May 28, 2022
By Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, Rafu Contributor
Read the full story from Rafu Reports here – rafu.com
Category: CCWP In the News
May 16, 2022
Greg Moran
Read the full story from the San Diego Union Tribune here – sandiegouniontribune.com
On April 4, 2022, the state of Delaware is set to join dozens of prisons in 18 other states in ending physical mail sent inside the prison system. The policy would force loved ones, activists, and others to communicate only via costly digital platforms. Monica Cosby, a formerly incarcerated grandmother and an activist with Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, said on the podcast Beyond Prisons that these policies are “decidedly cruel and intended to harm.” Receiving mail is a critical point of support for people on the inside.
Since the uprisings of the summer of 2020, more people than ever are interested in working to build a world without police and prisons. Organizations working toward this goal take many forms, including projects that may not be immediately recognizable as abolitionist on their face: pen pal or letter-writing exchanges between people inside and outside prison.
Ella Rosenberg is a member of the Knox College chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America, a subsection the Democratic Socialists of America that has college chapters and is organizing toward a mass labor movement. She says that her peers are among those becoming more aware of prison abolition, and it made them want to learn more about what was happening in the Hill Correctional Center, a prison located in the same town as their college: Galesburg, Illinois.
“If we on the outside don’t make the effort to make these connections, then they’re never going to get made, because that’s the point [of the system], is to cut people off,” Rosenberg says. “I think by writing these letters, a little bit, it is breaking down that barrier. And it’s bringing the people in prison back into the community where they live.”
Rosenberg says this is why she was insistent on writing to the men in the Hill Correctional Center, in particular: “This is the prison in our town. We’re writing to these guys because they’re right here.”
Rosenberg has been writing to her pen pal, Kevin “AK” Hemingway, for just over a year now. Hemingway told Truthout that when Rosenberg first wrote to him, it was “unexpected that a person like that would reach out,” and that he even wondered if perhaps she wanted to study him. With the benefit of time, however, the two have built a strong, trusting relationship that thrives on their differences. Hemingway says, “She taught me how to be a friend. I didn’t know how to be a friend with a woman.”
Abolitionists have been exchanging letters as part of their everyday political practice long before 2020. Black and Pink, a national organization dedicated to abolishing the criminal punishment system and liberating LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS, was founded in 2005 with letter-writing as a core component. Black and Pink currently coordinates a national database of approximately 20,000 people looking for incarcerated pen pals.
Andrea Kszystyniak, who helps run Black and Pink’s pen pal program and edits the organization’s newsletter, believes that for many people on the outside, pen palling can be “a radicalizing engine.” That’s because writers are forced to confront the full humanity and circumstances of the people they write to, and can easily see that prison “isn’t helping this person…. [It’s] a disabling agent, intentionally destroying people’s mental health.”
Like Rosenberg, Kszystyniak asserts that the prison-industrial complex “tries to completely erase people and systematically strips them from all of their support systems, until they’re completely alone.” After that, a person’s “will to fight will go quickly.”
Charley, who has been writing to their pen pal for about five months as part of the California Coalition of Women Prisoners Writing Warrior project, compares the work of letter writing to the principles of participatory defense, a community organizing model that engages the families and communities of people facing charges in their legal defense. Charley says that “one of our most powerful resources for how to resist this system is to really pull together communities.” They add that this is an important form of resistance because the prison-industrial complex “just repackages the tactics that white supremacy used to colonize Africa and Turtle Island” and “banks on us giving up on keeping in contact with our loved ones, by painting them as bad people, and by creating situations that make it dangerous for us to keep in contact with them.”
Additionally, Charley pointed out that letter writing is a powerful action that can be taken by people who might not necessarily be able to protest in the streets. As a disabled person, Charley notes that it’s “a way that folks with chronic illnesses and disabled folks can get involved in abolition in a way that is really high impact.”
Letter writing cuts into the isolation and brings people closer together through the physical and figurative walls that the prison-industrial complex builds, and in doing so, it helps keep people safer. Imprisoned people who receive no mail or contact from anyone are at risk of being recognized by both corrections officers and other people inside as being vulnerable, because the lack of mail sends a message that no one is coming to advocate for them, says Kszystyniak.
