Episode 1: Introducing CHOICES Podcast
Episode Description
Ralph Dunuan was incarcerated in 1999, in the era of pagers. Co-host and friend Megan Ybarra interviews Ralph to learn about how he builds from his experiences to understand how Native communities are impacted by the criminal punishment system and his perspectives on family, abolition, and why prisoner-led media is important.
Credits
This episode was hosted by Ralph Dunuan, produced by Megan Ybarra, and edited and mixed by Anvar Hassanpour. Thanks to facilitators, guest speakers, and cohort who welcomed us into the Movement Broadcasting Intensive: Creating Audio & Video for Liberation class. This podcast was supported by a Scholar-Activist Project Award from the Antipode Foundation.
Transcript
Elizabeth [00:00:11] Welcome to CHOICES, the podcast that dives deep into the real issues surrounding the currently incarcerated and survivors of mass incarceration. We are here to share the stories of those navigating the challenges of life inside the Washington prison system, focusing on struggles, transformations and rehabilitation. Our mission is to challenge the false narrative that paints incarcerated individuals as inherently bad. After all, a single choice shouldn't define a lifetime. It's the journey of CHOICES that shapes who we are. Join us on CHOICES where we highlight the voices of those committed to creating better futures and building stronger communities.
Ralph [00:00:54] Welcome to CHOICES, prisoner-led media for liberation in Washington. I'm your host, Ralph Dunuan, speaking with you from inside the Washington Corrections Center. With me today is Megan Ybarra, CHOICES team member and collaborator on the outside. How are you doing today, Megan?
Megan [00:01:10] I am good. The sun is out. Glad that we're sharing space again and that this podcast project is finally getting off the ground. We've been trying to share out information in support of the 2025 legislative session on our website, which is choicesmedia.org and our Instagram @choicesmediapodcast because the session has already begun. I really hope you all will check it out and help us think about pushing legislation as not the only way, but one of many ways that we work to abolish prisons. I'm also hoping that one of the things we can do with this podcast is give people context, help them understand why and how the prison industrial complex got to be the way it is in Washington State. So, for our first episode, we thought we'd share a little bit about who Ralph is, how he understands the prison industrial complex and how he got into inside-outside organizing. So, Ralph, who are you? How do you want to be known?
Ralph [00:02:11] You know, for a long time I let people define me, right? That I was all these negative labels that society didn't want nothing to do. And, you know, over time, I started just defining myself. And the way I see that is a father, a grandfather, a partner. A lineal descendant of the Coast Miwok Tribe from the Federated Indians Graton Rancheria. A Filipino whose ancestors descended from Northern Luzon in the Philippines. Well, I do a lot of work that helps articulate who I am with Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group, Tribal Sons, which is the Native American Circle here at WCC. And then also the Judicial Second Look Commission as a Board Member trying to make positive changes with these type of laws. Try to impact change so people can see the world differently. To really start looking at who we are as people, as individuals, as people in relation to our communities. And that's part of what I do. And I think it's those things that define me today. Those are the things that define Ralph.
Megan [00:04:04] Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us feel like we're so often defined not by how we see ourselves, but how other people talk about us. But it is a whole other level when we're talking about people who are incarcerated because prisons, the Department of Corrections and society more broadly often uses terms for people that are dehumanizing or that define them by one moment from harm, by their sentence, calling folks inmate, lifer, offender. So, you're in prison and we're going to be talking about prison advocacy. What do you think are respectful ways to talk about people who are incarcerated?
Ralph [00:04:46] So I think the term inmate right, like, in the history of the carceral state, you know, the per prison vernacular convict was usually the term people wanted to use. Right. Like it meant you are stand up person, you know, if you call someone a convict, then, what you said is you have a higher moral standard. And then the Department of Corrections didn't like that term. And over time they stopped using that. And what they started doing is changing terms of identification cards. So when I came in, it was already inmate.
Megan [00:05:36] Does it still say inmate on your I.D.?
Ralph [00:05:42] No, it says offender.
Megan [00:05:43] Offender.
Ralph [00:05:45] Yeah.
Megan [00:05:45] That's not really humanistic.
