Tag: prison

Wanna Know the Downside of Diversity? Look at the Prison System.

Prison is a deeply segregated environment. It’s expected that the whites stay with the whites, the blacks with the blacks, the Latinos with the Latinos, and never should they mix.

So Blagojevich met with the leaders of the Aryan prison gang and ceded to some of their demands: He wouldn’t sit with the blacks or Latinos anymore and agreed to hang with the whites. He didn’t like it, but he did it.

“And then they told me something which I respected,” Blagojevich told Rogan. “They said, look, you’re not in the real world anymore. This is not a place where you could be a civil rights advocate or a civil rights activist. This is a prison. You don’t have the same rights here that you have out there. …So, if you’re gonna sit with somebody outside your race in the chow hall, that’s a direct affront to us and there are measures that we can take to make sure that you don’t do those sorts of things. And I respected the fact that they said it was to keep order, and it was the culture, and pretty much everybody in the prison system accepts it anyway.”

According to the Aryan gang leader, segregation is what kept people safe.

It’s curious, isn’t it? Outside of prison, we keep hearing that diversity is our greatest strength — and to be fair, sometimes it is. Sometimes, when diverse skill sets converge, the sum total is exponentially greater than all the individual parts.

But sometimes, diversity leads to wars, violence, hatred, and death. Even in a tightly controlled, highly regimented place like a prison.

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Bodycam footage shows New York state correction officers beating prisoner to death

On Friday, the New York state attorney general’s office released video footage showing correction officers at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica, New York, beating to death a handcuffed inmate, 43-year-old Robert Brooks.

The bodycams of four of the killers recorded the horrific incident, which has been broadly viewed in the United States and internationally. He was pronounced dead the next day. Preliminary autopsy findings indicate that he died from asphyxiation due to neck compression.

Thirteen correction officers and a prison nurse have been terminated from their jobs for the killing. The FBI and the state attorney general’s office are investigating the incident, although as of this writing charges have not been brought against the guards.

In lying and insincere public statements, prominent state officials have expressed shock and horror at the killing. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said she was “outraged and horrified after seeing footage of the senseless killing.” New York state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) head Daniel Martuscello told the media, “This type of behavior cannot be normalized, and I will not allow it to be within DOCCS.”

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Women Allegedly Raped in Prison by Trans-Identifying Inmate Will Have To Refer to Attacker as ‘She/Her’

Women who allege they were raped in a California prison by a biological male claiming to be transgender will be compelled to refer to the defendant using she/her pronouns, a Madera County judge ruled last week, further complicating a case centered on a crime that was emboldened from the outset by the government.

Tremaine Carroll allegedly raped multiple inmates while at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla after securing placement there by self-identifying as transgender. The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, which took effect in January 2021, allows California inmates to be placed in a facility corresponding with the sex they say they are. Under the law, a prisoner need not be on hormones, have had surgery, or undergo a psychological evaluation to be approved. The government considers their testimony sufficient.

In 1990, Carroll was charged with three counts of kidnapping for ransom, two counts of robbery, and three counts of oral copulation in concert by force, ultimately pleading guilty to two counts of kidnapping. Several years later, Carroll was sentenced to 25 years to life under California’s three-strike law after acting as a getaway driver in a robbery.

“After his first cellmate became pregnant and was moved to Los Angeles, two other cellmates of his had complained that he had raped them,” Madera County District Attorney Sally Moreno told the local ABC affiliate. One of those cellmates says Carroll attacked her while she was in the shower. “This is a particular issue in this case because it’s confusing to the jury,” Moreno added. “In California, rape is a crime that has to be accomplished by a man.”

It may be disorienting to the alleged victims, as well, who will be vulnerable to speech policing from the judge—or directly from Carroll, their alleged rapist, who has opted for self-representation. Charged with two counts of rape and one count of dissuading a witness from testifying, Carroll has since been transferred to Salinas Valley State Prison, a men’s facility.

Prison rape is sadly a problem that attracts limited public outrage and is by no means constrained to women’s prisons. Though precise statistics are hard to track, as such assaults sometimes go unreported, a 2012 report from the Justice Department estimated that over 200,000 inmates were sexually abused behind bars in one year alone. Many of those occur in men’s prisons or happen to women at the hands of government employees. Those cases matter just as much.

