Prison Reform

[China]

Mississippi court won't undo 12-year sentence for jail phone

 

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — An attorney says he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 12-year prison sentence given to an African American man in Mississippi for carrying his mobile phone into a jail cell after he was arrested on a misdemeanor charge.

 

The Mississippi Supreme Court said Thursday that it will not reconsider its earlier decision to uphold the sentence of Willie Nash.

 

Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Will Bardwell told The Associated Press that an appeal to the nation’s high court is his next step.

 

Critics have slammed the sentence as an example of racial injustice. When the Mississippi Supreme Court initially upheld Nash’s sentence in January, nationally syndicated Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote that Nash was “the latest victim of a ‘just us’ system that promiscuously discards black life.” Pitts urged readers to call Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and tell him to “let my people go.”

 

Within days of the January ruling, Bardwell filed another appeal asking the Mississippi high court to reconsider. In rejecting the request on Thursday, justices revised a portion of their analysis about previous court decisions on sentencing, but did not change the outcome for Nash.

 

The sentence Nash received in August 2018 for possessing a cellphone in jail is longer than Mississippi courts would impose for second-degree arson or poisoning someone with the intent to kill, Bardwell wrote in his January appeal.

 

Bardwell also wrote that there was no proof Nash was searched for a cellphone before being booked into jail. The appeal said Mississippi is one of only three states where a 12-year sentence for having a cellphone in jail is even possible, and research found no cases of such a long sentence being given in the other two states, Arkansas and Illinois.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Police say he snuck guns into a Nashville detention center, and practiced his scheme in a basement

 

The Nashville man who authorities say was behind an elaborate plot to stash firearms in the walls of the Davidson County Downtown Detention Center created a practice model to rehearse his scheme and had a cache of firearms in storage, a federal indictment shows. 

 

Charging documents show that Alexander Friedmann, a criminal justice advocate, created a practice facility in a basement, which was discovered in March when authorities executed a search warrant. 

 

Friedmann, 51, was charged Tuesday with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm after authorities say he orchestrated a secret plan to store weapons inside the center while it was under construction.

 

In January, authorities discovered that Friedmann dressed as a construction worker to gain access to the facility. He told police he was working on the facility's construction, but was never employed by any company or contractor, the indictment said. 

 

Friedmann is believed to have broken into the incomplete center multiple times, possibly stretching back to August 2019 when an individual believed to be him was caught on camera with someone believed to be his lookout.

 

A timeline created by police details when people believed to be Friedmann and his unnamed accomplices stuffed weapons inside the walls of the facility. During his trips to the DDC, authorities say he stored weapons, guns, razor blades and handcuff keys in various hiding spots around the center. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Mr. Sinister]

Wtf. Sounds like something out of Breaking Bad

[Kosher Ham]

14 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

Wtf. Sounds like something out of Breaking Bad

 

Or that Martin Lawrence movie where he pretends to be a police officer. 

[Mr. Sinister]

3 minutes ago, Kosher Ham said:

 

Or that Martin Lawrence movie where he pretends to be a police officer. 

 

Blue Streak  (where he stashes the diamonds in the precinct then impersonates a detective to go back and get them years later).

 

 

 

[757SeanTaylor21]

Well there was really exciting and hopeful news for my brother concerning his release. As a personal witness to the justice system and its lack of justice I am extremely hopeful that soon my brother will be granted his release. I know straight killers with less time than my bro and he ain't even harm a soul

[Kosher Ham]

Thanks, I knew it was called blue something.  Might want to add on a nsfw note. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Kosher Ham
Saving someone.

[Kosher Ham]

757, I don't know the details, but I'm happy for you and your family if everything goes well. 

[China]

Dying Inside - The Hidden Crisis Inside America's Jails

 

U.S. jails are outsourcing medical care — and the death toll is rising

 

A Reuters data analysis finds that jails with healthcare overseen by private companies incur higher death rates on average than those with care handled by government agencies. The story of a Georgia jail that hired Corizon Health Inc reveals the hidden cost of privatized inmate healthcare.

 

atthew Loflin was coughing up blood, struggling to breathe and losing consciousness in his cell while awaiting trial on drug-possession charges in this historic Southern city.

 

“I need to go to the hospital,” he told his mother in a jailhouse phone call. “I’m gonna die in here.”

