Mass Incarceration

NYPD Considers Amnesty For 1.2 Million, Arrested Too Many

May 26, 2015 Jackson Marciana, www.countercurrentnews.com Educate! Marijuana, Mass Incarceration, NYPD, Police the Police, Racial Justice

The New York Police Department is being forced to acknowledge they have arrested far too many people for victimless crimes. Now, the department admits they will have to do something about it. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has publicly accepted the fact that “millions” have been convicted of crimes that they should never have been jailed for. The new controversial proposal suggests the City of New York grant amnesty to over 1 million citizens who have open warrants for low-level, clearly victimless offenses. The prison industry warns that this will “cause crime to skyrocket,” but what they seem more worried about is the bottom line for their for-profit, tax-payer-funded prison schemes.

Identifying Businesses That Profit From Prison Labor

May 19, 2015 Bob Sloan, www.dailykos.com Educate! Capitalism, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex

To demonstrate how difficult involvement in prison industries and the use of inmate labor is to identify, we'll begin with an investment firm involved in many of our 401(k) and retirement accounts. Fidelity Investments (Fidelity). This "financial investment" corporation is involved in holding the retirement and 401(k) accounts of millions of Americans. Many of the largest companies in our country offer Fidelity Investments as the sole source of retirement investing for their employees. Fidelity was previously identified as a funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in an earlir Insourcing blog. ALEC is deeply invested in supporting Corrections Corporation of American (CCA) and Geo Group (Geo) - that are both corporate members of ALEC. ALEC has willingly accepted responsibility for enactment of laws authorizing and increasing the use of inmates in manufacturing of products as well as the housing of those inmates by private corporations such as CCA and Geo.

The Latest Tool For Creating Criminals In The War On Drugs

May 14, 2015 Derrick Broze, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Wars and Militarism

Since Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement in the United States has undergone a dangerous transformation from protecting and serving the American public to enforcing Orwellian laws under the guise of national security. American law enforcement agencies have become heavily militarized, and they’ve been granted previously unseen levels of authority when it comes to the use of confidential informants in pursuit of criminals. The militarization can be seen on television screens and social media feeds around the nation. Instances of police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri; New York; Ohio; Baltimore and countless other cities have made police militarization and violence a national conversation.

Taking My Students To Prison

May 11, 2015 Jean Trounstine, www.theragblog.com Educate! Education, Mass Incarceration, Prison

Every semester my students from Voices Behind Bars, a class I teach at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, go to prison. They used to visit state institutions but now that the Massachusetts state prisons do not offer tours (perhaps because it is a hassle to have outsiders trooping through them and criticizing what they see), the students take a tour of Billerica House of Correction, where they experience confinement to some degree and listen for an hour to an incarcerated man talk about his life and what it is like to be behind bars. Originally, the Middlesex House of Correction, which was built in 1929, housed 300 men. Now it has more than 1,100, after a $37 million dollar expansion which prison officials say was to accommodate the closing of the Cambridge Jail — not without objection from activists and community members who opposed more prison building (actually costing $43 million per The Lowell Sun.)

B’more Teen Turns Himself In, Faces Life In Prison

May 2, 2015 Truth Voice, www.truthvoice.com Resist! Baltimore, Criminal Justice, Mass Incarceration, Racial Justice

Allen Bullock, the 18-year-old seen in photos smashing in a police car with a traffic cone, turned himself in after being encouraged by his parents. But now he is being held on $500,000 bail, an amount his parents cannot afford, The Guardian reports. Bullock faces charges of rioting and malicious destruction of property, among other criminal counts, after turning himself in at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center with his stepfather, Maurice Hawkins, at his side. According to Hawkins, who saw footage of his stepson on Saturday, the teen agreed to turn himself in after his stepfather told him that the police would “find him, knock down our door and beat him” if he didn’t, The Guardian notes.

Hunger Striking Mothers Sue ICE & Private Prison For Retaliation

May 2, 2015 Candice Bernd, www.facebook.com Resist! Immigration, Mass Incarceration

Three Central American mothers who participated in hunger strikes at the Karnes prison camp in Texas have filed suit in a federal court against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Sarah Saldaña and staffers with the private prison company running the immigrant-family prison on behalf of dozens of women who went on hunger strike or acted in solidarity with the strikers in two separate protests in April. Delmy Cruz, Polyane Oliveira and Lilian Rosado argue in a complaint filed last week that they were unjustly retaliated against for protesting their incarceration and the reportedly deplorable conditions inside the Karnes County Residential Center, operated by the private prison company GEO Group.

Activists Disrupt For-Profit Prison Corporation Meeting

April 30, 2015 Nadia Prupis, www.commondreams.org Resist! Mass Incarceration, Privatization, Slavery

As the for-profit prison corporation GEO Group held its annual shareholder meeting in Boca Raton, Florida on Wednesday, human rights organizations calling for an end to incarceration converged on the company's headquarters to demand accountability and divestment from the prison industry. The prison-industrial complex "not only profits off the imprisonment of of America's most vulnerable, but also corrupts our system through draconian legislation and our education system," said one activist, Joshua McConnel, who joined the march organized by Dream Defenders, Prison Legal News, Grassroots Leadership, SEIU Florida, and other groups. Taking up the call for other institutions to divest from the prison industry, McConnel continued, "My own university, the University of Central Florida... takes my tuition dollars and so many others and invests in companies just like GEO Group and CCA [Corrections Corporation of America]."

