Kite Line

In this week’s episode, we speak with Karen Smith in Florida, who gives us insights into Operation PUSH. Kicking off in just 10 days, Operation PUSH is a prisoner-organized work stoppage inside Florida’s sprawling Prison System. In their own words, Operation PUSH is “asking all prisoners within the Department of Corrections to take a stand by laying down starting January 15, 2018, until the injustice we see facing prisoners within the Florida system is resolved.”

They say, “We are calling on all organized groups as well as religious systems to come together on the same page. We will be taking a stand for:

1. Payment for our labor, rather than the current slave arrangement

In this week’s episode, we hear from Valerie Buford, the sister of Leon Benson, a prisoner here in Indiana. Valerie talks about the circumstances that lead to Leon being imprisoned on a murder charge since 1998. Through her story, you can hear how difficult it is to navigate the legal system, especially with few financial resources. Valerie walked us through the nightmarish ins and outs of the case, from a newspaper delivery person who didn’t have glasses on to the complexities of Post Conviction Relief (PRC) hearings. Valerie is still working to get Leon out, to get evidence heard in federal court, and to share Leon’s story along the way. You can learn more about Leon’s case at www.freeleonbenson.org.

This week we speak with Naomi Paik about her 2016 book, Rightlessness. Her work addresses the most pressing contemporary issues, drawing together the brutal state of exception imposed on Haitian and Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo with the historical experience of Japanese internment camps and the current anti-immigrant drive. She focuses on the spaces – whether prisons, concentration camps, or immigrant detention centers – necessary to isolate people and render them rightless and subhuman, and the enduring struggle of prisoners to assert their dignity and communicate with those of us on the outside.

This week features our second segment on PREA- the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Last week, we heard from Irene, who is being held in the Indiana Women’s Prison. She described her run-ins with PREA, leading to a broader analysis of the failure of prison bureaucracies to meaningfully respond to real abuse. At the same time, she shows how these bureaucracies use PREA to police and prevent even platonic, consensual contact between female prisoners.

This week, we hear statements from other prisoners, and learn more about the history of PREA. We encourage you to listen to Irene in last week’s episode, which you can find here.

This episode is the start of our conversation about PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act. PREA was passed in 2003 with unanimous support from both parties in Congress. The purpose of the act was to “provide for the analysis of the incidence and effects of prison rape in Federal, State, and local institutions and to provide information, resources, recommendations and funding to protect individuals from prison rape.”

Upon speaking to prisoners about their experiences with PREA, what we noticed was that prisoners were often upset that the act’s zero tolerance policy also includes banning touch of any kind, causing a different set of problems for them. We will get into the history of PREA in our next episode, along with more commentary from prisoners on how, from their experience, PREA is implemented within prisons. But first, we wanted to share this conversation with Irene, who is a prisoner here in Indiana. Irene has had first hand experiences with PREA, and we felt that sharing her story was an excellent way to start in on the subject of the Prison Rape Elimination Act.