According to activists like Johnny Perez, “The thing that they take the most, also, is actually your identity.” As the authors of The Roles of Dehumanization and Moral outrage in Retributive Justice point out, “viewing others as lacking core human capacities and likening them to animals or objects may make them seem less sensitive to pain, more dangerous and uncontrollable, and thus more needful of severe and coercive forms of punishment.”

The Humanization Project provides a powerful framework for advocacy

The Humanization Project has been working with the impacted community to reform Virginia’s justice system since 2017. Co-founded by Executive Director Taj Mahon-Haft and his partner Gin Carter while Mahon-Haft was still incarcerated, the organization began by noting that the “human consequence” of policy decisions was often left out of reform discussions. Informed by Mahon-Haft’s experience as a trained sociologist, The Humanization Project used a humanization framework, centered in empathy and common ground, to develop several strategies to change this dynamic, including:

• Using multimedia platforms to curate narratives and impacted person-produced research that provide human faces and voices for issues and connecting those narratives with policymakers, advocates, and the public;
• Using community engagement and direct outreach to educate and inform impacted people and their families on how the legislative process works, what a bill will do, and the processes and procedures of system change;
• Leveraging their intersectionality as impacted advocates to facilitate human-centered discussions across a diverse array of partners in order to build capacity and coalition through commonality and compassion.

Humanizing future advocacy can strengthen reform

While many factors contributed to Virginia’s massive drop in prison population since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the passing of Earned Sentence Credit has played a huge role, as has the use of humanization as a framework for change. The Humanization Project is now applying this same advocacy model to other issues they’ve identified, such as their “Reentry Begins: Day 1 Inside” initiative, which focuses on creating earlier access to programming for people in prison. Currently, people may have to wait months or even years before accessing programming. With the passage of HB5148, earlier access to programming would mean incarcerated people could begin to accrue good time and ultimately become eligible for release earlier as well, further amplifying the success of the changes to earned sentence credit. The campaign is also turning the lens of humanization towards protecting visitation quality and access for those in Virginia’s prisons and their loved ones, an effort that the Prison Policy Initiative’s advocacy department has supported through research.³ Focusing on humanization as a method of advocacy has proven effective in many contexts, and advocates across the country can use it in their own reform work.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the dehumanization force of incarceration serves as a roadblock to reform by disconnecting policymakers from the human experiences of those in prison. Humanization is a framework that uses intersectionality, compassion, and common experience to implement meaningful, sweeping change by countering narratives that too often overlook the people in the policy. As the Humanization Project’s co-founder Gin Carter puts it, “This particular argument has been won with humanity conquering the day. We discuss the human impacts more while stereotypes, dog whistling and fear-mongering win out less often.”

Learn More

• Read the original article about The Humanization Project, by Emmett Sanders, from Prison Policy Initiatve.
• Learn more about good time and other ways to shorten excessive prison sentences in the report, Eight Keys to Mercy.
• Learn how mass decarceration does not make us less safe in Large scale releases and public safety.

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By Angela Davenport and Carrie Hatcher-Kay

In remembrance of Dr King’s legacy and in honor of his fight for justice, on #MLK weekend, Sunday, January 16th, several hundred organizers, activists, friends & family, justice-impacted and formerly incarcerated members of the community and concerned citizens – came together to speak out against abuse and negligenceat Women’s Huron Valley Prison. A host of media outlets were also present to witness the speakers, chants, signs and ongoing Twitter Storm centered around exposing the abhorrent conditions of Huron Valley Prison and to uplift MLK’s clarion call that “​Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere!”

Led by a coalition of organizations, several hundred people came out to protest the hellish, inhumane and unconstitutional conditions inside Huron Valley Correctional Facility, Michigan’s only prison for women. For decades women have been subjected toovercrowding, mold, sexual harassment, inadequate healthcare and countless abuse. We lift up the collective of groups, activists and organizations that came together to lead Sunday’s action: including Silent Cry, Redeeming Kimberly, MI-CEMI Survivors Speak, Nation Outside, JustUs N.O.W., Emergent Justice, VAAC and so many more. Our own VAAC sisters, Kimberly Woodson and Natalie Holbrook helped to organize Sunday’s rally, along with our sisters in the movement: Trische ‘ Duckworth, Elisheva T. Johnson, Shawanna Vaughn and Ashley Goldon, who gave powerful, impassioned speeches— speaking out against the continued lack of action to improve these cruel, inhuman, degrading conditions. Check out some of the iconic photos from that day.

Ashley Goldon, director of Nation Outside, a Michigan-based organization dedicated to supporting justice-impacted individuals, recounted her experiences in the facility during her speech, “Before I was an advocate, before I was a director of Nation Outside or had a pot to piss in, I was identified as 681349,” Golden said. “We can’t heal our nation by treating the most vulnerable population like animals. Even the pounds give their beasts access to heat and water.”

Although Women’s Huron Valley has been problematic with its overcrowding and abuse long before COVID, the pandemic has exacerbated the problems and has made it much more urgent for us to take action. 

For several months, Prison Radio has been receiving and amplifying the voices of women calling in to share details of the public health nightmare that is the Women’s Huron Valley Prison. The decrepit buildings host decades-old sewage, heating & cooling systems and moldy walls that are painted over rather than treated. Broken hot water tanks are not properly replaced, resulting in several units having hot water shortages, which is only amplified by the increased overcrowding. Correspondents like Auroniece Jackson have been calling with reports of serious overcrowding and staffing shortages; scabies outbreaks, inadequate masks and Covid protections; grossly insufficient health care (mental, physical, sanitary care); escalating reports of sexual harassment, violence and abuse.

People are living in inhumane, unconstitutional conditions. If we treated animals this way, someone would call PETA or the ASPCA. 

Overcrowded, under-resourced facilities that are filled with people who have other chronic illnesses is a perfect storm for large COVID outbreaks. These conditions have led to a COVID surge at Huron Valley, which according to the Detroit Free Press, the facility “constitutes 60% of all known COVID cases among the incarcerated in the state of Michigan.”

WHAT NEXT?!

What happens at Women’s Huron Valley Prison doesn’t stay there. The conspiracy of silence that has shrouded the prison for so long mustn’t be allowed to continue. We need community oversight for the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility.

SB 487 will create a Community Advisory Oversight Committee for Michigan’s only women’s prison. This committee will have the authority to review conditions of confinement complaints, including everything from problems with food and nutrition to systemic issues with health and mental health care services.

The next step is for the bill to be given a public hearing before the Committee. Senator Roger Victory is the Chair of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, and it is his job to call for the hearing. EMAIL SENATOR ROGER VICTORY AND URGE HIS COMMITTEE TO GIVE THE BILL A HEARING.

To email Senator Victory and learn more about Senate Bill 487, go to bit.ly/HearSB487

And join us for the next rally on February 13^th from noon to 2– Details TBA

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