison industrial complex. We are also committed to developing and practising anti-racism as individuals and throughout our organization. We produce a Support Directory that is free to prisoners on request. And, we provide support for prisoners and their families, as well as for educators and activists. This work includes building networks for action and producing materials that expose human rights violations while fundamentally challenging the rapid expansion of the prison industrial complex.

The Corrections Documentary Project / Corrections: A Documentary Film

The Corrections Documentary Project began simply as a single documentary, CORRECTIONS: a 56 minute feature documentary that uses "prison privatization" as a lens into a prison system growing for reasons other than simple "justice." Seeing that privatization was an issue that needed to be debated publicly, it also opened up room for conversations on how ideas of crime and punishment not "natural," but are built upon and coded with politics of race and class.

As CORRECTIONS proved a useful tool for grassroots and activist groups, new opportunities arose to make pieces focused on specific campaigns and circumstances. This led to the production of "footnotes" to CORRECTIONS, pieces which are each in a way a "footnote" to the larger original piece.

Today there are a growing number of footnote pieces and other related projects, continuing to investigate the relationship of mass incarceration in the U.S. and abroad to the broader changes society is facing, the lingering challenges of race, class, gender and sexual based discrimination, and to question the value of "the prison" as an institution in society.

The Real Cost of Prisons Project

The Real Cost of Prisons Project brings together prison/justice policy activists with political economists to create popular education workshops and materials which explore both the immediate and long-term costs of incarceration on the individual, her/his family, community and the nation. The goals of the Real Cost of Prisons Project are to strengthen and deepen the organizing capacity of grassroots prison/justice activists and to broaden the public's understanding of the economic and social consequences of mass incarceration.

The Prison Policy Initiative

The Prison Policy Initiative conducts research and advocacy on incarceration policy. Our work starts with the idea that the racial, gender and economic disparities between the prison population and the larger society represent the grounds for a democratic catastrophe. Our conception of prison reform is based not solely in opposing a rising rate of incarceration, but in evolving to a better way of addressing social problems than warehousing our citizens in cages.

Prisoners of the Census / Illinois

PrisonersoftheCensus.org is a special project of the Prison Policy Initiative to quantify, publicize, and reform the current practice of utilizing the Census to shift political power away from poor and minority communities and into the hands of prison expansion proponents. The website will serve as a repository for research and advocacy on the impact on our economy, society and democracy from miscounting the incarcerated.

Prison Design Boycott Campaign

Our prison system is both a devastating moral blight on our society and an overwhelming economic burden on our tax dollars, taking away much needed resources from schools, health care and affordable housing. The prison system is corrupting our society and making us more threatened, rather than protecting us as its proponents claim. It is a system built on fear, racism, and the exploitation of poverty. Our current prison system has no place in a society that aspires to liberty, justice, and equality for all. As architects, we are responsible for one of the most expensive parts of the prison system, the construction of new prison buildings. Almost all of us would rather be using our professional skills to design positive social institutions such as universities or playgrounds, but these institutions lack funding because of spending on prisons. If we would rather design schools and community centers, we must stop building prisons.

The Sentencing Project

The Sentencing Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which promotes reduced reliance on incarceration and increased use of more effective and humane alternatives to deal with crime. It is a nationally recognized source of criminal justice policy analysis, data, and program information. Its reports, publications, and staff are relied upon by the public, policymakers and the media.

California Prison Focus

The mission for which California Prison Focus is organized is to end human rights abuses and torture in California prisons including abolishing the Security Housing Units, to end medical neglect and to insure civil and human rights for all prisoners. CPF achieves its purposes by visiting prisoners, monitoring conditions, educating the public and policymakers, providing a voice for and working with prisoners, and encouraging legal advocacy.

Western Prison Project

The Western Prison Project exists to coordinate a progressive response to the criminal justice system, and to build a grassroots, multi-racial movement that achieves criminal justice reform and reduces the over-reliance on incarceration in the western states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada.

The Death Penalty Information Center

The Death Penalty Information Center is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment. The Center was founded in 1990 and prepares in-depth reports, issues press releases, conducts briefings for journalists, and serves as a resource to those working on this issue.

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Since its inception in 1976, NCADP has been the only fully staffed national organization exclusively devoted to abolishing capital punishment. NCADP provides information, advocates for public policy, and mobilizes and supports individuals and institutions that share our unconditional rejection of capital punishment.

Prison Solidarity

The internet site Prisonersolidarity.org serves as a catalyst for communication between prisoners and people on "the outside." It publishes updated research, news, opinion pieces and educational material from activists, writers, prisoners, and the concerned public.

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.

