PRISON NATION -Gallery Guide

— PRISON NATION — 

Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex 

An Exhibition from the Archives of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics 

America, Cedomir Kostovic, Springfield, MO, 2004 

Center for the Study of Political Graphics • 310.397.3100 • www.politicalgraphics.org

From the Archives of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics 

Over 25 powerful exhibitions available to display at your local school, library, gallery or museum! 

The Center for the Study of Political 

Graphics (CSPG) collects, preserves 

and exhibits posters relating to historical 

and contemporary movements for 

social change. Through its diverse programs, 

CSPG is reclaiming the power 

of art to inspire action. 

CSPG has more than 80,000 posters 

going back to the 19th century, 

including the largest collection of post- 

World War II political posters in the 

U.S. Through traveling exhibitions, 

online photo albums, internships and 

volunteer opportunities, CSPG actively 

shares this valuable resource with 

artists, activists, academics, curators, 

students and the public. 

CSPG's rapidly growing collection 

contains posters reflecting historical, 

cultural, geographic and ideological 

diversity. CSPG is unique in its efforts 

to share this valuable resource with a 

broader public. CSPG demonstrates 

how art can be used to educate, prompt 

public debate and commentary and 

influence social change. 

The donation of posters is welcome 

and all donations are tax deductible. 

Center for the Study of 

Political Graphics 

3916 Sepulveda Blvc, Suite 103 

Cuvler City, CA 90230 

310.397.3100 

cspg@politicalgraphics.org 

www.politicalgraphics.org 

Earth, Wind & Solar—International Ecology Posters 

Pollution makes the world a global 

village where no continent, country or 

neighborhood is safe. Global warming. 

Arsenic in drinking water. Pesticide 

poisoning. Environmental racism. 

Nuclear waste disposal. Irradiated 

and genetically modified food. The 

list is endless. Multinational corporations’ 

insatiable need for new markets 

and greater profits consistently overrides 

environmental concerns and few 

governments oppose them. But these 

posters convey an increasing sense of 

urgency as international artists continue 

to use the power of graphics to 

organize a frontline of defense against 

rapidly escalating pollution. 

Funded in part by the City of Los Angeles, 

Department of Cultural Affairs 

Globalize THIS!—International Graphics of Resistance 

Trickle Down Effect, Craig Updegrove,Silkscreen, 2011, 

Anchorage, AK 

Globalization affects every aspect of 

life on this planet, including climate 

change, outsourced jobs, pollution and 

wars. The anti-globalization movement 

was dramatically announced 

to the world in the 1990s by two 

Arizona Liberty, Roy Villalobos, Offset, 2010, Chicago, IL 

memorable social explosions: the 1994 

Zapatista National Liberation Army's 

(EZLN) insurrection against the North 

American Free Trade Agreement and 

the 1999 “Battle of Seattle,” when tens 

of thousands protested against the World 

Trade Organization. Since then, there 

have been many protests—including 

the ongoing Occupy Movement—and 

countless graphics protesting meetings 

where representatives of the world’s 

most powerful economies set agendas 

for the rest of the world. 

The posters in this exhibition are from 

the archives and from the streets. As 

ecological crises escalate, resources 

diminish and distribution of wealth is 

increasingly skewed towards the richest 

1%, activists and artists throughout 

the world are speaking with a clarity 

and coherence exceeding that of most 

politicians. Their graphic messages are 

loud and clear: value people over profits, 

free speech over free trade and 

justice over inequality. 

Funded in part by the California Arts 

Council, City of Los Angeles Department of 

Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Arts 

Commission, the National Endowment for 

the Arts and individual donors. 

No Human Being Is Illegal!— 

Posters on the Myths & Realities of the Immigrant Experience 

"Give me your tired, your poor, your 

huddled masses yearning to breathe 

free…" The disparity between Emma 

Lazarus' eloquent promise on the 

Statue of Liberty and ongoing attacks 

against immigrants is enormous. From 

the Irish and Chinese who came in the 

nineteenth century to the Mexicans 

and Middle Easterners arriving now, 

discrimination based on race, class, 

language and culture has unfortunately 

been consistent. Whether the reason 

for migration is to escape war, seek 

asylum from persecution or pursue 

better economic opportunities, leaving 

one’s family, friends and home is never 

easy. These posters document diverse 

efforts to make immigrants’ reality 

closer to their hopes and dreams. 

Graphic Thanks to: 

The Andy Warhol Foundation 

Funded in part by the City of Los Angeles 

Cultual Affairs Department, the Brody 

Fund, and individual donors. 

Warning Against Warning, U.G. Sato; Pan -Pacific Committee for 

environmental Poster Design Exhibition Silkscreen, 1998, Toyko, Japan 

Subvertisements—Using Ads & Logos for Protest 

AIDS Crisis, Gang, ACT UP/NY, Offset, 1990, New York, NY 

Your Sneakers, Your iPod or Your 

Life—branding has never been hotter. 

Adults and children alike are targeted 

by ads and pressured by peers to buy 

the right clothes, the right toys and the 

right cars. They often pay extra for the 

privilege of being a walking advertisement. 

Many items have led to killings 

just to get the logo. 

Throughout the world, political artists 

are taking advantage of highly marketed 

advertising campaigns to bring 

diverse social causes to the forefront. 

Reclaiming the F-Word—Posters on International FeminismS 

The plural feminismS acknowledges 

and honors the diversity of international 

women’s movements. This exhibition 

documents women’s struggles, leadership 

and activism throughout the world 

and how posters are central to challenging 

oppressive conditions. Some 

posters assert the concept of “global 

feminism,” giving gender primacy 

Rural Women Unite Against Violence, Network of Rural Women's 

Groups, Silkscreen, no date, Sri Lanka 

An iPod ad becomes an image of torture 

in Abu Ghraib prison. Insecticide 

“Raid” becomes anti-immigrant spray 

“Fraid.” “Tony the Tiger” becomes 

“Frankentony.” Whether they are protesting 

the Viet Nam or Iraq wars, 

drawing our attention to sweatshop 

labor or opposing the use of pesticides 

and genetically modified foods, these 

posters provide an alternative view of 

reality. 

Funded in part by the Department of Cultural 

Affairs, City of Los Angeles and individual 

donors. 

over other issues. Others challenge 

the claim that gender is a defining and 

unifying issue. Posters explore class, 

race and gender as they show women 

at the forefront of struggles for human 

rights and social change. Powerful 

graphics depict diverse feminist issues 

from the suffragettes to the activism 

of the 1970s to today. The family unit, 

childcare, labor, ecology, trafficking 

and violence are just some of the topics 

covered. By expanding the definition 

of feminism, Reclaiming the F-Word 

should inspire women and men of all 

ages to be proud to call themselves 

feminists. 

Funded in part by the Department of 

Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles and 

individual donors. 

2.

— PRISON NATION — 

Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex 

An Exhibition from the Archives of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics 

PRISON NATION—Posters on the 

Prison Industrial Complex fulfills 

the Center for the Study of Political 

Graphic’s (CSPG) mission to demonstrate 

the integral connection between 

art and social action. Powerful posters 

from artists, activists, and organizations 

around the country and the world, cry 

out against the devastating impact of 

the mass incarceration required to support 

the rapidly growing prison industrial 

complex (PIC). These graphics 

are evidence that there has never been 

a viable movement for social change 

without the arts being pivotal to conveying 

the ideas and passions of that 

movement. Grassroots efforts are more 

effective when strong graphics project 

their messages. 

While funding for education and the 

arts plummets, funding for new prisons 

is skyrocketing. The United States has 

the largest prison population in the 

world—over 2.3 million people behind 

bars—quadrupling between 2008 and 

2011. The U.S. has only 5% of the 

world’s population yet we have 25% 

of the world’s incarcerated population. 

Another sobering statistic is that black 

men are imprisoned four times more 

often than any other group: 1 out of 3 

black men, 1 out of 6 Latino men, and 1 

out of 17 white men will be imprisoned 

at some point in their lifetime. 

Between 1980 and 2010, the total number 

of women in prison grew from 

15,118 to over 112,797—a 646% 

increase. The number of women in 

prison, a third of whom were incarcerated 

for drug offenses, has increased 

at nearly 1.5 times the rate of men. 

These women often have histories of 

physical and sexual abuse, high rates 

of HIV infection and substance abuse. 

This dramatic increase in the number 

of imprisoned women also severely 

impacts their children, and almost 2 

million children have a parent in prison 

on any given day. As one poster asks, 

"Have women become that much more 

dangerous?" 

California locks up more people than 

any other state in the U.S. and currently 

proposes to spend billions more to 

build additional prisons and jails across 

the state. Between 1984 and 2005, 

California built 22 prisons but only one 

addition to the University of California 

(UC Merced) and three California State 

Universities. As several posters point 

out, California is #1 in prison spending, 

but near the bottom of the country in 

education spending. 

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 

that California must reduce its prison 

population to 137% of its design capacity 

as the lack of medical and mental 

health care, due to overcrowding, 

amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, 

and was thus unconstitutional. 

Not only was there an average of one 

death per week caused by these deficiencies, 

but the Court also noted that 

the inmate suicide rate in California 

was 80 percent higher than anywhere 

else in the nation. 

To comply with the ruling, Gov. Jerry 

Brown implemented realignment. 

AB109, mandates that people with 

non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual 

offenses either be housed in county jails 

rather than in state prisons or be put 

under county probation instead of state 

parole. How this ultimately will work 

remains to be seen, but at present, the 

county jails are already overwhelmed 

and overcrowded. Each county has the 

choice of investing allotted realignment 

dollars into much needed programs that 

prevent people from going to prison or 

jail, or use it to continue tough on crime 

policies that will ensure the 70% recidivism 

rate and the excuse to build more 

jails. Of the state’s 58 counties, 32 currently 

have jail expansion projects in 

the works funded by AB900, the largest 

prison expansion plan in the history of 

the world. 

Since the 1970s, the rate of most serious 

crimes has dropped or remained 

stable, yet since 1980, prisons have 

been filled to double capacity. People 

of color, the poor, the illiterate, the 

mentally ill, youth, immigrants and 

women are the primary occupants. This 

phenomenal growth in the rate of incarceration 

is due to the war on drugs, 

mandatory minimum sentencing laws, 

conspiracy laws, the criminalization 

of youth, gang injunctions, inadequate 

legal representation, joblessness, slashing 

of social services, and profits made 

by investors and multinational corporations, 

like Corrections Corporation of 

America, GEO and AECOM, planning, 

building and servicing the prisons. 

The powerful posters in Prison Nation 

represent many of these issues—they 

document campaigns to expose horrifying 

conditions inside prisons; they 

challenge the economic and racial disparities 

of those most impacted by 

incarceration; and they record what 

has been a long standing, often lonely, 

struggle for those fighting to stop growing 

incarceration rates and the construction 

of more prisons and jails. The posters 

also reveal a growing awareness as 

contemporary poster artists around the 

country respond to the growing prison 

industry. 

CSPG exhibitions-to-go 

Prison Nation was first produced in 2006, using vintage posters from CSPG’s 

archive and funded by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. 

A generous 2012 grant from The James Irvine Foundation with additional 

funding from the California Arts Council, allowed CSPG not only to update 

the exhibition, but also to produce it in a new, more flexible traveling exhibition 

format called Exhibitions-to-Go. 

Prison Nation is the pilot project for Exhibitions-to-Go, using laminated, 

high quality digital reproductions to travel to venues that lack the security and 

environmental conditions needed to protect the vintage posters. Exhibitionsto-Go 

can be easily installed in non-traditional and alternative spaces including 

libraries, community centers, schools and even outdoor festivals. CSPG 

will continue to travel its vintage posters, but digital reproductions will greatly 

increase the potential audiences for our powerful exhibitions. During 2013/14, 

Prison Nation will travel to 6 venues throughout the San Joaquin Valley 

and the Inland Empire, areas underserved by the arts but highly impacted by 

California’s expanding prisons. 

3. 

Free, Cedomir Kostovic, Offset, 2002, Springfield, MO 

It is sobering to note the ongoing relevancy 

of some of the oldest posters: 

Danny Lyon’s photo from the 1960s 

depicts prison slave labor conditions 

that still exist. Peg Averill’s 1980s poster 

states, "Capital Punishment means 

them without the capital gets the punishment." 

The text, above an image 

comparing lynching with the electric 

chair, refers both to racism and to 

economic disparity, and is a powerful 

indictment against the inequities of the 

past and present legal system. 

Although the majority of the posters 

come from throughout the U.S., international 

graphics also focus on the U.S. 

legal system. Posters from Australia, 

France, and Switzerland reveal inconsistencies 

between the professed democratic 

ideals of the American system, 

and the too often undemocratic practice 

of using the legal system to prosecute 

and persecute individuals whose political 

views challenge the U.S. government— 

from Sacco and Vanzetti in the 

1920s to Mumia Abu Jamal now. 

The posters show ongoing struggles but 

they also record the victories that can 

result from years of grass roots organizing. 

In 1991, the Mothers of East L.A. 

succeeded in preventing the construction 

of a prison in their community. As 

of January 1, 2013, the shackling of 

incarcerated pregnant women is illegal 

in California. 

Prison Nation shows that victories are 

possible through educating and organizing, 

and posters are central to these 

efforts. They also show how struggles 

of the past continue to inform and 

inspire struggles of the present—as 

when a photo from the 1971 Attica 

prison uprising in New York, appears 

on a 2011 poster supporting the Pelican 

Bay hunger strike. This is the power 

and importance of the poster. 

This unique exhibition is relevant both 

to the community most effected by 

growing incarceration and to artists, 

activists, students, teachers, social service 

agencies, and community leaders. 

The posters in Prison Nation cover 

many of the critical issues surrounding 

the system of mass incarceration 

including: the death penalty, the Three 

Strikes law, racism, access to education 

and health care, the growing rate of 

incarceration, slave labor, divestment, 

privatization, torture, and re-entry into 

the community. They show the power 

of art to educate and inspire. 

Carol A. Wells 

CSPG Founder and Executive Director 

Mary Sutton 

CSPG Program Director 

Collection Criteria 

If you have posters under the bed, 

in the closet, basement or attic, 

please consider donating them to 

the Center for the Study of Political 

Graphics, so that the history they 

tell will not be lost to future generations. 

All donated posters will 

become part of CSPG’s unique 

archive and will be accessible to 

curators, researchers and students. 

Criteria for posters CSPG collects: 

1. All art is political, but not all art 

is overtly political. CSPG only 

collects posters with overt political 

content. We accept posters 

from all political perspectives. 

2. Posters must have been produced 

in multiples, such as offset, 

silkscreen, stencil, linocut, 

digital print, etc.

Prison Nation—Posters on the prison Industrial Complex 

BARS & STRIPES 

The posters introducing Prison Nation 

make powerful statements about the 

contradictions that claim that U.S. 

leads the world in democracy and freedom, 

while it actually leads the world 

in mass incarceration. Each of the 

artists uses the U.S. flag to focus their 

protest often transforming the stripes 

into prison bars. 

