- Police Oversight Mechanisms in the Council of Europe States
- Compendium of Conventions, Recommendations and Resolutions Relating to Prisons and Community Sanctions Measures
- Compendium of Good Practices on the Implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings
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Showing posts with label prisons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prisons. Show all posts
Recent Council of Europe Publications:
Report: America's Prisons are so Polluted they are Endangering Inmates
"According to a new investigation from Earth Island Journal and Truthout, mass incarceration has led to some of the most egregious examples of environmental injustice. '[M]ass incarceration in the US impacts the health of prisoners, prison-adjacent communities, and local ecosystems from coast to coast,' the authors of the special report said.
Prisons are often located in areas with known environmental hazards. Nearly 600 federal and state prisons are within three miles of a Superfund site on the National Priorities List, and more than 100 of those are just one mile from a site."
View the Report
"According to a new investigation from Earth Island Journal and Truthout, mass incarceration has led to some of the most egregious examples of environmental injustice. '[M]ass incarceration in the US impacts the health of prisoners, prison-adjacent communities, and local ecosystems from coast to coast,' the authors of the special report said.
Prisons are often located in areas with known environmental hazards. Nearly 600 federal and state prisons are within three miles of a Superfund site on the National Priorities List, and more than 100 of those are just one mile from a site."
View the Report
DOJ Investigation Confirms: Albuquerque Police 'Executing' Citizens
Residents of Albuquerque, New Mexico are marching on the police
department Saturday to demand retribution against the city's mayor and
police chief for their role in the police force's documented "execution"
of citizens.
The march comes after the Department of Justice slammed the Albuquerque Police Department for their frequent use of excessive and lethal force in a damning report released on Thursday.
Though, according to advocates, abuse by local law enforcement has been systemic for years, calls for increased scrutiny of the APD were amplified following the police shooting death of James Boyd, a homeless man suffering from mental illness, on March 16.
Read on...
The march comes after the Department of Justice slammed the Albuquerque Police Department for their frequent use of excessive and lethal force in a damning report released on Thursday.
Though, according to advocates, abuse by local law enforcement has been systemic for years, calls for increased scrutiny of the APD were amplified following the police shooting death of James Boyd, a homeless man suffering from mental illness, on March 16.
Read on...
Hard times: Top British writers blast prisoner book ban
An alliance of British authors have some harsh words for the
government's new rules that prohibit prisoners from receiving the works
of their favorite authors while serving time behind bars.
The book ban, which falls under the government’s Incentives and Earned Privileges initiative passed in November, denies inmates the right to receive packages from beyond the walls of the prison unless they can prove “exceptional circumstances” such as a health condition.
The ruling, which seems to fly in the face of the country’s rich literary heritage, has come under fire from a number of eminent British writers, including Alan Bennett, Sir Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Irvine Welsh and Nick Hornby, who signed their names to a letter blasting the decision.
Read on...
The book ban, which falls under the government’s Incentives and Earned Privileges initiative passed in November, denies inmates the right to receive packages from beyond the walls of the prison unless they can prove “exceptional circumstances” such as a health condition.
The ruling, which seems to fly in the face of the country’s rich literary heritage, has come under fire from a number of eminent British writers, including Alan Bennett, Sir Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Irvine Welsh and Nick Hornby, who signed their names to a letter blasting the decision.
Read on...
Britain's prison overcrowding crisis surges 'close to the brink'
The country is on the verge of its worst prison
overcrowding crisis since 2008, leaving the Justice Secretary, Chris
Grayling, fighting for his political future.
Mr Grayling has quietly sanctioned emergency measures, after it emerged that there were only 265 free spaces left out of an 85,800 capacity across the England and Wales prison estate. This is the most crowded that prisons have been since the coalition took power nearly four years ago.
To avert the crisis, privately run prisons will be paid to cram more inmates into their cells. The managers of these 14 private sector prisons include Serco and G4S, the companies at the centre of a scandal last summer, when the Ministry of Justice was billed for the monitoring of non-existent electronic tags.
Read on...
Mr Grayling has quietly sanctioned emergency measures, after it emerged that there were only 265 free spaces left out of an 85,800 capacity across the England and Wales prison estate. This is the most crowded that prisons have been since the coalition took power nearly four years ago.
To avert the crisis, privately run prisons will be paid to cram more inmates into their cells. The managers of these 14 private sector prisons include Serco and G4S, the companies at the centre of a scandal last summer, when the Ministry of Justice was billed for the monitoring of non-existent electronic tags.
