COVID-19COVID- 19 Information In format ion fforor PPrisonersr isoners anand d S Stafftaff VolumeVlVolume 1, 1N1, NNumberum ber 3 AugustAugus t 2020 2020 WHY HAS COVID-19 NOT LED TO MORE HUMANITARIAN RELEASES? By Dan Berger Bottom had fi rst joined the Panthers in of his crime. Since that can never change, alil Muntaqim, a Black Panther impris- the weeks immediately following the as- PBA pressure renders the parole board ir- oned since 1971, is one of thousands sassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In relevant. Every prison sentence becomes a Jof elderly prisoners the United States prison, Bottom converted to Islam and de facto death penalty—as became evident has refused to free during the pandemic. adopted a new name, Jalil Muntaqim. Af- when one of Muntaqim’s codefendants, Al- In 1971, two weeks shy of his twentieth ter almost fi ve decades of incarceration, bert Nuh Washington, was denied compas- birthday, Anthony Bottom, a young Black Muntaqim has racked up a laudatory fi le sionate release for stage IV liver cancer. He Panther, along with another Panther, Albert of accomplishments. He earned two bach- died in a prison hospital in April 2000. Nuh Washington, were arrested following elor’s degrees before Bill Clinton ended When COVID-19 struck, Muntaqim’s a shootout with San Francisco police. The Pell eligibility for incarcerated people. He advocates argued before the state that his pair would be tried along with a third man, cofounded an organization, the Jericho life was in grave peril. Fourteen of the top Herman Bell, for a separate attack: the May Movement, dedicated to the release of U.S. twenty pandemic outbreak clusters have killing of two New York City police offi - political prisoners. He has received numer- been prisons and jails, and incarceration cers. They were convicted and sentenced ous accolades from human rights organiza- creates and exacerbates a number of health to twenty-fi ve years to life, the maximum tions for his dedication to social justice. He problems. At sixty-eight years old, having penalty in New York at the time. The judge has taught poetry, history, and alternatives lived for fi fty years in prison—and having who sentenced them said the sentence was to violence classes for other incarcerated survived a stroke, hypertension, and heart befi tting a society at war. people. When I fi rst began corresponding disease—Muntaqim is at extreme risk of Even the most liberal of U.S. governors with him nearly two decades ago, he was dying from COVID-19. He is one of more would rather risk their prisons turning into organizing a fundraiser for AIDS orphans than 9,000 people over the age of 55 who is mass graves than off er the faintest of ad- in Africa. incarcerated in New York. An estimated 10 missions that mass incarceration is unnec- In 2002 Muntaqim became eligible for percent of the nation’s prison population is essary for public safety. parole. Yet the Patrolmen’s Benevolence in this high-risk age group. Yet governors Association—the revanchist police frater- have thus far refused to act on clemency for nity that has shielded abusive cops and pur- elderly people. CONTENTS sued aggressive forms of social control— Recognizing the precarious situation, lobbied heavily against it, as it has every the New York State Supreme Court or- Humanitarian Releases............1 time he has come up for parole. The PBA dered Muntaqim’s temporary release at the U.C. Health Experts .................3 even set up a website to monitor the sched- end of April. In granting it, Judge Stephan ule of parole hearings for anyone convicted Schick said, “Mr. Muntaqim may have got- Covid News Summaries...........4 of killing a police offi cer, allowing visitors ten a 25-to-life sentence, but it was not a to send an automatically generated letter to death sentence.” The state Black, Puerto Congress Woman's Bill ............6 the parole board opposing consideration of Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative release. Caucus agreed, off ering a letter of support Anti-COVID Strike at WSP .......6 For decades, the PBA eff ectively con- for his release. Yet the state—led by Attor- The Reynolds Six .....................7 trolled the parole board, and such pressure ney General Letitia James, the fi rst black ensured Muntaqim would be denied parole woman to occupy that role—appealed Sul- Breaking News .........................8 every two years. Each time he has been de- livan’s ruling. As the appeal wound its way nied parole, the board has stated that its de- through the courts, Muntaqim sickened. On Virus Behind Bars ....................9 cision is based not on his deeds in prison or May 25, he was transferred to the Albany his readiness for release, but on the nature Medical Hospital with COVID-19. Ten days later, with damage to one of his lungs, incarceration, and the generally