Prison Reform

[China]

New Mexico inmates graduate from CDL program

 

A new initiative for inmates in New Mexico offers a training program for a commercial driver's license (CDL).

 

"In ten years of teaching in prison, I have never seen a program with this much energy and work from all the guys involved," said David Bibeau, an instructor at the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility.

 

15 men are now finishing the program. 10 did not complete the course, but the instructor said that was due to COVID complications moving inmates around.

 

There is high demand for the course. 165 inmates have written letters of interest to join the CDL course.

 

Those who are finishing the program will still need three to four weeks behind the wheel after getting released. Then they can get fully certified.

 

"They go out with hope, so we're selling more hope," Bibeau said. "Where some guys don't have any, now they have some."

[China]

The Illinois Department of Corrections’ commissary shortage harms incarcerated people

 

As a vegetarian on a restricted diet, Joel Davis is often the first to notice when commissary items become scarce.

 

“I literally have to remove the vegetables from my lunch tray and save them until I can see if there is anything on the dinner tray to combine them with,” Davis said. “I’m used to fasting a lot, so I often just go without eating.”

 

In July, Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) Director Rob Jeffreys issued a memo to all 28 IDOC prisons warning incarcerated people that there would be a commissary shortage in the near future. Davis, who has been incarcerated at Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg, Illinois, since 1992, said he knew the warning wouldn’t prepare him for what he’d soon be enduring.

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Commissary stores are the core of the prison retail market and have been criticized for shifting “the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people and their families,” forcing them to buy items such as shampoo, toilet paper, groceries, and stamps and envelopes at a steep markup, up to a maximum of 25% for nontobacco products and 35% for tobacco products.  

 

IDOC has a long history of commissary shortages, but after a bidding war between private commissary vendors that began in March 2021 and concluded with multiple disputes and a canceled contract, incarcerated people in Illinois have been deprived of accessing basic necessities for months.

 

“The commissary situation is unlike anything I’ve seen in the 30 years I’ve been here,” Davis said.

 

In October, Jeffreys sent out a second memo blaming the commissary shortage on COVID-19’s impact on the global supply chain. However, many advocates like Alan Mills, the executive director of Uptown People’s Law Center in Chicago, believe that supply chain issues are a shallow excuse.

 

“Really, all it takes is money,” Mills said. “So the real question is, why hasn’t the DOC spent whatever money is needed on an emergency basis to solve this problem? I guarantee if the problem were there weren’t enough handcuffs, they would have figured out how to buy more handcuffs. This is a question of priorities to the Department, not a question of ability to provide commissary.”

 

Meals served in IDOC are often inadequate and unappetizing, with one person reporting that a dinner consisted of two pieces of toast and a hard-boiled egg. Davis said he has seen many people become sick from eating IDOC’s food.

 

“Just looking at the health and well-being of inmates is enough to make you not want to eat,” he said. 

 

Without the option of buying food from the commissary to supplement meals, many people are now going to bed hungry. On Dec. 16, 2021, only seven of 46 food options were in stock at Danville Correctional Center during the omicron surge.      

 

Not only are people struggling to access food, but essential hygiene items have also been unavailable for purchase.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

California Prisoner Has Now Beaten 2 Child Molesters To Death With A Cane While In Jail

 

41-year-old Jonathan Watson, a California inmate accused of killing two convicted child molesters with a cane last month, has publicly confessed to the murders. Watson added that he’d given prison officials plenty of warning before the attacks, but it fell on deaf ears.

 

In a letter to Mercury News, Watson confessed to killing 48-year-old David Bobb and 64-year-old Graham De Luis-Conti just one week after he was transferred to California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran.

 

In the letter, Watson stated that hours before the attacks, he told a counselor that he wanted to be transferred, and added that the request was “urgent.” He wrote that he said that he would soon attack another inmate, but he was ignored.

 

Watson wrote that he had been given a lower-level security classification, from Level III to Level II, and was transferred from a single-person cell to dorm-style living at the Corcoran prison. The transfer displeased him, and he called it a “careless” mistake by CDCR, explaining that he left “quite a paper trail” of grievances protesting the transfer.

