Prisons

Blacks And Hispanics Seeking Parole Face Widening Racial Disparity

November 20, 2024 Reuven Blau, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Mass Incarceration, New York (NY), Parole, Prisons, Racial disparities, Systemic Racism

Black and Hispanic people in New York state prisons have a much higher chance to be denied parole than whites over the past three years — a divide that’s gotten worse since being highlighted in 2016, a new study shows. New York’s Parole Board released 34.79% of people of color while letting out 48.71% of white people from January through June 2024, based on a report by New York University School of Law’s Center for Race, Inequality & the Law posted online Monday. Since Gov. Kathy Hochul took office in 2021, there would be 1,338 fewer Blacks and Hispanics behind bars if they were paroled at the same rate as whites, the report shows.

Former Prisoners Are Making Sure No One Leaves Prison Alone

October 18, 2024 Cinnamon Janzer, Next City. Create! Community, Criminal Justice and Prisons, New Jersey (NJ), Prisons, Returning Citizens

When Antonne Henshaw was released from a New Jersey prison in 2018, he walked out alone. His sister had planned to pick him up, but she got the time wrong. She made it a few hours later and brought him to stay at her home — but just a few months later, she had to sell her home and move away for a new job, leaving Henshaw alone once again. Henshaw had managed to save $13,000 during the 30 years he was in prison. It was a sizeable sum, considering the paltry pay for prison jobs, but he soon discovered it wouldn’t be enough to get him the apartment he now needed.

Washington Keeps Silent After Israel Arrests US Journalist

October 11, 2024 The Cradle. Educate! Iran, Israel, Journalism, Press Freedom, Prisons, The Grayzone, Wars and Militarism

The US government has yet to comment on the case of Jeremy Loffredo, an independent US journalist who remains in Israeli police detention on suspicion of “endangering national security.” Loffredo may potentially face life imprisonment or the death penalty after reporting the locations where Iranian missiles struck in the attack launched by Iran earlier this month. US officials refrained from commment despite a Yedioth Ahronoth report from Thursday stating that representatives from the US Embassy attended the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court for a hearing on the request of the police to extend his detention. In his report, Loffredo stated that the strikes hit targets, including the Israeli military's Nevatim Air Base and an intelligence base in central Israel.

Why So Many Called For The Release Of Walid Daqqah

April 8, 2024 Dalia Taha and Walid Daqqah, In These Times. Educate! Human Rights, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, Prisons

According to Amnesty International, Daqqah was a Palestinian liberation and resistance fighter who had been in an Israeli jail for almost four decades “for his involvement with an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984.” He served his full sentence, but it was been extended. He was very sick, but was denied adequate care. Amnesty and many other groups, including the Haaretz editorial board, had been calling for his release. “Daqqah’s case illustrates the Israeli justice system’s cruelty towards Palestinians, including those who are seriously ill or dying,” said an Amnesty official. News broke of his death on April 7.

‘Concrete Coffins:’ Surviving Extreme Heat Behind Bars

July 25, 2023 Jamiles Lartey, The Marshall Project. Educate! climate crisis, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Extreme weather, health, Human Rights, Prisons

Sweltering doesn’t even describe it. This week, more than a third of the U.S. population was under excessive heat warnings and heat advisories. Dozens of major cities and states have set new temperature records in recent weeks, including Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which logged its hottest June ever. Less than an hour from the city is Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola prison, where the state set up a temporary youth jail last fall, in a building that once housed adults awaiting execution. A federal court filing this week from the Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union alleges that the youth at Angola face inhumane conditions, in large part because they are regularly kept in non-airconditioned cells for up to 72 hours.

The Insanity Of Solitary Confinement

June 10, 2023 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! mental health, Prisons, Solitary Confinement, Torture

Solitary confinement is the practice of isolating a prisoner from all human contact for an extended period of time. It is often used as a form of punishment or to control behavior, but it can have serious negative effects on mental health. Most countries around the world limit the time that a prisoner can spend in solitary to 15 days. The United States doesn’t. There are scores of prisoners across the U.S. who have been in solitary for years and, in some cases, decades. It should be clear to everybody — the courts, the states, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons — that solitary only worsens already bad situations. It shouldn’t be in use.

Khader Adnan Unified The Palestinian People From An Israeli Prison Cell

May 10, 2023 Ramzy Baroud, Mintpress News. Resist! Hunger Strike, Israel, Media, Palestine, Prisons

Khader Adnan was not a ‘terrorist’ with ‘Israeli blood on his hands,’ as pro-Israeli propagandists have been repeating in the news and on social media. If the former Palestinian prisoner, who died in his Israeli prison cell following 87 days of an uninterrupted hunger strike, was indeed directly involved in armed resistance, the story would have had a completely different ending. Armed Palestinian resistors are either assassinated or detained and tried by Israeli military courts to spend prolonged sentences in Israeli prisons, following brief trials that lack fairness or due process. Adnan was a charismatic leader but not an actual fighter by the strict definition of the word.

Khader Adnan’s Martyrdom

May 2, 2023 Mariam Barghouti, Mondoweiss. Educate! Hunger Strikes, Israeli Occupation, Palestine, Prisons

On Tuesday morning, the Palestinian hunger striker and political activist, Sheikh Khader Adnan, died inside the Ramleh prison clinic. Since February 5 of this year, Adnan, 44, has been on hunger strike protesting his imprisonment by Israel, which has been targeting and harassing the Palestinian political figure and advocate for resistance over the past decade. Adnan was the veteran of two previous hunger strikes before his most recent one and was unlawfully imprisoned by the Israeli authorities without charge or trial several times in the past decade. Adnan’s latest arrest was due to his affiliation with the militant Palestinian resistance group, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), whose armed wing, Saraya al-Quds, is part of the umbrella faction of the Jenin Brigade — the armed resistance group operating out of Jenin refugee camp.