1. America 

Cedomir Kostovic 

Offset, 2004 

Springfield, MO 

2. Detrás Rejas 

Leslie Dwyer 

Digital Print, 2012 

Los Angeles, CA 

Translation: Behind Bars We’re 

Number One, World Leader in 

Locking Up People 

4. Attica 

Ernest Pignon Ernest 

Offset, 1974 

Paris, France 

On September 9, 1971, inmates rioted 

at the Attica Correctional Facility, a 

maximum-security prison in upstate 

New York. The underlying causes were 

overcrowding, poor food, inadequate 

medical care, rigid censorship and 

minimal visiting rights. Four days after 

inmates seized control of an exercise 

yard and took guards as hostages, New 

York’s Republican governor, Nelson 

Rockefeller, ordered state troopers 

to attack. Forty-three people died at 

Attica during a six minute assault. 

Nearly all were killed—inmates and 

hostages alike—when state troopers 

stormed the prison and fired indiscriminately 

through a thick haze of tear gas. 

Subsequently, the troopers and Attica 

guards lied about what had happened 

and resorted to brutal reprisals, beating 

and torturing inmates. In January, 

2000, a federal judge in Rochester, NY 

awarded $8 million to inmates who 

were beaten and tortured, as well as $4 

million for lawyers’ fees. 

5. Made by Prisoners 

Sheila Pinkel 



6. XIIIth Amendment 

of the U.S. Constitution 

Rodolfo "Rudy" Cuellar, Louie 

"the Foot" Gonzalez 

Royal Chicano Air Force; 

Committee to Abolish 

Prison Slavery 

Silkscreen, 1977 

Sacramento, CA 

7. Prisons: Slave Ships on Dry Land 

Andalusia Knoll 


Pittsburgh, PA 

Knoll superimposes an 18th century 

diagram of a slave ship onto a contemporary 

prison floor plan. The diagram, 

from a 1789 British abolitionist 

pamphlet, “Description of a Slave 

Ship,” illustrates how African slaves 

were transported in overcrowded and 

inhumane conditions during the trip 

across the Atlantic Ocean also known 

as the Middle Passage. The infamous 

Middle Passage was the second stage 

in the slave trade triangle. The triangle 

began with slave traders in Europe who 

went to Africa to collect slaves who 

were then exchanged for goods in the 

Americas. From the Americas, the traders 

returned to Europe with their profits 

and the slave triangle continued. 

9. No More Cotton-Pickin Prisons 

Artist Unknown 

Offset, circa 1970s 

Austin, TX 

1967/68 Photo by Danny Lyon 

One of the most prominent and influential 

photojournalists of the late twentieth 

century, Danny Lyon began documenting 

the civil rights movement in 1964 

as a member of the Student Nonviolent 

Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 

1967/68, a time when photographers 

were rarely allowed in prisons, Lyon 

photographed seven prisons in Texas 

and published them in "Conversations 

With the Dead" (1971), including the 

photograph used here. The photo was 

used in this poster without Lyon’s 

knowledge and his name was misspelled. 

Six years after "Conversations 

with the Dead" was published, it was 

used by the U.S. Department of Justice 

in a massive lawsuit against the Texas 

prison system. Lyon testified and the 

pictures were introduced as evidence. 

The prisoners won the suit and the prison 

system was temporarily improved. 

Thirty years later, in a 1995 interview 

by Nan Goldin, (Artforum, 9/95), 

Lyon said, "Actually it's supposed to be 

worse now. Since then, the demographics 

of prisons have just gone the other 

way; the prison population has quadrupled 

since I photographed in Texas 

a generation ago. Still, my photographs 

were used by people who meant well to 

try to change prison conditions and for 

a while prison conditions were forced 

to change.” 

CRIMINALIZATION OF RACE, 

CLASS & GENDER 

LEGALIZED SLAVERY 

3. USA - Hüter der Menschenrechte? 

Amnesty International 

Offset, circa 1998 

Germany 

Translation: USA–Guardian of 

Human Rights? 

Police Brutality, Death Penalty, Abusing 

Prisoners, Racism 

The first significant expansion to the 

U.S. prison system and the hiring 

out of prison labor to private business 

happened after the abolition of 

slavery in order to re-enslave thousands 

of African-Americans. In fact, 

the Thirteenth Amendment to the 

Constitution stated, “Neither slavery 

nor involuntary servitude, except as 

a punishment for crime whereof the 

party shall have been duly convicted, 

shall exist within the United States, 

or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” 

Today, prisoners are regularly 

paid as little as 30 cents per hour, and 

work for hundreds of U.S. corporations 

including interests as diverse as telephone 

companies, airlines and clothing 

manufacturer 

8. Slavery Still Exists 

Willie Worley Jr. 

Photocopy, 2012 

Polkton, NC 

Willey Worley Jr. is a political cartoonist 

who is currently incarcerated 

in Brown Creek Correctional 

Institute in North Carolina. Worley’s 

work has been featured on The Real 

Cost of Prisons Project website, 

www.realcostofprisons.org. 


#0453523 

B.C.C.I #3510 

PO Box 310 

Polkton, NC 28135 

10. Missing: 2.3 Million Americans 

Nicolas Lampert 

Justseeds 


Milwaukee, WI 

4. 

11. We Don't Lynch Them Anymore 

Scott Boylston 


Savannah, GA


12. I Don't See an American Dream 

Scott Braley 

Fireworks Graphics 


Berkeley, CA 

On March 3, 1991, Glen “Rodney” 

King, an unarmed African-American 

motorist, was stopped for speeding. He 

was repeatedly beaten by Los Angeles 

police officers as he lay defenseless on 

the ground. Unbeknownst to the police, 

George Holliday videotaped the beating 

and it was broadcast throughout the 

world. The incident raised an outcry 

as people outside and within African- 

American communities believed the 

beating was racially motivated, excessive 

and an example of routine police 

brutality. Although 27 officers were 

witnesses and/or participants, only 4 

were put on trial in state courts. 

The trial was moved from Los Angeles 

to the Simi Valley community because 

the defense argued that a fair trial 

in Los Angeles was impossible. Simi 

Valley was chosen because it has a 

much smaller African-American population 

and a large number of law 

enforcement personnel live there. 

In April, 1992, the four officers on trial 

were acquitted. This triggered a massive 

uprising in Los Angeles, resulting 

in 53 deaths, over 2,000 injured and 

hundreds of buildings severely damaged 

or destroyed by fire. Looting and 

destruction were widespread, including 

in Latin American immigrant communities. 

Rodney King pleaded for peace 

before TV cameras, saying, “Can we 

all just get along? Can we get along?” 

In response to the public outrage set off 

by the acquittals in state courts, a federal 

grand jury indicted the four officers 

for violating Rodney King’s civil 

rights. Two officers were convicted 

and two were acquitted. On August 4, 

1993, a federal judge sentenced LAPD 

officers Stacey Koon and Laurence 

Powell to 30 months in prison. 

ended when NYPD officers pushed 

and corraled protesters for not complying 

with an order to disperse. 

advances, with statements like “I’ll 

f**k you straight sweetheart.” He then 

spat on one woman’s face and flung 

a lit cigarette at them. After Buckle 

began choking one of the women, 

Patreese Johnson took a small kitchen 

knife and stabbed his arm to get him 

off her friend. The four women were 

arrested and received sentences ranging 

from three and a half to eleven 

years in prison. As of January 2013, 

Patreese Johnson remains in prison. 

Buckle was not arrested or charged. 

As a result of the probe into falsified 

evidence and police perjury, 106 prior 

criminal convictions were overturned. 

The Rampart Scandal resulted in more 

than 140 civil lawsuits against the City 

of Los Angeles, costing taxpayers an 

estimated $125 million in settlements. 

NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL 

14. Jail is Just a Kind of Warehouse 

for Poor People 

Peg Averill 

War Resisters League 

Offset, mid 1970s 

New York, NY 

15. To Protect and Serve the Rich 

Mark Vallen 



Throughout the U.S., laws that prohibit 

sleeping, eating, sitting and panhandling 

in public spaces are used 

to arrest and funnel homeless people 

into the criminal justice system, thus 

criminalizing poverty. Some community 

members have mobilized to defeat 

these laws. In 2012, voters in Berkeley, 

California defeated Measure S, which 

would have prohibited sitting and lying 

down in public areas. 

16. Stop Police Brutality 

Cristy C. Road 

INCITE! 


Brooklyn, NY 

INCITE! Women of Color Against 

Violence is a national grassroots organization 

working to end all violence 

against women of color, including state 

sanctioned violence. INCITE! uses 

direct actions, critical dialogue and 

grassroots organizing tactics. 

18. Sam & Alec 

Sabrina Jones 

Real Cost of Prisons Project, 

Center for the Study 

of Political Graphics 



19. Crack the CIA 

Crack the CIA Coalition 

Offset, 1997 


Ironically, poor communities long 

reported, and Congressional records 

prove, that the CIA worked with the 

military and local law enforcement 

–under the direction of the Reagan 

Administration and subsequent administrations–to 

flood neighborhoods with 

drugs and weapons in an effort to 

destabilize the energy and infrastructure 

of the civil rights movements. The 

resulting increase in drug use and violence 

destroyed families, bankrupted 

communities and fueled even greater 

expansion of police, courts, detention 

and incarceration. 

21. Who's the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim? 

Yolanda M. Lopez 

Offset, 1981 

San Francisco, CA 

22. ICE 

Ricardo Levins Morales 


Minneapolis, MN 

The U.S. Immigration and Customs 

Enforcement (ICE) was established 

in 2003 and is the principle branch 

of the Department of Homeland 

Security. When the Immigration and 

Naturalization Service (INS) was dismantled 

the same year, ICE took on 

part of its responsibilities and now 

handles the deportation and removal of 

immigrants. 

Secure Communities is a program 

formed through a partnership between 

ICE and the criminal justice system. Any 

immigrant arrested now is held under 

ICE detention regardless of whether or 

not they have committed a crime. ICE 

detentions can last from 48 hours to 

over a year. Many immigrant detention 

centers are privately owned and the 

longer they hold people in detention the 

more profits they make. One of the more 

prominent investors in private prisons is 

Wells Fargo Bank which owns 4 million 

shares in GEO Group and 50,000 

shares in the Corrections Corporation of 

America (CCA). 

13. End Stop and Frisk 

United Healthcare Workers East 

Offset, 2012 

New York, NY 

“Stop and frisk” is a policing method 

carried out by the New York Police 

Department (NYPD) based on what is 

called “reasonable suspicion” of criminal 

activity—others call it racial profiling. 

In 2011, 84 % of those stopped 

by the NYPD were black or Latino 

yet they only make up 23% and 29% 

of the general population respectively. 

Multiple class action suits have been 

filed in response to this obvious racial 

profiling. A January, 2013 court ruling 

deemed elements of “stop and 

frisk” to be a violation of the Fourth 

Amendment. 

This poster was created for the Silent 

March, held in June, 2012, when thousands 

marched to demand an end to the 

criminalization of their communities. 

This silent and peaceful procession 

17. Support Self Defense Free 

the New Jersey 4 

Ryan Conrad 

Naughty North Collective 


Portland, ME 

On August 18, 2006, four young 

African-American lesbians from 

Newark, New Jersey—Venice Brown 

(19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese 

Johnson (20), and Renata Hill (24)— 

traveled to New York’s Greenwich 

Village where they were subjected to a 

homophobic verbal and physical assault 

by Dwayne Buckle (29), also African- 

American. Buckle verbally attacked 

the women, who rejected his sexual 

5. 

20. Dis Belief 

Robbie Conal 

Offset, 2000 


This poster was produced in response 

to widespread corruption in the antigang 

unit of the Los Angeles Police 

Department, Rampart Division in the 

late 1990s. Commonly referred to as the 

Rampart Scandal, more than 70 police 

officers were implicated in some form 

of misconduct, making it one of the 

most widespread cases of documented 

police misconduct in U.S. history. The 

convicted offenses included unprovoked 

shootings, unprovoked beatings, 

planting of false evidence, framing of 

suspects, stealing and dealing narcotics, 

bank robbery, perjury and the covering 

up of evidence of these activities.


men are locked up at a rate of 1238 per 

100,000. 1 out of 3 black men, 1 out of 

6 Hispanic men, and 1 out of 17 white 

men will be imprisoned at some point 

in their lifetime. 

The monarch butterfly was recently 

adopted by the immigrant rights movement 

as a symbol of freedom for immigrants 

because of its ability to move 

freely across borders. 

EDUCATION NOT 

INCARCERATION 

27. Prisons for Profits 

Mariona Barkus 



23. Alto Arizona 

Ernesto Yerena 

Offset, 2010 


Alto Arizona/Stop Arizona is a national 

movement opposing Arizona Senate 

Bill 1070, which targets immigrants and 

encourages racial profiling. SB1070 

was drafted by ALEC, a corporate 

funded organization working with state 

legislators to rewrite state laws. Their 

“model bills” erode environmental protection, 

privatize education, weaken 

labor unions, reduce gun control and 

attack many basic rights in order to 

increase corporate profits. SB1070 

greatly benefited the Corrections 

Corporation of America, a member of 

ALEC and one of the two largest private 

prison corporations in the world. 

287G is a federal program authorizing 

local police to perform immigration 

law enforcement. It reduces reporting 

domestic violence and other crimes, 

when victims worry about deportation. 

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio was sued 

by the U.S. Department of Justice for 

racial profiling. 

24. Being Undocumented 

is Not a Crime 

Favianna Rodriguez 

Justseeds 


Oakland, CA 

PRISON BOOM 

The United States has the largest prison 

population in the world with over 2.3 

million people locked up in prisons 

and jails. Almost 5 million more people 

are on parole or probation across 

the country. In 2011, nearly 7 million 

people were under control of the U.S. 

Corrections System up from almost 

2 million in 1980. 

People residing in the U.S. make up 

only 5% of the world’s population yet 

we cage 25% of the world's prisoners. 

In 2011, the Washington Bureau of 

Justice Statistics showed that the U.S. 

locks up 716 people per 100,000 where 

other Western countries lock people up 

at a much lower rate: 

France – 96 per 100,000 

Canada – 114 per 100,000 

Denmark – 74 per 100,000. 

Germany – 85 per 100,000 

Many don’t want to believe that even 

China incarcerates its citizens at a 

much lower rate of 114 per 100,000 

people. The U.S. compares more closely 

with countries like Rwanda which 

locks up 595 people per 100,000. 

2011 statistics confirm an even more 

shocking truth that the U.S. locks up 

black men at a rate of 3,023 people 

per 100,000, a rate that is more than 4 

times higher than the average rate for 

all those incarcerated in the U.S. Latino 

25. Cornucopia of the World 

Ashley Fauvre 

Prison Moratorium Project 

Offset, 2002 

Berkeley, CA 

Based on 1892 poster by Randy 

McNally encouraging immigration to 

California. 

26. If We Build It, They Will Come 

Allison Coley; Architects/ 

Designers/Planners for Social 

Responsibility 


Palmdale, CA 

Architects/Designers/Planners for 

Social Responsibility (ADPSR) was 

established in 1981 to promote nuclear 

disarmament. Since 1990, they have 

focused on ecologically and socially 

responsible development, including educating 

and organizing their constituency 

to stop designing prisons. ADPSR is 

currently asking the American Institute 

of Architects (AIA) to amend its Code 

of Ethics and Professional Conduct to 

prohibit the design of spaces for torture 

and killing, including the design of 

execution chambers and super-maximum 

security prisons (“supermax”), 

which inflict torture through long-term 

solitary confinement. 

The poster’s title is a play on the signature 

line of the 1989 Kevin Costner 

film, Field of Dreams, where Costner’s 

character repeatedly hears a voice whispering 

“If you build it they will come.” 

