Mass Incarceration

California Agreement Ends Solitary Purely Due to Gang Validation

September 2, 2015 Center for Constitutional Rights, www.ccrjustice.org Create! California, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Center for Constitutional Rights - Today, the parties have agreed on a landmark settlement in the federal class action Ashker v. Governor of California that will effectively end indeterminate, long-term solitary confinement in all California state prisons. Subject to court approval, the agreement will result in a dramatic reduction in the number of people in solitary across the state and a new program that could be a model for other states going forward. The class action was brought in 2012 on behalf of prisoners held in solitary confinement at the Pelican Bay prison, often without any violent conduct or serious rule infractions, often for more than a decade, and all without any meaningful process for transfer out of isolation and back to the general prison population. Ashker argued that California’s use of prolonged solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and denies prisoners the right to due process.

Human Rights Abuses: Detaining Immigrants For Profit

September 1, 2015 Latino Rebels, www.latinorebels.com Educate! Capitalism, Deportation, Immigration, Mass Incarceration

By Latino Rebels - To make sure those changes never occur, CCA and GEO have pumped millions of dollars into political campaigns. Earlier this year, the Washington Post identified “Republican politicians in Florida, Tennessee, and border states with high populations of undocumented immigrants” as being the “biggest beneficiaries” of such donations. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has received nearly $40,000 from GEO, “making him the Senate’s top career recipient of contributions from the company.” In the end, no one should expect the for-profit prison system to operate any different, and as long as it does, we will continue seeing attempts to impose harsher immigration laws and tougher punishments for minor crimes.

Mass Incarceration Vs Rural Appalachia

August 27, 2015 Panagioti Tsolkas, www.earthfirstjournal.org Petitions and Online Actions Environment, Jobs, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex

By Panagioti Tsolkas in the EarthFirst! Journal. Letcher County, KY - The United States Bureau of Prisons is trying to build a new, massive maximum-security prison in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky — and there’s a growing movement to stop it. The prison industry in the US has grown in leaps and bounds in the past 20 years— a new prison was built at an average rate of one every two weeks in the ’90s, almost entirely in rural communities. As of 2002, there were already more prisoners in this country than farmers. The industry seems like an unstoppable machine, plowing forward at breakneck speed on the path that made the world’s largest prison population.

US Tracks Deaths Of Bees Better Then People Jailed

August 25, 2015 Shawn Musgrave, www.muckrock.com Educate! Bees, Death, Mass Incarceration, Torture

By Shawn Musgrave in MuckRock - Every year, a certain number of bees die. And every year, a certain number of people die while in police custody. We have a solid figure for one of these death tolls. At present, it’s not the human body count. As with deaths in custody, the issue of honeybee deaths is not new. Colony collapse disorder — the generic term for mass exodus of adult worker bees from a given colony — is nearly vernacular, and wonks routinely debate the scale of the problem and its long-term consequences. Such debates hinge on quantitative modeling, on forecasts that correlate honeybee population against crop yields or ecosystem resilience. Ask any beekeeper: the only way to know how many bees are around is to count them.

Black Prisoners’ Lives Matter: Dallas 6 Blow Whistle On The Inside

August 25, 2015 Shandre Delaney, www.truth-out.org Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner

By Shandre Delaney in Truth Out - On April 29, 2010, six prisoners in solitary confinement at SCI Dallas in Dallas, Pennsylvania, decided that enough was enough. Collectively, they are known as theDallas 6. One of them is my son. The Dallas 6 are jailhouse lawyers who fight injustice within prison walls and share information with the outside. They came to be seen as political prisoners through their actions as jailhouse lawyers, activists and whistleblowers. This caused them to be held in solitary indefinitely, where they were starved, beaten and outright tortured. Between the six, they served from 10 to 20 years in solitary, and one of them is still in solitary. After being subjected to starvation, brutal beatings, food tampering, witnessing beatings, the guard-assisted suicide of one prisoner and the torture of another, they covered their solitary cell windows and politely requested outside intervention.