Prison also works to cut people off from information and to create a totalizing social environment where, without contact or affirmation from people outside, imprisoned people can begin to feel that the maze of regulations — and their irregular and punitive application — is just.
For many people on the outside, pen palling can be “a radicalizing engine.” That’s because writers are forced to confront the full humanity and circumstances of the people they write to.
Reece Graham-Bey, my own pen pal of six years who is now formerly incarcerated, explained it this way: “The longer that you were in prison, the more sense it makes. You have a ready explanation [for the injustice you experience] because you’ve had it explained to you. It’s almost like being in a propaganda camp or a retraining camp.”
Charley described the importance of simply “reinforcing reality” in letters. For example, another volunteer with the Writing Warriors program, Stephanie Hammerwold, told Truthout that when the COVID-19 vaccine was released, pen pals in the program filled a critical information gap so that people inside could make an informed choice about their health.
In the case of LGBTQ+ people in prison, letter writing and newsletters can be an essential source of scarce information about queer issues. Similarly, Graham-Bey says information about gender and feminism was extremely rare behind bars, and our letters were an important counterpoint to the misogyny that was rampant, particularly from the guards.
Information doesn’t just go into the prison, however, but also travels out. Letters are a vehicle for people inside to tell the outside world what the inside of the prison is like, especially when there are abuses or problems in the institution. In response to Truthout’s request for interviews, one person from a California women’s prison responded, “Please let the world know how the prison are taking inmates whom are not [COVID] positive to quarantine units and placing them around other inmates whom are positive for their own self motives.”
The bonds that are formed in the pen-palling relationships often lead to advocacy. Anna Bauer, another member of the Knox College group, recently put together a phone zap with her pen pal Strawberry Hampton. Bauer says that “our relationship has just come to be something that’s very meaningful and something that I really appreciate. I definitely feel like our letter-writing practice has definitely gone two ways. I’ve been able to kind of act as a conduit with the outside with her.”
There are plenty of barriers to exchanging letters, however, in whatever format.
There are the hard-to-follow regulations, and the constant surveillance, costs and delays, particularly associated with the for-profit proprietary messaging systems like ConnectNetwork and JPay. These systems work in a similar way to email, but each “page” of the message costs between $.15 and $.44 to send (without attachments, which are an additional page) and must be approved before it is delivered. Other states have eliminated the possibility of physical mail altogether, like the change set to take place in Delaware.
Hammerwold refers to these disruptions as a “JPay delay” because they are so regular, and says that her strategy is to let her pen pals know that if it takes her more than two days to respond, they should assume the delay is institutional. “I hate that that happens, because it erodes trust, and it’s something that’s beyond our control,” she says. “I don’t want that person to think I’ve given up.”
Several people said that messages about the conditions inside prison are often censored. After Strawberry Hampton’s own message to Truthout was blocked, her sister Ebona told Truthout in a phone conversation that the messages that are blocked are ones detailing incidents and especially naming inaction on the part of top officials. Hampton is regularly subjected to racial and heterosexist slurs, has received death threats from corrections officers, and is unable to sign up for classes so she can get “good time” (earned time toward earlier release). This pattern was confirmed as common by other incarcerated people interviewed, as well as by abolitionist organizers on the outside, and several imprisoned people relied on assistance from family members to get in contact or relay information to Truthout for this story because of limitations in the prison’s communication systems.
Letter writing — and any communication to and from prison — exposes both parties to a certain level of surveillance, given that anyone writing in to a prison has to give their first and last name. However, of course, the risk of retaliation is higher for the inside correspondent. Although some communications about activism, including prison abolition, are allowed into prisons without obstacles (and everyone was unequivocal that pen palling is a net positive), interviewees also cited circumstances in which they faced barriers or retaliation.
“If you started to write to me about people who support prisoners, people who support prisoner education, people who support abolition, people who support strategies for different visions of justice, the prison goes on high alert in a way that you probably can’t imagine on the streets,” Graham-Bey says. “You know, the surveillance ups, they start doing rounds on you, they start watching you, they start making you feel uncomfortable, they start going through your cell, you know, and they randomly take you to [segregation] for invented infractions.”