Read on...
Brown promises, again, to fix the prisons. Will he?
There's always one kid in class who gets away with it. You know the
one. The teacher says the homework is due Friday and if you don't turn
it in, you flunk. But this kid pleads for more time. Just give him the
weekend and he promises to get it done. The teacher says OK, then Monday
comes and he asks to be given until the end of the week. And then he
promises to turn it in at the end of the year. Then he says he can get
it done by next April. Promise.
Read on...
Now, how about two years from now?
Gov. Jerry Brown is the kid who got away with it, persuading a three-judge federal court panel to give him until February 2016 — long after this year's elections — to reduce the state's prison population by 5,500 inmates and to put in place anti-recidivism programs to keep the numbers down permanently. Even the judges expressed surprise at their own leniency, acknowledging that they've heard similar promises from California governors many times since 2009, when they ordered the state to shrink the inmate population to comply with constitutional strictures against cruel and unusual punishment. The judges noted that in the intervening years, prisoners have continued to be mistreated, that Californians have paid a financial price for the state's delay, and that "this court must also accept part of the blame for not acting more forcefully with regard to defendants' obduracy in the face of its continuing constitutional violations."
Gov. Jerry Brown is the kid who got away with it, persuading a three-judge federal court panel to give him until February 2016 — long after this year's elections — to reduce the state's prison population by 5,500 inmates and to put in place anti-recidivism programs to keep the numbers down permanently. Even the judges expressed surprise at their own leniency, acknowledging that they've heard similar promises from California governors many times since 2009, when they ordered the state to shrink the inmate population to comply with constitutional strictures against cruel and unusual punishment. The judges noted that in the intervening years, prisoners have continued to be mistreated, that Californians have paid a financial price for the state's delay, and that "this court must also accept part of the blame for not acting more forcefully with regard to defendants' obduracy in the face of its continuing constitutional violations."
Read on...
Californians Rally Today to Denounce Plan to Spend a Half a Billion Dollars to Build and Maintain More Prisons
Part of Brown’s motivation to expand prisons throughout the state is to meet a 2009 order to lower the inmate population to 137.5 percent of the prisons’ designed capacities to reduce overcrowding. Brown has failed to meet the 2013 deadline for this prisoner reduction and has asked the court for a two-year extension. But instead of focusing on reducing the state’s number of prisoners, Brown has plans to build nearly 6,000 new prison beds. Diana Zuñiga, statewide field organizer of Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), said that there are also talks of building three new prison facilities that would cost $810 million to construct, which would then be double due to interest payments as well as cost $100,000 each year to upkeep.
Read on...
Stemming the Tide:
The federal prison population has risen dramatically over the past few
decades, as more people are sentenced to prison and for longer terms.
The result? Dangerously overcrowded facilities and an increasing
expense to taxpayers. In a new Urban Institute report, the authors
project the population and cost savings impact of a variety of
strategies designed to reduce the inmate population without compromising
public safety. They find that the most effective approach is a
combination of strategies, including early release for current prisoners
and reducing the length of stay for future offenders, particularly
those convicted of drug trafficking.
As Federal Prison Population Spiked 790 Percent, Average Drug Sentences Doubled
The federal prison population has ballooned 790 percent since 1980, and almost half of those now imprisoned
are there for drugs. In the coming years, the Bureau of Prisons
projects that prison overcrowding will get even worse. While federal
prisons are now 35 to 40 percent over capacity capacity, they are
expected by 2023 to reach 55 percent over capacity without a policy
change, according to a new report by the Urban Institute.
The prison population explosion was not driven primarily by a spike in crime, but by a change in punishment. Over a 25-year period, average drug sentences doubled from 38.5 months in 1984 to 74 months in 2011. And over a similar period, the percentage of convicted federal offenders sentenced to prison spiked from 50 percent in 1986 to 90 percent in 2011. Before the passage of several draconian laws that impose mandated harsh sentences and remove judicial discretion, many offenders received probation or a fine for the same violations.
Read on...
The prison population explosion was not driven primarily by a spike in crime, but by a change in punishment. Over a 25-year period, average drug sentences doubled from 38.5 months in 1984 to 74 months in 2011. And over a similar period, the percentage of convicted federal offenders sentenced to prison spiked from 50 percent in 1986 to 90 percent in 2011. Before the passage of several draconian laws that impose mandated harsh sentences and remove judicial discretion, many offenders received probation or a fine for the same violations.
