Vidal Guzmán worked as a bricklayer, doorman and waiter during his four years in prison. At the Riverview Correctional Facility, a New York state penitentiary near the Canadian border, he earned 16 cents an hour in the cafeteria; His paycheck was about $3.50 a week. When he first went to the prison police station, he recalled raising money to buy a postage stamp and two packs of ramen noodles.
“It’s a very awkward moment when you look into the store and split pennies to see how much you have,” Guzmán told the New York Focus.
Food insecurity and health outcomes
Hunger was the first thing most of our participants mentioned when talking about being poor in prison. All agreed that the food provided by the prison was inadequate, unhealthy, and sometimes inedible. To make ends meet, people without outside support would invest what little money they earned from prison labor into a “survival kit” consisting of peanut butter, jelly, and some ramen soups, which they used to incorporate, or sometimes replace, prison meals. These people were more likely to report health problems such as gastrointestinal disorders, foodborne illnesses, and drastic weight loss, as well as frequent headaches and chronic fatigue. Tim1, for example, who was imprisoned for seven and a half years with little family support, recalled feeling constant hunger during his last incarceration, to the point that he was often too weak or sick to leave his cell:
“When I was hungry, man, I had to go to bed, I just had to lie down. ‘Cause yeah, my head hurts, you know? I’ve got a headache, I’ve been in a bad mood, I’ve been in a bad mood, you know? Yes, you get cranky when you want to eat something, believe me.
This workshop is designed to guide participants through the mechanisms of implementing offline access to the JSTOR database for incarcerated students and highlight the resources IKATHA S+R has made available to university students Prison. Programs BPI was the first college prison program in the country to partner with JSTOR to create this offline research experience. Fifteen years later, alumnus Stacy Burnett ’20, Manager, JSTOR Access in Prison works with university prison programs across the country on access and justice issues, including issues such as:
- How JSTOR supports classroom instruction by providing access to academic research tools in prison
- Teaching essential academic research skills in tech-hungry rooms
- 3. Protect intellectual curiosity in restrictive environments.
- 4. How the offline investigation tool works in prisons
- 5. Full text options: challenges and opportunities .
- 6. Tablet interfaces are here.