Tag: prison

Paedophile jailed for 25 years complains prison guards have lost his teddy bear

A convicted paedophile has complained from behind bars that prison guards have ‘lost’ his teddy bear.

Shane Medhurst was jailed for 25 years last June after being found guilty of 14 counts of child sex abuse.

Among the charges included two counts of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13.

Medhurst, 58, was jailed at Reading Crown Court, and is currently serving his sentence at the 1,100-capacity HMP High Down jail in Surrey.

The jail has two dedicated wings sex offenders, with around 400 inmates convicted of sex offences.

Writing in the latest edition of prisoner publication Inside Time, Medhurst said he was really ‘into arts and crafts’ and had started making his own teddy bears.

One in particular, which he called Mr Bear – a bright yellow bear with a blue and white striped outfit and a hat – was his ‘favourite’ and had taken him three weeks to make.

He said other teddies that he made had been sent to family and friends, and had loaned Mr Bear to the library inside the prison – but three weeks later he’d vanished.

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Minnesota Lawmaker Killer Suspect Asks for Special Accommodations

The ambiance of his prison cell leaves something to be desired, alleged killer Vance Luther Boelter told a court on Thursday.

Boelter is accused of killing former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, on June 14. He is also charged with having shot Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, about 90 minutes before the second crime, according to Fox News.

The shooter was allegedly dressed as a police officer and drove a car that was made to look like a law enforcement vehicle.

During Thursday’s hearing, Judge Douglas Micko set bail for the suspect at $5 million, according to the St. Cloud Times.

Boelter said he could not make that high of an amount.

“I’m looking forward to court and I’m looking forward to the truth and facts of the 14th to come before you,” he said.

“I think Minnesotans want to know what’s going on,” he added.

That drew a response from U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson: “As I said a couple weeks ago, this isn’t just a murder case, it’s a political assassination.”

Since he appears to be going back to jail, Boelter asked for a cell where the lights are not on all 24 hours per day, according to Fox News.

Boelter also asked for a pencil with which to take notes.

Micko said the prisoner’s accommodations are up to the jail, not the court.

His attorney, public defender Manny Atwal, has said Boelter’s cell at the Sherburne County Jail was lit 24 hours a day because Boelter was on a suicide watch.

Boelter has complained that his cell smells of feces from another cell, causing him to lose sleep, according to Atwal.

Sherburne County Sheriff Joel Brott called the claim “offensive and disgusting.”

“He is not in a hotel,” Brott replied, according to The New York Times.

“He’s in a jail, where a person belongs when they commit the heinous crimes he is accused of committing,” he said.

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Florida Invokes Emergency Powers to Build ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis invoked emergency powers on June 24 to clear the way for Alligator Alcatraz, a new illegal immigration detention center deep in the Everglades.

The plans for another complex to hold illegal immigrants apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and awaiting processing and deportation—were drafted and submitted by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) to the Department of Homeland Security and received Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s approval on June 23.

“Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed to deliver cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” Noem said on X.

“We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”

She said the facilities would be largely funded by FEMA’s Shelter and Services program, which she noted was used by former President Joe Biden’s administration to house illegal immigrants.

The site chosen was the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.

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Alleged co-conspirator in Palm Springs fertility clinic explosion dies in federal custody

A Washington state man accused of providing large amounts of chemicals to make explosives for last month’s bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs has died in federal custody, the U. S. Department of Justice confirmed.

Daniel Park, 32, was taken into custody earlier this month at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport after being deported from Poland, where he’d traveled four days after the bombing, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced. He was facing charges of conspiracy.

According to a statement from the U. S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons, Park was found unresponsive at approximately 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

“Responding employees initiated life-saving measures. Emergency medical services (EMS) were requested while life-saving efforts continued,” the statement said. “Mr. Park was transported by EMS to a local hospital and subsequently pronounced deceased by hospital personnel.”

Further details about the manner in which Park died were not immediately shared.

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Report: Biden Gave ‘Millions’ In Tax Dollars To ‘Soros-Backed NGO,’ Group Pushing Men In Women’s Prisons

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released a report “exposing the disastrous consequences” of Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) awarding millions in taxpayer-funded grants to two non-governmental organizations with “radical” agendas.

The report showcases how, as Grassley noted in a statement, the tax dollars Biden’s DOJ gave to the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) and Impact Justice funded “left-leaning agendas that ultimately put lives at risk.”

“This is just a small sampling of the grant programs scrutinized by the Justice Department, but an inspection of these recipients suggests potentially a much bigger problem in how the Justice Department historically has awarded its grant funds,” Grassley said in his introduction to the report.

According to the group’s website, Vera’s mission is to create programs to “end the criminalization and mass incarceration of people of color, immigrants, and people experiencing poverty.”

