Jhody D. Polk
The Jailhouse lawyer initiative
322 S. W. 4 Th Ave.
Gainesville , Florida 32601

March 17 , 2019

RE: Request to connect to the network

Dear Jhody:

Hello, and first and foremost, thank you for existing.
Thank you for not forgetting. Thank you for creating a
Vehicle to help aid the struggle for Justice and fairness.
Without people like you, the heavy foot of the criminal
Justice system would continue to crush us by the neck.
without people like you, the feeling of hopelessness would
continue to encroach upon our willpower to fight back.
I would love to be a part of the Jailhouse lawyer
Initiative because the system needs more concrete Root
movements. Those of us closes to the problem are

also the ones closes to the solution.


To introduce myself , my name is S [RREDACTED] Steele. I am
a Jailhouse lawyer. I am a fighter for human
rights, Justice, and peace. Over the years I have
Participated in the exercise of law study and assistance
on behalf of myself and others. I currently have
a section 1983 civil suit filed in Federal Court. I
have been doing legal study for over 10 years and I
have been practicing motion filing for the past Five
years. I have been incarcerated for the past 20
years. I have been locked up since the age of 16.
I am currently working on Juvenile Justice Reform
and sentencing law practices. I equate the law
library to my cell because I am at the law library
as often as I can.


The challenges that I face are many. First, there
are not enough Lexis Nexus computers per capita
inside Ohio prisons. There are only 4 computers at
the current prison I am in, but there are over
1,000 prisoners. Although many of them do not fight for their

freedom, if they decided to , there wouldn't be enough time
in the month to assist every prison once. Second, the
law library is the smallest room in the prison. The
fiction books are always more frequently available than
the legal tools and resources. Law study demands
hundreds of hours of resources and it is obvious that
Such a small space is incapable of assisting the prisoners
who do go to the law library. Lastly, none of the
law libraries have certified legal clerks or paralegals
due to budget cuts and security issues. This forces
the jailhouse lawyers to put their assistance in overdrive
but with less resources and materials.


To fix a lot of these problems, Jailhouse lawyers
need more financial assistance, legal books, and
on-line access to Lexis Nexis . Many of us do not have t
he funds for postage cost, filing fees, and Court cost.
These hindrances usually keep us in debt and unable to
buy books and other legal accessories. Being able to
further our legal education would improve our research
Speed tremendously . Having books like a Black's LAW
Dictionary and books on Legal Structure are also
helpful tools.

I Study how to write paragraphs and essays so I
can learn how to write clearly. I also Joined
the Toastmasters club to improve my speaking skills. These
are self-initiatives so I can help assist others in the
Struggle, including myself. We also need on-going
Correspondences with outside legal groups with the
ability to establish these groups inside the prison
System. And we need more Prison Watchdog groups
to help assist us when our constitutional Rights are being violated.


I hope that we are able to make much more change
in the system, especially rehabilitative paths that
leads everybody back out into society, especially those
of us who have been incarcerated since we were
Children.

Well , this is all for now. OF course, there are
Volumes of issues. This is Just to skim the surface. I
hope to hear from you soon.

In solidarity,

S [REDACTED] Steele
[REDACTED]

December 27, 2021

Tyler Walton
Nyu School of Law
139 MacDougal Street, B23
New York, NY. 10012

Re: Update on TCI Mailroom policy

Dear Tyler:
Hi. This is S [REDACTED] Steele. I sent you two letters previously.
This letter is to show you the paperwork associated with why
they are holding the mail you sent to me. The first page is
the Notice of Withholding sent to me by the TCI mailroom. They
spelled your name wrong on it. And you will notice that they
only say the "K-9 hit on legal mail". They do not give any
additional information.