 

It was March 28, 2014, and his seven weeks at the Chatham County Detention Center had been a blur of blackouts and racing heartbeats.

 

The jail’s senior medical staff – Dr. Charles Pugh and two well-credentialed nurses – agreed he needed hospitalization. But the move was opposed by a senior manager at their employer, Corizon Health Inc, which held a multi-million dollar contract to manage the jail’s healthcare, according to court records and former medical staff.

 

When Loflin's X-ray showed a suspicious spot in his chest on April 7, Pugh tried another plan: He sent Loflin to a cardiologist, believing the specialist would want him hospitalized. After a quick exam, the cardiologist sent him straight to the hospital, but it was too late. Loflin, 32, deteriorated quickly, suffering irreversible brain damage. He died April 24.

 

His death was the second in two months that Pugh and nurses Betty Riner and Lynne Williams considered preventable, internal jail memos and emails produced in litigation show. That August, the trio met with the sheriff and accused Corizon of prioritizing profits over lives.

 

Corizon fired all three, triggering a wrongful termination lawsuit settled on confidential terms. The plaintiffs agreed not to discuss their allegations.

 

Reuters corroborated their claims about faulty care at the jail in this city of antebellum homes and moss-covered oaks. The story of deadly neglect was assembled through previously unreported whistleblower testimony, thousands of court and police documents, interviews with more than a dozen former medical and jail staff, and confidential monitor reports.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Biden to order DOJ to end private prison contracts as part of racial equity push

 

President Joe Biden on Tuesday will order his Department of Justice not to renew its contracts with private prisons, one of multiple new planks of Biden’s broad-focused racial justice agenda.

 

Biden is poised to sign four additional executive actions after laying out his racial equity plan at the White House at 2 p.m. ET, according to his press schedule. Vice President Kamala Harris will also attend the event.

 

The actions are aimed at combating discriminatory housing practices, reforming the prison system, respecting sovereignty of Tribal governments and fighting xenophobia against Asian Americans, especially in light of the Covid pandemic.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Warden out after new allegations at embattled federal jail

 

The warden brought in to clean up the federal jail where Jeffrey Epstein killed himself has abruptly stepped down after a yearlong tenure marred by the rampant spread of the coronavirus, inmates’ complaints about squalid conditions, a smuggled gun and an inmate’s death.

 

Marti Licon-Vitale, 54, quit the Metropolitan Correctional Center this week. Her abrupt departure came about a week after staff at the jail left an inmate — whose lawyer says he has the mental capacity of an 8-year-old child — in a holding cell for 24 hours while awaiting a competency evaluation, a violation of prison system regulations.

 

And in the last few weeks, a correctional officer at the facility had also reported sexual misconduct by a superior, which officials at the jail delayed reporting to senior Bureau of Prisons officials, according to three people familiar with the matter.

 

The people could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

 

The man who was left in the holding cell, Richard Quinn, 26, “made friends with mice” during the agonizing wait, his attorney Peter Brill said. He said the top officials at the jail had failed to report the violation to their superiors at the Bureau of Prisons.

 

The Bureau of Prisons would not directly address the allegations. But in a statement, the agency said it was “committed to ensuring the safety and humane treatment of all inmates in our population, our staff and the public,” adding that “allegations of staff misconduct are thoroughly investigated and appropriate action is taken if such allegations are proven true, including the possibility of referral for criminal prosecution when appropriate.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Joe Ligon, Alabama farm boy who was America’s oldest juvenile lifer, leaves prison at 82

 

Leaving the State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania on Thursday morning, his white hair peeking out below a prison-issue hat, Joe Ligon was accompanied by a dozen large file boxes. That’s about 10 more boxes than regulations normally permit.

 

“I’m a special guy,” Ligon explained.

 

It’s a privilege earned over 68 years, as the oldest and longest-serving juvenile lifer in the country. He’s been imprisoned since 1953, when he was just 15 years old.

 

“I guess you accumulate a lot of stuff in 68 years,” said Bradley Bridge, a lawyer with the Defender Association of Philadelphia who’s represented Ligon since 2006. Having taken on the mission of getting Ligon home — first legally, then logistically — he had to scramble to fit the materials into his car, commandeering a reporter’s trunk for the overflow.