Read on...
How a 1983 Murder Created America's Terrible Supermax-Prison Culture
On Oct. 22, 1983, inmates aligned with the Aryan Brotherhood prison
gang murdered two corrections officers at the United States Penitentiary
near Marion, Ill. The reverberations from those killings are still
being felt in the American prison system. The murders sent Marion into
lockdown for 23 years, ushered in the era of the modern Supermax prison,
and normalized the chilling idea that the only rational way to deal
with violent or notorious prisoners is to lock them up in small,
isolated cells and throw away the key.
In 1983 Marion was the toughest penitentiary in the federal prison
system. The maximum-security complex housed some of the country’s most
violent inmates, and the worst of those were put in Marion’s “control
unit.” Getting placed in the control unit was akin to being buried
alive. Inmates were confined to their small cells for almost 23 hours a
day. When they left their cells, they were shackled, guarded, and under
constant surveillance. The conditions there echoed the commandant’s line
in The Great Escape: “We have, in effect, put all our rotten eggs in one basket. And we intend to watch that basket very carefully.”
Read on...
Read on...
Correctional Service Canada Launches New Research Website
Research at the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) helps make direct links between research findings and implications for our institutions, community sites and the public. CSC research helps offenders work towards successful reintegration and assists staff in identifying effective strategies to work safely and efficiently. Check out our Research Spotlight for new research that will be highlighted throughout the year.
CSC's broad research portfolio includes projects in areas like:
We use quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, including data analysis and interviews with staff and offenders. Our studies can involve a quick, data-driven profile or can consist of a multi-year and multi-phase research study. Our research often involves CSC staff from national and regional headquarters, community sites and institutions. Results of our research are shared with CSC employees, other government departments, provincial/territorial counterparts, partner organizations, universities and academic journals, and the general public.
Read on...
- Offender population profiles
- Mental health issues – screening, population profiles and treatment
- Women and Aboriginal offender needs
- Institutional and community operations and security
We use quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, including data analysis and interviews with staff and offenders. Our studies can involve a quick, data-driven profile or can consist of a multi-year and multi-phase research study. Our research often involves CSC staff from national and regional headquarters, community sites and institutions. Results of our research are shared with CSC employees, other government departments, provincial/territorial counterparts, partner organizations, universities and academic journals, and the general public.
Read on...
Going inside ‘KP:’ Kingston Penitentiary soon open for guided tours
For three weeks, visitors will be able to tour the maximum security facility that’s housed Canada’s worst criminals
Members of the public will have soon have a rare and limited chance to go inside the country's most notorious but soon to be closed prison, the first such opportunity in ages.
For three weeks starting Oct. 2, visitors
will be able to tour Kingston Penitentiary, the formidable maximum
security facility that has housed Canada's worst criminals.
The tours, guided by Correctional Service
Canada volunteers, are a fundraiser for the United Way in Kingston, Ont.
Bhavana Varma, president of the local United Way branch, calls it an "exciting" opportunity.
"Many of us have lived here and been curious
about and intrigued by the historic institution," Varma said Friday.
Prison-Industrial Complex? Maybe It's Time For A Schools-Industrial Complex
California has built 23 prisons since 1980. In the same period, the
University of California system has opened one new campus. And although
California's prison population has declined in recent years, the state's
spending per prisoner has increased five times faster than its spending per K-12 student in the last two decades.
California has more than 130,000 prisoners, a huge increase from the state's 1980 prison population of about 25,000. Prisons cost California taxpayers close to $10 billion, compared with $604 million in 1980. While some say the additional spending is needed for rehabilitation services, they also note that the prisons are draining scarce funds from education and other key areas.
This week, Californians who hope to see the state scale down its prison spending were dismayed to learn that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) wants to further expand the prison system, spending an additional $700 million on prisons over the next two years. Brown is trying to comply with a federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding by the end of this year: Despite the 21 new prisons built since 1980, construction hasn’t kept pace with the growth of the inmate population, and California’s prison system is one of the most crowded in the country.
Read on...
California has more than 130,000 prisoners, a huge increase from the state's 1980 prison population of about 25,000. Prisons cost California taxpayers close to $10 billion, compared with $604 million in 1980. While some say the additional spending is needed for rehabilitation services, they also note that the prisons are draining scarce funds from education and other key areas.
