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Copyright 2008 Siddique Abdullah Hasan/Prison Radio
Siddique Abdullah Hasan is a prisoner on Death Row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, Ohio. For more information about Siddique, visit: www.freehasan.org or www.prisonersolidarity.org. You can write to him directly at: Siddique Abdullah Hasan, R130-559, Ohio State Penitentiary, 878 Coitsville-Hubbard Road, Youngstown, Ohio 44505-4635
New!! "Free Siddique Abdullah Hasan" Fact Sheet - word doc
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Unjustly Convicted
Commentary by Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Recorded 1-3-08
Written transcript soon to come
1) 8:51 Radio Essay MP3
What is Ramadan & What Does it Entail?
Commentary by Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Recorded 9-13-07
Written transcript soon to come
1) 4:35 Radio Essay MP3
Compassion from Death Row - Part III
Commentary by Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Recorded 6-29-07
Scroll down for a written transcript
1) 4:13 Radio Essay MP3
Compassion from Death Row - Part II
Commentary by Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Recorded 6-13-07
Scroll down for a written transcript
1) 3:52 Radio Essay MP3
Compassion from Death Row - Part I
Commentary by Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Recorded 5-18-07
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1) 3:46 Radio Essay MP3
Institutionalized Racism
Commentary by Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Recorded 3-18-07
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1) 2:36 Radio Essay MP3
Induced Failure
Commentary by Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Recorded 3-18-07
Scroll down for a written transcript
1) 6:16 Radio Essay MP3
Compassion from Death Row - Part 3
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Copyright 2007/ Siddique Abdullah Hasan
With more than 100,000 children being imprisoned in detention homes and state correctional institutions throughout America, Compassion has decided to turn its attention to this nation’s troubled and violent youths. We believe that life is a process of transformation and that if provided the proper education and guidance, most children will transcend their troubled past and capitalize on their mistakes. This is what detention homes and correctional institutions were designed for, but somewhere in the shuffle, this nation has lost focus of its goal and moral responsibility to rehabilitate.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling prohibiting the execution of juveniles. The premise for this prohibition was “a lack of maturity and underdeveloped sense of responsibility that is found in youth more often than adult.” Well, if executing juveniles was ruled unconstitutional based on this premise, shouldn’t this same rationale be applicable to not imprisoning juveniles with life sentences without the possibility of parole? Let’s face it, when we leap over the fanciful euphemism of “life without the possibility of parole” and land into the “executional arena,” the tear-jerking reality is: they both are death sentences for our children – one where they die sooner by the hands of the state, and the other where they die later by rotting away in prison.
America, a nation that boasts about its fair and humane treatment of its citizens, incarcerates more than 99% of the world’s youths who are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. That’s about 2300 children who are eternally doomed to a life of misery and despair. And of these 2300, 60% are first-time offenders. There is no rehabilitation for them nor are they provided a second chance to live a productive life in society, something they were “too immature” to comprehend prior to their incarceration.
Saving our children and everyone else in this society should be this nation’s primary goal, not the race to endlessly incarcerate. Throwing away the key and discarding our children, like unwanted trash, is not the logical solution to crime.
Instead of spending so much time and money to race to incarcerate, we at Compassion are convince that that time and money could best be served by teaching this nation’s children the importance of making better choices, and showing them an alternative to crime and a troubled life. This is the mission Compassion has embarked on.
This fall Compassion will be publishing Choices, a book which contains 60 essays written by different death-row prisoners. It highlights the importance of making good choices and what can happen when people fail to make them. It takes a nation to raise a child, and death-row prisoners are trying to do their part. We hope and pray that these personal testimonies will not only help in detouring our children from a life of crime, but will also motivate them to do something positive with their lives.
All proceeds made from the sale of this book will be placed in our account for scholarships; however, Choices are free to juvenile detentions.
Anyone who wishes to purchase a copy of Choices, or to donate to our scholarship program, or who just merely wants to know more about the work we do at Compassion, please call Fred Moor at (419) 874-1333 or you can log onto our website at www.compassionondeathrow.org.
From death row, this is Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Compassion from Death Row - Part II
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Copyright 2007/ Siddique Abdullah Hasan
Another compassionate element that simultaneously accompanied the publication of Compassion was our decision to award college scholarships to the immediate family members of murdered victims. Recipients of our scholarships are chosen after a designated committee of only death-row prisoners has reviewed all applications submitted.
Our scholarships are awarded on behalf of all death-row prisoners; however, these scholarships are not meant to atone for the secondary victims’ loss because no amount of money can compensate for, or even minimize, their loss. Instead, our scholarships are a compassionate gesture to those who have had an unfortunate tragedy befall them.