 

Ligon, now 82, received his life term for taking part in a spree of robbery and assaults in which two people died. Ligon admits participating in the crime with a group of drunk teens, but denies killing anyone.

 

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that automatic life terms for kids are cruel and unusual, he was one of more than 500 Pennsylvania prisoners all resentenced to terms contingent on lifetime parole.

 

But Ligon, resentenced to 35 years to life in 2017, rejected the very idea of parole after nearly seven decades in prison.

 

“I like to be free,” he said. “With parole, you got to see the parole people every so often. You can’t leave the city without permission from parole. That’s part of freedom for me.”

 

Other prisoners tried to coax him out into the free world. John Pace, a former juvenile lifer and now a re-entry coordinator for the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP), recalled a fruitless visit to the prison with a group of other ex-lifers. “If you want to fight, fight it when you get out,” he counseled Ligon at the time.

 

But Ligon refused to apply for parole, let alone take any required programs.

 

So Bridge fought three more years to get him released with time served — and won a victory that has given hope to hundreds of other juvenile lifers still on parole.

 

In federal court, he argued that Ligon’s mandatory maximum sentence of life was unconstitutional.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Just Let People Have Cellphones in Prison

 

In 2017, a man named Willie Nash was booked into a Mississippi county jail on a misdemeanor charge. For reasons that aren’t clear, his cellphone wasn’t confiscated as the law dictated. When he asked a jailer for a charger, the phone—which he had been using to text his wife—was seized. Nash was then sentenced to 12 years for possessing the cellphone. The case went all the way up to the Mississippi Supreme Court, where the 12-year sentence was affirmed. “While obviously harsh,” Justice James D. Maxwell II wrote for the court, “Nash’s twelve-year sentence for possessing a cell phone in a correctional facility is not grossly disproportionate.” Mr. Nash, a father of three, will be released back to his family in January of 2029, for the crime of texting his wife from jail.

 

In all federal and state prisons and jails, personal cellphones are classified as contraband—illegal for incarcerated people to possess. Incarcerated people are allowed to communicate with loved ones via letters, expensive phone calls in a centralized location (done through a prepaid account or collect calls, for a limited amount of time), or sometimes through expensive email and video messages on a prison-issued tablet. Due to COVID-19, in-person visitation has been halted in most prisons and jails since last March.

 

These rigid policies isolate incarcerated people and weaken their ties to friends and family. And this isolation radiates harm well beyond each individual. The vast majority of the millions of people currently incarcerated in this country will, at some point, be released. Every year, roughly 600,000 people leave prisons across the U.S., and a much higher number cycle in and out of jails. Roughly 2.7 million children in the U.S. have an incarcerated parent. “For people isolated from the world, hearing a loved one’s voice or a grandbaby coo for the first time is healing,” former death row resident Jarvis Jay Masters wrote in the Guardian. There is a wealth of research that confirms that the stronger the relationships and connections to loved ones and community, the better a person will fare once they are released from prison or jail. We’ve known this for a long time. A study from 1972 noted that, “The central finding of this research is the strong and consistent positive relationship that exists between parole success and maintaining strong family ties while in prison.” Decades later, the findings remain the same. “Incarcerated men and women who maintain contact with supportive family members are more likely to succeed after their release,” a 2012 Vera Institute report found.

 

Click on the link for more

[Larry]

 

[Larry]

As a more serious comment, though?  

 

I'm absolutely convinced that a good portion of what's done in terms of prisoner communication is simple sadism.  A way to abuse people.  Establish dominance.  (The fact that a lot of the abuse is directed at the prisoner's family is another factor, too.)  

 

However, I'm also convinced that there's a legitimate need for the prison to be able to monitor all communication, too.  To restrict who's communicated with, too.  

[China]

Did Illinois get bail reform right? Criminal justice advocates are optimistic

 

When a Cook County court judge set Timothy Williams' bond at $10,000 for a traffic charge, he knew he would be going to jail. There was no way, even after gathering everything he had, that he could come up with that amount of money.

 

So for the next two months, still legally innocent, Williams, 34, waited in jail.

 

On the other side of the bars were his wife, Brittany Williams, their newborn and three other children — all under the age of 10. The couple had just started a small business and moved to a condominium in the suburbs outside of Chicago.