In other words, the more prisons you 

build, the more prisoners you need to 

fill them. The pledge for the initiative 

promoted by the poster is: 

I believe that too many people are 

being incarcerated and that our society 

must immediately develop and implement 

alternatives to incarceration. I 

believe in creating design for a society 

with real security and social justice for 

all and I will not contribute my design 

to the perpetuation of wrongful institutions 

that abuse others. In recognition 

of the deep injustice of the present 

prison system, I pledge not to do any 

work that furthers the construction of 

prisons or jails. 

6. 

28. Divest 

Mary Sutton 

Northland Poster Collective 

Sara Olson Defense Fund 

Committee 



Divest is the opposite of invest. For 

decades, apartheid South Africa relied 

on transnational corporations for capital 

and technology. First advocated in 

the 1960s, but only implemented on 

a significant scale in the 1980s, the 

divestment campaign aimed at encouraging 

individuals and institutions to 

sell their holdings in companies doing 

business in South Africa. Religious 

leaders informed their followers; union 

members pressured their companies’ 

stockholders; and consumers questioned 

their store-owners. Students 

played an especially important role by 

compelling universities to change their 

portfolios. Eventually, international 

institutions and governments pulled the 

financial plug, and the South African 

government was forced to negotiate 

with a wide variety of political parties, 

including the African National 

Congress (ANC), ultimately leading to 

the dismantling of the apartheid system. 

This poster uses familiar imagery 

from the anti-apartheid movement and 

proposes using this same tactic against 

corporations making huge profits from 

the prison industry. 

29. Dump the Prison Stock! 

Melanie Cervantes 

Dignidad Rebelde 


Oakland, CA 

Melanie Cervantes created this poster 

for Enlace, a coalition of low-wage 

worker centers, unions and community 

organizations in Mexico and the U.S. 

working to hold trans-national corporations 

accountable for the treatment 

of their workers. This graphic is part 

of their national campaign demanding 

divestment from the two largest private 

U.S. prisons (see poster #23). 

30. Educate Don't Incarcerate 

Deborah Krall 



In 1995, while Deborah Krall was 

teaching pre school in Boyle Heights, 

one of her students and his older 

brother came to the school’s Halloween 

parade in black and white striped convict 

costumes. Krall was extremely 

disturbed at this image considering the 

high rates of incarceration for Latinos. 

After photographing the child in his 

costume, Krall used the photo as the 

focal point of a 1996 art installation 

in a cell at the Lincoln Heights Jail. 

The silkscreen poster shown here was 

made four years later, during the 2000 

Democratic National Convention in 

downtown Los Angeles, and was carried 

by hundreds of people during a 

demonstration against police brutality. 

31. California: #1 in Prison Spending 

Design Action 

Critical Resistance, Freedom 

Winter Coalition 

Offset, 2001 

Oakland, CA 

Since this poster was produced in 

2001, the statistics have worsened. 

California continues to be #1 in prison 

spending but fluctuates between 

46th and 50th in education spending. 

See also poster #35 

32. Investing in Our Future 

Amy Files 


Boston, MA

Dump the Prison Stock!, Melanie Cervantes, Dignidad Rebelde, Reproduction of Digital Print, Oakland, CA, 2012

ORGANIZATIONS, SERVICES & RESOURCES • ORGANIZATIONS, SERVICES & RESOURCES • ORGANIZATIONS, SERVICES & RESOURCES 

ACTION COMMITTEE 

FOR WOMEN IN PRISON (ACWIP) 

Our mission is to advocate for the humane 

and compassionate treatment of all incarcerated 

women everywhere. We work for 

the release of all women who are unjustly 

imprisoned and strive to reduce the over 

reliance on incarceration. 

We work to bring fairness and equity into 

the criminal justice system and to shift the 

focus to treatment and restorative justice. 

We work to educate the public, develop 

new legislation, implement new programs, 

and develop resources for incarcerated 

women. Join Us! 

769 Northwestern Drive 

Claremont, CA 91711 

626.710.7543 • info@acwip.net 

www.acwip.net 

ALL OF US OR NONE 

All of Us or None is a national organizing 

initiative of prisoners, former prisoners 

and felons to combat the many 

forms of discrimination that we face as 

the result of felony convictions. After 

serving time in torturous conditions, we 

were met at the gate with prejudice and 

discrimination that made our re-entry 

into society difficult and in some cases 

impossible. Many of us recognize that 

our prison sentence never ends as long as 

the discrimination against us continues. 

San Fransisco 

1540 Market Street, Suite 490 

San Francisco, CA 94102 

415.255.7036 • info@allofusornone.org 

Los Angeles 

C/O A New Way Of Life 

P.O Box 875288 

Los Angeles, CA 90087 

323.563.3575 

www.allofusornone.org 

BLACK & PINK 

Black & Pink is an open family of 

LGBTQ prisoners and “free world” 

allies who support each other. Our work 

towards the abolition of the prison industrial 

complex is rooted in the experience 

of currently and formerly incarcerated 

people. We are outraged by the specific 

violence of the prison industrial 

complex against LGBTQ people. We 

respond through advocacy, education, 

direct service and organizing. 

www.blackandpink.org 

blackandpink99@gmail.com 

CALIFORNIA COALITION 

FOR WOMEN PRISONERS 

CCWP is a grassroots social justice organization 

with members inside and outside 

prison, that challenges the institutional 

violence imposed by the prison industrial 

complex (PIC) on women, transgender 

people and communities of color. We see 

the struggle for racial and gender justice 

as central to dismantling the PIC and we 

prioritize the leadership of the people, 

families and communities most impacted 

in building this movement. 

1540 Market St., Suite 490 


415.255.7036 ext. 314 

info@womenprisoners.org 

www.womenprisoners.org 

CALIFORNIA PRISON FOCUS 

California Prison Focus works to 

abolish the California prison system 

in its present condition. 

We investigate and expose human 

rights abuses with the goal of ending 

long term isolation, medical neglect 

and all forms of discrimination. 

We stand up against the cruel and torturous 

conditions of the California 

prison system, especially advocating for 

the immediate shut down of all SHU 

(Security Housing Units) cells and similar 

conditions of solitary confinement. 

We publish a quarterly magazine, Prison 

Focus, distributed free to SHU prisoners, 

$6 a year to other prisoners and $20 

a year to former prisoners, their family 

members, activists and friends of CPF. 

1904 Franklin Street, Suite 507 

Oakland, CA 94612 

510.836.7222 • contact@prisons.org 

www.prisons.org 

CALIFORNIA PRISON 

MORATORIUM PROJECT 

The California Prison Moratorium 

Project seeks to stop all public and private 

prison construction in California. 

623 N. Harrison 

Fresno, CA 93728 

559.367.6020 • pmpvalle@yahoo.com 

www.calipmp.org 

CAPTIVE GENDERS 

In the first collection of its kind, Eric 

A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together 

current and former prisoners, activists 

and academics to offer new ways for 

understanding how race, gender, ability 

and sexuality are lived under the crushing 

weight of captivity. Through a politic of 

gender self-determination, this collection 

argues that trans/queer liberation and 

prison abolition must be grown together. 

captivegenders@gmail.com 

www.captivegenders.net 

CALIFORNIA ACCESS TO 

RECOVERY EFFORT (CARE) 

CARE is a substance abuse treatment 

and recovery program funded by the 

President’s Access to Recovery 

initiative. It empowers youth to make 

individual choices for recovery that 

reflect their personal values. 

Who is eligible? 

The CARE program is open to youth 12 

through 20 years of age who live in Butte, 

Los Angeles, Sacramento, Shasta or 

Tehama counties and want help overcoming 

problems with drug or alcohol abuse. 

www.californiacares4youth.com 

866.350.8773 

THE COALITION TO END SHERIFF 

VIOLENCE IN LA JAILS 

Demands: 

Civilian Review Board–Get rid of 

the Office of Independent Review 

and Separate Custody and Patrol 

No new construction of any L.A. jails, 

particularly Men’s Central Jail–Use dollars 

towards community–based programs 

Reduce the L.A. county jail 

population–Overcrowded jails 

creates and impacts VIOLENCE! 

Respect and Dignity for all Incarcerated 

People–End to all Sheriff–Deputy Abuse 

213. 375.4518 

endsheriffviolence@gmail.com 

CALIFORNIANS UNITED FOR A 

RESPONSIBLE BUDGET (CURB) 

CURB is a broad-based coalition of 

over 50 organizations seeking to CURB 

prison spending by reducing the number 

of people in prison and the number of 

prisons in the state. CURB seeks member 

organizations who are working on 

issues related to the prison industrial 

complex and organizations concerned 

about our state budget priorities. 

CURB Statewide Office 

1322 Webster St # 210 

Oakland, CA 94612-3217 

510.435.1176 

info@curbprisonspending.org 

www.curbprisonspending.org 

CRITICAL RESISTANCE 

Critical Resistance seeks to build an 

international movement to end the 

Prison Industrial Complex by challenging 

the belief that caging and controlling 

people makes us safe. We believe that 

basic necessities such as food, shelter 

and freedom are what really make 

our communities secure. As such, our 

work is part of global struggles against 

inequality and powerlessness. The success 

of the movement requires that 

it reflect communities most affected 

by the PIC. Because we seek to abolish 

the PIC, we cannot support any 

work that extends its life or scope. 

NATIONAL OFFICE 

1904 Franklin Street, Suite 504 


510.444.0484 

crnational@criticalresistance.org 

www.criticalresistance.org 

LOS ANGELES 

crla@criticalresistance.org 

8. 

DEATH PENALTY FOCUS 

5 Third Street, Suite 725 


415.243.0143 

information@deathpenalty.org 

DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE 

The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) is 

the nation's leading organization promoting 

alternatives to the drug war 

that are grounded in science, compassion, 

health and human rights. 

We work to ensure that our nation’s 

drug policies no longer arrest, incarcerate, 

disenfranchise and otherwise harm 

millions of nonviolent people. Our work 

inevitably requires us to address the disproportionate 

impact of the drug war on 

people of color. DPA is actively involved 

in the legislative process and seeks to 

roll back the excesses of the drug war, 

block new, harmful initiatives and promote 

sensible drug policy reforms. 

DPA Office of Legal Affairs 

legalaffairs@drugpolicy.org 


213.382.6400 • la@drugpolicy.org 


415.241.9800 • sf@drugpolicy.org 

ENLACE 

Prison Divestment Campaign 

Enlace, in partnership with community 

groups and unions across the US, is calling 

on all public and private institutions 

to divest their holdings in Corrections 

Corporation of America (CCA) and 

GEO Group, America’s largest private 

prison corporations which have received 

profits of billions in taxpayer money 

PO Box 33167, Portland, OR 97292 

503.295.6466 • info@enlaceintl.org 

Los Angeles Office 

213.880.5448 

FAMILIES TO AMEND CALIFORNIA'S 

3-STRIKES (FACTS) 

FACTS is a coalition of organizations 

from Los Angeles with the intent 

of abolishing the Three Strikes Law. 

We now have chapters in many cities 

across the state and have also 

reached into the prisons with the formation 

of Inside FACTS chapters. 

Our newsletter “The Striker” is an 

organizing tool inside (prison) and 

out, reaching widely into the prisons 

and the communities to inform and 

encourage the fighting capacity of the 

thousands of men and women and their 

loved ones who have had their lives 

stolen from them by this unjust law. 

FACTS State Chapter 

C/O Chuco’s Justice Center 

1137 E. Redondo Blvd. 

Inglewood, CA 90302 

213.746.4844 • gerifacts@sbcglobal.net 

www.facts1.org 

FAIR CHANCE PROJECT 

We are loved ones of long-term 

lifers, concerned community members 

and Liberated Lifers intent on carrying 

out the fight to free thousands 

who have spent far too many years 

behind bars long after they accepted 

full responsibility for their crimes, long 

after they have been fully rehabilitated 

and long after they fulfilled all requirements 

to become eligible for parole. 

We are committed to building a future for 

all California residents beyond prisons. 

Our goal is to transform unjust sentencing 

laws and parole policies while protecting 

the human and constitutional rights 

of those impacted by the prison system. 

C/O Chuco’s Justice Center 



213.746.4343 • jimmy_thompson@att.net 

www.fairchanceproject.org 

FRIENDS OUTSIDE 

Our mission is to improve the quality of 

life of families, children and communities 

impacted by incarceration, and to 

assist with successful community reentry 

and family reunification for those transitioning 

from confinement to freedom 

Friends Outside provides a Visitor Center 

at each state prison to help remove barriers 

to visiting in order to encourage visits 

and thereby support family and 

community ties. 

The Visitor Centers are located outside 

the prison walls but on the prison 

grounds. They are usually adjacent to 

the visitor parking lots and are clearly 

identified. These Visitor Centers 

provide childcare, transportation, 

information and resources and a restful 

and welcoming place to stop for 

a moment before and after visits. 

P.O. Box 4085 

Stockton, CA 95204 

209.955.0701 • gnewby@friendsoutside.org 

www.friendsoutside.org 

GENDER JUSTICE LA 

Gender Justice LA is a Los Angeles 

based non-profit organization working to 

build the collective power of the transgender 

community. We operate several 

programs, including a response to the 

criminalization of transgender people 

by the Los Angeles Police Department. 

6815 W. Willoughby Ave. Suite #203 


323.960.9279 • info@gjla.org 

www.gjla.org 

GET ON THE BUS 

Get On The Bus brings children and 

their guardians/caregivers from throughout 

the State of California to visit their 

mothers and fathers in prison. An 

annual event, Get On The Bus, offers 

free transportation for the children and 

their caregivers to the prison, provides 

travel bags for the children, comfort 

care bags for the caregivers, a photo of 

each child with his or her parent and 

meals for the day (breakfast, snacks on 

the bus, lunch at the prison and dinner 

on the way home) all at no cost to the 

children’s family. On the bus trip home, 

following a four-hour visit, each child 

receives a teddy bear with a letter from 

their parent and post-event counseling. 

5411 Camellia Ave 

Hollywood, CA 91601 

818.980.7714 • info@getonthebus.us 

www.getonthebus.us 

HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES 

Our mission at Homeboy Industries 

provides hope, training and support to 

gang-involved and recently incarcerated 

men and women, allowing them 

to redirect their lives and become contributing 

members of our community. 

We provide a continuum of services 

and programs designed to meet their 

multiple needs and we run four businesses 

that serve as job-training sites. 

130 W. Bruno St. 


323.526.1254 

info@homeboyindustries.org 

www.homeboyindustries.org 

HOMIES UNIDOS 

Homies Unidos works to provide the 

inherent right of youth, families and 

their communities to pursue their 

dreams and achieve their full potential 

in a just, safe and healthy society. 

For more than ten years, Homies Unidos 

has been a catalyst for change, working 

to end violence and promote peace 

in our communities through gang 

prevention, the promotion of human 

rights in immigrant communities and 

the empowerment of youth through 

positive alternatives to gang involvement 

and destructive behavior. 

1625 W Olympic Blvd # 706 

Los Angeles, CA 90015-3811 

213.383.7484 

aalvardo@homiesunidos.org 

www.homiesunidos.org 

Organizations, Services and Resources 

–continued on page 13.

While There Is a Lower Class I Am in It, Reproduction of Offset, United States, 1965-1980

Prison Nation GLOSSARY • Prison Nation GLOSSARY • Prison 

AB109 

In 2012, the state was ordered by a 

by the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce 

the state’s prison population to 137.5 

percent of design capacity by June 

27, 2013. AB 109, The Public Safety 

Realignment Act of 2011, was passed 

in response to this court order. 

