Every year for the last five years students at the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) have volunteered to undertake the incredibly unwieldy task of soliciting, receiving, reviewing, and responding to creative writing submissions from hundreds of prisoners throughout the state of Michigan.  Every single person who submits writing receives personalized feedback on his or her work; PCAP sends no form rejection letters.  The result is a remarkable collection of writing called the Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing, published annually in conjunction with the PCAP Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners.  This year’s review is a particularly good one, and I highly recommend it to those of you might be looking for prisoner writing to teach in your courses next year and to those of you who just want something great to read.

To order this year’s review or one from a previous year, use this order form.  Each copy of the review is only $15, and all proceeds go directly back into making the next year’s review.

Jodie Lawston and I have both previously written on this blog about the inextricable links between economics and mass incarceration, and it always boils down to the simple fact that as long as major corporate interests and the government itself have strong financial incentives to lock up lots of people and keep them there for extended periods of time, we cannot reasonably believe that our criminal justice system actually functions to punish or prevent crime.  Instead it works to make sure that people who do not have the resources to defend themselves will continue to be disproportionately incarcerated and used as a cheap–or in the case of Texas prisoners, free–labor source.

The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is not a real estate trust, and our government should not enable  it to escape taxation.  In actual fact the CCA has been entrusted with the lives of human beings who live under conditions that no outside party can effectively regulate.  This means that the health and well being of thousands of people are subordinated to the corporation’s main objective, which is, of course, to make money.

Robert received an earlier stay in December.  He was then scheduled to be killed on the feast day of the Virgen de Guadalupe–a significant date in the religious calendar for many people in Robert’s hometown of El Paso, Texas.  The criminal justice ministry group at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Robert’s family, and other supporters successfully campaigned to have his execution date moved, which is how he received an execution date of April 10, 2013.

For more information, see the El Paso Times‘ coverage of this latest development in Robert’s case.

Iris and Robert’s lawyers are very hopeful that new evidence will grant him a new trial.  Robert, Iris, and I are all very grateful to those of you who wrote letters to Robert in response to my earlier blog post.  People in prison, especially those on death row, need to know that they are not forgotten and that their lives have value, and those letters helped Robert through a terrible time.  Mil gracias.  Robert’s battle for his life is not over, but this is a significant victory for him and for those of us who oppose the death penalty.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Luke 23:34

                  We tend to think of forgiveness as something personal—a thing we ask of those whom we have wronged directly: the person whose car we rear-ended, the loved one to whom we spoke in anger, the acquaintance about whom we thought unkind things.  This sort of forgiveness gets us through each day by helping to mend our relationships with those around us, repairing and strengthening our ties to those with whom we interact each day.  Without it we would be in shambles, but God’s forgiveness is much larger than we can imagine.

When Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.  He was not addressing his executioners, who had just nailed him to the cross.  He was speaking to God, his Father, asking a parent to forgive not just those who were there that terrible day at Calvary.  Jesus asked God to forgive each of us throughout the millennia that would follow his death because he knew we would continue to harm one another and that we would need to be forgiven for an enormity of offenses.

As the child of a prisoner and a scholar who studies incarceration, I think often about the fact that Jesus was a prisoner executed by a government with the approval—indeed the zealous insistence—of the populous.  We in North Carolina are subject to both state and federal governments which execute those around us, and the majority of our fellow citizens are in favor of this practice, though few of us know much about life on death row or the individuals who are being killed.  However we personally feel about the death penalty, the fact that it is part of our culture and our system of government is well-known and at times hotly debated.  We know that this is a thing we do, even if we don’t fully understand it.

I awoke this morning wanting to speak about offenses that we almost never realize we have committed.  Just before last night’s Maundy Thursday service, I learned that my father’s best friend had died.  My father has been held captive in Texas prisons since 1994, and over the years he has grown close to a fellow prisoner named Pepper Ramirez.  I never got to meet Pepper, and all I know of him is what my father has told me in letters and in visits.  From what I understand, Pepper ended up in prison because he killed a man who was harming his sister.  Though I do not know the length of his sentence, I am sure he served well over a decade, perhaps two.  Pepper was a good friend to my father, told funny stories, and made big plans for what he would do when he got out of prison.  He had a large and loving family who desperately wanted him home and who remained steadfast throughout the many years of his incarceration.

In the last few years, my father’s news about Pepper always had to do with his health.  Pepper suffered from severe glaucoma which required medical treatment.  Medical care in Texas prisons is a terrifying thing.  In order for a prisoner who is held in a rural area to receive treatment, he or she must be handcuffed, shackled, and chained around the waist to another prisoner.  These patients are then loaded onto a bus and driven to another prison where they may spend a week waiting to be transported to the medical prison.  For men on my father’s unit, the Robertson Unit where the men wait before they are taken to the medical unit is one of the most violent prisons in the state.  Several years ago when my father’s friend Pepper was on his way back from the medical unit where he had been treated for his glaucoma, he was held at Robertson for several days.  The violence surrounding him at Robertson was so stressful that he had a heart attack and was taken back to the medical unit for open heart surgery.  Pepper never received even one doctor’s visit for follow up treatment after his open heart surgery.  He would not risk enduring the trip back to the medical prison.  My father tells me that many men would rather die from their ailments than have to take that trip.  It is widely believed by both prisoners and staff that the process of receiving medical care in Texas prisons is deliberately constructed to discourage the ill from seeking treatment.  It costs the state less to let the elderly and infirm die of their own accord.