The second page is a memorandum sent to Ohio's director of
prisons by the ACA Standards and Accreditation director. This
memo sheds light on the reason why mail in Ohio has been
withheld. The reasons for it have been fabricated.
Nevertheless, the Canine being used has made over 100 FALSE
1

BARKS!
The third set of papers is an article I recently sent to San
Francisco Bay View detailing the branch of the Attorney-Client
privilege.I am trying to shed Light on this issue so it can be
addressed. Several of us in Olio ace ready to file a class
action lawsuit about this issue.


In closing, I still haven't received the Letter you sent me.
There only suppose to take 72 hours. I've also enclosed the
ODRC policy variance approved by Ohio's Director as well.


I pray that this situation is handled properly. If you can,
please call up here and have them release the mail. The person
holding the mail at this point is the Institutional
Investigator, Mr. [REDACTED] or Mr. [REDACTED].


Thank you for your time and commitment to helping people
access and exercise their rights. People Like you are needed in this world.

Respectfully written,

S Steele [REDACTED]
2

Notice of an Unauthorized Item Received
Inmate's Name:
Steele
Number
[REDACTED]
Look:
[REDACTED]
Date Received:
12/22/21
Tayler Walton Esq New York School of law
Sender's Address:
139 Mac Dougal Street B23 New York NY 10012
Unapproved Funds
Money Order e:
Amount $:
Institution:
Cashior Check #:
Amount $:
Insitutionc
Other, Explain:
Reason Funds Have Been Withheld
No visiting list (Contact your unit staff)
Item not signed by sender
Returned to the sender because it was not from an approved source
Held by the Cashier's Office for further investigation as to source or related reasons
Was not in approved form (Explain):
The above listed item was withheld in accordance with AR 5120-5-02. These funds will be held in the mail office for TEN (10) DAYS ONLY. (See "Disposition of Unapproved Item")
Mall Room Employee and/or Cashier:
Nuisance Contraband
Description of contraband:
K-9
hit on legal mail
The item listed above has been withheld in accordance with AR 5120-9-17 (Incoming Mail). This item will be held in the mail office for TEN (10) DAYS ONLY. (See "Disposition of Unapproved Item" below)
Disposition of Unauthorized Item
This item(s) may not be returned to sender and will either be destroyed or forfeited to the institution per court order.
Check the appropriate box below to indicate how you wish the above item to be disposed of. This form must be returned to the Mail Office within TEN (10) DAYS of the date the unapproved item was received. Failure to do so will result in the disposal of the unauthorized item under AR 5120-9-55.
Mail at my expense to the above noted address
I have enclosed a self addressed stamped envelope or a signed cash slip.
Destroy the contraband item. (Funds can not be destroyed).
The visiting list has been completed by the Unit staff or the individual has been added to my list.
Inmate's Signature
Date:
RETURN THIS FORM IMMEDIATELY TO THE MAIL OFFICE
Action Taken By Mail Office Staff
Returned to sender
Returned to inmate
Mail Room Staff Signature:
Sent to Cashier's Office for processing
Destroyed in accordance with AR5120-9-55
Date:
DRIC 4225 (Rev.10/00)
DISTRIBUTION:
WHITE - Mail Room File
CANARY - Item
PINK -Inmate

ACA 4436
AGA FOUNDED 1870 @GCA
American Correctional Association
206 N. Washington Street, Suite 200
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
703-224-0000 · Fax: 703-224-0010 www.aca.org

Memorandum For: [REDACTED], Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections Bureau of Operational Compliance

SUBJECT: Temporary Waiver to Expected Practice 5-ACI-7D-09

1. Your request to have a temporary waiver to expected practice 5-ACI-7D-09 required time frames for mall delivery is granted for six months 1 March 2022.

2. Due to contraband being introduced through both vendor packages and legal mail, you have instituted new procedures to ensure dangerous contraband is not introduced into the facility, thus maintaining safety and security of the facility. The decision is based on the increase in introduction of contraband as a emergency situation. Legal letters must be delivered within 72 hours and packages must be delivered within 120 hours excluding weekends and holidays, or emergency situations till 1 March 2022 or procedures are in place.

