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ARCHIVE OF COVERAGE: Prison Issues & Prisoner Support

IMC-US, 26.12.2005

This page is a partial archive of reporting on the prison industrial complex, political prisoners, and prison-based activism from US-based IMCs. It is not a complete archive of such coverage. If you know of a story that is missing, please contact the editorial collective at imc-us-editorial((at))lists.indymedia.org.

<< Image from www.prisonzone.com

Background: The Prison-Industrial Complex

The US prison system functions as a system of modern-day slavery. People of color make up 70 percent of the prison population, and private corporations such as Eddie Bauer and Microsoft profit off of their labor. The number of prisoners topped 2 million in 2002 and keeps growing. Every year, new prisons are built -- and are filled. Private prisons (not state owned) are now being built and operated for profit.

This growth persists despite the fact that crime rates has been declining over the past 20 years. Nearly 80 percent of prisoners are there for non-violent offenses (the vast majority of these drug-related). Women are the highest rising population in prison, and most of them are there for "crimes of survival," committed to feed themselves and their families. Most of the people in prisons are poor, brown, urban, functionally illiterate, unemployed or under-employed before they were locked down, and are there for non-violent crimes, mostly selling or using drugs.

Information for this summary was taken from the Human Rights Coalition.

More Info: Books To Prisoners Projects | Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons | Critical Resistance | Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC) | Prison Legal News

Support for Political Prisoners
A movement that doesn't support it's political internees is a movement destined to fail.

Incarceration for espousing one's beliefs has been happening in this country and around the globe throughout history. Some ways folks on the outside can support political prisoners is by writing them letters that don't jeopardize cases/appeals and don't use nicknames, by sending them reading material, joining/starting a Books To Prisoners or other prisoner support group, and networking with existing support groups.

Here are some resources on political prisoners: Anarchist Black Cross | Freedom Archives | The Jericho Movement

And on eco-defense prisoner support: Portland IMC's Green Scare Page | fbiwitchhunt.org | Earth Liberation Prisoners | ecoprisoners.org







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