In December of 2018, i was transferred/transported from the Indiana Department of Corrections to the Virginia Department of Corrections.
This act was carried out under the authority of the Interstate Corrections Compact. i have no charges or convictions within the Commonwealth of Virginia. A lot of people are unaware of the existence of the Interstate Corrections Compact (ICC), or just what it entails.
The ICC is essentially a contract between states and territories where they agree to trade, swap, or ship prisoners back and forth for a fee. In my case, i was swapped for a Virginia political prisoner that was shipped to Indiana a month before. The sender state is required to pay the receiver state, or the receiving state, for housing that particular prisoner. Unless it’s a swap. In that case, the sender state is just required to pay for that prisoner’s medical expenses and whatever other expenses outside of general housing. Some states have a non-restriction policy, meaning that they will accept anyone from anywhere for a fee. It doesn’t matter: medical issues, mental health issues, or whatever.
Virginia is a non-restrictive state, or Commonwealth, which is why Virginia houses a huge percentage—a large percentage of prisoners from other states and jurisdictions. While you as a prisoner may file for or request an Interstate Compact Transfer to another state or territory if you meet a certain criteria, there’s no guarantee that such will be approved. That is considered a voluntary request.
i’m here to focus on the involuntary.
When We have no rights, not to any form of due process. We have no rights to a classification hearing where We can present evidence as to why We should not be moved. Nor do We have the right to be confronted by, nor challenge, any evidence that is used against Us in order to justify such.
In fact, i was housed in Virginia for three years before i was even afforded the right to appeal my placement in Virginia. And that was a result of outside pressure. It really is a mere formality without any substance or credibility. In fact, the u.s. Supreme Court has ruled that the criminally-convicted has no reasonable expectation to be housed within the state in which you are convicted.
In my case, i was seized in the middle of the night under the pretext of a cell search, of a cell shake-down, only to exit my assigned cell and be confronted by teams of guards who had specific duties.
One was to search me and dress me out. Two was to secure me in the shower and keep eyes on me until placed in the vehicle. Three: seize, search, destroy, inventory, and pack my property. Four: prepare the vehicle and place me in it.
i was placed inside a steel-enhanced blacked-out paddy wagon van where all the windows were covered and where i could be watched by an infrared camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. i was never informed where i was going and could only gauge by peeking through a small crack in the window and reading the front license plates of vehicles on the highway or during a bathroom break at police jails in each state We went through. This is how i figured i was going southeast and predicted Virginia as Kevin “Rashid” Johnson had just been moved to Indiana a month or so before.
The Tactic of Counterinsurgency and Human Trafficking
The ICC has been weaponized and used as a tool of counterinsurgency to target political prisoners, prison activists, jailhouse lawyers, and influential revolutionary-minded prisoner: those of us that refuse to toe the line of the state.
The objective being to neutralize Our ability to organize, to mobilize, to network, and educate. There’s a need to remove us from Our base of support, inside/outside network, family support base. It is equivalent of a modern-day slave master selling off a troublesome slave to another plantation and getting paid for it.
Indiana has prisoners housed as far away as Alaska.
It is also a twist to the original Fugitive Slave Act, where a slave could be retrieved from any other territory. When We are housed in these other areas and jurisdictions We can be, and often are, subjected to a variety of emotional and physical abuses/trauma.
And in some cases, the citizen state has falsified Our files in an attempt to set us up to be killed. This is a documented fact. Such manipulations and maneuvers allow the citizen state to feign innocents and a non-party to the conspiracy as if their hands are clean.
These policies and practices once again validate the 13th Amendment that states there should neither be slavery nor voluntary servitude unless duly convicted of a crime. We are mere chattel slaves without any rights and the state has the right to do with Our bodies as they please in violation of human rights and international law. We currently are witnessing the u.s. oppressident that Donald Trump maximize the human trafficking component of this practice and take it to an entirely different level and not put any cover on it.
Whereas before it was mostly on a state level where bodies were being bartered for pay (this would include the islands as well, as We have comrades from the islands and territories being housed in the u.s.), We now see where prisoners’ bodies human beings are being bartered as a part of u.s. foreign policy, where people can be bartered to the notorious oppressive CECOT prison in El Salvador, Guantanamo Bay, countries in Africa and the Middle East, or Third World countries that have had their blood sucked and colonized is now maneuvering to take blood dollars in order to house U.S. prisoners as an economy boost. How is this not human trafficking?
Please note, Shaka has been informed in writing by the Indiana Interstate Corrections Compact Unit Council per orders of the Deputy Commissioner that he will not be allowed to return back to Indiana due to his level of influence and in return he will be placed back in solitary confinement until placement can be found in another state or territory.
Free the Land!
Shaka A. Shakur
For more information you may go to ShakaShakur.org and read about my case.