Tag: prison

Federal Judge Rules Inmate Death Records Can Remain Secret Because They Could Embarrass Prison Officials

In response to a public records lawsuit filed by the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason, a federal judge has ruled the U.S. government can hide findings about whether people who died in federal prison received adequate medical care, partly out of fear that those records could be used to criticize prison officials.

U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Christopher R. Cooper issued an opinion in August that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was largely not required to disclose redacted information from mortality reviews of in-custody deaths in two federal women’s prisons that have been the subject of numerous accusations of medical neglect.

In addition to finding that the mortality reviews were part of the BOP’s decision-making process, Cooper wrote that the BOP had successfully demonstrated that releasing the records would result in foreseeable harm to the agency. The judge wrote that a declaration from a BOP official credibly established that the mortality reviews could be used to “criticize” or “ridicule” the agency. 

“And, as described above, she notes that the members of the Mortality Review Committee would be ‘deter[red] . . . from acknowledging mistakes’ if they feared those mistakes would be publicized,” Cooper continued.

Reason Foundation, represented by the law office of Deborah Golden, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last year against the BOP seeking mortality reviews of in-custody deaths at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama, and FMC Carswell, a federal prison in Texas that is the only medical center for incarcerated women in the BOP system.

Whenever a federal inmate dies, a committee reviews the circumstances and whether BOP policies were violated. The committee then gives recommendations on how care could have been improved. That information could reveal whether the BOP is aware of medical neglect within its walls and how bad the problem is.

Reason reported in 2020 on allegations of fatal medical neglect inside FCI Aliceville. Numerous current and former inmates, as well as their families, said in interviews, desperate letters, and lawsuits that women inside FCI Aliceville faced disastrous delays in health care. They described monthslong waits for doctor appointments and routine procedures, skepticism and retaliation from staff, and terrible pain and fear.

Seeking to learn more, Reason filed a FOIA request in May 2020 for inmate mortality reviews at FCI Aliceville, as well as FMC Carswell. 

When the BOP finally released mortality reviews from FMC Carswell three years later, it redacted any information that would indicate if there was substandard care, such as the review committee’s findings on the timeliness and appropriateness of care; problems encountered during the medical emergency; whether there was adequate documentation in the patient’s medical files; and whether the patient received appropriate care per the BOP’s policies.

The BOP withheld that information under exemption b(5) of the FOIA, which protects “predecisional” or deliberative communications between officials. The National Security Archive dubbed it the “withhold it because you want to” exemption.

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Trans prisoners to get wigs, prosthetic penises and breasts under Democrat bill

Trans prisoners in New York City will have access to ‘gender-affirming’ devices such as prosthetic penises and breasts under a new bill proposed by a Democratic lawmaker.

Councilwoman Crystal Hudson’s bill would also give guards at NYC prisons access to items like breast binders, wigs and tucking undergarments, as first reported by the New York Post. 

Hudson is expected to introduce the bill during Thursdays city council meeting.

The legislation is backed by fellow Democratic councilmembers Farah N. Louis, Chi A. Ossé.

‘This bill would establish a process for people in custody to obtain wigs, hair extensions, chest binders, tucking undergarments or gaffs, prosthetics, or other similar items or medical devices that are used by individuals to affirm their self-determined gender identity,’ according to the NYC Council website.

‘The bill also requires Department of Correction staff to have access to gender-affirming items or medical devices while at work.’

According to the bill, it would be up to the NYC Department of Correction to decide who foots the bill for the gender-affirming care. 

Prosthetic penises are sold on Amazon for about $130 while tucking undergarments go for about $15 and silicone breasts for $39. 

DailyMail.com has reached out to Hudson’s office for comment on the bill. 

According to her website, Hudson ‘was first elected in 2021 and made history as one of the first out gay Black women ever elected in New York City.’

The DOC confirmed to DailyMail.com that began quietly providing chest binders to detainees last year after apparently receiving them ‘as a donation.’

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Democrats Abandoned Their Anti-Death Penalty Stance. Those on Federal Death Row May Pay the Price.

