NewsTrust - Prisons - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

40 Years in Solitary Confinement: Two Members of Angola 3 Remain in Isolation in Louisiana Prison

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 17 (Special Report) - It’s been 40 years to the day — since April 17, 1972, or 14,600 days ago — that Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have been held in solitary confinement in Louisiana. The state says they were guilty of murdering a guard at Angola Prison, but Wallace, Woodfox and their network of supporters say they were framed for their political activism as members of the Black Panthers.

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How Prison Undoes Family Values

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - Apr. 02 (Special Report) - In the last 30 years or so, the rush to lock people up for ridiculously long sentences even for minor crimes has led to an explosion of the prison population. And as the majority of prisoners are also parents, the population of children with a father or mother in prison has also exploded. Since 1990, the number of children with a parent in prison has increased overall by 82%, and the number of incarcerated mothers has increased at almost twice the rate of incarcerated fathers. There are now an estimated 10 million American children who have had a parent in prison (pdf), on parole or under some kind of probationary supervision. And, as is always the case when you are talking about the prison population, there is a disturbing racial disparity; one in 15 black children have a parent in prison, compared to one in 111 white children.

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States Get Cash for Prisons

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

populist.com - By Chris Kirkham - Mar. 15 (Special Report) - Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging corrections budgets." In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90% full,

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Billions Behind Bars

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNBC.com - Oct. 24 (Special Report) - With more than 2.3 million people locked up, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. One out of 100 American adults is behind bars – while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. This reliance on mass incarceration has created a thriving prison economy. The states and the federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the industry.

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What Do Marco Rubio, Immigrants For Sale, And A Sh_t-Ton Of Cash Have In Common?

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

MoveOn - By MoveOn productions - Oct. 22 (News Report) - You’re about to find out. Watch:

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Freed U.S. Hiker Shane Bauer

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Sep. 26 (News Report) - "In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantánamo Bay. They would remind of us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world and the conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.," says Shane Bauer. "We do not believe that such human rights violations on the part of our government justify what has been done to us. Not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments, including the government of Iran, to act in kind."

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ALEC Exposed – Prison Labor

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

mainstreetinsider.org - Sep. 22 (Special Report) - Earlier this year, the Center for Media and Democracy released documents detailing some 800 model legislations crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Included in those documents was the Prison Industries Act, legislation that had already been established in dozens of states across the country. Like much of the model legislation created by ALEC, this bill is designed to help private corporations increase profits. In this case, those profits come from the use of prison labor. As Mike Elk and Bob Sloan wrote in The Nation, “prison labor for the private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair competition with private companies.”

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Flush With Prison Industry Dollars, Rick Perry Pushed Privatized Prisoner Care

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Tim Murphy - Sep. 03 (News Report) - Corrections industry lobbyists and execs donated generously to the Texas governor's reelection campaign. He advanced policies that would benefit the prison industry. Coincidence?

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The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Mike Elk, Bob Sloan - Aug. 01 (Investigative Report) - The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour.

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Mary Bottari on ALEC Exposed, Marjorie Cohn on prison hunger strike

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - Jul. 22 (Fact Check) - This week on CounterSpin: You've probably never heard of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. So why do they have so much sway over the laws affecting your life? We may get some sunlight on the actions of this influential "public/private membership organization" with the release of a cache of previously secret documents on their work. We'll hear from Mary Bottari of the Center for Media and Democracy about the ALEC Exposed project, and what it all means.

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The Corrupt Corporate Incarceration Complex

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By William Fisher - Jul. 01 (News Report) - Seventeen-year-old Hillary Transue did what lots of 17-year-olds do: Got into mischief. Hillary's mischief was composing a MySpace page poking fun at the assistant principal of the high school she attended in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Hillary was an honor student who'd never had any trouble with the law before.

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Festivus miracle ends early for Orange County inmate

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Humanist Examiner - By Michael Stone - Dec. 14 (News) - According to reports, King's defence attorney, Fred Thiagarajah, cited his client's devotion to Festivus in order to secure his client the special kosher meals. Ironically, keeping kosher is not one of the tenets of Festivus.

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Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to "Pharmacologic Waterboarding"

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Jason Leopold, Jeffrey Kaye - Dec. 01 (Special Report) - The Defense Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."

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Inmate asks for review of life sentence

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

tulsaworld.com - By Omer Gillham - Oct. 31 (Investigative Report) - A woman serving life in prison for a drug conviction is asking the district attorney to review her sentence, because two Tulsa police officers involved in her arrest are charged with planting drugs in other cases.

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In Gitmo Opinion, Two Versions of Reality

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Dafna Linzer - Oct. 08 (Investigative Report) - "Reconstituting and replacing a judicial opinion without public notice is active deception," said Steven Aftergood, a classification expert with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. "There is a role for classification and there are things that need to be redacted, but there is never a justification for deception in the judicial process and that's what this is," Aftergood said, after reviewing both versions of Kennedy's ruling in the Uthman case.

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"Neither the Destruction of the 9th Ward Nor the South Bronx Was Inevitable"

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Majora Carter, Amy Goodman - Jul. 22 (Special Report) - We broadcast from Las Vegas, which is hosting the 2010 Netroots Nation. Thousands of people are attending, including Democrats in Congress, policy speakers, progressive bloggers and more. Among them is urban environmentalist Majora Carter. Newsweek has named her one of “25 to Watch” and one of the “century’s most important environmentalists.” She is currently president of the green-collar economic consulting firm the Majora Carter Group. In 2006, Majora Carter gave a rousing address at TED Talks about her life and her work.

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Is This the End of the War on Crime?

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Sasha Abramsky - Jun. 16 (Investigative Report) - For decades, progressive policy analysts and criminal justice reformers such as Jones have argued that state and federal antidrug and, more generally, "tough on crime" incarceration strategies were counterproductive: that they were dramatically reshaping American society, at a staggering fiscal and moral cost, and they weren't succeeding.

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PTSD Soldier Punished by Army

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Dahr Jamail - Jun. 04 (News Report) - Iraq war veteran Eric Jasinski, after seeking treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is being punished by the Army. Jasinski turned himself in to the Army late last year, after having gone absent without leave (AWOL) in order to seek help for his PTSD. Help, he told Truthout, he was not receiving from the Army, even after requesting assistance on multiple occasions.

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Prison-Based Gerrymandering Creates Phantom Voters

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Yana Kunichoff - Apr. 11 (Special Report) - Anyone who is in prison on the first of April, 2010, will remain there for the next ten years - according to the US census . When the census counts prison populations, it counts them as residents of the towns in which they are incarcerated, not the communities they left and will most likely return to. With more than 2 million people currently incarcerated, advocates say this turns prisoners, who in most states cannot vote, into phantom voters.

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Mustang Redemption

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Michael Behar - Jan. 28 (Special Report) - Dangerous felons are being trained to tame wild horses. But can the horses tame the men?

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The Price of America's Prison Gulags

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Anthony Gregory - Feb. 17 (Special Report) - A three-judge panel has tentatively ruled that “[t]he California prison system must reduce overcrowding by as many as 55,000 inmates within three years to provide a constitutional level of medical and mental health care,” according to the New York Times.

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