Tag: Prisons

Bernie Sanders’s plan to abolish private prisons, explained – Vox

Almost every candidate in this election cycle has something to say about the prison system and the overcrowding……like most elections it is a lot of lip service……few plans available for analysis…..

This overcrowding problem began with the Clinton admin and his hard line on crime….his “law and order” presidency…….and since those days little has changed.

Another of these problems within the prison system is the “for profit prisons”….the privatization of prisons has made someone billions and amplified problems a hundred fold

The presidential hopeful wants to fix a “broken criminal justice system.”  All that is good idea but who of the bunch actually has a plan?

Source: Bernie Sanders’s plan to abolish private prisons, explained – Vox

Bernie has been talking issues at all campaign stops and he has a plan….there may be others that I have not run across just yet…..but at least Bernie is speaking to truth here……..

Thoughts?

Debtor’s Prison

Back in the early days of America England would turn out all the prisoners in debtor’s prison and mail them off to the new world and they were our first settlers……that’s right some of our earliest settlers were ex-cons, if you will……

But once we became a separate country we did away with people going to prison because they had the misfortune of being in debt……a step forward in the evolution of a civilized country, right?

The sad thing is that debtor’s prison may be making a comeback and in the country that prides itself in not throwing people in prison for being in debt…..

From Fox News:

As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.

Critics are calling the practice the new “debtors’ prison” — referring to the jails that flourished in the U.S. and Western Europe over 150 years ago. Before the time of bankruptcy laws and social safety nets, poor folks and ruined business owners were locked up until their debts were paid off.

Reforms eventually outlawed the practice. But groups like the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union say it’s been reborn in local courts which may not be aware it’s against the law to send indigent people to jail over unpaid fines and fees — or they just haven’t been called on it until now.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law released a “Tool Kit for Action” in 2012 that broke down the cost to municipalities to jail debtors in comparison with the amount of old debt it was collecting. It doesn’t look like a bargain. For example, according to the report, Mecklenburg County, N.C., collected $33,476 in debts in 2009, but spent $40,000 jailing 246 debtors — a loss of $6,524.

Don’t worry, I’m sure private prisons for debtors will soon spring up to make this practice a pillar of GDP growth.

Many jurisdictions have taken to hiring private collection/probation companies to go after debtors, giving them the authority to revoke probation and incarcerate if they can’t pay. Research into the practice has found that private companies impose their own additional surcharges. Some 15 private companies have emerged to run these services in the South, including the popular Judicial Correction Services (JCS).

Read More…

Sad…..very sad…..that a country as modern and up-to-date would resort to this type of thing……but I guess anything is possible when profit is the only worthwhile goal to pursue…..
Thoughts?

Remember The Re-Education Camps?

A while back we had a couple of conservs accuse the prez of trying to put into effect some camps that would re-educate people into the world of liberal thinking….I could name names but for the sake of argument I shall leave them out of this conversation……I personally think that they are not important to American democracy…….

In my radical days I accused the educational system of being such a camp….that we are taught a very limited view of what it was to be a citizen….the rights and the policies that we should aspire to if we were a good American….I still hold some of those views to a point (still a bit of long hair hippie radical in me)……..

But after all that I found something that would lead me to reassess my stand……

Found this on prisonplanet.com……..

A shocking U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers contains numerous clear references to the fact that the policies do apply domestically to U.S. citizens.

Despite the fact that the manual is well over 300 pages long and would take hours to read properly, within minutes of posting our story yesterday a minority of commenters were claiming that the policies outlined in the document only pertained to foreign combat operations and did not apply domestically to U.S. citizens.

This is similar to the denial witnessed prior to the passage of the NDAA when some argued that the indefinite detention provisions did not apply to American citizens despite numerous legal analysts asserting they did and President Barack Obama himself acknowledging they did when he signed the bill.

Click here to read the full document entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations.

The most alarming portion of the document appears on page 56 and makes it clear that detention camps will have PSYOP teams whose responsibility will be to use “indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes,” as well as targeting “political activists” with such indoctrination programs to provide “understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions.”

Let’s make one thing clear – the manual primarily deals with enemy combatants captured and detained in foreign prison camps run by the U.S. Military. However, another thing that is just as clear from reading the manual in full is the fact that it also applies to citizens detained within the United States, whether they be DCs (displaced citizens) or “civilian internees,” in other words citizens who are detained for, “security reasons, for protection, or because he or she committed an offense against the detaining power.”

Please take some time and read the link….I think that you will be surprised…..whether conserv or lib……makes NO difference…….it is a scary scenario!

In This Corner……Bernie Madoff

On the weekends I like to try and lighten up the tone from the rest of the week……most news is serious in content….but every now and then I find a report that I feel needs a shout out….and this is one such report…..in the past it was reported that he had fallen out of bed….then I said sure….and the woman with a black eye was hit by a door knob….sorry …I digress……

Bernie Madoff had his nose broken by another inmate in December, Dionne Searcy and Amir Efrati of the WSJ report, citing three people familiar with what happened.

The Bureau of Prisons denies the incident, as does Madoff (who presumably doesn’t want to get beaten up again for being a snitch).

Mr. Madoff was treated for a broken nose, fractured ribs and cuts to his head and face, according to a felon currently at Butner serving time on drug charges who was familiar with his condition at the time. The details of the injuries couldn’t be independently verified.

The former inmate said the dispute centered on money the assailant thought he was owed by Mr. Madoff.

Now there is an idea……let all the people that he screwed have a couple of shots at him…they may not see any of their stolen money but they would feel a whole lot better….Just a thought……

Gitmo To Close

President Barack Obama began overhauling U.S. treatment of terror suspects Thursday, signing orders to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, shut down secret overseas CIA prisons, review military war crimes trials and ban the harshest interrogation methods.

With his action, Obama started changing how the United States prosecutes and questions al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighters who pose a threat to Americans — and overhauling America’s image abroad, battered by accusations of the use of torture and the indefinite detention of suspects at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba.

The centerpiece order would close the much-maligned Guantanamo facility within a year, a complicated process with many unanswered questions that was nonetheless a key campaign promise of Obama’s. The administration already has suspended trials for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo for 120 days pending a review of the military tribunals.

In the other actions, Obama:

_Created a task force to recommend policies on handling terror suspects who are detained in the future. Specifically, the group would look at where those detainees should be housed since Guantanamo is closing.

_Required all U.S. personnel to follow the U.S. Army Field Manual while interrogating detainees. The manual explicitly prohibits threats, coercion, physical abuse and waterboarding, a technique that creates the sensation of drowning and has been termed a form of torture by critics. However, a Capitol Hill aide says that the administration also is planning a study of more aggressive interrogation methods that could be added to the Army manual — which would create a significant loophole to Obama’s action Thursday.

A task force will study whether other interrogation guidelines — beyond what’s spelled out in the Army manual — are necessary for intelligence professionals in dealing with terror suspects.

Was It Worth It?

Back in September I posted about a British couple that got caught having sex on a beach in the UAE.  And now a follow up.

A British couple convicted of having sex on a beach in Dubai have been freed and ordered deported to the UK after their three-month prison sentence was suspended.

The ruling, issued by Dubai’s court of appeal, marks a hard-fought victory for Michelle Palmer, 36, of Rutland, and Vince Acors, 34, of southeast London, who have been on bail since their July 5 arrest on Jumeirah Beach.

“This decision shows the law in the United Arab Emirates is just. Judges are not swayed by the media, they are swayed by the evidence,” he said.

Sources told The Times that the court’s climbdown from its original conviction stemmed from inconsistencies from the prosecution’s key witness, Ali Mohamed Yacoub – the police officer who arrested the couple after they’d spent the day drinking at a champagne brunch.

The court’s decision today marks a departure from the six years behind bars that the couple could have potentially faced for having sex outside marriage, public indecency and drunkenness.

Would not the price of a hooker been a lot cheaper and much safer?

Iraq’s Juvenile Prison System

Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons, sleeping in sweltering temperatures in overcrowded cells without working fans, no daily access to showers, and subject to frequent sexual abuse by guards, current and former prisoners say.

Daytime temperatures in Baghdad last week averaged 44C (112F). They barely drop below 38C at night. Water supplies in Karkh are spasmodic, and Omar said he was able to shower only once every three days. Boys sleep in four dormitories, averaging 75 inmates in a cell about 5 metres by 10 metres, on double bunks or the concrete floor.

Guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them, Omar alleged. They also break prison rules by lending their mobile phones to boys to ring home, on condition that each time their families top the phone up by $10 or $20. The teaching staff resigned en masse in November because of low pay, according to an international official. As a result, the children lounge around aimlessly with no daytime activities, other than an exercise yard.

Though the boys in the prison have been convicted, international standards for fair trials are never met. “Trials last on average for 25 minutes, no witnesses are called, confessions are used as the only evidence, and court-appointed defence lawyers get the case file on the day of the trial, leaving no chance to consult the defendant in private,” an international adviser in Baghdad said on condition of anonymity.

The ministry is under Shia control and its forces have repeatedly been accused of targeting innocent Sunnis. Sahar Muhammad, the boys’ mother, told the Guardian that when she was able to visit her sons they told her they were beaten repeatedly in the first days of custody and ordered to sign a blank sheet of paper on which charges would be written later.

The UN found severe overcrowding at Tobchi, with around 400 inmates in a prison with an official capacity of 206. “In some cells juveniles were taking turns to sleep on the floor without mattresses,” the UN reported. The ministry of labour and social affairs (Molsa), which manages the prison, said shortages of funds prevented improvements.