Author: jess

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Letter to Commissioner Thomas Turco

Thomas A. Turco III
Office of the Commissioner
Central Headquarters
50 Maple Street, Suite 3
Milford, MA 01757-3698

Dear Commissioner Turco,

We call on you today to immediately and effectively address the environmental crisis in MA prisons. As you know from multiple Department of Environmental Protections (DEP) orders, there is a longstanding toxic water problem at MCI Norfolk; we also know from prisoner accounts and further reports that toxic, unhealthful water is a widespread problem in many of our state prisons.

Therefore, the #DeeperThanWater coalition calls upon you to immediately provide all MA prisoners with clean, safe, sufficient, and healthy water within health standards. Until that is accomplished, we demand that prisoners be provided 6 bottles of water per day at no cost, and receive back pay for all water bought at commissary from January 2011 through the present.

The MA DOC’s failure to address this environmental crisis statewide is an example of environmental racism, demonstrating a blatant disregard for the health of communities of color. The public health implications of incarceration and fundamentally racist nature of prisons and police indict this outdated institution. Below, we offer you a path to addressing the immediate crisis and the problems of incarceration in MA:

  1. Immediate provision of clean, safe, sufficient, and free water for drinking and daily use to all prisoners in MA
    1. Unless and until DOC provides clean, safe, sufficient, and free water re-institute furlough programs and/or release all affected prisoners
    2. Ensure the DOC complies with DEP orders to install a filtration system at the well, and take additional measures to ensure clean, sufficient, safe, and free water at the tap.
  2. Immediate end to solitary confinement and similar practices, to allow those prisoners access to clean, safe, sufficient, and free water
  3. Release all prisoners in affected prisons who are held on bail.
  4. Reduce the population of MCI Norfolk and other all MA prisons to originally intended levels, without building more prisons.
  5. End life without parole sentences that in particular subjugate elderly and disabled prisoners to a lifetime of environmental and health hazards.
  6. Restore voting rights to all prisoners in MA
  7. Begin to dismantle all prisons in MA and reallocate funding to addiction recovery programs, mental health services, education, housing, and job assistance.

We will continue to work for the freedom of our people, and look forward to your cooperation.

Sincerely,

 

Emancipation Initiative Showing Up for Racial Justice Boston
Black and Pink Boston Party for Socialism and Liberation
Young Abolitionists The City School
Jericho Boston Toxics Action Center
Black Lives Matter Boston ANSWER Coalition

 

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A message from Wayland Coleman

A message from Wayland Coleman, currently incarcerated at MCI-Norfolk, read at yesterday’s press conference:

I want to take a moment to thank everyone for taking the time to listen and for allowing us to have a voice. The Massachusetts Department of Corrections is a monstrosity that is designed to label, dehumanize, and warehouse men and women who are primarily from lower class, poor, and poverty-stricken communities, while keeping society blind and ignorant of the inhumanities of incarceration. It propagates fear in the public through the process of negative labeling, stereotyping, and stigmatizing. Its fear-based tactics triggers society to willingly pour hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars each year into a criminal justice system that has proven to not work. The repressive nature of incarceration is in direct contrast to society’s beliefs in a penological system that properly rehabilitates, and the actions of the criminal justice system as a whole contradicts society’s naïve belief in a criminal justice system that properly convicts.

The #DeeperThanWater coalition was motivated by the exposure of chronic water issues at MCI-Norfolk. The June 18, 2017 Boston Globe article by reporter David Abel revealed the tip of an iceberg of issues related to the institutional treatment of incarcerated men and women. The members of the #DeeperThanWater coalition recognize the violation of basic human rights and chose to step up to do something about it. They began to network with those of us who are incarcerated and with those who had been incarcerated before and discovered that the issues of the incarcerated were much deeper than just the water issues at MCI-Norfolk. The administrator and staff treatment of the incarcerated as less than is a cornerstone in the system of punishment, often resulting in the deprivation of basic human and civil rights. Society often doesn’t know about the abuses of incarcerated men and women through beatings, gassings, harassment, and psychological torture, not to mention rape and sexual harassment in women’s prisons.

Our purpose is to make you aware and to challenge you to step up and be a voice to change and bring an end to such draconian practices. Therefore, the goals of the #DeeperThanWater coalition in part is to bring public awareness to the inhumanities that exist within the system of incarceration, destroy the dehumanizing label of “inmate” in order to restore the concept of “person” to the incarcerated, and to reconnect people outside of prison to those inside. In conclusion, consider this: the wall of a so-called “correctional institution” is not there to keep the incarcerated from getting out. It’s there to keep you from looking in.

Thank you.

Wayland Coleman

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