U.S. prison system the focus of Saturday conference

Over four million Americans are behind bars in this country, a number that has risen rapidly in the last few decades. Usually these citizens and their concerns seem far away from the Oberlin campus.

But Oberlin students and community members will have a chance to confront and take action on prison issues this Saturday at the fifth annual Ohio Prison Activists Conference. The conference will be held on campus and is sponsored and organized by Oberlin Action Against Prisons (OAAP) in conjunction with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).

The United States prison system has become infamous for a skyrocketing population and serious internal problems. Overcrowding is a major concern, particularly in the federal prison system. For example, the Terminal Island Facility in California currently has 1,024 prisoners, but its rated capacity is 478.

The goal of the Ohio Prison Activists Conference, according to college senior Vanessa Filley, is "to give voice to prisoners. It's a way for people on the outside to hear what people on the inside are thinking." OAAP hopes to make people aware of "how we really create change rather than just talking about it and thinking about it," said Filley, an OAAP member and one of the conference's chief organizers.

Attendance at last year's conference numbered between 60 and 70 people. Filley said that she is hoping for at least 80 people to attend this year's event; many people from Ohio and surrounding states have shown interest in coming.

The conference will include inmates' tape-recorded and written statements, as well as the personal experience of the attending speakers. The conference will include a variety of workshops, panels, discussions and speakers addressing the current situations inside of prisons, the role of the judicial system in our society and the causes for incarceration.

The "Rites of Passage" workshop, given by Latif Islam, is an empowerment workshop geared toward African-American and Latino teenagers and young adults. Islam was involved in the Attica uprising of 1971 and is now the director of the Family Partnership Network.

The Attica uprising was the bloodiest prison encounter in the United States history, in which 43 people died, most shot by state police in a morning raid ordered by the Governor of New York. Islam will also participate in a panel about higher education programs in prisons.

An organization called "Stand and Love thy Neighbor," which formed last year with help from OAAP, will sponsor a workshop focusing on religious issues.

President of the Grafton Village Council Tom Smith will be one of the speakers at the conference. Grafton, 20 minutes from Oberlin, is the location of the second privately owned prison in Ohio. The issue of private prisons, which are operated for profit, is particularly controversial and is one of the issues that will be a focus of the conference.

Oberlin students traveled to Youngstown, Ohio last year to protest the opening of a "supermax" maximum security prison that houses prisoners from other parts of the country. It is a private prison run by Corrections Corporation of America. Since its opening, it has been criticized for brutality by guards, two murders by inmates inside the prison and the escape of six prisoners in July.

There will be a workshop about women in prison, covering the conditions inside prisons, medical care and education. Other topics to be discussed include the parole system, supermax prisons and effects of imprisonment on families.

Recently OAAP sponsored outreach programs at Oberlin High School and a program called "Drop the Guns" in Lorain. These programs featured some of the same panels that will take place on Saturday.