Many of us in our death-row coalition have also lost loved ones to unnecessary violence, so we understand that people’s lives are derailed and become bleak with the sudden and tragic death of a loved one. In fact, statistics shows that in some cases people’s lives are never put back on track, and they end up experiencing a lifetime of psychological, emotional, economical hardships. The latter hardship is typically true if the loved one was the sole breadwinner in the family. Our awareness of these facts prompted us to financially invest in victims’ education.
The funds to preserve our scholarship program come from donations and subscriptions to Compassion, and they are maintained by a God-fearing and reliable source on the outside. Therefore, prisoners have absolutely no access to embezzle these funds.
So far we have been blessed to award $28,000 to secondary victims. The most notable recipient was Brandon Biggs, the son of a man whom was struck by a motor vehicle and left lodged in the windshield, still alive, but subsequently died. Brandon forgave the offender, Chante Mallard, a registered nurse, who left the victim lodged in her windshield without either providing or securing any medical care for him. Plain and simple, she left him to die. This tragedy happened in the state of Texas and was dubbed “Windshield Murder.”
Brandon was awarded a $10,000 scholarship to partially fund his education as a pastoral ministry student at the Southwestern Assembly of God University in Waxahachie, Texas – a city in northeast central Texas. With his education Brandon intends to spread God’s message of love, forgiveness and compassion.
After considering the fact that people do better in life with an education than without it, we felt obligated to institute a scholarship program for secondary victims. To educate, after all, is to give life, and it’s a wonderful passport to the future. In fact, one of our premier and late reformers said: “Education is a number one priority, and it’s our passport to the future.”
In light of the facts that our educational system is bogged down and grossly underfunded; that our government only provides lip services to its victims of crimes; and that it spends very little money on education in comparison to its military spending and empire building, we at Compassion are committed to helping to provide a better future to this nation’s victims of murder.
From death row, this is Siddique Abdullah Hasan.
Compassion from Death Row - Part I
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Copyright 2007/ Siddique Abdullah Hasan
I am the founder and former editor of Compassion, a bimonthly newsletter which publishes the compassionate and introspective writings of death-row prisoners. And, in a recent development, we now publish the writings of victims of crimes, simply because their heart-wrenching stories need to be heard. What grieves their hearts is important to us at Compassion, and we accept their stories as another contribution and element to restorative justice.
Since other publications focus on the innocence of condemned prisoners as well as the unfairness, racism, classism, barbarity, prosecutorial misconduct, and a host of other gross miscarriages of justice which exist in our so-called criminal justice system, our objective at Compassion has been to provide an unprecedented approach and alternative. That is, focusing on the humanity and the compassionate side of death-row prisoners in particular, and condemned prisoners in general. To achieve this objective prisoners needed a vehicle where they could speak for themselves instead of being erroneously defined and spoken for by others. Hence, the formulation of Compassion, yet the beginning of a marathon.
In seeing that we live in a society where prisoners are seen as evil, incorrigible, unsympathetic, game-conscious and narrow-minded monsters, Compassion had an assortment of hurdles to overcome. But remarkably, it succeeded! In fact, since our initial publication in July of 2001, more and more people are beginning to acknowledge prisoners’ humanity, their compassion, and that they possess the same positive tools, the same latent potentials, and the same loving, caring and compassionate spirit that others possess. When prisoners are seen in such a factual light, the healing process of restorative justice can truly begin.
For my fellow prisoners on death row, it began for many of them when I challenged them to go deeply inside of themselves and write about “their feelings and emotions in a way that other prisoners and people on the outside will get a sense of their humanity and concerns,” and to “let others see the individual quality inside of them and their potential for change.” Amazingly, many of them accepted the challenge and began to write about their joys, hopes, dreams, fears, sorrows, aspirations, and even their desire to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Best said, these men and women refuse to allow one criminal mistake to define who they really are.
It is my heartfelt belief that the main reason the majority of U.S. citizens support capital punishment is that condemned prisoners have been demonized, dehumanized, and portrayed as beasts that need to be exterminated. However, when citizens can bypass the political and media hype and begin to see condemned prisoners for whom they really are --namely, people who’ve made some very bad choices in their lives, but who can be imprisoned until they’re reformed--then citizens’ support for capital punishment begins to dwindle.
But this is obviously not what the powers that be, or their corporate friends, want to see materialize. Therefore, they continue to promote the hype, at the expense of exterminating their own citizens. They say “it’s merely business,” but I say “it’s politics at its worst, so don’t believe the hype.”
From death row, this is Siddique Abdullah Hasan.