Ralph [00:05:49] No, but everything…. And this, this is the funny part, right? So any type of paperwork or when DOC refers to any of us, it's incarcerated individual. However, our identification cards still reflect the term offender. And I like a lot of guys take offence to that, like I'm not, I'm not an offender. Like you may make it sound like... something weird, right? Like in a negative context. Yeah. You know, even though, you know, people are here for committing crimes against society. You know, they still have a moral concept. And within our social norms, that moral concept is that, you know, I hold myself to a higher standard. Even if society or the Department of Corrections does not see that.
Megan [00:06:59] Okay. So you think that people should just call you Ralph?
Ralph [00:07:09] You can just call me Ralph. The Department of Corrections can call me by my last name. Okay. I mean, if we're talking professional setting, then yes, it's...
Megan [00:07:17] Okay, I didn't know. Should I have been calling you Mr. Dunuan this whole time?
Ralph [00:07:23] So (laughter) But I mean, it's not like… there's a difference in how the population uses it and how the Department uses it. Right?
Megan Right.
Ralph And I think a lot of what the Department does is more of, let’s just check the box. Right? You check the box and say we're promoting racial equity and gender equality and things like that. Well, appearing to be more humanistic. Right? It's all for appearances. So they can say when, when community asks, Hey, why are you mistreating the guys? It's that, No, no. See, this is why we do these things. Because your purposes. But see, we're calling them incarcerated individuals instead of offender or inmate, because we're seeing them more as human beings than the animals in a cage that we make them feel that they are.
Megan [00:08:33] Talk to me about what kinds of like, media content is on the inside, Like so. Podcast. Tablets. When did you start getting that stuff and what did you first start listening to?
Ralph [00:08:48] So when I when I first became incarcerated in Washington state. You know, we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have Internet. We didn't have, you know, we were still using, what, today people term as snail mail. Right. We were still writing letters by hand, sending them through the mail and waiting 2 to 3 weeks for a response if we got a response. Right? You know, music we had to buy on tape. And then that didn't get transitioned into compact disk until, like 2008. (Wow) By 2008, Somewhere around there. In between that time is when they actually allowed us to start buying compact discs, and then it wasn't until I think I want to say 2011, when they first came out with the first JP3. Have you heard about that?
Megan [00:10:03] No, tell me about it.
Ralph [00:10:05] So we have been hearing about their coming out with this new technology for, you know, the population. And. At that time, it was it was called a JP three. And basically it was just like little mp3 players. All they did was have music. I mean, no email, no nothin. Just music. And like 1 or 2 games. I think Tetris was one of them. And then. About a year, maybe two after that, they came out with the JP Fours photos. That's when we started hearing about, okay, we're going to allow you E-messaging, which is basically an email, right? Through a provided service called JPay and they are the content for music. When the next playlist or song was on there, that you had a catalog you can buy it from. And then they came out, a little bit after that, they came out with the JP Five. JP five had your e-messages and then they came out with video-grams, which is a thirty second recorded video that your family or friends can send you. And it'll say on your tablet, you can view it whenever you want. And then, then they had the photo gallery where friends and family can, the pictures that they had send you through attachments, you can have in this gallery and always pull it up and see it. But the content was really limited. Then they came out with the JP sixes. When they came out with the JP6, they added the phone app and that's when we were able to call, to make phone calls from our cells, almost like a cell phone, right? Just without Internet access. Now we have podcasts. Now we have educational programing on it. You know, with these programs all came over time after they issued these tablets to us. But I mean, the content is better. When I first received this tablet, I think that my podcast list consisted of… there's one called 60 Minutes. Then another one was, All My Relations, which is in an Indigenous podcast by two Indigenous persons. One is from I want to say, Lummi or Tulalip, I can't remember which, but they all had, you know, perspective from Indian country and things like that.
Megan [00:13:19] Swinomish and Tulalip.
