Queries about Asians in prisons
tasm
US (so much for the strength of diversity), I wonder how Asians do in
prison. Prisoners find protection in their race, and with so few Asians in
prison, how do they find protection? Does the prison system give Asians a
special protected status where they are isolated from all the other
prisoners like how it is done for child molesters? If there are no
provisions for these needs, then I bet Asians are the first to become the
people's boys. On a more positive note, I think this is a great incentive
for Asians not to commit crimes.
eqtr...@020.co.uk
Have you seen American ME? The movie was about hispanic prison gangs
and had Edward james olmos (sp) with that Japanese actor (I forgot his
name) that was in Rising Sun. Anyways, he played an asian prisoner
that happened to run with the hispanic gang in prison. As far as real
life goes I have no idea and no research has been done in this area.
I'm pretty sure asian prisoners have it hard but I doubt it's
exceedingly dangerous otherwise you'd have a high casuality rate that
would cause a media storm. I'm guessing they would identify more with
a hispanic prison gang while in the slam since they tend to be more
inclusive of "different" minorities.
drydem
FYI... There are three systems of incarceration:
1) federal - convicted federal offenders, INS
2) state - convicted state offenders
3) local and private - convicted local offenders, temporary
incarceration (e.g. waiting for trial )
4) juvenile - convicted offenders under 18 years old.
offenders are released by the time they reach
18-21 years old (and their records are sealed).
usually each system of incarceration has two
levels of security
1) minumum - non violent offenders which can be very
nicely appointed if your the ex governor of Maryland
or Rhode Island...
2) maximum - violent offenders
The law requires that violent offender be kept separate.
In certain cases some prisoners are kept in solitary
confinement because they are
1) a danger to other prisoners
2) a danger to the outside world (because a regular
prison has some access to the outside world, e.g.
visitors, mail, telephone, internet, etc)... can
you say Wen Ho Lee three times very fast?
Of all the types of criminals that have a rough time
in prison - I have heard that prisoners despise
prisoners convicted child molesters the most - I am
not sure if that make life worst for them or not...
To find out more about Prison Conditions you
might want to do a search on "Prisoner's Rights"
ALCU Prisoner's Rights Page
http://www.aclu.org/issues/prisons/hmprisons.html
Cornell Law Library On Prisoner's Rights
http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/prisoners_rights.html
California's Prison Rights Website
http://www.prisonlaw.com/eventsc.htm
The charter to alt.prisoner.rights which is a
newsgroup devoted to prisoner's rights
http://www.thebird.org/newsgrps/chart7.html
you might want to followup on this documentary...
--------------
Bui Doi: Life Like Dust (1994) 28 min. (ZVC 7761) This film takes us
inside the mind on Ricky Phan, once a gang leader in Southern
California. He relates his immigration from a Vietnamese refugee camp
to California, his entry into American schools, his subsequent
involvement with Asia American gangs followed by criminal activity and
prison
Yuri Kochiyama: A Passion for Justice (1993) 57 min. (ZVC 7731) For the
past forty years, the work of this tireless political activist has
touched thousands of lives in diverse communities across the United
States. Yuri Kochiyama's story begins with her internment as a young
woman during World War II. She has been involved with world wide
nuclear disarmament, Malcolm X Black Liberation and the International
Political Prisoner Rights Movement.
From: gary colmenar, colm...@library.ucsb.edu, 3/1/00
Msg. No: 411, Sent by Email: Yes Topic: General
here is another url that came up on the radar scope....
#####################################################
ASIAN ACTIVISM IN THE POLITICAL PRISONER AND PRISON MOVEMENT
Santa Barbara & Los Angeles, March 2-4, 2000
http://origin.org/afj/forum/afj090i.cfm?V100=411
Featuring leading Asian American political prisoner activists WAYNE LUM
and MO NISHIDA.
Come hear what Asian American activists nationwide are doing to resist
unjust incarceration. Contrary to the myth of passivity, Asian
Americans did resist the incarceration of Japanese Americans during
World War II. Today, Asian Americans are affected by the racist and
classist patterns of imprisonment. And today, we continue to resist
injustice. Two leading Asian American activists speak about their work
to support political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal and to stop
Proposition 21.