Earlier this week my father’s prison was undergoing a shake down.  Pepper has been very frail in the years since his heart surgery, and he collapsed after carrying his possessions either to or from the gym.  I do not know if an emergency response team could have saved his life, but there was not one on hand.  The only doctor on staff is the elderly country doctor who delivered most of the guards who work in that prison, and even he is not on duty every day.  Pepper Ramirez died this week on a cement floor far from his family, and I feel responsible for his passing.

We live in a country where we think we know what justice is, where we are told that get-tough-on-crime legislation makes us safer, where we are encouraged not to think of prisoners as people but as beings not like us who have forfeited their civil and human rights by being irredeemably bad.  The jury that convicted Pepper Ramirez likely did not know that he would not be given adequate health care.  They may not have considered what his family would endure year after year as they watched him deteriorate.  Even if they had thought about these things, they may have felt that he, and perhaps also his family, deserved what they were getting.  I am not a witness to Pepper’s crime, but I am a secondary witness to his character and his suffering.  He was a good friend to my father, and for this I will be forever grateful.  Please pray today for Pepper’s family.  Pray for my father and the other men who lost a friend and who saw too well the fate that might await each of them.  Pray for all of us that we might not forget the lives and struggles of those who are deliberately hidden from us.  Pray that we find ways to end violence, addiction, and suffering through compassion, treatment, and forgiveness.  Pray for guidance to stop cycles of institutional violence.  Pray that we may learn not to be passive bystanders to the suffering of others.

Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.

If criminal justice administrators routinely agree that minors are so much at risk in adult prisons that they must be kept in solitary confinement to protect them, shouldn’t we rethink our decisions to send children to prison?

For Christians, the act of washing another person’s feet engenders a mix of humility and honor.  The person washing the feet humbles herself in cleansing what in Jesus’ day would have been the dirtiest part of a person’s body–rough and covered in the day’s dust.  The person who allows her feet to be washed is simultaneously honored by the act of another person’s service but also humbled in having another person care for her in this intimate way.

Regardless of our systems of belief, we could all learn from what the pope will do this Thursday.  This act is a public reminder that we should remember those whom we have shut away from our sight.  We should honor them with human dignity, concern, and care, as we should all people.  We should not be afraid to lay compassionate hands on those whom we have been taught to fear.

Thank you, Pope Francis, for remembering the incarcerated.  May this act inspire people around the world to treat prisoners with kindness.

Call for Papers

Special Issue on Prisoners,

Their Families and Loved Ones

General Information

The Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) is a prisoner written, academically oriented

and peer reviewed, non-profit journal, based on the tradition of the penal press. It brings

the knowledge produced by prison writers together with academic arguments to

enlighten public discourse about the current state of carceral institutions. This is

particularly important because with few exceptions, definitions of deviance and

constructions of those participating in these defined acts are incompletely created by

social ‘scientists’, media representatives, politicians, and legal and justice industrialists.

These analyses most often promote self-serving interests, omit the voices of those most

affected, and facilitate repressive and reactionary penal policies and practices. As a

result, the JPP attempts to acknowledge the accounts, experiences, and criticisms of the

criminalized by providing an educational forum that allows women and men to participate

in the development of research that concerns them directly. In an age where `crime` has

become lucrative and exploitable, the JPP exists as an important alternate source of

information that competes with popularly held stereotypes and misconceptions about

those who are currently, or those who have in the past, faced the deprivation of liberty.

Prisoners, Their Families and Loved Ones

While imprisonment has been the focus of a number of important studies, the impacts of

imprisonment on the families and loved ones of prisoners has rarely surfaced in

academic discussions. The difficulties faced by prisoners who wish to maintain links to

those outside prison walls has also been under-researched. The Journal of Prisoners on

Prisons invites prisoners, their families and loved ones to contribute articles that discuss

their experiences of enforced separation including the challenges and negotiations of

maintaining relationships affected by imprisonment.

This issue will offer prisoners, their families and loved ones the opportunity to voice their

concerns so their life experiences can be acknowledged and their insights appreciated.

In doing, so it will shed light on the struggles of population that has traditionally been

overlooked in society and to a greater extent within criminology.

Submission Guidelines

Prisoners and former prisoners are encouraged to submit papers, collaborative essays,

discussions transcribed from tape, book reviews, and photo or graphic essays.

The journal also encourages submissions of illustrations, drawings, and paintings to

appear within the special issue or as cover art. Artistic work should also include a short

description of the inspiration for the work.

The journal does not usually publish fiction, and does not generally publish poetry.

The journal does not publish material that focuses on the writer’s own legal case,

although the use of the writer’s personal experiences as an illustration of a broader topic

is encouraged.