Ralph [00:13:23] Go back just a little bit before we got these tablets, is when the idea of me podcasting kind of came into play when we were with Liberation Media Northwest. One of the organizers, Nils, said they had talked to the board and the board was saying, Hey, let's see if Ralph wants to do a podcast, right? He's been super involved, he's been helping the org, let's see if he's interested. I really did not know what a podcast was at the time. And I said, Well, let's just be clear. I've been consistently in prison since 1999, so the last thing I had was the pager. I said so, take your guess. And they said, oh, It's like a radio station, that's all. I said, well you're going to have to be a little more specific than that. And that's when I started learning about podcasting and what the intent behind it was. But my understanding of it wasn't really until you and I took that class, right? Like what the possibilities were for podcasting. You know, in the beginning it was just kind of a fun little project, right? And then things kind of fell apart with disbandment of Liberation Media Northwest, right? And I just I wanted to keep it going. You know, I thought that this was a good way to continue to have unfiltered information. You know, to not only our community but to the general public. I was tired of seeing, you know, news media after news channel KIRO, KOMO, all these you know, painting these negative narratives that wasn't always true about what's going on in our communities. So, I felt that podcasting was a way to change that narrative. And that continues to be…
Megan [00:15:46] So when you think about who you want to listen to the podcast, what kind of person do you imagine?
Ralph [00:15:53] So there's two parts to that. Yes. That's a two part answer. One, a vision of people who never had experience with mass incarceration Right? Now, they weren't impacted, they didn't know and they didn't understand… I envision this being a place where they can understand that perspective from those who have been impacted by mass incarceration. Who do I feel will generally click on something like this? Are people that are impacted by mass incarceration. I think more of the listeners would be folks that are impacted by that or are doing the work in that area of communities, you know, they have some form of connection to incarceration, those are probably the ones that are going to listen the most. But the hope and the goal is to have a general public click on this to have some type of understanding when we're talking about real solutions for our communities, for our communities, for Black, brown, Indigenous communities to have... In order to move forward for violence reduction, to heal from traumas, from inter-generational traumas, institutionalization, PTSD and things like that to have that place to really, you know, expand their understanding of the impacts of the prison system.
Megan [00:17:28] When you first got locked up with the sentence you have now, how old were you and how many years did they give you?
Ralph [00:17:37] I was six months past my 21st birthday and they had given me 31 years.
Megan [00:17:45] And at that point, what level of education did you have?
Ralph [00:17:54] Uh, so going to a physical school, the last grade I went to was seventh grade. But I got my GED in a juvenile facility and because I knew I didn't want to go back to school like that, that was my thing. I did not want to go back to school and I had time to spare. So it wasn't that I couldn't do the work. I just had a problem with authority figures, and that was always my issue. So, you know, it wasn't that I couldn't comprehend the curriculums and things like that. It was just, I don't care what you're telling me to do, I'm not doing it right? Like, I was anti-authoritarian. So as a youth, and my environment taught me that right? So, you know, over the years I began educating myself here again, understanding the system and the environment I was in. And also understanding myself, why I would make the choices that I made, right? And that that led to the progression of one me getting my associate's degree, you know, graduating with that. Not only graduating, but making the Dean's List. You know, and having that kind of GPA where, you would have asked me that back when I was 20 years old. There's no way, you know, there's no way that… I ain't going to college. You know, that's what my environment taught me. Like that wasn't even a possibility for me. So why even think about it?
Megan [00:19:38] And when you got locked up... So you got arrested when you're 20, right? And then you got your sentence when you're 21?
Ralph [00:19:46] No, I had just turned 21 when I got arrested
Megan [00:19:50] So I'm imagining like, like you get locked up in Washington state. What did you know about how the process...
Securus [00:19:58] YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE LEFT.
Megan [00:20:00] Did you know about parole? Did you know about that kind of shit when you got locked up?
Ralph [00:20:07] No. Yeah, absolutely. I understood parole through the eyes of my friends that were incarcerated in the state of California. That's how I understood prisons. And they have parole down there. So, you know, as I'm going through the process of trial and all that, they are spitting out numbers to my family and their friends in California. Man, you do. Yeah, I do. You know, you'll only do X amount of years and then you'll paroled out. And when they told me that there's no parole up here, I had to explain that, hey, there's no parole for me to walk that time off. Like, if they said, if they said this is the time, I gotta walk that off, you know, and that it was hard for them to comprehend.
Securus [00:21:00] Thank you for using Securus. GOODBYE.
