Ga lo Vann is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Eastern Oklahoma and a prisoner at Oregon State Correctional State Institution in Salem.
A vaccine carries part of a virus or its blueprints into a body, and this prompts the body’s immune system to produce antibodies counteracting the virus.
Taking a vaccine is receiving knowledge our bodies then read up on. After learning the code of the antigen (virus), the body can fight it off. The fact that the key to overcoming the virus comes from knowing it and all of the information it has to give is both profound and mundane.
To solve a problem sustainably, the solution must be informed by the problem, from intimate knowledge of it.
Some of the most effective problem-solving measures come from community-based participatory research. The communities’ members are asked what they see as their most pressing needs and how they believe they can be solved. Although the researchers are an integral part of each step, providing institutional resources, technical support and research products, the community is always the ultimate decision maker. The hope is that the best of Western academic knowledge and practice is placed in the service of the people in a way that does not perpetuate the traumas of the past from academic agents in community settings.
This approach is a paradigm shift and concession to the fact that you cannot solve or heal discord with any longevity if you are ignorant of your subject or target population. Only a community or subject can heal themselves or solve their own problems with any finality.
It is for this reason American prisons by and large do not create safety.
Mass incarceration is the term used to explain how a prison system stops locking up individuals and starts locking up populations. Prisoners are a group our society has agreed it is OK to oppress and deprive of constitutional rights guaranteed to all citizens, regardless of whether they purchased marijuana (in some states) for personal use or murdered another human being.
As such, prisoners are subject to the whims of prison officers and staff whose livelihoods depend upon the replication and spread not only of prison systems but also the perception of crime.
As crime in the U.S. declined, new legislation was passed in the form of tough-on-crime bills, bringing with them longer sentences. These new, harsher penalties serve to feed and engorge the prison industrial complex of the United States. The question of who will be sacrificed to become members of the American social underclass, subject to more restrictive and exclusionary laws than the rest, is easily answered: those of color, the poor.
When I entered the criminal justice system, a mentor of mine who was a health program manager told me a friend of hers worked within the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) as a corrections officer. He assured her I would be greeted by altruistic state employees offering me help and rehabilitative programming. She genuinely wished I would engage in healing from my addictions and reach a potential she had attempted to elicit from me for the years we worked together, a potential she only spied glimpses of.
To be sure, there are programs. Almost every one of them is orchestrated by some evangelical sect with Bible-based curriculum. The others are administered by organizations soliciting state contracts with fatigued instructors who, along with the state, need to pass every prisoner enrolled in the program to meet metrics and bill hours.
Under Measure 11 mandatory minimum sentencing, I and many other prisoners are not eligible for “good time.” We will serve every day of our sentences regardless of our conduct while incarcerated.
Most programs outside of the faith-based ones are open only to those who can earn good time. The rationale for this exclusionary practice is that we would not participate in a program unless we could be threatened by having our good time taken away.
I am serving 10 years under Measure 11 for drinking and driving and causing a collision that killed another driver. I petitioned the Oregon DOC to be admitted to a drug and alcohol program because it is my responsibility to fix my problems so when I am free, this does not happen again. I have been repeatedly denied treatment for my death-causing addiction because my participation will not get me out of prison sooner, therefore saving the Oregon DOC money. It might only save lives.
Also alarming is that prosocial rehabilitative efforts are not only neglected, but actively worked against by the Oregon DOC up to the highest level.
Corrections officers and brass rarely have any education beyond a high school diploma or work experience beyond food service, retail, hospitality and manual labor industries. While this previous work experience does not preclude them from performing basic corrections officer job duties, these education and work histories do not suggest they can responsibly be in charge of the lives of thousands of other people who themselves are traumatized and manifest destructive behaviors.
In prisons, corrections officers rule everyone inside and can determine what programs take place and who can participate regardless of the recommendations or protests of administrators who hold higher education degrees and may have previously worked in social services. Corrections culture is closed, secretive and resistant to change. Any request or proposal can be denied with the magic words, “It’s a security issue.”
A U.S. Department of Justice report following 401,288 prisoners released across 30 states in 2005 found 83% had been rearrested nine years later. It is clear that neither prisoners nor the communities they return to are benefitting from incarceration. Yet prison security culture stays closed and keeps prison walls impermeable for those outside trying to come in to learn and improve the system.
Decisions are made for prisoners without consulting us. Most of my fellow prisoners have histories of victimization by sexual and physical violence, poverty and addiction. These are not issues security staff have the education or an aptitude to handle. Instead, they use the tools of violence, or the threat of it, to control.
Trauma is a virus. Once exposed, it infects your mind, body, spirit and heart. It can manifest destructively inward as addictions or outward as violence. Some naturally possess the innate resources (antibodies) to counteract the trauma by processing it.
For many, a methodical examination of the causes of their traumas, workings and effects of that trauma, can teach their minds how to decode and process the traumas they have suffered and have yet to suffer.
The chance to come to know ourselves is the vaccine preventing further crime. It is a vaccine not readily distributed in Oregon’s prisons. We prisoners must come to know ourselves in a way that is meaningful and effective for us.
Academic, rehabilitative and culturally informed programming must be allowed to meet us inside, be shaped by us while we are not allowed out. The current criminal justice system results in 83% of released prisoners reoffending. This condemns our communities and children to becoming victims of preventable crimes.
Prisoners cannot change this alone. We need your help to guide traumatized officers and staff to a healing way. A good start is to contact your elected state representative and senator this legislative session, asking them to vote in favor of criminal justice reform bills coming before them this session.
Bills to support
These are some of the common-sense bills that seek to address the needs of victims and prisoners, and the healing required to change the picture of crime’s effects on our communities.
Visit oregonlegislture.gov to read the bills in full and to find your elected legislators and the names of the committee members to contact. And don’t delay: Several important bills related to criminal justice reform have already died this session.
Senate Bill 191 and House Bill 2002: Provides that a person sentenced to a mandatory minimum sentence under Measure 11 for a crime other than murder is eligible for a reduced sentence.
Senate Bill 207: Funds an office of Corrections Ombudsman by appropriating money from the general fund to the Governor’s Office.
Senate Bill 499: Allows a person to bring a civil claim against the state for wrongful conviction.
Senate Bill 571: Allows registered voters to vote while incarcerated.
Senate Bill 401 and House Bill 2172: Converts mandatory minimum sentences for certain felonies to presumptive sentences.
House Bill 2825: Requires a sentencing court to take into consideration domestic abuse that was a significant factor in the defendant’s criminal behavior.
House Bill 2169: Directs the Racial Justice Council to study potential changes to the criminal justice system and to provide results of the study to the Legislature.
House Bill 2932: Directs the Criminal Justice Commission to establish statewide database of reports of use of physical force by peace officers and corrections officers.
House Bill 2036: Authorizes conditions for medically related discharge of prisoners.
READ MORE: Ga lo Vann's column for Street Roots