Author: Amber Black

Groups Urge U.N. to Call for Abolition of Death By Incarceration During Historic U.S. Visit

Posted on by Amber Black
Groups Urge U.N. to Call for Abolition of Death By Incarceration During Historic U.S. Visit

Groups tell Expert Mechanism on Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement:
Life imprisonment violates human rights, including bans on torture and racial discrimination

April 28, 2023 – Amid the historic visit of the U.N. Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement, a coalition of civil rights, legal, and prisoners’ rights groups working on the issue of life imprisonment, also known as Death by Incarceration, released the following statement:

We welcome the EMLER experts and the light they are shining on racial injustice in the U.S. criminal legal system and its roots in slavery and colonialism. Our groups work in coalition with other organizations participating in the visit on many interconnected issues – from policing and immigration enforcement to incarceration, political prisoners, and the death penalty – and we welcome EMLER’s examination of all aspects of the U.S. criminal legal system. We hope EMLER’s areas of focus during its visit include life imprisonment, which we call Death by Incarceration (DBI). This is the term people serving these sentences and their loved ones use to emphasize the reality of their impact: premature death in prison. 

We urge EMLER to call for an end of DBI sentences in the U.S. They harm not only individuals but entire communities, rupturing family ties and perpetuating intergenerational cycles of poverty and pain. As we wrote in a submission to EMLER – which supplements a complaint sent to U.N experts in September 2022 – DBI sentences are the devastating consequence of a cruel and racially discriminatory criminal legal system that begins with violent policing and ends with the permanent abandonment of people in prisons, where lives – particularly Black lives – are cut short. While in 2020 only 12.4 percent of the U.S. population was Black, 46 percent of all of those serving DBI sentences nationwide were Black.

Though hardly confined to this country, DBI sentences are more prevalent here than anywhere else: a 2019 study found that more people are serving them in the United States than in the other 113 surveyed countries combined, and that people serving life without parole in the United States make up more than 80 percent of those serving it worldwide. The number of people sentenced to DBI in the United States has grown exponentially since the 1970s, helping to drive mass incarceration. In 2020, 203,865 people were serving DBI sentences. Compounding this rise is the large decrease in grants of clemency and the increasing uncertainty of parole. 

DBI sentences are a form of torture. Any sentence that deprives incarcerated people of a meaningful opportunity for release is cruel and inhuman, in violation of the international prohibition on torture. People sentenced to life without parole have no meaningful prospect of release. While people sentenced to other forms of DBI may be technically eligible for parole, parole processes across the United States fail to meet basic human rights standards and cannot be considered meaningful opportunities for release.

Though billed as a crime-fighting tactic, DBI sentences do not, in fact, make communities safer; rather, they divert resources away from systems and approaches that do. Rooted in the legacy of slavery and racial hierarchy, these sentences are common in the United States precisely because they disproportionately harm Black people and Black communities.
We have seen the U.N. influence the debate and policy in the United States on crucial human rights issues. It was U.N. leadership that, for example, contributed to the momentum for change on long-term solitary confinement. We believe EMLER has the capacity and the mandate to do the same on Death by Incarceration.

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Contact:

Kris Henderson, Amistad Law Project, (215) 310-0424, kris@amistadlaw.org
Bret Grote, Abolitionist Law Center, (412) 654-9070, bretgrote@abolitionistlawcenter.org
Courtney Hanson, California Coalition for Women Prisoners & DROP LWOP, (916) 316-0625, courtney@womenprisoners.org
TeAna Taylor, Release Aging People in Prison, ‭(518) 847-5497‬
Jen Nessel, Center for Constitutional Rights, (212) 614-6449, jnessel@ccrjustice.org

Historic Settlement Announced in Philly Police Violence Case

Posted on by Amber Black

On March 20, 2023, the Abolitionist Law Center, the Legal Defense Fund, and the law firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP announced an unprecedented settlement with the City of Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Police Department’s (PPD) violent, militaristic attack on people in West Philadelphia during peaceful protests following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. (This case is one of four arising out of the police violence directed at residents and protestors in West Philadelphia and the I-676 highway in Philadelphia. The others, by additional law firms, include Welch, et al. v. City of Philadelphia, Hough, et al. v City of Philadelphia, and Zolitor, et al. v. City of Philadelphia.)