When the Rev. Al Sharpton took the stage to introduce members of the Exonerated Five on the last night of the Democratic National Convention, it was, for the briefest moment, a nod toward a reality that the DNC had otherwise aggressively avoided: the myriad injustices of our criminal legal system.

“Thirty-five years ago my friends and I were in prison for crimes we didn’t commit,” Korey Wise said. As teenagers, Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Antron McCray were wrongly arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned for the brutal rape of a jogger in Central Park. Donald Trump notoriously spent tens of thousands of dollars on full-page ads in the New York Times calling to bring back the death penalty. “Our youth was stolen from us,” Wise said. “Every day as we walked into courtroom, people screamed at us, threatened us because of Donald Trump.”

“He wanted us dead,” Salaam, now a New York City Council member, said. Now in their late 40s and early 50s, the men once known as the Central Park Five stood as a living testament both to Trump’s cruelty and the futures he sought to crush.

The moment was powerful. But it also exposed a tension that had been present throughout the entire convention. All week, the criminal justice system — and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s role in it — had been cast as a force for good: a source of protection and justice for society’s vulnerable. Harris was praised by a parade of sheriffs, state attorneys general, and members of the U.S. security state as the leader who will keep Americans safe. “Crime will keep going down when we put a prosecutor in the White House instead of a convicted felon,” President Joe Biden said in his speech on Monday.

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UK government plans to release more prisoners early. Is this part of the strategy to impose a One World Government?

On Tuesday, The Telegraph reported that the number of spare prison places in male jails has fallen to just 100.

It is the closest the prison service has come to running out of space in male jails, although officials at the Ministry of Justice (“MoJ”) were hoping that they would not have to introduce further emergency measures.

 “The MoJ has already activated Operation Early Dawn, under which defendants are kept in police cells until prison spaces become available.  The problems have been worsened by a surge in arrests over the Bank Holiday weekend, including 330 at the Notting Hill Carnival in west London,” The Telegraph said.

Sources told The Telegraph that MoJ officials are confident they will be able to manage the situation without needing to implement further emergency measures, known as Operation Brinker.

Operation Brinker is a contingency plan that has never been used before. Under this plan, police forces would be required to hold suspects in their cells for a longer period than under the current Operation Early Dawn. This could potentially mean holding them overnight and even beyond 24 hours before they can be sent to court. It would involve operating a “one-in, one-out system,” which limits intake to the available space each day.

Further into The Telegraph’s article is the important part that has the most societal impact and possibly long-term harm: “Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, has introduced an early release scheme from 10 September that will see thousands freed 40 per cent of the way through their sentence, rather than halfway … It is expected to reduce the prison population by some 5,500.”

It is claimed that the early release programme will only apply to prisoners serving sentences for non-violent crimes.  However, this refers to offenders with longer sentences. It will exclude sexual offenders and violent offenders with sentences of 4 years or more. So, will violent and sex offenders sentenced to less than four years be eligible?

Some of these prisoners are being released early to make room for people who posted or reposted memes or comments on social media, people who shouldn’t be sent to jail in the first place.  Apart from perjury, bearing false witness under oath in a judicial proceeding, words and thoughts are not crimes.  Crimes are an act.  An act that causes damage to or loss of property, and harm to or loss of life.

However, the Labour government is using the law to persecute speech with which it doesn’t approve.

Take the case of Bernadette Spofforth (“Bernie”), a 55-year-old mother of three, who reposted that the suspect of the Southport murderous attack was a man called Ali Al-Shakati.  A man who was on an MI6 watchlist and had arrived in the UK by boat last year.  She prefixed this information with “if this is true” and deleted the tweet within hours, the minute she realised it was false information.  Nonetheless, she was arrested “on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred” and “false communication.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bernie has been outspoken about the UK government’s false narratives on covid and other topics, and is often described as an “anti-lockdown campaigner.”

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UK to release criminals early from jail to accommodate ‘keyboard warriors,’ protesters arrested after riots over school girl murders

Britain’s prisons are set to release prisoners in order to make room for those locked up due to the recent riots that took place after three school girls were stabbed to death by the son of Rwandan immigrants. Many of those who are facing prison terms were convicted over social media posts. Some 460 people have been arrested due to the riots so far. 