This week, Californians who hope to see the state scale down its prison spending were dismayed to learn that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) wants to further expand the prison system, spending an additional $700 million on prisons over the next two years. Brown is trying to comply with a federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding by the end of this year: Despite the 21 new prisons built since 1980, construction hasn’t kept pace with the growth of the inmate population, and California’s prison system is one of the most crowded in the country.
Read on...
The Conservative War on Prisons
American streets are much safer today than they were thirty years ago,
and until recently most conservatives had a simple explanation: more
prison beds equal less crime. This argument was a fulcrum of Republican
politics for decades, boosting candidates from Richard Nixon to George
H. W. Bush and scores more in the states. Once elected, these
Republicans (and their Democratic imitators) built prisons on a scale
that now exceeds such formidable police states as Russia and Iran, with 3
percent of the American population behind bars or on parole and
probation.
Now that crime and the fear of victimization are down, we might expect Republicans to take a victory lap, casting safer streets as a vindication of their hard line. Instead, more and more conservatives are clambering down from the prison ramparts. Take Newt Gingrich, who made a promise of more incarceration an item of his 1994 Contract with America. Seventeen years later, he had changed his tune. “There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential,” Gingrich wrote in 2011. “The criminal-justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.”
None of Gingrich’s rivals in the vicious Republican presidential primary exploited these statements. If anything, his position is approaching party orthodoxy. The 2012 Republican platform declares, “Prisons should do more than punish; they should attempt to rehabilitate and institute proven prisoner reentry systems to reduce recidivism and future victimization.” What’s more, a rogue’s gallery of conservative crime warriors have joined Gingrich’s call for Americans to rethink their incarceration reflex. They include Ed Meese, Asa Hutchinson, William Bennett—even the now-infamous American Legislative Exchange Council. Most importantly, more than a dozen states have launched serious criminal justice reform efforts in recent years, with conservatives often in the lead.
Read on...
Now that crime and the fear of victimization are down, we might expect Republicans to take a victory lap, casting safer streets as a vindication of their hard line. Instead, more and more conservatives are clambering down from the prison ramparts. Take Newt Gingrich, who made a promise of more incarceration an item of his 1994 Contract with America. Seventeen years later, he had changed his tune. “There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential,” Gingrich wrote in 2011. “The criminal-justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.”
None of Gingrich’s rivals in the vicious Republican presidential primary exploited these statements. If anything, his position is approaching party orthodoxy. The 2012 Republican platform declares, “Prisons should do more than punish; they should attempt to rehabilitate and institute proven prisoner reentry systems to reduce recidivism and future victimization.” What’s more, a rogue’s gallery of conservative crime warriors have joined Gingrich’s call for Americans to rethink their incarceration reflex. They include Ed Meese, Asa Hutchinson, William Bennett—even the now-infamous American Legislative Exchange Council. Most importantly, more than a dozen states have launched serious criminal justice reform efforts in recent years, with conservatives often in the lead.
Read on...
California’s Continuing Prison Crisis
California has long been held up as the land of innovation and fresh
starts, but on criminal justice and incarceration, the Golden State
remains stubbornly behind the curve.
Over the past quarter-century, multiple lawsuits have challenged
California’s state prisons as dangerously overcrowded. In 2011, the
United States Supreme Court found that the overcrowding had gotten so
bad — close to double the prisons’ designed capacity — that inmates’
health and safety were unconstitutionally compromised. The court ordered the state to reduce its prison population by tens of thousands of inmates, to 110,000, or to 137.5 percent of capacity.
In January, the number of inmates was down to about 120,000, and Gov. Jerry Brown declared
that “the prison emergency is over in California.” He implored the
Supreme Court to delay a federal court order to release nearly 10,000
more inmates. On Aug. 2, the court said no.
Over the furious dissent of Justice Antonin Scalia, who reiterated his
warning two years ago of “the terrible things sure to happen as a
consequence of this outrageous order,” six members of the court stood by
its earlier ruling. California has to meet its goal by the end of 2013.
How California Prisons Got To Be So Insanely Overcrowded
California has been ordered to release nearly 10,000 inmates by the end of the year to resolve a notorious overcrowding problem that's been brewing for decades. The Golden State's prison crisis reached a fever pitch in 2011 after the Supreme Court said the overcrowding amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment."
