Prisoner support encompasses a variety of activities aimed a providing assistance to

prisoner A prisoner, also known as an inmate or detainee, is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement or captivity in a prison or physical restraint. The term usually applies to one serving a Sentence (law), se ...

s, particularly

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...

s. Many programs devoted to this purpose have quite limited resources; for instance, Nottingham Black Prisoner Support, with one staff worker, had 297 active cases in 1999. Black Prisoner Support groups such as Partners of Prisoners have sought to establish productive working relationships with prison staff.

South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...

's Alston Wilkes Society is the largest statewide prison support organization in the United States, with a budget of $918,000 and a staff of 50. It operates two

halfway house A halfway house is a type of prison or institute intended to teach (or reteach) the necessary skills for people to re-integrate into society and better support and care for themselves. Halfway houses are typically either state sponsored for those ...

s, arbitrates prisoner grievances, maintains a

youth home Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood ( maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a young adult. Youth ...

, helps ex-inmates find work, and provides social services to prisoners' families. There are many special-interest prison support groups such as the

Out of Control Lesbian Committee to Support Women in Prison Out or OUT may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Out'' (1957 film), a documentary short about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 * ''Out'' (1982 film), an American film directed by Eli Hollander * ''Out'' (2002 film), a Japanese ...

. Some political movements find it to be in their interests to provide prisoner supports; Break the Chains argues, "Any movement that does not support its political internees is a movement destined to fail. When power is challenged, it inevitably turns to violent repression and imprisonment to maintain itself. In order to avoid defeat, movements must become organized and capable of combating the repression of the state apparatus, and they must be able to support their comrades and allies in the event that they are arrested or imprisoned. Few would commit themselves to a movement that would leave them behind prison walls, or a movement that is incapable of sustaining itself in the face of state intimidation." Ratner writes that the prisoner support movement has been hampered by "particularly strong public antipathy toward offenders who would deny culpability by assigning blame to the 'system'. This compromises the efforts of prisoner-support groups, who must rally public support in order to procure government funds. Such groups face the dilemma of rapidly losing their own legitimacy should they draw too closely to the very offenders whom they seek to help — offenders who are not perceived by the public as victims of injustice. Thus, many 'outside' groups are forced to shun the support of inmates who are in prison for violent offences, a serious ideological fracture of inside-outside alliances which limits the possibilities for prisoner politicization." In the early 2000s (decade), the

United States Libertarian Party The Libertarian Party (LP) is a Political parties in the United States, political party in the United States. It promotes civil liberties, non-interventionism, Laissez-faire capitalism, ''laissez-faire'' capitalism, and Limited government, limiti ...

's California affiliate established a Political Prisoner Support Committee. It mostly served to support

medical cannabis Medical cannabis, medicinal cannabis or medical marijuana (MMJ) refers to cannabis products and cannabinoid molecules that are prescribed by physicians for their patients. The use of cannabis as medicine has a long history, but has not ...

patients. Spokesperson Ann McCormick opined, "we need not only to protect and care for our wounded, but to present them as patriots and heroes of 'the people'."

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References