Institutionalized Racism
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Copyright 2007/ Siddique Abdullah Hasan
While blacks and whites in this country are murdered at relatively the same rate – about 47% blacks and 51% whites – 80% of those executed have been executed for murdering whites while only 7% have been executed for murdering blacks. So, what does this shocking reality tell you and I? It tells us several things:
- It tells us that institutionalized racism is very much alive because it is the powers that be who decide when to or when not to charge someone with a capital offense; 2) that if you murder a white person, you are ten times more likely to be executed than if you had murdered a black person; 3) that the lives of black people in this country is insignificant in relation to whites; 4) that the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution, which proclaims equal protection and treatment under the law, is only for human consumption because it is not put into practical application when it comes to its black citizens; 5) that even in this 21st century racism and bigotry against blacks is still prevalent in this society, both the South and the North; and 6) that 80% of executions occur in the Southern states.
However, this should not come as no surprise when you consider the fact that almost all the states which have their death penalty machine up and running are former slave states.
M y brother, instead of trying to find justification and rationalization for the government’s discriminatory behavior towards our people caught up in the criminal “injustice” system, you should lift up your voice in protest. Malcolm X stated in his autobiography, “I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things.” He also said, “If you want something, you had better make some noise.”
Therefore, I urge you and all concerned citizens to take a stand against the racism and bigotry which are being perpetrated against blacks in our judicuary system.
Induced Failure
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Copyright 2007/ Siddique Abdullah Hasan
The current penal system in America is not working. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion, that it predisposes prisoners to recidivism, a relapse into a life of crime. Since man is ultimately a product of his environment, the current system products speak for themselves: failure. The system practices set it’s occupants up for exclusion from the mainstream success stories of society, except for the families, friends and loved ones of prisoners and ex-prisoners. Most Americans have not really considered prisoners plight and daily struggles. Though various studies show that from one-half to two-thirds of parolees return to prison for violating the conditions of their release, or for reoffending, few people, tax-payers, prosecutors, politicians and CEO’s of corporations seemed to have really pondered the critical question: Why is this colossal recidivism taking place on our soil? Have the citizens of this great industrial nation become so detached and desensitized that they could care less about prisoner’s lives. Well, I hope not because prisoners desperately need your assistance in reintegrating back into society and upholding the anticipation that they will become an asset to their respective community.
Richard Gustufson, a columnist and retired teacher who taught 30 years at Miami Valley Career Technical Center, said, “National statistics indicate that recidivism is cut in half with support from the community.” It is my personal and unyielding belief that recidivism is also tremendously reduced when the system pursues its once desired effect, rehabilitation. However, rehabilitation is a thing of the past.
It was in 1790 that the first penitentiary in this country opened its doors to house criminals. The purpose of this new creation was to place criminals in a confined area, where they might ponder over their crimes, repent and reform themselves, hence, the term penitentiary. Much has changed in the last three decades due to the influences of tough talking, opportunistic politicians, who have reduced funding for rehabilitative programs to almost nil, so much so that rehabilitation, or producing a repentive person is no longer the desired objective. Instead, the current objective is to warehouse prisoners and deliberately create the circumstances for their failure. This cruel objective is being perpetrated to perpetuate job security for parole officials, individuals in corporate America and the like, who benefit financially from the prison boom, which currently incarcerates 2.2 million people in our nation’s prisons. This new trend of merely warehousing and punishing prisoners is not conducive to the security and stability of this nation. All it does is mentally crush prisoners will and doom them to inevitable failure.
As a result of this new trend, prisoners are being released with no skills, no education, no support system, no job and only a few dollars in their possession to try to make it in this dog-eat-dog society. Indeed, a recipe for disaster. It’s implausible for prisoners to survive under these bleak conditions. Let us not forget that unemployment, poverty, exclusion and a lack of education and guidance are the ingredients which led to their imprisonment, so how can the system or any rational human being expect ex-prisoners to succeed when they are still caught in a catch-22 cycle? Although a job is an essential means of support to help people acquire the things they need, trying to secure a job is the ex-prisoners greatest obstacle. Except when family or friends have been able to secure them employment, ex-prisoners are refused work due to their criminal history, something they can’t change.
With this revolving door being slammed in their faces, how do we expect them to react when they are stuck between a rock and a hard place? They then end up adopting the only culture they know, survival of the fittest. In plain old English, they resort to exploiting their old ways of living that is, victimizing others to survive. Because of this induced failure, I share the sentiments of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X, who said, “I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people and penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.” It is my only hope that society will come to realize prisoners have the same tools, the same potentials, the same basic human desires and the same capacity for change and positive development which all other citizens possess; they just need assistance in effectively developing their latent potentials.
People change. Even I have changed. In fact, life itself is a process of transformation. With this said it is my prayer that people will call on their elected officials to push for rehabilitative programs in prisons as well as re-entry programs in society that will help prisoners reintegrate in their communities and become law-abiding citizens.
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