Surrounded by wheat fields near the border of Washington and Oregon, Jeffrey R. McKee is imprisoned at Washington State Penitentiary. Alongside approximately 2,439 men. McKee is one of many advocating for prison reform from a cell. He attributes his commitment to social justice reform in prisons to his personal experience at Washington State Penitentiary–such as a sexual assault by the prison doctor, retaliation by guards for filing legal grievances against the state–and the state’s repression of goods that are used for gender-expression, like makeup.
Although the prisoners’ rights movement has traditionally been studied by scholars as a 1960s phenomenon, new scholarship has shown how the movement has continued in the 1970s to the mid-1990s, primarily through the courts and publicity. Academics have also revealed how Black and Brown incarcerated people have formed coalitions through remembrance, and McKee’s work demonstrates this as well. McKee writes, “Until prisoners realize they are slaves of the state, and their power lies in unity through peacefully withholding their slave labor and demanding basic human treatment, social justice is just another fancy name for an unchanged problem.” His use of “slaves of the state” in reference to imprisoned people can be traced back to the 1960s, when Black activists used slavery to articulate their lived reality in prisons and the unconstitutionality of prison practices. “Slaves of the State” is also a legal term originating from the 1871 Virginia case, Ruffin v. Commonwealth, in which the court ruled that convicted criminals are “for the time being a slave of the State…. He is civiliter mortuus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man.”
The “public memory of slavery” is still used by incarcerated people to advocate against the institution that entraps them, regardless of race. McKee is a “middle-aged pasty white straight guy,” according to a fellow person imprisoned with him, yet the memory of slavery resonates with him, like it did in the 1970s and 1980s with Chicano prisoners’ rights activists. McKee calls upon prisoners to withhold their “slave labor” and demand “basic human treatment,” including the right for men to wear makeup.
Today, only 21% of 1200 people surveyed had access to gender-affirming products, like underwear and makeup, in prison. Although there are federal protections in place to protect prisoners from being mis-gendered by staff employed at federal institutions, these protections do not exist at the state level (with the exception of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Vermont). Furthermore, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), passed in 1996, has made it more difficult for prisoners of all sexual orientations and gender identities to report sex crimes. The PLRA especially affects the incarcerated LGBTQ+ community as LGBTQ+ adults and children are at higher risk of sexual assault or harassment from staff and fellow imprisoned people. This is as important to McKee’s struggle as issues of labor.
His inclusion of the right for men to wear makeup as an individual freedom that prisoners are denied by the government reflects how changing ideas of sexual orientation and gender have reshaped the demands of the prisoners’ rights movement. McKee writes, “Do I care one way or the other if someone wears makeup? Not particularly…What I do care about, and consider my responsibility, is the government oppressing our individual freedoms for no other reason than they can.”
Moreover, in the states of Washington and Oregon and the Pacific Northwest generally (where McKee is imprisoned and where he lived, respectively) Black people are imprisoned at roughly five times the rate of their white counterparts. In Washington’s prisoners’ rights movement, race intersects with gender identity and sexual orientation in material ways because Black and LGBTQ+ people are arrested and imprisoned at higher rates than white, straight, and/or cisgender people. Although data is limited, there is evidence that Black trans people are incarcerated at higher rates than any other race (47% compared to 12% of white trans people). Other risks trans people are subjected to in prison are lack of healthcare access and solitary confinement. The government further contributes to the denial of trans identity by placing people in prisons according to their assigned sex at birth.
Although McKee continues to advocate for the rights of incarcerated people, he has faced retaliation by prison staff, noting, “We can get away with a lot in prison, including murder, and the prison will look the other way. But as soon as you start speaking out about the inhumane treatment and violations of the limited rights you have, the full force of prison abuse is taken until it either crushes your spirit or convinces those around you to not follow your lead.” Nevertheless, McKee continues his fight through newsletters published through correctionaloversightgroup.org.
For more information, see:
Center for American Progress and Movement Advancement Project, “Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People.” https://www.lgbtmap.org/file/lgbt-criminal-justice.pdf
Washington Prison History https://waprisonhistory.org/
Bibliography
Alexi Jones, “Visualizing the unequal treatment of LGBTQ people in the criminal justice system,” Prison Policy Initiative, March 2, 2021. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/03/02/lgbtq/
Nazgol Ghandnoosh and Emma Stammen, “Incarcerated LGBTQ+ Adults and Youth,” The Sentencing Project, June 9, 2022. https://www.sentencingproject.org/policy-brief/incarcerated-lgbtq-adults-and-youth/
Robert T. Chase, “We Are Not Slaves: Rethinking the Rise of the Carceral States through the Lens of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement,” The Journal of American History, vol. 102. No. 1 (June 2015)
“Newsletters,” Correctional Oversight Group, https://correctionaloversightgroup.org/newsletters
“U.S. Criminal Justice Data,” The Sentencing Project, https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/us-criminal-justice-data/#map
“Washington State Penitentiary,” Department of Corrections Washington State, https://doc.wa.gov/corrections/incarceration/prisons/wsp.htm
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