Vera “reportedly received $6.75 million in contracts from the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice” between 2022-2023, Grassley’s report reads, citing InfluenceWatch. In April, the Trump DOJ said it was terminating $5 million dollars worth of grants to the organization on the basis that its activity “no longer effectuate[s] the program goals or agency priorities,” Vera reported.

Later that month, Vera launched an “Emergency Justice Fund,” asking people to give them money directly.

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Federal judge temporarily orders prisons to provide ‘transgender’ therapy despite Trump order

Prisons that deny trans-identifying prisoners hormone therapy could be guilty of cruel and unusual punishment, according to the newest ruling of a federal judge against the Trump administration.

Senior Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a request from a group of trans-identifying prisoners on Tuesday for a temporary restraining order against a ban on hormone therapy.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons was ordered to provide the therapy to the group of trans-identifying prisoners as well as 2,000 other prisoners who were certified under the ruling as belonging to the same class who would suffer irreparable harm otherwise.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20 that banned federal funds for treatments provided “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

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New Israeli Law Allows Palestinians as Young as 12 to Be Imprisoned for Life

Agroup of UN human rights experts is raising alarm over a recently-passed Israeli law that allows children as young as 12 years old to be sentenced to life in prison, saying that the legislation is likely a violation of international human rights law.

The experts say that the law, passed late last year, is crafted specifically to target Palestinian children, as Israeli authorities often accuse Palestinian children of terrorism while not charging Israeli children the same way — one fixture of Israel’s apartheid system.

“[A]uthorizing up to life imprisonment for children as young as 12 years old is not consistent with international law,” the experts wrote in a statement this month. “Under [the Convention on the Rights of the Child], the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child must be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”

The statement was signed by UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestine territory, Francesca Albanese, as well as Ben Saul, special rapporteur on the promotion of human rights in counterterrorism; Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to education; and K.P. Ashwini, special rapporteur on racism and intolerance.

Israel often accuses children of terrorism for actions like throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or at cars, with Israeli forces killing many children for stone throwing over the decades and Israeli lawmakers passing a minimum sentence of three years for the act.

Israeli officials have also long framed all Palestinians, including children, as terrorists.

This has led to the detention and killing of huge numbers of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation. According to a recent report by Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), the proportion of children in administrative detention — meaning that they are being held without charges — has reached a record high amid Israel’s genocide.

Citing numbers from the Israeli Prison Service, DCIP reports that nearly 40 percent of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons are being held without charges. This amounts to 119 of the 323 imprisoned by Israeli authorities, which represents “both the highest number and the highest proportion” in DCIP’s records on administrative detention.

“These figures highlight Israel’s continued criminalization of Palestinian childhood and its deepening disregard for fundamental legal protections,” the group wrote, adding that children and their families are frequently forbidden from contacting their lawyers by Israeli authorities.

The Israeli Knesset has sought to further punish these families in another recent law condemned in the UN experts’ statement.

That law, passed last year, allows child welfare benefits to be taken away if children are convicted of terrorist offenses. Experts say that the legislation is “overbroad” and not backed by evidence that such a punishment would deter supposed terrorist acts.

“We note that Israeli law does not withdraw benefits from children convicted of other serious offences, suggesting that the Amendment does not legitimately aim to suspend benefits that may be unnecessary while the child is in detention, but serves an ulterior punitive purpose,” the experts wrote.

This legislation, too, is aimed at punishing Palestinian children and their families, experts say, and is likely a violation of international law.

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Shocking footage shows Saudi police beat women and girls inside secret prisons where families send ‘disobedient’ females to be locked away and punished for YEARS to break their spirit

Shocking footage obtained by MailOnline shows Saudi police beating women detained inside secretive facilities where families send ‘disobedient’ women and girls to be punished.

Women seen in the clip were said to be staging a peaceful sit-in protest over poor living conditions at their so-called ‘care home’ in Khamis Mushair, in Asir Province.

Security and police officers at the ‘Social Education Home for Girls’ are seen rushing in and hitting the woman; some as they lay helpless on the ground.

Women were seen being dragged by their hair, beaten with belts and sticks, and subjected to other forms of physical abuse.

The video, which caused outrage among rights activists in Saudi Arabia when it first circulated in 2022, re-emerged as former detainees bravely spoke out about their experiences held in ‘Dar al-Reaya’ facilities across the country.

Dr Maryam Aldossari, a Saudi academic at Royal Holloway, University of London, told MailOnline that despite recent reforms, many women remain held in these de facto prisons, unable to leave until a male guardian permits them.

She cited examples of women enduring horrifying conditions inside the facilities, some reportedly even moved to take their own lives due to alleged abuse.

‘It still exists,’ she warned. ‘We still know people who are there and God knows when they will leave.

‘They completely cut them [off]. There are cameras everywhere. If you misbehave you must go to these small individual rooms, you are separated.

