Alana McMains
Appearances
Flightless Bird
Prisons
My name is Alana McMains. I'm an attorney. I primarily focus on federal criminal defense.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
So in the United States, we have two parallel criminal justice systems. We have the state system. Most crimes are charged by the state, things like murders, DUIs, robbery, the kind of things we normally think of when we think of crime. There is also the federal system, and... I represent indigent clients who are charged with federal crimes.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
So being here in San Diego, border city, we're typically talking about border-related crimes. So importing, you know, fentanyl, bad hombres crossing the border, as Trump would say. Those are all my favorite people who I help. What I'm mainly doing is presenting mitigating factors to a judge and explaining why this person, whether due to poverty, sexual abuse, drug addiction, et cetera, why...
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Eight years is not necessary for this woman. How about three years? Or how about probation as opposed to six months, depending on the severity of the crime?
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Yeah. In law school, you're taught about the various purposes of a criminal justice system. And, you know, there's rehabilitation. There is basically keeping people off the streets and away from people, just literally protecting the public. One of the options, of course, is retribution.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And I think, unfortunately, our criminal justice system is really heavy on the retribution and doesn't really focus on the others. Rehabilitation is just a joke. The type of programs that are available to people, it's minimal. There's very little funding. We are not sending people out better than they were. People are coming out, I think... They're traumatized.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
They're coming out often victims of sexual abuse or physical violence. They're coming out of prison having probably developed a lot of new criminal skills and criminal friends. Like overall, it's even if you're just thinking not about the people themselves, but thinking about society and what's best for us, the law abiding people. I don't think prison is achieving that.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Well, it appeared that you thought that the appropriate prison outfit should be a nine-inch nail shirt and a pair of, I don't know if those were swim trunks? What was going on?
Flightless Bird
Prisons
No, technically they don't. Knees are considered very scandalous in the prison world. Shorts are a no-go. Tight yoga pants I've gotten in trouble for wearing, like, legging-type things. Underwire and bras is a constant problem.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
I've heard stories of women who went to visit clients at, like, faraway prisons out in the boondocks and were rejected for their bra, but you can't go in with no bra either, so they had to, like, drive and find a Walmart and just buy a sports bra.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
So we're going to visit a client who is in custody on drug charges. His is kind of a sad case where he was charged by the state and they had come up with a deal for about three years custody. And then for some reason, the feds decided to pick him up. They arrested him in the state courthouse and now are charging him using the 10 year mandatory minimum.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
I told him that you are not from the United States, and you are fascinated by our bizarre ways, and you want to learn about the prison system here. And because he does have a prior, I think, like a DUI or something, he spent a little bit of time in probably a county lockup, and now he's in a federal facility. The place we're going to actually is a private facility.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
This is not a federal Department of Justice. This is the GEO group. The two big private prisons are CoreCivic, previously known as Corrections Corp of America, but they rebranded to sound nicer. Core Civic sounds like they're, you know... Such a generic name.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Yeah, well, you should see the videos on their website when they change the name about all the civic duty and glory that they're bringing to our great nation. But the other one is the Geo Group, so... When there was an attempt by Obama to say, we're not going to use private prisons anymore in the federal system, obviously he can't control the states, and Trump rescinded that.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
But even when that was in effect, there was still an agreement that for pretrial detainees, they could use them, because I think there's just not enough space in the pretrial facilities.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
The court believes you're a journalist named David Ferrier, so I hope that that's true. We're not lying.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Oh yeah, when he was talking about regulating. Yeah, unfortunately, that's another thing that I've just been kind of aware of through clients.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
There's just a lot of problems with violence in the facilities. And I think they attempt to minimize it by having this racial segregation, which is so bizarre.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
So that's something that's been going on in California, you know, for a very long time, I think always. And it is a weird situation where, like I said, if you did that at a university or something, there would be lawsuits aplenty.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
Yeah. And in fact, it does seem like everyone I've talked to appreciates that and likes it and they're not racist or anything. Right. But for whatever reason, it seems to keep the peace and gives a sense of order to people. I don't know. Again, I will often hear people say like what he said, where like I myself, I have a couple black friends, even though I'm Mexican or yeah.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
I'm friends with one of the Peckerwoods. That's what they call the white guys sometimes, you know, who's he's not really a Nazi. He just has to hang out with the white people, even though some of them are neo-Nazis. He's not. And so we kind of sometimes chat when we work at the kitchen together. Right. So there's these sort of like secret friendships cross racially.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
But for the most part, yeah, it's odd. And there's also problems, though, when people get classified into the wrong area. Someone got misclassified and they were put in a pod. This was like somebody who had like a shoplifting, you know, nonviolent financial crime. And they were placed in a pod with people who were facing murder charges, were going down for life, sexually violent predators.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And this guy was sexually abused and beaten. And he sent five or six requests saying, please move me. I don't belong here. This is a mistake. I believe he was Middle Eastern. And so that falls in that other category, again, because they don't know what... Other is a category. Other is a category, exactly. White, black, Mexican, and other is how it's done in the system.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
And so I think when someone, when it's unclear, they sometimes put people and they don't know what to do with them. And it's, yeah, again, it's just so odd.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
These skills, if you're good at things like dice and dominoes and handball, there's various things that can get you hooked up.
Flightless Bird
Prisons
I would say that for any client facing serious time, It's a roller coaster of emotions. So he's not always super chill. Not that he's never expressed anger with me at the system and why this is happening and how things are going. People express sadness. I have a client who tells me he feels like he's falling down a hole, endless, with a noose around his neck and he's just waiting.