Prisoners, their Rights, their Lives

(October 2001)

Urszula Masny-Latos, issue editor, writes:

In this issue, we present an article by Phillip Kassel, an attorney with Massachusetts Correctional Legal services, who voices concern regarding a wide-spread tendency to "overclassify" prisoners' crimes in order to further punish them.
Mr. Kassel also appeals to Guild members for help with a new project established by MCLS: filing a high volume of civil assault and battery cases in district courts against prison guards.
Timothy Muise, an inmate at Shirley, recounts the Department of Correction's illegal seizure of indigent prisoners' funds as payment for the privilege of having their DNA placed in the state's "DNA database."
David Husband, prisoner at Walpole, argues that current prison mental health services are substandard and even counterproductive.
Kevin Hicks, a prisoner at Bridgewater, uses the execution of Timothy McVeigh as a prism to reflect on how to politically and spiritually resist capitalism and related oppression.
This year we were again overwhelmed with the number of articles, short essays, and poetry submitted by incarcerated members of society. We would like to thank every person who sent us his (unfortunately we did not receive any written material from imprisoned women) article or poem for giving us an opportunity to see prison life from within. We also regret that many outstanding pieces could not find a space in this issue because of strict printing requirements. We apologize to all those whose work was omitted and encourage you to submit work in the future.

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