 

In the letter, he stated that a “child molester” moved into his pod six days into his stay at the prison. He doesn’t say whether it was Bobb or Luis-Conti, instead referring to the man as “Molester #1.” Watson wrote that Molester #1 began watching PBS Kids in full view of the other inmates, who took it as a taunt.

 

Watson wrote about that night, “I could not sleep having not done what every instinct told me I should’ve done right then and there, so I packed all of my things because I knew one way or another the situation would be resolved the following day.”

 

Watson spoke to a prison counselor the next day – two hours before the attacks – and stated that he needed to be transferred back to Level III “before I really (expletive) one of these dudes up.”

 

He said that the counselor “scoffed and dismissed me.”

 

Watson wrote that he returned to his pod after warning the counselor that he might turn violent.

 

He wrote: “I was mulling it all over when along came Molester #1 and he put his TV right on PBS Kids again. But this time, someone else said something to the effect of, ‘Is this guy really going to watch this right in front of us?’ and I recall saying, ‘I got this.’ And I picked up the cane and went to work on him.”

 

Watson wrote that he then left the pod and was on his way to find a guard and turn himself in when he encountered Molester #2 and decided to kill again.

 

His beatings failed to draw the attention of the correctional officials, so he approached an officer and confessed.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

Sounds like premeditation, to me. 

[China]

California trying to remove ‘involuntary servitude’ as a protected form of punishment

 

California is the latest state trying to remove “involuntary servitude” as a constitutionally protected form of punishment, a move aimed at formally severing the remnants of slavery from the law.

 

The U.S. Constitution bans slavery, but it allows involuntary servitude for the punishment of a crime. Many state constitutions say the same thing, including California’s.

 

But a movement to get rid of those exceptions has been gaining momentum across the country. Colorado was the first state to get rid of the exception in 2018, and voters in Utah and Nebraska followed in 2020.

 

Monday, the California Assembly approved a bill that would eliminate involuntary servitude in the state for any reason. The bill now heads to the state Senate. If the bill clears the state Legislature before the end of June, it would be put on the statewide ballot this November for voters to decide.

 

“The nature of this measure is importantly symbolic,” Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San Jose, said Monday before the vote. “Our constitution serves as the guiding principle for all other state laws. There is no place for slavery, force labor or involuntary servitude on our books.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Mississippi violated U.S. Constitution with unsafe prison conditions, DOJ says

 

A two-year federal probe into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm has found that unsafe state prison conditions — including solitary confinement and a lack of mental health treatment — had violated the U.S. Constitution and contributed to deadly violence among inmates.

 

The Department of Justice opened investigations into Parchman and three other state-operated Mississippi prisons in 2020 as civil rights advocates called for urgent changes at Mississippi’s state prison system. The probes into the three other prisons are ongoing.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[skinsmarydu]

I think I've mentioned it before, but John Grisham's fictional novels about prisoners at Parchman are absolutely harrowing.  I know he does exhaustive research, so I believed his portrayal of the place for a couple of decades.  Reading about it as "news" now is depressing, but I hope something starts to change with regard to this topic in general.

[China]

9th Circuit to reconsider California private prison ban

 

An appeals court has vacated its earlier decision that required California to exempt federal immigration detention facilities from its ban on for-profit prisons, ruling this week that the issue will be re-heard by a larger panel of judges.

 

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled 2-1 in October that the state ban must not pertain to immigration centers.

 

In the split ruling, the majority agreed with The GEO Group, a prison operator, and the federal government that the state law impeded federal immigration policy. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not operate any of its own detention centers in California as it does in other parts of the country, relying solely on privately run facilities.

 

Judge Mary Murguia dissented, citing the state’s police powers which include regulations affecting health and safety. The law, AB 32, took aim at reports of substandard conditions and health and safety concerns in for-profit prisons.

 

The panel’s ruling had overturned an earlier one by a district court judge in San Diego, who had upheld the ban as to immigration detention centers.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

US prison workers produce $11bn worth of goods and services a year for pittance

 

Incarcerated workers in the US produce at least $11bn in goods and services annually but receive just pennies an hour in wages for their prison jobs, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

 

Nearly two-thirds of all prisoners in the US, which imprisons more of its population than any other country in the world, have jobs in state and federal prisons. That figure amounts to roughly 800,000 people, researchers estimated in the report, which is based on extensive public records requests, questionnaires and interviews with incarcerated workers.

