Q4J Prisoner Advisory Team

The Prisoner Advisory Team is a group of incarcerated community members in the mid-Hudson Valley, as well as some satellite participants in other locations throughout the state, collectively organizing for prison reform. This team will be structured and operate under three foundational pillars of practice. 

  • Relationships:

    • Relationships are the embodied practice of truth across intersectional identities for the common goal of coming home.

  • Education and Political Advocacy

    • Education is how the team stays connected and informed about the policies and methods that are being used to oppress them, inside the system.

  • Trust

    • Trust is what the team relies upon with each other and with the outside team. It is only when trust is built that prisoners and outside team members can bring each other into the folds of the movement

  • What the prisoner advisory team does:

    • Informs: Prisoner Advisory Team members provide much-needed insight to the outside community members of Queers for Justice and advise on the organization’s policy agenda as it relates to reforms of the New York State Prison System.

    • Inspires: It is only through the sharing of lived experiences and knowledge by the inside team that this work is fueled and sustained. Through op-eds, original artwork, and direct feedback to outside community organizers and state legislators, the Prisoner Advisory Team inspires and catalyzes change within the prison system. 


History

In the spring of 2020, Director of Queers for Justice Alisha Kohn—a formally incarcerated community member—along with team Leaders Eric Whitfield (Paris) in Eastern Correctional Facility and Brian Boles in Fishkill Correctional facility developed what is now called the Prisoner Advisory Team. Combining philosophies and theories learned in higher education with their own practices developed through their lived experiences with the carceral system, the leaders and founding members of this team aimed to abolish the prison system by the way of policy reform and education through an intersectional abolitionist lens. As the conditions of a global pandemic laid bare the inequities of a historically unjust system, the continued murders of unarmed Black men and women at the hands of police sparked an international movement for Black Lives. The community outside of the prison walls took to the streets to stand up against injustice as prisoners sat in their cells and watched. But prisoners would not sit for long. Members of Queers for Justice collectively brought together a team to fight for justice with the pen and power of community organizing. Now, as of the fall of 2022, the Prisoner Advisory Team is made up of 35 incarcerated community members across five New York State Prisons.