Pennsylvania, where I am currently incarcerated, has twenty-two prisons designated for men. I have been held captive inside twelve of them—three, more than once. For years, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) has used routine transfers between state-run prisons as a form of active retaliation for my organizing work behind and across the walls. Between October 2019 and March 2023 alone, I was caged in four different prisons. And it wasn’t the first time Pennsylvania’s DOC had subjected me to a whirlwind of transfers. Previously, I was transferred four times in thirty months. I have learned to keep my bags packed.
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The Pennsylvania DOC’s official rationale for these transfers has always been “security purposes.” Prison officials use this phrase to justify transferring imprisoned activists and organizers who challenge their oppressive policies and practices. Imprisoned people who file grievances, lawsuits, and contact the media are considered threats to “the orderly function of the prison” and every attempt is made to neutralize them. In March 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, I was placed in solitary confinement for expressing, via e-messaging, my solidarity with imprisoned people on Rikers Island who were striking for personal protective equipment (PPE). Ultimately, I beat the misconduct charge (for unauthorized group activity) but became a target for transfer. This experience is common. A comrade in the state of Washington relates:
When we raised grievances, they started dropping arbitrary infractions and I eventually found myself in solitary confinement. I ended up beating all the infractions, yet the administration felt compelled to place a ‘prohibited placement’ order on me, which essentially bans me from Stafford Creek [Corrections Center] for five years. They shipped me out in an emergency transfer to another solitary confinement.
Like solitary confinement, routine transfers are used to isolate people—to keep them separated, physically and emotionally, from family, friends, and community. While solitary confinement uses restricted movement to isolate people, routine transfers use continual movement to effect the same goal. Solitary confinement and routine transfers are the flip sides of the same oppressive coin prison officials use to unsettle imprisoned people and make it harder for them to stay connected—both with one another and with their communities on the outside. Unsettled people find building community and resistance to the criminal punishment system almost impossible.
Those most likely to be placed in solitary confinement are also those most likely to experience routine transfers. When keeping someone in solitary confinement becomes problematic for the DOC, it transfers the imprisoned person. In 2019 I was placed in solitary confinement on false charges after I filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) complaint against a guard. I beat the infraction and the PREA complaint was substantiated, but I remained in the hole. When family, friends, and comrades began to call the prison and DOC headquarters, I was swiftly transferred to another prison hundreds of miles away. Another comrade in Washington state recalls the same treatment: “They put me in the hole and denied me showers, denied me phone calls, denied me medical care. This was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. And when my people starting calling, then they shipped me to another prison.” These routine transfers are a form of psychological warfare that DOCs use to control, repress, and eliminate imprisoned people who speak out and organize against their insidious practices.
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The number of prisons within a state affects its practice of routine transfer, but having fewer prisons doesn’t preclude the practice. Pennsylvania has twenty-two prisons for men—and still it has shipped prisoners to other states as well as housed prisoners from other states. While intrastate transfers are more common, interstate transfer often occur. According to research published in 2020 by law scholar Emma Kaufman, at any time in recent years there have been between 10,000 and 20,000 imprisoned people doing time in a state they were not convicted in. States with fewer prisons are more likely to use interstate transfers. These interstate transfers are often more oppressive than intrastate transfers. Kaufman notes that the average distance transferred is more than 1,200 miles. Imprisoned people doing time in a state they weren’t convicted in find themselves unable to stay connected to family. Visits rarely, if ever, happen. The hosting prison often denies the transferred person opportunities to work or take programs; they’re not really part of that state’s system. Moreover, many transferred people find themselves trapped in solitary confinement in the new prison. A comrade found himself in this predicament when he was transferred from Indiana to Virginia, as did another after being transferred coast to coast, from Oregon to Connecticut.
Years ago, Pennsylvania shipped over a thousand imprisoned people to Michigan and Virginia. These imprisoned people didn’t get visits and weren’t offered any programming. Eventually, they were returned to Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania DOC stopped shipping prisoners and now receives them. Currently, Pennsylvania houses prisoners from Vermont and Delaware. Some states rely extensively on the practice: Hawaii sends nearly 50 percent of its imprisoned population to other states; Vermont, over 15 percent. These transfers strain familial bonds. Often, family members don’t even know where their loved ones are. Family separation is a strategy DOCs across the country use to punish and isolate imprisoned people.
Routine transfer is most insidiously practiced on those convicted in the federal system. With prisons spread across the country, federal prison officials are able to use transfers as a regular disciplinary tool. It is almost a given in the federal system that people will be incarcerated far from their homes, often in quite remote locations in Appalachia or the Great Plains. Federal prison officials use “diesel therapy” to discipline imprisoned people who file grievances, lawsuits, and organize. Diesel therapy entails routinely and swiftly transferring a person from place to place. The person is never able to get settled, to get connected to others. Often, the person is transferred too quickly for family members to know where they are. As soon as the family discovers where their loved one has been caged, prison officials ship the person somewhere else. The person’s property often never catches up with them. And because the federal system is sprawled across the country, the transfers can go on for years.
Routine transfers, whether intrastate, interstate, or federal, are a form of active retaliation. Family, friends, and comrades of imprisoned people have to work to stay connected to us. The prison works to alienate us, to isolate us. They know that alone we cannot win. We need each other and our supporters to win. When an imprisoned family member or friend is transferred, people need to recognize what the DOC’s goal is: to keep us apart. By refusing to have our connections and communications severed or strained by the DOC, we counter and foil their plans. Like solitary confinement, routine transfers are tools used to alienate and disconnect. Our efforts to build and sustain connections and community thwart the work of the criminal punishment system. Stay connected. Build community. Practice freedom.
Image: Todd Quackenbush/Unsplash