 

ACLU researchers say the findings outlined in Wednesday’s report raise concerns about the systemic exploitation of prisoners, who are compelled to work sometimes difficult and dangerous jobs without basic labor protections and little or no training while making close to nothing.

 

Most incarcerated workers are tasked with general prison maintenance that is crucial to keep the facilities running, according to the ACLU researchers, who worked with the University of Chicago Law School’s Global Human Rights Clinic.

 

“State governments and the prison system are extracting tremendous value from a captive and exploited workforce all while claiming they can’t afford to pay them a liveable wage,” said Jennifer Turner, the principal author of the report.

 

More than 80% of incarcerated laborers do general prison maintenance, including cleaning, cooking, repair work, laundry and other essential services. For paid non-industry jobs, workers make an average of 13 cents to 52 cents an hour, according to the report. Seven states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas – pay nothing for the vast majority of prison work.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

'Slowly Cooked Alive': Many Texas Prisons Still Don't Have Air Conditioning

 

A few years ago, Benny Hernandez penned a dispatch from what reads like hell on Earth. "Prisoners look upon the summer months in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) with dread and trepidation," he wrote. "For one is acutely aware that one may not survive another summer. Many do not. The deadly heat in Texas prisons is killing us."

 

Hernandez, now free and attending graduate school, was incarcerated on robbery and domestic violence charges in the Price Daniel Unit in Snyder, a prison about four hours west of Dallas. During the summer months of each of his 10 years in incarceration, he and his fellow prisoners were forced to share a low supply of water and a few extra fans.

 

“One 10-gallon water cooler is placed in our living area under lock and key,” he wrote in Prison Writers, a publication by incarcerated people. “This 10-gallon cooler must provide cold water for 84 inmates, which it never does. An inmate can expect to get one 8 oz. cup of water every four hours. Moreover, ice for the cooler is only provided twice a day and the ice frequently melts before the hottest part of the day.”

 

His brief yet searing story also notes that the extra fans “simply circulate hot air” when the temperature exceeds 95 degrees, which it often does in West Texas. “It routinely feels,” he wrote, “as if one’s sitting in a convection oven being slowly cooked alive.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

‘Night of terror’: Female inmates raped when male detainees bribed guard, lawsuit says

 

Female inmates at an Indiana jail were subjected to a “night of terror” when male detainees gained access to their cells, the women allege in a lawsuit.

 

The lawsuit was filed Friday, July 22, by eight women against Clark County Sheriff Jamey Noel and current and former Clark County Jail officers. It’s the second lawsuit filed this summer following the alleged incident, with 20 women filing suit in June, court records show.

The women claim that on Oct. 23, 2021, jail officer David Lowe gave two male detainees keys to the interior of the jail in exchange for $1,000.

 

That night, the two male detainees and other male inmates went into restricted areas of the jail that housed women, according to the lawsuit.

 

“Numerous male detainees used the keys obtained from Lowe to enter Pods 4(E) and 4(F), where they raped, assaulted, harassed, threatened and intimidated the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, and other women, for several hours, resulting in significant physical and emotional injuries,” the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court of the Southern District of Indiana says.

 

The men threatened to further harm the women if they pressed the emergency call button, according to the lawsuit.

 

The women claim in the lawsuit that no jail officers came to their aid throughout the night, despite the assaults being viewable on surveillance video.

 

Scottie Maples, chief deputy for the Clark County Sheriff’s Department, said that when the first lawsuit was filed, the department would not comment on pending lawsuits, according to the News and Tribune.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LadySkinsFan]

On 3/22/2022 at 10:22 PM, China said:

California trying to remove ‘involuntary servitude’ as a protected form of punishment

 

California is the latest state trying to remove “involuntary servitude” as a constitutionally protected form of punishment, a move aimed at formally severing the remnants of slavery from the law.

 

The U.S. Constitution bans slavery, but it allows involuntary servitude for the punishment of a crime. Many state constitutions say the same thing, including California’s.

