Historical Spotlight: Prison Activists Surveillance Program
To a certain extent, this country is built on hypersurveillance, unnecessary policing, and covert operations kept behind curtains. From explicit FBI programs like COINTELPRO to more subtle propaganda, it’s difficult deciphering people’s true intentions. If you have a platform and can inspire people to fight for change, especially in the Black community, you can quickly find yourself classified as a domestic enemy. Join me as we shine a Historical Spotlight on the Prison Activists Surveillance Program, a covert operation of the FBI to control those in the prison system.
PRISACTS, for short, was officially launched in 1974 as a continuation of the formal COINTELPRO program that ran rampant in the US between 1956 and 1971. Its purpose was to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt any political activity that was occurring in prisons. During that time in history, there were a lot of powerful activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, The Black Panthers, and others who were distributing empowering messages to the Black American community.
Those strong voices have always been seen as a threat in this country and because of that, there have been many groups and individuals targeted, smeared, and wrongfully incarcerated. It was an attempt to keep Black people subservient and with as few civil rights as possible. After centuries of constantly being kicked down, beaten, and abused, the 1960s and 1970s were a time when Black Americans put foot to pavement.
For the activists who were imprisoned, PRISACTS acted as a monitoring system to ensure they weren’t able to rally others while behind bars. Any communication that focused on economic redistribution, racial equality, gender equality, and other left-leaning ideals, were intercepted immediately. Some prisoners were already ear-marked from the illegal evidence gained from the COINTELPRO projects while others were freshly targeted by the system that was never reformed.
The targets were subjected to psychological warfare that included smear campaigns, forged documents, fake reports planted in the media, harassment, illegal violence, wrongful imprisonment, and even assassination. Some of the tactics never stopped and more than likely continue today under the guise of ‘investigation’.
PRISACTS got its start from an FBI program called “Black Extremist Activity in Penal Institutions” and was developed when convicted activists continued to organize in local, state, and federal prisons. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover stressed in an August 21, 1970 memo that since there was increasing activity of Black extremists in penal institutions, that there also needed to be methods of obtaining information about them and their moves.
About seven months later, he doubled down and said that there was a definite link between dangerous Black extremist organizations like the Black Panther Party and Black extremists groups operating within the prison system. He claimed the activists in prison were purposefully creating havoc by extorting, blackmailing, rioting, and holding hostages. His memos gave PRISACTS even more backing and legitimacy for a general public that was barely ready for integration, let alone full racial equality.
PRISACTS formally got its name on May 10, 1974 and was overseen by an FBI agent named William D. Fallin. The very next month, there was a convention held by the FBI for prison administrators in Quantico, Virginia to discuss propaganda and revolutionary warfare strategies and tactics. Successful uprisings like the Attica Prison Riot in 1971 were heavily censored and monitored by the FBI to prevent the prisoners from inspiring others to follow suit and fight against their unjust targeting, wrongful incrimination, and poor prison conditions.
The program was initially exposed by Dhoruba bin-Wahad, a Black Panther Party member and part of the Panther 21, who were arrested and wrongfully imprisoned on over 200 counts of conspiracy in New York. He sued the FBI and NYPD for the ploy to imprison him and destroy the Black Panther Party. During the lawsuit, evidence intentionally held back from the defense was found that ultimately cleared him of the crime.
His conviction was reversed and after spending 19 years in prison, he was finally released in March 1990. He won $400,000 from the US government for the FBI’s transgressions and another $490,000 in damages from the city of New York. As a result of his successful appeal, over 300,000 pages of previously classified government documents related to COINTELPRO, PRISACTS, and other programs were released.
PRISACTS officially ended on August 16, 1976. Many suspect that it continued under a different name until stopping in the 1980s but others think that it has never actually ended and was just absorbed into local, state, and federal prison systems.
Unfortunately, every story didn’t have a happy ending. A lot of the people targeted by COINTELPRO and PRISACTS weren’t able to get their convictions overturned, get awarded damages, or even see their loved ones ever again. Simply because the dominant society, scared of change, deemed them a national threat, they were forced to rot in a cell for the rest of their days.
While the good heart in me wants to pretend like we’ve made such progress in roughly 60 years, the realist in me isn’t so sure. I definitely think there are spies monitoring our spending trends, online activity, and social communications to drown out the stronger voices of change. It’s all about the powers that be retaining their power and not allowing an uprising to finally reset the nature of this country.
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Signed,
Jessica Marie