We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice.
We investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable.
We challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law.
We enlist the public and the international community to support the cause of human rights for all.

Human Rights Watch is an independent, nongovernmental organization, supported by contributions from private individuals and foundations worldwide. It accepts no government funds, directly or indirectly....

Resources for Prisoners and Their Families in Illinois / Prison Conditions / Criminal Sentencing and Re-Entry Policy / The Death Penalty / Police Brutality / Racism and Discrimination

International Centre for Prison Studies

The International Centre for Prison Studies seeks to assist governments and other relevant agencies to develop appropriate policies on prisons and the use of imprisonment. It carries out its work on a project or consultancy basis for international agencies, governmental and non-governmental organisations.

The Urban Institute / Crime & Justice

Today, we analyze policies, evaluate programs, and inform community development to improve social, civic, and economic well-being. We work in all 50 states and abroad in over 28 countries, and we share our research findings with policymakers, program administrators, business, academics, and the public online and through reports and scholarly books.

Justice Policy Institute

The Justice Policy Institute is a non-profit research and a public policy organization dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration and promoting effective and just solutions to social problems.

The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons

The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons is a national effort to clarify the nature and extent of violence, sexual abuse, degradation, and other serious safety failures and abuses in prisons and jails throughout the United States, as well as the consequences for prisoners, corrections officers, and the public at large.

The Other Side of the Wall

The Other Side of the Wall was established in 1995. For nine years, it provided news, articles, and resources affecting prisoners in California and across the United States.

The November Coalition

Working to end drug war injustice, the November Coalition, a non-profit grassroots organization, was founded in 1997. Members educate the public about destructive, unnecessary incarceration due to the U.S. drug war, and advocate for drug war prisoners.

Education Not Incarceration

Education Not Incarceration is a group of teachers, parents, students, and community members who are outraged by the current cuts in education funding. We believe that the state budget needs to prioritize education funding, as well as funding for other important social services, over increased spending on prisons.

Open Society Institute / US Justice Fund

In order to build an open society that is fair and accountable to all of its members, the U.S. Justice Fund focuses its grantmaking, educational and advocacy activities on two objectives in the United States. In pursuing these two objectives, OSI places a premium on empowering those individuals whose rights, economic self-sufficiency and political participation have systematically been undercut, so that they can provide leadership in their communities and serve as catalysts for just policies and practices. We place priority on the needs of low-income individuals or who historically have been the targets of discriminatory practices.

Illinois Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty

Believing that the death penalty is morally wrong and is an ineffective, unnecessary and discriminatory response to the problem of crime, we seek to abolish it by the development and maintenance of programs that will: educate the public about the death penalty; provide information and assistance to lawyers in capital cases and others interested in the issue; monitor legislation affecting this issue; and provide support for the men and women on death row as well as their families.

Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance

Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance makes visible women's experiences in the criminal justice system. Documenting these stories is integral to this project of resistance. The stories are supported by a collection of resources, such as organizations, reports, essays, and links to a wide range of information on women and prison.

Justice Now

Our mission is to end violence against women and stop their imprisonment. We believe that prisons and policing are not making our communities safe and whole but that, in fact, the current system severely damages the people it imprisons and the communities most affected by it. We promote alternatives to policing and prisons and challenge the prison industrial complex in all its forms.

{ PRISON-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX }

"Hell factories in the field: a prison-industrial complex" / By Mike Davis
The Nation / February 20, 1995

The road from Mecca follows the Southern Pacific tracks past Bombay Beach to Niland, then turns due south through a green maze of marshes and irrigated fields. The bad future of California rises, with little melodrama, in the middle distance between the skeleton of last year's cotton crop and the aerial bombing range in the Chocolate Mountains. From a mile away, the slate-gray structures resemble warehouses or perhaps a factory. An unassuming road sign announces Calipatria State Prison.

California has the third-largest penal system in the world, following China and the United States as a whole: 125,842 prisoners at last official count. Over the past decade, the state has built Calipatria, located 220 miles southeast of L.A., and fifteen other new prisons - at a cost of $ 10 billion (interest included). An emergent "prison-industrial complex" increasingly rivals agribusiness as the dominant force in the life of rural California and competes with land developers as the chief seducer of legislators in Sacramento. It has become a monster that threatens to overpower and devour its creators, and its uncontrollable growth ought to rattle a national consciousness now complacent at the thought of a permanent prison class....

"The Prison-Industrial complex" / By Eric Schlosser
The Atlantic Monthly / December 1998

Correctional officers see danger in prison overcrowding; others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars, the majority of whom are nonviolent offenders, represent jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for the private companies that run many of them.