“The UK is turning into a police state,” Elon Musk said. “Keyboard warriors” are facing specific scrutiny from the judiciary, with one man facing jail time for posts said to have “instigated” riots. A 53-year-old woman who posted “burn the mosque down” and is the only caretaker for her disabled husband was sentenced to 15 months in prison. 12-year-old boys are also among those convicted.

The prisoner release plan, called Operation Early Dawn, was “triggered for a week in March,” The Times reports, and it requires police to release suspects on bail if confinement space is lacking. In this case, the plan will be enacted in the North East and Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire, and Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire regions.

The riots are being blamed for the expansion of these measures and it’s believed, per a senior government source cited by The Times, that “the large numbers of people imprisoned for their role in the riots will probably lead to emergency early release measures staying in place for longer than expected.” 567 new prison cells have been opened ahead of schedule to cope with the demand.

“From September 10, thousands of prisoners will start being released 40 percent of the way through their sentence as part of the emergency measures announced last month,” The Times reports.

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Newly Released Footage Proves That Gershkovich & Whelan Were Indeed American Spies

This debunks the fake news alleging that they were “innocent Americans taken hostage by Russia”.

The US Government (USG) insisted throughout the entire time of Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan’s imprisonment in Russia on espionage charges that these two were “wrongfully detained”, but newly released footage from the FSB proves that they were indeed American spies. Folks can view the footage of Gershkovich here and Whelan here, both of which have a brief video analysis from RT’s Murad Gazdiev embedded at the bottom that’s also worth watching to place everything into context.

Gershkovich’s includes audio which proves that he knew that he was soliciting classified defense secrets on behalf of the Wall Street Journal and then planned to mislead their readers by claiming that they only spoke to an “anonymous source” without mentioning that they also obtained documents about this. He also tried hiding the flash drive that he obtained during his meeting with his source in a Yekaterinburg restaurant when he was arrested, which the video specifically highlights to draw attention to.

As for Whelan, there’s no audio in his video but it shows him receiving a flash drive in a hotel bathroom from a friend who he claimed during his interrogation was allegedly giving him pictures of churches. RT’s brief analytical video amusingly mocks his story as absurd. After all, Gazdiev reminded everyone that friends share pictures over email or text, not via flash drives in hotel bathrooms. Just like Gershkovich, he also obviously knew that he was illegally soliciting classified secrets, in this case about FSB officers.

Nevertheless, CNN promptly spun this newly released footage as alleged evidence of “entrapment”, completely ignoring the fact that both men knowingly accepted flash drives from their Russian sources that they were told contained classified information about their host country’s national security. It’s altogether a very shoddy information product that reeks of desperation to distract from the visual evidence that those two were literally caught red-handed receiving Russian state secrets.

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Historic US-Russia prisoner swap exposes CIA support for Chechen jihad

Western media focused intently on a Russian “murderer” released in the exchange with Washington, but whitewashed the record of his target – a Chechen militant now confirmed as a CIA asset.

August 1 saw the largest prisoner exchange between Moscow and Washington since the end of the Cold War. Among those freed were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US marine Paul Whelan, who were each serving 16 year sentences for espionage.

In the other direction, Russian opposition activists jailed for criticism of the so-called “special military operation” have now resettled in Western countries. This includes politician Ilya Yashin, sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in December 2022. At a press conference in Bonn, Germany on August 2, he described the feeling of being beside “the wonderful Rhine river”, when just a week earlier he was imprisoned in Siberia, as “really surreal.” But Yashin claimed that his release was difficult to personally accept, “because a murderer was free.”

He referred here to Vadim Krasikov, a Russian convicted of killing the Georgian-born Chechen militant Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin in August 2019, who was also released as part of the deal. He was reportedly of extremely high value to the Kremlin. In a February 2024 interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed trading Gershkovich for an unnamed Russian “patriot” imprisoned in a “US-allied country” for “liquidating a bandit.” 

Krasikov was that “patriot”, and Khangoshvili that “bandit.” In 2004, Khangoshvili led a lethal guerilla operation that killed four Russian soldiers. Krasikov was tasked by the Russian state with serving the Chechen justice, cutting him down in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019. 