‘Anything can be considered as a violation of women’s rights.’

Dr Aldossari, who left Saudi Arabia in 2008 to study and work in the UK, today works with Al Qst (ALQST), a human rights organisation that documents and promotes human rights in Saudi Arabia.

‘What we do hear – it’s such a dark time in Saudi Arabia. This is becoming a police state,’ she said. ‘People are scared.’

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Pregnant Women in Prison Aren’t Getting Care, and No One Is Keeping Track

Early in her second trimester, Linda Acoff was taken into custody for failing to complete court-ordered mental health treatment. After three weeks in the Cuyahoga County Jail in Columbus, Ohio, she began experiencing intensifying pressure, cramping, and bleeding. But despite her pleas for help, the nurse on duty offered only sanitary napkins and Tylenol. After banging on her cell door for hours, Acoff was eventually taken out of the jail’s pregnancy pod on a stretcher—leaving behind the remains of her 17-week-old fetus. 

A recent exposé from The Marshall Project revealed that Acoff had contracted chorioamnionitis, an infection of the fluid and tissues inside the uterus. Although considered a serious pregnancy complication that can threaten both the fetus and the mother, there was hope that Acoff’s 17-week pregnancy could have been saved. “If there’s early appropriate diagnosis and intervention, that baby can absolutely survive if the patient is treated promptly,” Michael Baldonieri, an OB-GYN and assistant professor of reproductive biology at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, told The Marshall Project.

In the end, Acoff lost her baby, and while the nurse on duty was ultimately fired, the tragedy has not inspired change in the way that Ohio handles incarcerated pregnancies or collects data on them. Unfortunately for Acoff, and the estimated 55,000 pregnant women who enter the nation’s jails every year, little data exists on the impact incarceration has on pregnancy outcomes. 

A 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that “comprehensive data on pregnant women incarcerated in state prisons and local jails do not exist” even though the U.S. has “one of the highest maternal mortality rates” and “incarcerates women at the highest rate in the world.”   

This number is trending upward: between 1980 and 2022, the female prison population in the U.S. grew by more than 585 percent, more than twice the growth rate of the male prison population. Much of this increase has been attributed to more expansive policing, post-conviction barriers, and stiffer drug sentencing laws. Women have seen drug-related arrests increase by 317 percent since 1980, while men have seen a 69 percent jump. Today, more than half of the incarcerated women are serving time for drug and property offenses. 

Sentencing for these offenses, which considers the nature of the crime and criminal histories, can disproportionately put pregnant women inmates in harm’s way. 

The Prison Policy Initiative estimates that in 2024, about 189,600 women and girls were held in state custody, and 93,000 were held in local jails across the country. Of this number, more than half of the women were held in jail while awaiting trial. Even after a conviction, women were more likely to be sentenced to jail, rather than to prison, compared to convicted men. 

This distribution can be problematic, particularly for pregnant women, because jails are poorly positioned to provide proper health care and often offer fewer services than prisons. This discrepancy, plus negligent care, is ultimately what cost Acoff her pregnancy. 

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Ex-Police Chief Serving Time for Rape and Murder Escapes Arkansas Prison Wearing Homemade Police Uniform

Former Gateway, Arkansas police chief Grant Hardin escaped from prison Saturday while serving a 50 and 30-year sentences for rape and first degree murder. According to authorities, Hardin wore a homemade police uniform to escape, wheeling supplies though the yard to fool guards.

Excerpt from the New York Post:

A disgraced ex-Arkansas police chief who was serving 80 years in prison for rape and a shotgun-to-the-head execution escaped from a high-security prison disguised as a cop.

Grant Hardin, 56, the former police chief of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was seen on security cameras walking out of the North Central Unit prison, in Calico Rock, dressed in what appears to be a homemade law enforcement uniform on Sunday afternoon.

Hardin, who is considered extremely dangerous, used the outfit to sneak through the controlled gate while inconspicuously pushing a cart full of utility materials, according to the Stone County Sheriff’s Office.

…In 2017, Hardin pleaded guilty to the murder of James Appleton, 59, a Gateway water department employee who was shot in the head at point-blank range with a shotgun while on the phone with his brother-in-law, who was at the time the mayor.

…While incarcerated, Hardin’s DNA was tested and linked to a 1997 rape case that saw an elementary school teacher sexually assaulted at gunpoint inside a school bathroom while a community church service occured down the hall.

Hardin pleaded guilty to rape and kidnapping in 2018, with a judge sentencing him to an additional 50 years in jail.

Statement and updates by the Arkansas Department of Corrections, “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – CALICO ROCK – On Sunday, May 25, at approximately 3:40 p.m., inmate Grant Hardin, ADC #168541, escaped from the North Central Unit. Anyone with information about inmate Hardin’s whereabouts should contact local law enforcement immediately.”

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