ALC and co-counsel’s suit, filed in July 2020, challenged the PPD’s extreme response to protests, which included attacking peaceful demonstrators with rubber bullets, pepper balls, and chemical munitions, and also harming uninvolved residents of the majority Black neighborhood.

Under the settlement terms for all four cases, the City of Philadelphia has agreed to pay monetary damages totaling $9,250,000 collectively to those who were harmed — one of the largest settlements of its kind in Philadelphia history.

Additionally, the City will:

  • Disengage from the 1033 federal program which arms state and local law enforcement with military weapons and equipment
  • Meet every six months with the West Philadelphia community to present data around the Department’s use of force and respond to questions and comments from the community
  • And commit $500,000 to a fund (to be distributed through a community-led grantmaking process administered by Bread & Roses) that will provide interdisciplinary, trauma-informed counseling to victims of police violence and provide support for and promote community-led programming in the aftermath of police violence and misconduct. 

“Instead of protecting us, the Philadelphia Police Department waged war in our streets, tear gassed us, and shot us with rubber bullets. By blanketing a community with tear gas, they haphazardly attacked law-abiding citizens in their homes and on their sidewalks,” said Amelia Carter, a plaintiff in the case. “There should be no place for the militarization of a police department that is supposed to serve us. The settlement’s disengagement from the 1033 program, which arms law enforcement with military equipment, is a welcome start that prioritizes our safety. This settlement represents a significant stride in preventing the police department from being granted the authority to act against its own citizens in the future.”

ALC staff attorney Nia Holston noted, “This landmark settlement provides a singular opportunity for the City to reflect upon the harm it enacted on its residents on that day, harm that echoed Philadelphia’s own history of racism and discriminatory infliction of violence. It is only through the work of the community and the movements that have pushed this city to do better, that we progress to a more just Philadelphia for all who inhabit it. The settlement not only compensates those who were targeted, but provides further opportunity to residents to heal and to continue their work.”

“Often, settlements come in the form of compensating a harmed person without accounting for the damage that police violence does to the whole community,” said Director and Practice Associate Professor of the Advocacy for Racial and Civil (ARC) Justice Clinic Cara McClellan. “This settlement, however, features a recognition of the damage the PPD has done throughout West Philadelphia and it communicates the importance of centering the community in a path towards healing. Today’s settlement sets an important precedent for accountability in future cases.”

Read more

Press Coverage

Video of Settlement Announcement Press Conference, 03.20.23

Philadelphia to Pay $9.25 Million to Settle Suit by George Floyd Protesters
The protesters said they sustained “physical and emotional injuries” in the response by city police to civil unrest after his murder in Minneapolis in 2020. (The New York Times, 03.20.23)

Philadelphia will pay $9.25M to protesters over police use of tear gas and rubber bullets during 2020 unrest: The city also agreed to contribute $500,000 to a fund that will provide counseling to victims of police violence and offer community-led programming. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 03.20.23)

$9.2M Settlement Reached in 2020 Philly Protests Where Tear Gas Was Deployed (NBC10 Philadelphia, 03.20.23)

Philadelphia to pay nearly $10 million for police misconduct in 2020 (The Washington Post, 03.20.23)

Philly Inks $9.75M Settlement With Residents, BLM Protestors (Law360, 03.20.23)

Making Noise & Making News: March 2023

Posted on by Amber Black

Our litigators, organizers, and volunteers, and the larger abolition and decarceration movement we’re part of, have been running at full speed the last few months.

We’ve been in the streets and in the courts, in front of the cameras and behind the scenes, fighting for freedom and an end to state violence.