However, activists and loved ones of incarcerated people work daily to overcome these kinds of barriers. “I think it took incredible personal power, to pierce that kind of environment, and to reach into the place where I was at, and I could feel that power, in a sense of a real power, like a real person,” says Graham-Bey.
Forging relationships with each other through the intimate practice of letter writing allows each writer to represent themselves and be known. In letters, strangers learn to connect in honest, human ways to each other, and to do healing work. Hemingway says that his friendship with Rosenberg was transformative, and that his friends inside “could see a difference in me.”
The bonds that are formed in the pen-palling relationships often lead to advocacy.
Ajani Walden, a staff member with Black and Pink and an outside letter writer, says, “We’re talking about freedom, we’re talking about community care, that is what pen palling is. I care about the person I’m writing [to], the person that’s writing cares about me. I mean, it doesn’t really get any simpler than that, right? Because this is really what we’re supposed to be doing. Caring for other people, communicating, mutually destroying systems.” Walden emphasizes the two-way nature of the relationship, saying, “There’s some times where my pen pal writes me a letter and they literally uplifted my day, you know, and I’m on the outside.”
Dude Ramirez, an inside member of the Writing Warriors program, wrote to Truthout, saying that having a pen pal “means someone is taking time to care about you and sharing their time with you.” According to Writing Warriors correspondent Araceli Peña, having a pen pal when you are inside “enables you to be able to vent to others and you’re able to talk with someone about anything and just feel completely comfortable. Sometimes a person is just able to share more with someone through paper and yeah, it’s harder to share face to face sometimes.”
Christopher Naeem Trotter, who is currently serving a de facto life sentence and is Kszystyniak’s pen pal, told Truthout in a letter that, “Without their friendship and support, I probably would had given up on struggling to liberate myself from this belly of the beast, and just accepted that fact that I was going to die inside this belly of the beast which would give these prisoncrats something to celebrate about…. Now every day I am reminded that no matter how dark the days may appear that there is always a ray of light breaking through the crack to shine for you to see that there are still loving and kind people in this world that care about something other than [themselves].”
Letters and relationships are a source of hope for all of the people involved, and this lays a foundation for strong organizing.
According to Graham-Bey, it is often transformative for people in prison to know that there are people outside who are engaged in social movements, and who care about what is happening inside the prison from an abolitionist perspective. He says that letters also serve as tangible, written, coherent arguments that can be returned to again and again to support political education inside.
Anthropologist Orisanmi Burton has written recently that, “The slow and deliberate act of producing, circulating, and consuming letters is a contemplative practice generated from mutual investments of time, as well as emotional and intellectual labor, that has far reaching effects.”
People inside also benefit from knowing who is on the outside that can support them if they decide to engage in organizing work.
Meanwhile, abolitionists on the outside are nourished by the analysis of their comrades inside.
Kszystyniak says that letter writing is a good mechanism for “continued momentum toward abolition,” and highlights that “it’s super important that the folks inside are leading the movement.”
Trotter agrees, saying, “People on the outside must tune into their voices on paper because there are a lot of different ideas floating in these prisons. Sometime those ideas never get outside the prison gates because they have no one to write…. We need organizers on the outside to start reaching inside to prisoners getting prisoners ideas, learning what they are strategizing, because what happens on the inside affects what happens on the outside.”
Policies like the one in Delaware eliminating physical mail are another malicious attempt to further isolate and disappear people from our communities. Cosby, reflecting on a time when she received a letter that smelled like her mother, said, “[Physical] letters don’t weigh much but at the same time they weigh everything.”
Read the full story by Carolyn Said from the San Francisco Chronicle here.
On July 4, 2010 Corene De La Cruz, 33, rang the doorbell of the home she once shared with her ex-boyfriend, James Calderon. She carried a comforter, which belonged to his godmother, and a gun.
They had broken up in June, ending an 11-year on-again, off-again abusive relationship. De La Cruz’s mother, Beatrice Bayardo, said, “I would notice a mark on her neck or a black eye, or I would just see markings, and she would always deny it…I think Corene loved him more than she loved herself.”