 

But a movement to get rid of those exceptions has been gaining momentum across the country. Colorado was the first state to get rid of the exception in 2018, and voters in Utah and Nebraska followed in 2020.

 

Monday, the California Assembly approved a bill that would eliminate involuntary servitude in the state for any reason. The bill now heads to the state Senate. If the bill clears the state Legislature before the end of June, it would be put on the statewide ballot this November for voters to decide.

 

“The nature of this measure is importantly symbolic,” Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San Jose, said Monday before the vote. “Our constitution serves as the guiding principle for all other state laws. There is no place for slavery, force labor or involuntary servitude on our books.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Forced Birth = Involuntary Servitude

[China]

Why I'll never forget having my period in prison

 

On the day I was arrested with a Tupperware container full of heroin in 2010, I knew almost nothing about the legal system. It was the first time I'd ever been locked up, so I had to learn the ropes from the women around me.

 

For the most part, they were glad to share -- but I wasn't always sure how much of what they said was just jailhouse lore. So when a couple of them griped about how the local lockup always put men's needs first, I didn't know whether to believe them.

But my new neighbors offered examples: The men could sign up for buzz cuts, while we had to trim each other's hair with toenail clippers. Though we all lived in cells, they also had a lower-security dorm. They had more classes than we did. And they were allowed to have jail jobs and earn privileges.

Most importantly, they were almost never the ones who got sent to another jail when our home jail -- in Tompkins County, New York -- ran out of space, a transfer that usually meant a few days or weeks in solitary and sometimes months spent further from loved ones who might visit.

Still, I was skeptical. At the time, I did not understand that jails and prisons were made with men in mind -- from the fit of the uniforms to the rules designed to control male social structures and violence to the medical services that consistently overlooked women's basic needs. It is a system where women are often an afterthought. I just hadn't realized it yet.

Then, I got my period. On the outside, I'd had a very irregular cycle due to years of eating disorders and heavy drug use, the latter of which was what landed me behind bars in the first place. But once I sobered up in the county jail, I started bleeding -- and did not stop.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Renegade7]

What the **** is this ****??? 

 

https://apnews.com/article/crime-prisons-lawsuits-connecticut-074a8f643766e155df58d2c8fbc7214c

 

Quote

“I'm about to be homeless,” said Beatty, 58, who in March became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state law that charges prisoners $249 a day for the cost of their incarceration. “I just don't think it's right, because I feel I already paid my debt to society. I just don't think it's fair for me to be paying twice.”

 

All but two states have so-called “pay-to-stay” laws that make prisoners pay for their time behind bars, though not every state actually pursues people for the money. Supporters say the collections are a legitimate way for states to recoup millions of taxpayer dollars spent on prisons and jails.

 

Critics say it's an unfair second penalty that hinders rehabilitation by putting former inmates in debt for life. Efforts have been underway in some places to scale back or eliminate such policies.

 

[China]

Fort Worth prison officer gets lighter sentence for assault than victim’s drug sentence

 

A former federal Bureau of Prisons staff member, who pleaded guilty to raping two women at a prison in Fort Worth, was sentenced to 18 months on Thursday — half the amount of time one of his victims is serving for drug possession.

 

Lt. Luis Curiel pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual abuse of a ward while he was a lieutenant at Federal Medical Center Carswell. Judge Mark Pittman sentenced him to 18 months for each charge, but the judge ruled the sentences could be served at the same time. According to court documents, Curiel admitted to meeting three women at separate times near a staff elevator and forcing them into sexual acts.

 

A months-long Star-Telegram investigation published on Aug. 26 shed light on misconduct at FMC Carswell. The nation’s only medical prison for women, Carswell had the highest rate of sexual assault allegations at any federal women’s prison from 2014 to 2018, and the highest number of assault allegations against staff, the Star-Telegram found. In that period, 35 women at Carswell reported they were sexually assaulted by a staff member.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Slavery is on the ballot for voters in 5 US states

 

More than 150 years after slaves were freed in the U.S., voters in five states will soon decide whether to close loopholes that led to the proliferation of a different form of slavery — forced labor by people convicted of certain crimes.