Megan [00:21:03] So, I thought we would have this conversation because I was getting ready to think about the website and I wanted to put it some language around the legislative session that reflects how you and I talk about it all the time. So, here's some draft language that I came up with. At CHOICES Media, we know that the state won't free us. We have to liberate ourselves. The state legislative system is just one of many tools in our tool kit that we will use to try to bring people home without endorsing harmful narratives that reproduce the idea that prisons are necessary places or that some people belong in cages. This session, we support laws for abolitionist reforms that change power relations to increase freedom and make prison abolition seem a little more possible. So, I wonder if you could share a little bit about, you know, how that sounds to you and what it is that that you mean when you talk about abolitionist reform?
Yeah, there's always so many bills in the state legislature, and every year I always give you a hard time about this, right? Because there's a capacity question. I'm always like, tell me the three bills you care about. Don't tell me the ten. Tell me the three. Right. And every year, you come with ten and we talk about it. And I get that. But when we talk about making your criteria for how you think about what are the best abolitionist reforms that really do make this kind of change towards freedom possible, more imaginable: What are some of the key criteria that you or the groups of incarcerated organizers that you work with in prioritizing the bills that you want to spend your time on?
Ralph [00:22:39] Yeah. So. First I think about like how do these mechanisms take place or how these actions take place and how they work together, and you know these points, these each take up something different, Right? Like community up in arms protesting at the Capitol, you know, reaches a different demographic in the community. Whereas when, you're working with legislators in order to make changes and speaking language that that other communities actually understand and get on board with without that level of changes... To your point, that's why I think every avenue of this is important. You know, every aspect of how we promote abolition is important in order to create change as a whole. So with that in mind, a lot of us inside, we think about that right now. And we think about when we talk about these bills that are going up for these legislators, how do we prioritize? And I think a lot of conversation circling around, How much does it help? Does it stop harm and prevent future harms? Is it retroactive? And what is the likelihood of that... Even if it meets the top four criteria. If we know that legislators are saying no, there's no way we'll pass this bill like this, right? And say they want to take retroactivity out. And there's no point in asking the community to extend themselves or utilize their capacity on something that we know is going to fail, right? So I think those at that point talk about the same because, having conversations with legislators and community members, and, committee chairs and folks like that. Or getting that temperature from them or gauging where they're going to be like, okay, yeah, that we can get behind, right? So those are the kinds of perspectives that we had as a community on the inside, at least here at the Washington Corrections Center, you know, kind of circle around when we look at what to prioritize.
Megan [00:25:07] So when we talk about when we talk about this historically, we know that beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, people started really ramping up how long we would lock people up and what the consequences would be for the same kind of potential harm. And now we're in a place where legislators are thinking like, maybe we shouldn't lock you up for marijuana, or maybe mandatory sentences aren't the best way to do things. But they so often are willing to do it, looking only prospectively into the future and not retroactively, meaning they won't acknowledge that the previous sentences that people like you are living with maybe weren't the best idea. And that is of deep concern. I think that this question of retroactivity. It's such a dry term and it doesn't fully... I know just how important it is, actually getting people home. So I think that those are some of the most difficult conversations. If we change the bill moving forward, what will it do for those of us who are already impacted by the previous harm? But I also think that the way that you talked about how many people will be helped by a potential bill is important because so many of these bills, legislators can say they did things. People can go home and pat themselves on the back. But if it if the number of people who are able to access the relief is very small, a lot of times it can just provide false hope. And so I wanted to invite you to talk a little bit about one of our experiences with that, this bill that promised to give people an opportunity for resentencing 6164, but let's call it the Prosecutorial Discretion Act. So, tell me about what the Prosecutorial Discretion Act did, how you tried to access it, and what kind of impact that had on you and your family.