In the hills east of Sacramento, California, Folsom State Prison stands beside a man-made lake, surrounded by granite walls built by inmate laborers. The gun towers have peaked roofs and Gothic stonework that give the prison the appearance of a medieval fortress, ominous and forbidding. For more than a century Folsom and San Quentin were the end of the line in California's penal system; they were the state's only maximum-security penitentiaries. During the early 1980s, as California's inmate population began to climb, Folsom became dangerously overcrowded. Fights between inmates ended in stabbings six or seven times a week. The poor sight lines within the old cellblocks put correctional officers at enormous risk. From 1984 to 1994 California built eight new maximum-security (Level 4) facilities. The bullet holes in the ceilings of Folsom's cellblocks, left by warning shots, are the last traces of the prison's violent years. Today Folsom is a medium-security (Level 2) facility, filled with the kind of inmates that correctional officers consider "soft." No one has been stabbed to death at Folsom in almost four years. Among its roughly 3,800 inmates are some 500 murderers, 250 child molesters, and an assortment of rapists, armed robbers, drug dealers, burglars, and petty thieves. The cells in Housing Unit 1 are stacked five stories high, like boxes in a vast warehouse; glimpses of hands and arms and faces, of flickering TV screens, are visible between the steel bars. Folsom now houses almost twice as many inmates as it was designed to hold. The machine shop at the prison, run by inmates, manufactures steel frames for double bunks—and triple bunks—in addition to license plates.

The Prison Industrial Complex / Three Projects

Recording Carceral Landscapes

Recording Carceral Landscapes is an investigation of the United States' enormous prison system by artist/geographer Trevor Paglen. By inquiring into the financial, social, and cultural elements that compose the Prison Industrial Complex, the project shows some of the invisible ways that mass incarceration has been woven into the fabric of our society. In addition to the documentation of this project's exhibition, the website contains a collection of interviews with prominent activists. Each interview contains a discussion about different aspects of the Prison Industrial Complex. These interviews are illustrated with images from the exhibition.

"From Military Industrial Complex to Prison Industrial Complex" / Prof. Ruth Wilson Gilmore in conversation with Trevor Paglen

Prison Maps

Prison Maps is a set of two mappings of the Prison Industrial Complex, "What is the Prison Industrial Complex?" and "What is the Context for Today's Prison Industrial Complex?"

The first map, "What is the Prison Industrial Complex?", maps out the relationship between the many forces which profit from and influence prison growth and criminalization. The second map, "What is the Complex for Today's PIC?", maps the historical change from the Welfare State to a new security state in which the state's function has been reduced to one of force, apprehension and detention. Both are lend abstract visual representations to forces and things that can't be represented in a photograph or through video, giving an understandable form to the complex workings of a growing and dispersed system.

360degrees: Perspectives on the U.S. Criminal Justice System

Even as the crime rate is dropping, the criminal justice system continues to grow. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there will be 30 new federal prisons built over the next 7 years. Throughout this unprecedented growth, there have been few opportunities for critical examination of what is working and what isn't. It is our hope that this site will challenge your perceptions about who is in prison today and why. We also hope that it will generate ideas, big and small, about how we can reduce crime and strengthen our communities without continuing this unprecedented rate of incarceration.

Over the next two years, we are continuing to work with educators and students to develop local dialogues in schools and communities. We will be partnering with radio producers and journalists across the country to tell stories about how crime and incarceration affects not just the people who are directly involved, but whole families and communities.

{ IN THE NEWS }

The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

MotherJones.com Special Report / "Debt to Society"

AlterNet / Drug Reporter

ZNet Repression Watch

Prisons @ Yahoo News

Prisons @ Google News

BBC News / In Depth / "Prisons in the UK"

The New York Times / "Prisons and Prisoners"

"Number of US Inmates Rises Two Percent"
By Elizabeth White / The Associated Press
Monday 22 May 2006

{ BOOKS & PEOPLE }

The Other Side of the Wall / Reading List

Recommended Reading / 360degrees

Angela Y. Davis

Are Prisons Obsolete?

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable.

In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

Abolition Democracy: Prisons, Democracy, and Empire

Revelations about U.S policies and practices of torture and abuse have captured headlines ever since the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison story in April 2004. Since then, a debate has raged regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavior for the world’s leading democracy. It is within this context that Angela Davis, one of America’s most remarkable political figures, gave a series of interviews to discuss resistance and law, institutional sexual coercion, politics and prison. Davis talks about her own incarceration, as well as her experiences as “enemy of the state,” and about having been put on the FBI’s “most wanted” list. She talks about the crucial role that international activism played in her case and the case of many other political prisoners.

