The latest piece supported by Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project is written by Christopher Blackwell, an award-winning journalist and grassroots organizer incarcerated in Washington State. Below is an excerpt from his piece exposing the state‘s manipulation of a victim protection policy to censor his freedom of expression and that of other incarcerated individuals. Read an excerpt below and find the full story at The Appeal.

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In February 2021, Washington State Representative David Hackney invited me to testify in support of legislation reforming the state’s use of convictions in juvenile court to increase adult sentences and requiring courts to consider the science around brain development for young adults when deciding on punishments. I was excited to share my story. Given I had entered the juvenile system for the first time at 12 years old, I had a lot to share. I was also with my wife, Chelsea Moore, one of the key authors of the bill.

But when Hackney’s office asked the Department of Corrections to allow me to testify over Zoom, they denied the request saying that, based on contact with Victim Services, my victim’s next of kin “would likely not be okay.” (DOC did allow another person to testify because the mother of their victim “was okay with possible clemency for him.”)

I take full responsibility for my choices and the harm I have caused. The last thing I would ever want to do is cause harm to my victims’ loved ones. But I couldn’t understand how my testimony in a legislative hearing would be harmful. I wrote directly to the DOC’s Victim Services Department and asked what policy they were using to block my voice from public forums. I received no response. So, I decided to dig deeper, spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours filing public records requests. 

I discovered hundreds of pages of emails and text messages from DOC administrators looking for ways to block me from participating in legislative hearings, a Washington State Supreme Court task force, and a symposium on investigative reporting. The emails show that DOC repeatedly involved Victims Services, a DOC program responsible for working with crime victims, as a reason to restrict me from participating in public events, despite there being no indication that my victims’ loved ones had made such a request.

I’ve been incarcerated for more than two decades in the Washington State prison system. Before that, I spent three years in the juvenile carceral system. I’m used to restrictions on my basic freedoms. But the Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners retain the right to free expression under the U.S. Constitution—with an asterisk: Prison officials can impose significant constraints on the basis of safety or security concerns. Washington DOC, however, is weaponizing a nebulous policy to silence incarcerated people under the guise of victim’s rights… (Read the full article at The Appeal.)

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