Trenton Bishop discusses sweltering conditions in Kansas prisons and initiates a call to action for solidarity with residents of KDOC. “We're already suffering. We—we're already going through what we're going through. And I know the consensus is, ‘well, let those criminals sweat,’ but we're humans. We're human beings too. And this A/C thing is making it very hard to function. Like I can't get a full eight hours of sleep because I'm waking up tossing and turning.”

Stanley Wooley Jr. is a prolific poet and song-writer incarcerated at Winfield Correctional Facility. His spoken word poem, “Ignorant to the Law” explores the injustices that incarcerated folks experience at the hands of criminal law and its executors. Click here to listen to or read “Ignorant to the Law.”

Liberation Lit sent Ronald Quiceno, incarcerated at Hutchinson Correctional Facility, a copy of “Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System: by Alec Karakatsanis. He wrote us this letter to tell us what he thought of the book.

I’m Devon Westerfield, a 29-year-old artist from Independence, Kansas. I am currently incarcerated at Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas. It’s been tough for me to endure these living arrangements, and this is only a peek into my experiences with this flawed system that claims to be in place to “correct” criminal behavior. In actuality, I’ve found that so many of us who are incarcerated have been the victims of true criminal behavior perpetrated by a system that claims to help us. I just want to create true change from within these cages and bring about real positive change for those of us in chains. But we can’t do it alone. We need help. 

I’m Devon Westerfield, a 29 year old artist from Independence, Kansas. I am currently incarcerated at Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas. For my entire life, I have either been a ward of the state, incarcerated in some sort of facility, or excessively punished and mistreated by the judicial system. Throughout it all, true rehabilitation has never been offered to me.

Jeff Zmuda and the Kansas Department of Corrections are grossly mistreating people incarcerated at Lansing Correctional Facility. Here’s what’s happening and what you can do about it, in the words of Trenton Bishop, who is currently at Lansing.