Now all eyes are on liberal Gov. Jerry Brown, who insists the public's
safety will be jeopardized if he releases the inmates. The mass release
would only bring prisons down to 137 percent of their capacity.
So how did California's prisons get to be so dreadfully overcrowded
in the first place? The state actually had a reputation for an
ultra-progressive penal system before 1980, according to the radio
documentary "Prisons in Crisis: A State of Emergency In California."
Then California began aggressively increasing sentencing in the late
1980s and 1990s in response to nationwide fear about high crime rates.
Several high-profile crimes by parolees including the murder of 12-year-old Polly Klauss stoked fear in California, according to "Prisons in Crisis."
California enacted more than 1,000 laws that increased sentencing in a five-year span to settle these fears, law professor Jonathan Simon
told "Prisons in Crisis" producer JoAnn Marr. "Legislators were
competing with each other to see who could be tougher," Marr reported.
"Any politician seen as being soft on crime ran the risk of losing his
seat."
Read on...
Read on...
Locking Up Millions of Americans Isn't Just About Punishing the Underclass, It's About Raking in the Dough
The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is
only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized
poverty.
Debbie Bourne, 45, was at her apartment in the Liberty Village
housing projects in Plainfield, N.J., on the afternoon of April 30 when
police banged on the door and pushed their way inside. The officers
ordered her, her daughter, 14, and her son, 22, who suffers from autism,
to sit down and not move and then began ransacking the home. Bourne’s
husband, from whom she was estranged and who was in the process of
moving out, was the target of the police, who suspected him of dealing
cocaine. As it turned out, the raid would cast a deep shadow over the
lives of three innocents—Bourne and her children.
The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized poverty. Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jails and prisons, however, they each can generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year. This use of the bodies of the poor to make money for corporations fuels the system of neoslavery that defines our prison system.
Prisoners often work inside jails and prisons for nothing or at most earn a dollar an hour. The court system has been gutted to deny the poor adequate legal representation. Draconian drug laws send nonviolent offenders to jail for staggering periods of time. Our prisons routinely use solitary confinement, forms of humiliation and physical abuse to keep prisoners broken and compliant, methods that international human rights organizations have long defined as torture. Individuals and corporations that profit from prisons in the United States perpetuate a form of neoslavery. The ongoing hunger strike by inmates in the California prison system is a slave revolt, one that we must encourage and support. The fate of the poor under our corporate state will, if we remain indifferent and passive, become our own fate. This is why on Wednesday I will join prison rights activists, including Cornel West and Michael Moore, in a one-day fast in solidarity with the hunger strike in the California prison system.
Read on....
The murder of a teenage boy by an armed vigilante, George Zimmerman, is only one crime set within a legal and penal system that has criminalized poverty. Poor people, especially those of color, are worth nothing to corporations and private contractors if they are on the street. In jails and prisons, however, they each can generate corporate revenues of $30,000 to $40,000 a year. This use of the bodies of the poor to make money for corporations fuels the system of neoslavery that defines our prison system.
Prisoners often work inside jails and prisons for nothing or at most earn a dollar an hour. The court system has been gutted to deny the poor adequate legal representation. Draconian drug laws send nonviolent offenders to jail for staggering periods of time. Our prisons routinely use solitary confinement, forms of humiliation and physical abuse to keep prisoners broken and compliant, methods that international human rights organizations have long defined as torture. Individuals and corporations that profit from prisons in the United States perpetuate a form of neoslavery. The ongoing hunger strike by inmates in the California prison system is a slave revolt, one that we must encourage and support. The fate of the poor under our corporate state will, if we remain indifferent and passive, become our own fate. This is why on Wednesday I will join prison rights activists, including Cornel West and Michael Moore, in a one-day fast in solidarity with the hunger strike in the California prison system.
Read on....
Shrinking Prisons, Saving Billions
The mandatory sentencing craze that gripped the country four decades ago
drove up the state prison population sevenfold — from under 200,000 in
the early 1970s to about 1.4 million today — and pushed costs beyond $50
billion a year. Until recently, it seemed that the numbers would keep
growing. But thanks to reforms in more than half the states, the prison
census has edged down slightly — by just under 2 percent — since 2009. A
new analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that the decline would
have been considerably larger had the other states not been pulling in
the opposite direction.
