Criminal Justice and Prisons

Prison Lockdowns Are Becoming More Frequent And More Brutal

February 8, 2024 Silja J. A. Talvi, Truthout. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Prisoner rights, Solitary Confinement

Every morning, Mary Frances Barbee wakes up and experiences a “microsecond of happiness before the terror sets in.” Barbee had a heart attack, transient ischemic attack and then a stroke after her sons were incarcerated. She puts on a brave front when they call. “I wonder what they are going through, will they be able to call today, and how long until they are out of lockdown again,” Barbee, 71, says as she chokes back tears. “Will it be for just three hours after many days or weeks locked inside? They have no exercise. Four, six or 12 days without a shower. It is inhumane treatment on a daily basis.” What Barbee is living through is something that millions of people inside and outside razor wire are also experiencing: The purgatory of endless prison “lockdowns” where prisoners are forced to live in isolation that typically exceeds punitive segregation conditions.

Western Officials Warn Of War-Crimes Complicity

February 3, 2024 Jake Johnson, Consortium News. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, European Union (EU), Genocide, Israel, Palestine, United States, War crimes

More than 800 government officials in the United States and Europe released a letter Friday criticizing their countries’ leaders for providing unconditional military and diplomatic support to Israel as it inflicts disaster on Gaza’s population. The authors of the letter, who remain anonymous, wrote that their attempts to voice concerns internally about their governments’ support for Israel’s assault on Gaza “were overruled by political and ideological considerations.” “We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century,” the letter reads.

Prisoners Are A Hidden Workforce Linked To Popular Food Brands

February 3, 2024 Margie Mason and Robin McDowell, New York Amsterdam News. Educate! Big Ag, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Food and Agriculture, Prison Labor, Slavery, Wages, Worker Rights

Angola, LA - A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison. Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.

Four Just Stop Oil Supporters Found Not Guilty

January 16, 2024 The Canary. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Direct Action, Just Stop Oil, United Kingdom (UK), Victory

Four Just Stop Oil supporters were acquitted of willful obstruction of the highway on Monday 8 January, as the Judge declared they had a lawful excuse for their actions. Meanwhile, another case against Just Stop Oil supporters has been cancelled due to a lack of a primary witness. Miranda Forward, Dave Boden, Chris Hardy, and Annotony Cottam appeared before District Judge Lloyd at Stratford Magistrates court. The four Just Stop Oil supporters peacefully blocked roads into Parliament Square with 60 others on the 4 October 2022. Their actions were part of a month of continuous action to ‘Occupy Westminster’ in order to demand that the government call a halt to all new fossil fuel licenses and consents.

The Language We Use To Describe Japanese American Incarceration During World War II Matters

January 16, 2024 Tamiko Nimura, Smithsonian Magazine. Educate! Concentration Camps, Criminal Justice and Prisons, History, Human Rights, Internment Camps, Japan, Pearl Harbor, Racism, Trauma, World War II, WWII

Out the front windows of our bus, we could see acres of sun-dried grasses during a hot and arid Northern California summer. On either side of the road stood barbed-wire fences, like the ones many of our family members spent years behind, surrounded by armed guards and guard towers, living in crowded tar-paper barracks with little to no privacy. “How many of you have been here before or were here during World War II?” our tour guide asked. A few Japanese Americans—in their 70s and 80s, or even older—raised their hands. Many of us were stunned by what the tour guide said next, almost in passing: “Welcome back.”

Five Victories Against Wrongful Convictions In The First Week Of 2024

January 14, 2024 Victoria Valenzuela, Scheer Post. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Legal System, Victory, Wrongful Imprisonment

The new year has just begun and already there have been five victories against wrongful conviction within the first week, with the release of Montana Innocence Project (MIP) client Bernard Pease Jr. and the exonerations of William Williams and Renay Lynch in the U.S., and Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie in Canada. Each of them had served decades in prison – a total of 191 years — for crimes they did not commit. They all received the help of innocence organizations, which are nonprofit organizations that provide legal services to innocent people in prison and prevent wrongful convictions through legal education and reform.

An Ex-CIA Agent Looks Back At 22 Years Of Torture At Guantanamo Bay

January 11, 2024 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. Educate! CIA, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Torture

January 11 marks the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the prison component of the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Cuba. The U.S. military has been at Guantánamo for decades, of course, but the idea to use the isolated base as a prison where men — and in some cases boys — who had never been formally accused of a crime could be held forever, came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002. In the intervening years, presidents and members of Congress of both parties have ignored civil rights, civil liberties and human rights to keep this abomination open. It’s up to the rest of us to demand its destruction.