3. This does not apply to non-legal mail.

4. If you have any questions you can contact the undersigned at [REDACTED].

6 Sep 2021 [REDACTED] Director,
Standards and Accreditation

ODRC Policy/Operation Manual Variance Request
Variance to ODRC Policy/Operation Manual #: 75-MAL-01
Section(s): VI A-14
Policy/Operation Manual Name: Incarcerated Individual Mail
Managing Officer or
designee Submitting the Emie Moore
Request
Signature
Policy Owner Signature
[REDACTED]
Date:
8/16/2021
Date of Request: Aug 16, 2021
Length of Request: Expires 3/1/2022
Effective Date of Variance:
September 15, 2021
Applicable to:
All facilities
Next revision
90 days
120 days
180 days
other
Please provide a full explanation of the requested variance including the identification for the request. Please be specific as to exactly what sections and language are being revised. Explain revision necessary prior to routine revision of the policy. (Attach additional sheets if necessary):
75-MAL-01 Section VI A-14 is modified to allow 72 hours, excluding weekends, holidays, or emergency situations to process and deliver
incoming legal mail to incarcerated individuals. The additional 24 hours are needed to aid in the identification and Interception of contraband Into DRC institutions.
Comments:
Bureau of Operational Compliance (A. Moon) is currently seeking a waiver with ACA for standard 5-ACI-7D-09 (4495).
Recommended Not Recommended
Comments:
Recommended Not Recommended
Comments:
Recommended Not Recommended Jocelyn K Lowe
Decision/Comments:
Approved
Disapproved
Central POllice Policy Review Chairperson
[REDACTED]
3/16/2021
Deputy Director Regional Director:
[REDACTED]
Date:
8/16/2021
Date:
8/16/2021
-
Director:
[REDACTED]
Date:
9/14/24
Next Revision
Expiration of Variance:
120 days
180 days
3/1/221
DRC1687 E (Rev. 00/2020)
Policy: 01-CONF-01
Page 1 of 1

Attorney-Client Privilege in Ohio threatened By New
Prison Policies
by Dr. S. M. Steele [REDACTED]

The prisoner's last piece of privacy in Ohio is under
attack. Beneath the pretext of maintaining safety and security
of its facilities, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and
Corrections ("ODAC") has altered their mail policies to allow
prison employees to read and/or copy prisoner's legal mail.
With the assistance of poorly trained canines, legitimate legal
mail from reputable law firms and organizations is being held
under the suspicion of being paper soaked in drugs. If the
canine barks at the piece of mail, the mail is confiscated and
sent to the Institutional Investigator. The mail is then held
in his or her office until he or she gets to it. When the
investigator does get to it, there has been claims that the
mail has been opened and re-sealed and sometimes it has been
copied and feigned as the original. The long held practice of
inspecting legal mail in the presence of the prisoner has been
breached.


Shockingly, the authorization of this breach is supported
by the American Correctional Association ("ACA"). The ACA used
to be an organization that held prisons to high standards and
made sure they were constitutionally in compliance. Not
anymore. On September 6, 2021, the ACA director of standards
and accreditation, [REDACTED], gave the ODRC
director, [REDACTED], unprecedented permission to
temporarily waive ODRC prison policies that instruct prison
administrations to timely and efficiently distribute mail,
specifically legal mail and packages, to their prisoner
populations. Their reason for this prison policy was "Due to
contraband being introduced through both vendor packages and
legal mail[. ]" (Memorandum For: [REDACTED],
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections Bureau
of Operational Compliance). The policy has opened a floodgate
of constitutional violations.


On its face, the policy seems like ODRC has a logical,
vested interest in making sure drugs do not come into the
prisons. But in practice, this policy has gave prison
administrations unbridled authority to pry into the privacy of
prisoner's legal mail and, as a result, has entitled them to
violate prisoner's right to attorney-client privileges. The
fallacy of this policy works like this -- Once the legal mail
arrives at the prison, a canine is sent to sniff the mail. If
the canine barks at the mail, the mail is withheld and the
prisoner is sent a 'Notice of Unauthorized Item Received' form.
At the Trumbull Correctional Institution where I am held
captive, these forms are sent to prisoners with no signature
from mail room staff and there is no description of the actual
reason why the mail is being held. The only response given to
the prisoner is :"K-9 hit on legal mail". After this the legal
mail is sent to the investigator until he reviews it.
2

There are several problems wrong with this policy in
practice. First, the canine has made over 100 false barks on
prisoner's legal mail. After the legal mail is reviewed by the
investigator and proven NOT to be drugs, the legal mail is
forwarded to the prisoner. But, if the canine barked at it and
the canine is trained to detect drugs, what did the dog bark
at? The question has been posed to several prison
administrations, but they never give a clear answer. Like
drones, they just continue to confiscate prisoner's legal mail
by following orders.
The second issue with this policy is, when the mail is
being held, it is often held for close to 10 business days. As
many of us know, responses to the courts have time frames. If a
prisoner misses those time frames, he or she might find their
case dismissed and procedurally barred. However, the prisons do
not care about this. There job is to keep people incarcerated,
so for those prisoners who have errors in their cases or may be
actually innocent, they end up being forced to forfeit their
opportunity to go home. And the prisons do not have a policy
that they will send an affidavit to the courts and admit it was
their fault why responding to a motion was late.
The third issue is connected to the second. On paper, the
ACA gave ODRC only an extra 24 hours to get prisoner's legal
mail to them, for a total of 72 hours, the time in which they
have to forward legal mail to prisoners once the canine sniffs
it. But if the canine barks on it, this policy is bypassed and
the mail ends up being held longer than authorized. And there
3

is no policy that protects against this.
The fourth issue is the fact that several prisoners have
reported that their mail is being copied by the investigator
and feigned as the original or that the mail is being opened
and read by the investigator without the investigator truly
being focused on the presence of contraband. This issue is an
egregious violation of prisoner's constitutional rights. As
stated by Sisk, King, Nissen Beitzel, Duffus & Koehler (2019),
"the use of confidential mail correspondence is vital to
effective representation and indeed for access to legal
representation at all" (p.574). If that confidentiality is
breached by prison investigators who rely on a poorly trained
canine that makes false barks, a prisoner's right to their
attorney-client privilege becomes no privilege at all. This
makes the policy in place unjust when it opens a door that allows so many abuses.



For months, since this policy has been in place,
I have sought to raise awareness about the issues. I could only raise
awareness because I hadn't been affected by this policy
directly. But on December 22, 2021, I was attacked by this
unconstitutional evil. During mail call, I received the
notorious 'Notice of an Unauthorized Item Received' form that
stated a canine had hit on my legal mail. The legal mail was
sent to me by a lawyer and graduate from the New York School
of Law. I was sure the mail did not contain any drugs so I
immediately grieved the issue. I had to get to the bottom of
4

why the mail room had held my mail.



I grieved to the institutions Deputy Warden of Special
Services. He was suppose to be the guy who oversaw the
entirety of the mail procedures. But he did not want to touch
the issue; instead, he directed me to the mail room supervisor.
I sent my complaint to him, but he has yet to respond.
Regardless, his response will be the same as given to other
prisoners who have raised the issue. They will say their is
nothing they can do because of policy. They will give me a half-
hearted response designed to avoid accountability for violating
prisoner's constitutional rights. Whatever the case, it will
not excuse their violation of prisoner's rights.


My goal with my complaint will be to file a lawsuit to
Federal court. Hidden within this practice is the fact that
reputable lawyers and organizations are being subject to
defamation of their character and reputation. When the canine
barks at their mail, it gives the impression that these
upstanding legal professionals are participating in the drug
trade. If made public, this could cause them to lose
respectability in their profession and community, only to later
find out that the canine used to detect the drugs had made a
false bark and was poorly trained.


