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U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

inquisitr.com - Apr. 30 (Opinion) -

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A Desperate Situation at Guantánamo: Over 130 Prisoners on Hunger Strike, Dozens Being Force-Fed

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 29 (News Report) - Lawyers for the prisoners say more than 130 men are taking part in the hunger strike, which began in February. One of the hunger strikers is a Yemeni man named Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel. In a letter published in The New York Times, he wrote: "Denying ourselves food and risking death every day is the choice we have made. I just hope that because of the pain we are suffering, the eyes of the world will once again look to Guantánamo before it is too late."

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Poverty Expert Peter Edelman Explains How Low Wages and Racial Politics Line the Pockets of the Rich

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Adelle M. Stan - Apr. 16 (Opinion) - in 1996, Edelman resigned his post as an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human services to protest President Bill Clinton's signing the Republicans' welfare-reform bill into law. Since then, Edelman has held fast not only to his critique of that law -- which, he says, has left some 6 million people with no income other than food stamps -- but to his assessment of why poverty in the world's richest nation has become so intractable.

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What?! Enviro Activist Re-Imprisoned for Writing a Blog Post

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steven Hsieh - Apr. 06 (News Report) - McGowan’s wife, Jenny Synan says officials re-jailed her husband for writing a Huffington Post blog piece critical of a controversial prison program designed to restrict inmates’ communication to the outside world.

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Former Prisoner's Dire Warning: America's Prisons Turning Out Violent White Supremacists "Mentally Fighting Civil War"

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Alex Kane - Apr. 03 (Special Report) - “America’s harsh judicial system, coupled with a growing national affinity for utilizing complete isolation at super-max prisons as a corrections tactic of first choice, in many cases turns men into monsters.” The prisoner warned that “many of the first men locked up when our nation embarked on a policy of for-profit mass incarceration near the end of the last century are now returning into society.” He also provided details on what motivates the members of the Aryan Brotherhood gang.

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Immigrants Held in Solitary Cells, Often for Weeks

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Ian Urbina, Catherine Rentz - Mar. 24 (Special Report) - New federal data shows that on any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers, a practice psychiatrists worry is overly punitive.

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BBC-Guardian Exposé Uses WikiLeaks to Link Iraq Torture Centers to U.S. Col. Steele & Gen. Petraeus

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Maggie O'Kane - Mar. 22 (Investigative Report) - A shocking new report by The Guardian and BBC Arabic details how the United States armed and trained Iraqi death squads that ran torture centers. It is a story that stretches from the U.S.-backed death squads in Central America during the 1980s to the imprisoned Army whistleblower Bradley Manning.

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Big Labor's Lock 'Em Up Mentality

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By James Ridgeway, Jean Casella - Feb. 22 (Special Report) - On January 4, the Tamms Correctional Center, a supermax prison in southern Illinois, officially closed its doors. Tamms, where some men had been kept in solitary confinement for more than a decade, was notorious for its brutal treatment of prisoners with mental illness—and for driving sane prisoners to madness and suicide.

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Israelis puzzle over mysterious death of Mossad’s ‘Prisoner X’ Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/13/182979/israelis-puzzle-over-mysterious.html#storylink=cpy

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - By Frenkel - Feb. 15 (News Report) - Zygier was kept in a cell known as Wing 15 that had been designed for Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Ari Shamay, a lawyer for Amir who visited him once in the cell, described it as a "four-by-four room, with next to nothing inside but a bed, shower and toilet." Cameras were fixed on the room and monitored 24 hours a day. Reports in Israeli newspapers have said the room had special sensors that monitored temperature and even heartbeat, though Israeli officials wouldn’t confirm those details. Israeli human rights groups have begun asking how, under those conditions, a prisoner manages to fashion a noose and hang himself before guards are able to intervene. On Wednesday, Israeli blogs speculated that the story of Zygier’s suicide was yet another cover-up, designed to disguise a more gruesome death

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Welcome to the New Federal Supermax

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By James Ridgeway - Feb. 11 (News Analysis) - Even as it announces a review and reduction of its solitary confinement practices, the US Bureau of Prisons has confirmed that a newly acquired prison in Illinois will hold federal prisoners in supermax conditions.

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Woman finds note from Chinese labor camp prisoner in Kmart decorations

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Examiner - By : Mikael Thalen - Jan. 11 (News Report) - "Sir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever." The letter went on to describe 15 hour work days, no days off, and pay at 10 yuan per month ($1.61 US Dollar) if any. It also described the 1-3 year average forced labor terms without trial, and the large amount of Falun Gong practitioners in forced labor, a banned spiritual group.

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5 Senior Citizens Serving Life Without Parole for Pot

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Kristen Gwynne - Dec. 23 (Special Report) - They are all more than 60 years old; they have all spent at least 15 years locked up for selling pot; and they are all what one might call model prisoners, serving life without parole.

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As Bus Bomb Hits Tel Aviv, Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Egypt's Mediator Role and Gaza's Ongoing Torment

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Sharif Abdel Kouddous - Nov. 21 (News Report) - The Israeli bombardment of Gaza has entered its eighth day with the Palestinian death toll now topping 139. More than 1,200 people have been injured. Earlier today, 21 people were injured in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv when a bomb exploded aboard a crowded bus. International efforts to secure a ceasefire have so far been unsuccessful. We're joined from Gaza City by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Why Don't Americans Care About Democracy at Home?

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Henry A. Giroux - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - economic darwinism will...ensure the ...eventual elimination of those...willing to fight for public values, rights, spaces and institutions not wedded to the logic of privatization, commodification, deregulation.. we are seeing the breakdown of democracy...

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The Push to Keep Teen Felons Locked Up for Life

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Suevon Lee - Aug. 07 (Special Report) - When Dennis Epps learned in June that the Supreme Court had struck down mandatory life without parole sentences for kids convicted of murder, he was hopeful. His brother, David, was given such a sentence for home burglary-murder committed at 16 and has spent most of his 48 years behind bars. "I was thinking he was going to get some kind of release, because he served 32 years on a life sentence," Epps told ProPublica . But Epps's brother is unlikely going anywhere soon. A few weeks after the ruling, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad announced he would commute the life without parole sentences of 38 juvenile offenders , and make them eligible for parole after 60 years. David Epps would be in his mid-70s when he could first be released. Continue Reading ...

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Private Prisons Spend $45 Million on Lobbying, Rake in $5.1 Billion for Immigrant Detention Alone

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - Aug. 05 (Opinion) -

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Immigrants are lucrative for private prisons

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Detroit Free Press - By Laura Wides-Munoz, Garance Burke - Aug. 04 (News Analysis) - Immigrants are lucrative for private prisonsDetroit Free PressMIAMI -- Locking up illegal immigrants has grown lucrative for the private prisons industry, a reliable pot of revenue that helped keep some of the biggest companies in business. And while nearly half of the 400000 immigrants held annually are housed ...and more »

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Served your time in prison and looking for a job? You're out of luck | Sadhbh Walshe

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Sadhbh Walshe - Jul. 26 (Research) - Few ex-prisoners in the US manage to secure employment after their release – a prior conviction automatically disqualifies them. Homeboy Industries is working to change that When Vance Webster was released from prison three years ago, he was determined to find a job, his first ever, and finally get his life off the ground. He was 45 years old and had been in prison since he was 16, serving out a 25 to life sentence for being an accessory after the fact to a gang-related murder and robbery. Vance applied for hundreds of positions, did over 80 interviews and finally, almost miraculously, got a job in a warehouse. Seven months into that job, a supervisor told him he was being let go for having lied on his application. He had failed to tick the box that asked if he had been convicted of a felony in the past seven years. Although he pointed out that he hadn't actually committed a felony in 29 years, he was fired and the job he'd fought so hard to get was gone and, so it seemed, was his shot at a ...

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Justices Bar Mandatory Life Sentences for Juveniles

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Adam Liptak, Ethan Bronner - Jun. 25 (News Report) - Some 2,000 juvenile offenders serving life sentences without parole were given hope of eventual release by the Supreme Court on Monday. The court ruled that laws requiring youths convicted of murder to be sentenced to die in prison violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

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Torture in U.S. Prisons? Historic Senate Hearing Takes Up Solitary Confinement's Devastating Toll

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 22 (News Report) - In the first-ever hearing of its kind, a Senate panel heard testimony this week on the psychological and human rights implications of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. While defenders of solitary confinement claim it is needed to control the most violent prisoners, many of the people called to testify at the hearing described how it can cause intense suffering and mental illness. We're joined by Anthony Graves, a former Texas prisoner who was fully exonerated of a murder conviction after spending 18 years behind bars, the bulk of that time on death row and in solitary confinement, and by James Ridgeway, a veteran journalist and co-editor of Solitary Watch, a website that tracks solitary confinement and torture in American prisons. [includes rush transcript]

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By the Numbers: The U.S.’s Growing For-Profit Detention Industry

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Suevon Lee - Jun. 20 (Special Report) - Added to your activity feed: We’ve taken a look at some of the numbers associated with the billion-dollar and wide-ranging for-profit detention industry—and the two companies that dominate the market: 1.6 million: Total number of state and federal prison

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40 Years in Solitary Confinement: Two Members of Angola 3 Remain in Isolation in Louisiana Prison

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 17 (Special Report) - It’s been 40 years to the day — since April 17, 1972, or 14,600 days ago — that Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have been held in solitary confinement in Louisiana. The state says they were guilty of murdering a guard at Angola Prison, but Wallace, Woodfox and their network of supporters say they were framed for their political activism as members of the Black Panthers.

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How Prison Undoes Family Values

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - Apr. 02 (Special Report) - In the last 30 years or so, the rush to lock people up for ridiculously long sentences even for minor crimes has led to an explosion of the prison population. And as the majority of prisoners are also parents, the population of children with a father or mother in prison has also exploded. Since 1990, the number of children with a parent in prison has increased overall by 82%, and the number of incarcerated mothers has increased at almost twice the rate of incarcerated fathers. There are now an estimated 10 million American children who have had a parent in prison (pdf), on parole or under some kind of probationary supervision. And, as is always the case when you are talking about the prison population, there is a disturbing racial disparity; one in 15 black children have a parent in prison, compared to one in 111 white children.

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Zakaria: Incarceration nation

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Fareed Zakaria - Mar. 30 (Opinion) - Something caught my eye the other day. Pat Robertson, the high priest of the religious right, had some startling things to say about drugs. "I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Mr. Robertson said in a recent interview. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think. This war on drugs just hasn't succeeded." The reason Robertson is for legalizing marijuana is that it has created a prison problem in America that is well beyond what most Americans imagine.

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States Get Cash for Prisons

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

populist.com - By Chris Kirkham - Mar. 15 (Special Report) - Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging corrections budgets." In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90% full,

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