 

None of the proposals would force immediate changes inside the states’ prisons, though they could lead to legal challenges related to how they use prison labor, a lasting imprint of slavery’s legacy on the entire United States.

 

The effort is part of a national push to amend the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. That exception has long permitted the exploitation of labor by convicted felons.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Another pigeon wearing a smuggling backpack has been found inside a B.C. prison

 

A second pigeon wearing a tiny makeshift backpack presumably meant for smuggling drugs has been found at a corrections facility in Abbotsford, B.C., nearly two months to the day after a bird carrying a package of crystal meth was found at the prison next door.

 

Officers discovered the latest bird wearing its backpack inside Matsqui Institution during a routine search on the morning of Feb. 27, according to its union. The backpack, possibly made from cut-up jeans, was empty — leading guards to believe the bird might have still been in training.

 

"It was actually inside the institution where they actually found the pigeon, again wearing a small fabric-like backpack," said John Randle, Pacific regional president of the Union for Canadian Correctional Officers.

 

"Where did it come from, and what was happening? That's kind of the big discussion right now."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

A fight against floppy discs evolves into a prison rights crusade

 

As a paralegal, LaShawn Fitch has learned some weighty stuff, everything from the difference between de facto, de jure, and de novo to the proper way to file things in criminal, civil, administrative, and federal courts.

 

But one of the biggest challenges he’s faced has been how to find an affordable, long-lasting word processor and keep floppy discs from corrupting and wiping out all his work.

 

Fitch has been incarcerated since 2014 at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, where laptops, flash drives, and other modern digital conveniences are banned as security risks.

Now, he’s on a crusade to get the state Department of Corrections to lift that ban. He filed a grievance with the system last fall seeking broader technology access for imprisoned people. After several terse responses from corrections officials saying they were researching the issue and a notice that those responses were final, Fitch escalated his case in December to state Superior Court, where he hopes a judge will intervene.

 

“I’m only 32, so I didn’t know what a word processor was till I got here,” Fitch told the New Jersey Monitor. “They’re obsolete. It’s time to change.”

 

Such a fight might seem surprising, considering how tightly access to digital tools is restricted behind bars. Even today, many people in prisons rely on pen and paper to fight their cases and to communicate with the outside, with their only technological access an occasional turn on the few internet-free computers in prison libraries.

 

But as technology has evolved, so has access to it behind bars.

 

In 2015, New Jersey prison officials made tablet computers available for incarcerated people to send email and videograms, download digital books, games, and music, and transfer money through a system called JPay. These concessions have recognized that incarceration’s digital divide leaves many people who leave prison struggling to reintegrate and that digital literacy can reduce recidivism.

 

Battles like Fitch’s have helped remove barriers to other modern mundanities, like cell phone calls. Incarcerated people in New Jersey had long been barred from calling cell phone numbers — similarly, because of “security concerns” — until Edward Grimes, who was incarcerated at the Trenton state prison, took the Department of Corrections to court and won that right in 2017.

 

Still, the digital tools available to people serving time are in short supply and in huge demand. The state prison in Trenton has 49 JPay kiosks for the 1,300 people incarcerated there.

 

Technology in prison also can lag decades behind that on the outside.

 

“The courts went through a technological revolution, with e-filing and all these new things that they got out there, and we’re still stuck in the Stone Age,” Fitch said.

 

Fitch uses floppy discs and a word processor to store legal research and draft filings for himself and others at his prison.

 

But floppy discs are easily corruptible, so one pass through a metal detector can wipe out weeks of work, he said. And word processors have become so antiquated that they don’t last long and cost a lot, Fitch said. He said he paid $600 for his.

 

“Outside sources know that people in prison use them, so they end up price gouging you,” he said. “They only have a shelf life of six months. I can’t turn my word processor on if it’s too hot in my cell because it’ll turn all your words into gibberish. The first thing that goes is the keypads. So you got to order the keypad — but the thing is, they won’t let you order the stuff that you need to fix it. It makes absolutely no sense. So it’s like you have to roll the dice. I’ve seen guys buy word processors for $500, and it conked out on them in a week.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Inmate with history of mental health issues shot at 200 times with projectiles during incident at Tecumseh

 

A new report by a watchdog agency for Nebraska State Correctional Services alleges excessive use of force was used on an inmate with a history of mental health issues.