I believe a class action suit needs to be filed in Ohio
about this issue. These closed door violations need to be
5

addressed in open court because many of these incidents
are being swept under the rug. Prisoners in Ohio need help on this
issue. Even though several of us are fighting it, if we do not
receive our legal mail on time, how can we properly respond to
the courts? There was an incident where a prisoner had
received a 'Return to Sender' mail back from the courts. The
courts needed him to attach an affidavit of indigence. But
when the mail arrived at the prison, the poorly trained canine
backed at the mail and the prison confiscated the mail before
it was delivered to the prisoner. How did the mail he sent out
cause the canine to back? After the mail was determined
harmless, the mail was forwarded to him, but it was too late.
The court later ruled he took too long and dismissed his case
for failure to prosecute.


If you are a lawyer, several of us in Ohio need your
help. The practice of this policy is different from what's
written on paper. And as a result, the prison has found a way
to circumvent our constitutional protections. We need a proper
investigation done on this issue.


In conclusion, a prisoner's right to counsel and to
access the courts has been threatened. If the issues presented
in this article are not contained, many incarcerated Ohioans
will suffer the loss of the few constitutional rights
6

we have left. Ohio's modification and waiver of their original
mail policy is egregious and needs to be corrected. Without a
correction, the ODRC will continue their pursuit of harnessing
a power that devours the last piece of privacy held by
prisoners in Ohio.


For more information on this issue I can be contacted via
jpay.com with the information, S [REDACTED] Steele [REDACTED]. This is the
best way to contact me at the moment. Any letters may not make
it. Thank you for your support.

About the Author
S [REDACTED] is a youth-to-adult prisoner. He has been incarcerated
since he was a juvenile. He is currently serving his twenty-
second year in prison. While incarcerated, he has earned his
Doctors in Divinity, Certification as a Life Coach, and
Graduated from the Blackstone Career Institute as a paralegal.
S [REDACTED] is a juvenile justice advocate and currently fights to
change the juvenile bind-over laws in Ohio.
7

Works Cited
Sisk, G., King, M., Nissen Beitzel, J., Duffus, B., & Koehler,
K. (2019) . Reading the prisoner's letter: Attorney-client
confidentiality in inmate correspondence. The journal of
criminal law and criminology, 109(3), 559-632.
8

S [REDACTED] Steele
[REDACTED]

January 8, 2022

Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative
c/o Tyler Walton Esq. 139 MacDougal St., B22
New York, NY 10012

Subject: Response to Question

Dear Mr. Walton:
This communication is a response to the question on page 19 of
the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative: Practice Modules I
nternational Human Rights.

I wanted to share my answer with you so you could know that I
considered the question. I did not answer it pertaining to me
in particularity; instead, I answered it in reference to the
plight of juveniles in this country who ace unlawfully treated
like adults inside our citizen injustice systems.


I hope you enjoy the read and I look forward to hearing from
you to the Future.

Thank you for the time and effort you are placing into giving
a marginalized population a voice. You are appreciated.
1

Respectfully communicated,
S [REDCATED] Steele
S[REDACTED] Steele

encl(s): Answer to the question, 'Do local government
officials respect my rights?
2


Question:
Do Local Government Officials (judges, prosecutors,
defense attorneys, prison officials) respect my human rights?


Answer:
Enclosed

January 8, 2022

by Dr. S. M. Steele [REDACTED] D.D., CLA, CPLC.

Government Officials do not respect the human rights of
children. The overall evidence of this is found in State and
Federal juvenile bind-over laws. These Laws give State and
Federal governments the power to deprive children of their
human right to youth and it allows them to legally convert
children into adults before the child is ever convicted for a
crime.

