Hosting donated by MutualAid.org

Dortell Williams' Radio Broadcasts

Higher Quality Audio files available info@prisonradio.org

Copyright 2007 Dortell Williams/Prison Radio

Dortell Williams is an inmate at the Los Angeles County California State Prison in Lancaster, California. Dortell has been published in a number of community newspapers, including the San Francisco Bay View, The Final Call and The Los Angeles Sentinel. He mentors at-risk kids through San Francisco's The Beat Within and is an inside correspondent for Families to Amend Three Strikes. You can email Dortell at: dortellwilliams@yahoo.com. For more information about the Honor Yard Program, visit: www.prisonhonorprogram.org

The Suffering Children of Incarceration

Commentary by Dortell Williams, recorded 8/8/07

1) 3:14 MP3 Radio Essay

Update:

Senate Bill 299 sailed unscathed through the Senate Public Safety Committee, the Senate Public Safety Commission, Senate Appropriations and the full Senate. The bill is scheduled to go before the Assembly Public Safety Committee, August 31st, where it is expected to hit turbulence. Old fashioned, traditional letters are requested of the public for legislative supporters of the bill to offset expected opposition.

The Suffering Children of Incarcerated Parents

_______________

“Dortell, will you please help us get my dad out of prison? Will you be his paralegal? We need him home really bad.”

Those are the desperate words of 12-year old Robby (not his real name), in a letter pleading with me to contest his father’s 52-years-to-life sentence under California’s Three Strikes law. Ruben Reyes was convicted June 10, 2004, of robbery and aggravated assault, among other charges. The question remains, did he do it?

Robby’s dismay represents scores of other parentless children who wail in anguish at the imprisonment of one or both parents.

According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 19,000 California children suffer with a mom in prison: more than half had no visit, two-thirds are women of color and non-violent.

Of course, Reyes isn’t a mom, so that number only reflects part of the tragedy. Overall, men are imprisoned at a rate far greater than women, some 200,000 children in the Golden State have a parent in one of California’s many penal colonies.

In 1999, over 1.5 million U. S. children had at least one parent incarcerated , according to the U. S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. The numbers continue to increase.

Still, women are the primary caretakers of the nation’s children. The impact is huge. From 1986 to 1996 the imprisonment of women jumped from 2,370 to 23,7000, according to Amnesty International; published in a study called, “Not Part of My Sentence: Violations of Human Righta of Women in Custoday” (1996).

What pangs Robby most is that it was his ninth birthday in which he last saw his dad. They spent the entire day with one another, shopping and spending quality time together.

Reyes is absolutely sure various retail surveillance cams recorded their day out; and his whereabouts. But his public defender refused to collect the exculpatory tapes. In fact, he refused to even interview alibi and other witnesses.

“I told the public defender I didn’t do it, but he wouldn’t help…” – exasperation curtained across Reyes’ face. “I told the cops to fingerprint the duct tape the assailants used, they wouldn’t. One cop even got one of my tennis shoes from my mother’s car. It had red paint splatter on it. They told the jury it was my blood, my public defender sat silent when I told him to get it tested.” Reyes is infuriated now. He grows suddenly silent.

“My dad is a good man, Dortell. He and my grandma are all I’ve got,” Robby writes.

Reyes’ blue-flamed infuriation descends into red-hot frustration as he speaks. “The messed up part is the guy they caught confessed, and he got acquitted. The really messed up part is the victim (who was allegedly passing drugs prior to the assault) has a worse record than me.”

Having reviewed his case, it appears that Reyes doesn’t belong here. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the hundreds of thousands of parents in for petty offenses and health issues pertaining to drug use don’t belong in prison, either.

Somehow, do you get the feeling our justice system is a bit broken?

Sources:

Pacifica Network’s KPFK (90.7FM, www.kpfk.org), August 24, 2006 (parent incarceration stats.)

Families of the Incarcerated, Amalia Molina (aamolina@la-archdiocese.org).

Ruben Reyes (subject – CDCR# V-51070).

Superior Court case No. KAO65262.