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Kansas Governor Frees First-Time Marijuana Offender Sentenced To More Than Seven Years In Prison

A Kansas court said Deshaun Durham was supposed to serve more than seven years in prison for a first-time marijuana offense.

Durham tried to sway the state’s Prison Review Board to recommend clemency, and the board denied his application.

But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) overruled the board’s decision November 6 and commuted Durham’s sentence. Friday, he walked out of the Hutchinson prison where he had spent the last two-and-a-half years.

Durham, of Manhattan, was arrested as a 20 year old in 2020 for possession of more than two pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute. He had no criminal history and was later sentenced to 92 months. In the roughly two years between his arrest and sentencing, Durham worked as a Chinese food delivery driver and stayed out of trouble.

Prison changed him, he said.

Durham said he saw “things I’m going to carry with me for the rest of my life.”

On the outside, he felt people saw him as just a criminal. Inside prison, he wasn’t criminal enough.

“He said, ‘I’m losing myself,’” recalled his mother, Brandi Davis.

“To me it was like, ‘Wow, this kid has shown he can make the right choices, and they still thought he needed to be imprisoned for eight years,’” Davis said.

While Durham was serving his sentence, Davis spent her days advocating for his release. She joined with the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit drug policy reform organization, to pursue clemency.

Barry Grissom, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas under the Obama administration, represented Durham through his work as legal counsel for the Last Prisoner Project. Durham’s plight isn’t new in Kansas, he said in a news release on the day of Durham’s release.

He said Kansas ought to decriminalize marijuana possession, use and production and craft public policies that regulate and tax it like alcohol.

“To fail to do otherwise means taxpayer dollars are wasted on investigation, interdiction, prosecution and incarceration of individuals, thereby depriving law enforcement from utilizing those funds for more meaningful law enforcement measures to keep us safe in our communities,” Grissom said

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New York City’s Push to Ban Mail at Rikers Was Based on Drug Test Kits With an 85 Percent Error Rate

In 2022, former New York City Department of Corrections Commissioner Louis Molina testified before the city council about the flood of fentanyl coming into Rikers Island, the city’s infamous jail complex.

“How does fentanyl get into our jails?” he asked. “The short answer is that most of it enters in letters and packages laced with fentanyl, literally soaked in the drug, and mailed to people in custody.”

To illustrate the problem, Molina had a powerful prop: A child’s drawing of a reindeer that had been mailed to a Rikers Island inmate and tested positive for fentanyl. It was because of letters like this, Molina explained, that his department was proposing ending delivery of physical letters to jail inmates and instead sending them scanned and digitized copies.

There was only one problem: The field test used on that reindeer drawing wasn’t reliable, and a drug lab would later invalidate the results. Rudolph was clean.

In fact, a report released Wednesday by the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) found that, when it sent 71 pieces of mail that tested presumptive positive for fentanyl to a drug lab for verification, 85 percent of the items came back negative, including the reindeer drawing.

The DOI concluded that “field tests are not reliable, particularly with respect to the identification of fentanyl in items such as books, clothing, greeting cards and other materials sent through the mail.”

The basis for the DOC’s proposed policy ending physical mail delivery to inmates was a falsehood, and not a particularly good one. The problems with these drug field tests are well known: They’ve resulted in hundreds of documented cases of wrongful arrests around the country, and several state prison systems, including New York’s, have suspended their use.

The test kits use instant color reactions to indicate the presence of certain compounds found in illegal drugs, but those same compounds are also found in dozens of known licit substances. Over the years, police officers have arrested and jailed innocent people after drug field kits returned presumptive positive results on bird poop, donut glaze, cotton candy, and sand from inside a stress ball. 

A study published earlier this year by the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania estimated that these tests may result in up to 30,000 wrongful arrests a year.

The DOI says reliance on these field tests led officials to incorrectly focus on mail instead of other, more obvious, vectors for contraband.

