Tag: Prisons

Little Marco And The Salvadoran Connection

ICE rounds up suspected illegals and ships them off to El Salvador to Donny’s buddy for incarceration….plain and straightforward, right?

Maybe not as up and up as you might think….

We already knew back in March that President Donald J. Trump had made some kind of very dark quid pro quo with the dictator presidente of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele: millions of your tax dollars to El Salvador in exchange for the country accepting deportees into El Salvador’s notoriously brutal prison, CECOT, where hundreds of people have died. And then Bukele and Trump hyucked together in the Oval Office that El Salvador should build five more mega torture prisons, just for Americans, har har!

The administration rushed to deport hundreds of people to El Salvador, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia by mistake, racing to get the plane in the air before a judge was able to stop them. You remember all of that, about 600 corruption scandals ago.

And now it turns out that behind the scenes the deal was even dirtier than it seemed at the time. The Washington Post reports that Secretary of State Marco Rubio made another secret agreement with Bukele: to turn over nine members of MS-13, ones who were informants that had made deals to cooperate with the US government. Not just any informants, either, but ones who had dirt on how Bukele allegedly met with top members of MS-13 numerous times between 2012 and 2015, while mayor of San Salvador, and quid pro quo-ed them to reduce the number of “public murders” to help himself get elected president, in exchange for plushy prison conditions or release.

In one instance, a Bukele official even hid a gang member who went by Crook de Hollywood in a luxury apartment, then gave him a gun, and drove him to the Guatemalan border. He eventually wound up back in the US, where Joe Biden’s DOJ picked him up again in 2022.

Not only that, “US authorities suspected Bukele’s government had used U.S. Agency for International Development programs to benefit MS-13’s leaders, according to three people familiar with the investigation.”

https://www.wonkette.com/p/marco-rubios-deal-with-el-salvador

How many times has Donny used MS-13 to justify his ‘crackdown”?

And yet they cut a deal with a person that was an enabler of MS-13 why is that?

How long has Donny been in bed with MS-13?

His rhetoric is always total lies and bullshit….Americans know it and yet they are stupid enough to keep kissing his ass…..why is that?

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

US Version Of ‘Devil’s Island’

We have a new ‘detention’ center about to open in Florida it is being called ‘Alligator Alcatraz’…..

President Donald Trump will visit a new immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades on Tuesday for what’s expected to be the site’s official opening, showcasing what critics are condemning as an inhumane makeshift prison camp and what supporters are embracing as a national model for aggressively ramping up detention and deportation efforts.

Florida officials have raced to erect the compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and temporary buildings in a matter of days, as part of the state’s muscular efforts to help carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by state officials, the facility is located at an isolated airfield about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami and is surrounded by swamps filled with mosquitoes, pythons and alligators.

To Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials, locating the facility in the rugged and remote Florida Everglades is meant as a deterrent, and naming it after the notorious federal prison, an island fortress known for its brutal conditions, is meant to send a message. It’s another sign of how the Trump administration and its allies are relying on scare tactics to try to persuade people in the country illegally to leave voluntarily.

It is sounding like the US version of France’s Devil’s Island…..a prison in the middle of a jungle surrounded by disease and dangerous wildlife.

Donny’s press secretary summed it up like this….

“The facility is in the heart of the Everglades and will be informally known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ There is only one road leading in, and there is the only way out is a one-way flight,” Leavitt told reporters on Monday.

“It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife in unforgiving terrain, the facility will have up to 5,000 beds to house, process and deport criminal illegal aliens. This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history,” she added.

Leavitt was later asked whether the “dangerous wildlife” is a “design feature” of the facility.

“When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape,” she said.

The problem that load of manure is not everyone sent there will a murderer or a rapist….some will be family members that have been ripped away from their loved ones.

  • The compound at Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in the Everglades, around 50 miles west of Miami, consists of tents, trailers and temporary buildings, the AP reports. “You don’t always have land so beautiful and so secure,” Trump said. “You have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops that are in the form of alligators. You don’t have to pay them so much.” He joked about teaching detainees to run in a zigzag manner to improve their chances by “about 1%” if they escape and have to run away from an alligator.
  • Critics of the project include Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, the Miami Herald reports. In a statement Tuesday, Jackson said the branding of the facility “reflects an intent to portray people fleeing hardship and trying to build a better life for themselves and their families as threats, which is both unnecessary and abusive.”
  • The area is home to endangered species. Elise Pautler Bennett, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, described it as the “most sensitive” place in the state, the BBC reports. “Any other project that would have been proposed in the Everglades would have gone through an intense environmental approval process,” she said. “I’m convinced this one didn’t get that because it’s a political stunt.”

