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Criminal Justice and Prisons

Biden Frees All Marijuana Prisoners – Except Not At All

October 12, 2022 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. , ,
Joe Biden just pardoned everyone arrested for marijuana possession! Right? If you watched the mainstream media a few days ago, they lost their minds over President Biden’s incredible move to release thousands of people who were convicted of drug possession from prison! USA TODAY said, “Inside Biden’s history-making moves on marijuana.” And The New York Times screamed, “Biden Pardons Thousands Convicted of Marijuana Possession Under Federal Law.” Here are the words of the U.S.’s superhuman octogenarian president himself: “No one should be in prison just for using or possessing marijuana. It’s already legal in many states. And criminal records for marijuana possession have led to needless barriers to employment, to housing, and educational opportunities.”

The Puppets And The Puppet Masters

October 10, 2022 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
Washington, D.C. - Merrick Garland and those who work in the Department of Justice are the puppets, not the puppet masters. They are the façade, the fiction, that the longstanding persecution of Julian Assange has something to do with justice. Like the High Court in London, they carry out an elaborate judicial pantomime. They debate arcane legal nuances to distract from the Dickensian farce where a man who has not committed a crime, who is not a U.S. citizen, can be extradited under the Espionage Act and sentenced to life in prison for the most courageous and consequential journalism of our generation. The engine driving the lynching of Julian is not here on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is in Langley, Virginia, located at a complex we will never be allowed to surround – the Central Intelligence Agency.

World-Wide Backing As Parliament Encircled For Assange

October 10, 2022 Mohamed Elmaazi, Consortium News. , , ,
Thousands of supporters of Julian Assange descended upon London’s Palace of Westminster to form a human chain around the Houses of Parliament in support of the embattled WikiLeaks publisher on Saturday. Meanwhile, the London action was backed up by rallies in Melbourne, Australia, Washington D.C., San Francisco and other locales. In the British capital, men and women from a myriad of backgrounds attended the demonstration from across the U..K, and beyond, including from France, Germany and the United States. It was the first known human chain to surround the Houses of Parliament. Stella Assange, wife of the imprisoned publisher, said around 5,000 people showed up to form the chain despite a nation-wide strike announced by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transportation Workers (RMT). Other estimates put the crowd as high as 7,000.

Acquittal For Saved Dying Piglets Sets ‘Right to Rescue’ Precedent

October 10, 2022 Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. , , ,
The not-guilty verdict—a landmark decision establishing the legal "right to rescue" distressed animals in need of care—is "the culmination of a more than five-year pursuit that multiple agencies, including the FBI and the Utah attorney general's office," The Intercept's Marina Bolotnikova reported. As Bolotnikova noted, the case "began after the activists published undercover footage revealing gruesome conditions at Smithfield, the nation's largest pork producer," in violation of Utah's 2012 ag-gag law criminalizing the collection of evidence of animal abuse and other illegal activities on factory farms. Wayne Hsiung and Paul Picklesimer, members of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), rescued two dangerously underweight piglets, whom they named Lily and Lizzie, from Circle Four Farms in Beaver County in March 2017.

Alabama Prison Strike Enters Seventh Day

October 4, 2022 Mansa Musa, The Real News. , , ,
Huntsville, Alabama - On Monday, Sept. 26, incarcerated workers at all major Alabama Department of Corrections prison facilities began a labor strike. The strike is focused on both improving the living conditions of prisoners and demanding changes to Alabama’s draconian parole and sentencing laws and practices. A 2020 Justice Department lawsuit found that the Alabama prison system “fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff.” TRNN contributor Michael Sainato returns to Rattling the Bars to discuss the issues at play in this prison strike.

Alabama Prisoners Organize A System-Wide Shut Down

October 1, 2022 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Alabama - “The state of Alabama is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis,” begins a demand letter authored by Alabama prisoners, who on September 26 went on strike across all major correctional facilities in the State. The letter continues, “This crisis has occurred as a result of antiquated sentencing laws that led to overcrowding, numerous deaths, severe physical injury, as well as mental anguish to incarcerated individuals.” In a country where over 80% of incarcerated workers are tasked with maintaining the prison itself, either through cooking, cleaning, laundry, or other essential needs, work stoppages can mean that the entire prison system shuts down. The strike is ongoing as of September 30 according to reports from inside prison walls.

CA Governor Vetoes ‘Mandela Act’ To Limit Solitary Confinement, Torture

October 1, 2022 The Davis Vanguard. , , ,
Sacramento, California – Opponents of solitary confinement said late this week it’s “disappointing” California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the “Mandela Act,” a measure that would prevent “the torture of Black and Brown people in jails, prisons and immigration detention facilities.” AB 2632, the California Mandela Act on Solitary Confinement authored by Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena), would have placed “comprehensive limits on the use of solitary confinement in jails and prisons, and is the first bill in the nation to also cover private immigration detention facilities. The legislation would have banned the use of solitary confinement against pregnant people, individuals with certain disabilities, as well as individuals under 26 and over 59, said advocates, defining “solitary confinement” as holding a person in a cell with severe restrictions on physical movement and minimal or zero contact with people for more than 17 hours a day.

Incarcerated Workers Go On Strike In Alabama’s Correctional Facilities

September 28, 2022 John H. Glenn, Alabama Political Reporter. , , ,
Alabama - Incarcerated workers at all of Alabama’s major correctional facilities have begun a general strike and protest of conditions and legislation that organizers believe have created “a humanitarian crisis” within the state prison system, according to sources within the correctional system and the Alabama Department of Corrections. Last week, sources within the Alabama correctional system told APR that the strike and peaceful protest would begin on Sept. 26. An additional protest of non-incarcerated individuals, many with friends and family in state prison facilities, occurred concurrently with the strike inside. Demands include a repeal of the habitual offender act, an end to life without parole, a reduction of the 30-year minimum for juvenile offenders down to 15 years before parole eligibility, and a more streamlined review process for medical furloughs and elderly incarcerated individuals.

