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Criminal Justice and Prisons

Texas prison abolitionists confront the state

September 7, 2022 Workers World. ,
Abolitionists from the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement traveled from Houston to Galveston on Aug. 26 to address the Texas Board of Criminal Justice (TBCJ) about issues affecting those incarcerated in Texas. TBCJ is in charge of nearly 150,000 imprisoned people. The families and friends of these people went to give voice to the issues that affect people most harmed by the horrific system. The Houston-based abolitionists took off from the S.H.A.P.E. center, a Pan-African community center before meeting up with abolitionists from across the state. Many of them have, or have had, loved ones incarcerated within a prison system with conditions so brutal that countries like Scotland refuse to extradite its citizens to be sentenced in Texas. (The Marshall Project, March 17)

From Coast To Coast: Open Letter By Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone

September 6, 2022 It's Going Down. , , , ,
I’m in favor of strengthening our international networks in the face of an increased technocratic authoritarianism. To remain locked up in our local areas without considering the struggles elsewhere is self-defeating, as repressive operations seek to confine us and stem our anarchic contagion specifically to promote sterility. Can we renew an Atlantic bridge that connects our tendencies, that connects the uprisings in the North American metropolises to those in Europe, Latin America and Asia? Can we join together the struggles of the long-term COINTELPRO prisoners with those elsewhere in the global prison industrial complex?

Is The US Legal System At War With Its People?

September 2, 2022 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , ,
The very laws and government agencies created to protect the people in the United States are increasingly being weaponized against those who are often marginalized in society: people of color, the poor, and the working class. In just the last few months, there have been many incidents of this kind of violent abuse of power. On July 28, the state of Alabama performed a “botched” execution on Joe Nathan James Jr., who journalists believe may have suffered medical malpractice akin to “torture” for hours before his death. On August 12, around midnight, a police officer threatened to kill a Black pregnant woman during a traffic stop in Florida.

Los Angeles Is Creating A Model For Fighting Mass Incarceration

September 2, 2022 Mark Engler and Paul Engler, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
Los Angeles, California - In the late spring and summer of 2020, protests for racial justice erupted in response to the police murder of George Floyd. Mobilizations spread throughout the country and continued for months, producing what scholars identified as arguably the largest wave of mass protest in U.S. history. However, as with other surges of popular uprising, the actions died down over time. At that point, critics claimed that protesters made a lot of noise and drew public attention but were unable to translate their discontent into concrete policy gains. When the moment of peak protest passed, these detractors held, the movement disappeared with little to show for its efforts.

Black August And The Fight To Free Political Prisoners

August 30, 2022 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. , ,
Black August is a month-long commemoration of Black resistance against oppression, with an emphasis on Black freedom fighters and political prisoners. To this day, dozens of Black freedom fighters remain incarcerated in US prisons after decades. As Black August gains more mainstream currency, many activists want to make sure its original purpose in uplifting Black resistance and the ongoing struggle to free political prisoners is not erased. The Jericho Movement is an organization fighting for amnesty and freedom for all political prisoners, from Leonard Peltier to Mutulu Shakur. On this episode of Rattling the Bars, Jihad Abdulmumit and Paulette Dauteuil of the Jericho Movement speak with co-host Mansa Musa about the work of their organization and the significance of Black August.

ICE Prison In South Georgia Should Be Shut Down, Not Expanded

August 28, 2022 Meredyth L. Yoon and Azadeh Shahshahani, Prism Reports. , , ,
Neal, a Jamaican citizen who owned and operated a yacht servicing company for 25 years in South Florida, spent 17 months in a prison that’s been converted into a detention center for immigrants in Georgia. Speaking to us of his experience at the Folkston ICE Processing Center, Neal described a prison that lacks basic safety and care for the people detained there and overall conditions that reveal a jarring lack of regard for human life. “That place is not for safety or for human beings—it is just for money,” said Neal, who wishes to be identified by his first name only. “I thought this government was going to close down all of those private ICE prisons. Politicians say anything when they want votes.” On June 30, a government investigation of Folkston identified numerous violations that “compromised the health, safety, and rights” of detained immigrants.

Don’t Charge Trump With Espionage

August 27, 2022 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. , , ,
Former President Donald Trump shouldn’t be charged with espionage for taking classified documents with him —some of them apparently very highly classified — when he left the White House for semi-retirement at his Mar-a-Lago home. Nobody should be charged with espionage unless they are working for a foreign power and mean harm to the United States.  The Espionage Act, which was written 105 years ago to combat German saboteurs, is rarely used now to target spies and traitors.  Instead, it’s used as a cudgel to silence whistleblowers, journalists, and occasionally a stupid former president. To understand the damage that this deeply flawed law has done, and will continue to do, we have to look at its origins.  The Espionage Act was written in 1917, at the height of World War I.  The U.S. was panicked at the thought of German spies working undercover to steal its secrets and to disrupt its ability to produce war materiel and support its allies.

Julian Assange Files His Perfected Grounds Of Appeal

August 27, 2022 Assange Defense. , , ,
Today, 26 August 2022, Julian Assange is filing his Perfected Grounds of Appeal before the High Court of Justice Administrative Court. The Respondents are the Government of the United States and the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Priti Patel. The Perfected Grounds of Appeal contain the arguments on which Julian Assange intends to challenge District Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s decision of 4 January 2021, and introduces significant new evidence that has developed since that ruling. The Perfected Grounds of Appeal concerning the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD) include arguments that Home Secretary Priti Patel erred in her decision to approve the extradition order on grounds of specialty and because the request itself violates Article 4 of the US-UK Extradition Treaty.

