Message from Kenneth E Hartman:
Dear Friends & Colleagues:
As you may already know, the CDCR has implemented a new screening system for visitors that includes the use of Ion Scanners and dogs. The upshot of this is visitors, and only visitors, if found positive by either of these highly inaccurate methods, are required to submit to a strip search in order to have a contact visit. (For the details of what constitutes a strip search, please see my opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hartman-prison-strip-search-visitors-20150406-story.html), dated April 6, 2015.) Over the past few weeks, at this prison alone, a 77-year old woman with a recent knee replacement was ordered to squat naked, another woman who refused to submit to the humiliation of a strip search was denied contact visits, but when she reluctantly agreed the following weekend she was forced to strip search twice as punishment, and multiple other visitors were placed on noncontact visiting status for not surrendering their dignity.
The goal of all of this is clear. The CDCR wants to do away with contact visiting. They are heaping their own failure to control the drug problem in the prisons onto the backs of the visitors. It's a terrible thing we all have to fight back against now before it's too late, before we're all on noncontact visiting status forever.
As a starting point to this campaign, there's an online petition called "Stop Strip Searching My Mom." It's located at Change.org. (https://www.change.org/p/california-governor-stop-strip-searching-my-mom). I encourage all of you to sign the petition and get everyone you know to sign the petition. Further, please forward this to all your contacts and ask them to do the same thing. We need 100,000 signers before we send it to the governor. Let's get to work!
And there will be more to this campaign, so please get ready to participate again when we press for legislative help and seek legal help in the not too distant future.
Thank you in advance for your help in defeating these unreasonable policies.
Take the best of care and strive to be happy. Peace...
Sincerely,
Kenneth E. Hartman
(This is being forwarded to you by one of our free world supporters, who has transcribed Ken's message from a phone call or a letter mailed out through regular mail. He does not have email access.)
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