Lately, Washington Division of Corrections officers have made journeys to Norway, ostensibly to implement features of that nation’s progressive jail mannequin again residence. The visits have spawned information releases about rehabilitation, empathy and humane therapy of prisoners. However, to the individuals locked up inside Washington prisons, the lived actuality couldn’t be extra completely different.
One of many few rehabilitative features of Washington’s jail system is programming, teams that provide academic, therapeutic, non secular and social help. Any jail system actually dedicated to a progressive mannequin of incarceration would prioritize making programming as broadly out there as attainable. As an alternative, DOC has shut down a number of the packages most useful to the incarcerated.
In 2019, former Washington Division of Corrections Secretary Steve Sinclair declared the state would begin to transfer away from punitive, warehousing fashions of incarceration, and into a brand new period impressed by Norway. He was changed in 2021 by former Division of Social and Well being Service Secretary Cheryl Unusual, to hold out Sinclair’s reforms.
However regardless of Unusual’s public statements, below her management the division has actively blocked, fairly than inspired, rehabilitation. The 2 DOC staff Unusual promoted to supervise packages — Director of Correctional Providers Lisa Flynn and Household Providers Program Supervisor Daybreak Taylor — are undermining public security by hindering the rehabilitation efforts of prisoners.
Since no less than 2008, DOC has supported and promoted peer-to-peer packages, that are common and have a report of success. Individuals with comparable experiences and struggles have a neater time studying from and supporting each other. That is what makes packages like Alcoholics Nameless profitable.
As COVID-19 restrictions eased, prisoners have been desperate to resume peer-to-peer programming. However in March, the prisoner-led packages Constructing Blocks and Peer 2 Peer have been abruptly halted at Washington Corrections Heart. On the identical time, the jail shuttered The Involved Lifers Group, a social help group I’m a member of, which has been doing rehabilitative work for 50 years.
A jail administrator who requested anonymity out of concern of retaliation mentioned these packages ended as a result of “headquarters” not supported peer-to-peer packages.
But DOC media relations supervisor Tobby Hatley mentioned in an electronic mail in late March the division nonetheless helps peer-to-peer packages. As proof, Hatley supplied a link to a two-year old DOC news release about a peer tutoring program. He additionally supplied an inventory of DOC’s present programming however Involved Lifers, Constructing Block and Peer 2 Peer have been noticeably absent from the record. Requested about CLO, Hatley mentioned, “DOC is unfamiliar with this group.”
Only a week later, WCC Affiliate Superintendent of Applications William Swain straight contradicted Hatley’s declare. DOC’s “new coverage doesn’t permit for peer led packages,” Swain informed a prisoner in an April 7 letter denying the prisoner’s proposed peer-led examine group.
Cultural teams have additionally come below growing assault, as incarcerated author Felix Sitthivong reported within the Worldwide Examiner in March. In Might, prisoners have been informed that minor kids wouldn’t be allowed to attend WCC’s “household pleasant” Juneteenth occasion, a vacation commemorating the emancipation of enslaved individuals within the U.S. Weeks later, WCC’s Black Prisoners Caucus was informed they may not have a Juneteenth celebration in any respect except they paid the vacation wages of guards who labored the occasion.
Steven Marshall, treasurer of the caucus, was “disgusted” by this announcement. As a Black man incarcerated in the identical system that enslaved his ancestors a whole bunch of years in the past, he discovered it offensive that he must pay guards to “oversee” a vacation meant to rejoice Black liberation.
The crackdown on prisoners who’re pursuing rehabilitation places the group in danger. In any case, most of us will, finally, be launched. It’s unclear if Unusual is attaining her imaginative and prescient for Washington prisons, or having that imaginative and prescient undermined. Unusual ought to keep away from selling management from inside if she actually needs to attain completely different outcomes. Flynn and Taylor may be the most effective DOC has to supply, but when that was adequate for the residents of this nice state, why are we seeking to Norway for solutions anyway?
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