On October 18th, over 200 people traveled to the State Capitol to demand an end to Death By Incarceration and support House Bill 2135, which would make people serving life sentences parole-eligible after 15 years.
The Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration is led by people on both sides of the prison walls. Here, Terri Harper, who is serving a Death By Incarceration sentence at SCI Muncy, addresses the crowd via prerecorded audio.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that mandatory Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences are unconstitutional, but the state has failed to provide meaningful relief for the 500 people in Pennsylvania already serving this sentence. In honor of Mother's Day, we are calling on Pennsylvania to end Juvenile Life Without Parole/Death By Incarceration. We are calling on state and city officials to create space for healing, redemption and compassion by following recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and providing immediate relief.
On May 4th, Decarcerate PA traveled to Harrisburg to protest the Silencing Act and all the other ways that people in prison are silenced. Check out some photo highlights below.
Check out these videos of Jondhi Harrell from Decarcerate PA and The Center For Returning Citizens performing his originial spoken word piece titled "I can't Breath."
Press conference held in Harrisburg on August 28, 2014, addressing issues faced by life prisoners in Pennsylvania, and the flawed commutation process in Pennsylvania. Sponsored by Let's Get Free: the Women and Trans Prisoner Defense Committee, and Decarcerate PA.
This week we had a prerecorded interview with some of the Hearts on a Wire Collective talking about their campaigns, report on trans and gender variant people in Pennsylvania prisons, and the newsletter they send inside prisons. The Voices from the Inside segment featured poetry from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project Prisoner Advisory Committee Blog.