Mastodon Twitter Instagram Youtube
Aug 14, 18

In Wake of Death, Minnesota Prisoners Speak Out

Report from the Twin Cities IWOC chapter on the current situation in local prisons, and the end of the recent lock down.

As the Minnesota Department of Corrections ends its lockdown at all prisons except Stillwater, prisoners there are speaking out against human rights abuses and calling for the lockdown to end.

According to Carlos Smith, a prisoner at Stillwater, “we are currently without any basic humane treatment here… We still have not received any showers nor are we any closer to seeing any end to this nonsense.” Stillwater has been locked down since a lone prisoner killed a guard on July 18. When facilities are on lockdown, prisoners receive no more than one hour a day outside their cells.

Smith says prisoners are being held hostage in a struggle between the DOC and AFSCME prison guards, some of whom are calling for the resignation of the commissioner.

Beyond the lack of laundry and showers, the 1600 men inside Stillwater are facing humiliation during the lockdown. “They took two sections, about sixty of us, handcuffed together, naked. Then we sat like that in the gym for an hour and a half while they ransacked our cells,” Smith reports.

AFSCME, the prison guard union is looking for a bigger budget for staffing but David Boehnke of the Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee doesn’t believe staffing alone will reduce violence. “If you don’t give respect, you won’t get it. Overcrowding means reduced programming and inhuman conditions – violence which begets violence,” Boehnke says. “The solution is there. Release the thousands of people locked up for petty parole violations and reinvest that money into improving conditions.”

A 2017 study from California prisons notes a robust relationship between reducing overcrowding and lowering prison violence. Minnesota prisons are already above maximum capacity, resulting in hundreds of people being housed in county jails while the prison population is projected to be more than 1,300 people over maximum capacity by 2022. As of July 2018 35.6% of Minnesota’s prison admissions, 2771 people, were incarcerated for crimeless technical violations of parole.

Beyond the recent killing, both guards and prisoners are facing increasing violence inside Minnesota’s prisons. Without changing conditions, it is hard to see an end rising violence. But right now, Smith hopes the public will speak up to end the lockdown and its human rights abuses. “We are just sitting in these cells smelling like billy goats,” he says.

Share This:

Members of the IWW have created the IWOC, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, which functions as a liaison for prisoners to organize each other, unionize, and build solid bridges between prisoners on the inside and fellow workers on the outside. Prison is a setup, a big business, there to make money off the People. Neither the setup, nor the slavery inside of prisons can be combated without the conscious participation of prisoners and the working class on the outside through mutual aid, solidarity, and the building of working relationships that transcend prison walls and the politics of mass incarceration. The IWOC has been actively reaching out to prisoners while at the same time prisoners have been reaching out to the IWW for representation and assistance in building a prisoners union. The IWOC has taken up the cause and is helping prisoners in every facility organize and build a union branch for themselves, which will together form a powerful IWW Industrial Union.

More Like This