Hi-
I understand that you're looking for writers for your news
site, and
I'd like to be considered. I've written for a variety of
print
and online
news outlets and other publications, including Skeptic,
PoliticalBase.com,
National Lampoon, The Onion A.V. Club, Austin Monthly,
Dining
Out, and The
Fortean Times, and my first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind
Modern Creationism,
Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny was released in
2007
to praise from
Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, Rolling Stone, and
other sources.
I've also contributed to reference books by publisher
Thomas
Riggs and
Company.
I generally work for around twenty cents a word, although
this
is
negotiable.
Along with my attached resume, I've pasted a couple of
samples
below.
The first is a simple news summary of the sort I used to
write
for Political
Base, and the second is an article on new Texas prison
regulations which
effectively prevent inmates from freely communicating with
journalists; it
was cited by Sonoma State University's Project Censored as
one
of the most
important underreported stories of 2004.
Please take a look and get back to me if you're interested
in
discussing the position further.
Thanks,
Barrett Bown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
White House Legal Trouble Update
1. The CIA's covert service head who some believe to have
presided
over the destruction of tapes which may depict the use of
torture against
al-Qaeda operatives is requesting immunity ahead of an
expected appearance
before Congress next week in which he'll be providing
testimony on exactly
what went down and why. Attorneys for the White House,
meanwhile, are still
urging a federal court to hold off its own investigation
into
the incident,
claiming that it would interfere with ongoing
investigations
by Congress and
the Justice Department. At any rate, they've been
successful
in their
efforts to convince Judge Edward Kennedy that a judicial
inquiry is
unnecessary; Kennedy announced yesterday that he agrees,
citing the
inability of lawyers for a group of detainees to come up
with
evidence that
a specific law pertaining to Guantamo captives was broken
in
light of
revelations that the detainees in question were actually
being
held in
secret prisons elsewhere at the time of the alleged abuse.
2. Allegations by the National Security Archive that the
Bush
Administration is hiding millions of e-mails that it had
previously claimed
were accidentally deleted has prompted a federal judge to
order the White
House to make a formal response to the charges within five
business days of
last Tuesday. White House spokesman Tony Fratto has thus
far
declined to
comment.
Texas Prisons: Silencing Inmates
by Barrett Brown
(Toward Freedom, June 2004)
In March of 2004, a jailer at an Arlington, Texas, prison
confessed
that he had helped another jailer rape a female inmate the
previous evening.
Israel Mouton, a prison employee since 2002, told police
that
he watched his
colleague commit the assault from the jail control room in
order that he
might alert his colleague if anyone were to approach.
According to both
Mouton and the inmate, who was questioned later by
investigators, Mouton
afterward told the victim via the cell's intercom, "Don't
say
nothing. You
don't know nothing."
A few hours after the inmate confirmed the detailed
confession,
Mouton and his colleague were arrested. But unlike the
inmate
whom they had
violated, both jailers were able to make bail, and in fact
were released the
same evening. And despite the fact that one perpetrator had
voluntarily
confessed to a second-degree felony, neither man was
immediately fired;
instead, they were placed on paid administrative leave.
Later in the week, the wire services picked up the story,
which ran
in every major newspaper in Texas. The timing was
moderately
ironic; the
Texas Board of Criminal Justice (TBCJ) was set to meet in
Austin a few days
later to vote on several proposed prison policies. Given
that
the
corrections system had just been hit with a rather
disturbing
scandal, one
might have expected the TBCJ to adopt some new regulation
ensuring inmates a
reliable means of reporting staff abuse to a third party
assuming that one
was ignorant of Texas in general, its cultural climate in
particular, and
the increasingly disturbing manner in which the nation's
largest state
prison system is being administered.
Censoring the Mail
During a two-day meeting at Austin's Hyatt Regency, rather
than pass
any new reporting policies to help prevent cover-ups, the
TBCJ
instead did
the opposite. On April 2, members passed Board Policy
03.91,
by all accounts
the most drastic restriction on Texas inmate correspondence
rights in more
than two decades.
Actually, the board passed two major policy changes during
their
meeting. One was a ban on incoming mail containing
"sexually
explicit"
images, "material that shows the frontal nudity of either
gender, including
the exposed female breast(s) with nipple(s) or areola(s),
or
the genitalia
or anus of either gender." Explaining the new policy, Texas
Department of
Criminal Justice Executive Director Gary Johnson pointed
out
that his office
strives for "a more positive and safer environment for both
staff and
offenders," adding that "the elimination of sexually
explicit
material helps
us move in that direction."
Because it dealt with such an attention-grabbing issue as
pornography, the new "Playboy Policy" received nearly all
of
the media
coverage; one Associated Press piece devoted all but two
sentences to the
porn ban. The remainder consisted of a verbatim reading of
the
second
measure passed at the April meeting, Board Policy 03.91:
"Outgoing special or media correspondence will be opened in
cases
where there have been known problems ('special
correspondence'
is defined as
any official of any federal, state or local law enforcement
agency,
including offices of inspector general). The intent is to
prohibit offenders
from sending correspondence that seeks to threaten, harass
or
intimidate in
any way (including anthrax hoaxes)."
In other words, Texas prison officials are now permitted to
read mail
written by inmates to journalists, but only "in cases where
there have been
known problems."