As of October 2011, this law shifted 

significant responsibilities for corrections 

from the state government 

to local county governments. When 

individuals convicted of non-violent, 

non-serious, and non-sexual offenses 

are released from prison, they will be 

under the jurisdiction of county probation 

rather than state parole supervision. 

People who are newly convicted 

of low level non-violent offenses or 

have violated their probation will serve 

their time county jail instead of state 

prison. 

There is the potential within the law 

for each county to use AB109 dollars 

to divert people from lock-up to community-based 

alternatives. Ironically 

counties were allotted millions of dollars 

through AB109 to manage their 

realignment populations while at the 

same time jail construction dollars 

were being doled out through AB900. 

As a result, each County Board has a 

choice to make: they can use AB109 

as an opportunity to reduce recidivism 

and prevent further jail overcrowding 

by investing the dollars into community 

based re-entry services, alternatives 

to imprisonment and resources 

like housing, employment, health care, 

youth programs and job services; or 

they can dump the money into expanding 

the capacity of the county sheriff’s 

department and set the stage for ongoing 

70% recidivism rates, jail overcrowding, 

increased violence and the 

excuse to build more jails. 

L.A. County was awarded $124 million 

dollars in the first year of realignment 

and $90 million of that is allocated for 

Sheriff Baca despite the recent investigation 

of ongoing violence by deputies 

against prisoners. Only a small percent 

of those dollars have been distributed 

to agencies that provide housing to 

former prisoners. 

Rise Up LA No Prisons No Jails, Mary Sutton, Californians United 

for a Responsible, Budget, Rise Up LA, Digital Print, 2012 


AB900 

AB900, also known as the Public 

Safety and Offender Rehabilitation 

Services Act of 2007, is the biggest 

single prison construction bill in history. 

It was designed to help reform 

California’s overburdened correctional 

system and address severe overcrowding 

in state prisons and local jails by 

funding 53,000 new beds. 

At that time, California’s adult prisons 

were filled to double capacity–incarcerating 

almost 180,000 people in 

facilities designed for 84,653. Federal 

judges had placed California’s prison 

medical system under receivership and 

were contemplating the early release of 

tens of thousands of prisoners. 

Rather than implement measures 

known to reduce prison populations 

like addressing the harsh sentencing, 

mandatory minimums, unfair parole 

practices, and drug and gang laws 

responsible for prison overcrowding, 

then Governor Schwarzenegger worked 

with then Speaker of the Assembly 

Fabian Nuñez to gut a transportation 

bill, craft a massive prison construction 

bill. They pushed the state legislature 

to pass it in a process that happened 

over a few days without public notice, 

public hearings or media investigation 

or debate. 

Though California has since cut $4 billion 

from AB900 construction dollars, 

many AB900 projects are underway 

across the state including the renovation 

and reuse of the former Northern 

California Women’s Facility in San 

Joaquin County as a 500-bed adult male 

secure community reentry facility. 

The second phase of AB900 provides 

that bond funding be awarded to counties 

for the construction of new jail 

facilities. Of the state’s 58 counties, 

32 have jail expansion projects on the 

table funded by AB900 

ABOLITION 

Inspired by the movement for the abolition 

of slavery, PIC abolition is a political 

vision with the goal of eliminating 

imprisonment, policing, and surveillance 

and creating lasting alternatives 

to punishment and imprisonment. 

BAN THE BOX 

When people apply for jobs, school, 

financial aid, housing and entitlements 

(such as welfare and food stamps) they 

are required to check a box indicating 

whether or not they have been 

convicted. The movement to “Ban the 

Box” refers to campaigns throughout 

the U.S. to remove this box from all 

applications. Removing the box would 

not eliminate background checks so 

community protections would still be 

in place. However, eliminating the box 

would go a long way toward easing 

the discrimination faced by formerly 

incarcerated people. 

CYA 

The California Youth Authority 

(CYA) is now the California Division 

of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). The CYA 

was long known as the world’s largest 

and most notorious youth prison 

system. Families frequently have a 

twelve hour round-trip from the facility 

where their child is incarcerated, 

so visits are often rare. In the span of 

two years, 2004-2005, five youth died 

in the CYA. Public hearings, demonstrations 

and community mobilization 

throughout the state were led by 

Books Not Bars and the Youth Justice 

Coalition. Research studies and several 

law suits exposed widespread abuse of 

youth by guards, including violence, 

misuse and over-use of medication, use 

of solitary confinement, under-feeding 

and systematic neglect of youth within 

the CYA/DJJ, leading to the closing 

of more than 2/3 of the facilities and 

improvements in conditions of confinement 

and programming. 

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 

Capital punishment is the legally sanctioned 

killing by the state of persons 

convicted in a court of law. The U. 

S. has executed almost 1000 people 

since 1976. California has the largest 

death row in the country with over 600 

people awaiting execution. The death 

penalty is imposed in a discriminatory 

manner by race and class. Nationwide, 

African Americans are 12% of the 

population, but are 42% of the people 

currently on Death Rows. Over 80% 

of the people executed in the U.S. since 

1976 were convicted of killing white 

victims, despite the fact that people 

of color make up more than half of all 

homicide victims in the U.S. Ninetyfive 

percent of all people sentenced to 

death are indigent. Since 1973, over 

140 prisoners have been released from 

death row because of new evidence 

proving their innocence 

10. 

Bound, Josh MacPhee, Stencil, 2006, Troy, NY 

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL 

The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. 

Constitution was ratified in 1791. It 

states that in regards to imprisonment, 

“Excessive bail shall not be required, 

nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel 

and unusual punishments inflicted.” 

Activists have challenged the mistreatment 

of people in prison based on this 

amendment. In California, the death 

penalty imposed by lethal injection has 

been halted by the courts because activists 

successfully argued that injections 

by persons other than medical professionals 

constitutes “cruel punishment.” 

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 

in Roper vs. Simmons that putting 

youths to death constituted “cruel and 

unusual” punishment. In recent decisions 

the U.S. Supreme Court has also 

ruled that the practice of sentencing 

youth under 18 to life in prison without 

the possibility of parole is cases where 

no one was killed was also “cruel and 

unusual punishment." 

DISENFRANCHISEMENT 

The policy is used to deny people 

with criminal convictions the right to 

vote. Fourteen states deny people with 

felony convictions the right to vote for 

the rest of their lives. This is the only 

law of its kind in the world. California 

(as well as 31 other states) denies 

people on parole the right to vote until 

their parole is completed. Twenty-nine 

states disenfranchise people on probation. 

As this policy is both confusing 

and inconsistent, additional people 

are disenfranchised since many jail, 

prison, parole administrators and others 

are unclear about the laws in their 

state and regularly assume detainees 

and people with misdemeanor convictions 

are ineligible to vote. In 1800, no 

U.S. state denied prisoners or former 

prisoners the right to vote. The political 

implications of disenfranchisement for 

poor communities and communities 

of color became especially obvious in 

the 2000 presidential election in which 

George Bush's victory was attributed 

to the illegal removal of thousands 

of voters—particularly African- 

Americans—from the voter rolls in 

Florida with the excuse that they had 

felony convictions. It was later determined 

that most of the removed voters 

had no criminal records but the election 

results were not reversed. 

EXPUNGEMENT 

A court process which enables a person 

to apply to have a criminal record “dismissed” 

so that it has less effect on: theability 

to find a job, get credit, obtain 

a license for a particular occupation, 

or even join the military. However, 

neither expungement nor Certificates 

of Rehabilitation “seal” or “erase" therecords 

although many people believe 

they do. 

LEGALIZED SLAVERY 

The first significant expansion of the 

U.S. prison system took place after 

the abolition of slavery, when prison 

labor was hired out to private business 

in order to re-enslave thousands 

of African Americans in prison factories, 

as contract labor to local agriculture, 

and in prison work crews often 

referred to as chain gangs. In fact, 

the Thirteenth Amendment to the 

Constitution stated, “Neither slavery 

nor involuntary servitude, except as 

a punishment for crime whereof the 

party shall have been duly convicted, 

shall exist within the United States, or 

any place subject to their jurisdiction.” 

Today, people in prison are regularly 

paid as little as 30 cents an hour, and 

work for hundreds of U.S. corporations 

including interests as diverse as telephone 

companies, airlines and clothing 

manufacturers. 

Prisons: Slave Ships on Dry Land, Andalusia Knoll, Silkscreen, 

2004, Pittsburgh, PA 

LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE (LWOP) 

A person sentenced to life without 

parole will have no chance of release. 

PAROLE 

Parole is the “conditional early 

release” from prison or jail, under 

supervision, after a portion of a 

person’s sentence has been served. 

A person’s parole can be violated by 

their parole officer at any time that 

parole clams they violate their “conditions 

of parole” – such as curfew, job, 

housing or treatment requirements, 

failing a drug test, missing a parole 

appointment, etc. or any time they are 

rearrested. Violations can result in 

extended time on parole or re-incarceration 

for the remainder of their 

original sentence. 

PROBATION 

Probation is a court-imposed sanction 

that releases a convicted person into 

the community under a “conditional 

suspended sentence.” Summary probation 

requires that the person have no 

further arrests in order to prevent further 

sanctions, including confinement. 

Under summary probation, a person 

does not have to report to a probation 

officer. Formal probation requires 

that the person be under the supervision 

of the Probation Department, in 

which case they are required to report 

to a probation officer, follow strict 

probation conditions—often including 

curfews, requirements for school 

if under 18 and employment or job 

training for adults, drug testing, courtordered 

treatment such as outpatient or 

residential drug treatment, anger management 

or parenting classes, unannounced 

home, school or job visits by 

probation and other law enforcement 

officials, and search of the person 

and/or their property upon demand of 

any law enforcement officers regardless 

of probable cause. Any failure to 

meet probation conditions can lead the 

court to extend or revoke probation and 

impose increased sanctions, including 

incarceration or lock-down placement.

Nation GLOSSARY • Prison Nation GLOSSARY • Prison Nation 

PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 

(PIC) 

The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) 

is a complicated system situated at 

the intersection of governmental and 

private interests that uses prisons as 

a solution to social, political, and economic 

problems. The lure of big money 

has corrupted the nation's criminal justice 

system, replacing notions of safety 

and public service with a drive for 

higher profits. The PIC refers to interest 

groups that represent organizations 

that do business in correctional facilities, 

like prison guard unions, construction 

companies, and surveillance 

technology vendors, who are more 

concerned with making making money 

than actually rehabilitating criminals 

or reducing crime rates. Some prisons 

provide free or low-cost labor for state 

or municipal governments. Providing 

jobs for prison guard union members 

can be seen as a motivation for building 

and maintaining a large prison 

system. The prison construction boom 

can also be linked to the huge increase 

in the number of people sentenced 

to prison terms with the onset of the 

war on drugs, the repression of radical 

movements by people of color for selfdetermination, 

and the anti-imperialist 

struggles of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The 

War on Drugs and the national and 

local efforts to destroy radical political 

movements led to increasing police 

presence in communities of color 

and poor communities, higher arrest 

rates, and longer prison sentences. 

–criticalresistance.org 

PRIVATIZATION/ 

PRIVATE PRISONS 

U.S prisons, whether run by government 

agencies or private corporations, 

have long collaborated with private 

business interests and investors. They 

all profit from prison labor, the sale of 

prison products, the feeding, clothing 

and medical care of prisoners, security 

systems and equipment for guards and 

of course the ongoing construction and 

maintenance of prisons. 

Almost half of all immigrants detained 

by federal officials are held in facilities 

run by private prison companies at an 

average cost of $166 a night for each 

detainee. The two main private prison 

corporations, Corrections Corporation 

of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, 

and others, are reaping huge profits. 

For nearly two decades, CCA has been 

one of the most stable investments on 

the New York Stock Exchange. 

Over the past decade, three major private 

prison companies spent $45 million 

on campaign donations and lobbyists 

to push legislation at the state 

and federal level. At times, this money 

has gone to nefarious legislation like 

SB1070 in Arizona, which would have 

landed many more people in detention. 

30 of the 36 legislators who 

co-sponsored Arizona’s now mostly 

invalidated immigration law, received 

campaign contributions from private 

prison companies or their lobbyists. 

A 2011 report found that the private 

prison industry spent millions seeking 

to increase sentences and incarcerate 

more people in order to increase 

the industry’s profits. States contract 

with private prisons to reduce overcrowding. 

California currently has 

almost 9000 people incarcerated in 

private prisons in Mississippi, Arizona 

and Oklahoma. California politicians 

including Governor Jerry Brown, have 

also accepted major donations from 

lobbyists working for prison construction 

firms. 

Because private prisons are run with 

profit in mind and often have less oversight 

than federal, state and county-run 

facilities, private prisons have been 

found to have much higher rates of 

prisoner neglect and abuse. 

PROP. 9 

In 2008, Proposition 9—Marsy’s 

Law—passed with 54% of the vote. It 

increased California’s prison population 

by making parole harder to acheive. It 

also increased the time between parole 

hearings, and allowed unchallenged 

opposition to parole by crime victims 

and their families. Prop. 9 prohibits 

early release to reduce prison overcrowding, 

effectively eliminating the 

credit of “good time” as an incentive for 

reducing prison violence and participating 

in rehabilitation programs. 

PROP. 21 

In 2000, California voters passed 

Proposition 21, allowing prosecutors, 

rather than juvenile court judges, to 

decide whether youths under 18 could 

be tried as adults for serious crimes. 

The sentences of youths convicted in 

juvenile courts are limited to age 25, 

and they can be kept for the duration 

of their sentence in youth facilities 

where education is mandated and rehabilitative 

services more likely. Under 

Proposition 21, youths under 18 can be 

prosecuted as adults and sentenced to 

life without the possibility of parole. 

Prop. 21 expanded the number of “violent 

and serious felonies” with sentence 

enhancements for gang membership 

and gun use. Proposition 21 also turned 

low-level vandalism (usually graffiti) 

into a felony punishable by up to three 

years in prison. 

PROP. 36–The Substance Abuse 

and Crime Prevention Act 

The Substance Abuse and Crime 

Prevention Act was passed by 61% 

of California voters in 2000. The law 

mandates probation with drug treatment 

for all “nonviolent drug offenders” until 

their third conviction, then limits incarceration 

to a maximum of 30 days. The 

law mandates that all “nonviolent drug 

offenders” currently serving sentences 

be released from jail and put on probation. 

The State of California has failed 

to live up to the promise of the law due 

to bureaucratic inefficiencies and the 

lack of adequate funding for drug treatment. 

Also, Prop. 36 does not apply to 

youths under 18, thus excluding many 

thousands of youths who would benefit 

from drug treatment as an alternative to 

incarceration. 

REVOCATION 

Revocation refers to the reversal or 

rescinding of probation or parole. Both 

are conditional releases, and can be 

revoked if the conditions governing 

release are not met (technical violation) 

or if a person is arrested for a new 

crime during the probationary period 

(new offense). Although similar, probation 

is supervised at the county level, 

whereas parole is governed by administrative 

procedures on the state level. 

SB1022 

In June 2012, the California Legislature 

passed SB1022 which allocates $500 

million for construction and renovation 

of county jails. This is part of 

Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to reduce 

state prison populations by increasing 

county jail populations. 