How Far Would You Go To Stop Climate Change?

August 25, 2022 Jack McCordick , In These Times. , , ,
On a balmy afternoon in late September of 2016 — then the hottest year on record — a 76-year-old retired Presbyterian minister named George Taylor and some two dozen fellow residents of Spokane, Wash., stopped along a stretch of road that abuts a major set of train tracks coming into the city. Ignoring “No Trespassing” signs, they crossed a stretch of grass and walked onto the middle of the tracks. In front of them stood the lead car of a freight train, idling under a clear blue sky. Behind it, dozens of jet-black, cylindrical train cars stretched toward the horizon. Taylor had studied them long enough to know exactly what they were carrying: crude oil. By the time Taylor stepped onto the tracks, he had been an environmental activist for nearly two decades and had attended his share of peaceful marches and rallies. 

The Plea Bargain Originated To Undermine Working-Class Solidarity

August 25, 2022 Dan Canon, Truthout. , , ,
The U.S. criminal legal system is terrible by so many metrics: We lock up more people than anywhere else in the world, our penalties tend to be harsher, our arrest rates are many times higher than other democracies, and so on. Plea bargaining is not often at the top of the list when we think of all harm done by the system, but the U.S. is an outlier in this area as well. More than 95 percent of all American criminal cases end in a guilty plea, mostly due to bargained agreements, making our plea-deal rate much higher than that of any other country in the world. In my book Pleading Out: How Plea Bargaining Creates a Criminal Class, I argue that the widespread use of plea bargaining is a chief enabler of our criminal legal system’s ills.

Repurposing Prisons Can Revitalize Rural America

August 24, 2022 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. , ,
The economic fortunes of rural communities across the United States are often deeply intertwined with the prison industrial complex. This poses a real challenge to the project of ending mass incarceration. How can organizers build political opposition to prisons in areas where prisons are the lifeblood of a community? And what should be done with former prisons once they are closed? The question of repurposing prisons in particular is too often neglected by state governments. A new report  from the Sentencing Project finds that while 21 states have closed prisons since 2000, many of these sites have simply become other types of correctional facilities in the absence of clear transition plans. Nicole Porter  from the Sentencing Project joins Rattling the Bars  to discuss this new report.

Mexico: Former Prosecutor General Arrested For Role In Ayotzinapa Case

August 23, 2022 Saheli Chowdhury, Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
Former prosecutor general of Mexico, Jesús Murillo Karam, was arrested on Friday, August 19, for alleged involvement in the Ayotzinapa forced disappearance case, in which 43 teaching trainee students of Guerrero state were forcibly taken and later executed during the midnight hours of September 26-27, 2014. Murillo Karam, who headed the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), was the mastermind behind the deceiving “historical truth” narrative of the case. The news of the detention was reported by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) through an official statement, which explained that the former prosecutor general was arrested “for the crimes of forced disappearance, torture, and obstructing the administration of justice in the Ayotzinapa case.”

The Biden-Trump Persecution Of Julian Assange

August 21, 2022 Eve Ottenberg, Counter Punch. , , , ,
For a good while one could blame Trump for the prosecutorial monstrosity perpetrated on journalist Julian Assange. But now it’s time for Trump to move over. The single worst assault on the first amendment and a free press in recent centuries is no longer solely his. Biden owns it. Biden could end this state persecution of a journalist today, if he felt like it. A persecution that a U.N. expert has called torture. A persecution that could easily lead to Assange’s death. But maybe that’s the point. Indeed, if killing Assange isn’t the point, Biden should prove it, by pardoning him now. Biden doesn’t feel like it. Unlike Jamal Khashoggi, whose murder he deplored before he didn’t, Biden never censured the years of abuse heaped on Assange by the U.S. government. He enabled it.

Police Lied To Get The Warrant To Search Breonna Taylor’s Home

August 18, 2022 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , ,
The March 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor, which caused widespread protest around the country, was the result of police lies to obtain a warrant and racist police violence after officers forced their way into her apartment. On August 4, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the federal grand jury indictments of four Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the raid that resulted in Taylor’s death. Three of the officers were accused of violating Taylor’s Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure by lying to secure a no-knock warrant. The officers who sought the warrant “knew that the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Taylor’s home contained information that was false, misleading, and out-of-date; that the affidavit omitted material information; and that the officers lacked probable cause for the search,” the indictment reads.

Pompeo Sued Over Surveillance Of Assange Visitors

August 16, 2022 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , ,
Four U.S. citizens who were surveilled by the C.I.A. during visits to WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in the Ecuador embassy in London have sued the C.I.A, former C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo, the Spanish security firm UC Global and its director David Morales Guillen for allegedly violating their constitutional rights protecting them from illegal searches and seizure. The lawsuit was filed at 8 a.m. Monday in the Southern District of New York federal court. Assange spent seven years in the embassy as a political asylee. He is being held on remand in London’s Belmarsh prison after the U.S. indicted him in 2019 under the Espionage Act for alleged possession and dissemination of defense information. Assange is awaiting a decision by the High Court of England and Wales on whether it will hear his appeal of the ruling by the High Court, signed by the home secretary in June, to extradite him to the United States.
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