abysmal has so thoroughly limited the imagination his kidneys, and liver, Muntaqim had re- levels of health care inside, four times as of political elites that even a pandemic can- covered enough to be transferred back to many incarcerated people as staff die from not dislodge their belief in the necessity of the prison infi rmary. That same day, June the pandemic. And the vast majority of mass incarceration. Their refusal of a broad 4, the Appellate Division reversed Judge those who have died have been black or humanitarian release of incarcerated senior Schick’s ruling. Muntaqim, the court said, Latinx—higher even than the already dis- citizens serving lengthy sentences—really must remain in prison. parate rates at which New Yorkers of color the lowest of bars—reveals, in its absurd New York’s intransigence fi ts with a outside of prison have succumbed to the perverseness, a deeper truth: even the most national pattern that the pandemic has pandemic. RAPP calculates that 81 percent liberal of U.S. governors would rather risk revealed. For while a number of munici- of the deaths in prison since the pandemic their prisons turning into mass graves than palities shrunk their jail admissions in the began, both related to COVID-19 and not, off er the faintest of admissions that mass early months of the pandemic, no state has have been people of color. Black people ac- incarceration is a colossal failure and un- meaningfully reduced its prison popula- count for 14 precent of New York state, 50 necessary for public safety. tion. Jails generally house people who are precent of the state’s prison population, but If liberal politicians struggle to admit awaiting trial but who are too poor to make 60 percent of the deaths since the pandemic this fact, conservative politicians con- bail or who are serving short sentences, began. tinue to run in the opposite direction, in- whereas prisons house people who have sisting that the carceral state alone stands been found guilty and sentenced to a year between civilization and chaos, despite all or more. In the restrictive purview of elite evidence to the contrary. In a speech that empathy, then, jails have been an easier branded Antifa—an umbrella term for an- sell for massive reduction. According to tifascism activists—domestic terrorism, an analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative, Attorney General William Barr menaced local municipalities have reduced their jail would-be demonstrators by saying, “It is a populations by an average of 31 percent. federal crime to cross state lines or to use State governments and the federal Bureau interstate facilities to incite or participate in of Prisons, meanwhile, have reduced their violent rioting.” He promised to “enforce incarcerated population by an average of these laws.” The law in question is part of just 5 percent. Typically, this has meant a the 1968 repressive Anti-Riot Act that was release of a few hundred people—some of appended to the otherwise laudatory Fair whom have not been released but merely Housing Act. Legislators rushed to pass transferred to home confi nement. And it's not just New York. Wash- this bill after King’s assassination and the The carceral1 state is anticipatory vio- ington governor Jay Inslee was widely tinderbox it lit nationwide; they colloqui- lence masquerading as responsive force. praised for his commitment to science- ally referred to their repressive cri de coeur A number of states have created an al- based responses to climate change and 3 as the “Stokely Carmichael bill” in honor most nonexistent category of those war- the pandemic. Yet even in a proclamation of the charismatic SNCC leader whose in- ranting release: people over fi fty-fi ve who declaring that elderly people are at particu- cendiary talks white legislators blamed for are serving time for nonviolent drug off ens- lar risk of contracting the pandemic and antiracist uprisings. es and who are within three months of re- that prisons are too crowded for people to Spontaneous uprisings are by nature un- lease. Yet few of the many septuagenarians practice eff ective social distancing, Inslee predictable, yet a cogent demand is emerg- in our nation’s prisons meet this restrictive only committed to releasing a few hundred ing from coast to coast: “Defund the po- categorization. As the group Release Aging people from a state prison system that con- lice.” People in Prison (RAPP) noted in its evalu- fi nes 19,000. Inslee’s order pertained only The carceral state is anticipatory violence ation when New York governor Andrew to those who fall into the elusive category masquerading as responsive force, and Cuomo created this impossible category, that political scientists Marie Gottschalk Barr has been preparing for this moment 98 percent of the people over 55 incarcer- has called the “non-non-nons”: nonvio- for a long time.