Don’t Blame Inmates for the #VaughnRebellion in Delaware, Blame the Prisons
Early this afternoon, an inmate uprising was reported at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Facility in Smyrna, Delaware, with reports of a “hostage situation” being reported around 12:30 PM. Trending on Twitter as the #VaughnRebellion, the inmates took control of a large building in the prison complex and took five correctional officers hostage in an effort to enact their demands. One officer, injured while inmates took control of the building, was released shortly after, and the remaining officers are still being held by inmates. At the moment, police officers and SWAT teams are believed to be organizing around the perimeter of the facility, most likely in an effort to besiege and eventually re-capture the prison.
Despite initially not having an outlet to communicate their demands, calls from inside the facility were made to the local Wilmington News-Journal. The first call, received by an inmate who claimed that he himself was being held hostage, told the News-Journal that the prisoners were calling for an end to “oppression towards the inmates”, specifically citing the prison’s practice of “improper sentencing orders” and “status sheets being wrong”. Later, a full statement of demands was delineated through a second phone call to the News-Journal. This is their statement:
We’re trying to explain the reasons is for doing what we’re doing. Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he’s doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse. We know the institution is going to change for the worse. We got demands that you need to pay attention to, that you need to listen to and you need to let them know. Education, we want education first and foremost. We want a rehabilitation program that works for everybody. We want the money to be allocated so we can know exactly what is going on in the prison, the budget.
It takes little to see the conditions which led to the Rebellion. Just yesterday, The Morning Call reported on the Delaware prison system’s decision to continue its serving of Nutraloaf to unruly inmates. Also known as prison loaf, Nutraloaf is an intentionally gag-inducing meal described by many as “cruel and unusual punishment”, and is just one example of the failures of the Delaware prison system. Prisons are at over 150% capacity, recidivism rates are approaching 100%, and as incarceration rates have skyrocketed, so have violent crime rates. Prisoners routinely report improper treatment, with 10% of prisoners placed in solitary confinement at any given moment. The incarceration system in Delaware is also clearly racially motivated, with 6-in-10 inmates in the state being Black despite committing far less than 60% of the crime, much less violent crime, and being an even smaller fraction of the population. As a microcosm of a national prison system that operates on much the same lines, Delaware represents the worst harms of Jim Crow’s successor, mass incarceration.
The Vaughn Rebellion comes as yet another flashpoint in the fight against mass incarceration in the United States. Anti-mass incarceration actions have become increasingly radical in the last year, culminating in the months long prison strike led by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), the largest prison strike in US history. Despite briefly becoming a campaign issue during the Democratic Presidential Primary in early 2016, the issue of mass incarceration has been largely under-covered by the US Media, even after the IWOC-led strike in late 2016. While some short-lived efforts have been made on a legislative to curb the worst harms of mass incarceration, none have gone far enough, and none have gained enough traction to pave the way towards real change.
Until reforms are made to the prison system and Delaware and nationwide, events such as the Vaughn Rebellion are the only option for a group of Americans under the oppression of mass incarceration. These prisoners are dehumanized to the point that they have no voice, to the point that even two months of non-violent strike resulted in no pathway to change. When left with no ability to fight back by other means, violence becomes the only option, and we should be on the side of the prisoners in their struggle. The description of a Facebook event in solidarity with the rebels states it most succinctly:
The 2,500 inmates at the Vaughn facility are the real and ongoing hostages — hostage to subhuman conditions.