FREEDOM, FIVE YEARS ON

February 20, 2023 was the five year anniversary of the day that ALC executive director Robert Saleem Holbrook, walked out of SCI Greene after serving 27 years of a death by incarceration sentence for an offense he was involved with as a 16-year-old child. In this essay Saleem reflects on his journey since 2018 (which includes recently being named to the transition team for PA Governor Josh Shapiro), and his unwavering dedication to the people he left behind on the inside, and their families on the outside.

ON THE LEGAL FRONT

In the fall of 2022, ALC and our allies at Civil Rights Corps filed Horton v. Rangos, a major new lawsuit challenging the illegal detention of hundreds of people in the Allegheny County Jail. The suit claims that the manner in which the County detains individuals accused of violating the conditions of their probation is unconstitutional, leading to excessive pre-trial incarceration.

People accused of having violated their probation – whether for technical reasons such as not attending a required meeting, or for allegedly committing new offenses – are often detained pending a probation violation hearing, which can take months and even sometimes years to be scheduled. Even if a judge sets bail, people held pursuant to probation detainers must remain incarcerated. Probation detainers are the primary driver of pretrial incarceration at the Allegheny County Jail.

The lawsuit alleges that when probation hearing officers are ruling on whether to lift people’s detainers (that is, whether to release them from incarceration), the officers do not consider any evidence and do not make any findings about whether there’s a good reason to jail the person. Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that in certain categories of cases, the hearing officers apply a mandatory detention policy; no matter the facts or circumstances, they refuse to lift the probation detainers.

In October 2022, ALC filed a motion for preliminary injunction asking defendants (including Adult Probation and Judges Rangos, Bigley, and Mariani) to cease those mandatory detention practices. A hearing on that motion is coming up in April, as we continue building a powerful case to end these egregiously unconstitutional and repressive practices in Allegheny County.

In other ALC legal news:

SHOWING UP FOR OUR COMMUNITIES

Around Philly:

There is a deadly crisis in Philadelphia’s jails. Our community members are being abused and neglected, and just during the pandemic time period alone, 29 people have died.

ALC is working on legislation to establish a Prison Oversight Board over Philly’s four jails to create oversight, transparency, and accountability where currently none exists. Our vision is that the Board will be an independent civilian body whose members will include those who are the experts on Philly’s carceral system — formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones — who will have the power to investigate abuses, audit prison practices and policies, and have full access to the facilities.

You can learn more about Philly jail conditions and the work we’re doing by checking out videos of POWER’s Town Hall on the Tragedy of Philly’s Jails and one we hosted last year. To get involved, email ALC’s Philly Jails Organizer Sam Lew at sam@alcenter.org.

Around Pittsburgh:

The campaign to end abuses at the Allegheny County Jail remains the primary focus of our Pittsburgh-area organizing work presently. We’re continuing to engage relentlessly with jail oversight board meetings and board members, educate the community on carceral issues, and build a coalition with our partners at APA (Alliance for Police Accountability).

We’ve been advocating for incarcerated people to receive medicine while caged at the jail; organizing court support for people who have hearings; and focusing especially on the children incarcerated at the ACJ, as well as those with psychiatric and other disabilities, whose conditions tend to be catastrophically exacerbated by confinement at the jail.

This excellent recent article in Spotlight PA exemplifies the abysmal situations that are all too often experienced by people with psychiatric issues who encounter the criminal legal system in Allegheny County, and describes the sort of intensely hands-on interventions by our staff and other advocates who are fighting for better outcomes for these vulnerable people: A CRIMINAL SOLUTION: Determining whether someone is mentally fit to stand trial in Pennsylvania often traps them in the very place making them worse — jail. This is the story of one woman’s fight to get out.

And in another form of advocacy, we’re lifting up this fundraiser to buy a headstone for Gerald Thomas, who died at ACJ a year ago, and whose experience was detailed in the ALC report, “Death-Making Institutions.”