Bayardo also said Calderon used racial slurs against her daughter during his attacks. Calderon’s family is from Guatemala, but he is U.S.-born. De La Cruz told a court psychologist that his family “looked down on Mexicans” and that he “should’ve never gotten together with a Mexican girl.”
De La Cruz told her mother that Calderon twice pulled a gun on her and threatened to kill her if she ever left him. During their first breakup in 2002, Calderon waited in front of her parents’ house (where she was living at the time). When De La Cruz arrived home, he beat her in front of the friend she was with and damaged the friend’s car. De La Cruz said she didn’t file charges because she didn’t want him to get in trouble
Between five and six in the morning, before going to Calderon’s house on July 4, 2010, De La Cruz wrote a suicide note and multiple goodbye letters to family members. In court, she said that she brought the gun to commit suicide in front of her ex so he could feel the pain she felt at the time.
What happened after De La Cruz rang the bell was presented in court as a case of he said, she said. Calderon claimed his ex rushed toward him, locked the door and then shot him. De La Cruz said that he knocked her down as he pulled her into the house and the gun went off when she fell. De La Cruz’s defense attorney never introduced evidence which corroborated her version of events, including audio and video of the incident which was recorded by a home security system Calderon had installed after their final breakup.
De La Cruz waited in county jail for three years before she stood trial for burglary, pre-meditated attempted murder and gun charges. De La Cruz was found guilty of everything except attempted murder. She was sentenced to six years for those crimes. If that was her full sentence, De La Cruz would be free today. Instead, she’s still in prison. Her sentence was extended 15 years by mandatory sentence enhancements.
De La Cruz’s experience is emblematic of how survivors of intimate partner violence who commit trauma-related crimes experience the criminal justice system.
2010, the year De La Cruz was arrested, was an especially violent year for intimate partner homicides in California. 157 people – 130 women and 27 men – were killed. According to 2010-20 data collected by the California Department of Justice, women were far more likely to be murdered by an intimate partner than men were, even though men accounted for 80% of homicides statewide.
High Murder Rate in San Bernardino County
Locally, San Bernardino County has seen an uptick in intimate partner violence-related homicides most years since 2010. Fourteen people were killed in 2020, up 75% from the previous year. San Bernardino County’s population is nearly a quarter million lower than neighboring Riverside County, but the intimate partner violence-related murder rate in San Bernardino County was seven times higher in 2020.
People who experience intimate partner violence are far more likely to be murdered by their mate than to pull the trigger themselves. However, these victims face a criminal justice system where an affirmative defense, when a defendant claims they committed a crime due to a mitigating circumstance, isn’t an option. Affirmative defenses, for example, allow human trafficking victims to defend themselves against prostitution charges.
“There are only two options for survivors in the worst conditions of violence: die or defend yourself and face prison for the rest of your life.”
Sentence enhancements for violent crimes against intimate partners can mean more time incarcerated. Sentence enhancements add time or conditions to a sentence based on how a crime was committed – like use of a firearm – or the defendant’s criminal history – like gang affiliation or past felonies.
New Bill Aims to Help Survivors
California Assembly Bill 124, which went into effect Jan. 1, overhauls the state penal code to address disparities faced by some of the most vulnerable defendants. AB 124, written by Sen. Sydney Kamlager, calls for several reforms.
- Defendants who have experienced intimate partner violence, sexual violence or human trafficking can use an affirmative defense for all crimes except violent felonies, like assault with a deadly weapon or murder.
- Prosecutors are required to consider the impact trauma, exploitation and youthfulness (under age 26 at the time the crime was committed) had in the commission of a crime during plea bargaining.
- Judges should start at the lower prison term when sentencing a survivor if trauma, age or victimization contributed to the commission of the crime. Judges can still use their discretion to sentence a survivor to the middle or high prison term if the aggravating factors (such as lack of remorse, amount of harm caused to the victim) outweigh the mitigating factors (factors that support leniency, such as youth, ability for criminal reform and mental impairment).
- Judges are encouraged to consider whether having seen or experienced abuse, trauma, intimate partner violence or human trafficking was a contributing factor in the evaluation of resentencing petitions.