Lawyers Urge UN To Review Solitary Confinement Of Black Americans

March 5, 2023 Cheyanne M. Daniels, The Hill. Resist! Legal System, Prisons, Solitary Confinement, United Nations

A group of human rights attorneys have filed a joint submission urging the United Nations to review abusive solitary confinement practices used in the U.S. against Black Americans. The submission, which comes ahead of U.N. officials’ April trip to the U.S. to review issues related to racial justice and equality in law enforcement, details the physical and mental health repercussions of solitary confinement. The visit is part of a four-point agenda to end systemic racism and human rights violations by law enforcement against Africans and people of African descent. It comes after the Biden administration extended an invitation to the U.N. in December.

Ahmad Manasra And The Crime Of Existing While Palestinian

July 4, 2022 Miko Peled, Mintpress News. Educate! Anti-Arab Bias, Children, Israeli Apartheid, Israeli Occupation, Palestinian rights, Prisons

Conversations with Palestinians both young and old almost always end with them saying to me, “you [a Jewish Israeli] can say these things, but if we were to say them we would be excluded from all spaces and we would be called anti-semitic.” A young Palestinian interning in Washington, D.C. told me she felt that she needed an Israeli beside her to give her legitimacy. Not in her own eyes, but in the eyes of the D.C. establishment. Sadly, she is probably correct; in the anti-Arab, and particularly anti-Palestinian atmosphere in Washington, this is very likely true.

Gross Negligence In For-Profit Prison Health Care

April 17, 2022 Marie Kelly, Workers World. Educate! Corporatism, Health Care, Prisoner rights, Prisons

By law, people in prison have a right to get the health care they need. In the late 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court decision Estelle v Gamble set the standard for medical rights of prisoners. But prison authorities are being criminally negligent in not providing adequate health care to incarcerated people. As the jailed population ages, 40% have chronic health conditions. The cost of providing health care has skyrocketed and local, state and federal governments have contracted with for-profit prison health care companies as a way of tightening their budgets. Private companies give a per diem rate for basic and specialty care – which would be lower if services were publicly provided. The negotiated per diem rate creates a huge profit incentive.

Student Granted Bail After Protesters Threaten To Render Kingdom ‘Ungovernable’

February 6, 2022 Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch. Resist! Prisons, Student Activism, Swaziland, Torture

A court in the city of Manzini granted bail to Colani Maseko, the president of Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) on Friday, February 4. The student leader had been arrested on January 31 and charged with sedition. His bail came a day after the SNUS marched to the Manzini regional police headquarters and held a demonstration on February 3. A cross section of Swaziland’s pro-democracy forces, including the banned political parties, trade unions, and youth organizations, attended the action. Outside the police headquarters, protesters at the demonstration openly threatened to render the kingdom “ungovernable” until the release of Maseko and all other political prisoners of Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

Leonard Peltier Pleads For Help Amid Constant COVID Lockdowns

January 24, 2022 Jennifer Bendery, Huff Post. Resist! COVID-19, Human Rights, Leonard Peltier, Prisons

Never mind that he shouldn’t be in a federal prison at all. Leonard Peltier, the Native American rights activist whom the FBI put behind bars decades ago without any evidence that he committed a crime, tells HuffPost that his facility’s prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns and failure to provide at least some inmates with booster shots has left him ― and likely others ― unbearably isolated and preparing for death. “I’m in hell,” Peltier said in a Friday statement, “and there is no way to deal with it but to take it as long as you can.” Peltier, who is 77 and has serious health problems including diabetes and an abdominal aortic aneurysm, said “fear and stress” from the prison’s intense coronavirus lockdowns are taking a toll on everyone, including staff.

The Scandal Of US Prisons

January 19, 2022 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Bureau of Prisons, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Prisons

Michael Carvajal, director of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons (BOP), resigned in disgrace last week after being overwhelmed by scandals, none of which were necessarily of his doing so much as they were a result of his unwillingness or inability to make changes to the Justice Department’s largest and best-funded bureau. The scandals—and his resignation—reinforce the conventional wisdom that the BOP is broken and must be overhauled dramatically. The Associated Press reported that Carvajal, a Trump appointee, was forced to resign after more than 100 BOP employees had been arrested for or convicted of crimes during his short two-year tenure. The employees were prosecuted for crimes ranging from smuggling drugs and cell phones into prisons to sell to prisoners, to theft, to a warden raping a prisoner.

New Data: Changes In Incarceration System ‘Inadequate, Uneven And Unsustained’ During COVID

January 12, 2022 Wendy Sawyer, Prison Policy Initiative. Educate! COVID-19, health, Prisoner rights, Prisons

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a lot of new data over the past few weeks that help us finally see — both nationally and state-by-state — how policy choices made in the first year of the pandemic impacted correctional populations. Unsurprisingly, the numbers document the tragedy of thousands of lives lost behind bars, and evidence of some of the policy decisions that contributed to the death toll. Drilling down, we also see a (very) few reasons to be hopeful and, for those of us paying close attention, a few notable improvements in what the BJS is able to collect and how they report it. Above all, we see how quickly things can change — for better or for worse — when under pressure, and discuss some of the issues and policy choices these data tell us to watch out for.

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