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The jailer is another kind of captive -
is the jailer envious of his prisoner's dreams?
Prisons are, by nature, political institutions erected to serve political interests of those in power. They are instruments designed to protect, not the people, but the status quo, and its historical usages against Africans, Indians, workers and radicals certainly supports that notion. 'Law' is similarly but a political expression and as such, usually a tool against the poor, the powerless and the unpopular. Rich men don't come to prison; and when they break laws they leave room for loopholes. For prison administrators, there is one kind of prisoner that they hate above all others: the jailhouse lawyer. For them, they are the modern-day equivalent of what once stirred the ire of their linear ancestors - the hated 'smart nigger' that dared question the slavers. On March 5, 1998, the state, angered at being beaten by a small group of jailhouse lawyers, attacked the Death Row unit at SCI Greene - not the prisoners, but their property - books, pens, legal material, etc. In late Jan. '98, the US District Court in Pittsburgh, through its Magistrate- Judge, ruled that the SCI Greene legal visitation procedures were unconstitutional as they were non-confidential. Similarly, actions were pending for years that the state violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. The state, embarrassed at its recent losses, hit back, stripping Death Row of its legal, educational, recreational and personal property, in stark retaliation for the vigorous advocacy of its jailhouse lawyers and supportive street counsel. Indeed, one SCI Greene administrator, present during the raid, admitted as much: "Is this behind that thing we talked about
a few months ago in the law library?"
In a fit of bureaucratic pique, the prisoncrats ordered that all property be boxed, shipped or destroyed. In one fell swoop the state cut visiting, limited property, cut educational programs, all in response to prisoner's legal and constitutional activities. What does a constitutional right mean, if when one exercises it, one is punished? Clearly, such a "right" is no right at all. It goes without saying, however, that a suit that proves the state violated its own heralded constitution can never be deemed "frivolous," yet the polluted air of the corporate media never tires of telling tales of the courts swimming in a deluge of jailhouse junk suits, while the Pittsburgh ruling merited nary a peep (nor did the state's retaliation). Why support a media enterprise that never supports you? Why patronize a paper that treats you as trash? In my book Live from Death Row (1995) I wrote of the state's attack on the life of the mind. That attack did come on hundreds of men in the state's holes, but Death Row was largely exempted. For daring to practice their alleged constitutional rights (and proving the state's violations!) the men on Death Row had that exemption nullified. They violated no prison rules save the unwritten one: Don't sue, and if you do - don't win. © 1998 Mumia Abu-Jamal
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The
State Against the 'Law'