Throughout these interviews, Davis returns to her critique of a democracy that has been compromised by its racist origins and institutions. Discussing the most recent disclosures about the disavowed “chain of command,” and the formal reports by the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch denouncing U.S. violation of human rights and the laws of war in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, Davis focuses on the underpinnings of prison regimes in the United States.

Angela Y. Davis is a professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the last thirty years, she has been active in numerous organizations challenging prison-related repression. Her advocacy on behalf of political prisoners led to three capital charges, sixteen months in jail awaiting trial, and a highly publicized campaign then acquittal in 1972. Her books include Are Prisons Obsolete?, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, and forthcoming from Random House, Prisons and Democracy.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces from the global to the local conjoined to produce the prison boom.

In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California's economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results--a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number off incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law--pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state's commitment to prison expansion.

YBE Interviews Ruth Wilson Gilmore / Interview by Josef Gregory Mahoney, Editor / March 15, 2005

Ruth Wilson Gilmore recommends:

{ AUDIO }

"Lockup" / This American Life

"DIY" / This American Life

"Prison Diaries" / Radio Diaries

"The Lock-Up Society" / American RadioWorks

"Ex-Inmates Come Home" / NPR

"Locked Down: Gangs in the Supermax" / American RadioWorks

"Recommended Listening" / 360degrees

"Resisting the Prison Industrial Complex: Angela Davis, Assata Shakur and Others" / Democracy Now

"Calls From Home: A Radio Broadcast for Prisoners and Their Families" / Holler to the Hood / Appalshop

Holler to the Hood is excited to offer community radio stations and indivduals the sixth annual national cultural organizing effort Calls From Home. The program features calls from mothers and children, brothers and grandparents, sharing the intimate power of families speaking directly to their incarcerated loved ones.

{ COLLECTIONS OF PRISON LINKS }

Critical Resistance

Prison Activist Resource Center

California Prison Focus

Prison Resources

PrisonSucks.com

The Real Cost of Prisons Project

http://del.icio.us/tag/prisons

http://del.icio.us/tag/prison

Family & Corrections Network / Reading Room

360degrees

Crime Correction and Rehabilitation in the Yahoo Directory

{ LEGAL RESOURCES }

Prison Legal News

Human Rights Watch / Resources for Prisoners and Their Families / Illinois

Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers

American Civil Liberties Union / Prisoner Rights

Prison Activist Links / Prisoner Support

Illinois Legal Aid / Prisoners' Rights

"You're Arrested...? What the Family Needs to Know. What the Family Can Do...."

The Center for Constitutional Rights

The Center for Constitutional Rights, in alliance with the National Lawyers Guild, has just released "The Jailhouse Lawyer's Handbook: How to Bring a Federal Lawsuit to Challenge Violations of Your Rights in Prison." The handbook is a free resource for prisoners and their family members who wish to learn about legal options to challenge mistreatment in prison. It can be downloaded, or you can request a copy by writing to us at the following address:

Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook
c/o The Center for Constitutional Rights
666 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10012

Jail House Lawyers Handbook Women's Appendix (PDF) - The JHL Appendix for women is a free resource geared specifically to women prisoners and their family members who wish to learn about legal options to challenge mistreatment in prison.

{ GOVERNMENT & STATISTICS }

Statistical Presentation 2004 / Illinois Department of Corrections

Reports and Stats / Illinois Department of Corrections

National Institute of Corrections / Illinois

2004 Illinois Statistical Abstract / Crime and Law Enforcement

Bureau of Justice Statistics

"Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2005" / Bureau of Justice Statistics

"Prisoners in 2004" / Bureau of Justice Statistics

"World Prison Populations" / BBC News

Prison Policy Initiative / Maps

National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

The mission of the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) is to facilitate research in criminal justice and criminology, through the preservation, enhancement, and sharing of computerized data resources; through the production of original research based on archived data; and through specialized training workshops in quantitative analysis of crime and justice data.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service

NCJRS is a federally funded resource offering justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide.

National Institute of Corrections

Providing federal, state, and local corrections agencies with training, technical assistance, information services, and policy/program development assistance.

CensusScope

CensusScope is an easy-to-use tool for investigating U.S. demographic trends, brought to you by the Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN) at the University of Michigan. With eye-catching graphics and exportable trend data, CensusScope is designed for both generalists and specialists.

{ MISC }

American Indian Prisoners

Drug War Facts

Prisoners' Inventions / By Angelo and Temporary Services

Supermaxed

360-degree panoramic photos from 360 Degrees: Perspectives on the U.S. Criminal Justice System

{ Prisons Index }