SPOTLIGHT ON AN EMERGING LEADER

Sergio “Serg” Hyland joined ALC’s staff as the executive assistant in 2022, several months after being released following two decades in prison.

While inside, Serg pursued an education; was mentored by ALC’s first client, political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz; and became a published writer and a correspondent for Prison Radio.

Today Serg is still a writer. He’s also an in-demand speaker, a political organizer, and the editor-in-chief of The Movement magazine of the Human Rights Coalition.

In addition to all of these activities, Serg was recently named to the Emerging Leaders Corp, a new collaborative learning program just launched by the Pew Charitable trust. This initiative “aims to help rising Philadelphia leaders tackle some of the city’s biggest challenges by strengthening their ability to use data effectively to assess policy options and inform decision-making… Over the course of the sessions, participants will also develop their visions for the city’s future. And the program will culminate with participants sharing their action plans for advancing those visions through continued learning, collaboration, and advocacy with policymakers and civic leaders.”

We send a huge shout-out to this dynamic and driven member of our staff!

DOUBLE DIGITS!

In February 2023, ALC turned 10! We’re working on plans to celebrate a decade of freeing people and fighting state violence, and we’ll share more news about that as the year unfolds.

As we look at where we’ve been and where we’re headed, we gratefully acknowledge the vital role our community plays in enhancing and sustaining our work. And we’re counting on our supporters to invest in another decade of decarceration.

Please consider marking this milestone by increasing your total annual support by 10% this year; setting up a recurring $10/month donation; or even simply adding $10 to your one-time gift.

DONATE TO DECARCERATE

Help us sustain the fight to free people from incarceration and other forms of racist state violence by making a tax-deductible donation to the Abolitionist Law Center today.

Your gift fuels our collective liberation struggle and powers the transformative change we’re fighting for in the courts, in the streets, behind bars, and on the outside.

We need your partnership to keep the pressure on, and we appreciate your contribution of any amount today. There’s so much more for us to do together!

Contributions to the Abolitionist Law Center, a 501(c)(3) organization, are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

My Freedom, Five Years On (A Msg From Robert Saleem Holbrook)

Posted on by Amber Black

“I exited prison with a singular determination and commitment to fight against mass incarceration just as relentlessly and boldly as its proponents fought to keep me behind bars, and to prioritize the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families.”

– Robert Saleem Holbrook, ALC executive director

Five years ago today, I was released from SCI-Greene after serving 27 years of a life without parole sentence that was imposed on me for an offense I was convicted of as a child. Initially sentenced to die in prison, my release was the result of an international campaign to end the practice of sentencing children to life without parole. That effort culminated in the United States Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama in 2012, which held that sentencing children to mandatory life without parole sentences is unconstitutional. It took four more years of work by activists on the ground in Pennsylvania, and across the country, to make that ruling retroactive so that it applied to me and others like me. 

I am proud to have been a part of that campaign and even prouder that my sister, Anita Colon, was one of the activists at the forefront of ending mandatory life without parole sentences for children. However, I was never in this fight for personal freedom alone, nor was my sister. It was always about the movement and justice. 

I was released from prison on Tuesday, February 20th. On Wednesday, the 21st, the first thing I did was go to a general meeting of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration. I still vividly remember walking into the old, dank recreation center at 7th & Diamond Street, and being embraced by dozens of family members and comrades.

My long-awaited reunion with comrades and family members of those still inside, at CADBI meeting the day after my release.

I remember being overwhelmed with emotion thinking about my mother, who did not live to see my release, but had fought for her son like every mother in that room. I remember telling them that they should never for a moment believe that what they were doing wasn’t making a difference, because 20 years prior, my mom was just like them, going to meetings to advocate and agitate for her child’s release. And my mother sitting in those Fight For Lifers meetings in 1992 helped build a movement that led to my release in 2018.