To me this is cruel and usual punishment and I find it sad that many Americans support this cruelty.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Return Of Devil’s Island

That time again….my little history lesson and beyond.

Did you see the movie Papillon?

If so then that was about the penal colony for France in South America.

Devil’s Island, its true name Cayenne, is a penal colony of French Guiana with a haunted history. Here lie the crumbled remains of a prison opened in 1852. Infamous for housing French political prisoners cast out of France by Emperor Napoleon III, it eventually became home to tens of thousands of hardened criminals. It even served as the backdrop for the 1973 action-thriller film Papillon. Nestled among the palm trees and tropical setting hides a turbulent past truth.

Prisoners were subjected to strict and inhumane treatment, making Devil’s Island aptly named. Kept in dark cells and forbidden to talk, read or even sit down throughout the day, the prison guards made the criminals’ lives a nightmare. Talking to a guard could end in severe punishment.

When details of the inhumane conditions of the prison were leaked, a public outcry led to the system’s end in 1938. But the penal colony did not close until after World War II, finally shutting down in 1946. Since its abhorrent history as a terrible prison, others have tried using the island for other means. From a police station to a shark fishing factory to a summer camp to a plant oil factory, none succeeded. Eventually, the island was abandoned, and nature took over the buildings.

I brought up this bit of history because news has broken that France will open a prison near the original location.

Deep in the Amazon jungle, France plans to open a $450 million high-security prison to isolate drug lords and radical Islamists—turning a notorious former penal colony into a fortress for modern criminals. French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin on Sunday announced the plan to build the high-security prison in the overseas territory of French Guiana, to open as early as 2028, per the BBC. The facility will sit deep in the Amazon near Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, the site of the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony, where 70,000 convicts from mainland France were sent between 1852 and 1954. The site inspired 1973’s Papillon, starring Steve McQueen, per CNN.

Designed for about 500 inmates, the prison will include a wing reserved for the most dangerous prisoners. Darmanin said the prison will enforce a strict protocol intended to disrupt contact between powerful criminal figures and their networks, especially drug lords “at the beginning of the drug trail.” The remote location was chosen in part to prevent inmates from communicating with outside networks. The announcement follows a wave of violence targeting prisons and staff in France, incidents the government links to its crackdown on organized crime.

French Guiana serves as a “strategic crossroads” for drug trafficking, particularly from Brazil and Suriname, and the new prison is part of broader efforts to control organized crime. Gangs have pushed the territory’s homicide rate to 18.4 per 100,000 people, compared to 1.2 per 100,000 in mainland France, per CNN. Recent government action also includes tough new laws, a dedicated prosecutors’ branch for organized crime, expanded investigative powers, and special protected status for informers. As French authorities face ongoing challenges such as widespread smuggling of mobile phones into prisons, stricter control over visitation and communication for high-risk prisoners is planned.

Fascinating…..will it become as infamous as the original?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Food And Slave Labor

There are things about our food chain that most do not know…..did you know that some food suppliers use prison labor?

That’s right prison labor.

In a sweeping two-year investigation, the AP found that goods linked to the forced labor of US prisoners wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola beverages. They’re on the shelves of most supermarkets, including Kroger, Target, Aldi, and Whole Foods. Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned—except as punishment for a crime. Takeaways from the AP’s investigation:

  • People of color are disproportionately affected: Goods tied to prison labor have morphed into a massive multibillion-dollar empire, extending far beyond stamping license plates or working on road crews. The 2 million currently imprisoned are disproportionately people of color. Some are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work—or face punishment—and are sometimes paid pennies an hour or nothing at all. They’re often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers.
  • The businesses that benefit: The AP linked hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions to agriculture-based prison labor in state and federal facilities over the past six years. Those figures include everything from people leased out to work at private businesses to farmed goods and livestock sold on the open market. Reporters also found prison labor in the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart, and Costco—and in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington for using prison and forced labor.
  • Wide range of jobs: The country’s prison work programs employ around 800,000 people, and the vast majority toil at tasks like maintaining prisons, laundry, or kitchen work. But inmates also are contracted out to private companies in industries with labor shortages, doing some of the country’s dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in poultry plants, meat-processing centers, and sawmills. In Idaho, they’ve sorted and packed the state’s famous potatoes. In Kansas, they’ve worked at Russell Stover making chocolates.
  • From the companies: Mammoth commodity traders like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland, and Consolidated Grain and Barge have been scooping up millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn, and wheat straight from prison farms. Cargill acknowledged that, adding that “we are now … determining the appropriate remedial action.” McDonald’s said it would investigate links to any such labor, and Archer Daniels Midland and General Mills, which produces Gold Medal flour, pointed to their policies restricting suppliers from using forced labor. Whole Foods responded flatly that it “does not allow the use of prison labor in products sold at our stores.”
  • From the prisons: Corrections officials and other proponents note that not all work is forced, and that prison jobs save taxpayers money. They also say workers are learning skills, potentially shaving time off sentences, and given a sense of purpose, which could ward off repeat offenses. “A lot of these guys come from homes where they’ve never understood work and they’ve never understood the feeling at the end of the day for a job well done,” said David Farabough, who oversees Arkansas’ prison farms.