 

According to the Office of Inspector General’s report, the incident happened in June 2021 when an inmate at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution was causing a disturbance and threatening staff in a common area of a housing unit.

 

The report alleges, in response to the disturbance, more than 200 projectiles were shot at the inmate, who has a documented history of mental illness.

 

Following this happening, NDCS investigated and two employees were disciplined. Now, ombudsman Doug Koebernick’s office is releasing the results of their independent review.

 

The report starts by detailing the inmate’s history of serious mental illness and disruptive behavior. The inmate spent much of his time incarcerated living in a mental health unit.

 

Based on video and audio evidence reviewed during the investigation, NDCS staff reported the man was acting “unusual and aggressive” and was screaming in his housing unit around 4:30 p.m. on the day of the incident.

 

The report lists several actions taken by NDCS staff.

 

First, they cleared the housing unit of other inmates, barricaded the man into the area, and called the “use of force team” to the facility.

 

While that was happening, the report said the inmate was attempting to make small weapons with what he could find around the unit. When a staff member tried to talk to him, the report said the inmate told the staff member he would “stab staff in the neck.”

 

A few minutes after that threat, the report said staff began shooting pepper balls at the inmate. Koebernick writes that during this time, audio recordings captured staff talking about the inmate and past instances where they had tried to use projectiles on him and it didn’t work.

 

They were quoted saying “the last time we unloaded on him and it didn’t affect him, so the more the merrier.”

 

A phone call between two high-ranking corrections officers during the incident also captured a warden stating he’d love to shoot the inmate with a “mini-14 and be done with it.” The report said a mini-14 is a semi-automatic rifle.

 

More than three hours into the incident, the report said the use of force team entered the housing unit and deployed flash-ban grenades, less-lethal shotgun rounds, and pepper balls at the inmates. This prompted the inmate to hide in the shower room.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

New York City Jails No Longer Announcing Deaths After Horrifying Wave Of Fatalities

 

The city Department of Correction has abruptly stopped notifying the media when an incarcerated person dies and will no longer do so in the future.

 

“That was a practice, not a policy,” said new DOC chief spokesperson Frank Dwyer when asked about the lack of public notification about recent deaths behind bars. Dwyer took over the department’s press office a few weeks ago following a similar role at the Fire Department.

 

Over the past two years, the department’s media team would issue a press release announcing the death of anyone behind bars. The release typically included basic information like the person’s name, housing facility, date and time of death.

 

But over the past two weeks, the DOC has failed to notify the public about at least two deaths, including those of Rubu Zhao, 52, who died after he allegedly jumped from an upper tier of a specialized unit on Rikers for people with mental illness on May 14, and of Joshua Valles, 31, who died on Saturday suffering from a fractured skull that officials first internally labeled as a heart attack.

 

Valles had been given a “compassionate” release out of DOC custody days before his death.

 

The department is taking a step in the wrong direction with its new death notification practice, according to Stanley Richards, who spent time at Rikers as an inmate in the 1980s and later served as the department’s deputy corrections commissioner during the last six months of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration in 2021.

 

“This administration is going back to the way in which jails were managed decades ago. They are closing ranks,” said Richards, now vice president of the Fortune Society, a nonprofit that seeks to help current and formerly incarcerated people.

 

“I think it’s part of a series of attempts to isolate the jails from scrutiny to control the narrative,” said Kayla Simpson, staff attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project at The Legal Aid Society.

 

Under the Adams administration, the department has also blocked real-time video surveillance access from Rikers and other city lockups to members of the Board of Correction, which oversees the agency.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

New accounts of abuse at federal prison prompt renewed calls for investigation

 

Months after officials closed a violent federal prison unit in Illinois, a new report reveals more accounts of a pervasive culture of abuse inside and calls for an investigation of the officers involved.

 

On Thursday, the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs published a report compiling the stories of more than 120 people who were incarcerated in the Special Management Unit, a high security section of the Thomson Penitentiary about 150 miles west of Chicago.