Ralph [00:27:05] Okay. So in 2020, Washington state legislation passed the prosecutorial discretion bill that is commonly known as a 6164 petition. And what that essentially means is that you can ask a prosecutor of your county to resentence you based on specific criteria among which considering your youthfulness, rehabilitation and whether or not your sentence no longer serves the interest of justice. I fit a majority of the criteria. Why all those criteria? For my situation, I filed. The prosecutor accepted. And we sent in, my attorney at the time, emails which my family were cc'ed in on. So they were reading all these emails back and forth as well that, "We previously reviewed Mr. Dunuan's case and we are strongly leaning towards advocating for his resentencing." What that did was triggered my family into, he's going out. If a prosecutor is saying this, he's getting out. So they went into, what do we need to do mode, and start like mentally listing things. Where am I going to live? Clothes, basic necessities, employment and all these other things. I, knowing the system, said, hold on. Before you get to putting down payments on houses and anything like that. Let's just wait. Let me see what's going to happen and let's have it in black and white. I said, just saying we think we're strongly leaning towards isn't a guaranteed yes. And me, the skeptic that I am when it comes to the system, asked my family to hold up on everything. Just hold off on the plans. Hold up.
At the same time, and I know it's kind of contradictory, I was trying to get my son out of a toxic environment. I was utilizing the fact the prosecutor was saying this to try and get him to move to Washington state from California. In order to put him and my grandson in a better environment where they didn't have to look over their shoulder every time they knock on the door. Then a year goes by waiting for an answer. Email after email with the same response. And then, finally a year later, I'll never forget the message. Mr. Dunuan has been denied, the petition will not move forward. The rejection letter was vague and it was a standard rejection letter. It didn't use a specific criterion of the criteria in which they can deny you. So, therefore, your petition for 6164 is denied at this time. What that did was cause my son to stay in a harmful environment. And during this period, I was talking to him about being put in a situation the day he wasn't going to be able to get out of state where he was at. Coming from the background that I come from, I know these things because I was that guy putting people in those conditions at one point in my life. I was trying to get him out of there. And he was trying to do good. He had a full-time job, he was taking care of his son, he was living on his own. You know, he got off probation. Cleared probation. And was ready to move on with his life. And then that night you got a. And I asked what happened. And he said three rival gang members approached him. A shot was fired. A person died. And now he's sitting in Sonoma County jail fighting for his life. All because he chose to stay. Because he was afraid of what it looked like beyond the environment he was in. You know, not willing to make those changes because we're comfortable with the people that we know than the ones that we don't know is what kept him there. His dad was getting out, so he was ready for it. He even applied to Pierce County to transfer his probation, and Pierce County shot him down. You know, all these things based upon one no. One vague no, not even telling me exactly why they turned me down, triggered a chain reaction of events, that now put my son in the category of intergenerational incarceration. So now he falls into that statistic of another minority, another Indigenous youth being incarcerated. All because they wouldn't give me a chance. Now, moving past that denial, I still do community work. I still help implement change within my environment. I still promote education and continue my education. I didn't let that “no” deter me, but not everybody has the strength to do that. And I think that's where we as a community need to invest our time in our capacity and our political engagement.
Megan [00:33:43] Yeah, I think that's important because part of what you're saying is, you know, we think about the intergenerational trauma of policing and incarceration and state violence. There is both the need to have community support on the outside so that people don't get caught up in the system. And there's the need to really have legislative reforms that bring opportunities for people to be resentenced and get released and go home to family who need them. I mean, this year you're working on legislative reforms that we hope might not even impact you because you're finally at a place where you can think about when you're getting out. So, can you say a little bit more about why you do advocacy for bills that might not even help you?
Ralph [00:34:30] I continue to do the work, but I don't do the work for me, I do it because of me. That I examined the situation that I was in, and because I care about my community, I don't want to see others go through those same situations. If I can do my part to try to prevent that, that's what I want to do. And the bills I've chosen to associate myself with and work on helping out, even if it doesn't help me. So, the primary bill that I'm a part of is the Judicial Discretion Act, which is now House bill 1125. This bill would have helped me. However, with the triage plan, it no longer will. I'll be out by the time my section of the triage plan will be up. But I do this because I know how many people it could still help. And that if I can help prevent these type of traumas to somebody else's family, then I've done my part. This is how I feel I'm accountable to community.
Megan [00:35:42] All right. So tell us what the what would the Judicial Discretion Act do? And then what is triage and why is that important?
