Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group

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Dear Community, 

The Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group (APICAG) is a group of incarcerated individuals and community organizers.  We organize to promote cultural awareness, social justice, immigration rights, gender equality and the equity of those marginalized.  

The APICAG is currently working in partnership with various groups within Stafford Creek Correction Center (SCCC)- Black Prisoners Caucus/TEACH, Nuestro Group Cultural and the Native American Circle- along with community based networks to build a campaign that contributes to the upcoming legislative session.

Our focus this session will be on the current fight to eliminate auto-decline of youthful offenders, which currently allows for youth to be prosecuted in the adult court system.  We will continue our efforts to pass four (4) specific bills that would affect how the state defines youthful offenders and sentences them.  These bills also offer the possibility of retroactive relief for adult prisoners, especially those sentenced as juveniles.

The four (4) bills include the following:

SHB 1413  proposes to retroactively eliminate the use of juvenile felonies in the calculation of adult sentences.  It would also make adults eligible for resentencing if they had juvenile felonies factored into their sentences.

SHB 1282 expands the calculation  used toward "earned release time" to 33% of the total sentence that an individual serves.  This can be accured  through good behavior and good performance.  Currently, this calculation is capped at 10% for violent convictions.

HB 1344 seeks to expand the pool of people eligible to have their sentences reviewed by the Washington State Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board.  Currently, anyone under the age of 18 who was tried and convicted as an adult, are eleigible to have their sentences reviewed by the ISRB; this bill extends that review to people who were convicted under the age of 25. 

SHB 1169 would eliminate the sentencing enhancement for certain controlled substance violations committed in a protected zone, enhancements for involving a minor in street gang-related felonies, removes the requirement that a court must order multiple firearm or deadly weapons enhancements to be served consecutively and would leave it to the descrection of the court judge.

This bill also provides a process for re-sentencing a person currently serving multiple consecutive firearm enhancements, while removing current law restrictions on partial confinement and earned early release on sentencing enhancements.  These changes would apply retroactively to all incarcerated persons.

Our plan is to request personal stories from our peers at our facility that illustrate their life experiences and how these bills would impact them and their families personally.

Upon compiling these stories, our mission is to connect with youth organizations in our community to transform our stories into art (i.e. digital, drawings, paintings, spokenword, poetry, music, etc...).  

While the current plan is an art project, the possibilities are endless.  Keeping that in mind, it is our hope that this project is not only a way of working with legislation, but also a way of connecting with youth that are impacted by the injustices of our legal system in a multitude of ways.

After the project is complete, we will work collectively with our community network to share/display the art, and setup a collaborative presentation geared towards voters and the legislators who have the power to pass these bills.

Since the next legislative session is right around the corner, time is of the essence and we must work with urgency.

For two long, voices of prisoners have been silenced and marginalized-ignored and forgotten.  Rarely has legislation regarding the criminal justice and prison systems been centered on these voices that have been discarded in concrete cages.  This is our opportunity to breathe life into the part of our community that has been long left for dead.

It is our hope that this project works to give life to words, faces to statistics and transforms ideas into action.   "Our Only Chance Is Together!!! We Must Act Now!!!

Please join us in our fight for justice.  Our colletive efforts have the ability to redefine liberation and reimagine how we can unite behind our love and solidarity.

To get involved and contribute , Please contact the SCCC chapter of the APICAG.  Any and all contributions are welcomed and needed.

On behalf of the APICAG and our colleagues,

Felix Sitthivong #354579

Stafford Creek Correction Center

191 Constantine Way

Aberdeen, Washington  98520