SHU 

SHU Stands for Special Housing Unit, 

or in some facilities Secure Housing 

Unit. Slang terms for the SHU include 

“the hole” or “the box.” The SHUs 

are for extended solitary confinement, 

where prisoners are held in isolation for 

23 or 24 hours a day, often for months 

or years, with insufficient clothing, 

access to sunlight, or lighting to read. 

SHU prisoners are regularly denied 

visits, phone calls, recreation, rehabilitative 

job training and education, even 

reading and writing materials. Solitary 

confinement causes severe and longterm 

mental distress and illness and 

11. 

can lead to an increase of violence to 

others and self-mutilation and suicide. 

Long-term solitary confinement in 

SHUs is recognized internationally as 

torture, yet this practice is widespread 

in juvenile halls, jails, and prisons in 

the U.S. In California, without judicial 

review, prisoners are put in SHUs for 

extended periods of solitary confinement 

for alleged gang membership and 

cannot join the general prison population 

unless they denounce the gang 

and incriminate individuals, which risks 

their lives and their family members’ 

lives. In August 2011, SHU prisoners 

in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison 

staged a hunger strike to protest inhumane 

conditions. 

THREE STRIKES - PROP. 36 

In 1994, California voters passed 

Proposition 184, one of the strictest 

criminal punishments in U.S. history. 

Sold to the voters with the slogan “three 

strikes and you're out,” Proposition 184 

prescribed that people with two violent 

felonies would get 25-life sentences for 

any third felony conviction—even in 

cases where the third conviction is as 

minor as stealing a tee shirt, writing a bad 

check or possession of small amounts of 

drugs. Since 1996, Families to Amend 

California's Three Strikes (FACTS) has 

built a statewide movement of strikers, 

families and their allies to challenge the 

law and bring thousands of people home 

who are serving life sentences for nonviolent 

third strikes. In 2012, California 

voters passed Proposition 36, amending 

the Three Strikes Law to curtail the 

ability of courts to sentence a person to 

life for a non-violent third strike. The 

amendment could reduce the sentences 

of as many as 3,800 people currently 

incarcerated on a third strike. 

iRAQ, Forkscrew Graphics, Silkscreen, 2004 

Los Angeles, California 

TORTURE 

The United Nations’ Convention 

Against Torture and Other Cruel, 

Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or 

Punishment was adopted by the General 

Assembly in 1975. It defines torture as 

“any act by which severe pain or suffering, 

whether physical or mental, is 

intentionally inflicted on a person for 

such purposes as obtaining from him or 

a third person information or a confession.” 

UN reports have recently cited 

the U.S. for violating the Convention 

in the treatment of prisoners at both 

Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu 

Ghraib in Iraq. Evidence shows that the 

torture, abuse and neglect that characterizes 

these military prisons—including 

widespread use of solitary confinement, 

extreme temperatures, dehumanizing 

treatment and physical, sexual and emotional 

abuse is also practiced throughout 

the U.S. in county jails, juvenile halls 

and juvenile prisons, as well as in state, 

federal and private prisons and immigrant 

detention centers. 

Crack the CIA, Crack the CIA Coalition, Offset, 1997, 


WAR ON DRUGS 

The term "War on Drugs" was first 

used by President Richard Nixon on 

June 17, 1971, when he described illegal 

drugs as "public enemy number one 

in the United States." 

The War on Drugs was one of the earliest 

tools used to fuel the rapid expansion 

of police forces and prisons. By 

exaggerating the threat of illicit drugs 

and exploiting the public's fear of drugaddicted 

youth, federal laws and funding 

combined with new sentencing laws 

at the state level mandated increasingly 

harsh sentences for both drug users 

and traffickers. Among the War’s earliest 

champions was Governor Nelson 

Rockefeller of New York, whose drug 

laws inspired the extreme mandatory 

minimums now in use throughout the 

U.S. President Richard Nixon’s policies 

initially included 2/3 of the funding to 

be used for drug treatment but over 

time eliminated funding for treatment 

in favor of suppression—including 

the confiscation of property of those 

targeted under the new term—“zero 

tolerance.” Later efforts at prevention 

included millions spent on programs 

that have since been proven ineffective 

including the DARE program that 

provided funds for police workshops in 

schools and Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say 

No” Campaign 

Despite recent federal reforms of crack 

sentencing laws, much higher penalties 

still exist for possession and sale 

of crack, despite the fact that, pharmacologically, 

it is the same drug as 

cocaine. Possession of 28 grams of 

crack cocaine yields a five-year mandatory 

minimum sentence for a first 

offense; it takes 500 grams of powder 

cocaine to warrant the same sentence. 

WAR ON GANGS 

In the late 1970s and 1980s, law 

enforcement agencies in Los Angeles 

County created comprehensive youth 

gang suppression policies. Gang injunctions 

allow police to arrest alleged 

gang members for being in public with 

another alleged gang member including 

family members, being out past 

curfew, or carrying a cell phone. Gang 

databases were created by police from 

their surveillance files that label children 

as young as 10 as gang members. 

The 1988 STEP Act—Street Terrorism 

Enforcement and Prevention Act—created 

a statewide database that labeled 

“gang membership” as terrorism and 

provided sentence enhancements for 

membership. Despite the failure of the 

War on Gangs to increase public safety, 

and its impact on the mass criminalization, 

incarceration, deportation and 

death of Black and Brown youth, L.A. 

has exported these policies and police 

practices to the rest of the state and 

much of the nation.

No More Shackles, Micah Bazant; Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Digital Print, Berkeley, CA, 2013

ORGANIZATIONS, SERVICES & RESOURCES • ORGANIZATIONS, SERVICES & RESOURCES • ORGANIZATIONS, SERVICES & RESOURCES 

Organizations, Services and Resources 

–continued from page 8. 

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 

Human Rights Watch is dedicated to 

protecting the human rights of people 

around the world. We stand with victims 

and activists to prevent discrimination, 

to uphold political freedom, to protect 

people from inhumane conduct in wartime 

and to bring offenders to justice. 

We investigate and expose human rights 

violations and hold abusers accountable. 

We challenge governments and those who 

hold power to end abusive practices and 

respect international human rights law. 

11500 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 441 


310.477.5540 

www.hrw.org/en/los-angeles 

www.hrw.org/san-francisco 

INNOCENCE PROJECT 

The Innocence Project’s full-time staff 

attorneys and Cardozo clinic students 

provide direct representation or critical 

assistance. The Innocence Project’s 

groundbreaking use of DNA technology 

to free innocent people has provided 

irrefutable proof that wrongful convictions 

are not isolated or rare events but 

instead arise from systemic defects. Now 

an independent nonprofit organization 

closely affiliated with Cardozo School of 

Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence 

Project’s mission is nothing less than to 

free the staggering numbers of innocent 

people who remain incarcerated and to 

bring substantive reform to the system 

responsible for their unjust imprisonment. 

If you are seeking legal assistance, 

please read the following guidelines 

for submitting your case. 

All cases for consideration should be 

mailed (to the address below) with 

a brief factual summary of the case, 

including the specific charges and 

convictions and a list of the evidence 

used against the defendant. No other 

documents should be submitted for 

initial review. The Innocence Project 

is not equipped to handle telephone 

or electronic (email) applications. 

40 Worth St., Suite 701 

New York, NY 10013 

212.364.5340 

info@innocenceproject.org 

www.innocenceproject.org/ 

JUST DETENTION INTERNATIONAL 

Since 1980, JDI has worked to end the 

sexual abuse of detainees in the U.S. 

and around the world. No matter what 

crime someone might have committed, 

rape is not part of the penalty. 

JDI has three core goals for its work: 

to ensure government accountability 

for prisoner rape; to transform illinformed 

public attitudes about sexual 

violence in detention; and to promote 

access to resources for those who 

have survived this form of abuse. 

Note: If you are incarcerated, please feel 

free to communicate with JDI using legal 

mail, addressing your correspondence to: 

Cynthia Totten, Esq. 

3325 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 340 


213.384.1400 • info@justdetention.org 

www.justdetention.org/ 

JUSTICE NOT JAILS 

In November, 2012, California Faith 

Action launched Justice Not Jails, a multiyear 

campaign designed to aggregate and 

enhance the faith community’s involvement 

in working against racialized mass 

incarceration in California. 

Progressive Christians Uniting 

634 S. Spring Street, Suite 300 


213.625.0149 • admin@pcu-la.org 

www.justicenotjails.org 

THE LABOR/COMMUNITY 

STRATEGY CENTER 

Schools, Not Pre-Prisons Campaign 

The Community Rights Campaign is 

organizing in L.A. high schools and 

among L.A.'s 500,000 low-income 

bus riders to build campaigns to push 

back the growing police/prison state 

and push forward an expanded social 

welfare state; push back the police/prisons/punishment 

approach to organizing 

society and push forward a resources/ 

reparations/redistribution approach. 

We organize high school students in after 

school clubs to stop the school-to-prison 

pipeline and the schools-as-jails culture in 

favor of building a positive, empowered 

learning environment. Real public safety 

will be achieved only by challenging the 

Prison/Police State–not allying with it. 

3780 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1200 

L.A., CA 90010 

213.387.2800 

www.thestrategycenter.org/project/community-rights-campaign 

LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY 

ACTION NETWORK (LA CAN) 

The mission of LA CAN is to help people 

dealing with poverty create and discover 

opportunities while serving as a vehicle 

to ensure they have voice, power and 

opinion in the decisions that are directly 

affecting them. Our overarching goals 

focused on social change are: to organize 

and to empower community residents to 

work collectively to change the relationships 

of power that affect our community; 

to create an organization and organizing 

model that eradicates the race, class, 

gender barriers that are used to prevent 

communities from building true power; 

and to eliminate the multiple forms of 

violence used against and within our 

community to maintain status quo. 

530 S. Main Street 


213.228.0024 

beckyd@cangress.org 

www.cangress.org 

LEGAL SERVICES FOR 

PRISONERS WITH CHILDREN 

The mission of Legal Services for 

Prisoners with Children is to advocate 

for the civil rights and empowerment 

of incarcerated parents, children, family 

members and people at risk for 

incarceration by responding to requests 

for information, trainings, technical 

assistance, litigation, community 

activism and the development of more 

advocates. Our focus is on women 

prisoners and their families and we 

emphasize that issues of race are central 

to any discussion of incarceration. 

1540 Market St., Suite 490 


415. 255.7036 

info@prisonerswithchildren.org 

www.prisonerswithchildren.org 

A NEW PATH 

A New PATH works to reduce the 

stigma associated with addictive illness 

through education and compassionate 

support and to advocate for therapeutic 

rather than punitive drug policies. 

P.O. Box 3644 #264 

Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067 

619.670.1184 • anewpath@cox.net 

A NEW WAY OF LIFE 

A New Way of Life Reentry Project provides 

housing and support services to 

formerly incarcerated women in South 

Central Los Angeles, facilitating a successful 

transition back to community life. 

As a community advocate, A New 

Way Of Life works to restore the 

civil rights of people with criminal 

records to housing, employment, public 

benefits and the right to vote. 

PO Box 875288, 


323.563.3575 

info@anewwayoflife.org 

www.anewwayoflife.org 

13. 

NO MORE JAIL LA COALITION 

We meet 2-3 Sundays a 

month, 5 pm, at the: 

Chuco’s Justice Center 



213.864.8931 

diana@curbprisonspending.org 

or masutton2@earthlink.net 

PRISON ACTIVIST RESOURCE 

CENTER (PARC) 

PARC is a prison abolitionist group 

committed to exposing and challenging 

all forms of institutionalized racism, 

sexism, able-ism, heterosexism 

and classism, specifically within the 

Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). PARC 

believes in building strategies and tactics 

that build safety in our communities 

without reliance on the police or 

the PIC. We produce a directory that is 

free to prisoners upon request. We seek 

to work in solidarity with prisoners, exprisoners, 

their friends and families. 

PO Box 70447 


510.893.4648 • prisonactivist@gmail.com 

www.prisonactivist.org 

PRISON LAW OFFICE 

The Prison Law Office provides free 

legal services to California state 

prisoners and occasionally to California 

state parolees. Our assistance is 

generally limited to cases regarding 

conditions of confinement. 

We are also happy to provide self-help 

and informational materials to prisoners, 

some of which are published on 

this website, including a habeas corpus 

manual, parolee rights manual, 

and personal injury lawsuit packet, as 

well as material regarding administrative 

remedies, divorce, guard brutality, 

immigration, loss of personal property, 

plea bargains, release dates, workers' 

compensation and worktime credits. 

If you or a family member have an issue 

that you believe we can assist with, please 

feel free to contact our office. Letters 

concerning individual prisoners and 

prison conditions can be addressed to: 

Prison Law Office 

General Delivery 

San Quentin, CA 94964 

Due to the large number of inquiries, we 

cannot accept telephone calls from prisoners 

and their families. 

www.prisonlaw.com 

PRISON LEGAL NEWS 

Prison Legal News is an independent 

56-page monthly magazine that provides 

a cutting edge review and analysis 

of prisoner rights, court rulings and 

news about prison issues. PLN has a 

national focus on both state and federal 

prison issues, with international coverage 

as well. PLN provides information 

that enables prisoners and other concerned 

individuals and organizations to 

seek the protection and enforcement of 

prisoner's rights at the grass roots level. 

P.O. Box 2420 

West Brattleboro, VT 05303 

802.257.1342 

pwright@prisonlegalnews.org 

www.prisonlegalnews.org 

PRISON LIBRARY PROJECT 

The mission of the PLP is to provide 

reading material free of charge 

to inmates nationwide. The PLP also 

serves prison chaplains and librarians, 

drug/alcohol recovery groups, 

domestic abuse and HIV/AIDS support 

groups and others within the immediate 

community. Our goal is to address 

issues of literacy and promote personal 

responsibility, reflection and growth. 

Prison Library Project 

586 West 1st Street 

Claremont, CA 91711-3356 

www.claremontforum.org 

PRISON RADIO 

Prison Radio’s mission is to challenge 

mass incarceration and racism by airing 

the voices of men and women in prison 

by bringing their voices into the public 

dialogue on crime and punishment. 

Our educational materials serve as a 

catalyst for public activism. Prison 

Radio’s productions illustrate the perspectives 

and the intrinsic human worth 

of the more than 7.1 million people 

under correctional control in the U.S. 

P.O. Box 411074 


415.648.4505 • info@prisonradio.org 

www.prisonradio.org 

TGI JUSTICE MISSION 

TGI Justice Project is a group of transgender 

people—inside and outside of 

prison—creating a united family in the 

struggle for survival and freedom. 

TGI works to forge a culture of resistance 

and resilience to strengthen us for 

the fight against imprisonment, police 

violence, racism, poverty, and societal 

pressures. Our goal is to create a world 

rooted in self determination, freedom 

of expression and gender justice. 

342 9th Street, Suite 202B 


415.252.1444 • info@tgijp.org 

www.tgijp.org 

TIME FOR CHANGE FOUNDATION 

Our programs provide the women and 

children we serve with the necessary 

tools to recover from homelessness, drug 

addiction, family separation, mental and 

physical abuse and the effects of incarceration. 

Through advocacy efforts of Time 

for Change Foundation's H.E.L.P project, 

the Housing Authority of the County 

of San Bernardino has enacted policies 

and created procedures that provide a 

fair and equal opportunity for housing 

to persons with past felony convictions. 