- Allow survivor to petition the court to vacate convictions and expunge arrests for nonviolent offenses that stemmed from being a victim of intimate partner or sexual violence.
Sen. Kamlager wrote in the bill’s legislative analysis, “AB 124 is an opportunity to correct unjust outcomes of the past and provide full context of the experiences that might impact a person’s actions and use a more humanizing and trauma informed response to criminal adjudication.”
Kamlager said in an interview that the bill was written with a particular, Sacramento-based survivor in mind. Keiana Aldrich experienced human trafficking and sexual assault as a minor before she was charged for the robbery of a man who was trying to buy her. Even though she was 17, she was charged as an adult and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Protections for violent felonies created by AB 124’s original text – which could have helped Aldrich and De La Cruz – were scaled back in the Senate. Before her trial, a forensic psychologist examined De La Cruz and concluded she was exhibiting symptoms of a depressive episode. Dr. Nancy Kaser-Boyd said that she displayed “the effects of intimate partner violence and that her plan to commit suicide in front of Calderon was not unusual.” But, Dr. Kaser-Boyd wasn’t called to testify at trial, and her report was only brought into consideration during De La Cruz’s sentencing.
Under the version of AB 124 that passed, De La Cruz wouldn’t have been able to use the affirmative defense for the attempted murder or first-degree burglary charges, but she could have used it to defend herself against the other charges against her. That may have resulted in a shorter sentence, or even an acquittal, on those charges.
The omission of violent felonies, including murder and attempted murder, from the new law disproportionately impacts women, especially Black women. According to the Family Violence Law Center, an Alameda County-based nonprofit which provides legal assistance for domestic violence survivors, about two-thirds of women who are convicted of killing a romantic partner did so in self defense. In addition, Black women are inordinately represented in California prisons compared to their overall population in the state. And, in San Bernardino County, Black women are the most likely to be murdered by an intimate partner.
“We see this pattern of survivors of violence, particularly Black women and other women of color, being charged with murder and given the most severe sentences in context of that violence,” said Colby Lenz, a co-founder of Survived and Punished, a national coalition of survivors, advocates, attorneys and scholars who organize to decriminalize efforts to survive domestic violence.
When asked about the senate amendments which made violent felons ineligible for the new reforms, Kamlager said, “It is time to address the sections of our penal code that do focus on violent and serious felony offenses, and work to rectify these sections as well that have become overly used and leveraged by DA’s offices across the state to over incarcerate.”
Lenz said the amendments were “unfortunate” and that the modified AB 124 bill “excludes survivors who are facing the most severe consequences of violence. [It] reinforces the idea that there are only two options for survivors in the worst conditions of violence: die or defend yourself and face prison for the rest of your life.”
Sentence Enhancements Make Justice One-size-fits-all
If AB 124 had existed when De La Cruz was sentenced, she could’ve been released in 2017. But, her sentence enhancement means she can’t be released for at least several more years. (De La Cruz’s petition to remove her violent offender status, which would make her eligible for release as soon as 2025, is currently under review.)
Sentence enhancements remove a judge’s discretion to dismiss charges or reduce sentences which can lead to inequitable outcomes. Lenz said that the state’s 150 sentence enhancements are unevenly applied by race.
“Corene gets multiple enhancements, including an enhancement tagged as domestic violence,” said Lenz. “They’re able to turn these enhancements around and target the very victims of domestic violence that we’re supposed to be protecting.”
De La Cruz, who has served her entire base sentence, is now in prison entirely on enhancements. Lenz said that she is not alone. “Many survivors, particularly Black survivors that we’re working with in California, are sitting in prison on enhancements alone, based on defending themselves from violence,” said Lenz.
“Many survivors, in particular, Black survivors that we’re working with in California, are sitting in prison on enhancements alone, based on defending themselves from violence.”
A 2011 study published in a criminology journal examined sentence enhancements and mandatory minimums in five states, including California. The research found that both policies increased the number of Black and White men in the prison system. But, Black men were disproportionately impacted by sentence enhancements, particularly drug offenses. Sentencing enhancements enacted between 1982 and 2000 in every state studied are associated with 26 more Black men and 3 additional White men incarcerated per 100,000 people.