This is messed up!

Cheap labor and no price decreases just more profit while the consumer foots the bill.

I know it is for a fact…. I had a relative that was sent to one of these private ‘workhouses’ where they put him to work in a leading chicken packing planet one of the larger ones in the South…..he was paid $1.10 an hour and by the time everybody took their part of the paycheck he was lucky to have $5 a week to buy essential and pay his restitution.

It is a great way for the private prison system to make lots of money with very little pay out in return….plus the state pays them for housing an inmate.

Think about that when going to the market….never mind most could care less.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Remember Gitmo?

NO?

It is a US prison on the island nation of Cuba.

Right now it is solely used as punishment for those accused of being “terrorists”.

Some are calling for the prison to close…..

The Guantánamo conundrum never seems to end.

Twelve years ago, I had other expectations. I envisioned a writing project that I had no doubt would be part of my future: an account of Guantánamo’s last 100 days. I expected to narrate in reverse, the episodes in a book I had just published, The Least Worst Place: Guantánamo’s First 100 Days, about—well, the title makes it all too obvious—the initial days at that grim offshore prison. They began on January 11, 2002, as the first hooded prisoners of the American war on terror were ushered off a plane at that American military base on the island of Cuba.

Needless to say, I never did write that book. Sadly enough, in the intervening years, there were few signs on the horizon of an imminent closing of that U.S. military prison. Weeks before my book was published in February 2009, President Barack Obama did, in fact, promise to close Guantánamo by the end of his first year in the White House. That hope began to unravel with remarkable speed. By the end of his presidency, his administration had, in fact, managed to release 197 of the prisoners held there without charges—many, including Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the subject of the film The Mauritanian, had also been tortured—but 41 remained, including the five men accused but not yet tried for plotting the 9/11 attacks. Forty remain there to this very day.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/04/will-americas-forever-offshore-prison-ever-be-closed

I say NO…..the prison should remain open and the convicted of the 06 January insurrection should be given the maximum and fine and prison time and be sent to Gitmo.

Since these cowards are traitors and terrorists what better place than Gitmo for them to serve their time and think about the treason they committed.

Since our domestic prison system is overcrowded the use Gitmo the prison infrastructure is already available.

Let Gitmo serve the purpose that we have come to know and hate.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Jail, The Killing Fields

The election is over and time to return to looking and posting on society and the problems that need attention.

We have been bombarded with the tragic deaths of people that are being taken into custody by the people……the protests are justified….the violence, in my opinion, is justified by the protesters for those sent to “control” protests are showing NO mercy to the people or their rights.

However there is a part of this story that goes virtually under reported…..deaths will accused are in jail awaiting trial……nearly 5000 deaths in a decade of accused dying in jail for various reasons….

7,571 inmate deaths Reuters documented in an unprecedented examination of mortality in more than 500 U.S. jails from 2008 to 2019. Death rates have soared in those lockups, rising 35% over the decade ending last year. Casualties like Hill are typical: held on minor charges and dying without ever getting their day in court. At least two-thirds of the dead inmates identified by Reuters, 4,998 people, were never convicted of the charges on which they were being held.

Unlike state and federal prisons, which hold people convicted of serious crimes, jails are locally run lockups meant to detain people awaiting arraignment or trial, or those serving short sentences. The toll of jail inmates who die without a case resolution subverts a fundamental tenet of the U.S. criminal justice system: innocent until proven guilty.