 

Not long after Williams’ incarceration, his wife began struggling. She wasn't able to manage both the new company and children, leading to the business’s eventual collapse. Without a steady income, she lost their home and had to move in with her sister-in-law. Timothy Williams was finally released after a judge lowered his bond to $5,000, which was paid for by the Chicago Community Bond Fund.

 

"It devastated our family," Brittany Williams, 30, said. "People don't understand how severe it is to put someone in jail just because they can't pay their way out. And it doesn't just hurt them; it hurts every person connected to them."

 

But the long-standing practice may come to an end as Illinois is expected to pass legislation that will fully end the use of money bond, making it the first state to explicitly and entirely end a system of wealth-based freedom that has not only disproportionately affected low-income populations but also communities of color. While other states have struggled to successfully implement similar bail reform measures, criminal justice advocates say Illinois may have gotten it right.

 

The Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act passed the state legislature last month and is expected to be signed into law by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in the coming weeks.

 

The act, more than 300 pages long, is one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation that not only abolishes the cash bond system but also aims to end mass pretrial incarceration, said Sharone Mitchell, director of the Illinois Justice Project, a member organization of the Coalition to End Money Bond that was heavily involved in drafting the legislation.

 

"We live in a system today where we use money as the sole determining factor in determining whether somebody is going to be in jail or out of jail," he said. "Using money instead of risk is clearly not what we want to do."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Whistleblowers: Software Bug Keeping Hundreds Of Inmates In Arizona Prisons Beyond Release Dates

 

According to Arizona Department of Corrections whistleblowers, hundreds of incarcerated people who should be eligible for release are being held in prison because the inmate management software cannot interpret current sentencing laws.

 

KJZZ is not naming the whistleblowers because they fear retaliation. The employees said they have been raising the issue internally for more than a year, but prison administrators have not acted to fix the software bug. The sources said Chief Information Officer Holly Greene and Deputy Director Joe Profiri have been aware of the problem since 2019.

 

The Arizona Department of Corrections confirmed there is a problem with the software.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Convicted Murderer Killed His Child Rapist Cellmate: Police

 

A prison inmate murdered his convicted child rapist cellmate on Monday, the Delaware State Police announced Wednesday.

 

At face value, a conviction would not change very much for defendant John Cameron, 55. He’s already serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, authorities said.

 

Troopers responded to the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in the town of Smyrna at about 8:13 a.m. on Monday, police said. Authorities determined that Cameron killed Philip Langell, 69, who was serving a 20-year sentence for rape in the first degree against a victim under 12 years of age. Officers did not reveal the alleged motive.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PleaseBlitz]

One of the worst abuses of the American prison system is the outsourcing of inmate services to for-profit companies.  For example, if you want to send money to a family member in prison so they can buy toothpaste at the commissary, it is likely to cost you $10 just to send them $20 because you have to send it though the prison "banking" services, most likely a company called JPay.  

 

If an inmate wants to make a phone call, it probably costs them like $1 per minute, which is far far far higher than it costs for anyone else (because the prison phone services sends part of the profits as kickbacks to the relevant Dept. of Corrections so that they award them the contract so they can gouge the **** out of the inmates).  

A video on this is below.  The reason for my post is that today, the CFPB fined JPay, the dominant "prison bank" for $6 million and told them to cut the ****.

 

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/enforcement/actions/jpay-llc/

 

Quote

On October 19, 2021, the Bureau issued a consent order against JPay, LLC (JPay). JPay, headquartered in Miramar, Florida, contracts with Departments of Corrections around the country to provide financial products and services to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. JPay provided prepaid cards to formerly incarcerated individuals upon their release from prison or jail (JPay debit release card). The debit release cards contained the balance of funds owed to former inmates upon their release, including their commissary money, as well as any “gate money,” which are entitlements provided pursuant to state or local law, policy, or regulation to ease transition to society after release from prison or jail. The Bureau found that JPay violated the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) and its implementing Regulation E by requiring consumers to establish an account with the particular financial institution that issued the JPay debit release card as a condition of receiving a government benefit, namely their gate money. JPay’s violations of EFTA and Regulation E also constituted violations of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 (CFPA). The Bureau also found that JPay engaged in unfair and abusive acts and practices by causing fees to be imposed through its JPay debit release card on consumers who were required to get a JPay debit release card to access the money owed to them at the time of their release from prison or jail. In addition, the Bureau found that JPay violated the CFPA’s prohibition against unfair acts and practices by causing some consumers to be charged fees on their JPay debit release card that were not authorized by their cardholder agreements, and the CFPA’s prohibition against deceptive acts and practices by misrepresenting fees of some JPay debit release cards. The consent order requires JPay to pay $4 million for consumer redress, prohibits JPay from engaging in the illegal conduct found by the Bureau, and requires JPay to pay a $2 million civil money penalty.

