Tag: prison

Jailed German neo-Nazi changes gender in apparent attempt to go to women’s prison over fear of ‘discrimination’

A German neo-Nazi who was imprisoned for inciting hatred has legally changed his name and gender in an apparent attempt to get transferred to a women’s prison, citing fear of “discrimination.”

Sven Liebich, 53, is in the process of appealing the 18-month jail sentence he’s been serving in a men’s prison in Saxony, per the New York Post. The felon, who has changed his name to Marla-Svenja Liebich, said “I am afraid of discrimination” in a statement.

Despite the legal gender change, Liebich hasn’t changed appearance and has even grown his beard out longer. Local German news outlets have stated that he only made the move to get transferred to a female-only prison, however officials have stated that his gender change does not guarantee relocation.

“There is no automatic guarantee that a man will be sent to a women’s prison after changing his gender and name,” a spokesperson for the local prosecutor’s office said. “In each case, there will be an individual review.”

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Connecticut Parole Board Pardons Illegal Migrant Pedophile Who Says He Might Re-Offend

A convicted pedophile and illegal migrant was released from a Connecticut prison last month after his sympathetic parole board mulled how to best help him avoid deportation.

The Trump administration, the parole board decided, would not be able to get its act together fast enough to deport the illegal migrant pedophile before his 30-day immigration detainer runs out. “They can’t elect a Speaker of the House,” one board member scoffed.

Guerino Magloire, 52, was serving five years in prison for felony second degree sexual assault against a child between 13 and 15 years old. He was convicted of sexually assaulting the child on March 11, 2020, just as pandemic lockdowns were starting, and he was sentenced in November the next year.

During his parole hearing on New Year’s Eve, Magloire said he cannot promise he will not offend again.

“I can’t say I promise that it’s not going to happen because that’s not always a thing, when you say, ‘Oh I promise,’” Magloire told the parole board. “No, I’m not going to say I promise, but I will definitely try to do my best, my best to keep myself away from situations like that again.”

Magloire scored as a moderate to high risk on an evaluation used to predict whether a male sexual offender will reoffend.

Despite those red flags, the parole board released him that day from Carl Robinson Correctional Institution north of Hartford.

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O’Keefe Media Group Releases Bureau of Prisons Documents Showing Policy Change Downgrading Security Classification of Child Porn Offenders from “High Severity” to “Low Severity” – Terrorists Downgraded Too!

James O’Keefe has revealed documents, which he received from a “high-level” Bureau of Prisons whistleblower, showing the Bureau’s new proposed policies that downgrade inmate security classifications for inmates convicted of child pornography offenses and terrorists.

The internal labor relations draft, sent by Chief Labor Relations Officer Christopher Wade, outlines several proposed changes to security designation, custody classification, and offense severity scores.

“A classification system is necessary to place each inmate in the most appropriate security level institution to manage their risk of misconduct, to meet their program needs, and to be consistent with the Bureau’s mission to ensure public safety,” one of the documents reads.

The new policy changes the classification of Child Pornography offenses from a “High Severity Offense to a Low Severity Offense.”

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US System of Prison Injustice

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.

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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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