…

The Reuters analysis revealed a confluence of factors that can turn short jail stays into death sentences. Many jails are not subject to any enforceable standards for their operation or the healthcare they provide. They typically get little if any oversight. And bail requirements trap poorer inmates in pre-trial detention for long periods. Meanwhile, inmate populations have grown sicker, more damaged by mental illness and plagued by addictions.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-jails-deaths/

This is unacceptable….but do I need quote the Constitution? 

Damn silly question!

Of course I do!

The U.S. Constitution grants inmates core rights, but those provisions are hard to enforce. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees fair treatment to pre-trial detainees, but “fair” is open to interpretation by judges and juries. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel punishment forbids “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners,” but proving deliberate negligence is difficult. The Sixth Amendment assures speedy trials, but does not define speedy.

Don’t trust me…then I suggest you look it the fuck up!

Here is one proposal…..

End pretrial detention for most defendants

Problem: Many people who face criminal charges are unnecessarily detained before trial. Often the sole criteria for release is access to money for bail. This puts pressure on defendants to accept plea bargains, even when they are innocent, since even a few days in jail can destabilize their lives: they can lose their apartment, job, and even custody of children. Pretrial detention also leads to jail overcrowding, which means more dangerous conditions for people in jail, and also drives sheriffs’ demands for more and bigger jails — wasting taxpayer dollars on more unnecessary incarceration.

Solutions: States are addressing this problem with a variety of approaches, including bail reforms that end or severely restrict the use of money bail, establishing the presumption of pretrial release for all cases with conditions only when necessary, and offering pretrial services such as postcard or phone reminders to appear in court, transportation and childcare assistance for court appearances, and referrals to drug treatment, mental health services, and other needed social services.

Any thoughts?

Learn Stuff!

I Read I Write You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–22Jan20

I live in Mississippi and from time I write about to doings in my state….I do not write much for I do not think that too many are interested in the policies and events in Mississippi

But since a good portion of the population of my state is in prison or have been in jail…I read an article about the so-called “restitution program”…..

Debtors’ prison may sound like a concept from another century. But the Marshall Project asserts that Mississippi is running a court-ordered restitution program that is essentially the same thing. The investigation found that judges sentence hundreds of people a year to one of four “restitution centers” around the state. There they must live while they work off court-ordered debts, including fees, fines, and restitution to victims. One big problem is that most of the workers have low-paying jobs, making their stays at the centers open-ended. And “centers” might be overstating things. One is described as a motel-turned-jail that is surrounded by razor wire. The residents sleep on prison-issued mattresses, eat the same food as inmates, and generally have the same restrictions.

“We don’t know of any other states that have a program quite like Mississippi’s,” says Sharon Brett of Harvard’s Criminal Justice Policy Program. The story by Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu also includes this quote from Cliff Johnson of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi. “Debtors’ prisons are an effective way of collecting money—as is kidnapping. But there are constitutional, public policy and moral barriers to such a regime.” The program has its defenders, including a judge who says it’s better than sending people to regular prison. One woman who went through it isn’t so sure. Annita Husband ended up escaping from her center. When caught, she went to prison for 10 months, about half as long as she would have spent at the center had she stayed and paid off the debt under its system.

I have thought that it was beyond time for reform in our penal systems and programs…..like why is there little training offered or educational programs?

While writing this draft more news about Mississippi penal system came to light……

Two inmates were beaten to death in a fight with other inmates in an understaffed Mississippi prison that has been shaken by other deadly violence in recent weeks, a coroner said. The state Department of Corrections on Tuesday confirmed the men died at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and said officials are investigating, the AP reports. “Both victims appear to have died from blunt force beating injuries,” said Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton. The department originally said the inmates died Monday night, but Burton later clarified that they died early Tuesday. Department spokeswoman Grace Simmons Fisher said the injuries occurred late Monday as the two inmates fought with other prisoners. “At this moment, it appears to be an isolated incident—not a continuation of the recent retaliatory killings,” the Department of Corrections said Tuesday.

Violence is a recurring problem in Mississippi prisons, where many jobs for guards are unfilled. Five inmates were killed and an undisclosed number of others inmates were injured during an outbreak of violence in Mississippi’s prison system between Dec. 29 and Jan. 3. Three of those five deaths were at Parchman. In addition to those deaths and the two on Tuesday, another inmate was found hanging in his cell Saturday night at Parchman. Burton said she was called Sunday to the prison, where Gabriel Carmen was found hanging the night before. She said corrections officials reported he had been irate and throwing feces before his death. An autopsy was being done. Prison officials said Carmen’s cell lock had been jammed from inside the cell. One of the inmates who died Tuesday was Timothy Hudspeth, 35, who was serving a 10-year sentence for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The name of the other inmate was not immediately released because a chaplain was trying to reach his family.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–25Apr18

Trump has been at odds with journalists ever since he announced he was a candidate in 2016…..he has daily Twitter storms about this media or that journalists…….usually those that do not agree with him on his many and varied opinions.

