Criminal Justice and Prisons

Presumption Of Innocence Is For The Privileged

October 7, 2018 Briahna Gray, The Intercept. Educate! Brett Kavanaugh, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Racism

I believe in the presumption of innocence. As an American, a lawyer, and a black woman, I believe it is perhaps the most important principle in our criminal justice system — a last bulwark against the structural momentum that incentivizes convictions over justice and minimizes the value of some lives under the pretext of protecting others. The presumption of innocence is, in fact, the fundamental project of Black Lives Matter. The controversial movement, born from a controversial hashtag, was intended to elevate black lives not above others, but so that they are considered equally valuable.

National Prison Strike Solidarity: Next Steps

September 14, 2018 Amani Sawari, Sawarimi. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Prison Strike, Worker Rights

We made it! I appreciate everyone's efforts in making the National Prison Strike a national headline for three weeks. Your solidarity and support has been a huge reason why the NPS flooded the media and transformed the national narrative surrounding prisoners' human rights. While the symbolic end date of the national prison strike past on Sunday's 45th anniversary of the Attica Uprising, prisoners take the lead in determining whether to continue striking depending on their individual circumstances at their institutions: some extending the call, others placing a new date on their call and even striking indefinitely.

Court Affirms Right Of Homeless Persons To Not Be Punished For Sleeping In Public

September 8, 2018 National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Homeland Security, Housing

Boise, Idaho – The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that homeless persons cannot be punished for sleeping outside in the absence of adequate alternatives in Martin v. Boise (formerly Bell v. Boise), a lawsuit challenging Boise, Idaho’s ban on sleeping in public. In so holding, the court of appeals permitted various homeless individuals who have received criminal citations under Boise’s policy to proceed with their constitutional claims against the City. The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, which filed the case in 2009...

National Prison Strike Kickoff #August21

August 22, 2018 Amani Sawari, Sawari Mi. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prison Strike, Worker Rights

On the first day of the prison strike we’ve already seen hundreds demonstrating on both sides of the wall. Particularly where I reside in the Pacific Northwest, there have been reports of over 200 individuals incarcerated in Tacoma’s Detention Center participating in the Nationwide prison strike through work stoppages. In support of those on the inside demonstrations took place throughout Washington State as supporters march through the University of Washington’s Seattle campus. The university currently has contracts with Correctional Industries in which prisoners’ labor is responsible for the construction of the furniture in their campus housing and classrooms.

Water Protector Sentenced To Time In Federal Prison For DAPL Protests

June 14, 2018 Alexandra Jacobo, Nation of Change. Resist! #NoDAPL, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Standing Rock

Michael “Little Feather” Giron, a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, was sentenced to thirty-six months in federal prison this week. He is the first person to be sentenced to serious prison time for his role in the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Little Feather has already spent fifteen months of his life incarcerated – time which will be credited to him as part of the sentencing – but still faces at least eleven months in prison. His legal team hopes that he will be released after eleven months to a halfway house.

Why Are For-Profit US Prisons Subjecting Detainees To Forced Labor?

May 20, 2018 Azadeh Shahshahani, The Guardian. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prison Industrial Complex, Workers

In 2017, officials at the Stewart immigration detention center in Georgia placed Shoaib Ahmed, a 24-year-old immigrant from Bangladesh, in solitary confinement for encouraging fellow workers to stop working. Ahmed, who was paid 50 cents per hour to work within the facility, was upset because his $20 paycheck was delayed. His punishment was solitary confinement for 10 days, where he was subject to deplorable conditions – a cell with no access to other workers, only an hour of out of cell time per day and showers only three times per week.

16 And Life. And Then Some.

April 28, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Art Killing Apathy. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Florida, Supreme Court, Youth

Bobby Bostic won’t be eligible for parole until he’s 112. He’s more than 20 years into a 241-year sentence for crimes committed in 1995 when he was 16 years old. On Monday April 23rd, the Supreme Court announced that it would not review his case. In March of this year, an Amicus Brief was filed with the Supreme Court on behalf of Bostic hoping to overturn the extreme sentence. The Brief cited the 2010 Supreme Court ruling Graham vs. Florida which stated that the 8th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits a juvenile from serving a life sentence without parole if they did not commit a homicide.

Millions For Prisoners’ Human Rights March In DC

August 18, 2017 Kyle Fraser, www.blackagendareport.com Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Prison Labor, Racism, Slavery

By Kyle Fraser for Black Agenda Report. Prisoner rights advocates will converge for what aims to be the largest abolitionist demonstration in U.S. history, Saturday, August 9, in Washington D.C. The Millions for Prisoners' Human Rights March is centered around the demand that the exceptions clause, which allows for slavery to continue in United States prisons, be removed from the Constitution's 13th Amendment. With over 1,100 lives claimed last year by today's slave-catchers in law enforcement, a Black imprisoned population that comprises 1/9 of the prisoners on earth and a manufactured “war on drugs” that rages on despite untold evidence of its foul origins, the fact of prison slavery should not exceed the imagination's limits -- and yet mass mobilization for its abolition has thus far not reflected the brutally severe implications of its ongoing practice. On August 19th, IAmWeUbuntu and the other march organizers both in and outside the walls seek to change that, as they bring family members, friends and supporters of the incarcerated from across the country together under the banner of abolitionism. The growing modern-day abolitionist movement calls on all people of conscience to join in on the mass denunciation of this country's original sin in D.C.'s Lafayette Park this Saturday, August 19th, to finally achieve the goal of ending slavery once and for all and without exception.