P.O. Box 5753 

San Bernardino, CA 92412 

909. 886.2994 

info@TimeForChangeFoundation.org 

TURNING THE TIDE 

Turning the Tide newspaper is 

free to prisoners and GIs for a 

free sample copy, write to: 

ARA-LA/People Against Racist Terror 

PO Box 1055 

Culver City, CA 90232 

310.495.0299 • arala@yahoo 

www.antiracistaction.org 

THE REAL COST OF PRISONS PROJECT 

The Real Cost of Prisons Project seeks 

to broaden and deepen the organizing 

capacity of prison/justice activists 

working to end mass incarceration. 

They bring together justice activists, 

artists, justice policy researchers 

and people directly experiencing the 

impact of mass incarceration to create 

popular education materials and other 

resources which explore the immediate 

and long-term costs of incarceration. 

5 Warfield Place 

Northampton, MA 01060 

info@realcostofprisons.org 

www.realcostofprisons.org 

THE YOUTH JUSTICE COALITION (YJC) 

YJC is working with youth, family 

and the formerly incarcerated movement 

to challenge race, gender and class 

inequality and to dismantle policies 

and institutions that ensure the massive 

lock-up of people of color that promote 

widespread police violence, corruption 

and distrust between police and communities; 

that disregard youth and communities’ 

Constitutional and human 

rights; the encourage construction of 

a vicious school-to-jail track and the 

build-up of the world’s largest network 

of juvenile halls, jails and prisons. The 

YJC uses direct action organizing, advocacy, 

political education, transformative 

justice and activist arts to mobilize 

system-involved youth, families and 

our allies – both in the community and 

within lock-ups – to bring about change. 

Chuco’s Justice Center 



323.235-4243 

freelanow@yahoo.co 

www.youth4justice.org

3 Strikes, Kevin McCloskey, Reproduction of Woodcut, Kutztown, PA, 2010


33. Shut Down CYA 

Oscar Rodriguez, Kim McGill 

Youth Justice Coalition 



CYA is the abbreviation for California 

Youth Authority, long known as the 

world’s largest and most notorious 

youth prison system. Chad refers to the 

N. A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional 

Facility in Stockton, one of the CYA's 

two maximum security lockups for 

those aged 18–24. Chad earned national 

headlines in 2004 when guards were 

captured on film kicking and punching 

wards. In August 2005, 18-yearold 

Joseph Daniel Maldonado hung 

himself at Chad. In the eight weeks 

before Maldonado died, he had rarely 

been let out of his cell and was denied 

family visits, mental health care and 

educational services. Five youths died 

there between 2004-2005. This poster 

was part of a successful campaign to 

improve conditions for incarcerated 

youth. In 2005, the CYA was renamed 

the California Division of Juvenile 

Justice (DJJ) to distance it from the 

abuses of the original agency. 

34. Will Work for Food! 

Richard G. Hall, Jr. 


Soledad, CA 

Richard G. Hall, Jr. became an accomplished 

political cartoonist in the 1980s 

while in prison. His illustrations and 

writings have been featured in various 

publications throughout California and 

his cartoons were recently highlighted 

in a publication by Zine Distro based 

in Homewood, Illinois. He also has 

been an illustrator for the California 

Prisoner newspaper. Hall’s politically 

conscious cartoons comment on various 

social issues that communities of 

color face in the U.S. He is currently 

serving a sentence in Salinas Valley 

State Prison in Soledad, California. 

Richard G. Hall, Jr. C-0727 

P.P. Box 689, YW-343up 

Soledad, CA 93960 

35. Prisons Are Sucking 

the Life Out of Education 

Lisa Roth 

Californians United for a 

Responsible Budget 



When originally designed in 2001, 

California was #1 in prison spending, 

#48 in education spending. 

36. End Youth Life Without Parole 

Brendan Campbell 



Boston, MA 

The U.S. is the only nation in the world 

that continues to sentence its youth 

to die in prison. In 2012, more than 

2,570 youths were serving life without 

parole (LWOP), nearly 300 of them in 

California. California has the worst 

record in the nation for racial disparity 

in the imposition of LWOP for 

youth: African-American youths are 

sentenced to LWOP more than 18 times 

the rate of white youths and Latino 

youths are sentenced to LWOP five 

times more often than white youths. 

In 2006, a statewide working group 

that included the L.A. Archdiocese 

Office of Restorative Justice, Human 

Rights Watch, the Youth Justice 

Coalition and several civil rights litigators 

formed a working group to 

address the extreme sentencing of 

youths in California. In 2012, after six 

years and three attempts, the working 

group succeeded in getting Senate 

Bill 9 passed giving youth serving 

Life Without Parole in California an 

opportunity for re-sentencing. 

was killed. Only through packing the 

court with supporters, organizing press 

conferences and rallies, testifying at 

sentencing and meetings with court 

officials, did Tedi receive a sentence of 

32 to life, the lowest sentence possible 

under California law. In Tedi’s case, 

the jury never heard that this was his 

first major arrest; or that when Tedi 

was 13, he heard gunshots and ran up 

to see one of his best friends dying; 

or that at 14, Tedi saw another youth 

whom he considered a brother, shot 

and killed in front of him, and that the 

boy bled out onto the concrete as Tedi 

held him; or that at 15, just two months 

before his arrest on these charges, Tedi 

was shot in the head and nearly killed; 

or that the day before his arrest, he 

was shot in the hand. Instead, the DA 

argued that Tedi is broken, beyond 

repair, cold-blooded; and that he must 

be caged until death. 

WOMEN BEHIND BARS 

Between 1980 and 2010, the total 

number of women in prison increased 

646%, from 15,118 to over 112,797. 

The number of women in prison, a 

third of whom are incarcerated for drug 

offenses, has increased at nearly 1.5 

times the rate of men. The sentencing 

project states that these women often 

have histories of physical and sexual 

abuse, high rates of HIV infection and 

substance abuse. 

This growing large–scale imprisonment 

of women has resulted in an increasing 

number of children who suffer from the 

loss of their mothers and broken family 

ties. Almost 2 million children have a 

parent in prison on any given day. 

Once inside prison or jail, women are 

more likely than men to be victims of 

staff sexual misconduct. 

38. Have Women Become That 

Much More Dangerous? 



Savannah, GA 

Scott Boylston originally made this 

poster in 2003, but was asked to update 

it for the Action Committee for Women 

in Prison. In 2003 there were 100,000 

women in prison. Two years later there 

were 140,000. Here is his response to 

the new information he found: 

.... My job of updating the information 

graphics of the poster was sobering, and 

it goes right to the heart of why graphics 

can be so compelling... Just redesigning 

it made the increase in female 

inmates from 2003 to 2005 disturbingly 

concrete. I hate to think what a poster 

like this will look like in five years... 

Scott Boylston, Savannah, Georgia, 2006 

39. Womyn Are the Fastest Growing 

Prison Population in Amerikkka 

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson 


Pound, VA 

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is an artist, 

published writer and the Minister of 

Defense of the New Afrikan Black 

Panther Party-Prison Chapter (NABPP- 

PC). Rashid is currently an inmate 

in Oregon’s Snake River Correctional 

Institute serving his nineteenth year 

of a lengthy drug-related sentence. 

Rashid has taken the lead in challenging 

and organizing around prison 

conditions, which include his recent 

support and participation in the 2011 

California prisoners’ hunger strike. He 

also designed the logo used to represent 

the strikers. Rashid’s activism 

has made him a target of prison officials 

and caused him to be segregated 

from the general prison population. 

His writings have also been banned in 

many California prisons. 

Kevin Johnson # 19370490 

Snake River Correctional Inst. 

777 Stanton Blvd. 

Ontario, OR 97914 

40. No More Shackles 

Micah Bazant, Legal Services 

for Prisoners with Children 


Berkeley, CA 

In 33 states, shackling—the use of 

leg irons, waist chains and handcuffs—continues 

to be routinely used 

on incarcerated pregnant women. In 

2005, California became one of the 

first states to prohibit the shackling 

of incarcerated pregnant women during 

labor, delivery and recovery after 

childbirth. Not until January 1, 2013, 

after three years and countless petitions, 

letters, phone calls, votes, revotes and 

two vetoes, did Governor Jerry Brown 

sign AB 2530, prohibiting shackling 

throughout pregnancy in California’s 

state prisons, juvenile detention facilities 

and county jails. 

Pregnant women are the most vulnerable 

and the least threatening in the 

prison system and even without shackling 

they are more likely to experience 

miscarriages, pre-eclampsia, pre-term 

births, and low birth weight infants, 

all of which seriously jeopardize the 

health of the mother and her newborn. 

37. Justice for Tedi Snyder 




At the age of 15, Tedi Snyder was 

arrested and charged with attempted 

murder, accused of being in a car 

where another person shot out the 

window at two other youths. He faced 

80 years to life in a case where no one 

15.


41. Sexual Extortion is a Crime 

Not a Sentence 

Mary McGahren 


Boston, MA 

Every year over 200,000 adults and 

children in U.S. prisons are raped and 

sexually abused. Although it is the job 

of prison staff to keep inmates safe, 

they are among the main perpetrators 

of sexual abuse. Prisoner rape is 

a crime and a human rights violation. 

In 2003, the Prison Rape Elimination 

Act was signed into law by President 

George W. Bush, requiring the U.S. 

Bureau of Justice Statistics to collect 

and analyze data on rape in prison and 

requiring the Department of Justice 

to make prison rape prevention a priority. 

Despite the intent of this law, 

sexual extortion against women, children, 

men and LGBTQ individuals is 

an ongoing epidemic in prisons. 

Solitary confinement is an increasingly 

common practice in most U.S. prisons. 

Prisoners may be held in solitary 

cells for 23 hours a day or more; have 

very limited contact with other people; 

endure little or no contact with family 

members; receive little or no access to 

rehabilitation or educational resources; 

and receive inferior physical and mental 

health care. During solitary confinement, 

prisoners may develop Special 

Housing Unit Syndrome—visual and 

auditory hallucinations, hypersensitivity 

to noise and touch, insomnia 

and paranoia, uncontrollable feelings 

of rage and fear, distortions of time 

and perception and increased risk of 

suicide. Once released, many prisoners 

experience Post Traumatic Stress 

Disorder (PTSD). Pelican Bay’s Special 

Housing Unit (SHU) is notorious for 

its solitary confinement practices. (See 

poster #68). 

44. 3 Strikes 

Kevin McCloskey 

Woodcut, 2010 

Kutztown, PA 

California’s 1994 Three Strikes law 

created mandatory sentencing of life 

in prison for anyone convicted of a 

third felony, even for such petty crimes 

as writing a bad check or shoplifting 

socks. On November 6, 2012, 

Californians passed Prop. 36 to amend 

the law so that it only applies to “serious” 

or “violent” felonies. Prop. 36 

allows the possibility of 3,000 sentences 

to be reduced and may save 

the state as much as $90 million per 

year. However, the terms “serious” 

and “violent” are extremely vague and 

the Three Strikes law continues to be 

misused to expand the prison industrial 

complex. 

Some inmates said they saw bodies 

floating in the floodwaters as they 

were evacuated from the prison. A 

number of inmates told Human Rights 

Watch that they were not able to get 

everyone out of their cells. Several 

corrections officers told Human Rights 

Watch that there was no evacuation 

plan for the prison, even though the 

facility had been evacuated during 

floods in the 1990s. 

Many of the men held at the jail had 

been arrested for minor offenses including 

criminal trespass, public drunkenness 

or disorderly conduct. Many had 

not even been brought before a judge 

and charged, much less convicted. 

New Orleans Sheriff Marlon Gusman 

and other city officials are trying to 

push forward the expansion of the 

notorious Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) 

which would add 5,800 new beds, 

extend the prison 9-10 city blocks and 

cost $250 million. OPP is already the 

largest per capita county jail of any 

major U.S. city, while resources for 

housing, education, job training and 

healthcare continue to be cut or remain 

deeply underfunded. 

In an effort to stop construction and 

shrink the prison system in the city, 

The Critical Resistance New Orleans 

chapter has been working with allies 

and community members trying to 

build people power in order to shift 

vital resources away from the prison 

industrial complex and toward building 

thriving, sustainable, self-determined 

communities. 

48. iRaq 

Forkscrew Graphics 



iRaq combines the infamous photograph 

of a prisoner tortured in Abu 

Ghraib, the U.S. run prison in Iraq, 

with the graphics of the internationally 

distributed iPod ad. The poster was 

produced soon after the photograph 

was first seen by the U.S. public in 

2004. This is one of a series of four 

posters mimicking the iPod ads. The 

posters were inserted into rows of real 

iPod ads in Los Angeles, so that the 

viewer would do a double take when 

passing by. An almost identical appropriation 

of the iPod ad was simultaneously 

produced by New York artist 

Copper Greene, who also inserted his 

posters into the rows of iPod ads in the 

subways and on the walls of New York. 

This is a very effective form of culture 

jamming—once someone sees the 

parody or politicized version, they can 

rarely see the real advertisement without 

thinking of the politicized one. 

HEALTH CARE NOT DEATH CARE 

42. End the Attack 

on Our Communities! 


Justseeds 


Oakland, CA 

CRUEL & UNUSUAL 

In 1791, the Eighth Amendment to the 

U.S. Constitution was ratified stating 

that, in regards to imprisonment, 

“Excessive bail shall not be required, 

nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel 

and unusual punishments inflicted.” 

Since then, activists have challenged 

the mistreatment of prisoners based on 

this statute. 

43. Bound 

Josh MacPhee 

Stencil, 2006 

Troy, NY 

45. $15.4 Billion Spent on 

Incarcerating Californians 

José Jimenez 



46. Left to Die 

Kelly Hickman 


Frostburg, MD 

During Hurricane Katrina, the sheriff’s 

department deserted the New Orleans 

Parish Prison, abandoning 6,500 men, 

women and children left in their care. 

As floodwaters rose in the prison 

buildings and power went out, entire 

buildings were plunged into darkness. 

Deputies left their posts leaving prisoners 

in locked cells, some standing 

in sewage-tainted water up to their 

chests. Many were not evacuated until 

Thursday, September 1st, four days 

after flood waters in the jail had reached 

chest level. Inmates interviewed by 

Human Rights Watch said that they had 

no food or water from their last meal 

over the weekend of August 27-28, 

until they were evacuated on Thursday, 

September 1. By Monday, August 29, 

the generators had died, leaving them 

without lights and sealed in without air 

circulation. The toilets backed up creating 

an unbearable stench. 

"They left us to die there," Dan Bright, 

an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told 

Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish 

Prison, where he was sent after the 

evacuation. 

16. 

47. Guantanamo Bay 

Luxury Resort 

Sixten 

Stencil, 2003 

Melbourne, Australia 

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, at the 

southeastern end of Cuba, has been 

used by the U.S. Navy for more than 

a century under a lease set up in the 

wake of the 1898 Spanish-American 

War. The Cuban government continues 

to denounce the lease on grounds 

that Article 52 of the 1969 Vienna 

Convention on the Law of Treaties 

voids treaties procured by force or its 

threatened use. 

Since 2001, the naval base contains 

a controversial detention camp 

for militant combatants captured in 

Afghanistan and later Iraq. After stories 

of torture and abuse were revealed, 

the U.S. government said that these 

prisoners were not covered by the 

Geneva Conventions—which include 

prohibiting the torture of prisoners of 

war—because the prison is located 

outside the U.S. The justification of 

torture by the Bush administration 

received intense criticism both domestically 

and internationally. On January 

22, 2009, President Obama’s first day 

in office, he signed an executive order 

to close the Guantanamo Bay prison 

within the year but Congress passed 

laws thwarting the order. It remains 

open. This poster uses irony to focus 

on the conditions. 