Ralph Dunuan [00:21:05] Okay. So the Judicial Discretion Act, It's similar to the Prosecutorial Discretion Act. The difference is, we're not asking a prosecutor to be on our side. We're not asking the person that's paid by the state to put us in cages. What we're doing is presenting facts in front of a judge that has the authority to make a decision and say, you know what? You're right. This sentence no longer serves the interest of justice for X, Y and Z. You have shown astronomical strides in rehabilitation and you have proven that you are no longer the person that was sentenced to this time. And they can use current sentencing practices. So for me, having been incarcerated for 26 years, thus far, sentence practice has changed over time. Now a judge can say, because I've seen these things, utilize current sentencing practices.
Megan [00:36:58] So we have all these propaganda TV shows like Law and Order, SVU, stuff like that. And in those shows, people buy over whether you're guilty or not guilty. Everything happens before a judge and a jury. And ultimately the judge gets to decide if you are if you are guilty, what is the appropriate punishment? How long should you get locked up for? Basically, a judge gets to use their discretion on all the mitigating factors, whether they're good or bad, to make that choice. But the system that you encountered is one in which actually judges had no discretion. Mandatory means the prosecutor decides, I'm going to use this mechanism or I'm not going to use this mechanism, and the judge is up there and can actually make a decision about whether or not the sentence that you get is appropriate. They don't have discretion. So what this bill does is restore it. That's not so. That is something that I would say is really criminal justice, but at least so that it more closely mirrors what we magine, that a judge who is trained, who's got a law degree, who spent all of this time becoming qualified, can actually use their skills to make a decision about who the person is in front of them and what the appropriate mechanism is. That feels like we are restoring a commonsense idea about what a judge's job is.
Do you know how many people got supported so far or received re sentencing through the Prosecutorial Discretion Act?
Ralph [00:38:37] Yeah. The last time. And it might have changed. When we were looking at data for the Judicial Discretion Act, House Bill 1125, we did that when we examined and gathered data on the Prosecutorial Discretion Act. And at the time that we did that out of, I want to say, 2500 petitions, only 45 were granted. And then even less than that, actually committed to change someone's sentence. So just because 45 were granted and that they went before a judge doesn't necessarily mean that their sentence changed. The one thing that the Prosecutorial Discretion Act does that The Judicial Discretion Act seeks to change is create language that judges have to go by. Right. And to the previous one for the prosecutors does not do that. They can say no. We don't agree, and your sentenced to the sanction because they have no real language to guide them in this change. And as we all know, some judges are just as bad as the prosecutors. So what we did with the Judicial Discretion Act was create language that specified, you know, this is what you should follow for legislative action.
Megan [00:40:19] And so some of what that does is it goes back to that vague email that your family got that just says. No. And it offers some onramp, some guidelines as to why people should say yes or people should say no, in this case judges to considering a petition and doing resentencing…
As I mentioned, there's going to be a couple of other bills that might come up for us that we might flag if they happen in the legislative session. But the next one that I wanted to really talk about that is important to me is the solitary confinement restriction act, which would provide the first ever and the only check on the Department of Corrections use of solitary confinement in Washington State. There are over 600 people in solitary confinement right now, and this bill seeks to protect people with disabilities, people who have recently been pregnant or are otherwise vulnerable. It increases time outside of confinement every day and would be the first step to phasing out this kind of cruel and unusual punishment. It doesn't get people free, but it does start to address and name the harm of solitary confinement. Do you want to share a little bit about your perspective on the bill?
Ralph [00:41:38] Yeah. So. Again. I've thus far served over 26 years in prison. Over ten of that have been in a solitary confinement unit. Those units are super harmful. And if we're looking at statistics, they say over 80% of the prison population has a release date. So if we're creating more harm while on the inside, then what are we releasing back into our communities? Is always. Has been my perspective. Right. For a long time. Angrier. The more hateful. Right. If it wasn't for my community on both sides of the walls that Help give me pathways to change that perspective, you know I would've continue to do the harms that I was doing in the beginning of my sentence. And a lot of that was because they used solitary confinement to try to break me mentally. The isolation units are nothing but mental warfare. Where they do little things because they know, you can't do nothing about it. And the only way people consistently do something about it, is they act out… Because they have no other means of voicing how they feel. And the reason why this bill is important is because, again, what do we want releasing back out to our community? I want to be a part of making people better than what they came in as and solitary confinement does not do that. In my experience, I've seen people that in a general population setting just fine, Normal people, yes, they had criminal habits that put them in prison. But they could have a cohesive conversation. After months in the isolation unit. Broke down. No sanity, no mental wherewithal. Just with sheer voices, Become, you know, antisocial, you start seeing multiple personality traits. You start to see all these really harmful psychological impacts that this places put on people. Now what I've come to discover is that these systems, Isolation units, Department of Corrections, Prisons, That's what they want. Because they can manage that. They can manage somebody that's broken. They can manage somebody that's addicted. They can manage somebody that has all these social issues. They get paid for doing it. But what I want is for us to be accountable to us. And what I see is eliminating these harmful practices in order for us to heal and to grow. And to not have to be in places like this to be better family members, to be better fathers, to be better grandfathers, to be better brothers, to be better sisters, to be better people for our families and our communities. And we can't do that by subjecting people to isolation.
