Victoria Valenzuela Substack
Forget ghouls and goblins. Here are five scary details about the prison system to think about.
Halloween, a day known for fright, is upon us. Yet, the horrific thing isn’t that haunted house or corn maze you visited, it is that there are nearly two million people incarcerated in the United States — the global leader in incarceration by far — in deplorable conditions to the point where imprisoned people are dying, endeavoring to file lawsuits against the states for better conditions, and spending decades behind bars despite bettering themselves.
As a reporter covering incarceration for nearly six years, I have heard the worst. Here are five scary issues around incarceration. As you read, think to yourself: would you want yourself, your mother, or your friend to ever experience this?
Felony murder
Felony murder happens when a person is convicted for a murder someone else committed. They are charged as an accomplice simply for being present or taking part in the crime but not committing the actual murder.
While there is no real way to know how many people are serving felony murder sentences, the Felony Murder Reporting Project analyzed 10,000 cases across the country and found that young people — sometimes even minors — are overwhelmingly convicted for felony murder, it disproportionately impacts people of color, and the sentence is also given to a large amount of women, as 72% of women in California are serving felony murder sentences.
Many people with felony murder are sentenced to life in prison. Some are even given the death penalty, even though they did not murder anybody. Sometimes, the actual perpetrator is given a lesser sentence than the person convicted of felony murder solely because of defense team ineffectiveness or race.
Sadik Baxter is one example of a horrific felony murder case. When was arrested for stealing a pair of sunglasses, his getaway driver sped off, was car chased by police and 18 minutes later fatally hit two bystanders. Baxter and the getaway driver, O’Brian Oakley, were both charged with two counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole, even though it was an accident and Baxter was miles away from the crime.
In the case of LaChanté Mobley, she was convicted of felony murder after her partner killed her four year old son. She was at work when her son was taken to the hospital and died. She was still charged as an accomplice.
When people get felony murder sentences, they are punished as if they committed the murder when they did not. It is unfair and another travesty of the justice system.
Prison labor and pay
Many people in prison don’t have a say over whether or not to work. Fifteen states, including California, have an exception clause that bans involuntary servitude — also known as slavery — with the exception of punishment of crime. That forces incarcerated people to work.
Currently and formerly incarcerated people say that being forced to work is harmful because that takes away from time they can spend on college or rehabilitative programs, and they do not get time off if they are sick or grieving. There have been ballot measures across the country to ban the exception clause. Some have been successful, but others like California were did not pass the measure when it came time to vote.
Incarcerated people often work jobs that regulate the prison such as janitors, cooks, or visiting room staff. Sometimes they are given dangerous jobs, like to work in slaughterhouses, with tractors, or in the fields. They can also work for for-profit companies to manufacture furniture, license plates, or more.
Despite this, most incarcerated people get paid less than a dollar, if they get paid at all — even if they produce goods that get sold outside of the prison.
In the case of Arkansas, there is a prison named the Cummins Unit built over a former slave plantation. Incarcerated people work in a “hoe squad” and get on their hands and knees to pick vegetables out of the dirt, as armed officers on horses stand above them. They are not given any pay for their work because of the exception clause. They are also not allowed to eat any of the food they harvest, and are instead fed cheap, fake meat. Men incarcerated there told me that the conditions are dehumanizing. Meanwhile, the Arkansas Department of Corrections was paid more than $36 million for its produce and livestock between 2019 and 2023.
Juvenile life sentences
Another horrific fact is that minors can be sentenced to life in prison in many states, despite science proving that their brain is not fully developed yet. While most of the country has abolished juvenile life sentences, there are still 17 states that permit it. The US is the only country in the world that allows youth life without parole sentences.
The Sentencing Project reported that youth sentenced to life often faced some kind of trauma before their arrest and incarceration:
The life experiences of those sentenced to life as juveniles varies, but they are often marked by very difficult upbringings with frequent exposure to violence; they were often victims of abuse themselves.
In 2012, The Sentencing Project found that of youth sentenced to life:
- 79% witnessed violence in their homes regularly
- 32% grew up in public housing
- Fewer than half were attending school at the time of their offense
- 47% were physically abused
- 80% of girls reported histories of physical abuse and 77% of girls reported histories of sexual abuse
They also found that juvenile life sentences are also disproportionately given to Black youth, especially if the victim was white.
The death penalty
There is no talking about the horrors of the system without mentioning the death penalty. There are currently about 2,000 people facing execution in the US. Many people languish on death row for decades before their execution. During this time, they live in solitary confinement away from the rest of the prison population, are fed through a slot in the door, and are alone with their thoughts and fear that they are going to be murdered by the state one day. The conditions on death row are deplorable.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center:
Some Supreme Court Justices have raised constitutional concerns about the physical and psychological effects of being held for extensive time in solitary confinement, separate from challenges to the death penalty itself. Many legal experts in the U.S. and internationally have concluded that prolonged isolation is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, comparable to torture.
In an interview with CNN in 2011, Damien Echols, who has been on death row in Arkansas since 1993, said:
“I miss the stars. You know, I haven’t seen the stars in years and years and years. I miss the rain. I miss food. I miss all these things. But what it comes down to the most — and this is the thing that will scar me the most and that I’ll carry with me as a scar the longest — the thing I miss the most is being treated like a human being.”
There are three executions scheduled on Nov. 5: one in Indiana, Florida and Alabama. There are two more on Nov. 12, and two more on Nov. 19. After that, there is one more execution this year before the seven more scheduled for next year. It should horrify everyone that the state is murdering people so rampantly.
Death penalty abolitionists say that executing people only perpetuates a cycle of violence. Most of the world has already abolished the death penalty. There are 113 countries that have fully outlawed the death penalty completely. According to Amnesty International, last year the US was in the top five executors of the world, alongside China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
Prison food
According to survey responses Impact Justice received from 250 people in prison for a report titled “Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food,” incarcerated people are often served spoiled food (moldy bread, sour milk, rotten meat, slimy bagged salad mix, and canned or packaged products years past their expiration date). Impact Justice estimated that even if a person is incarcerated for three years, they would eat 3,000 meals in prison.
The report stated, “Numerous formerly incarcerated people who were assigned to work in their prison’s kitchen recalled being required to cook and serve packages of chicken and beef marked ‘not for human consumption.’” Nearly everyone who responded to the survey said the meals did not taste good and looked unappetizing. Additionally, 94% of respondents said they did not have enough food to feel full.
Even the process of eating is a negative experience. Some people in Impact Justice’s survey also said chow halls were stressful, potentially dangerous places and they felt shame eating in front of the guards.
Additionally, while preparing their own food out of commissary items is an option, it is often expensive and therefore inaccessible. Most commissary items cost more than they would at regular markets, despite incarcerated people making less than a dollar an hour.
Impact Justice’s report stated:
The damaging and degrading prison food experience is a symptom of a larger systemic malady: our dependence on a dehumanizing criminal justice system to address harm. Like every other aspect of mass incarceration, this is an issue of racial and economic injustice: Lower-income communities of color, where affordable healthy food is scarce, disproportionately lose members to prison and then struggle to support them when they return home in worse health. In this way, prisons function as out-of-sight food deserts, perpetuating patterns of poor health in communities that already experience profound inequities.
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