Inspired by long-time activist Yuri Kochiyama, WAYNE LUM is a leader in
two New York-based Asian American organizations supporting political
prisoners: Asians for Mumia/Jericho and the Yu Kikumura
Support Committee. Framed in an anti-imperialist context, Mr. Lum will
discuss the work to defend the only officially recognized Asian
American
political prisoner Yu Kikumura. Mr. Lum also supports David Wong, a
Chinese immigrant prisoner who was convicted on shaky evidence in a
racially biased trial.
Veteran activist, MO NISHIDA will connect the current incarceration of
Asian Americans and the expanding prison industrial complex to the
history of Asian American imprisonment. Mr. Nishida works with the
Jericho Movement for political prisoners in Los Angeles.
SANTA BARBARA
Thursday, March 2, 7-9 pm
UCSB's Asian American Studies Conference Room, 5th floor HSSB
Organized by ASIAN! (Asian Sisters & Brothers for Ideas in Action Now!).
For more information call: 800/730-8103
NORTHRIDGE
Friday, March 3, 12 noon
California State University at Northridge, Location TBA.
LOS ANGELES
Saturday, March 4, 6-9 pm
People's Core, 300 W. Cesar Chavez, at Broadway
For more information about the Northridge and Los Angeles events, call
the Organizational Committee of Asian Pacific Ethnics for Mumia &
Jericho at 323/295-0687.
###########################
Asian American Gangbanger Stereotype Sentences UCI Student to 15 Years
in Prison
by Daniel C. Tsang
Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved
Irvine -- UCI sophomore Dan Trung Hoang thought he was just helping a
friend out. Last November 15, rushing to get to his Organic Chemistry
class where he faced a quiz, Dan decided to avoid the "hassle" of
finding on-campus parking, and lent his car to a 16-year-old friend,
who had been crashing at his Campus Village apartment. Later that
evening, the friend brought the car back, and with others, they went
out to Westminster to eat, then decided to head toward the beach. They
did a detour back to Irvine to pick up some soft drinks at Ralph's on
Alton Square at Alton and Jeffrey.
What followed is in dispute, and Dan's trial, just ended in Superior
Court, left too many questions unanswered. It turned out his friend was
no choir boy; he had left a gun in the car (with ammo in the trunk),
and during a confrontation outside near Ralph's that Dan says was
a "racial attack," gunshots were fired, and two of the
apparent "attackers" were injured. The victims recovered fully and
testified against Dan in the two-week long trial, which ended April 6
in Dan's conviction on three attempted murder charges with gang
enhancement thrown in. After the verdict, I visited him in OC Jail; he
had shaved his hair; the prosecution had claimed he had red hair (gang
colors!) when in fact everyone in court could see the streak in his
hair was yellow. In jail, he told me he wants to clear his name.
The irony is that Dan did not shoot anyone, and as he told KUCI's
Subversity listeners April 3 in a taped interview from jail, he had
never handled a gun before the incident....
Hoang was found guilty of three other counts of attempted murder. The
California Street Terrorism Act is draconian: A minimum 15 year state
prison term without parole for anyone.....
[see url http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~dtsang/stereot.htm
for the rest of the story ]
########
A three part story on the U.S.A penal system.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/prisons.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/pris2.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/pris3.htm
#######
I could not find any reports or statistics on
criminal behavior within the prison systems
but the USA does provide demographic data on
the prison population at
U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice statistics
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/correct.htm
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
Jsexton3
>Being that the prison system is about the most segregated institution in the
>US (so much for the strength of diversity), I wonder how Asians do in
>prison.
Check out the Massachusetts Department of Corrections web site for an extensive
list of prison gangs- including a number of Asian gangs. Some are street gangs
represented in the prison population, others are self-defense gangs formed in
prison.
Apart from gang membership, it's more about how you carry yourself than
physical size. Small guys willing to fight get along better than big guys that
won't.
BCpaperguy
system tell me that there are actually more Asians in prison than any other
time in history. Because of the very fact that Asians make up just a small
percentage of inmates in San Quentin, diferent groups that normally are not
known to get along learn to treat each other like brothers on the inside.
Regardless of ethnicity, national origin, skin color or gang affiliation,
Samoans,Tongans,Hawaiians, Filipinos and other Pacific Islanders will put aside
their diferences with Southeast Asians like Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians
and Thais and East Asians like the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans to form a
prison gang with a reputation for being cohesive and ruthless. Asians are
generally left alone by other ethnic groups because the majority of Asian
inmates are hardcore violent criminals who would not hesitate to murder someone
at the drop of a hat.