Megan [00:45:29] Solitary confinement, we know is in and of itself disabling, particularly in terms of mental health. The data on that is just very, very clear. And this is why the United Nations classifies this as a form of torture. I think for me, that's also where it's like, all right, so even if folks never get out into community, even if they're never released. Solitary confinement is just not, it's not humane. Well, you know, I just adopted a dog from a shelter. Right? And we would not we would not treat these stray dogs the way that we are treating people in solitary confinement and part of what it does, is it just reproduces that cycle that says these are people who aren't fit to live on the outside. These are people who need to be managed with state violence. And it does its damnedest to turn them into people who need to be managed with state violence. I think some of the stuff that has honestly messed me up the most in talking to people is when you have folks who request to go back to solitary confinement, because after a while you don't know how to live in community, even if it's just community in a prison. It makes it impossible for people to know how to be together with others. That is sort of a fundamental piece of being a person.
Ralph [00:46:59] Yeah. And just to add to that. When we talk about, folks that do have sentences like life without the possibility of parole, subjecting them to solitary confinement and implementing them into a general population setting, what happens is they become antisocial. And those are the ones that are more likely to commit extreme acts of violence that double with the release date. So all you're doing is basically lighting a fuse and just waiting for it to go off. That too, is also why Solitary confinement is harmful. Not just for those getting out, but that's how it leads to that chain of events. You know, for those who are getting out. Right. Because they've become so broken and hateful and not caring because they feel nobody cares about them. Right. That type of uncaring is that, you know, it impacts those in a prison population, and in turn those people bring that to them, with them to communities. It's a part of that cycle of harm.
Megan [00:48:15] Prisons and jails are communities as well. What we what we have in the United States of America is just wild. So according to the Prison Policy Initiative in Washington state alone, we've got 28,000 people behind bars. That includes jails and prisons. If you think about how many people are in Washington state prisons, it's a bigger population than the entire town of Port Townsend. So there's no world in which Washington state would say that the entire town of Port Townsend should be subjected to the kinds of conditions that you and I are talking about right now. Once you start to think about it as like that's an entire Port Townsend rather than those are people who are locked up, for me, it's really sort of shifted my perspective. And, you know, this bill does not get people free. But I think it's important for us to go back to thinking about this as like these are folks from Tacoma, these are folks from Port Townsend. These are folks from Yakima. Rather than these are folks who are locked up and don't have a release date. So we don't have to think about what their life is and, you know, what their hobbies are, what classes they're taking, how they're relating to their children. I think there's just a basic need to get back to understanding that just because someone is behind bars doesn't mean that they are not part of our community.
Ralph [00:49:42] Yeah, absolutely. And it's like, you know how it is how you interact with the outside with our outside community, right? For a long time, I didn't even want to talk to family. Like, what is there to talk about? You know, that's how I always felt. You know, I would make a phone call. Hey, everybody good? Is everybody alive? Yeah. Okay. And I was the extent of my conversation. The rest of it was like, I'm in here doing my time. What does it matter? Right. And half the time I was in solitary. It truly means that isolation is exactly that, not just politically, but mentally too. You become alone. Right. And it's a loneliness that's reaches deep down in you and destroys anything that connects you to people, that connects you to someone else. That's what that place does. Because that's how I felt for a long time. And because of that, I didn't know how to have a regular relationship on any level, whether it was a friendship, whether it was any level back then, I couldn't have that. Because of what and how that place made me feel.
