Tag: poor health care

A costly mistake at age 15 holds 26-year-old Eric Allen Jr. in prison serving a 50-year-to-life plus life sentence, plus COVID-19. Eric intimately shares his fear of dying in prison alone, about his being stripped of all human rights and dignity, dehumanized and treated as an animal in a 24-hour cage who can’t fend for himself, with no voice or caretaker and at the mercy of guards who lie and falsify documents to hide inhumane wrongdoing.

After a combined total of over 65 years in the SHU, our brothers Zaharibu, Heshima and Kambui, after surviving decades of unprovoked torture, have been released to general population. This is in fact proof that through agitation, small victories can be won. It is not by mere coincidence that the administration all of a sudden decided to release all of us freedom fighters to GP so abruptly after the assassination of our beloved Hugo Pinell on Aug. 12.

The much-publicized brutality and inhumane conditions suffered by prisoners in solitary confinement worldwide has once again sparked global debates on the unprecedented urgency of prison abolition and, by default, on the implementation of community-led restorative justice programs. Over the past two to three decades, the global penal system has turned increasingly roughshod and its practices have grown greatly abusive.