[Pnews] Support political prisoner Zolo Azania

[Prisoner News]

“It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the 
strong.”

— Leo Roskin

Friday, November 6, 2015

To: All Concerned for Human Rights in all Human Sights!

This is an open letter requesting your help to garner support for my 
plight.i am currently serving a fourteen (14) year sentence for class 
B-robbery.i have less than 15 months left on the sentencing judgment.i 
have completed previously a sixty (60) year sentence. My first 
twenty-seven years and three months was spent on death row in Indiana.i 
want to be moved into some type of viable program or positive position 
for these last few months so that i can effectively earn credit time and 
additional life skills in preparation for my eventual reentry into the 
community.i have been held in continuous confinement since August 11, 
1981, and i will need more quality time in the reentry program than 
someone who has served only two (2) or three (3) years, for example.

In 1967, the Indiana General Assembly enacted a statute (law), which 
allowed the development and implementation of a Work Release Program in 
this state.The purpose of the Work Release Statute is to permit 
qualified applicants committed to the DOC to participate in a program in 
which the participant resides in or near his or her home community and 
is allowed to secure gainful employment or to further educational goals 
prior to actual release from prison.This type of habilitative or 
rehabilitative program was expanded in recent years to include a 
Pre-Work Release Re-entry program as well.The staff people are charged 
with the duty of assisting people like me in making the transition or 
re-entry to the community with some type of financial self-reliance.

i meet all qualifications for these programs.The crux of my genuine 
complaint is this: Each prisoner’s success is dependent upon his or her 
own initiative and ability to practice a high level of personal 
responsibility.i have properly done just that, and i continue to do the 
same.i have continued to do everything i am supposed to do under the sun 
necessary to work my way out of prison, but these prisoncrats always 
overlook my achievements.i am being held in a dormitory setting outside 
the Indiana State Prison walls.This is not a true minimum security 
facility.It is also illegally overcrowded; both the ceiling and floor 
are not strong enough to carry the extra weight of steel bunks, 
cabinets, and humans stacked on top of one another.Recently, in 2013, an 
electrified, barbed wire chainlink fence, topped with coils of razor 
wire was erected around the building here.I.S.O. not only has a fence 
around it, but the back of the outer perimeter is marked by a 
thirty-foot wall and guntowers!This brick building is a two story 
dormitory with a prisoner population of more than 380.

A minimum security assignment constitutes an assignment of a convicted 
person to a work release center or program, to intermittent service of a 
sentence, or to a program requiring weekly reporting to a designated 
official.Moreover, an assignment to minimum security need not involve a 
penal facility.It is just unconscionable to think these DOC officials 
can go and do anything they want to confine people in a condemned, 
overcrowded building because they want more taxpayer money for each bed 
filled with a warm human body.i would like for you to contact Indiana 
DOC officials and voice your concerns.i want to be transferred from this 
place to a real minimum security facility.


Please call to Indianapolis at (317) 233-5541 or 232-5755, 
www.in.gov/idoc <http://www.in.gov/idoc>

Thank you for your attention and assistance in this matter.

Zolo Agona Azania

Indiana State Prison Minimum Security Unit

201 Woodlawn Avenue

Michigan City, Indiana46361

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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