Megan [00:51:04] it's just so wild because until we started having these conversations, I had no idea that you were in solitary for that long. I mean, the person I know, is not the person you're describing. And I think that's always important for us to keep in mind. I mean, it's not that you are not that person who was self-isolating. You were not a person who didn't commit harm. But, you know, people have the capacity to change. But what solitary confinement does is make it harder for people to access that.
Ralph [00:51:34] The times I noticed it the most on what it did to me, was like the few moments out of all that time that I was on a on a general population setting and I would get a surprise visit from my family, specifically my grandmother, you know, she would go to hug me and just everything in me would lock up. And I'd just see the confusion in her eyes, like, Hey, what was that? Like what, what did I do to cause that? Like she did something wrong. And like that, that too destroyed me inside. Because I never wanted my grandmother to feel like that. Like she did something wrong just because she wanted to hug her grandchild. You know, it's those reflections that that help me fighting for something more and something better.
Megan [00:52:34] Yeah. I have to say, I'm not overly optimistic about the solitary confinement restriction acts, but I want to keep fighting for it because I want to believe that the people of Washington State have the capacity to recognize common humanity in a way that we haven't done yet.
Ralph [00:52:54] No. Yeah, absolutely. It's been a consistently ongoing struggle, you know, for that kind of change. Again, all for the podcast, changing the narrative that Teamsters Union tends to promote. You know, making people feel that they are still super predators. Well, they're just not saying it. But look at mainstream media. At least for Washington state system. We put it out there that juveniles ought to mean minor crimes. But they're they're doing it in a way where it might not be every day, but they're using the same incident over and over again. To keep it in people's minds is that we need to give up, that kids need to be put away. And it's like, why should we live like that? But we feel we have to put our kids through something like that.
Megan [00:53:50] It's not just anybody's kids. We're talking about locking up. We're talking about locking up Black and brown and Indigenous kids. Over and over again, we see that people's fear of crime is not reflected in the actual data of what we would count as a crime. So there's this real need to stop pitting communities against each other and recognize what's actually going on. Why do people feel insecure? Why are people concerned? And understanding that locking up somebody else's kid isn't going to make your groceries cheaper or get your rent paid. I think that's that's the world we're in where people don't question some of that basic stuff because they're just afraid to walk out on the street in the dark, even though nothing's going to happen to them.
Ralph [00:54:37] Yeah. And that's real. You know, it's fear mongering. Got whole lot communities that create a reaction. And at the end of the day, it's our community of Black, brown and indigenous peoples that are feeling the effects.
Securus [00:55:02] You have one minute left.
Megan [00:55:04] Okay. So we have talked about a lot, and we are just getting started. I think it's really timely and important that we do this work in 2025. We are looking at the state legislative session starting on January 13th and it is going to move fast. There are a number of bills we are watching that need to get scheduled for a public hearing in the House Community Safety, Justice and Reentry Committee, and they have to get passed with a majority by the first deadline, February 21st, 2025 to stay live. As we talked about, these are bills that we think will materially improve people's lives and hopefully get as many people free as we can, correcting the mistakes of the past as well as the future. We'll keep sharing updates and ways you can support on our Instagram page, which is at CHOICES Media podcast.
Ralph [00:55:55] And in the next episode, how do prison sentences really work and what does that look like through the lens of prison activism? What happened to parole in Washington state? And what is the SRA? So much to unpack. Ralph and Megan go through the gambit of sentencing, racially motivated mechanisms, and what do criminal sentences truly mean? In this episode, we also look at how inside out organizing and activism impacts these issues. We look at the history of sentencing in Washington State and how it impacted families, what we have and what we have learned. We will also explore the movement inside the Washington prison system to organize for change around conditions and laws. Thank you all for listening and I'll see you on the next one.
Megan [00:56:40] All right. See you next time.
Elizabeth [00:56:43] You've been listening to CHOICES. A quick note from our host. Thanks to Megan for believing in me and this project. And thanks to Elizabeth, my strength, my reasons and my smiles. You make my life brighter. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends, family, and community. You will find us at CHOICES Media dot org or on any platform where you listen to podcasts. Until next time. Stay engaged and keep working towards safer, stronger communities.
