54 – Herbalism, Incarceration and Abolition, Part One

Posted on 23rd January 2024

Content warning – prison, racism, suicide, self-harm, medical neglect, chronic illness, trauma

This is part one of a workshop that explores herbalism, incarceration and abolition. This particular section introduces incarceration and the prison industrial complex, with a focus on the so-called UK and US.

About the workshop: This workshop explores the role of herbalism in supporting prisoners, families and communities affected by incarceration, and herbalist roles in the abolition of these systems of oppression. There are more than 11.5 million people incarcerated worldwide, including a massive 2.2 million in the so-called United States. Most are completely excluded from herbalism yet many can find plants cracking through the concrete. These plants can bring hope, connection and health support to people experiencing the worst of state violence.

In this workshop we will explore the health impacts of incarceration, and look at herbal strategies to support people experiencing traumatic stress and PTSD. We will look at some practical uses of plants commonly found in prison yards and what practicing herbalism in prison can look like. The workshop explores ‘abolition’ as a framework and the role of herbalists within these movements.

Links & resources from this episode

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

Support the show

Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Transcript
Nicole:

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism podcast with your host Nicole Rose from The Solidarity Apothecary.

Nicole:

This is your place for all things plants and liberation.

Nicole:

Let's get started.

Nicole:

Hello, welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

Nicole:

The next kind of little series of episodes are going to be the audio recording from a workshop herbalism, incarceration and abolition.

Nicole:

So this was a workshop I did with the awesome Railyard Apothecary and we did like a live version of the workshop which went you know, really well.

Nicole:

It was amazing that people came and things and it, you know, fundraised a bunch of money for like the prisoners herbal work.

Nicole:

So we couldn't share like the exact recording from the night because we didn't have like consent from the participants.

Nicole:

But I pre recorded the entire workshop because during that time of my pregnancy and it was only a few weeks ago really, I was vomiting kind of relentlessly.

Nicole:

So I recorded the kind of workshop in advance just in case.

Nicole:

On the live one, I had to run off and be like, yo, sorry folks, I need to go and throw up.

Nicole:

Thankfully I didn't and I made it through the workshop, but it was great because it meant that that this pre recorded one can be shared with the world.

Nicole:

So if you hadn't heard of the workshop I'm just going to read the blurb here.

Nicole:

This workshop explores the role of herbalism in supporting prisoners, families, and communities affected by incarceration and herbalist roles in the abolition of these systems of oppression.

Nicole:

There are more than 11.

Nicole:

5 million people incarcerated worldwide, including a massive 2.

Nicole:

2 million in the so called United States.

Nicole:

Most are completely excluded from herbalism, yet many can find plants cracking through the concrete, these plants can bring hope, connection, and health support to people experiencing the worst of state violence.

Nicole:

In this workshop, we will explore the health impacts of incarceration and look at herbal strategies to support people experiencing traumatic stress.

Nicole:

And PTSD.

Nicole:

We will look at some practical uses of plants commonly found in prison yards, and what practicing herbalism in prison can look like.

Nicole:

The workshop explores abolition as a framework and the role of herbalist within these movements.

Nicole:

So you are able to.

Nicole:

Basically, like, watch the videos online.

Nicole:

I'll put a link in the show notes.

Nicole:

So you can sign up for free and it means, like, it's a bit more kind of visual.

Nicole:

Like, there's different slides and graphs and graphics and stuff like that, that I refer to.

Nicole:

And you're also able to download the PDF of the slides as well.

Nicole:

So yeah, so please sign up if you're interested.

Nicole:

This particular part one is looking at incarceration.

Nicole:

So I'm kind of introducing the prison industrial complex like with a focus on the so called UK and United States.

Nicole:

Yeah, it's meant to be like participatory.

Nicole:

Like it's like, yeah, it's meant to be something done in a group.

Nicole:

So yeah, it's kind of designed to be participatory.

Nicole:

So listening to it might be a bit strange.

Nicole:

But yeah, I'm sure there will be useful information in there and just like a content warning.

Nicole:

There's obviously references to prison and racism and suicide, self harm, medical neglect, chronic illness, trauma, like all the things that you get in the prison system.

Nicole:

Anyway.

Nicole:

I hope you enjoy it.

Nicole:

I'm going to be publishing, like, the whole series at once, so make sure you check out the other parts which, yeah, are kind of more, like, herbal focused.

Nicole:

Okay, I hope everyone is okay and, yeah, take care.

Nicole:

Hello!

