Mass Incarceration

200 Detainees Stage Hunger Strike At Eloy Detention Center

June 18, 2015 Phil Benson, www.kpho.com Resist! Hunger Strike, Immigration, Mass Incarceration

By Phil Benson in KPHO - More than 200 immigrant detainees launched a hunger strike Saturday at the Eloy Detention Center. At 9:45 a.m., the men sat down in the recreation yard and declared a hunger strike over what they call brutal and inhumane conditions, according to grassroots justice organization Puente Arizona. Protesters stood outside the detention facility all day Saturday, holding signs to show their solidarity with the strikers. The group said it is demanding improved conditions, access to legal resources and court hearings and an independent investigation into two recent deaths after what it calls “guard abuse.” "The deaths of these two men has triggered outrage of people that have nothing but their bodies as a way to demand justice,” supporter Francisca Porchas said.

New York City Council Restricts Use Of Criminal Records In Hiring

June 18, 2015 Christopher Mathias, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Mass Incarceration, New York City (NYC), Politics, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Christopher Mathias in Huffington Post - Carl Stubbs, 63, stood outside New York City Council chambers Wednesday in anticipation of the council’s vote on the Fair Chance Act -- a bill that would delay when many of the city’s private sector employers can ask job applicants about their criminal history. “I feel [that] being black, having a felony, you don’t get hired,” he told The Huffington Post. “I have had a felony for over 30 years.” Stubbs, who’s also an activist with the group Voices of Community Activists Leaders (VOCAL-NY), wanted the bill to pass because it could improve his chances getting a job. “I would love to go back to work,” he said. Earlier, Piper Kerman, author of the memoir-turned-hit-Netflix-series Orange Is The New Black, offered her support of the bill.

End All Youth Detention & Torture At Rikers Island Now

June 15, 2015 Marian Wright Edelman, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Criminal Justice, Mass Incarceration, mental health, Torture

By Marian Wright Edelman in Huffington Post - Nobody of any age should be held in jail without a trial for three years. No child or adolescent should be held in an adult jail. No child or youth should be housed in facilities where those entrusted to care for them violently assault them. Yet, a 16-year-old accused of stealing a backpack was kept in one of the most violent adult jails in the United States, Rikers Island in New York City, for three years without a trial. This was morally scandalous and inhumane. Even worse, he spent more than two years of that time in solitary confinement, locked up alone except to go to the shower, the recreation area, the visit room or the medical clinic. This was torture. The suicide of 22-year-old Kalief Browder on June 6, barely two years after his release and return home, was the final horror in his tragic and brutal journey into the depths of the adult criminal justice system in New York City and state.

The Plight Of Guantánamo’s Best-Selling Author Worsens

June 11, 2015 Hina Shamsi, www.aclu.org Resist! Guantanamo, Law, Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner, Wars and Militarism

By Hina Shamsi in ACLU - Mohamedou Ould Slahi's 13th year of captivity in Guantánamo has been remarkable in many ways. "Guantánamo Diary," his story of torture and unlawful detention by the United States, was finally published and has become a best-seller, earning rave reviews around the world and a Hollywood movie deal. Readers continue to marvel at a book that's been called a "masterpiece" and "literary magic," written by a man whose "unfailing humanity is the constant thread throughout." Celebrities like Jude Law and Benedict Cumberbatch are reading Mohamedou's work for a global audience. Almost 50,000 people have signed the ACLU's petition calling for his freedom. But Mohamedou's despair only grows, because the Obama administration is still denying this innocent man what he most urgently needs: freedom.

Black Panther Ordered Released After 40 Yrs In Solitary Confinement

June 9, 2015 Cain Burdeau, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Black Panther, Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner, Racial Justice

By Cain Burdeau in Huffington Post - The last of the "Angola Three" inmates, whose decades in solitary confinement on a Louisiana prison farm drew international condemnation and became the subject of two documentaries, was ordered released Monday. The ruling would free 68-year-old Albert Woodfox after more than 40 years in solitary, which human rights experts have said constitutes torture. U.S. District Judge James Brady of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ordered the release of Woodfox and took the extraordinary step of barring Louisiana prosecutors from trying him for a third time. A spokesman for the Louisiana attorney general said the state would appeal Brady's ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals "to make sure this murderer stays in prison and remains fully accountable for his actions."

Man Who Spent 3 Yrs In Rikers Island Jail W/o Trial Commits Suicide

June 9, 2015 Ben Mathis-Lilley, www.slate.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Death and dying, health, Mass Incarceration

In 2014, New Yorker writer Jen Gonnerman reported on the case of Kalief Browder, who was 16 when he was detained at New York City's Rikers Island jail on theft charges—and 19 when he was released three years later, in 2013, without ever having been tried for the crime. An April 2015 follow-up post included video of Browder, who spent a total of two years in solitary confinement during his "term," being beaten by a guard and by a group of inmates. On Sunday, Gonnerman reported that Browder, who had attempted suicide at least twice before, had killed himself. Staggeringly, Browder's experience—being jailed for a period of years at Rikers without trial—seems to be quite common.

The Real Experts In Criminal Justice Reform

May 26, 2015 Glenn E. Martin, www.nccdglobal.org Create! Criminal Justice, Law, Leadership, Mass Incarceration, Poverty, Social Change

I was first bound by handcuffs in 1995, and though I haven’t known their debilitating grip for years, the hypocrisy and destructiveness of our criminal justice system has remained with me ever since. When exiting the belly of the beast, my vision was crystal clear, even if my path was uncertain. Throughout my adolescence, strife was a familiar companion: poverty, crime, meager public support, and violence predictably culminated in a term of incarceration. After leaving prison, like the other 650,000 people who exit each year, I faced barriers to employment, enfranchisement, education, and equality, both mirroring and intensifying the challenges of my youth. I found opportunity in the advocacy world. There, I was valued for my professional skills, but also for the unique perspective that I brought to the work as someone directly impacted. I began to gain national attention as a staunch advocate for reform.

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]."

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources