What is prison for? Rehabilitation? Revenge? To make millions for private corporations with ties to Department of Corrections (DOC) employees and politicians? Look up the whistle blower from MINCORR Industries, a private company under contract with the MN Department Of Corrections, secretly recording MINCORR employees bragging about making $50 million in one year from slave labor! You would expect rehabilitation, but that’s not even a top-5 priority of the DOC.
The DOC is not a rehabilitative system. It is a racket with the perfect cover: “keeping the communities safe from the criminals.” Since the target demographic are perceived as criminals, the public could care less about what goes on in here. Don’t be deceived by the public relations-written speeches, or the confusing number play in the MRRA earned time “policy”; the truth is “US” the incarcerated.
The programs that the DOC offers are one size fits all, standard and arbitrary. A college degree is the number-one program for reducing recidivism, but the average timeframe for incarcerated individuals to even get an AA degree has been 9 years! This is due to the limited classes made available, often repeating the exact same class back-to-back, though a new program at Stillwater is actually getting it done in two years.
Around 2018-19, Commissioner Schnell “ordered” close custody prisons (level-4/maximum) to begin the process of transitioning their facilities to single (1-man) cells. Stillwater was first to comply, but MCF-St. Cloud, and MCF-Rush City have not even attempted to try.
Overcrowding is a real human rights and civil rights issue. The violence that takes place due to double cells is major, and it makes prison very unsafe for all of us. Cellmates have killed, beat to a pulp, paralyzed, caused brain damage, stabbed, sexually assaulted and sexually harassed cellmates.
I’m currently helping a few inmates with their own civil rights suits. Hopefully we get enough for a class action. One individual, Armond Stewart, was attacked while sleeping, sending him to the hospital, leaving Stewart with constant headaches, loss of vision in left eye, loss of sleep and paranoia about it happening again. The correctional officer who discovered Stewart getting beat in a pool of his own blood refused to intervene to stop the assault.
Another individual named Eli B. Lange was sleeping when his cellmate bashed him in the head with a hot pot, causing significant damage, sending him to the hospital. Lange’s cellmate told the correctional officer to move him out of the cell earlier that day due to a conflict between him and Lange that was escalating. The guard refused to move one of them, and that night as Lange slept, he was brutally attacked.
Quinten L. Osgood JR. was attacked on flag time out of cells by two inmates for close to 10 minutes and the guards didn’t see or hear it. This has caused him to have panic attacks, insomnia and paranoia. Pierre Ramsey was viciously stabbed while being chased around the unit. He ran to the officers desk begging for help and the officers literally said they were “not trying to get stabbed too,” letting the inmate get stabbed around 7 times while they waited for the squad. Pierre had to run into someone else’s cell for safety.
DOC staff could care less about our safety or well-being. This is a FACT!
The fact that they are continuously prolonging us getting the phone function on our tablets shows their mindset towards our safety. As commissioner Paul Schnell said, 80% of fights in Rush City are over the phones. Riots are common; we just had an inmate stabbed in the head over the phone, and fights happen on a consistent basis.
The DOC staff are not worried about ending the violence — it’s their bread and butter. They try to use the excuse of not being able to stop someone from using their cellmate’s phone while serving loss of privileges punishment. So basically the chance that we will violate a “minor infraction” is more important than the often extreme violence committed over the phones?
Does this make sense? It does to the DOC. Violence is the Department of Corrections. Why would they want to reduce the only thing that validates their relevance and lines their pockets?
Don’t be fooled. Listen when we reach for help — you’d be surprised about what goes on in here. Any reasonable person would have an issue with the way the MN Department of Corrections is being run. A lack of accountability has bred an environment of corruption and exploitation, all at the expense of our wellbeing.
We are not political pawns, slaves or chattel, but that is what we are being used for. We are all trying to survive and become better in a place where chaos and ignorance is king and the facilities themselves are perpetuating it. How can we grow in a place where growth is met with the most resistance?
Alonzo Graham is an inmate at Rush City.
Look into Wisconsin doc. They kill your brain with solitary confinement torture… they covered our windows so we could not look outside. B.s. we are going to be neighbors to people look what they creating.
The chaos and ignorance is not of the inmate doing but from the environment that is intentionally created to be hostile which is orchestrated by prison officials for political and monetary reasons.