On March 1st, 2018, a week after that CADBI meeting, I started working as an organizer and paralegal at the Abolitionist Law Center, an organization I helped create while still incarcerated. Along with my comrades from the Amistad Law Project, I hit the ground running in Philadelphia. Since then we’ve been striving relentlessly to bring abolition to the masses by prioritizing releasing people from extreme sentences and dismantling the carceral state. We do this not just by advocating, lobbying, or litigating but also by building the political power of families of the incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and marginalized communities.

Building with Amistad Law Project, on my first day on the job for ALC.

As I reflect on the many accomplishments of this movement in the five years since my release, I see a list too long to detail. A recent highlight for me was being named to incoming Governor Shapiro’s transition team. In that role I participated in a press conference just last week, at which Shapiro announced he will not sign any death warrants, and called on the legislature and community advocates to work with him to abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania.

While we celebrate this announcement and acknowledge how far we have come as a movement, to have reached this place where we are influencing the governor’s criminal justice reform priorities, we are not satisfied. The abolishment of capital punishment in Pennsylvania would be for us, another milestone on the road to decarceration and abolition.

I exited prison with a singular determination and commitment to fight against mass incarceration just as relentlessly and boldly as its proponents fought to keep me behind bars, and to prioritize the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families. When I walked out of those gates, I left men who I spent more time on this earth with than my own mother or father – men who helped raise and protect me when I was a juvenile thrown into a state prison system. I left mentors, I left friends, and I left comrades who stood with me, back against the wall, fighting for our lives in prison yards and cell blocks.

I didn’t learn about abolition in the abstract. I wake up every morning with my mind on those people still inside and their families. Never for a moment will I forget that the Abolitionist Law Center and Straight Ahead owe our power to these families. They are our constituents, and as executive director it is to them I am answerable. And having recently become a father myself – something the state tried to deprive me of – I now feel even more driven to raise a son in a society free of racism, sexism, homophobia, capitalism, oppression, and incarceration.

My lived experience compels me to this fight. I’m immensely proud of having become the executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center in 2020, and establishing its 501(c)(4) legislative arm, Straight Ahead, in 2021. And as long as I hold these roles, I’ll approach them with the unwavering commitment to boldly and unapologetically fight to dismantle the carceral state, win abolition, and reunify the families of our movement.

ACJ’s Medical Neglect Leads to Life-Threatening Emergency for Denzelle Kendrick

Posted on by Amber Black
Denzelle Kendrick

January 26, 2023, Pittsburgh: The Abolitionist Law Center is demanding that the Allegheny County Jail provide immediate medical care for Denzelle Kendrick, a medically vulnerable individual currently incarcerated at the facility. 

Mr. Kendrick has suffered his entire life from sickle cell disease, which often results in severe episodes of pain that can develop into seizures, stroke, and death if untreated. Dr. Ines Kanandra reportedly discontinued Mr. Kendrick’s prescribed pain medications in August 2022, leading to numerous such pain episodes for Mr. Kendrick. In total, he reports approximately 30 such episodes and 6 seizures since he was transferred to ACJ in July 2022. In all of these instances, correctional staff and/or medical staff have, at best, an extremely delayed response. Often, there is no medical response at all.

“The jail is withholding medication for his life threatening illness that he was born with, Sickle Cell,” said Cadiadra Kendrick, mother of Denzelle Kendrick. “I had to watch a YouTube where three medical emergencies were called and no medical aid was rendered while my child was unresponsive. This is totally neglectful.” 

The videos Cadiadra Kendrick describes were uploaded by another incarcerated individual, James Byrd, and depict an incident on or around December 4, 2022 wherein Mr. Kendrick requested to be seen immediately by medical staff due to feeling on the verge of an impending sickle cell pain episode. He was ignored by medical staff until his situation had become so severe that he had to be taken out in a stretcher, despite laying on the floor of his cell unresponsive for over an hour. 

“It is concerning that, but for the leaked videos, we would never have learned of Mr. Kendrick’s situation,” said ALC Staff Attorney Dolly Prabhu. “It’s clear that ACJ appears more focused on punishing anyone who makes them look bad rather than providing anything resembling adequate medical care. There are, undeniably, countless others with similar experiences who the public will never hear about.”