Marvin Haynes Exonerated And Released From Prison After 19 Years

January 10, 2024 Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. Organize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Marvin Haynes, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Police, Police abuse, Victory

Minneapolis, MN — In a historic ruling, Hennepin County Judge William Koch vacated Marvin Haynes’ murder conviction, dismissed his charges with prejudice, and ordered his release from prison where he was sentenced to serve life. Haynes walked out of MCF-Stillwater as an exonerated man into the loving arms of his family and supporters on Dec. 11, 2023. Marvin Haynes was 16 years old when he was framed for murder by the Minneapolis Police and Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. Haynes’ wrongful conviction was supervised by former Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar and upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court years later in an appeal.

Bill Introduced In House Calls For US To Drop Charges Against Assange

January 7, 2024 Dave DeCamp, Scheer Post. Organize! Biden administration, Congress, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom

A resolution introduced in the House last month calls for the US to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the US and convicted for journalism that exposed US war crimes. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), expresses “the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment and that the federal government should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”

In Washington State, Prison Closure Divides Abolitionist Community

December 31, 2023 Raymond Williams, Scheer Post. Strategize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Decarceration, Prison abolition, Washington

I board the transport in an orange jumpsuit, shackled and cuffed at the waist, one of many prisoners in exodus from the Washington State Reformatory. The rattling of our chains fills the cabin as we find places to sit. I slide into a seat with a small window high on the wall next to me—the coveted seat with a “view.” Nervous chatter ensues as we wait to be shipped to the next prison. In 2021, during the pandemic, the Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC), experienced a steep decrease in prison admissions (and therefore a great loss of revenue). In response, the department announced it would close the Washington State Reformatory (WSR), the oldest unit in the Monroe Correctional Complex in Monroe, Washington.

How Oil Money Turned Louisiana Into The Prison Capital Of The World

December 28, 2023 Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Truthout. Educate! Big Oil, Capitalism, Criminal Justice and Prisons, History, Louisiana

On October 14, 2023, Louisiana elected far right candidate Jeff Landry to the governor’s mansion. As the state’s current attorney general, Landry (a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy) has made headlines for his creation of an anti-crime policing task force for New Orleans, suing the state to block clemency appeals by those on death row, and advocating to make public the criminal records of juveniles in predominately Black areas of the state. Landry’s dedication to “law and order” has been matched by his commitment to extractive industries. As a climate change denier, he has pushed for more aggressive off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and sued the Environmental Protection Agency for overreach.

Landmark Court Cases See Palestine Action’s ‘Elbit Eight’ Acquitted

December 26, 2023 The Canary. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Elbit, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Action, Protests

In a landmark case, eight Palestine Action activists who used direct action to shut down the Israeli weapons trade have been acquitted of a total 12 charges which included criminal damage, burglary and encouraging criminal damage. The trial, which commenced on 13 November, related to a series of actions taken during the first six months of Palestine Action’s existence from July 2020 to January 2021. Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, was convicted by a 10-2 majority of one count of criminal damage, for an action at the now-closed Elbit Ferranti factory in Oldham. At least one member of jury later asked if they could change their verdict, but were prohibited from doing so. Lawyers will be considering appealing this conviction.

The Urgent Fight To Stop The Execution Of An Innocent Man

December 23, 2023 Victoria Valenzuela, Scheer Post. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Legal System

Marcellus Williams, who has spent 24 years of his life on death row for a murder DNA evidence proves someone else committed, could have an execution date set as early as next month following Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s decision in June to lift his stay of execution and dissolve his innocence investigation. Williams, 54, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 death of Lisha Gayle, a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter, who was stabbed 16 times during a robbery in her home.

Here We Go Again

December 23, 2023 Brandon Soderberg and Andrew Friedman, The Real News Network. Educate! Accountability, Baltimore, Criminal Justice and Prisons, History, Police, Zero Tolerance

It was about to get dark. In the summer of 2003, Devin was 19 years old and living in West Baltimore with his mom and two brothers, just a few blocks away from the Western District Baltimore Police station. Every night around 9 or 10 p.m., Baltimore cops patrolled the area heavily. They drove in marked and unmarked cop cars searching for signs of disorder, ready to round up people for mass arrest. It was all part of a policing strategy introduced in the late ’90s called “zero tolerance.” “It always happened around sundown,” Devin told The Real News. “The police see you out with even just one or two people and they just looked at you and you knew they were gonna wild out.”

The 13th Amendment Legalizes Slavery; Many States Have Their Own Version

December 19, 2023 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. Resistance Report 13th Amendment, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prisoner rights, Slavery, State laws

The 13th Amendment of the US Constitution makes an exception to the abolition of slavery in order to permit the use of “involuntary servitude” as punishment for a crime. The modern system of mass incarceration depends on this exception to justify paying millions of incarcerated people subminimum wages that many advocates say is virtually indistinguishable from forms of slavery. Various US states also have their own constitutional “exception clauses” that mirror the language of the 13th Amendment, providing an additional layer of legal justification for the exploitation of prisoners.

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