Nicole:

Welcome to the Herbalism, Incarceration and Abolition workshop.

Nicole:

If you are listening to this, it means I'm probably in my bathroom vomiting.

Nicole:

Unfortunately, so yeah, it's not going to be the same as a kind of live participatory session, but I just wanted to record a backup just in case I need to run to the loo to vom for my pregnancy.

Nicole:

So yeah, thank you for your patience and understanding.

Nicole:

Just a little overview of some practicalities yeah, I guess I just, oh yeah,

Nicole:

just a little overview of the evening, so I'm just going to do some kind of practical stuff, kind of content warning things, introduce myself, and then we'll be looking at like incarceration and like the prison system or the prison industrial complex, some of the kind of health impacts and kind like how prison is traumatizing, for example.

Nicole:

And then we're going to look at practicing herbalism in prison healing from prison and kind of herbal support for traumatic stress.

Nicole:

And then just, yeah, introduce some ideas around abolition and the role of herbalism in abolitionist movements, and then hopefully have a bit of space for questions and answers.

Nicole:

Okay, so yeah, welcome, I'm really grateful for your presence, your time and your energy.

Nicole:

I hope that this is participatory, but obviously as it's a recording it's like not going to be possible.

Nicole:

But maybe you can be working through this at a later date with your crew or collective.

Nicole:

Hopefully some of the questions will be an opportunity for sort of like self reflection beyond the workshop.

Nicole:

And yeah, I'm happy to answer any questions and answers like via email if I'm not physically able to attend tonight.

Nicole:

And yeah, just like a content warning that you know, like I do share things like statistics about prison and it can sometimes feel a bit like abstract and intellectual, but actually like this is like really gnarly stuff, like really distressing kind of content.

Nicole:

Like, you know, I do kind of reference some of my own experiences in prison, experiences of close people I love, of, like, the prison system around the world, you know, and that stuff's, like, really gnarly, like, whether that's solitary confinement or sexual violence in prison.

Nicole:

You know, I haven't designed this workshop to be, like, explicitly horrible, but I'm just saying, like, because of the content matter, like, you know, we will be talking about, yeah, things that humans, like, shouldn't have to go through, if that makes sense, so I just want to kind of hold space for that, and there will be some references to suicide as well.

Nicole:

Okay, so in terms of care, like, yeah, there will be a recording that you can listen to, I won't be offended if you duck out.

Nicole:

It's totally normal to sort of dissociate when hearing distressing things.

Nicole:

I really encourage you to find some sort of anchor to support you through the call.

Nicole:

Maybe you can sit and watch it with a cuddly toy.

Nicole:

Maybe you can have your favorite herbal tea next to you on the go.

Nicole:

And yeah, I really encourage you to kind of debrief and kind of like discharge like your feelings and thoughts and stuff about the workshop with like a friend or a comrade.

Nicole:

Excuse me.

Nicole:

And I also, yeah, encourage you to journal or just move through the workshop, just kind of prioritize your body.

Nicole:

So yeah, just a couple of disclaimers.

Nicole:

So this is like an absolutely massive topic in a small amount of time.

Nicole:

You know, we've got 90 minutes and I hope there's time for questions and answers.

Nicole:

So I just want to say that this is very imperfect and incomplete.

Nicole:

This is just like one lens of state violence.

Nicole:

There are countless other forms of state violence.

Nicole:

And I really want to acknowledge, like, the distribution of this violence and oppression is not even right, like, it's extremely racialized, gendered, classed, you know, and all other forms of oppression so, yeah, I want to kind of hold space that I am, like, a white person, cis white person living in the UK.

Nicole:

And a lot of my, well, all of my prison experience has been in this system here, which, you know, is also quite gnarly, you know, it's like 23 hours a day, bang up, which is considered solitary confinement in many parts of the world.

Nicole:

So I definitely don't want to minimise the experiences of people in the UK, but I just want to name that, like, I'm talking from that place and That's definitely not going to be all encompassing of like, all the people's experiences of prison around the world, which are very different.

Nicole:

You know, I want to name the like, ongoing genocide at the moment in Gaza.

Nicole:

And yeah, the amount of people that are in, you know, Israeli prisons who've been arrested recently from the West Bank, or have been sat in prison for years and years.

Nicole:

You know, at the end I can talk about some of the groups I met in Palestine doing prisoner solidarity work.

Nicole:

Yeah, and I wanted to name that, like, abolitionist movements have really been led by black feminists and black radicals and women of colour and people from the global South generally.

Nicole:

So I just, yeah, again, I want to name that, that that's who I've been learning from.