 

Echoing the findings of an earlier investigation by NPR and The Marshall Project, many people described being beaten by officers while in shackles, a dangerous dearth of mental health care and a system that made it impossible to file complaints.

 

"We found rampant racism, and many people who were subjected to unnecessary restraint and forced to cell with another individual who was known to be dangerous," said Maggie Hart, senior counsel with the Washington Lawyers' Committee.

 

Five men died by suspected homicide in the Special Management Unit at Thomson.

"This is major trauma they have inflicted on people. They knew they could get away with these abuses," Hart said.

 

The federal Bureau of Prisons closed the unit in February after officials found "significant concerns with respect to institutional culture." Roughly 350 people were immediately sent to prisons across the country, where many of them report still being held in solitary confinement, according to the Washington Lawyers' Committee. Several guards from Thomson are now working at other federal facilities.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Penis Squeezing Not Protected by Qualified Immunity

 

Genital squeezing at jail is "not related to a legitimate penological purpose" and not protected by qualified immunity. Sometimes it seems like the doctrine of qualified immunity—under which police officers and other agents of the state are protected from legal liability for some abuses and mistakes—has no limit. So it's nice to see courts at least occasionally reject ridiculous qualified immunity claims, like the idea that squeezing a detainee's genitals during a strip-search is proper and standard procedure.

 

Indeed, "squeezing a detainee's penis hard is not a 'proper part of a search,'" a federal appeals court has held.

 

The case, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, was brought by Wilbert Glover against Minnesota corrections officer Richard Paul. Paul strip-searched Glover while Glover was jailed at the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center in St. Paul in 2015.

 

Paul "made me take off my jumpsuit strip search me took his hand and grasp my penis squeeze it hard and gestures," Glover alleged. After the incident, Glover sought medical care and filed a complaint against Paul, alleging that the corrections officer had violated his constitutional rights.

 

Paul responded by claiming that he "never touched [Glover's] genitals or otherwise touched him inappropriately" and that even if he had, he was protected by qualified immunity.

 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota rejected Paul's argument, concluding "that Paul's alleged actions violated Glover's clearly established constitutional right to be free from excessive force in the form of sexual assault or abuse," as the appeals court describes it. In an August 24 ruling, the court affirmed the district court's ruling.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

How a Man in Prison Stole Millions from Billionaires

 

Early in 2020, the architect Scott West got a call at his office, in Atlanta, from a prospective client who said that his name was Archie Lee. West designs luxurious houses in a spare, angular style one might call millionaire modern. Lee wanted one. That June, West found an appealing property in Buckhead—an upscale part of North Atlanta that attracts both old money and new—and told Lee it might be a good spot for them to build. Lee arranged for his wife to meet West there.

 

She arrived in a white Range Rover, wearing Gucci and Prada, and carrying a small dog in her purse. She said her name was Indiana. As she walked around the property, she FaceTimed her husband, then told West that it wasn’t quite what they had in mind, and that he should keep looking. West said that he’d need a retainer. She reached into her purse and pulled out five thousand dollars. “That was a little unusual,” West recalled.

 

Later that summer, Lee called again, with a new proposal. His wife, he said, had been “driving around Buckhead, and she came across this amazing modern house and thought it had to be a Scott West house.” She was right. The house, on Randall Mill Road, wasn’t quite finished, and it had not been on the market—but Lee told West that he was already buying it, from the owner, for four and a half million dollars. Now he wanted West to redo the landscaping and the outdoor pool, plus some interior finishes. West took another retainer, but he had other clients to attend to, and Lee grew impatient. Eventually, Lee asked West for his money back and began planning the renovations without him.

 

The renovations were supervised, as far as the neighbors could tell, by Indiana’s father, Eldridge Bennett, a sturdy man who drove an old Jaguar and wore a pair of dog tags around his neck. Neighbors described him as friendly but hard to pin down. He told one that he worked in the concrete business—and that he’d been on the team that killed Osama bin Laden—but gave another a card that identified him as the marketing manager for an accounting company. This neighbor noticed that a wine tower in the house was being stocked with Moët & Chandon (“thousands of bottles, like, twenty feet tall”) and asked who was paying for it all. Bennett told him that the new owner was in California, “working on music stuff.” Like many residents of Randall Mill Road, this neighbor is white. The Bennetts are Black. “It seemed like they didn’t come from money,” the neighbor said, “but they had sure found a lot of it.”