And recently Trump stated that journalists, at all, should be jailed and forced to give up their sources…..apparently he is not knowledgeable on the Constitution and the First Amendment……

Amid more salacious talk and other key interactions—including discussions of “golden showers”; how President Trump claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged to him that Russia had the “most beautiful hookers in the world“; and a request by the president for the then FBI director to “let go” of the investigation into national security advisor Michael Flynn—a revealing moment contained in the contemporaneous memos of James Comey, redacted versions of which were released Thursday night, is when Trump suggests jailing journalists and then having them sexually assaulted as way to force them to “talk” about their sources.

http://theantimedia.com/trump-journalists-jail-raped/

Interesting, yes?

For someone that claims all this patriotism to mention anything that impedes a persons First Amendment rights is just silly…..and a bit scary.

Debtor’s Prison Of Days Gone By

Do you know where you heard the term “Debtor’s Prison”?

Many of those that came to the New World were religious zealots on the run and people fleeing from debtor’s prison……our ancestors were actually running from the law…

But what is debtor’s prison exactly…….A debtors’ prison is a prison for those who are unable to pay debt. Prior to the mid 19th century debtors’ prisons were a common way to deal with unpaid debt.

Meanwhile back to my state of Mississippi……along the Coast there are 2 major cities…Biloxi being one of them and this city has made the news…..

Debtors prisons are supposedly a thing of the distant past—except in Biloxi, Miss. That’s according to a class-action lawsuit filed against the city, its police department, the courts, and a private probation company, alleging these agencies have conspired to threaten poor residents into paying up to avoid jail time, the Guardian reports. Despite a 1983 Supreme Court ruling that imprisoning someone because they can’t pay fines violates the 14th Amendment, the lawsuit documents 415 such people in Biloxi who were thrown behind bars between September 2014 and March. A lawyer for the ACLU, which filed the suit, says locals were “arrested at traffic stops and in their homes, taken to jail, and subjected to a jailhouse shakedown,” calling it “a debtors’ prison from the Dark Ages.” One notable case: a 51-year-old jailed a month for misdemeanors mainly related to his homelessness.

An NPRprobe found all 50 states are engaging in such practices (and more and more lawsuits are being filed), but Biloxi takes issue. “We believe the ACLU is mistaken about the process in Biloxi,” the city noted in a statement, though it says it hasn’t yet seen the lawsuit. “The court has used community service in cases where defendants are unable to pay their fines.” The lead plaintiff, Qumotria Kennedy, is a 36-year-old single mom who makes $9,000 a year as a cleaner. She was a passenger when her friend was pulled over in July for running a stop sign. Police ran Kennedy’s name, and she was arrested and jailed due to $1,000 in unpaid court fines and late fees. She spent five days and nights in a holding cell and lost her job; the fees are now $1,251. “The probation person told me if I don’t pay it, I will be arrested again sooner or later,” she tells the Guardian. “I don’t believe this is right. I just hope other people in the world don’t get treated like I have.” (A New Orleans parish is facing the same scenario.)

The South may be attempting to move out of the shadow of its past but there are some things that never change……Mississippi and its sister state Alabama are stuck in pre-1950 history….

The Next Big Story!

Now that the Right has moved on from all the dire scenarios they have predicted because of the refugee crisis…..I have been waiting to see which will make their headlines….especially in rags like WND or Alex Jones or Drudge Report…..the shooting in Oregon filled that bill….this incident has all the gun crazies predicting the end of the 2nd amendment…just like after every shooting….and you know….so far they have been dead wrong……(forgive the pun)…..this should keep the rags filled for the next week or so……

But when that dies down….what will they do?  What crisis will they predict next?

In the past I have called pretty much most of the BS crisis that the looney Right will try to foist on the American public…..but what will be next?

At the end of this month (it is October btw) there will be an event that could fit the bill for something the crazies can worry about….endlessly…..

Interested in knowing the next “Big Story”?

Viola!  Source: The biggest prisoner release in US history, explained – Vox

There you have it….set your clock and wait for the alarm!

Hide your children and lock-up your wife……society will degrade into anarchy…..(that is sarcasm)…..the end is near……repent!