While the Russian operative has been subject of intense mainstream interest since the swap, the media has largely whitewashed Khangoshvili’s background. To the extent he was mentioned at all, he was laconically characterized as a “Chechen militant,” or more favorably, as a “dissident.” For some anti-Russian ideologues, the Western media’s failure to completely lionize Khangoshvili demanded a rebuke. Giorgi Kandelaki, formerly a Georgian lawmaker with the United National Movement of the now-imprisoned former President and US posterboy Mikheil Saakashvili, was so repulsed he took to ‘X’ to correct the record.

Kandelaki seethed that Khangoshvili was, in fact, a patriotic Georgian citizen and state “security agent.” What’s more, he was “part of US-Georgian security cooperation,” and “highly respected by the CIA.” The furious former MP suggested Khangoshvili “was assassinated in part because he loyally served” Tbilisi at a time when it was an effective US colony under the puppet Saakashvili’s rule. 

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Some Swapped Prisoners Were Likely ‘On CIA Payroll’

The operation to swap 26 prisoners from seven countries took place in Ankara (Turkiye) on Thursday. As a result, eight Russian citizens, detained and imprisoned in several NATO countries, along with their minor children, were returned to their homeland.

All implications are that some of the people involved in the recent prisoner swap between Moscow and several Western countries were CIA espionage assets, Scott Ritter has told Sputnik.

The exchange that occurred on August 1 appears to have been “a deal hashed out between the Russian secret services and the American CIA,” noted the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-UN weapons inspector.

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Kremlin Reveals Details of Prisoner Swap With Western Countries

Negotiations for the Russian-US prisoner exchange were primarily conducted between Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the CIA, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

The FSB confirmed on Thursday that eight Russians detained and held in custody in a number of NATO countries had been returned home.

A plane carrying the freed prisoners arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo-2 airport from Ankara late on Thursday, where they were greeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia, in turn, has released 16 people, including seven Russians and five German citizens.

“Negotiations for this complex exchange were conducted through the FSB and CIA. This was the main channel through which the agreement was reached,” Peskov told journalists.

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The Biden Administration’s Prisoner Swap With Russia Was Ridiculously Lopsided

The Biden administration’s prisoner swap with Russia is being touted by the corporate press as “historic,” and in a way it is. Nothing like this, on this scale, has happened since the Cold War. But the swap is as lopsided as it is historic.

All Americans should welcome the release of our three unjustly imprisoned compatriots: Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. They were among the 16 western prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for eight Russian nationals released by the U.S. and allies.

But this wasn’t a Cold War-era prisoner swap of the kind immortalized in the Oscar-winning 2015 film “Bridge of Spies.” It was a dangerously uneven exchange that saw the release of a Russian assassin along with Russian spies and hackers, all of whom have committed serious crimes in western countries. Essentially, Moscow arrested a bunch of innocent western journalists and political dissidents, and then used them as bargaining chips to secure the release of its own killers, criminals, and spies.

Among the Russians released from western prisons, for example, was Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who in 2019 killed a Chechen separatist commander in broad daylight in a park in central Berlin. Krasikov, who shot his victim twice with a Glock 26 and then threw it in a river, was sentenced to life in prison in 2021. At the time, German officials said he was a member of the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic spy agency.

Also released was suspected F.S.B. agent Vadim Konoshchenok, arrested in 2022 on espionage charges in Estonia and extradited to the U.S. He was accused of conspiring to obtain military-grade technologies from U.S. companies and pass them to Moscow.

The prisoner swap recalls the 2014 Bowe Bergdahl affair under the Obama administration. Bergdahl was a U.S. Army soldier who, disillusioned with the war in Afghanistan, abandoned his post in 2009 and was subsequently captured by the Taliban and held as a hostage. In 2014, the Taliban agreed to free him in exchange for five top Taliban officials being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including army chief of staff and deputy minister of intelligence. One of them, Abdul Haq Wasiq, is currently the head of intelligence for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the internationally unrecognized name of the Taliban regime.

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