Clipmarks | Kauaiguy's 'prison' clips

Drug War Bloating Police And Prison "Industries."

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:33:26 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: What ever happened to the days of Andy of Mayberry? Today's law enforcement officers are dressing up like paramilitary thugs in some futuristic sci-fi where "if you ain't cop, you're little people."

Clip Source: www.enterstageright.com

Drug war very effective -- at bloating police, prison 'industries'

Seeing a new source of funds for local police equipment, staff and operations, "Every congressman has raised their hand and said, 'I need relief from this problem, too,' " explains UCLA public policy professor Mark A.R. Kleiman.

Tags: police, drugs, law, justice, politics, corruption

How The War On Drugs Victimizes Women

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:27:39 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: Treatment costs much less than incarceration and provides far better returns.

Clip Source: realcostofprisons.org

War on Drugs Victimizes Women

War on Drugs victimizes women
By LOIS AHRENS
Op-Ed- Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA
We live in Orwellian times. We are asked to believe that the peacekeeper missile delivers peace and declaring war on a nation will bring democracy. Now Sally Van Wright, soon to be assistant superintendent of the Hampden County House of Correction, a new jail for women, states ''We incarcerate to set free.''

Despite the beliefs of jailers, when the public is polled, as they were in a study by Peter Hart (''Changing Public Attitudes Toward the Criminal Justice System,'' February 2002), they say incarceration cannot solve the deep social and economic problems that drive crime, nor is criminalizing addiction more viable than treating it as an illness. Jailing women does not set them free. It also drains money from programs that could treat drug addiction, prevent and treat childhood sexual abuse, and fund quality education.

Tags: durgs, prison, war on drugs, justice, women

Why The American Prison System Is A Failure

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:19:10 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: More punitive policies and the war on drugs provide perverse incentives to a private corrections industry with an interest in bilking public funds.

Clip Source: realcostofprisons.org

The Failing American Prison System

"Just as national security planners faked a "missile gap" in order to justify extravagant expenditures for defense, criminal justice policy makers are currently faking a "crime gap" in order to justify similar expenditures on prisons. Just as the military- industrial complex is a means of exercising international control so is the prison-industrial complex a means of exercising domestic control. This system is less about keeping the streets safe or rehabilitating criminals and more about serving a dual role in social management. Prisons are used to warehouse members of the unwanted social groups. Simultaneously, the job creation from the expansion of the prison system serves as a means of partially compensating and pacifying elements of the population negatively affected by outsourcing, automation, and farm failure."

Tags: prison, crime, justice, america, drugs

IN A Perfect World

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 04:59:43 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: Anyone for another episode of COPS?

Clip Source: www.ojp.usdoj.gov

Criminal Offenders Statistics

Lifetime likelihood of going to State or Federal prison

If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 15 persons (6.6%) will serve time in a prison during their lifetime.

Lifetime chances of a person going to prison are higher for

-- men (11.3%) than for women (1.8%)

-- blacks (18.6%) and Hispanics (10%) than for whites (3.4%)

Based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 32% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males.

Tags: prison, law, crime

Another Rape Conviction Overturned by DNA Evidence

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:31:54 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: Thanx to the work of THE INNOCENCE PROJECT.

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Texas Man Freed After 26 Years in Prison

Dallas Distict Court Judge John Creuzot, left, gives Charles Chatman a hug after leaving court Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008, in Dallas. Creuzot released Chatman and recommended that his rape conviction be overturned after new DNA testing that lawyers say proves his innocence. Chatman, who had been imprisoned for 26 years, is accompanied by his aunt Ethel Bradley (Tim Sharp/AP Photo)

District Attorney Craig Watkins also attributes the exonerations to a past culture of overly aggressive prosecutors seeking convictions at any cost. Watkins has started a program in which law students, supervised by the Innocence Project of Texas, are reviewing about 450 cases in which convicts have requested DNA testing.

Tags: rape, prison, dna, justice, law

America the Ugly: The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:22:40 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: The civil rights movement of the 1960's was critical in making society consider how a stigmatized group, the mentally ill, should rejoin society at large. Turning the clock back to an earlier era when hospitals would again be an asylum except for exceedingly few people is both unrealistic and retrogressive.

Today's solution continues to be the development of small, noninstitutional yet structured places within the community where people live, get treatment and are afforded rehabilitation in social and vocational skills.

Clip Source: www.law.uchicago.edu

The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars

LAST August, a prison inmate in Jackson, Mich. -- someone the authorities described as ''floridly psychotic'' -- died in his segregation cell, naked, shackled to a concrete slab, lying in his own urine, scheduled for a mental health transfer that never happened. Last month in Florida, the head of the state's social services department resigned abruptly after having been fined $80,000 and is facing criminal contempt charges for failing to transfer severely mentally ill jail inmates to state hospitals.

What few people realize, though, is that in the 1940s and '50s we institutionalized people at even higher rates -- only it was in mental hospitals and asylums. Simply put, when the data on state and county mental hospitalization rates are combined with the data on prison rates for 1928 through 2000, the imprisonment revolution of the late 20th century barely reaches the level we experienced at mid-century. Our current culture of control is by no means new.

Tags: crime, mental illness, prison, justice

Racist U.S. Crack Sentencing Rules

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:43:01 GMT

clipped by: Kauaiguy
clipper's remarks: Maybe Congress needs a lecture from Chappell.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Major Blow Struck Against Racist U.S. Crack Sentencing Rules

The Sentencing Commission's decision came only a day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal judges can sentence individuals below the guideline recommendation in crack cocaine cases. The combination of both rulings puts enormous pressure on Congress to change the statutory mandatory minimums that punish crack cocaine offenses 100 times more severely than powder cocaine offenses. That sentencing disparity is responsible for appalling racial inequities in the criminal justice system. Although the majority of crack users and sellers are white, more than 80 percent of people incarcerated in federal prison for crack are black.

Tags: drugs, racism, law, justice, congress