49. In America 

Derek Luciani 


Boston, MA 

From the mid-1950s to the late 1990s, 

many mental health institutions 

throughout the U.S. were closed leaving 

patients with no access to mental 

health care. As a result of this policy, 

called “deinstitutionalization,” many of 

these individuals end up in the criminal 

justice system. In 2006, the Bureau of 

Justice Statistics reported that 56% of 

state prisoners, 45% of federal prisoners 

and 64% of jail inmates had mental 

health issues.


CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 

DEAD WRONG 

50. To Hell with Their Profits 

Rachael Romero 

San Francisco Poster Brigade 

Offset, 1978 


The forced drugging of inmates is an 

ongoing problem—40% of the inmates 

and patients given antipsychotic drugs 

develop long term injuries. One of the 

most common side effects is tardive 

dyskinesia, which causes loss of bodily 

control and disfigurement. The drug 

companies make huge profits with the 

sale of the drugs and prisons can cut 

corners by overmedicating inmates 

rather than finding lasting and rehabilitative 

alternatives. The forced drugging 

of people being held in Guantanamo 

raises further concerns. Prisoners with 

no history of mental health issues 

were drugged in what many interpret 

to be efforts to coerce confessions. 

(see poster #47) 

51. Atmos-Fear 

Doug Minkler 

New Movement in Solidarity 

with Puerto Rico 


Berkeley, CA 

This poster was created to inform the 

public about an experimental federal 

women's sensory deprivation center 

not designed for rehabilitation or job 

training but for breaking the spirit of 

political prisoners. Three of the five 

prisoners at the Lexington Control Unit 

were anti-imperialists involved in supporting 

foreign and domestic liberation 

struggles: Alejandrina Torres, Silvia 

Baraldini and Susan Rosenberg. All 

three have since been released, but can 

be seen on poster #60. 

The prison opened in 1986. Educational 

and organizing efforts, including court 

cases and the use of this poster, succeeded 

in closing this prison in 1988. 

The closing of Lexington was a major 

victory for political prisoners and the 

forces working to support them. But 

at the same time the authorities have 

moved to greatly expand their use of 

such high security "control units." 

52. Health Care Not Death Care 

ACT UP/LA, Critical Mass 



In 1990, the overcrowded California 

Institution for Women at Frontera, was 

the country's second largest women's 

prison. All women diagnosed with HIV 

or AIDS were segregated inside, in the 

Walker A Unit. The conditions and 

treatment for these women were deplorable—there 

was no infectious disease 

doctor and Frontera had no licensed 

infirmary. Women died in their cells 

without medical attention. The prison 

staff did not want to come in contact 

with those who were infected. Deaths 

were sometimes discovered when the 

food trays piled up. 

This poster was first used in a boisterous 

ACT UP/LA demonstration outside 

the Frontera prison on November 30, 

1990. Prisoners inside were placed on 

lockdown but could hear AIDS activists 

chanting, "sisters on the inside, sisters 

on the outside, ACT UP is watching, 

you won't die." When a series 

of protests moved to the California 

Department of Corrections main offices 

in Sacramento, ACT UP took over 

the offices of the prison system's Chief 

Medical Officer to demand an end to 

inhumane conditions for incarcerated 

people with AIDS. 

Several of ACT UP/LA's demands were 

implemented. An infectious disease 

doctor was assigned to Walker A. One 

woman, Judy Cagle, became the first 

inmate in the history of the CDC to be 

granted a compassionate release. The 

segregation policy was changed and 

the women with AIDS were moved 

into a medical facility. These actions 

by ACT UP/LA and other California 

ACT UP chapters and in particular, 

the ACT UP/LA's Womens Caucus, 

inspired ACT UP chapters in other 

states to take action and advocate better 

treatment for all prisoners living 

with AIDS. 

53. Inmates Have the Right to 

Maintain Personal Hygiene 

Kaiti Robinson 


Frostburg, MD 

Hygiene is a basic human right yet continues 

to be neglected in many prisons. 

At times, prison officials withhold supplies 

necessary to maintain adequate 

hygiene to further punish and humiliate 

prisoners. Serious health issues can 

develop as a result. A dangerous drugresistant 

strand of staph (MRSA) is 

rapidly spreading in prisons. It causes 

large, painful boils which are highly 

contagious. The spread of the bacteria 

can be stemmed with soap and basic 

sanitary conditions. Female inmates 

have additional hygiene needs, yet 

inflated prices for sanitary pads and 

tampons inside prison, where they cost 

two to three times the market price, 

can force women to improvise with less 

effective and less sanitary methods. 

17. 

54. Capital Punishment 

Peg Averill 

Liberation News Service 

War Resisters League 

Offset, 1980s 

New York, NY 

55. Killing Kindly 

Garland Kirkpatrick 

helveticaJones 

Offset, 2006 


56. Dead Wrong 

Mary Sutton 



Stanley “Tookie” Williams (1953-2005) 

was a leader of the Los Angeles Crips, 

a notorious gang he co-founded in 

1969. In 1979, Williams was convicted 

of four murders and an armed robbery 

that netted $200. While incarcerated, 

he wrote a number of books, including 

children’s books, warning readers 

about gang and prison life. In 2004, he 

helped negotiate a peace between some 

of the major Crip and Blood gangs in 

Los Angeles with the Tookie Protocol 

for Peace. Williams was nominated 6 

times for the Nobel Peace Prize for his 

work to end gang violence. 

With the help of author and journalist 

Barbara Becnel, Tookie fought to 

prove his innocence. In his autobiography, 

he explained that witnesses 

against him were coerced and there 

was thus reasonable doubt. Despite 

these facts and high profile supporters 

ranging from Archbishop Desmond 

Tutu to Rev. Jesse Jackson, California’s 

former Republican Governor Arnold 

Schwarzenegger denied Williams’ 

appeal for clemency. 

The unforeseen difficulty in killing 

him in San Quentin State Prison—it 

took more than half an hour for him to 

die—led to a moratorium in California 

of executions by lethal injection. 

Becnel continues working to prove his 

innocence. 

57. Troy Davis 


Silkcreen, 2012 


Troy Anthony Davis (1968-2011) was 

convicted of murdering a police officer 

but maintained his innocence 

from the time of his arrest until his 

death. Approximately one million people 

signed a petition seeking clemency 

for him. He was supported by 

many groups and individuals including 

Amnesty International, NAACP, 

President Jimmy Carter, Desmond 

Tutu, Pope Benedict XVI, and former 

FBI Director William S. Sessions. 

Many concerns were raised in the case, 

including testimony that he was not 

the shooter, contradictory testimony by 

state witnesses, former juror appeals 

for clemency, exclusion of a key figure 

as a suspect and new DNA evidence 

disproving original state evidence. 

Despite overwhelming public support 

and serious and reasonable doubt, Troy 

Davis was executed by the State of 

Georgia in 2011. 

58. Sentenced to Death by Mistake 

Center on Wrongful Convictions 

Offset, 2002 

Chicago, IL 

Photo by Loren Santow 

Verneal Jimerson (in photo) and Dennis 

Williams were African-American men 

sent to death row for the murder of a 

young white couple in 1979. In 1996, 

three journalism students found the real 

killer who had been identified to the 

police at the time of the crime. Police 

used perjured testimony to win convictions 

against Williams and Jimerson. 

Jimerson and 14 others were photographed 

by Loren Santow on March 

31, 1997 for a poster series called "Nine 

Lives." At the time, there were nine 

men on Death Row in Illinois who 

were later exonerated. By 2012, there 

have been more than 300 DNA exonerations 

nationwide.


59. It's a Matter of Social Control 

Malaquías Montoya 


Elmira, CA 

This silkscreen is part of a series 

by Montoya titled, “Pre-meditated: 

Meditations on Capital Punishment,” 

referencing those killed by the death 

penalty from Ethel and Julius Rosenberg 

to Jesus Christ. 

“We have perfected the art of institutional 

killing to the degree that it 

has deadened our national, quintessentially 

human, response to death,” 

says Montoya. “I wanted to produce a 

body of work depicting the horror of 

this act.” 

Rev. Joseph Ingle is a United Church 

of Christ Minister, author, two-time 

Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and a 

prominent critic of the death penalty. 

He points out that “since 1977, more 

than 93 percent of the executions in the 

U.S. have been in the South.” He also 

discusses how the patterns for those 

executions follow disturbingly familiar 

paths of racial discrimination: 

“If you kill a white person, you are 11 

times more likely to die for that crime 

than if you kill a black person,” Ingle 

said. “And it’s even worse if you’re a 

black person and you kill a white person. 

Then you are 22 times more likely 

to die.” 

DEMOCRACY DENIED- Political 

Prisoners in the United States 

The very existence of political prisoners 

in the U.S. is officially denied, and 

the widespread domestic and international 

efforts demanding their freedom 

are rarely reported. Posters are one 

of the primary tools for organizing 

support for political prisoners—they 

give witness to the prisoners’ existence, 

inform the public about their status, 

mobilize support on their behalf and 

prevent them from being forgotten by 

future generations. These posters commemorate 

political prisoners of the 

past and demand freedom for political 

prisoners of the present. More than 35 

years of posters demanding freedom 

for Leonard Peltier remind us that these 

posters have a life-and-death function 

for those still imprisoned. 

(See poster #51) 

60. Face Reality, Freedom Now! 

Campaign for Amnesty & Human 

Rights for Political Prisoners in 

the USA 

Offset, 1990 

Chicago, IL 

Some of the political prisoners shown 

here have been released since this poster 

was produced, including Silvia Baraldini, 

Marilyn Buck (deceased), Herman Bell, 

Edwin Cortes, Linda Evans, Ricardo 

Jimenez, Adolfo Matos, Dylcia Pagan, 

Geronimo Pratt (deceased), Luis Rosa, 

Susan Rosenberg, Alejandrina Torres, 

Carmen Valentin and Laura Whitehorn. 

Others, including Sundiata Acoli, 

Mumia Abu Jamal, Jaan Laaman, 

Mafundi Lake, Abdul Majid, Thomas 

Manning, Mutulu Shakkur and Gary 

Tyler remain in jail. 

For a more complete list of currently 

held political prisoners, please visit: 

www.prisonactivist.org/projects/ 

political-prisoners 

61. International Day to Resist the 

Imprisonment of Leonard Peltier 

Juan Fuentes, Mission Gráfica 



Leonard Peltier is a Native American 

activist, artist, and former member of 

the American Indian Movement who 

was convicted of aiding in the killing 

of two FBI agents during a shootout 

on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian 

Reservation in 1975. Imprisoned since 

1977, Peltier is one of the longest 

incarcerated prisoners in the U.S. The 

Supreme Court has refused to review 

the case despite documents proving 

that the FBI faked evidence, perjured 

themselves in court and coerced witnessed 

to make false statements against 

him. Peltier is supported by Amnesty 

International, United Nations High 

Commissioner for Human Rights, 

Kennedy Memorial Center for Human 

Rights, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop 

Desmond Tutu, Rigoberta Menchú and 

many others. 

62. Etats-Unis Etats Racistes 

Comité du Justice 

du AMJ en France 

Offset, circa 1997 

France 

Translation: United States Racist 

States No capital punishment, 

No legal lynching, 

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal 

SACCO AND VANZETTI 

In 1920, Nicola Sacco (1891-1927), a shoemaker, 

and Bartolemeo Vanzetti (1888- 

1927), a fish peddler, were charged with 

murder and robbery in Massachusetts. 

Because they were immigrants and anarchists, 

they did not receive a fair trial. 

Despite an international campaign on 

their behalf, Sacco and Vanzetti, still 

maintaining their innocence, were executed 

Aug. 23, 1927. 

JULIUS AND ETHEL 

ROSENBERG 

In 1950, in an atmosphere of anti- 

Communism directed against radicals 

in the Jewish community, the Federal 

Bureau of Investigation arrested Julius 

Rosenberg (1918-53), an electrical engineer, 

and his wife Ethel (1916-1953). 

They were convicted and sentenced 18. 

to death for conspiracy to transmit 

secrets of the atomic bomb to the 

Soviet Union. Despite an international 

campaign from the President of 

France, Pope Pius XII, Albert Einstein, 

Martin Buber, Bertrand Russell, Jean 

Paul Sartre, Reinhold Niebuhr, Pablo 

Picasso, Israel's Chief Rabbis and many 

others, President Eisenhower refused 

to grant clemency and the Rosenbergs 

were electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison, 

June 19, 1953. They were the only 

Americans ever executed for espionage 

by judgment of a civilian court. 

MALCOLM X 

Malcolm X (1925-1965) joined the 

Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) while 

serving a prison term, and became a 

minister upon his release in 1952. He 

quickly became prominent in the movement 

and his popularity rivaled that of 

Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Black 

Muslims. In March, 1964, Malcolm X 

publicly announced his break from the 

Nation of Islam. A month later, he made 

a pilgrimage to Mecca, announced his 

conversion to orthodox Islam and his 

new belief that there could be brotherhood 

between blacks and whites. In his 

Organization of Afro-American Unity, 

formed after his return from Mecca, 

the tone was still that of militant black 

nationalism but no longer of separation. 

In February, 1965, he was shot 

and killed in a public auditorium in 

New York City by three men identified 

as Black Muslims. There is ongoing 

speculation that the assassination was 

a collaboration between the FBI and 

Nation of Islam. 

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) 

was a Baptist minister, activist, and 

prominent leader in the Civil Rights 

Movement. His use of nonviolent civil 

disobedience became a powerful tactic 

to advance civil rights. King led the 1955 

Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and 

in 1957, helped found the Southern 

Christian Leadership Conference. His 

“I Have a Dream” speech, given at the 

1963 March on Washington, established 

his reputation as one of the 

greatest orators in U.S. history and 

also as a radical. For the rest of King’s 

life, he was under surveillance by the 

FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program 

(COINTELPRO). 

In 1964, King received the Nobel Peace 

Prize for combating racial inequality 

through nonviolence. On April 4, 1967, 

at the Riverside Church in New York 

City, King delivered his "Beyond Viet 

Nam" speech, speaking strongly against 

the U.S. role in the war, arguing that 

the U.S. was in Viet Nam "to occupy it 

as an American colony" and calling the 

U.S. government "the greatest purveyor 

of violence in the world today." Exactly 

one year later, April 4, 1968, King was 

assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 

and many continue to believe that his 

murder was directly linked to the content 

of this speech. 

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL 

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a black writer 

and journalist, author of six books and 

hundreds of columns and articles, former 

member of the Black Panther Party 

and supporter of Philadelphia’s radical 

MOVE Organization. He has spent 

over 30 years in prison, almost all in 

solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s 

Death Row. 

He has been in prison since 1981, 

accused of killing a police officer. At 

the time of his arrest, Mumia was shot 

by police and almost died that night. 

The main civilian witnesses at the 

trial were two prostitutes. One changed 

her description of the assailant several 

times. The other subsequently stated 

that she was under pressure by police 

to testify against Mumia. Witnesses to 

support Mumia’s version were never 

called to testify and many inconsistencies 

were not examined. The court 

imposed a death sentence. 