Children who are accused of acts that "would be" a crime "if"
such acts were committed by an adult are dealt an unfair
disadvantage in the United States Legal system. Once the State
or Federal Prosecutor pushes for the position that the child
should be tried as an adult, the child is transferred to adult
court and forced to be presumed to possess an adult 'mind
construct' and then expected to defend themselves like an
adult would.

A child should never be tried as an adult. Why? Because a
child is never an adult. The laws of nature and the biological
construct of the child can attest to this. The child's natural
condition prohibits the child from ever functioning within the
capacity of an adult. It's not possible. Those rare moments
were we see children behaving like an adult is due to mere
mimicry. Therefore, to force a child to act like an adult in a
legal capacity is impossible, especially inside a courtroom
where every adult in the room has went to law school
for years.
1

The common sense of these facts shows that the government does
not respect the human rights of the child when it can design
schemes that convert children into adults while it disallows
children to function in such a capacity in all other areas of
society. For example, children cannot convert themselves
into an adult and go have sex with an adult. Children cannot
convert themselves into an adult and join the military.
Children cannot convert themselves into an adult and go vote.
But somehow children can become adults when it's time to send
them to prison for the rest of their lives.


This shows that the juvenile bind-over laws serve as the
"other" abortion laws in this country that no one is
protesting about. These laws take unwanted children and kill
them off in prison at the hands of irresponsible adults.
Adults who have neglected children by raising them up in
communities where they are subjected to all forms of negative
influences, care less about children who are sent to adult
prisons. Deprived of their right to youth, children ace sent
to adult prisons without any type of serious protest.


The truth is, if a child has committed a crime, they have been
failed by the adults in our society. Somewhere along the way,
they were neglected. They were birthed into crime-ridden
neighborhoods; they were raised by uneducated adults; they
were fed malnourishing foods; they were sent to disinterested
schools; they were subjected to play with incompetently raised
children; they were exposed to drugs, guns, sex and violence
2

of unimaginable dimensions. Many children who end up
committing crimes had to endure all these circumstance before
they ever saw one positive role model. It's the failure of
adults who misraised children that are at fault, not the
child. So when we ask the question, "Does the Government.
respect my human rights, the short answer is No. I myself has
been incarcerated since the age of sixteen. I've now been in
prison for over twenty-two years. Many lies where told in
order to secure my conviction. I couldn't defend myself at the
time because I didn't get to earn a Doctors In Jurisprudence. I
lacked the capacity to apply the law in my Favor. And there
are thousands of other children, labelled juveniles, who have
suffered just like me. They languish in prison cells all
throughout the United States because irresponsible adults
allowed a society to exist that ultimately failed us. And
other adults, those in power, stood by and watched them fail
us.


A child, who has no choice from birth, but to obey the adults
who made the world before they arrived, must suffer both the
good and bad that is distributed to them. The information
plowed into their brains, whether good or bad, serve as the
behavioral model they are forced to express because no other
reality is placed before their eyes. From music to movies,
adults have plowed images of drugs, sex, and violence into the
public mind and it inevitably trickles down into the children.
The child has no choice except to choose From the choices provided. The child has no choice except to focm behaviors
3
based upon the social ingredients given to him or her.


Self-responsibility for a child is always in the form of adult
hindsight. The child may know his or her actions are right or
wrong only after they are in trouble. Children believe that
getting away with something is considered good unless they get caught. This trusted, twisted Logic is embedded in children by
adults because so many adults set the example that "Doing what
they want to do" is a staple of human life and adulthood. But
the child knows no better. The child has no idea that
consequences, severe ones, wait at the other ended of this
twisted adult logic. Yet, once this twisted logic is fused
into the child, the child has been ruined and then forced to
fend for themselves inside a society that has forgotten, they
too, were once children.


