Prison

Belmarsh Prisoners Remind Us Of Our Duty Of Civil Disobedience

February 2, 2020 Nozomi Hayase, Commondreams. Resist! Julian Assange, Legal System, Prison, Wikileaks

On January 24, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is detained in London’s Belmarsh prison solely for the purposes of the US extradition request, was moved out of solitary confinement. He is now placed into a different wing of the prison, where he can interact with other inmates. In a statement, WikiLeaks Ambassador Joseph Farrell indicated, “The move is a huge victory for Assange’s legal team and for campaigners who have been insisting for weeks that the prison authorities must end the punitive treatment of Assange.” Assange has been charged with 17 counts of Espionage related to WikiLeaks’ 2010-11 publication concerning U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, embarrassing US diplomatic details, and torture in the Guantanamo Bay Prison.

Palestinian Child Prisoner Reveals Horrible Details About His Detention

January 26, 2020 Palestine Chronicle. Educate! Children, Palestine, Police, Prison

A Palestinian child prisoner revealed horrible details about his detention to the Committee of Prisoners. 17-year-old Ishaq Abu Hitteh from Hebron (Al-Khalil) was arrested near the Ibrahimi mosque on January 18, while he was heading to the mosque to pray. Abu Hitteh told the Committee that he was assaulted by a group of Jewish settlers, who surrounded and threatened him, before a large number of Israeli soldiers arrived and brutally beat him, claiming that he had tried to stab the settlers. The soldiers forced Abu Hitteh to sit on his knees and left him for three hours in the freezing weather.

Activist Marty Gottesfeld Silenced For Writing About Prison Corruption While Serving Time

December 24, 2019 Barrett Brown, Counterpunch. Resist! Justice System, Media, Prison

As I’ve recently learned from his wife, activist and prison journalist Marty Gottesfeld — recently sentenced to ten years for a denial of service attack on the website of the Boston hospital that was holding a young girl against her will and that of her family while denying her treatment for the painful condition they claimed was all in her head — has been held incommunicado from his family by the Bureau of Prisons for well over seven months. This act of totalitarian retaliation, shocking even to many of us who have likewise been illicitly silenced by the BOP both in and out of prison, began shortly after Marty was suddenly and irregularly shipped from the notorious New York BOP facility where Epstein would later die of pretend suicide.

British Judge Jails Assange Indefinitely, Despite End Of Sentence

September 15, 2019 Oscar Grenfell, WSWS.org. Educate! Julian Assange, Media, Prison, Wikileaks

In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday morning, British District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange will remain in prison, despite the fact that his custodial sentence for “absconding” bail expires on September 22. The ruling is the latest in a series of attacks on Assange’s legal and democratic rights by the British judiciary. It means that the publisher and journalist will be detained until court proceedings next February for his extradition to the US, where he faces 175 years imprisonment for exposing American war crimes. Given that the extradition proceedings will likely involve a protracted legal battle, Baraitser’s decision potentially confines Assange to the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison for years to come.

“Please Save My Life”: Julian Assange In Prison

September 14, 2019 Annissa Warsame, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom. Organize! health, Julian Assange, Prison, Torture

For over 150 days this has been Julian Assange’s residence, whether he likes it or not. And a judge has ruled today, he is to remain there even after his jail sentence is over. Swiftly after his asylum status was stripped by the Ecuadorian government, the British authorities sentenced Assange to fifty weeks in prison, for violating his bail. The maximum sentence being fifty-two weeks and the typical sentence being none and a fine. With his arrest, Assange was moved to HMP Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in South London. Belmarsh during the early millennium was known as ‘Britain’s Guantanamo Bay’ for its foreign detainees, held without trial. When you visit the prison, you are immediately struck by its fortress-like exterior. With its water-stained concrete perimeter walls, enumerable CCTV cameras and floodlights.

These Crime Victims Have Lost Loved Ones To Murder — And To Prison. That’s Why They Want To End Life Without Parole In Pennsylvania

August 28, 2019 Elizabeth Hardison, Penncapital-star.com Organize! Mass Incarceration, Prison, Reform

Kimberly King woke up at 5 a.m. on a February morning in 1997 to her phone ringing. Her mother was on the other end, calling to tell her that her brother, Damani Carter, had been shot in the head in North Philadelphia. King, who was 26 years old at the time, said she entered a state of shock. She threw up. Then she began to pray. “When my mother said he was shot, I just knew he was gone,” King said. “My faith has never been shaken as much as it was shaken at that time.”

#FreeBlackMamas Bails Black Mothers From Jail For Mother’s Day

May 12, 2019 Victoria Law, Wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Black Women, Mothers, Prison

In 1870, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe issued her Mother’s Day proclamation: a call for mothers across the United States to end war. It was five years since the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment, which banned chattel slavery with one notable exception: involuntary servitude is allowed as punishment for a crime. Nearly 150 years later, Howe’s dream of ending war has yet to become a reality. And the 13th Amendment has become more significant as, over the past 40 years, the number of people being sent to prison has skyrocketed. But accompanying these soaring numbers have been calls for abolition of another kind — to abolish prisons.

Half Of US Adults Have Immediate Family Member Currently Or Previously Incarcerated

December 9, 2018 FWD.US. Educate! Families, Justice System, Prison, United States

Washington, DC – A new, first-of-its-kind report released today finds that nearly half of all adults in the United States – approximately 113 million people – have an immediate family member who is either formerly or currently incarcerated. Based on new research conducted by FWD.us and Cornell University, this is the first ever national estimate of the share of Americans who have had an immediate family member spend time behind bars. “These numbers are stunning, all the more so if you think of them not as numbers but as stories like mine,” said Felicity Rose, Director of Research and Policy for Criminal Justice Reform at FWD.us.

