Washington’s state prison population isn’t allowed to vote — but if they were, about half would vote for Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump in 2024.

That’s according to a sweeping national survey from The Marshall Project on the political opinions of incarcerated people, which found that 48% of the 954 respondents from Washington said they preferred Trump and 29% said they preferred Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat’s nominee.

Nationally, 46% of the respondents preferred Trump and 33% preferred Harris. The top party affiliation in both Washington and nationwide was “Independent.”

The Marshall Project also conducted a survey when President Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee, in which 54% of 2,166 Washington prisoners said they preferred Trump, compared to 12% supporting Biden.

“There’s been this narrative that most people behind bars are going to be Democrats because they think Democrats are soft on crime,” said Kelly Olson of Free The Vote Washington, a coalition promoting voting rights for people involved in the criminal justice system.

“It’s not a monolith,” Olson said.

Rep. Tarra Simmons, D-Kitsap, the state’s first formerly incarcerated representative, introduced a bill early this year to give voting rights to people in prison — but the legislation came up against staunch opposition from Republicans, who invoked serial killer Gary Ridgway as a reason not to pass the bill. It’s also not supported by Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, who has “strong objections to restoring the ability to vote until a person has paid their debt to society,” his office said. Simmons told the Standard she’ll be re-introducing the legislation during the next legislative session in January.

Those who support giving prisoners the right to vote argue that voting is an inalienable right. They also say civic engagement could help reduce recidivism, as studies show prisoners are less likely to reoffend if they feel invested in their communities. Preventing prisoners from voting also disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous communities in Washington, who have higher rates of incarceration.

“It’s important to remember too that they are still citizens that are counted in the census that adds revenue to our cities and counties and states based on population,” said Olson. “They’re a part of that population and they’re underrepresented.”

Washington enacted a law granting voting rights to formerly incarcerated people in 2021 and a 2022 bill gave people on parole or probation the right to vote. The state is still trying to get the word out; Hobbs’ office is running a program that conducts outreach to formerly incarcerated people and registers them to vote.

A 2024 analysis by Free the Vote Washington of party preference of voters who were formerly incarcerated found similar results to The Marshall Project’s survey: In 2024, 59% preferred the Republican Party and 41% preferred Democrats. However, formerly incarcerated voters in 2020 preferred the Democratic Party, which indicates that they may be swing or independent voters.

The support for Republicans, though, baffles Olson, who was formerly incarcerated: “It’s hard for me to understand, when most of the progress that has happened as far as sentencing reform — efforts to reform and to improve conditions, efforts to access education inside — all of these things have been Democrat-led,” she said.

But Nicole Lewis, the engagement editor at The Marshall Project who organized the publication’s survey, said she could think of a few reasons why prisoners prefer Republicans.

“People forget 30% of the prison population is white,” Lewis said. “Look at our electorate on the outside — there’s racial breakdowns among party lines, and in prison, the segregation is even more stark and even more intense.”

Lewis also pointed out that people who follow politics less closely — so-called “low-information” voters — tend to support Trump, and that people in prison, often “through no fault of their own,” don’t have as much access to information on the outside world.

Lewis questioned whether GOP lawmakers opposed to re-enfranchisement of incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people would take different positions if “they understood that some of their constituents were locked up too.”

Meanwhile, many prisoners don’t like the Democratic Party’s framing of this election as being a prosecutor versus a felon. “I think it is horrible political framing that does not allow for us to get to the heart of our nation’s issues,” said one survey respondent incarcerated at Washington Corrections Center.

Criminal justice advocates have criticized the prosecutor versus felon rhetoric, arguing that it contributes to stigma against those who have a criminal record.

However, beliefs on whether Trump should have been convicted of a felony differ inside prison, just as they do on the outside.

One Washington respondent said he related to Trump, believing he was a “victim of being overcharged like me” and he should have only been found guilty of a misdemeanor. Another said he should have faced greater consequences: “I was convicted for one felony. I was sentenced to life. He was convicted of 34 felonies. He should be in prison.”

Those who supported Harris often said they resonated with her middle-class background and thought it might be time for a woman to be in office.

“Putting a woman in office would be great because, to be honest, she probably had to work twice as hard just because she was a woman to get to where she is now, so she’ll probably work twice as hard in office,” a respondent at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla said.

Issues that mattered to respondents included comprehensive criminal justice reform and economic issues — poverty, wages and other issues that “affect everyday Americans,” like the prisoners’ families outside, Lewis said.

Lewis said she hopes the survey helps provide a clearer picture of the “spectrum of politics behind bars” and how people’s experiences in prison shape their politics.

She and Olson pointed out that the majority of incarcerated people will leave prison — and that because they can’t vote while behind bars, lawmakers often don’t think of the incarcerated population as a group of voters to engage.

“That’s a bit shortsighted, because every year, around 600,000 people are cycling out and back into their home communities,” Lewis said. “This is a group that’s waiting to be engaged. They’re waiting to be invited in.”

Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on Facebook and X.

On Feb. 1, 2023, Jemal Houston-Brown woke up in his cell at a federal immigration detention site in Tacoma to the sound of screaming. It was around 3 a.m. and guards had released chemical agents in a unit directly below his.

“Some [detainees] clawed windows, desperate to escape,” Houston-Brown said. “I struggled to breathe.”

The ventilation system between the two units was left running, Houston-Brown said. He called 911 and the public defenders’ office using a phone in the unit, begging for help. Houston-Brown said the 911 call did not go through and the public defenders’ office said they didn’t know what they could do.

