When Michael Carvajal appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee, here’s what we want them to ask

In the Bureau of Prisons’ first oversight hearing since 2019, Barr appointee Michael Carvajal will face the Senate Judiciary Committee April 15. Politico reports that two major issues will be top-of-mind for the committee members: 1) how BOP has responded to the coronavirus pandemic and 2) how it’s implemented the First Step Act, a law adopted in 2018 designed in part to expand “evidence-based recidivism-reduction programs and productive activities” in federal prisons.

This is great, but we want the senators to go further than…

As I write this post, I am in lockdown. Yes, again: the same place I was in when we published my last post. This time the excuse for locking us all in our cells was the murder of one resident by another — and thus we were all punished. But there will be another reason soon — a fight maybe, or even just “disrespect” of the staff. This is the daily reality to which I was sent by the judge who denied my petition for release, saying I should spend the next three years continuing to “better” myself. …

The isolation is deadly in so many ways

“As COVID-19 continues to rip through prisons across the world, measures introduced by governments to prevent the spread of the disease have led to human rights violations, including the use of excessive solitary confinement to aid social distancing and inadequate measures to reduce the detrimental effects of isolation.” Netsanet Belay, Research and Advocacy Director, Amnesty International

By Rob Barton

These last six months in transit have been a living hell. I have been shuffled all over the country (from D.C. to Virginia to West Virginia to Oklahoma to Florida) with my wrists…

I will no longer allow my environment to define me

By Rob Barton

I partnered with Pam to launch this blog as a “voice for the voiceless,” hoping to use the stories of people behind bars to paint vivid pictures of our pain, struggles, losses — and resilience — to both humanize the experience of incarceration for those on the outside and galvanize support for dismantling and rebuilding our broken criminal justice system to be more holistic and humane.

But I never foresaw what this blog would become to me personally. It now is a huge part of my support…

It’s popular right now for media to mark the one-year anniversary of the pandemic by sharing people’s memories of “the moment” when COVID-19 first became real to them. It is important to assure that voices of people who are incarcerated are heard as well. Following are edited transcripts of interviews conducted by Pam Bailey with three Black men, originally from Washington, D.C.

Colie Levar Long, D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility

All we knew at first was that there was a virus that allegedly came from China. Honestly, we all thought it was sort of funny early on. Based on the first reports we heard, it seemed like only…

By Pam Bailey

Prisons have become cauldrons of coronavirus infection, with confirmed cases four times higher than in the general population and mortality twice as high overall. (Deaths are as much as seven times higher in some state prisons.) And although politicians debate whether incarcerated people are “worthy” of saving, the pandemic cannot be brought into control without bringing those numbers down. …

We need to know our presence is still felt.

“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.” Kurt Vonnegut

I originally composed this post on Valentine’s Day, but the insane mess the postal service has become delayed publication until now. Valentine’s Day was created for lovers, but it got me to thinking about what the word means to me and many others who are incarcerated.

My collaborator Pam shared with me how Pete (a recently released friend of mine) described being treated like a “Cabbage Patch” doll when he…

The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by white supremacists continues to hog the headlines in the news I read. And it should, but not just because of the specific acts of the day, but also for the systemic biases it exposes once again in American government and society.

According to The New York Times, the officials who testified at the first of a series of hearings were “reluctant to accept responsibility for the politically charged issue of calling in National Guard troops — even as the violence escalated.” …