Another 2011 analysis, on sentencing patterns of intimate partner violence-related homicides in California, found that women were less likely to be convicted of killing an intimate partner. However, they face a legal framework inherently stacked against them. Women in heterosexual relationships are more likely to kill their male partner with a gun or knife, a crime which carries weapons-related sentence enhancements. Heterosexual men are more likely to use their physical strength as a weapon. Men usually strangle or beat their partner to death, neither of which carry sentence enhancements.
The disparities in sentencing highlighted by the analysis are clear, but the data studied had major limitations. First, the data was drawn from appellate court system records, a smaller pool of records than trial courts. And, those records don’t include any demographic information beyond gender, like race or sexual orientation. These holes in the data could mask even more inequities.
Black women are disproportionately represented in the state’s prisons and are more likely to be murdered by their partner. And, there are already significant barriers to Black survivors seeking help from the legal system overall.
Jane Stoever, director of the Domestic Violence Clinic at UC Irvine’s School of Law and the university’s Initiative to End Family Violence, studies the criminalization of survivors in the justice system. According to Stoever, domestic violence homicides and survivor incarceration have increased through prosecutors’ contempt filings and bench warrants since the 1990s. This is when national mandatory arrest policies, which require police to make an arrest if they believe domestic violence is involved, were enacted. This led to abuse victims often serving longer sentences than their abusers.
“We still see this pattern in survivors of violence – particularly Black women and other women of color being charged with murder – being given the most severe sentences for self-defense in the context of that violence,” said Lenz.
Lenz explained that, despite reform attempts, she still sees survivors “intensely persecuted when they act in self-defense.” Survivors in Riverside and San Bernardino counties tend to be sentenced severely, she said.
An “Extension” of Violence
In prison, De La Cruz tried to heal from her abuse. She’s participated in vocational programs, helps her fellow inmates with writing assignments and statements for court and she’s currently attending Chaffey College, a San Bernardino-based community college which provides courses for inmates at her prison.
De La Cruz’s mother describes her prison’s conditions as “inhumane.” She said there’s mold in the showers, infestations of pests and the prison limits the amount of times an inmate can flush the toilet.
Aminah Elster, a policy coordinator for the California Coalition of Women’s Prisoners, is a previously incarcerated survivor. She said the conditions in De La Cruz’s prison are similar to those she experienced and those in other women’s prisons around the state.
“It is important to note that prisons are an extension of the violent conditions survivors encounter on the outside,” said Elster. In 2018, the most recent year data is available, California reported 940 alleged non-consensual sexual events to the U.S. Department of Justice. These included sexual harassment and misconduct by prison staff, and non-consensual sex acts and abuse by other inmates.
De La Cruz, writing from prison lockdown, said she is doing everything possible to obtain credits and milestones to decrease her sentence. But, it’s been difficult because of her status as a violent offender. This status, carried by many victims of intimate partner violence, impacts aspects of De La Cruz’s prison experience, including when she is eligible for parole and what career opportunities she is allowed to train for in prison. For example, De La Cruz wants to train to be an inmate firefighter, but she can’t because she’s considered a violent offender.
Bayardo keeps a binder of all her daughter’s accomplishments and certificates in prison. She feels that the prison isn’t taking into account the classes and efforts De La Cruz is making to rehabilitate herself.
A Fight for Reform…and Freedom
Both Sen. Kamlager, Lenz and Elster agree that AB 124 is a good step toward reform but that there is still work that needs to be done.
“AB 124 was a good start,” said Elster. “But it needs to be expanded.”
Survived and Punished and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners have petitioned Gov. Newsom to pardon Corene De La Cruz and commute her sentence. Newsom recently granted 24 pardons and 18 commutations but De La Cruz wasn’t among them.
Editor’s note: The terms “intimate partner violence” and “domestic violence” have purposefully not been used interchangeably in this story, as there are nuanced differences between the two. Although not universally recognized as separate by law enforcement and other entities, intimate partner violence is committed within the confines of a romantic relationship. Domestic violence, however, includes abuse against both adults – significant others or other family members – and children.