Unfortunately, the term "known problems" isn't defined,
which
may
seem odd in light of the great extent to which the board
went
in defining
the female breast, which, as the reader may recall,
includes
both nipple(s)
and areola(s). In contrast, the criteria by which media
correspondence may
be read by low-level officials are left to the imagination
of
prison staff.
"Known problems," then, might very well include instances
in
which prisoners
have spoken to the press about prison conditions or other
issues of
legitimate public interest.
In fact, this has already proven to be the case. In one of
the
few
articles that actually focused on the board's new outgoing
mail censorship
provision, Houston Chronicle staffer Polly Ross Hughes
described the case of
William Bryan Sorens, a convicted rapist whose sentence was
extended by one
year after it was discovered he had sold Penthouse an
article
detailing his
prison experiences. (Texas prisoners must get permission
before accepting
any payment for work they undertake while incarcerated.) In
the course of
researching her article, Hughes asked TDCJ spokeswoman
Michelle Lyons about
this incident; Lyons confirmed that Sorens' mail would most
likely be tagged
for automatic inspection under the new policy.
But aside from deterring the extremely small percentage of
Texas
inmates who run freelance writing businesses from their
cells,
the other
major purpose of the policy, according to Lyons, is to
protect
media
personnel from inmate threats and harassment. And how do
journalists feel
about being thus protected? Not surprisingly, they're
almost
unanimously
against it.
Each of the Texas newspaper staffers I contacted regarding
the
case
said they would prefer that inmate correspondence to
journalists be
privileged, in the same way that legal correspondence is,
or
rather used to
be; another provision passed by the board during its April
meeting dictates
that "incoming special, legal and media correspondence will
be
searched for
contraband and only in the presence of the offender." This
includes letters
from lawyers.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one staffer with a
major
Texas
daily pointed out that, among journalists who cover the
prison
system, mail
is used as something of a barometer. Although reporters
rarely
reply to
individual inmate letters or even take their assertions at
face value, a
large volume of mail detailing a specific problem often
serves
as the only
indication that something might be awry in the state's
prisons. After all,
Texas inmates were already among the most elaborately
muffled
prisoners in
the US; in mostly every other state, inmates are permitted
to
make phone
calls whenever they please and at their own expense,
whereas
Texas inmates
get only one five-minute call every 60 days. And Policy
03.91
comes just a
few months after another new policy which prevents
journalists
from speaking
to inmates unless the journalist in question is working on
a
specific
deadline, thus preventing many writers from gaining
in-person
access to the
prisoners they may be writing about.
Lack of Concern
The "no deadline, no meetings" policy is part of the reason
why few
of the journalists I contacted were surprised by the
passage
of 03.91. Among
Texas crime reporters, it's common knowledge that
institutional procedure
has undergone major changes in the last few years. Retiring
corrections
officials, they say, are often being replaced with a
younger
crowd possessed
of a somewhat more Draconian view of prisoner rights and
public access, and
the overriding philosophy of this new breed is that the
best
way to deal
with a crack in the wall is to apply a fresh coat of paint.
Indeed, 03.91 and similar new policies would hardly seem as
threatening were it not for the fact that the Texas prison
system is
notorious for its cracks. Nationwide, the state is perhaps
most famous for
the often haphazard manner in which people are tried and
executed; perhaps
the most damning account in recent years involved a man
found
guilty of
murder and sentenced to death during a trial in which his
court-appointed
attorney fell asleep several times.
Much of the criticism has come from progressive watchdog
organizations of the sort one would expect to raise
questions
about such
things. But some of the most serious warnings have come
from
the federal
government itself. In 1998, the US House of Representatives
asked the
General Accounting Office (GAO) for a report on
staff-on-inmate sexual
misconduct in four of the nation's female prison
jurisdictions, including
Texas. When the investigation ended in 1999, the resulting
document didn't
do much to help the state's already-tarnished image.
If Texas prison officials really strived for "a more
positive
and
safer environment for both staff and offenders," as
asserted
by Johnson in
his statement to the press, they would most likely strive
to
compile data on
the subject to inform recommendations for further action.
But
this hasn't
happened. In fact, while conducting research for its 1999
report, the GAO
found that Texas, like the other three jurisdictions deemed
worthy of
investigation, didn't have "readily available,
comprehensive
data or reports
on the number, nature, and outcomes of staff-on-inmate
sexual
misconduct."
Additionally, if Texas prison officials were actually
concerned with
preventing inmate abuse, they might consider cracking down
harder on prison
guards who have "known problems" with sexual misconduct in
the
same manner
in which they crack down on prisoners with "known problems"
selling articles
to national magazines. But that hasn't happened, either.
Many
staff members
who sexually abused inmates during the four-year GAO survey
were simply
suspended. In other words, they were forced to take a leave
of
absence, but
returned to work in the same capacity at a later date and
often supervised
the same inmates they abused in the first place.
Today, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice supervises
about
150,000 prisoners. Of these, nearly half have been
incarcerated for
non-violent offenses ranging from possession of marijuana
to
writing bad
checks. Their safety and well being depends upon the good
will
and
competence of prison guards, some of whom have proven to be
criminals
themselves. And those who run the Texas prison system,
although obviously
aware of such facts, have done nearly everything possible
to
ensure that our
fellow citizens are unable to protect themselves in the
only
manner in which
a prisoner is able - to communicate with the world beyond
the
walls.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302