 

 

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by PleaseBlitz

[China]

Ex-jail employees sued for playing ‘Baby Shark’ on repeat

 

Three people are suing Oklahoma County jail employees who investigators found forced them to stand handcuffed for hours and listen to the children’s song “Baby Shark” on repeat.

Attorneys for three former inmates filed the civil rights lawsuit Monday in Oklahoma City federal court, according to The Oklahoman.

 

Daniel Hedrick, Joseph “Joey” Mitchell and John Basco are suing Oklahoma County commissioners, Sheriff Tommie Johnson III, the jail trust and two former jailers, describing the discipline tactics as “torture events.”

 

A criminal investigation last year determined at least four inmates were secured to a wall with their hands cuffed behind them while the song played on a loop at a loud volume for hours in two separate incidents in November and December 2019.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Workers at federal prisons are committing some of the crimes

 

More than 100 federal prison workers have been arrested, convicted or sentenced for crimes since the start of 2019, including a warden indicted for sexual abuse, an associate warden charged with murder, guards taking cash to smuggle drugs and weapons, and supervisors stealing property such as tires and tractors.

 

An Associated Press investigation has found that the federal Bureau of Prisons, with an annual budget of nearly $8 billion, is a hotbed of abuse, graft and corruption, and has turned a blind eye to employees accused of misconduct. In some cases, the agency has failed to suspend officers who themselves had been arrested for crimes.

 

Two-thirds of the criminal cases against Justice Department personnel in recent years have involved federal prison workers, who account for less than one-third of the department’s workforce. Of the 41 arrests this year, 28 were of BOP employees or contractors. The FBI had just five. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives each had two.

 

The numbers highlight how criminal behavior by employees festers inside a federal prison system meant to punish and rehabilitate people who have committed bad acts. The revelations come as advocates are pushing the Biden administration to get serious about fixing the bureau.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

One in 10 US Black men put in solitary confinement before turning 32

 

Almost 1 in 10 Black men in the US are held in prolonged solitary confinement in prison at least once before their early 30s – a practice considered torture by the United Nations because of its severe impact on mental health. This is according to an analysis in Pennsylvania, where incarceration rates are representative of the US as a whole.

 

Solitary confinement involves isolating a prisoner in a cell – colloquially called “the hole” – for 22 or more hours a day with little to no human contact or mental stimulation. The UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules state that it should only be imposed in exceptional circumstances and for short periods because more than 15 days of it constitutes torture.

 

Research shows that the practice can induce anxiety, psychotic symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder in prisoners. Those held in solitary confinement for any amount of time are 78 per cent more likely to kill themselves within one year of being released from prison and 127 per cent more likely to die of an opioid overdose in the first two weeks compared with other released prisoners who haven’t experienced solitary confinement.

 

Hannah Pullen-Blasnik at Columbia University in New York and her colleagues analysed administrative records from prisons in Pennsylvania spanning 2007 to 2018 to understand how solitary confinement was being used.

 

They found that 9 per cent of all Black men in Pennsylvania born between 1986 and 1989 had been held in solitary confinement for at least 15 consecutive days by the age of 32, compared with 3 per cent of all Latino men and 1 per cent of all white men.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[TheGreatBuzz]

19 minutes ago, China said:

They found that 9 per cent of all Black men in Pennsylvania born between 1986 and 1989

 

Hmmm….seems like the headline is a little overly dramatic.

[China]

4 minutes ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

 

Hmmm….seems like the headline is a little overly dramatic.

 

Clearly, the study needs to be expanded to confirm the results of their analysis, but there is this tidbit:

 

Quote

This is according to an analysis in Pennsylvania, where incarceration rates are representative of the US as a whole.