Chemical agents – a class of substances sometimes referred to as tear gas – were released to subdue a protest happening over confiscated razor blades, an ICE spokesperson said. The facility is run by The GEO Group, a private company contracted with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Houston-Brown shared his story in front of a Seattle ICE field office on Thursday, exactly one year after the incident — one of over 70 uses of force documented by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights.

Experts and advocates were gathered outside of the building to announce the release of a partial video taken of the Feb. 1 incident, which was obtained through a July 2023 complaint filed in Seattle federal district court by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project over a public records request the federal government failed to fulfill. Officials have yet to produce every record responsive to the organization’s request.

Northwest ICE Processing Center is the only for-profit federal detention center in Washington and one of the largest in the country, with a capacity for about 1,575 people. From mid-2021 to 2022, the facility had an average population of 374 detainees, according to a May 2023 report from the Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement, a GEO spokesperson said “we take the use of chemical agents with the utmost seriousness, and our staff follow strict federal standards that govern their use.” ICE said officials authorized “non-lethal use of force” after “careful consideration.”

“A number of detainees housed at the NWIPC have been convicted of serious crimes, such as assault, child exploitation, and murder. The lawful removal of these noncitizens should not be impeded either by the dangerous actions of any detainees or inaccurate information free of context,” an ICE spokesperson said.

‘As if they were going to war’

In the 40-minute-long video, guards are seen waiting to enter Unit F4, where four men were refusing to move in protest, according to ICE records obtained by UW’s Center for Human Rights.

“SEG, SEG, SEG! It’s a three-man escort!” one person shouts, using common prison slang to refer to a solitary confinement unit, or “Segregated Housing Unit.”

Northwest ICE Processing Center uses solitary confinement more than any other ICE facility, according to Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, director of UW’s Center for Human Rights. GEO Group and ICE maintain that detention centers are not prisons.

Guards can be seen shouting to “get on the ground” while wearing riot gear and carrying rifles. The four detainees walk down a set of stairs as over a dozen guards surround them. Guards put a hood on at least one detainee and zip-tie handcuffs.

“Stop resisting,” a guard says. “I’m not resisting,” he replies. “Stop resisting,” the guard says again. The video does not show a clear view of the detainee as he is surrounded by guards.

People can be heard coughing heavily. Detainees and guards’ faces are blurred out and the audio cuts out intermittently.

“It’s as if they were going to war,” said Maru Mora Villalpando, who leads La Resistencia, a group calling for the facility’s closure. “We don’t see the need at all to have gassed them. There is absolutely no excuse to send a SWAT team.”

At least five people who were detained at Northwest ICE Processing Center during the Feb. 2023 incident are still there today, said Villalpando, who keeps in close contact with detainees in the facility.

“They feel there should at least be an apology,” Villalpando said.

Houston-Brown said medical neglect in the facility exacerbated the health effects of the gas for him. After his release in June 2023, a doctor sent him to critical care for six days.

“My lungs suffered damage from the gas, causing constant chest pain and coughing. My doctor couldn’t believe I did not die in detention,” Houston-Brown said, adding that his liver and kidney were in near-failure.

ICE and GEO said in separate statements that medical staff cleared detainees of all injuries immediately following the incident.

The battle over records

According to Villalpando, La Resistencia reached out to UW’s Center for Human Rights and asked them to file a public records request for video and other documentation of the Feb. 1 incident because of their expertise. The center did not hear back, so they asked Northwest Immigrant Rights Project to file a request, said Matt Adams, the organization’s legal director.

When Northwest Immigrant Rights Project did not hear back, they filed a complaint in federal court. The partial video is the first video released as part of the request.

“We still haven’t received the bulk of the video,” said Adams.

Court documents filed by ICE say they have processed and released 100 minutes of video. There are approximately 12 hours of video documentation that must be released under the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project’s request, the agency says in court filings.

“ICE is not trying to hide anything about what happened during the incident in question,” the agency said in a Jan. 29 status report.

Houston-Brown, who has filed a grievance signed by 26 other detainees against ICE over the incident, said he knows there is a video record showing how badly the gas affected him.

“I got within five feet from the door – from outside the door – and I collapsed,” Houston-Brown said. “Get the video footage of the breezeway right outside the door. You can clearly see me laying on the ground and a guard telling me to get up. I attempted to get up three times and I couldn’t get back on my feet.”

U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson on Nov. 16, 2023, ordered the Department of Homeland Security to produce all records by Jan. 31. However, federal officials are requesting an extension from Evanson until April 12, citing technical difficulties that they say are slowing efforts to blur faces to ensure privacy of individuals.

“The video files ICE Processing received were so degraded, and more degraded than anticipated, that the software was not able to function properly and track faces appropriately,” the filing said.

A Feb. 6 court hearing is scheduled to discuss the status of the case.

Villalpando said Washington’s congressional delegation should get involved in helping expedite the public records process and should hold a hearing to investigate the incident.

Democratic members of Washington’s congressional delegation have introduced legislation to improve conditions in ICE facilities. But Villalpando said it’s “not enough to introduce a bill that goes nowhere.” State lawmakers have attempted to both close the facility and bring more oversight to it, but have been met with legal challenges from GEO.

“We will continue fighting and please don’t forget: Every February 1, we’re gonna keep coming back until that place is shut down,” Villalpando said.

Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on Facebook and Twitter.