Justice For Major Tillery

June 15, 2017 Justice for Major Tillery, www.popularresistance.org Organize! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Police abuse

By Justice for Major Tillery. June 14--Major Tillery, now 66 years old, continues to advocate for all prisoners while fighting for his own his freedom. He filed a federal pro se lawsuit against the Pa Department of Corrections (DOC) because of retaliation against him for demanding medical treatment for Mumia and all prisoners. At SCI Frackville he has succeeded in obtaining services for aging prisoners. Major Tillery filed a pro se Pennsylvania state post-conviction petition in June 2016 to overturn his 1985 conviction. It is based on his actual innocence, with new evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct. Nine years after a 1976 Philadelphia poolroom shooting of two men, Major Tillery was tried and convicted for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The surviving victim identified other men as the shooters. There was no evidence against Major, except the testimony of two career jailhouse informants.

Barrett Brown Taken Back Into Custody Before PBS Interview

April 29, 2017 Alex Emmons, www.theintercept.com Educate! Corporatism, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Media, Stratfor

By Alex Emmons for The Intercept. Texas - Award-winning journalist Barrett Brown was re-arrested and taken into custody Thursday, the day before he was scheduled to be interviewed for a PBS documentary. Brown quickly became a symbol of the attack on press freedom after he was arrested in 2012 for reporting he did on the hacked emails of intelligence-contracting firms. Brown wrote about hacked emails that showed the firm Stratfor spying on activists on behalf of corporations. Brown also helped uncover a proposal by intelligence contractors to hack and smear WikiLeaks defenders and progressive activists. Faced with the possibility of 100 years in prison, Brown pleaded guilty in 2014 to two charges related to obstruction of justice and threatening an FBI agent, and was sentenced to five years and 3 months.

Privatization Of Prisons Gets New Life Under Sessions Order

February 25, 2017 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, ICE, Immigration, Prisons, Private Prisons

By Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. One of the ugliest policies in the move to privatize public services has been the private prison industry. We have reported on the abuses of private prisons, riots at them and how they put profit ahead of prisoners as these shocking photos show. The private prison industry is a corrupting influence in US politics. We have reported on how "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is striking deals with private prison companies to lock up a “guaranteed minimum” of mothers with their children in euphemistically-termed family detention centers" and how they are getting wealthy abusing immigrants. Corporations are turning the US justice system into a profit making venture at every step in the process. This decision to continue to use private prisons by the Trump administration ensures that the profit of private prisons will come before treating prisoners humanely. The trend toward corporate profiteering from what is becoming a prison-industrial complex will continue. Injustice will thrive while justice is diminished.

Dissent Is Patriotic, And Powerful Antidote To Propaganda

January 15, 2017 Bethany Woolman, www.aclu.org Resist! Civil Resistance, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Dissent, First Amendment

By Bethany Woolman, ACLU of Northern California. Fifty-five years ago this January, the ACLU of Northern California was busy filling orders from across the country for copies of its recently produced film, “Operation Correction.” The film was a response to a piece of Red Scare propaganda, “Operation Abolition,” which was produced by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and depicted civil liberties activists in San Francisco as violent “communist agents” bent on destroying the fabric of America. In those days, the federal government was deeply concerned with the political affiliations of ordinary Americans — if those affiliations were left-leaning. My own grandfather, who was a World War II veteran and affiliated with the Communist Party in San Francisco, was under FBI surveillance.

Debtors Prison Not A Tale Of Charles Dickens

January 1, 2017 Paul Kirk Haeder, www.dissidentvoice.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Debt, Poverty, Racism

By Paul Kirk Haeder for Dissident Voice. Constitutional checks and balances were put in place to prevent citizens from succumbing to undue and unfair prosecution, and the courts have upheld many times the right of individuals who have served their time in prison to move on, move ahead. However, times have changed, and there has been a huge push to privatize prisons, and to place filing fees, court costs and even the daily maintenance, upkeep and staffing of these halls of justice on the financial backs of the accused. It’s sometimes called a punishment society, and on top of that, when we start looking at African-Americans and Latinos in this snapshot of Mass Incarceration, we have the respective stats – black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men, and Latinos 2.5 times more. The cost of their crimes also increases with the color of their skin.

Quarter Of Inmates Could Have Been Spared Prison Without Risk

December 13, 2016 Jamiles Lartey, www.theguardian.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration, Prisons

By Jamiles Lartey for The Guardian - Study of 1.5 million prisoners finds that drug treatment, community service, probation or fines would have served as more effective sentences for many. A quarter of the US prison population, about 364,000 inmates, could have been spared imprisonment without meaningfully threatening public safety or increasing crime, according to a new study. Analyzing offender data on roughly 1.5 million US prisoners, researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that for one in four, drug treatment, community service, probation or a fine would have been a more effective sentence than incarceration.

Tear Down The Walls Mexico Delegation

December 13, 2016 Staff, www.afgj.org Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Drug War, Mexico, Militarized police

By the Alliance for Global Justice. The United States is building walls and militarizing both the US-Mexico border and Mexico’s southern border. The US is also building prison walls throughout Mexico and militarizing police as living walls to repress and reign in popular movements. When Mexican police fire on striking teachers and normal school students, they’re using weapons made in the USA. When indigenous and labor activists are locked away as political prisoners, they’re locked away in US funded jail cells. The Alliance for Global Justice Tear Down the Walls Mexico delegation will visit with indigenous and labor leaders, family and supporters of political prisoners, ex-political prisoners, anti-torture activists and experts on police, border and prison militarization. We will investigate US prison imperialism in Mexico and relate that to similar programs in other parts of the world.

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