Showing posts tagged prison
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We use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (via ida-b-wells-b-whippin-yo-ass)
(Reblogged from mohandasgandhi)
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While the poor conditions that prevail in U.S. prisons and jails undercut the promise of rehabilitation, the likelihood of rape makes a mockery of the idea. It is long past time for prisoners to be able to serve their time behind bars without fear of sexual abuse.
Ending Prison Rape | Joanne Mariner | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia (via charliemielczarek)
(Reblogged from charliemielczarek)
motherjones: Your Lunchtime Must-Read: How a rapist’s confession forced Rick Perry, champion of Texas justice, to pardon a dead man.

motherjones:

Your Lunchtime Must-Read: How a rapist’s confession forced Rick Perry, champion of Texas justice, to pardon a dead man.

(Reblogged from motherjones)
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Private prisons don’t save money, but they create an obvious and counterproductive profit motive that leads to policies that increase the prison population. Private prisons need more prisoners. While the most effective way to reduce prison costs is to “reduce the headcount,” that is, the number of incarcerated. Private prison companies have a financial interest in doing the opposite. So whatever cost-saving private prisons might offer in the short run is swamped by their interest in making sure America imprisons more people, because otherwise they’d go out of business.
Adam Serwer (via letterstomycountry)
(Reblogged from corruptpolitics-deactivated2011)

On Gov. Jindal's plan to sell Louisiana's three state prisons...

ubiquitousamericana:

Sounds like a great idea. (Who thought adding a profit motive to keeping people incarcerated was a good idea? GOP faux-libertarianism is insanity.)

neighborhoodr-neworleans:

The Pew Center pointed out in a 2008 report that the United States incarcerates more people than any other country — even China. But if you move past the raw numbers and look at the incarceration rate, Louisiana, is the world leader. For every 100,000 adults, we’ve got 881 confined behind bars.

If that statistic embarrasses Jindal — and, really, it ought to embarrass all of us — his plan to sell three of the state’s prisons to private companies makes no sense. No company’s going to buy a prison without plans to keep it well stocked with humans.

(Source: neighborhoodr-neworleans)

(Reblogged from bradleywarshauer)

As Mental Health Cuts Mount, Psychiatric Cases Fill Jails

The Harris County Jail, a Houston facility the size of two football fields that houses more than 10,000 inmates. He is one of about 2,400 inmates taking psychotropic medications. The jail is the largest mental institution in the state. It has a special unit with 108 beds for the severely mentally ill, where guards wear less-intimidating uniforms, nurses are on duty 24 hours a day and inmates undergo intensive psychiatric treatment. “We’ve done everything we can do to make it therapeutic,” said Sgt. Bernard Kelly, a supervisor in the jail’s mental health unit. Some inmates say it is the best mental health care available to them in Houston, and it costs the county about $27 million a year. Harris County officials have seen the number of mentally ill inmates explode since 2003, the last time Texas had a budget crisis and made major cuts. Then, there were fewer than three full-time psychiatrists at the jail. Now, there are more than 15. Often they see the same mentally ill inmates repeatedly. “It just becomes a chronic cycle,” said Sylvia Muzquiz-Drummond, medical director of the mental health division of the Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County. As lawmakers consider deeper cuts this year to deal with a budget shortfall estimated at $15 billion to $27 billion, jail officials across Texas are deeply concerned that proposed reductions in community-based mental health treatment will worsen the problem. Without resources in the community, more mentally ill Texans are likely to end up on the streets, in emergency rooms and behind bars, and it will cost local taxpayers even more to care for them.

This does, however, serve the private prison industry quite well. Yes, it costs taxpayers a great deal more money than providing mental health services to keep people out of prison, but then what would our for-profit prison system do to expand and increase profits, as any good corporation aims to do?

(Reblogged from abbyjean)

IRAN: Opposition leaders reportedly moved from house arrest to prison

mohandasgandhi:

Iranian opposition leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi may have been moved from house arrest to a prison in Tehran.

According to reformist website Kaleme.com, the two men and their wives were believed to have been taken to Heshmatieh prison after two weeks of house arrest, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The semiofficial Fars News Agency denied that Mousavi and Karroubi had been jailed, saying they remained under house arrest.

Some members of parliament this month called for Mousavi and Karroubi to be executed.

“The chiefs of the sedition have reached the end of the road,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said in a statement carried by Fars, “and it is time for [the authorities] to do their duty and judge and punish them.”

This is really bad news for Mousavi and Karroubi.

(Reblogged from mohandasgandhi)

A Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

abbyjean:

longreads:

There was no crusading journalist, no nonprofit group taking up his cause, just Inmate 95A2646, a high-school dropout from Brooklyn, alone in a computerless prison law library. Jabbar Collins pried documents from wary prosecutors, tracked down reluctant witnesses and persuaded them, at least once through trickery, to reveal what allegedly went on before and at the trial where he was convicted of the high-profile 1994 murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack.

By Sean Gardiner, Wall Street Journal (from December, but still great)

this is very much worth reading - the story of how an innocent man convicted of a crime he did not commit had to rely only on his own ability to advocate for himself from jail in order to clear his name. while it’s wonderful and frankly amazing that this man was able to find out that witnesses had been railroaded into false testimony and gather the necessary evidence to clear himself all while incarcerated, it is a shitty shitty system that relies on such miracles to correct the errors made by the criminal justice system. 

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)

(Reblogged from abbyjean)

Guys, I’m obsessed with National Geographic’s “Lockdown” series right now.

I don’t know how it happened, but I can’t stop watching it. It’s amazing and fascinating (and sad and infuriating and sickening) to see the different dynamics of the US prison system, the operations of gangs, guard and prisoner interaction, and so on.

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The “hanging’s too good for them” brigade should read an eye-opening piece from last Friday’s Washington Post, co-written by Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, and Pat Nolan, former Republican leader of the California State Assembly. They pointed out that the U.S. currently spends US$68-billion on corrections — 300% more than 25 years ago — and the prison population is growing at 13 times faster than the general population.

“Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If your prison policies are failing half the time, and we know there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners,” they concluded.

Even Mr. Toews wouldn’t accuse Texas of being soft on crime, yet the Lone Star State has instituted reforms that have strengthened its probation system, reduced its prison population and freed up money to be redirected into community treatment for the mentally ill and low-level drug addicts. Since the reforms were launched in 2004, the crime rate has dropped 10% to its lowest level since 1973.

The Conservative tough on crime drive may be good politics but it’s tough on taxpayers and bad policy.

At a time when every department in government is experiencing budget cuts, Canada should not be embarking on an expensive prison-building program. Rather it should be following U.S. states like South Carolina, which is reserving costly prison spaces for violent criminals and dealing with lower level offenders in more imaginative ways.

John Ivison: Government’s tough on crime agenda is bad policy (via abcsoupdot)
(Reblogged from abcsoupdot)