Private Prison Firms Buy Access To Public Officials At Conferences

August 21, 2015 Mike Ludwig, www.truth-out.org Educate! Corruption, Mass Incarceration, Politics, Prison Industrial Complex

By Mike Ludwig in TruthOut - The prison industry in the United States has grown so large that there are no less than seven professional associations for people who work at prisons and jails. The industry conferences held by these associations provide a perfect venue for private corrections companies to influence government officials with little public oversight, according to a recent report by the watchdog group In The Public Interest (ITPI). The biggest names in the prison business spend millions of dollars sponsoring these conferences and wooing prison officials with free massages, awards ceremonies, luxury dinner cruises and plenty of corporate schwag. Over the past week, one of the most prominent associations, the American Correctional Association (ACA), held its summer conference in Indianapolis, where major sponsors included private prison companies Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group and food services giant Aramark.

4,000 Prison Inmates Fighting California Wildfires For $2 Per Day

August 19, 2015 Kit O'Connell, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! California, health, Mass Incarceration, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Kit O'Connell in Mint Press News - With wildfires blazing throughout the parched Western United States, the state of California has found a novel, though ethically questionable, way to save money on the state’s safety budget: Send state prisoners to work on the frontlines fighting forest fires for $2 per day. “More than 100 wildfires are burning across the West — destroying dozens of homes, forcing hundreds of people to flee and stretching firefighting budgets to the breaking point,” wrote Tim Stelloh for NBC News on Monday. For California, he reported, that means some 14,000 firefighters combating 19 forest fires, including the “Jerusalem fire,” which covered over 25,000 acres before being mostly contained as of Saturday. “[T]he blaze — along with six others — was still sending smoke south across the San Francisco Bay Area,” Stelloh wrote.

Ex-Felons And Advocates Rally For Voting Rights

August 11, 2015 Eddie Conway, www.therealnews.com Resist! Mass Incarceration, Re-entry, Voting Rights

By Eddie Conway in The Real News - What happens is in any organizing campaign or anything bottom-up, you have to build momentum. I think that this is, what it's going to do, it's going to amplify the voices of the people that don't have their voices. This is a conversation right now between the haves, the have-nots. You have an industry or administration that want to keep things the way they are. Then you have people that live in my district, District 45, where there's a high population of ex-offenders that want to see change.They want to have a voice, they want to be able to have that conversation in reference to job employment. In reference to the Second Chance Act. In reference to housing. In reference to transportation, the rail line coming. So many things that affect not only this generation but so many generations to come.

Opal Tometi On Building A Transnational Movement For Black Lives

August 6, 2015 Interview with Opal Tometi Laura Flanders, www.truth-out.org Strategize! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Black Power, Immigration, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutrality, Racial Justice, Worker Rights and Jobs

Interview with Opal Tometi by Laura Flanders in Truthout - Take us back a couple of years. Were you conscious of the fact, in 2013 when you saw that Black Lives Matter post from Alicia, that here was an opportunity to connect your issue, the issue of immigrants' rights and justice, to the Black justice movement in this country? Was it a conscious thing? It was absolutely conscious. When I reached out to Alicia to say, "I really think we need an online platform to connect our groups and to connect our communities," I had in mind that it was really important that we establish a really broad notion of who is Black America, these days. A really broad notion to ensure that this platform was big enough for the communities like the ones that I represent (my parents are Nigerian immigrants; the communities that I work with are Afro-Latinos and Caribbean and so on) and that they could also have their concerns heard. It was really important to us to ensure that it wasn't just a movement about police killing Black people but it was also about structural racism and justice for all Black people.

Court Fees Trap Ex-Inmates In A Prison Of Debt

August 5, 2015 E. Tammy Kim, www.america.aljazeera.com Educate! Debt, Mass Incarceration, Prison

By E. Tammy Kim in Al Jazeera - In Washington, a state whose progressive reputation masks a tough-on-crime undercurrent, defendants and prisoners are charged “user fees” that fund the state and local systems designed to put them away. Those who do not or cannot pay are at risk of arrest and reimprisonment. It’s a national trend: In nearly every state, offenders pay for court costs, representation by a public defender, jail and probation, and fees are on the rise. The county clerk’s offices that depend most on these sums routinely refer to defendants as “customers”. Since 2003, Spokane County, home to about half a million people, has more than doubled what it collects in these legal financial obligations, or LFOs, from criminal defendants.

