ARCP Fifty-Third Edition Preface: Quentin Lewis
I. INTRODUCTION
“There is no iron curtain drawn between the Constitution and the prisons of this country.”
—Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 555–56 (1974).
For the past year, I’ve been representing incarcerated individuals in administrative disciplinary proceedings at Wende Correctional Facility, which is located in way upstate New York near the Canadian border. Footnote #1 content: See Wende Correctional Facility, DEP’T OF CORR. & CMTY. SUPERVISION, N.Y. STATE, https://doccs.ny. gov/location/wende-correctional-facility (last visited June 10, 2024). Wende has capacity for 961 people. Wende Correctional Facility, PRISONPRO, https://www.prisonpro.com/content/wende-correctional-facility (last visited June 10, 2024). Not only do I represent incarcerated individuals, but I am also an incarcerated Black jailhouse lawyer at Wende. It is not easy work. And there’s a ton of it. Each week, I get requests from incarcerated individuals who need representation for alleged fights, possession of contraband, and disagreements with guards. While many people who study or work in the criminal legal system might be familiar with punishments given out at sentencing, including the trial tax Footnote #2 content: The “trial tax” describes how defendants who plead guilty have been found to receive less severe punishments compared to those who are convicted following a trial. See Alexander Testa & Brian D. Johnson, Paying the Trial Tax: Race, Guilty Pleas, and Disparity in Prosecution, 31 CRIM. JUST. POL’Y REV. 500, 501 (2020). and other harsh conditions (for example, hard labor still exists in states across the South Footnote #3 content: See, e.g., Robin McDowell & Margie Mason, Prisoners in the US Are Part of a Hidden Workforce Linked to Hundreds of Popular Food Brands, ASSOCIATED PRESS (Jan. 29, 2024, 8:03 AM), https://apnews.com/ article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e (describing how men at the Louisiana State Penitentiary are “sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all”). ), fewer may know about the details surrounding punishments administered for alleged violations and incidents that occur once you’re inside. The ramifications for getting in trouble once inside a maximum-security prison like Wende—where there is already constant surveillance, restrictions, and lack of access to the outside world—can mean many dark months, if not years. This is because if you step even a little bit out of line, guards can write you up and throw you into solitary confinement for weeks at a time. Footnote #4 content: See id.
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