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Water Catchment System 2
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1: Water Tanks 2: Storage
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To learn more about the Green Life program, or if you would like to support any of these viable ideas for sustainable projects inside San Quentin and opportunities for people in re-entry, contact Green Life Project Director Angela Sevin at angela4change@gmail.com or go to earthisland.org/index.php/projects/green-life
Ballot measure’s implementation speeds path to parole for many
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Wes Eisiminger
with Green Life’s partners to produce media about their work, access financial literacy, entrepreneurial training and build a therapeutic community support network among peers. Co-founder Troy Williams, a powerful and intense man who paroled from San Quentin almost two years ago, was damp from his trips through the rain. Like the onetime cellies around him, he was unbothered by his wet clothes. Prison, he knew, accustoms one to discomfort. Taking the stage during the ceremony, Williams told graduates that he had been skeptical about the relationship between criminal justice, prisons, and environmentalism. “I thought, ‘What do I care about trees when people are dying where I’m from?’ ” he said. But reading Jones’ book “helped me understand: If I don’t care about the world that sustains us, how can I care about the people in the world?” Williams also talked about how valuable incarcerated men’s voices and perspectives are. “Even though you don’t see how much you affect the outside world, a lot of people feel it. They might not know your name, but people know the work you are doing inside this prison.” After Williams spoke, graduates Wesley Eisiminger and Lynn Beyett presented their project, a plan to conserve water at the prison. California was drought-plagued at the time and as a result, showers in San Quentin had been limited to three days a week. Eisiminger and Beyett proposed a catchment system that uses rain runoff from the rooftops of buildings in San Quentin. For each 1,000 sq. ft. of roofing, the system would gather 600 gallons per inch of rainfall. San Quentin could use the water for irrigation during the summer months to support the prison’s gardens and fields. Changing gears, a graduate named Seth Hard-
Proposition 57 and California’s road to declaration
ing talked about how the first step toward a greener world can begin with literally walking greener. Harding’s prison blues folded around his bird-like frame, and his eyes glinted with excitement above a wild, white beard as he demonstrated a natural way to walk. According to him, “walking correctly” reduces stress and damage to joints. He said early Homo sapiens walked in this way, and learning to “walk green” is the first step on a larger journey back to a greener life. Whether San Quentin’s administration can implement a catchment system, or whether an octogenarian’s prescription for better walking becomes a standard on the yard, the Green Life crew seemed to feed on each other’s energy and ideas. “I am always amazed by the wisdom and insight of people cut off from society,” said Tamira Jones, a representative from Earth Island Institute, which fiscally sponsors The Green Life, who sat in the audience. “To have the time and opportunity to contemplate the choices we make and our impact on the world feels like a luxury for most, but in prison, it’s a daily imposed reality. To propose a right way, or even an improved way of living on the Earth, through consuming resources, or being a good steward, is a means of restoring a relationship, contributing to a solution and being of good use,” Jones said. “This is vital for a man who has been paying the price of past mistakes for decades and lost all ability to make choices, have free will, or participate in society.” Graduates are experiencing not just reconciliation with their environment — there, too, is another powerful kind of reconciliation: with oneself. Sustainability, zero waste and conservation are ideas that powerfully enhance a prisoner’s rehabilitative journey: to build community with others and with their planet.
Luis Muñiz, luismuniz03.tumblr.com
Inner City Advisors. Participants can get permaculture-design training and certification, are offered job referrals and various opportunities to work with a case manager. They can even work
ew CDCR regulations that implement Proposition 57 shift the focus of incarceration more toward rehabilitation, though not as much as many had hoped. Still, the rules are expected to allow the early release of about 2,000 prisoners within the first year — and up to 10,000 by 2021. That’s far fewer than the 30,000 estimated by the Legislative Analyst’s Office before the ballot measure passed in November 2016. The huge difference is mainly because the CDCR’s regulations now classify all third-strikers as if they are violent felons. Efforts are afoot in Sacramento to further narrow the list of crimes considered non-violent. That would further limit access to Proposition 57 programs. Proposition 57 was based on the idea that inmates are entitled to use prison time to improve their prospects for successful return to the community. Inmates who participate in rehabilitation or education programs and exhibit good behavior can shave months off their sentences or earn earlier opportunities for parole board hearings. Under the new regulations, inmates earn milestone credits when they complete training programs with attendance and performance requirements. These are one-time credit earnings — up to 12 weeks a year for completing 208 hours of an approved rehabilitation program, and up to six months for earning a graduate equivalency diploma (GED), associate (AA) or bachelor’s (BA) degree. The regulations boost good conduct credits for inmates who remain discipline-
free, ranging from one day of credit for four days of incarceration up to two days of credit for each day of incarceration, based on an inmate’s xoriginal sentence and current security status. Altogether, this could speed up the last years of especially long, determinate sentences for prisoners who have worked their security level down sufficiently to work in fire camps. Theoretically, an
incarcerated person eligible for all of the new options could have their sentence reduced by as much as 16 weeks if they participate in both milestone and rehabilitation programs and earn the maximum good-conduct credit. By restoring major incentives for prison programming, Proposition 57 could have a significant impact on California prison culture. One of the main unanswered questions is how relationships among prisoners and between prisoners and staff will affect implementation. One possibility is a return to the time when inmates were highly motivated to write books or create other works, which was one of the ways to earn parole consideration under the indeterminate sentence system of the 1950s and 1960s.
However, due to overcrowding, inmate control of key prison space, and securityheavy design of most California prisons, delivering rehabilitation programs won’t be easy. Potentially, programs implemented under Proposition 57 could benefit all incarcerated persons, not just those eligible for the new credits. Perhaps life without parole inmates and other inmates ineligible for Proposition 57 could be rewarded with security level reductions. The governor’s office appears to see Proposition 57 as a way to persuade the federal courts to lift its ongoing oversight of California prisons. That oversight has forced the state to address prison conditions, including overcrowding. Ultimately, the state must be able to manage its prison system on its own, within all legal boundaries and with dignity for all persons. Pushing against Proposition 57’s success are anti-crime advocates and district attorneys who say the early release of more inmates increases the risk of crime in their communities. At least six bills have been proposed in Sacramento to limit Proposition 57 by adding to the list of crimes classified as violent, and therefore ineligible for the new early release options. Adapted from an article written for Wall City by Jonathan Simon, the Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Center for the Study of Law & Society at U.C. Berkeley.
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