Documentary ‘Alex Saab, A Kidnapped Diplomat’ Premieres

September 20, 2022 Orinoco Tribune. , ,
The documentary Alex Saab, A Kidnapped Diplomat, directed by Venezuelan journalist and documentary filmmaker Karen Méndez, which tells the truth about the illegal detention of Venezuelan ambassador Alex Saab, first in Cape Verde and since October 2021 in the United States, premiered on Friday, September 16. “For years, opinion experts on media have lied about Alex Saab, and they hide the truth that he brought food, medicine and fuel to Venezuela in the midst of the total blockade by the US,” Méndez wrote on Twitter. “It is time to listen to lawyers, experts and family members to understand the story of the first diplomat to be kidnapped in the history of the world.”

Mexican military officials arrested over involvement in Ayotzinapa disappearances

September 20, 2022 People's Dispatch. ,
On September 14, twelve days before the eighth anniversary of the forced disappearance of 43 students of the Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, Mexico, the federal authorities arrested a retired general and two other military officials for their involvement in the case. Undersecretary of Security, Ricardo Mejía, announced the news on September 15. In a press conference, Mejía reported that the government had issued warrants against four members of the Mexican Armed Forces, adding that three of them had already been arrested, including the commander of the army base in the city of Iguala, where the students were ambushed and abducted in September 2014. “At the moment, three of the warrants have been carried out, and there are three detainees, including the commander of the 27th infantry battalion when the events in Iguala occurred,” said Mejía.

Assange Supporters Call For ‘Truth Not War’ On UN Peace Day

September 19, 2022 Globetrotter,  Pressenza. , , ,
Calls of ‘Truth not War’ can be heard around the globe this week as supporters of the world’s most famous political prisoner, Australian journalist Julian Assange, rally for his immediate release by the 21st anniversary of the United Nations International Day of Peace (21 Sept 2022). Julian’s growing army of millions of supporters – from ordinary people to governments, politicians, professional and non-government organisations, charities, activists, lawyers, journalists, authors, academics, doctors, artists, unions and grass-roots community groups – are all calling on the USA and UK Governments to stop the US extradition and drop the charges against the award-winning Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder. On 5 April 2010, WikiLeaks published ‘Collateral Murder’, a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen civilians in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff.

US Leaders Moralize About Alleged Human Rights Abuses In Russia And China To Justify Proxy Wars

September 17, 2022 Lauren Smith, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
Jonny, a pseudonym for a 45-year-old man currently being held in pretrial detention in Miami’s Federal Detention Center (FDC Miami), believes that prison authorities are trying to kill him. Maria, Jonny’s partner of three years, tells me in a series of interviews translated by her teenage daughter that she is also concerned for his life, given FDC Miami’s cruel mismanagement of his grave medical condition. As a pretrial detainee, Jonny’s innocent until proven guilty and protected by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, but you wouldn’t know this from the inhumane treatment he receives at the prison. Jonny’s detention should not deprive him of life, liberty, or property without due process, and it certainly shouldn’t subject him to punishment since he has not been convicted of a crime.

United States Now Recognizes Alex Saab As Special Envoy Of Venezuela

September 16, 2022 William Camacaro, Orinoco Tribune. , ,
After more than two years questioning Venezuelan Alex Saab’s diplomatic status, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has now conceded that he is a special envoy. The dramatic U-turn was made in a filing before Justice Scola on Tuesday, September 13, in a hearing that was held regarding Saab’s motion to compel the DoJ to hand over certain documents, which his defense believes would be beneficial to his claim of diplomatic immunity. Alex Saab’s defense has been pushing the DoJ for some months now to make what are called “Brady disclosures.” These require that information and evidence that is material to the guilt or innocence of a defendant must be disclosed by the prosecutor to the defense team. The term comes from the 1963 US Supreme Court case (Brady v. Maryland), in which the Supreme Court ruled that suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to a defendant who has requested it violates due process.

Groups Urge UN To Call For Abolition Of ‘Death By Incarceration’

September 16, 2022 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , ,
Several human rights organizations submitted a 31-page complaint to United Nations experts today, alleging that the United States is committing torture and violating the prohibition against racial discrimination by condemning people to death by incarceration through extreme sentences including life and life without possibility of parole (LWOP). The groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Drop LWOP Coalition and the Abolitionist Law Center, are urging the UN to call for the abolition of all death by incarceration sentences. “Death by incarceration is the devastating consequence of a cruel and racially discriminatory criminal legal system that is designed not to address harm, violence, and its root causes, but to satisfy the political pressure to be tough on crime,” the complaint states.

Why unions can’t ignore incarcerated workers

September 7, 2022 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. ,
An estimated two thirds of the more than one million prisoners in the United States today are incarcerated workers. With many prisoners earning less than a dollar an hour, and those who refuse to work often facing vicious retaliation in the form of punitive solitary confinement, labor exploitation is an important part of what makes life in American prisons so brutal. It’s little surprise that prisoners’ resistance often centers around the question of labor, as was seen during the nationwide 2017 prisoners’ strike. In spite of these realities, ‘labor issues’ and ‘prison issues’ are all too often presented as separate concerns. US labor journalist and Real News contributor Michael Sainato joins Rattling the Bars to discuss why the union movement today should see the prison struggle as an essential part of the fight for justice for all workers. Michael Sainato is a journalist based in Gainesville, Florida, and a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Real News Network.
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