Due to the grossly inadequate medical response in these incidences, and the jail’s failure to provide Mr. Kendrick with his prescribed medications, we sent the attached letter to Warden Harper’s counsel, an assistant county solicitor, on Tuesday, January 24, 2023, demanding appropriate care moving forward and an investigation into Dr. Kanandra’s conduct.

See below for the full letter with additional details.

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Contacts: Tanisha Long, ALC Community Organizer, tanisha@alcenter.org; Dolly Prabhu, ALC Staff Attorney, dprabhu@alcenter.org

1.24.23-Medical-Advocacy-Letter-re-Denzelle-Kendrick

We’re fighting & winning in PA, and we need your help!

Posted on by Amber Black

As I often recount, I was a 16-year-old child when I was arrested. My offense resulted in me being sentenced as an adult, to spend the rest of my life behind bars, with no chance for parole.

I survived decades in Pennsylvania state prisons, including around 10 years in solitary confinement, because of the fierce advocacy of my family, and the support I received inside from mentors and Black Liberation Movement elders who were already decades into their sentences when my incarceration began.

Twenty seven years later, in 2018, I stepped out of SCI Greene after the Supreme Court ruled that sentencing children to automatic life without the possibility of parole is cruel, unnecessary, inhumane, and unconstitutional.

When I won my freedom I immediately joined the staff of the Abolitionist Law Center in my native Philadelphia, finally working on the outside with the people I’d been building with for years from the inside. Two years later I became ALC’s Executive Director.

Since then, ALC has experienced tremendous growth and vital progress in our work to combat the harms of the criminal punishment system.

And we’ve become leaders in the movement to radically alter the landscape around mass incarceration and related issues in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania.

So today, I’m asking for you to stand with us by making a tax-deductible contribution to ALC to show that you care about people like me and you want to end the racist, classist prison system that has shattered the lives of so many others from communities like mine.

As an ALC supporter, you know that we employ two broad tactics in our fight for freedom: we’re both a non-profit, public interest law firm, and a grassroots community organizing project.

We wield class action, impact, and accompaniment litigation. We mount pressure campaigns and mobilize affected communities. And we reshape the narratives around the criminal punishment system, and target every point on its conveyor belt: policing, the courts, cash bail, probation, parole, jails, and prisons.

In 2022 ALC has continued making progress achieving sweeping changes to carceral policies around restricting solitary confinement, challenging death by incarceration (life without parole), and defending the rights of imprisoned people with disabilities, and those who need psychiatric treatment and other medical care.

We’ve ratcheted up our scale and pace of bringing people home…like Bradford Gamble, an elder suffering from Stage 4 cancer, who after decades behind bars, faced the excruciating scenario of having to decline medical treatment in prison in order to qualify for “compassionate release” to spend his final days at home with family.

We’ve kept fighting to limit incarceration in the first place, and protect those who are trapped behind bars, especially the most vulnerable like those with mental illness who are often brutalized and subjected to solitary and other forms of torture.

And we’ve extracted financial resources from carceral institutions and redirected them to those the system has harmed.

People who are currently or formerly incarcerated and their loved ones are the leaders here. Folks who are directly impacted by state violence are building the strategic alliances and power to end it. But to succeed, we know we need a broad community standing with us as we fight for freedom.

Pennsylvania is a key battleground state and the stakes couldn’t be higher. So I’m personally inviting you:

Join us. Help us.

Renew your commitment as a member of our abolitionist family. Please donate to decarcerate today and for abolition tomorrow.