Prison Art Arrives At Governor’s Island In “Escaping Time” Show

August 3, 2015 Sarah Cascone, www.news.artnet.com Create! Art, Mass Incarceration, Prison

By Sarah Cascone in Artnet - "Escaping Time: Art From U.S. Prisons," an exhibition opening this weekend on Governor's Island, looks to highlight the power of rehabilitation. Featuring 200 artworks including pieces by noted prisoner-turned-painter Anthony Papa as well as condemned killer Charles Manson (but not by recently-killed escapee Richard W. Matt), the show also serves as a reminder of the island's historic past. Today, Governors Island is New York's summer playground, a picturesque island full of art, bike trails, and shaded picnic spots, but not that long ago, its 19th-century fort, Castle Williams, was actually used as a prison, first during the Civil War, and later for offenders within the US Army. "Art offers prisoners a new conviction that, although their circumstances may seem inescapable, their memories, experiences, and hopeful dispositions are preserved," explained curator Anastasia Voron, director of exhibitions at New York's Wallplay, in a statement.

8 Stats That Reveal How Badly Police State Hurts Black Women

August 1, 2015 Terrell Jermain Starr, www.alternet.org Resist! Black Women, Mass Incarceration, police brutality

By Terrell Jermain Starr in Alternet - A major barrier in understanding the ways in which the criminal justice system treats black women is the dearth of research on the subject. While statistics on how law enforcement engage black men are plentiful, similar data on black women is limited. But Bland’s death has sparked a rare national conversation that’s forcing the country to take a closer look at how law enforcement and the criminal justice system treat black women. AlterNet was able to find eight statistically-backed ways in which law enforcement disproportionately abuses black women, despite limited scholarly research devoted to the issue. Below are some of the most glaring findings, along with some commentary from Willingham and Jordan-Zachery.

Social Worker Blows Whistle On Private Prison In Texas

July 28, 2015 Franco Ordoñez, www.mcclatchydc.com Resist! Families, Hunger Strike, Immigration, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement, Torture

By Franco Ordoñez in McClatchy DC - Olivia López thought she’d be working with migrant mothers and children in a group-home setting when hired as a social worker at a Texas family detention center. But when she arrived at the concrete facility and the doors were unlocked to let her in, she was startled by the cacophony of cell doors clanging. “I walked in and thought, ‘oh my Lord, this is really a prison,’” she said. In an exclusive interview with McClatchy, López shared an inside perspective of troubling operations at the Karnes County Residential Center, which has been at the center of controversy over the Obama administration’s family detention policy. She described a facility where guards isolated mothers and children in medical units, nurses falsified medical reports, staff members were told to lie to federal officials and a psychologist acted as an informant for federal agents.

Illinois Spent 2.4 Million Incarcerating People In One Chicago Block

July 28, 2015 Alex Nitkin, www.dnainfo.com Educate! Capitalism, Chicago, Illinois, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex

By Alex Nitkin in DNAInfo - In just five years, the State of Illinois dedicated more than $2.4 million to the 4800 block of West Adams Street in Austin. But don't look for new developments or freshly paved roads on that stretch of street, because that's not where the money went. No, $2.4 million is the amount of money the state spent on incarcerating people for drug offenses from that block alone. Million Dollar Blocks looks at more than 300,000 criminal records, showing what developers called a "conservative estimate" of how much the Illinois Department of Corrections spent on people from each block and neighborhood. Cooper said he and his colleagues assumed the minimum sentence for each offense, when in reality the state likely spends much more. Developers at DataMade spent months putting together data based on offenders' home addresses, assuming that the state spends an average of $22,000 on each criminal every year.

Solitary Confinement In NJ Immigration Detention Centers Overused

July 23, 2015 American Friends Service Committee, www.afsc.org Educate! Mass Incarceration, New Jersey (NJ), Solitary Confinement, Torture

An investigation of the use of solitary confinement in New Jersey’s immigration detention centers finds an unnecessarily harsh and unfair system that violates state and international standards. The report “23 Hours in the Box, Solitary Confinement in New Jersey Immigration Detention” is released by New Jersey Advocates for Immigrant Detainees*, a coalition of community-based groups that support immigration and detention reform, and NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic. The investigation examined hundreds of documents from public record requests and found that solitary confinement is applied far too often and far too long to immigrant detainees in New Jersey. Investigators also found an unnecessarily harsh system severely limiting due process and fraught with violations of state regulations and international standards.

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