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Justice Department Finds ‘Dehumanizing’ Filth and Violence at Atlanta Jail Where Man Died Covered in Bugs

Two years after a mentally ill man died malnourished and covered in insects in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, a Justice Department investigation has found that man’s death was only one of a string of fatalities due to pervasive unconstitutional conditions at the jail.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released a report Thursday concluding that the Fulton County Jail, which handles pre-trial detention for most of Atlanta, subjects incarcerated people to pest infestations and malnourishment, excessive force from correctional officers, and fails to protect them from rampant violence and sexual assaults from other inmates. The report found that these conditions violate the Eighth and 14th Amendments, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The Justice Department launched the civil rights investigation in the wake of the 2022 death of Lashawn Thompson. Thompson, a 35-year-old man with schizophrenia, had been incarcerated at the Fulton County Jail for three months on a misdemeanor battery charge when he was found dead in an extremely filthy cell. Thompson’s body was covered in lice, bedbugs, and lesions. An independent autopsy listed his cause of death as “severe neglect,” noting Thompson was suffering from a “severe body insect infestation.”

In a press statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thompson’s “horrific death was symptomatic of a pattern of dangerous and dehumanizing conditions in the Fulton County Jail.”

“The Justice Department’s report concluded that Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the Jail,” Garland said. “As a result, people incarcerated in the Fulton County Jail suffered harms from pest infestation and malnourishment and were put at substantial risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people—including homicides, stabbings and sexual abuse.”

Justice Department investigators reported widespread infestations of mice, roaches, bedbugs, lice, and scabies.

In addition to being unsanitary, the jail’s kitchen also fails to adequately feed detainees. The report notes that jail medical staff determined in 2022 that 90 percent of the people in the mental health unit where Thompson died were “significantly malnourished with obvious muscle wasting.”

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Warden Admits Biden-Harris DOJ Has Illegally Imprisoned Steve Bannon Since October 19

The Tennessee Star on Monday obtained a letter sent by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to attorneys representing Steve Bannon, wherein the federal agency acknowledged it is holding the former White House chief strategist in violation of the First Step Act (FSA) of 2018, as Bannon accrued 10 days of good time credit toward an early release:

To date, Mr. Bannon has earned 10 First Step Act (“FSA”) time credits. These credits would typically be applied toward early transfer to supervision pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 3624 (g) (3). However, Mr. Bannon does not have a term of supervision following his term of imprisonment. Thus, his 10 FSA time credits can only be applied toward prerelease custody placement in a Residential Reentry Center or on home confinement.”

According to attorney R. Trent McCotter, who represents Bannon, “Those credits mean that Mr. Bannon could have been released to home confinement two days ago on October 19, 2024 (i.e., 10 days before the end of his sentence) – yet the BOP declined to do so, citing its view that there is ‘insufficient time’ remaining on Mr. Bannon’s sentence ‘to process’ the referral to home confinement.”

Bannon’s attorneys filed the letter as part of an effort to secure an earlier release but it was sent to Bannon’s lawyers by the Acting Warden at the Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) in Danbury, Connecticut, where Bannon is serving a four-month sentence after he was convicted in 2022 for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena from the House select committee that investigated January 6.

Acting Warden Darek Puzio said that “Mr. Bannon has earned 10 First Step Act (“FSA”) time credits,” which the warden additionally acknowledged “would typically be applied toward early transfer to supervision,” but noted that Bannon was not sentenced to any form of supervised release.

According to Puzio, this means Bannon can only use his credits, which the BOP typically calls good time credits, to secure a transfer to home confinement for the remainder of his sentence. However, the federal official claimed there is insufficient time left in Bannon’s sentence to arrange this and that the BOP department responsible for such arrangements “will not accept placements under 30 days.”

While confirming FCI Danbury and the BOP are willfully ignoring the good time credit accrued by Bannon, the warden nonetheless acknowledged the former Trump adviser “will be released on his full-term release date of October 29, 2024.”

In a legal filing containing the letter, Bannon’s attorneys argued that Puzio’s admission means the court should order Bannon “released immediately.”

This acknowledgment by Puzio and the BOP follows last week’s statement by Bannon that the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) was illegally holding him through its abandonment of the landmark civil justice reform signed into law by former President Donald Trump.

