The ACA’s 149th Congress of Correction took place in Boston, MA from August 1-6, 2019, and prompted moral outrage for local residents who believe that no one belongs in cages.
The conference concluded with J David Donahue receiving the E.R. Cass award for “outstanding contribution to the corrections field.” Mr. Donahue is an outspoken Christian despite the fact that Jesus proclaimed release for the captives and good news to the poor.
(None of the organizations that organized these protests were involved in the creation of this website.)
Protesters Condemned Immigrant Detention Conditions
“Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of the Back Bay on Sunday to denounce mass incarceration and call for an end to the use of cages to detain people crossing the southern border with Mexico.”
Prison reformers protest Baker and Walsh-endorsed corrections conference
Activists from 19 grassroots organizations marched through downtown Boston Sunday afternoon to protest the American Correctional Association (ACA), which was holding its annual conference at the Hynes Convention Center.
Targeting a group that ‘lends legitimacy’ to human caging
This week was the 149th annual conference of the American Correctional Association. The nonprofit organization provides accreditation to public and private prisons and jails. For private prison and jail operators, that accreditation is a requirement to win contracts with the federal government. State facilities also seek out the ACA’s accreditation.
Private and public prison and jail officials cite the ACA’s accreditation as evidence of their commitment to safe and humane conditions. But the list of facilities that the ACA has granted accreditation to includes detention centers, prisons, and jails where people are held in horrific conditions. The overcrowded El Paso Detention Center, where detained people were reportedly forced to drink water from toilets; Angola prison in Louisiana, notorious for its use of solitary confinement and substandard medical care; the Essex County jail in New Jersey, which Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General recently faulted for multiple examples of unsafe and inhumane conditions, all have ACA accreditation.
Activists Unfurled an Anti-ICE Banner at Fenway Park
“The banner, which reads “No ICE, no prisons, no more cages,” was created by activists from Deeper Than Water and the Boston chapter of Black and Pink, which are both groups that work against incarceration. Four members of the organizations unfurled the banner at the top of the second inning of the game. They were quickly apprehended by security and escorted out of the park.”