With this amnesia in place, adults grow up to be politicians
and judges and forget that the children they send to prison
are products of the world they failed to fix. The existence of
images and acts of violence and other socially immoral
behaviors ace controlled by the adults who cast them into the
world. It doesn't matter if the Label says 'Rated R' or 'Must
be 18' when adults do not care about eradicating the contents
of these labels from our society. The whole concept is
contradictive.


People will acqua and claim freedom of speech when it comes to
these images and actions they cast into the world, but if this
is the case, then no child should be held liable for imitating
the speech accepted by adults who make the laws or who
exercise behaviors that support these images and actions. No
child should be penalized for the thoughts and images placed
into their vulnerable minds by conscious adults who knows that
these thoughts are harmful to public welfare. With the freedom
of speech argument made by most adults, no child should be
held in prison at all.


The development of a child's mind is just like a product
manufactured by a company. As a society we do not blame the
car with bad brakes that crashes into something or someone
regardless of the damage done. We blame the manufacturer. The
manufacturer of the vehicle is responsible for the efficient
operation of the car. If more adults were held responsible for
the development of the child, more children would be raised
correctly. Once this is understood as a Nation, it will be
realized that no child is responsible for their actions. Even
if they appeared to know right from wrong, some wrongs have
been made to appear right by the adults who smile, laugh and
giggle at the violence that they portray in movies and sports.


Until this is checked, the child will remain the victim of
adult irresponsibility. Aod until this is checked, government
officials will still continue to disrespect children's human
5

rights. Loft unchecked, children cemain the United States
scapegoats For their own mismanagement. But when it is checked
and those who were sent to prison an children are released,
that is when the government will start to respect the human
rights of children.
6


About The Author

Dr. S. M. Steele, D.D., is a youth-to-adult prisoner. He has been
incarcerated since he was 16. Over the course of 22 years and
counting Steele has evolved to become a Writer, a Life Coach,
an Ordained Minister, a Paralegal and a Doctor in Divinity. He is
also in College seeking his Bachelor's Degree in Technical and
Applied Studies. And he is currently working on his first book
to become a published author. In addition, Steele is a Juvenile
Justice activist and fights to change laws aimed at children who
are bound over and tried as an adult.

Steele is currently incarcerated at the [REDACTED] Correctional
Institution. His contact information is:

S [REDACTED] Steele
[REDACTED]
or through
www.jpay.com

S[redacted] Steele
May 9th, 2022

Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative
c/o Tyler Walton Esq.
139 MacDougal St., B22
New York, NY 10012

RE: Answer to question posted in the Jailhouse Lawyer
Initiative Newsletter, Issue No. 3, April 2022

Question(s) Posed:
#1 How do movements for abolition, against criminalization, and prison reform represent you and your experiences?

#2 What policy (policies) would you want to see the community mobilize to change?

Answer to Question #1

I am represented by abolition movements against criminalization in the sense that a fight to remove labels of permanency. Criminal, inmate, prisoner, etc. should be temporel labels, not a permanent designations. When I hear people call us human or incarcerated citizens, I feel more accepted by the human family.

But, in prison, correctional officers use the word "Inmate" like Southerners use the word "Nigger". When we are called inmates, some of us can feel the sting of the stigma inside the word. We can sense that it is used to degrade us.

We get punished by people with more skeletons in their closet than a cemetery. Yet they have the nerve to dehumanize us and label us words designed to perpetuate us into an existence of ridicule and ostrasization.

These movements that mobilize to make sure our humanity is protected is a form of positive citizenship. I encourage it and look forward to its ongoing projects.

Answer to Question #2

I would want the community to mobilize to change how kids are treated under the law. I believe children should never be legally transferred into adults. This goes against science, biology, and common sense morality. The child is never an adult. I would like to see adults who fight for incarcerated people to shine some light on Juvenile Justice. To demand change towards incarcerating kids for decades behind bars. It is unfair. This is the main thing I'd like to see mobilizing groups change – the way the government treats our children.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

S[redacted] Steele