Over the last five years, 29 states have managed to cut their imprisonment rates, 10 of them by double-digit percentages. California, which has been ordered by the Supreme Court to ease extreme prison crowding, led the way with a 17 percent drop, mainly by reducing parole and probation revocations and shifting custody of low-level offenders to counties. Other states reduced prison terms for low-level offenses; diverted some offenders to community supervision; and strengthened parole programs, so that fewer offenders landed back in jail for technical violations like missed appointments or failed drug tests.
Read on...
This is a NYTimes editorial. Tom
Over the last five years, 29 states have managed to cut their imprisonment rates, 10 of them by double-digit percentages. California, which has been ordered by the Supreme Court to ease extreme prison crowding, led the way with a 17 percent drop, mainly by reducing parole and probation revocations and shifting custody of low-level offenders to counties. Other states reduced prison terms for low-level offenses; diverted some offenders to community supervision; and strengthened parole programs, so that fewer offenders landed back in jail for technical violations like missed appointments or failed drug tests.
Read on...
This is a NYTimes editorial. Tom
The Conservative War on Prisons
Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools:
hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform. Is
this how progress will happen in a hyper-polarized world?
American streets are much safer today than they were thirty years ago, and until recently most conservatives had a simple explanation: more prison beds equal less crime. This argument was a fulcrum of Republican politics for decades, boosting candidates from Richard Nixon to George H. W. Bush and scores more in the states. Once elected, these Republicans (and their Democratic imitators) built prisons on a scale that now exceeds such formidable police states as Russia and Iran, with 3 percent of the American population behind bars or on parole and probation.
Now that crime and the fear of victimization are down, we might expect Republicans to take a victory lap, casting safer streets as a vindication of their hard line. Instead, more and more conservatives are clambering down from the prison ramparts. Take Newt Gingrich, who made a promise of more incarceration an item of his 1994 Contract with America. Seventeen years later, he had changed his tune. “There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential,” Gingrich wrote in 2011. “The criminal-justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.”
Read on...
American streets are much safer today than they were thirty years ago, and until recently most conservatives had a simple explanation: more prison beds equal less crime. This argument was a fulcrum of Republican politics for decades, boosting candidates from Richard Nixon to George H. W. Bush and scores more in the states. Once elected, these Republicans (and their Democratic imitators) built prisons on a scale that now exceeds such formidable police states as Russia and Iran, with 3 percent of the American population behind bars or on parole and probation.
Now that crime and the fear of victimization are down, we might expect Republicans to take a victory lap, casting safer streets as a vindication of their hard line. Instead, more and more conservatives are clambering down from the prison ramparts. Take Newt Gingrich, who made a promise of more incarceration an item of his 1994 Contract with America. Seventeen years later, he had changed his tune. “There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential,” Gingrich wrote in 2011. “The criminal-justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.”
Read on...
Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons.
We throw thousands of men in the hole for the books they read, the company they keep, the beliefs they hold. Here's why.
IT'S BEEN SEVEN MONTHS since I've been inside a prison cell. Now I'm back, sort of. The experience is eerily like my dreams, where I am a prisoner in another man's cell. Like the cell I go back to in my sleep, this one is built for solitary confinement. I'm taking intermittent, heaving breaths, like I can't get enough air. This still happens to me from time to time, especially in tight spaces. At a little over 11 by 7 feet, this cell is smaller than any I've ever inhabited. You can't pace in it.
Like in my dreams, I case the space for the means of staying sane. Is there a TV to watch, a book to read, a round object to toss? The pathetic artifacts of this inmate's life remind me of objects that were once everything to me: a stack of books, a handmade chessboard, a few scattered pieces of artwork taped to the concrete, a family photo, large manila envelopes full of letters. I know that these things are his world."So when you're in Iran and in solitary confinement," asks my guide, Lieutenant Chris Acosta, "was it different?" His tone makes clear that he believes an Iranian prison to be a bad place.
He's right about that. After being apprehended on the Iran-Iraq border, Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal, and I were held in Evin Prison's isolation ward for political prisoners. Sarah remained there for 13 months, Josh and I for 26 months. We were held incommunicado. We never knew when, or if, we would get out. We didn't go to trial for two years. When we did we had no way to speak to a lawyer and no means of contesting the charges against us, which included espionage. The alleged evidence the court held was "confidential."
Read on...
Follow this link, Life in the Hole: Inside a Solitary Cell, for an interactive tour of a Solitary Cell. Tom
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