Robert Saleem Holbrook
Executive Director

Plaintiffs bring class action lawsuit challenging the pervasive use of probation detainers in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Posted on by Amber Black

For Immediate Release: October 3, 2022 –

Pittsburgh, Pa. –  Six currently detained individuals filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against three Allegheny County judges; Administrative Judge Jill Rangos and Court of Common Pleas Judges Anthony Mariani, and Kelly Bigley, as well as Jail Warden Orlando Harper and Director of Probation Frank Scherer and other probation department officials, alleging that Allegheny County’s pervasive use of probation detainers violates their state and federal constitutional rights. Represented by counsel from Civil Rights Corps and Abolitionist Law Center, the plaintiffs seeks a declaration that Defendants’ policies and practices violate their rights to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, through unlawfully jailing people arrested for probation violations for prolonged periods without an adequate assessment or determination that such detention is necessary. The plaintiffs also seek injunctive relief to change the practices that result in rampant illegal incarceration, and they will be moving for a preliminary injunction to immediately halt the unconstitutional practices. Finally, they seek money damages for every day of illegal detention they have suffered.

The lawsuit challenges the systemic use of probation detainers, the single largest driver of incarceration at the Allegheny County Jail. A probation detainer prohibits an individual’s release from jail until they have a hearing to determine whether they violated their probation. On any given day, about one third of the  jail population (upwards of 600 people) has  a probation detainer lodged against them. Approximately 16% of them are accused only of a technical violation of probation, such as failing to update their address or to meet with their probation officer. Most of the people with new charges, the other reason for alleged violations, are theoretically able to get out of jail on the new charges on either monetary or non-monetary bail. But because of the probation detainer, they’re stuck in jail. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the perfunctory proceedings at which decisions regarding detainers are made. The suit further challenges Judges Mariani and Bigley’s blanket administrative “no-lift” policy, automatically requiring all people they supervise who are arrested for an alleged probation violation to remain in jail, no matter the circumstances of the probation violation. “Local officials’ detainer practices are particularly jarring in light of the ongoing crisis at the Allegheny County Jail; at least six people incarcerated at the jail have died this year alone, 17 since the onset of the pandemic. Yet the jail continues to be senselessly overpopulated because of the rampant and illegal use of probation detainers,” said Sumayya Saleh, Senior Attorney, Civil Rights Corps.

Gerald Thomas is one of the individuals who died in the jail this past year. He was accused of new charges, which were all ultimately withdrawn. Mr. Thomas was held on a probation detainer for almost a year. Shortly before Mr. Thomas’s death, Judge Mariani refused to lift his detainer despite the withdrawn charges. “Mr. Thomas’s death is the worst possible outcome of these dangerous policies, but it is not an unpredictable one,” said Dolly Prabhu, Staff Attorney at the Abolitionist Law Center. “To not put an end to these practices is to continue to put hundreds of incarcerated people in Allegheny County at risk everyday.”

Dion Horton is the lead named plaintiff in the case. He’s been in jail since February 2022 for allegedly violating probation after being accused of new offenses. A judicial officer in a separate proceeding ordered that he could be released from jail on those charges. Despite this, a probation detainer was lodged against him, with no separate determination that his incarceration is necessary. Nearly eight months have passed, and there is no end in sight–he has no idea when he will have a hearing on the alleged probation violation. “I thought that we were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty,” said Mr. Horton. “But with probation detainers, it’s like I’m guilty before I’m ever tried. That doesn’t seem fair to me.”

Civil Rights Corps is a non-profit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system through innovative civil rights litigation. CRC works with individuals accused and convicted of crimes, their families and communities, people currently or formerly incarcerated, activists, organizers, judges, and government officials to challenge mass human caging and to create a legal system that promotes equality and human freedom.

The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm inspired by the struggle of political and politicized prisoners, and organized for the purpose of abolishing class and race based mass incarceration in the United States.  Abolitionist Law Center litigates on behalf of people whose human rights have been violated in prison, educates the general public about the evils of mass incarceration, and works to develop a mass movement against the American punishment system by building alliances and nurturing solidarity across social divisions.

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Cheryl Bonacci
Civil Rights Corps
cheryl@civilrightscorps.org

Dolly Prabhu
Abolitionist Law Center
dprabhu@alcenter.org