What Happened At Vaughn Prison?
At Vaughn prison and elsewhere, we should demand transparency and stand with the inmates who dare to affirm their humanity.
Yesterday, scores of men in Delaware’s largest prison, the Vaughn Correctional Center, took over one of the buildings in their facility. The prison, built in 1971 and known for its serious overuse of solitary confinement, is one of the state’s most severely overcrowded and punitive facilities.
Hoping to push the state to improve living conditions at Vaughn, the prisoners didn’t just take control of building C — they also took guards hostage. And to make the public aware of why they were protesting, they called the media:
We’re trying to explain the reasons for doing what we’re doing. Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he’s doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse. We know the institution is going to change for the worse. We got demands that you need to pay attention to, that you need to listen to and you need to let them know. Education, we want education first and foremost. We want a rehabilitation program that works for everybody. We want the money to be allocated so we can know exactly what is going on in the prison, the budget.