Groups such as Amnesty International, 

the PEN American Center and Human 

Rights Watch all have questioned the 

fairness of the trial. Demand for a 

new trial and freedom is also supported 

by heads of state from France to 

South Africa, Nobel laureates Nelson 

Mandela, Toni Morrison, Desmond 

Tutu, European and Japanese parliaments, 

city governments from San 

Francisco to Detroit to Paris, the 

Congressional Black Caucus, the 

NAACP, labor unions and by thousands 

of others. 

The ongoing international attention 

given to this case—as exemplified 

by this French poster—can be credited 

with Mumia's removal from death 

row in January, 2012. However, in 

March, 2012, the Supreme Court of 

Pennsylvania ruled that all claims of 

new evidence brought forward on his 

behalf did not warrant conducting a 

retrial. 

Write to Mumia at: 

Mumia Abu-Jamal 

#AM 8335 

SCI Mahanoy 

301 Morea Road 

Frackville, PA 17932 

63. Free Lynne Stewart 

Christopher Hutchinson 


Hartford, CT 

Lynne Stewart (born 1939) is a radical 

human rights lawyer convicted of conspiracy 

and providing material support 

to terrorists. The charges stem from two 

press releases that Stewart released via 

Reuters on behalf of her client, Sheikh 

Omar Abdel Rahman, that urged his 

followers to think critically about the 

cease-fire terms offered between them 

and the Egyptian government. 

Stewart and her supporters describe 

her situation as an attempt by the 

U.S. government to generally intimidate 

lawyers. The government is especially 

interested in suppressing any 

evidence of misconduct and abuse 

at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib that 

might arise from lawsuits filed by 

current and former prisoners. Stewart 

says she did nothing that a committed 

lawyer would not do for any client. 

Stewart and her supporters accuse the 

U.S. government of using the Patriot 

Act to erode civil liberties. 

64. Obama...Give Me Five! 

Jorge Martell, Gonzalo Canetti 

(photographer) 


Oakland, CA 

The Cuban 5, Gerardo Hernández, 

Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, 

Fernando González and René González, 

were arrested by the FBI in 1998. All 

were convicted in 2001 of conspiracy 

to commit espionage against the United 

States. The trial was held in Miami, 

Florida, a center of hostility against the 

Cuban revolution. The Cuban 5 neither 

committed nor intended to commit


espionage against the U.S. They were 

in the U.S. in order to monitor anti- 

Cuban terrorist organizations in Miami 

responsible for attacks and deaths in 

Cuba. A three-judge panel of the 11th 

Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals 

overturned the convictions in 2005 but 

the full court reinstated the convictions. 

The U.S. Supreme Court refused 

to review their case in 2009. René 

González has been on probation since 

October, 2011 after serving his 13 year. 

term. As of January, 2013, the other 

four remain in prison. 

65. Heroism 

A Ride Till The End 


United States 

United States Army Pfc. Bradley 

Manning (born 1987) has been held 

since May, 2010, without trial, on suspicion 

of “leaking” classified documents 

to WikiLeaks an anti-secrecy 

website. These documents include a 

video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter 

crew killing unarmed civilians 

and two Reuters journalists in Iraq. 

Manning was tortured and held in 

solitary confinement for the first 10 

months of his arrest until public pressure 

helped end this illegal phase of 

his imprisonment. Many consider him 

to be a hero following in the footsteps 

of Daniel Ellsberg who released the 

Pentagon Papers exposing U.S. government 

lies about the Viet Nam War. 

Manning still has not had a trial. 

CHALLENGING THE PRISON 

INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 

67. Mothers of East Los Angeles 

Justseeds 

Offset, 2004 

Portland, OR 

In the early 1980s, the California 

Department of Corrections was ordered 

by California state legislators to build a 

prison in Los Angeles County because of 

the disproportionate number of inmates 

originating from southern California. In 

1985, the Mothers of East L.A. (MELA) 

formed to organize their community 

to oppose the prison. When the prison 

came up for a vote in the summer of 

1991, it failed by four votes. 

68. Solidarity with All Prisoners 

Tim Simmons 

Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity 

Digital Print, circa 2011 

California 

On July 1, 2011, a hunger strike was initiated 

at Pelican Bay’s Security Housing 

Unit (SHU) by prisoners demanding 

changes to the torturous conditions of 

their solitary confinement (see poster 

#43). Soon, over 12,000 California prisoners 

participated. The hunger strike also 

spread to prisons in Arizona, Mississippi 

and Oklahoma. The strike in Pelican 

Bay lasted nearly three weeks and ended 

only after the California Department of 

Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) 

sent a memo detailing a comprehensive 

review of every affected SHU prisoner 

in California whose SHU sentence is 

related to gang validation. As the majority 

of people in the SHU are there for 

being labeled “gang members,” this was 

seen as a victory. 

The photo is from the 1971 Attica 

prison uprising in New York. 

(See poster #4) 

needed light on the prison system. The 

bill made it through the State Assembly 

and Senate but was vetoed in 2012 by 

Governor Brown under pressure from 

CDCR officials. 

70. Ban the Box 

Garland Kirkpatrick, Mary Sutton 



(see glossary) 

71. Rise Up LA No Prisons No Jails 

Mary Sutton 


Responsible Budget, Rise Up LA 



In 2011, members and allies of the 

Youth Justice Coalition formed Rise Up 

LA!, a civil disobedience committee 

to increase pressure on local officials 

to address the criminalization, mass 

incarceration, deportation and police 

killing of youth of color in Los Angeles. 

This poster was created to carry in the 

2012 May Day March to raise awareness 

about L.A. County’s jail expansion 

plans and to link the struggle of workers 

outside with the struggle of people in 

California’s prisons. 

73. Dragon Flight 

Doug Minkler 

Center for the Study 

of Political Graphics 


Berkeley, CA 

74. While There Is a Lower Class 

I Am in It 

Artist Unknown 

Offset, 1965-1980 

United States 

Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) was a 

champion of industrial unionism, five 

time Socialist Party candidate for president, 

anti-war activist, and civil liberties 

advocate. He organized the American 

Railway Union in 1892 and led the boycott 

of all Pullman cars during the great 

strike of 1894. In 1901, he helped form 

the Socialist Party (SP) and in 1905 he 

helped found the Industrial Workers 

of the World (also known as the IWW 

or Wobblies). In the 1912 presidential 

election, Debs won more than 900,000 

votes, 6% of the total cast. He was tried 

under the 1917 espionage act for speaking 

out against WWI and the draft 

and sentenced to ten years in prison. 

In 1920, while in prison, he again ran 

for president on the Socialist ticket and 

received his largest vote ever. Public 

protests persuaded President Harding 

to pardon him in 1921. 

66. Imagine California 

Critical Resistance, Justseeds 

Silkscreen, circa 2008 

California 

1920 Photo by Lewis Hine: Power 

House Mechanic Working on 

Steam Pump 

69. End the Media Ban 

Kim McGill 



In 1996, the California Department of 

Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) 

imposed the strictest prison media ban 

in the nation. A humane view of the 

people inside, their stories and struggles, 

as well as a realistic view of overcrowding, 

solitary confinement, dismal 

health care and other prison realities 

have been largely hidden from the public’s 

view. When prisoners in Pelican 

Bay’s long-term solitary confinement 

units or SHUs began a hunger strike in 

2011, the media was denied access to 

the strikers. AB 1270 would have lifted 

the media ban and shed some much 

19. 

72. More Cages 

Jesus Barraza, Dignidad Rebelde 

Critical Resistance 


Oakland, CA 

In 2012, California spent billions of 

dollars and shifted thousands of people 

from a failed system of state imprisonment 

and parole to county based jails 

and probation. This shift appears to 

follow the the same failed policies that 

lead the Supreme Court to order the 

corrections department to reduce its 

prison population by tens of thousands 

in 2011. People from San Mateo County 

to L.A. are demanding that community 

based solutions that rely on access to 

housing, jobs and health services be the 

core of the response to violence in our 

neighborhoods notmore cages MORE 

CAGES! To learn more go to www. 

criticalresistance.org. 

75. Free 


Offset, 2002 

Springfield, MO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

PRISON NATION: International Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex was an extraordinary collaborative effort. 

Special thanks to all the artists, cultural workers and organizers whose dedication, talent and commitment produced the posters, 

and to the many people and organizations that saved them and donated them to the Center for the Study of Political Graphics 

so future generations might learn from them: 

ACT UP/LA 

Architects/Designers/Planners 

for Social Responsibility 

Peg Averill 

S.A. Bachman 

Mariona Barkus 

Jesus Barraza 

Micah Bazant 


Scott Braley 

California Prison 

Moratorium Project 


Responsible Budget (CURB) 

Brendan Campbell 

Gonzalo Canetti 


Allison Coley 

Edwin Colfax 

Robbie Conal 

Ryan Conrad 

Marti Copleman 

Critical Mass 

Critical Resistance 

Rodolfo "Rudy" Cuellar 

Lincoln Cushing 

Jo'ann DeQuattro 

Design Action Collective 

Dignidad Rebelde 

John Doffing 

Emory Douglas 

Leslie Dwyer 

Ernest Pignon Ernest 

Linda Evans 

Ashley Fauvre 

Ricardo Favela 

To CSPG’s staff and volunteers who were tireless in documenting, researching and preparing the posters, sincerest thanks go 

to: Sherry Anapol, Alena Barrios, Gloria Galvez, Alejandra Gutierrez, Ted Hajjar, Elora Lavery, Joy Novak, Anna Saradeth, 

Trevor Schiefelbein and Carol Watson. 

PRISON NATION was curated by Kim McGill, Mary Sutton and Carol A. Wells and produced from the collection of the 

Center for the Study of Political Graphics, an educational and research archive with more than 80,000 posters—including the 

largest collection of post-W.W.II posters in the country. CSPG is reclaiming the power of art to educate, agitate and inspire 

action. Donations to this archive are welcome. All donations are tax-deductible. 

PRISON NATION: Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex was funded by The James Irvine Foundation 

and the California Arts Council. 

To ensure the widest representation 

of issues in all of our exhibitions, the 

Center for the Study of Political 

Graphics (CSPG) asks artists, activists 

and organizations to submit posters. In 

response to this call, CSPG received 

graphics from many artists including 

from artists inside prisons. Several 

prisoners have art in the exhibition 

(Posters #8, 34 & 39) and additional 

ones are included here. 

Amy Files 

Fireworks Graphics 

Forkscrew Graphics 

Juan Fuentes 

Gloria Galvez 

Bruce Gilbert 

Louie "the Foot" Gonzalez 

Ted Hajjar 

Richard G. Hall, Jr. 

Kelly Hickman 

Christopher Hutchinson 

INCITE! 

Inkworks 

José Jimenez 

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson 

Sabrina Jones 

Justseeds 

Garland Kirkpatrick 

John Kitchenka 

Andalusia Knoll 


Deborah Krall 

David Kunzle 

Nicolas Lampert 

Mike Lee 

Lucy R. Lippard 

Yolanda M. Lopez 

Derek Luciani 

Josh MacPhee 

Jorge Martell 

Kevin McCloskey 

Mary McGahren 

Kim McGill 

Doug Minkler 

Mission Gráfica 

Marc Monarch 

Malaquías and Lezlie Montoya 


Naughty North Collective 

Northland Poster Collective 

Michael Novick 

Mary Patten 

Sheila Pinkel 

Raphael Sperry, Press. 

Ray Reece 

A Ride Till The End 

Jessica Nemeroff Ritz 

Cristy C. Road 

Kaiti Robinson 

Favianna Rodriguez 

Oscar Rodriguez 

Rachael Romero 

Lisa Roth 

Royal Chicano Air Force 

Salsedo Press 

San Francisco Poster Brigade 

Tim Simmons 

Sixten 

Norma Sporn 

Mary Sutton 

Syracuse Cultural Workers 

Aaron Eliah Terry 

THINK AGAIN 

Fereshteh Toosi 

Bony Toruño 

Mark Vallen 

Carol Wells 

Don White 

Willie Worley, Jr. 

Col. Ann Wright 


MORE CSPG TRAVELING 

EXHIBITIONS – partial list 

Art Against Empire— 

Graphic Responses 

to U.S. Interventions 

Since World War II 

We Shall Not Be Moved— 

International Graphics on 

Gentrification, Homelessness 

& Resistance 

Solidarity Forever!— 

Graphics on the International 

Labor Movement 

Reel to Real— 

Political Reflections of 

Hollywood Film Posters 

Courageous Voices— 

International Posters 

on Racism, Sexism 

& Human Rights 

Sex, Lies & Stereotypes— 

Posters on Sexism 

& Homophobia 

Race, Lies & Stereotypes— 

Posters on Racism 

& Anti-Semitism 

Can’t Jail the Spirit— 

Political Prisoners 

in the United States 

¡Viva la Huelga!— 

Graphic Heritage & Legacies 

of the United Farm Workers 

All Power to the People— 

Graphics of the Black 

Panther Party USA 

Our Sisters’ Voices— 

From Africa to the Americas 

Posters About African & 

African-American Women 

Throwing Away the Future— 

The War Against Children 

An International Poster 

Exhibition 

Los Angeles— 

At the Center & On The Edge 

Thirty Years of Protest Posters 

Fight for the Living— 

Poster Art Against AIDS 

Marcus A. Bedford Jr. is a published 

cartoonist, writer and children's book 

author. Bedford’s comics have been 

featured on The Real Cost of Prisons 

Project website. 

Y-WING 204L 

CTF-Central 

PO Box 689 central fac 

Soledad, CA 93960 

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is an artist, 

published writer and the Minister of 

Defense of the New Afrikan Black 

Panther Party-Prison Chapter (NABPP- 

PC). Rashid is serving his nineteenth 

year of a lengthy drug-related sentence. 

Rashid has taken the lead in challenging 

and organizing around prison 

conditions, which include his recent 

support and participation in the 2011 

California prisoners’ hunger strike. He 

designed the logo used to represent the 

strikers. Rashid’s activism has made 

him a target of prison officials and 

caused him to be segregated from the 

general prison population. His writings 

have also been banned in many 

California prisons. 

Kevin Johnson # 

19370490 

Snake River 

Correctional Inst. 

777 Stanton Blvd. 

Ontario, OR 97914 

20. 

Willey Worley Jr. is a political cartoon 

artist, who is currently incarcerated 

in Brown Creek Correctional 

Institute in North Carolina. Worley’s 

work has been featured on The Real 

Cost of Prisons Project website: 

www.realcostofprisons.org. 


#0453523 

B.C.C.I #3510 

PO Box 310 

Polkton, NC 28135 

A Presidential Rogues 

Gallery— 

Satirical Posters of U.S. 

Presidents: 1960s to the Present 

Peace Press 1967-1987— 

Art in the Pursuit of 

Social Change 

Richard G. Hall, Jr. became an accomplished 

political cartoonist in the 1980s 

while in prison. His illustrations and 

writings have been featured in various 

publications throughout California and 

his cartoons were recently highlighted 

in a publication by Zine Distro based in 

Homewood, Illinois. He also has been 

an illustrator for the California Prisoner 

newspaper. Hall’s politically conscious 

cartoons comment on various social 

issues that communities of color face 

in the U.S. Hall is currently serving a 

sentence in Salinas Valley State Prison 

in Soledad, California. 

Richard G. Hall, Jr. C-0727 

P.P. Box 689, YW-343up 

Soledad, CA 93960

PRISON NATION -Gallery Guide

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