“The Harris Bureau of Prisons is illegally holding me past my legal release date–trying to eliminate one of President Trump’s strongest advocates–these criminals reek of desperation,” said Bannon in a statement last week to The National Pulse.

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These Texas Inmates Wrote a Book. Then the Prison System Banned It.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has banned yet another book in its prisons. Except this time, it was written by inmates themselves.

TEXAS LETTERS, an ongoing anthology of letters written by inmates detailing their experiences with solitary confinement, will no longer be accessible to those in custody. The publisher and editor, Damascus James, says he received a letter from the TDCJ in July apprising him of the decision.

James describes the project on his website as a work that “explores the loss of sanity, humanness, and, oftentimes, hope through the personal writings” of inmates who have spent months, years, and sometimes even decades in solitary confinement. Much of the collection features portrayals of violence from correction officers and grueling accounts of the living conditions within solitary confinement cells. 

Studies on the long-term effects of solitary confinement attest to the brutal nature described in many of the letters. Half of all suicides in prisons and jails occur in solitary confinement, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal. Even just experiencing solitary confinement at any time during incarceration increased the chances of dying within the first year of release by 24 percent.

The banning of TEXAS LETTERS was not a surprise for James. Not only does the Texas prison authority have a reputation for book banning but also for trying to evade the term solitary confinement altogether by instead using alternative phrases.

“They’ve euphemized torture, calling it ‘administrative segregation’ and ‘restrictive housing’ for years in an effort to conceal the harsh realities of torturous isolation for thousands of people,” James tells Reason. The ban “was clearly an attempt to silence the voices of those who have suffered the torture of solitary confinement.” 

More than 10,000 books are currently banned from Texas prisons. TEXAS LETTERS vol. 1 and vol. 2 join a long list of prohibited material, which includes the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Color Purple, Freakonomics, and even Where’s Waldo? Santa Spectacular. Notable omissions include books such as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, as well as two books by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. 

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Harris Endorsed Transgender Operations For Prisoners In Bret Baier’s Fox News Interview

Vice President Kamala Harris told Fox News host Bret Baier she would “follow the law” when asked about her support for prisoner “sex change” surgeries. According to the law under the Biden-Harris administration, trans-identifying prisoners could be entitled to taxpayer dollars for the procedures.

On Wednesday, Baier presented Harris with an ad from former President Donald Trump’s campaign airing the then-California senator’s endorsement of trans surgeries for prison inmates. During a sit-down interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) in 2019, Harris spoke about her time as attorney general when she “made sure that they changed the policy in the state of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and need,” including requested surgery.

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Israeli Torture Chambers Aren’t New. They Provoked October 7

For many years I lived just up the road from Megiddo prison in northern Israel, where new film of Israeli guards torturing Palestinians en masse has been published by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. I drove past Megiddo prison on hundreds of occasions. Over time I came to barely notice the squat grey buildings, surrounded by watch towers and razor wire.

There are several large prisons like Megiddo in Israel’s north. It is where Palestinians end up after they have been seized from their homes, often in the middle of the night. Israel, and the western media, say these Palestinians have been “arrested”, as though Israel is enforcing some kind of legitimate legal procedure over oppressed subjects – or rather objects – of its occupation. In truth, these Palestinians have been kidnapped.

The prisons are invariably located close to major roads in Israel, presumably because Israelis find it reassuring to know Palestinians are being locked up in such large numbers. (As an aside, I should mention that transferring prisoners out of occupied territory into the occupier’s territory is a war crime. But let that pass.)

Even before the mass round-ups of the past 11 months, the Palestinian Authority estimated that 800,000 Palestinians – or 40 per cent of the male population – had spent time in an Israeli prison. Many had never been charged with any crime and had never received a trial. Not that that would make any difference – the conviction rate of Palestinians in Israel’s military courts is near 100 per cent. There is no such thing as an innocent Palestinian, it seems.

Rather, imprisonment is a kind of terrifying rite of passage that has been endured by generations of Palestinians, one required of them by the bureaucracy managing Israel’s apartheid-occupation system.

Torture, even of children, has been routine in these prisons since the occupation began nearly 60 years ago, as Israeli human rights groups have been regularly documenting.

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