Post Staff WriterA New Slant on the Old "Hands-Over-Someone-Else's-Mouth" Trick
Denial of Access
Concerning Jun 19th Palm Beach Post article
"Losing Typing Privilege Upsets PrisonersOne prisoner told me that the DOC would prefer inmates
only be able to write with crayon on toilet paper.
I guess you can imagine all the reasons why.This article calls it a typist's "Black Market", but on the
outside it's known as free enterprise.QUESTION: If everything is right in the DOC, why is every
new rule another muffle on the mouths of those in their keeping?Visualizing Transparent walls,
Kay Lee
2613 Larry Court
Eau Gallie, Florida 32935
321-253-3673
Rexford Tweed is a representative case for Okeechobee CI
on the FBI Citizen's Complaint
http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/fci/FBImain.html
Losing typing privilege upsets prisoners
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Palm Beach
Tuesday, June 19, 2001
OKEECHOBEE -- It takes patience for Rexford Tweed to write legal briefs in longhand. Usually he makes a few mistakes, which he scribbles over or erases as neatly as possible. Typing is not an option. Tweed, 66, is one of about 71,732 state prisoners unable to type.
He used to. But on May 11 the Department of Corrections decided word processors in prison libraries were not worth the upkeep. An order went out to the state's 56 prisons: Ship the typewriters and computers back to Tallahassee. Handwritten prisoner grievances soon followed.
The American Civil Liberties Union office in Miami got them. "To the extent that courts now or in the future are requiring that all submissions be typewritten, a ruling like this could be a denial of access," said Randall Marshall, legal director for ACLU of Florida.
Then there's penmanship. "The more difficult it is for the court to read and understand what the prisoner is saying, there certainly is a disadvantage built into that," Marshall said.
The law provides forms -- but not a means -- for prisoners to file appeals and other legal paperwork. Prisons gave inmates pencils, paper and word processors donated by state offices. Five or six inmate law clerks staff each prison library. But in a tight year marked by department-wide budget cuts, corrections officials found it cost $50,000 to maintain 75 to 80 machines statewide. Dumping them filled gaps in a budget straining to cover basics like food and health care.
It also riled prisoners like Tweed, who awoke one day at Okeechobee Correctional Institution to find his typewriter gone and with it, he alleges in a recent (handwritten) letter, the right to represent himself in court.
Spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff said a black market formed for typing services within the cashless prison society. Any work done by prisoners like Tweed, serving life for a 1988 sexual battery conviction in Polk County, should be for the prison, Rackleff said.
Get rid of the machines and the typing pool disappears, she said.
Copyright © 2001, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved.
To: kaylee1@charter.net , An action beneath contempt
Subject: An intolerable revocation of rights
The Pacific Institute for Criminal Justice
1868 San Juan Avenue
Berkeley, California, 9470719 June 01
Dear Kay:
Please use this text in any way which seems appropriate: I write it as a letter to the official (unknown to me) who revoked the typing privileges of prisoners at his facility.
Please say that I am a retired professor of criminal justice. and a former associate warden for treatment at a very old and very tough prison in New Jersey. Long, very long ago.
I am addressing this letter to whatever functionary was responsible for the (reported) revocation of typing privileges previously enjoyed by prisoners at the Okeechobee State Prison. Though I do not know this person, it seems to me I can imagine him (or her, though I doubt it) - and I should like to address him face to face.
Dear Sir:
We have not met, in the flesh, but I have a vivid sense of you from what you have reportedly done. Your face even in repose, would manifest an aura of watchful cunning, mixed with self-satisfaction, even pride. You believe you are good at what you do - which you might describe as foiling the evil designs of evil men. When you learn of my identity, you will assume a posture of belligerent self-righteousness, as if defending your good works against naive-do-gooders who endanger good people by coddling bad people..
What you have done may be contrary to regulations: it is surely an offense to decency. But you will have a good reason for it. You will point out that your prisoners are misusing their typing privileges by making unfounded complaints about "mistreatment" - and slandering the good men and women who devote themselves to the protection of decent citizens. (Etc., etc,.ad nauseum.)
I have a terrible need to express the depth of my contempt at your action, But to do so would be reduce me to your level, and imply that we both inhabit the same moral world.
Sincerely,
Richard R. Korn, Ph. D.
Director
The Pacific Institute for Criminal Justice