The “Shocking” Statistics Of Racial Disparity In Baltimore

April 29, 2015 Bill Quigley, www.commondreams.org Educate! Baltimore, Education, Inequality, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Public Health, Racial Justice, Unemployment

Were you shocked at the disruption in Baltimore? What is more shocking is daily life in Baltimore, a city of 622,000 which is 63 percent African American. Here are ten numbers that tell some of the story. One. Blacks in Baltimore are more than 5.6 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than whites even though marijuana use among the races is similar. In fact, Baltimore county has the fifth highest arrest rate for marijuana possessions in the USA. Two. Over $5.7 million has been paid out by Baltimore since 2011 in over 100 police brutality lawsuits. Victims of severe police brutality were mostly people of color and included a pregnant woman, a 65 year old church deacon, children, and an 87 year old grandmother.

Private Prison Sued For Putting Hunger Striking Moms In Solitary

April 25, 2015 Roque Planas, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Dignity, Immigration, Mass Incarceration, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Three immigrant women who say they were punished for joining a hunger strike in a Texas family detention center on Thursday sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and GEO Group, the company that operates the facility. The lawsuit, filed in federal court against ICE Director Sarah Saldaña and personnel at the Karnes County Residential Center, seeks to prohibit ICE and GEO from putting women and their children in isolation as punishment for protesting, and from threatening to separate mothers from their children. “All we’re asking is that under the First Amendment, for ICE officials and GEO officials to stop retaliating against the women and allow them to peacefully protest,” said Ranjana Natarajan, an attorney with the University of Texas Civil Rights Clinic, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the women.

Seattle Activists Fight Building Of New Youth Jail

April 21, 2015 Megan Sherman, www.therealnews.com Resist! Criminal Justice, Mass Incarceration, Racial Justice, Seattle

With the prospect for a new $210 million juvenile jail looming in Seattle, a coalition of activists group held what's known as a people's tribunal to formulate strategies to fight it. Ariel Hart, a youth organizer with YUIR, Youth Undoing Institutional Racism, talks about the purpose of the tribunal. ARIEL HART, YOUTH ORGANIZER, YUIR: It is important that as we're organizing, as we're trying to talk to the politicians and dismantle the system that we're building and we're healing and we're growing our community. SHERMAN: The struggle to block the jail comes as troubling statistics show African-American youth are disproportionately ensnared in the city's juvenile justice system.

States That Send The Most Students To Police, Courts

April 18, 2015 Susan Ferriss, www.publicintegrity.org Educate! Children, Mass Incarceration, police brutality

Kayleb Moon-Robinson was 11 years old last fall when charges — criminal charges — began piling up at school. Diagnosed as autistic, Kayleb was being scolded for misbehavior one day and kicked a trash can at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A police officer assigned to the school witnessed the tantrum, and filed a disorderly conduct charge against the sixth grader in juvenile court. Just weeks later, in November, Kayleb, who is African-American, disobeyed a new rule — this one just for him — that he wait while other kids left class. The principal sent the same school officer to get him. “He grabbed me and tried to take me to the office,” said Kayleb, a small, bespectacled boy who enjoys science. “I started pushing him away. He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me.”

Protests Lead To President’s Support Of Prison Divestment

April 18, 2015 University Business Magazine, www.google.com Resist! Divestment, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Prison, Student Activism

37 Wesleyan students sat in on President Michael Roth’s office yesterday and today demanding divestment from fossil fuels, the Israeli occupation and the prison industrial complex. This morning, they left with Roth’s endorsement of prison divestment and commitment to further dialogue on divestment from fossil fuels and the Israeli occupation. President Roth agreed to investigate the current status of the university’s investments in private prisons, to publicly state his endorsement of prison divestment, and proceed to support divestment of any holdings Wesleyan may have. Students arrived in the president’s office at noon on Thursday, marking the anniversary of President Roth’s participation in a sit-in for divestment from South African Apartheid as a Wesleyan student in 1978.

Kathy Kelly: The Storm Is Over

April 17, 2015 Kathy Kelly, www.riseuptimes.org Educate! Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Prison

Lightning flashed across Kentucky skies a few nights ago. “I love storms,” said my roommate, Gypsi, her eyes bright with excitement. Thunder boomed over the Kentucky hills and Atwood Hall, here in Lexington, KY’s federal prison. I fell asleep thinking of the gentle, haunting song our gospel choir sings: “It’s over now, It’s over now. I think that I can make it. The storm is over now.” I awoke the next morning feeling confused and bewildered. Why had the guards counted us so many times? “That was lightning,” Gypsi said, giggling. The guards shine flashlight in our rooms three times a night, to count us, and I generally wake up each time; that night the storm was also a culprit. As the day continued we saw large pools of water had collected at each entrance to Atwood Hall.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources