America has one of the world’s largest prison populations, with an estimated 1.7 million people in confinement.
Going further, America’s incarceration rate is the fourth-highest in the world. Despite being a developed economy, its prison population is more than double that of Russia, India, and Brazil combined.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the countries with the most prisoners, based on data from the Prison Policy Initiative.
QUESTION: I believe you have said that the United States practices the law of tyrants, conspiracy, which only proves a thought crime, not that you committed a crime. Is this why you say we are doomed, because nobody will do real legal reform?
Wes
ANSWER: Our legal system adopted the tyranny of the king and replaced him with the Department of JUST US. Its combination of the Pinkerton rule, broad federal statutes like RICO, and the strategic, frequent use by prosecutors makes American conspiracy law one of the most potent and expansive in the world. The United States has the most anti-human rights legal system on the planet. For example, under Canon Law used in France, they cannot compel any family member to testify against you. In the United States, they can imprison your children until they testify against you. The only privilege is granted to a spouse or a priest. Then they will use a divorce to get around the spouse rule. Under the Canon law of the Catholic Church, the sanctity of the family unit comes first. Under English Common Law, precedent takes precedent. We had a revolution against the king’s tyranny, replacing him with local tyranny.
They love to call Russia and China authoritarian and communist. But look at the stats. You have a 340% greater chance of going to jail in the United States compared to China. The United States has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any country in the world, so much for liberty. Suppose you lie to a government official; that is perjury, punishable by up to 5 years. If a government official lies to you, that is legal.
Without the rule of law, civilization crumbles. Courts rule in favor of the government. Rarely will you find a judge who will truly defend the Constitution, and good luck in prosecuting a judge or a prosecutor.
“You think we’re arresting people now? You wait till we get the funding to do what we got to do.”—Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar
America is rapidly becoming a nation of prisons.
Having figured out how to parlay presidential authority in foreign affairs in order to sidestep the Constitution, President Trump is using his immigration enforcement powers to lock up—and lock down—the nation.
After all, a police state requires a prison state. And no one is cheering louder than the private prison corporations making money hand over fist from Trump’s expansion of federal detention.
Under the guise of national security and public safety, the Trump administration is engineering the largest federal expansion of incarceration and detention powers in U.S. history.
At the center of this campaign is Alligator Alcatraz, a federal detention facility built in the Florida Everglades and hailed by the White House as a model for the future of federal incarceration. But this is more than a new prison—it is the architectural symbol of a carceral state being quietly constructed in plain sight.
With over $170 billion allocated through Trump’s megabill, we are witnessing the creation of a vast, permanent enforcement infrastructure aimed at turning the American police state into a prison state.
The scope of this expansion is staggering.
The bill allocates $45 billion just to expand immigrant detention—a move that will make ICE the best-funded federal law enforcement agency in American history, with more money than the FBI, the DEA, and the Bureau of Prisons combined.
Yet be warned: what begins with ICE rarely ends with ICE.
After unchecked French Organized Crime Gangs promoted nightly attacks against prisons, it appears that Paris will at long last start thinking seriously about tackling the problem – even if they go about it in a surprising way.
If you were surprised that US President Donald J. Trump floated the idea of rebuilding the Alcatraz prison, just brace yourself for the French idea of building a successor for one of the most infamous prisons in history, L’Îlle du Diable – Devil’s Island.
Today, during a visit to the French Guiana territory, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin announced that the government will build a new high-security prison in the territory.
It will be used, according to the Minister, ‘to house drug traffickers and radical Islamists’.
BBC reported:
“Gérald Darmanin told Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper that the prison would target organized crime ‘at all levels’ of the drug supply chain.
The €400m (£337m) facility, which could open as early as 2028, will be built in an isolated location deep in the Amazon jungle in the northwestern region of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.”
Did you know that in America you can be criminally charged for using a racial slur? The First Amendment is supposed to protect our freedom of speech (even the use of racial slurs!) and in theory it should prevent such a gross violation of our civil liberties.
But apparently it happens anyway — and it happens because the revolutionary left doesn’t care about free speech. What they care about is power, and if they have enough power they will throw their ideological opponents in prison for the crime of disagreeing with them.
Consider the case of Lauren Noble, a Yale graduate and the founder and executive director of the Buckley Institute, named for conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. Two years ago, Noble was arrested in New Haven, Conn., for allegedly using a racial slur in an argument with a black parking attendant.
The parking attendant, 60-year-old Gerno Allen, claimed that Noble repeatedly called him the N-word during a dispute in July 2023. Allen didn’t file a complaint with the police until February 2024, and Noble was arrested that May and charged at first with disorderly conduct and then three counts of breach of the peace.
Noble maintained her innocence throughout, and the misdemeanor charges against her were dropped last month. The state prosecutor cited “insufficient evidence … inconsistencies in the witness’ statements,” and “video evidence clearly contradicting the complaining witness’ statements.” In other words, Allen made up the entire story.
It’s great that Noble is no longer facing criminal charges, but the fact that she was forced to go through two years of this appalling legal ordeal based on an accusation with no evidence to support it is outrageous.
Even more outrageous is that she was arrested and charged in the first place for allegedly uttering an offensive word. Even if Noble had called Allen the N-word, and there was video evidence of it, that’s not a crime. You’re free to use whatever racial slurs you like, even lazy ones like the N-word. Contrary to what many college students seem to think at places like Yale, there’s no such thing as “hate speech” in America. It might be offensive, but it’s not illegal — at least it’s not supposed to be.
But this was a just-so narrative that was apparently too good for the left-leaning police and prosecutors in deep-blue New Haven to ignore: a conservative woman who runs an organization promoting intellectual diversity and freedom of speech at Yale, caught using the N-word against a working-class black man. Perfect.
As Noble herself wrote in a recent New York Post op-ed: “The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing. Headlines in local newspapers made much of both Buckley and conservatism generally, as left-leaning media outlets welcomed the opportunity to advance the dishonest narrative that everyone on the right is racist.”
That’s really what Noble’s case was about. Concocting a race-based “crime” out of thin air to tarnish the reputation of a conservative activist and ruin her good name.
For the left, conservatives aren’t just wrong or misguided, but evil. They should be silenced. If they can be silenced by jailing them on bogus charges stemming from a made-up story, so be it. Even better if the story exposes them as racist.
As consumers and businesses across the U.S. gear up for the 4/20 holiday on Sunday, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is drawing attention to the “tens of thousands of people who will spend their 4/20 in prison for the same cannabis-related activity.”
This year the company—which has regularly used 4/20 to highlight justice-related cannabis matters—has partnered with the advocacy group Last Prisoner Project (LPP) to urge state governors to grant relief to those behind bars for marijuana.
“This 4/20, the need for cannabis justice is at an all-time HIGH,” Ben & Jerry’s said about the new effort.
The groups are also encouraging supporters to take action, recommending they reach out to their state governors to call for clemency, sign petitions to free people incarcerated for cannabis crimes, spread the word using the #420ForFreedom on social media and attend a Washington, D.C. event—the Cannabis Unity Week of Action, held April 29 through May 1—aimed at promoting broader marijuana legalization.
The company says that as “cannabis businesses will rack up sales, public figures will use their platforms to highlight cannabis culture, and millions of Americans will take advantage of their freedom and consume with friends and family” on 4/20, it’s crucial that advocates continue pushing to right the wrongs of prohibition.
“When we say legalization without justice is half baked, we mean that legalization while people, disproportionately Black and Brown, are still sitting in prison for cannabis or reeling from the detrimental impacts of having a cannabis conviction on their records is simply not justice fully realized,” Palika Makam, Ben & Jerry’s U.S. activism manager, said in a statement.
I wrote in October that Joe Biden, in his four years as president, did literally nothing to improve the situation in prisons and jails across the country, either through the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), over which he has direct authority, or through enlightened policies that might filter down or set the standard in state prisons and in local jails.
As we bump up against the end of the Biden administration, I wanted to take a look at this president’s final year in office and at what legacy he’s leaving in criminal justice.
— California, at the demand of the Justice Department in September, paid $4 million to five victims of a former guard at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla and another $450,000 to a former prisoner at the California Institution for Women in Chino for rape and sexual assault at the hands of at least four guards.
One of those guards, Greg Rodriguez, is facing 96 counts of rape, sodomy and sexual battery. But because he resigned before being arrested, he has been allowed to keep his pension.
North Carolina has made it a felony crime to patronize a sex worker. Under a law that took effect December 1, “any person who solicits another for the purpose of prostitution is guilty of a Class I felony for a first offense”—a crime that comes with a minimum of four months in prison, up to two years. Second and subsequent offenses are now Class H felonies, punishable by up to 39 months in prison.
“In the past, many first offenses under either classification have received house arrest or probation in lieu of prison time. Prior to this revision, the maximum penalty for purchasing sex from a consenting adult was a misdemeanor,” according to Yes Weekly.
Soliciting sex—like selling sex—has typically been categorized by states across the country as a misdemeanor. But in recent years, we’ve seen a disturbing trend of states starting to classify attempts to pay for sexual activity as a felony.
It’s a trend that’s bad for not only sex buyers but also, and perhaps especially, for sex workers. And it mirrors the misguided and detrimental path we saw people take with the war on drugs.
Three states now make it a felony crime to pay for sex or attempt to pay for sex, even on a first offense and in situations where the person being paid is a consenting adult or a cop posting as a consenting adult. (Many states make it a felony to pay or attempt to pay a minor for sex, but that is not what we’re talking about today.)
Felony crimes not only tend to come with more harsh prison sentence but other conditions, such as loss of voting rights for some period of time, restrictions on the kinds of jobs one can hold, and restrictions on one’s right to own firearms.
“In 2021, Texas became the first state to make buying sex a felony, when Governor Greg Abbott signed a law increasing the maximum penalty to two years in prison for a first offense,” notes Yes Weekly. “State Representative Senfronia Thompson (D–Houston), the author of the bill, said ‘We know the demand is the driving force behind human sex trafficking. If we can curb or stamp out the demand end of it, then we can save the lives of numerous persons.'”
Last May, Oklahoma made “engaging in prostitution or soliciting, inducing, enticing, or procuring another to commit an act of prostitution” felony crimes.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)—the conservative group formerly known as Morality in Media that has spent the past decade trying to rebrand itself as a feminist organization—is a major driver of these laws and, more generally, the idea that we can “end demand” for prostitution.
NCOSE tends to focus on salacious stories of people violently forced into prostitution and portray all sex buyers as people complicit in committing “atrocities.” The group and its allies make it very hard for politicians or anyone to speak out against harsher penalties for sex buyers, even though the vast majority of sex buying situations look nothing like the horror stories they blast out in support of them.
Sen. Kamala Harris is rising in the polls after dramatically confronting former Vice President Joe Biden during the Democratic primary debate about his opposition to federally mandated busing for desegregation.
The following week, however, Harris backed away from saying that busing should always be federally mandated, calling it just one “tool that is in the toolbox” for school districts to use. When asked to clarify whether she would support federal mandates for busing, she said: “I believe that any tool that is in the toolbox should be considered by a school district.” But Biden’s poll numbers are falling as a result of Harris’s theatrical attack.
Harris, who served as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and California attorney general from 2011 to 2017, describes herself as a “progressive prosecutor.” Harris’s prosecutorial record, however, is far from progressive.
Through her apologia for egregious prosecutorial misconduct, her refusal to allow DNA testing for a probably innocent death row inmate, her opposition to legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to independently investigate police shootings and more, she has made a significant contribution to the sordid history of injustice she decries.
The governor of Louisiana has vetoed a bill that would have allowed him and future governors to issue pardons for people with past marijuana convictions.
Gov. Jeff Landry (R) rejected the legislation on Wednesday, about a month after it was approved in the legislature. It remains to be seen what he will do with separate proposals to decriminalize cannabis paraphernalia and regulate hemp products that have also been sent to his desk.
The pardon bill from Rep. Delisha Boyd (D) would have made people convicted of cannabis possession eligible for a gubernatorial pardon after paying all court costs associated with the offense, without the need for a recommendation from the Board of Pardons.
Individuals could have only received a pardon for their first possession offense, and anyone “who received such pardon shall not be entitled to receive another pardon by the governor pursuant to this Section,” the legislation says.
Kevin Caldwell, Southeast legislative manager for the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), said his organization is “saddened” by the governor’s veto of the bill.
“This legislation would have granted him the authority to pardon tens of thousands Louisianans who have a cannabis conviction on their records,” he told Marijuana Moment in an email. “This is a missed opportunity to help everyday citizens better their lives and economic opportunities.”
“This legislation was always about improving opportunities,” Caldwell added. “The strong bipartisan support this legislation achieved is a testament to the level of support sensible cannabis policy has in Louisiana.”
Meanwhile, the governor still has several other cannabis bills pending action.
Hellbound and Down 
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