Nicole:

You know, I've been reading books and learning from comrades and yeah, being inspired by movements, especially those like in the so called United States for a really long time.

Nicole:

Yeah, and like I said, this talk is global, like the prison system is global, but this talk focuses mostly on the UK, and I've tried to put in like US related content, because I imagine most people coming are from the US and the final thing I wanted to name is that like, the prison system is like, one of the most like, effective kind of state tools that has been exported from the British state.

Nicole:

Like, I really think this kind of concept of penal colonialism, you know, like how the Britain has kind of colonized other countries.

Nicole:

Like, you know, one example is Australia through the use of prison labor, through, you know, the use of kind of working class people in prisons.

Nicole:

And, you know, we can also think about the prison system obviously in terms of slavery and enslaved people.

Nicole:

So it's like, Yeah, I just want to name that, like, you know, there are really origins, like, in the UK and that, yeah, this kind of statecraft has been, like, mastered over time and that's been through experimentation in countries where the British state has inflicted, like, vast amounts of, like, colonial violence and state violence.

Nicole:

So, yeah, okay, those are the things I want to name and, like, hold space for during the talk.

Nicole:

Yeah, just about me.

Nicole:

I use she, her pronouns my lineages are English, Welsh and Irish, and I just want to name the island is also a colony, and Wales, of the UK.

Nicole:

Been a DIY herbalist for over a decade started learning about herbalism in prison when I was 21 and yeah, completed formal clinical training with a school called the Plant Medicine School in Ireland, graduated a few years ago, and I've been running this project called the Solidarity Apothecary that most of you will have seen.

Nicole:

So my kind of entire focus as a herbalist is supporting people experiencing state violence with herbal medicines.

Nicole:

Yeah, and I'm also pregnant so I'm like out of breath very easily as well as doing this while I'm very very nauseous and yeah just have navigated kind of PTSD stuff since childhood.

Nicole:

In terms of my experience of prison I got five and a half years, brought down to three and a half years due to a guilty plea.

Nicole:

And I served just under two years in prison amidst a kind of decade of state repression of the animal liberation campaign that I was involved in.

Nicole:

Yeah, and that was all when I was very young.

Nicole:

I'm 35 now, and yeah, it was when I was 21, 22, that I was in prison and ever since, and even before, like, my first boyfriend went to prison when I was just 16 years old, so I've been really affected by the prison system through most of my adult life.

Nicole:

always had friends inside, whether that's politically or just like class stuff.

Nicole:

I've always spent my weekends visiting people I love in prison.

Nicole:

I'm part of a group called Bristol Anarchist Black Cross, and we do shitloads of prisoner support work.

Nicole:

We're supporting people from the Kill the Bill uprising in Bristol from 2021.

Nicole:

So yeah, kind of like, my whole life has been dominated by the prison system, and I just want to name that.

Nicole:

Yeah, it's very real for me, like my best friend died last year inside killed himself, so like, I haven't, yeah, like this stuff's like not easy to talk about if that makes sense, it's very activating and triggering.

Nicole:

But it is like the biggest passion in my life.

Nicole:

And yeah, I hope that this workshop kind of inspires you to also, you know, connect with people in prison.

Nicole:

And maybe, you know, I'm sure a bunch of you have already had experiences of family members or comrades or people you care about inside.

Nicole:

So yeah, I hope you can also feel some like resonance with what I'm saying tonight.

Nicole:

Okay, and yeah, the Solidarity Apothecary, my Project, so the mission is to materially support revolutionary struggles and communities with plant medicines to strengthen collective autonomy, self defense, and resilience to climate change, capitalism, and state violence.

Nicole:

It's making me yawn, but yeah, that's the kind of mission statement.

Nicole:

So I'm all about building that kind of collective infrastructure to respond to state violence, to the sort of ongoing violence of capitalism and the kind of ongoing climate crisis.

Nicole:

And that's my website.

Nicole:

And then just a little overview of the project.

Nicole:

So since I've started, I've been supporting people one to one who've experienced state violence.

Nicole:

So that might be someone like going through the courts in Bristol, for example, or family member of someone who's been sent down.

Nicole:

It could be someone coming out of prison.

Nicole:

Yeah, kind of getting care packages to people, also sending them to people who are like, you know, living at protest camps and things like that.

Nicole:

My main focus is distributing the Prisoner's Herbal Book, which I'll talk about this evening to people in prison worldwide.