The journal will not publish any subject matter that advocates hatred, sexism, racism,

violence, or that supports the death penalty.

Articles should be between 1,000 and 10, 000 words, and maybe handwritten (legibly) or

typed, in English, French or Spanish. The author may elect to write anonymously or

under a pseudonym.

Editors look for developed pieces that address topics substantially. Manuscripts go

through a preliminary reading and then are sent to review by the board, and those of

suitable interest are returned to the author with comments or suggestions. Editors work

with writers on composition and form, and where necessary may help the author with

referencing and bibliographic information, not readily available in prisons.

If your submission is not accepted for publication in the special issue, the Editorial board

will consider it for a later publication.

Submission Process

If you are interested in contributing to the JPP please your writing and/or art to:

Journal of Prisoners on Prisons

c/o University of Ottawa Press

542 King Edward,

Ottawa, Ontario

K1N 6N5

Canada

Please include: a clear and accurate contact details for the author, and a brief

description of the work. Once your work has been received and reviewed you will be

notified by the JPP.

Additional Information

For more information regarding this project or the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, feel

free contact the editors of the special issue through mail at the JPP office or at the e-mail

addresses listed below:

Stacey Hannem

Assistant Professor

Wilfrid Laurier University

shannem@wlu.ca

Erin McCuaig
PhD Candidate
Queen’s University Belfast
eringayle@hotmail.com

We look forward to hearing from you,

Stacey and Erin

After graduating from UNC, Anita went to work for National Public Radio’s StoryCorps program, where I know she is doing wonderful things.  She recently sent me an email with this link to a StoryCorps clip in which a formerly incarcerated mother and her daughter interview one another about their experiences of the mother’s imprisonment.

Thank you, Anita, for the great work you are doing!  We need many more thoughtful young people like you to help bring stories of women and families’ experiences of incarceration to light.

Buzz Alexander–the taller of us–founded PCAP in 1990 at the University of Michigan, and in the years that followed Buzz built this extraordinary program into the largest organization in the U.S. (and perhaps the world) that links university students and incarcerated youth and adults through arts programming.  PCAP sends undergraduates into Michigan prisons, juvenile detention centers, and urban high schools to facilitate arts workshops.  PCAP also hosts the Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners, which displays over four hundred works of visual art from every prison in the Michigan Department of Corrections.  PCAP’s annual literary review publishes writing by Michigan prisoners, and the organizations many workshops host dozens of performances each year.  In fact, last week PCAP celebrated the performance of its 600th play.

Now I have the honor of succeeding Buzz in running this incredible organization.  As of January 1, 2013, I am a new Associate Professor of Theatre & Drama at the University of Michigan and the Director of PCAP, and I am deeply grateful to Buzz and to Janie Paul (the other long-serving member of the PCAP faculty and Buzz’s wife) for the years of preparations that went into the process of getting me hired at Michigan.  Many other people worked very hard to get me to Michigan, including Priscilla Lindsay, chair of the Dept. of Theatre & Drama; Dean Christopher Kendall of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre, & Dance; and Angela Dillard, chair of the Residential College.  Half of my faculty appointment at Michigan is in Theatre & Drama (the field in which I was trained), and the other half is in the Residential College (RC) where PCAP will soon be moving.

PCAP has long lived in Michigan’s English Department because that’s where Buzz founded it.  Though PCAP will maintain connections to the English Department through Buzz and my husband Phil Christman, who will be teaching as a lecturer in the first year writing program in English, the PCAP’s administrative operations will move into the RC in Fall 2013. The PCAP staff–Sari Adelson, Shannon Deasy, and Vanessa Mayesky–and I will all have offices in the RC, while Buzz and Phil will be the PCAP faculty with offices  in English.  I also have an office in Theatre, and Janie, of course, has an office in Art & Design, which gives PCAP a strong presence on North Campus as well.

Buzz is considering retirement in the coming years but has not set a date for his retirement.  We hope to have a few semesters or years of working together before he stops teaching, though he will never truly leave PCAP or stop participating in its activities. (Thank goodness!)  Though I will undoubtedly do many things differently than Buzz has in the past–because I could never hope to fill his shoes completely–I endeavor to honor the incredible work that he has done and continues to do with hundreds of students, volunteers, and incarcerated people.  Buzz’s main purpose in bringing me to Michigan, and mine in coming here, is to protect PCAP’s sustainability so that this organization can thrive for twenty more years and beyond.

My husband Phil–a writer and former lecturer at North Carolina Central University–will play a significant role at PCAP as well.  Starting with the 2014 issue, he will be the editor of PCAP’s annual Review of Literature by Michigan Prisoners.

We have taken up residence in Ann Arbor, though neither of us will start teaching until Fall 2013.  Though we already miss many friends and colleagues at UNC, we are very happy to be at Michigan and plan to be here for years to come.  The PCAPers, colleagues at Michigan, and our neighbors have done much to welcome us and make us feel at home here. We are grateful for all the good will and kindness that is being shown to us, and we look forward to meeting all of the current PCAPers and to teaching our first Michigan students in the Fall.