The Billion Dollar Companies In The Business Of Imprisoning Children

November 10, 2018 By Emily Ludolf, Occupy.com Educate! Capitalism, Children, Detention Centers, Immigration, Prison

Revelations that the United States is conducting widespread detention of immigrant children who were separated from their families at the border sparked national outrage. Reports of the inhumane conditions and treatment drew shocked criticism, and the images of children in cages as well as the recordings of children screaming for their mothers resulted in the majority of the public disapproving of the cruel and unnecessary treatment of immigrants. Much of the criticism has been aimed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with rising calls to abolish the agency in its entirety. #AbolishICE has become a movement as people have reacted to the horrific behavior overseen by ICE officials.

The Forever Prisoners Of The US’s Forever War

October 27, 2018 By Aisha Maniar, Truthout.org Educate! Prison, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

In the early years of the war in Afghanistan, thousands of men, women and children were taken prisoner. Afghan militias allied to the US or in joint US-militia efforts killed many. Thousands of others simply “disappeared” in Afghanistan, as well as in neighboring Pakistan. In the first three years alone, more than 50,000 people were detained by the US as terror suspects. Others were rendered to Afghanistan by the US military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from other countries to be held, interrogated and tortured in a secret network of torture prisons the US set up under its extraordinary rendition program. The label “terror suspect” averted questions of accountability for the “disappearances,” mass killings and the torture of prisoners, who were not granted prisoner-of-war status.

DE-NJ NLG Prisoners’ Legal Advocacy Network (PLAN) Mounts Legal Responses to Widespread Reports of Prisoner Abuses In The Aftermath Of The 2018 National Prison Strike

September 22, 2018 Staff, Nlg.org Resist! Abuse, Prison, Prison Strike, Property Rights, Repression, Slave labor

From August 21, 2018 to September 9, 2018, prisoners across the country participated in a peaceful strike to protest steadily deteriorating conditions of confinement in United States prisons. These worsening conditions, such as major cutbacks to prisoner programs, services, and safety measures have led to prison facilities that are increasingly dehumanizing and unsafe for prisoners. The April 2018 events at South Carolina’s Lee Correctional Institution, the deadliest prison incident in this country in the last 25 years, are emblematic of this sharp decline in prison conditions. Widespread reports from prisoners independently corroborated allegations that Lee Correctional prison guards turned their backs on the riot they provoked...

Death Row Saved My Life

June 11, 2018 Christopher Young, Law at the Margins. Resist! Criminal Justice System, Death Row, Prison

Christopher Young is on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, listed in 2013 as one of America’s 10 worst prisons. He has an execution date of July 17, 2018. Young, 34, was sentenced to death in 2006 for the 2004 murder of 55-year-old convenience store owner Hasmukhbhai “Hash” Patel. Young’s lawyers claim religious discrimination occurred during the jury selection process of his trial, and over 500 religious leaders signed a statement saying he deserved a new trial. In January 2018, the United States Supreme Court turned down Young’s latest appeal.He seeks clemency.

Anticipating A Crush: In Prison, Tactical Teams Declare Uneven War

May 18, 2018 By Phil Hartsfield, Kzoo.edu Resist! Prison, Prisoner rights

About 7:45 am on Tuesday, January 17, 2017, I muster the energy to get out of bed and walk the step to the sink from the bottom bunk and I hear it. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. “Shit!” I say to myself as my cellmate and I look at each other wide-eyed. We know that sound anywhere. That’s three-foot-long, two-inch diameter solid wood batons hitting the steel bars as “Orange Crush” runs down the gallery clunking every bar along the way as they yell. Though it’s not our cell house, it’s E House right behind us. We’re able to hear them through the utility alley that the cell houses share behind the cells. They’re making their rounds due to an unauthorized pair of headphones found during a cell search in another cell house. We’ve already been on lockdown since Sunday afternoon here at Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Joliet, Illinois.

New Bipartisan Bill Would Give President Power To Imprison In Military Detention

May 6, 2018 By Jon Schwarz, the Intercept Educate! Military Detention, NDAA, Prison

This matters because the Corker-Kaine AUMF allows the president to decide that he has the power to use force against any “organization, person, or force” essentially at will, by designating them as associated with previously named enemy groups. Here’s how it works: The Corker-Kaine AUMF codifies an expanded list of entities against whom the president is authorized to use force. They are “the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and designated associated forces.” The associated forces designated by the bill are Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; Shabab; Al Qaeda in Syria; the Haqqani Network; and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Then when the bill is passed, the president is invited to designate additional “associated forces” to the list. And going forward, the president can add more at any time. All he needs to do is inform “the appropriate congressional committees and leadership” that he’s doing so.

Could Student Loans Lead To Debt Prison? The Handwriting On The Wall

April 20, 2018 Alan Nasser, Counterpunch.org Educate! Debt, Prison, Student Loans

The burden weighing like a nightmare, to coin a phrase, on 44 million indebted current and former students will haunt these people for a good portion of their lives. The average student debtor graduates owing close to $34,000 and is projected to spend 21 years paying it off. At present, the average monthly payment for those between 30 and 40 years old is $351.00. It is not uncommon for repayment obligations to be borne by underwriters of these loans, typically the primary borrower’s parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Taking these co-signers into consideration, we have about 100 million people adversely affected, directly or indirectly, by the difficulty very many have repaying these loans. Because it is hard to have loans dismissed or renegotiated on the grounds of undue hardship, cases like the following are numerous

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