Nicole:

I've been Going to France the last four years with a mobile clinic that supports refugees surviving on the, like, French British border, trying to cross and kind of risking their lives in the water and in lorries and things.

Nicole:

And yeah, last year I was involved in starting a project called Ukraine Herbal Solidarity and we distributed about 17, 000 medicines to people leaving Ukraine because of the kind of genocidal invasion from Russia.

Nicole:

And yeah, also have a podcast.

Nicole:

And yeah, like I've mentioned already, my main political focus has has been prisoner support but also abolitionist struggle in the sense of resisting prison expansion in the UK, trying to build up like various prisoner support campaigns over the years, like a prisoner union was the focus for a while, like a campaign against these IPP sentences.

Nicole:

And yeah, I was part of a collective called the Empty Cages Collective for several years and we kind of toured all over the place doing workshops about abolition with different people from different communities.

Nicole:

And yeah, kind of all ended in Burnout and the Overcoming Burnout book.

Nicole:

But yeah, I'm still involved in several of those projects and that's kind of, yeah, my background.

Nicole:

This is my herb shed and all the gorgeous bottles.

Nicole:

Okay, so let's talk about incarceration and the prison system.

Nicole:

So yeah, with the magic of the internet, you'll be able to like, pause this presentation to reflect on this, but I just wanted to ask you like, what is your first memory of prison?

Nicole:

Like, of prison being mentioned or seeing prison in a film, for example.

Nicole:

So if you just want to pause that.

Nicole:

And you know, the reason I always start my workshops with this question is because we Nearly all have some cultural memory of prison, like for me it was Dumbo, right, the elephant and, you know, his mum being in the cage and them being separated and you could see this kind of like heartache between them and, you know, for for younger people it might be, for example, Toy Story, like I remember watching it with my niece and seeing like this scene where Buzz Lightyear is like acting as a prison officer and they're all in these little cages and I just thought wow like what is that telling young people who are watching this right?

Nicole:

So what it's telling us is that prisons are kind of natural normal and necessary and I think part of abolition is like really trying to break these down and counter them that actually this system is so far from normal and it is so far from necessary.

Nicole:

And yeah, okay.

Nicole:

Okay, so I've designed a quiz and obviously this is going to work much more if we're doing this live together and people can put what, you know, the answer they think in the comments.

Nicole:

But as we can just jot it down on a piece of paper and like kind of think about it to yourself.

Nicole:

Okay, so how many people in US prisons are serving a life sentence?

Nicole:

Is it A.

Nicole:

1 in 10 people, B.

Nicole:

1 in 20 people, is it C.

Nicole:

1 in 7 people, or D.

Nicole:

1 in 50 people?

Nicole:

Okay, so take a second to write your answer and pause me.

Nicole:

Okay, so the answer is C, one in seven.

Nicole:

And the source of this stat is from the sentencing project.

Nicole:

I've put the link in the slides.

Nicole:

So yeah, one in seven people in US prisons is serving a life sentence, either life without parole, life with parole, or virtual life, which is like 50 years or more.

Nicole:

And the reason I think this statistic is important is it's showing that You know, prison isn't just this, like, easy in and out thing, like, states are developing legislation all the time of ways to keep people in prison, like, as long as possible, right?

Nicole:

Because that sustains the prison system, it enables prison expansion And, you know, it kind of creates this culture of oppression, right, where people are really locked up for harrowing lengths of time.

Nicole:

Okay, how much higher are average incarceration rates of black people to white people in the so called US from 2021?

Nicole:

So is it A 6 times larger?

Nicole:

B, 5 times higher?

Nicole:

C, 4 times higher?

Nicole:

Or D, 3 times higher?

Nicole:

So take a pause.

Nicole:

Okay, the correct answer is A, six times higher.

Nicole:

I've put again the links to the data and I just wanted to name that the prison system is extremely racialized, it's extremely racist how it's designed.

Nicole:

That is no accident.

Nicole:

It is a complete continuation of racial oppression from when people were enslaved and You know, I know that's slightly different in a UK context, but yeah, I could talk about this all day, but it is much more connected in terms of colonialism and, yeah, how people are racialized in the UK.

Nicole:

So these are just some of the statistics.

Nicole:

This is just people in local jails.

Nicole:

I know, oh yeah, local jails and prisons.

Nicole:

So I know you have a different system in the US, like in the UK we call jail, like, prison.

Nicole:

Like, there's just prisons, if that makes sense.

Nicole:

But yeah, you can see the rates of black people in prison are much higher and AI slash AN, they've used here shortened for American Indian, Alaska Native, so indigenous people from Turtle Island Hispanic and white and Asian.

Nicole:

Okay, and then there's another graph here of how much higher are black incarceration rates than white, and this is done by kind of states in the U.

Nicole:

S.

Nicole:

Okay, so yeah, I hope those slides illuminated how racist the prison system is by design.

Nicole:

I now kind of, I guess, wanted to talk about class.

Nicole:

So yeah, the average life expectancy in the UK is roughly 80 years, but I just really wanted to say that You know, there are massive class disparities in these statistics.

Nicole:

So yeah, what is the average age of death for people in prison in the UK?

Nicole:

Is it A.

Nicole:

78 years old, B.

Nicole:

56 years old, C.

Nicole:

70 years old, or D.

Nicole:

65 years old?

Nicole:

And the correct answer is actually B.

Nicole:

56 years old.

Nicole:

And I found an article about deaths in prison, like, from quite a while ago, but it was like 47 for people, you know, categorized as women in so called women's prisons, but I just wanted to name that my best friend Taylor, who died who was, you know, like, assigned female at birth, but was a trans man, he was actually 50 when he died, so I think these statistics are you know, very accurate in terms of people I've known who've died in prison.

Nicole:

And yeah, I just, yeah, I think it's such an extreme disparity between people not incarcerated and incarcerated in terms of how short their lifespans are.

Nicole:

Okay how much higher was the rate of death of people in prison dying from COVID 19 in UK prisons?

Nicole:

Was it A, the same?

Nicole:

B, 1.

Nicole:

5 times higher.

Nicole:

Oh, excuse me.

Nicole:

C, 2 times higher.

Nicole:

Or D, 3 times higher.

Nicole:

And the correct answer was D, 3 times higher which again is really shocking, and yeah, I think I found some research in the US that showed that it was a 20 percent higher death rate from people dying of COVID 19 in prisons.

Nicole:

Yeah, people still haven't recovered from the impacts of COVID in terms of incarceration, like most prisoners in the UK ended up in absolute bang up, like 23 hours a day, you know, very lucky if you're even let out, vast amounts of lockdown for literally like months, years on end, like really high rates of suicide and self harm as a result, obviously high rates of COVID and long COVID that, you know, people in prison can't get support for.

Nicole:

And yeah, the kind of prison system used the pandemic as ways to bring in even more like oppressive policies in terms of reducing staffing, for example, which meant even more bang up for people in prison and less visits, for example, when, you know, prisons are very slow to re implement kind of pre pandemic changes.

Nicole:

So yeah, it's, it's pretty dire.

Nicole:

Okay, how many children have a parent who is incarcerated in the U.

Nicole:

S.?

Nicole:

Is it A, 1.

Nicole:

25 million children?

Nicole:

Oh, excuse me.

Nicole:

B, 1 million children.

Nicole:

C, 800, 000 children.

Nicole:

And D, 500, 000 children.

Nicole:

Given that there's around 2 million people incarcerated in the US.

Nicole:

Okay, so the correct answer is A, 1.

Nicole:

25 million children and nearly 1 in 4 of them is under 4 years old.

Nicole:

So it's like, you know, I, I really think the focus should always be on the prisoner, but I want to name kind of like how, how it is for prisoner families, right?

Nicole:

Like how it would feel to have a parent who is Incarcerated, you know, like my dad was absent the majority of my childhood from four years old, so, you know, that had a massive impact on the consequences of my life and my family and, you know, growing up on benefits and stuff with a single parent.

Nicole:

So it's like, yeah, to have your parent incarcerated is gonna have huge effects on a kid, right?

Nicole:

Let alone, like, all the trauma of visiting someone, for example, and what they go through in prison and how it feels for the parent in prison.

Nicole:

Et cetera, et cetera.

Nicole:

So, you know, it has massive impacts on families.

Nicole:

Okay.

Nicole:

What is the reduced life expectancy of someone who has an incarcerated family member in the U.

Nicole:

S.?

Nicole:

Is it A.

Nicole:

6 months or less, B.

Nicole:

12 months or less, or C.

Nicole:

2 years or less?

Nicole:

D, 2.

Nicole:

6 years or less.

Nicole:

Okay, so the correct answer is D, 2.

Nicole:

6 years.

Nicole:

And for people with three or more family members, it's 4.

Nicole:

6 years less.

Nicole:

Like literally nearly five years off your life expectancy if you have family members incarcerated.

Nicole:

God knows how that affects people that, you know, do prisoner support where, you know, we have shitloads of people we care about inside.

Nicole:

But I think this research is really fascinating because it's really actually looking at, like, the health impacts of Like, the chronic stress and the chronic trauma of incarceration on people who are supporting someone inside.

Nicole:

Yeah, and I thought this graph was interesting, like, mass incarceration directly impacts millions of people, but just how many and in what ways.

Nicole:

So, you know, we talk about these nearly 2 million people in prison, but there's also 5 million people who've been in prison, you know.

Nicole:

Even more, 19 million who've been convicted of something, or have a criminal record, and then, yeah, this massive impact on family members of someone who's been in prison, so it's like, this kind of, yeah, massive cascade of effects, like, permeates, like, all our communities, like, it's not just, like, a small issue, like, this is something affecting generations of people in our communities, you know?

Nicole:

And I hate to say it, but it's mostly ignored, right, by Herbalist, you know, when these are vast things, like, affecting, like, our health systems, affecting our communities.

Nicole:

But yeah, all of these people are, like, often very marginalised and invisibilised.

Nicole:

Yeah, and then just, again, like, for the US context, like, how many people are locked up in the US?

Nicole:

I thought this graph was quite interesting, like people in state prisons people in local jails.

Nicole:

And also to like, say about like, all the other forms of incarceration, right?

Nicole:

That this workshop doesn't talk about, but you know, like youth imprisonment or immigration detention is absolutely massive part of the prison industrial complex in terms of like, you know, incarcerating people and deporting them or like, you know, this whole connection to the border regime, you know, involuntary commitment.

Nicole:

That's also, you know, like you know, we haven't even talked about like psychiatric prisons, for example, or, you know, psychiatric imprisonment.

Nicole:

So yeah, there's so many parts of the prison system, you know, aren't included in this workshop, but are, you know, like a big part of this whole system as a whole.

Nicole:

And one kind of term that's been developed of this like big complex system is like the prison industrial complex.

Nicole:

And if, you know, this was hopefully live and participatory, I would be asking everyone now to kind of give me their definitions of what the prison industrial complex means, like what that means to people.

Nicole:

And, you know, like, again, like, the context is quite different in the UK, like, in terms of the history of the prison system, the history of the police but this picture, like, really summarises the state of things in the so called US in terms of connection to plantation slavery.

Nicole:

And people still literally working in plantations as prison labor, people working in factories and you know that making profits for corporations and then you know that prison labor like not being, actually I've got a slide about prison labor in a minute, but yeah it's like the whole system.

Nicole:

If that makes sense.

Nicole:

Okay, so critical resistance who are like one of the kind of long runners in terms of abolitionist organizing and being like quite a kind of think tank and, you know, developing a lot of literature around abolition They've written that the Prison Industrial Complex, so the PIC, is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social, and political problems.

Nicole:

I would actually add there like as alleged solutions or false solutions because You know, these systems don't solve these political problems, right, in our society, but they're used as a way of kind of, you know, saying that they will, right?

Nicole:

So just some notes on prison labor.

Nicole:

Like I've mentioned, like prison labor has really been used as a tool for like conquest and domination, for colonization.

Nicole:

You know, whether that's making goods for armies, for example.

Nicole:

This picture is from yeah, the Middlesex House of Correction in the UK, and this is like a kind of picture of prison labour.

Nicole:

I'm not sure what year it is, but I think it's around the turn of the century.

Nicole:

But you can see how the British Empire was like completely dependent on prison labour at home and abroad in order to enact its kind of colonial project, right?

Nicole:

So as like a labor force, like prisoners have no rights, like as workers in prison, if you're, if you refuse to work, then you're punished.

Nicole:

You know, in England, we have this IEP scheme, this incentive and privileges scheme.

Nicole:

So basically, it's like a kind of red card, like in football.

Nicole:

And, you know, if you get Too many of them you end up like on basic where you're kind of locked in all the time and then you can end up in segregation which is like a next level layer of punishment.

Nicole:

But now kind of prison labour is a bit different and it's more about prisoners really like maintaining prisons, you know, like doing all the things in prison, like cleaning the prison, feeding the prisoners, cooking the food.

Nicole:

And there are like some more specialist roles.

Nicole:

You know, for example, like I worked in the gardens, which I'll talk about later.

Nicole:

But yeah, I just wanted to say that, like, prison labour is, like, this global force within capitalism.

Nicole:

Okay.

Nicole:

All right I'm going to leave that there and record another video now about the health impacts of incarceration.

Nicole:

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

Nicole:

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the show at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast