About Conditions Of confinement
We expect to pay for our mistakes —but not at risk of our lives.
Correctional facilities are dangerous places. Facing peril, we are forced to live in fear and degradation. We are hungry, humiliated, violated. And we are exposed to Covid-19 because we are not considered human beings worthy of protection.
There is No #MeToo Movement Behind Bars
ELIMINATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE BEHIND BARS
A significant percentage of incarcerated people of color, Indigenous people and LGBTQIA2S individuals in confinement are victims of sexual assault. Correctional facilities are traumatizing, dangerous places, especially for women and LGBTQ+ people who are likely to face daily humiliation and physical and sexual abuse.
Congress passed the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) “...to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse in confinement facilities…”. And yet, 19 years later, sexual violence in correctional facilities continues to exist.
The PREA act and standards, developed with good intentions, fall short of what is needed to protect all incarcerated people. The failure to successfully implement PREA disproportionately impacts incarcerated people of color, Indigenous people and LGBTQIA2S individuals, who are most likely to be targeted for sexual assault.
Witness’s vision is to eliminate sexual violence in confinement.
A report written by Evie Litwok, founder of Witness to Mass Incarceration, was published on the National PEA Resource Center website.
You can download the report itself directly from here
leadership
Vulnerable populations
prea standards
We are the witnesses.
Witness Network
The Witness Network (WN) is a signature leadership development program for formerly incarcerated people of color, Indigenous people and LGBTQIA2S individuals.
The first WN cohort of formerly incarcerated leaders survived sexual violence in confinement, spent a combined 924 months, totalling 77 years, in 63 facilities, primarily jails and prisons. They went through a 15-session program designed to develop their leadership skills, sharing and speaking out about the sexual assault, abuse and harassment they endured. Personal interviews were used to create educational training films to highlight the unimaginable reality of sexual assault faced by each WN cohort member. Those who experienced this abuse are in a unique position to identify the systemic changes that must take place in order to eliminate sexual violence.
Evacuate or die.
THE INTERSECTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND MASS INCARCERATION
Most correctional facilities either don’t have emergency evacuation plans or don’t use the ones they have during times of natural disasters—like hurricanes, tornadoes, fires and floods. During these disasters, incarcerated people are left to shelter-in-place, leaving them at extremely high risk for sitting in sewage water, without power, electricity or food. Worse yet, they have no access to life-saving medications, such as insulin, meds for high blood pressure, seizures and the like.
We need allies to increase public support to combat this decades-old policy of leaving incarcerated people at such high risk for losing their lives under extreme conditions.