 

A closing meeting was scheduled for early September at a bank in Alpharetta, north of the city. By then, Lee and the Bennetts had made three down payments on the house, totalling seven hundred thousand dollars, most of which Indiana and Eldridge had delivered in rubber-banded bundles of cash. Lee told the seller’s attorney that they would deliver the rest—about three and a half million dollars—in similar fashion, at the closing. He couldn’t be there himself, he said, because he was still busy in California. (Lee, the lawyer recalled, said that he “represented a variety of entertainers and got paid in a variety of ways,” and also that he’d made money in Bitcoin.)

 

Because so much cash was going to be exchanged, the bank arranged for the closing to be held in its kitchen and break room, which offered some privacy. The bank also asked a local cop to be present. At the appointed time, Eldridge and a younger man carried several black duffelbags into the room and began handing stacks of bills to a bank employee, who spent the next three and a half hours counting them all. Afterward, on the phone, Lee asked the seller to complete a few punch items on the property. When the seller got to the house, he noticed that the door to a large safe that he’d installed—and which he’d left open—was locked, and that the combination had already been changed.

 

A few weeks after the close, Lee sent Scott West another e-mail. “I’m buying land in a month or so to start planning on designing a house 100% to my liking,” he wrote. “I want to give you the ball and let you run the entire project. Let you go insane on your ideas. I’m thinking of a seven million dollar budget just for the house, not including the landscaping.” He suggested that the two of them “become a team.” West replied, as gently as he could, that he was too busy. A week before, he’d received a call from a federal agent, who asked him if he knew a man named Arthur Cofield. West said that he did not, and the agent began rattling off names. “He kept going through aliases until he said ‘Archie Lee,’ ” West told me. Arthur Lee Cofield, Jr., the agent said, resided in a maximum-security prison in Georgia. He had been incarcerated for more than a decade.

 

Arthur Cofield probably stole more money from behind bars than any inmate in American history. By the time Cofield was charged—with identity theft and money laundering, among other crimes—he had likely stolen at least fifteen million dollars. 

 

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1 in 4 inmate deaths happens in the same federal prison. Why?

 

Ever since his release from federal prison, Jeffrey Ramirez had been waiting to die.

 

He passed the time at his parents' home near San Diego, doting on his mom and watching movies with his teenage daughters. But his doctors had recently told him they'd run out of options for treating his cancer.

 

"I can go almost about any day. I can go tomorrow. I can go a week from now, a month from now. It's all on God," he told NPR. "I try not to think about it. It hurts."

 

Eleven days after that interview this past January, Ramirez died at age 41.

 

NPR looked into the deaths of people like Ramirez, who died during or shortly after their time in federal prison. Records obtained from the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) show at least 4,950 people died in its custody over roughly the past decade. Although there are more than 120 federal prisons nationwide, a quarter of those deaths occurred in a single place: the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina. Ramirez was there in the months before his release.

 

More deaths at Butner are to be expected. The complex includes a federal medical center (FMC), which is essentially a prison hospital. Inmates who need intensive medical care often end up at one of these hospitals, and FMC Butner is the bureau's largest cancer treatment facility. According to NPR's analysis, more people in BOP custody died of cancer than any other cause from 2009 to 2020.

 

But looking closer at the experiences of individual people, NPR found numerous accounts of inmates nationwide going without needed medical care. More than a dozen waited months or even years for treatment, including inmates with obviously concerning symptoms: unexplained bleeding, a suspicious lump, intense pain. Many suffered serious consequences. Some, like Ramirez, did not survive.

 

Too often, sources told NPR, federal prisons fail to treat serious illnesses fast enough. When an ailment like cancer is caught, the BOP often funnels these sick inmates to a place like Butner, where it is assumed they'll receive more specialized treatment. But by the time prisoners access more advanced care, it's sometimes too late to do much more than palliative care. What's more, current and former inmates and staff at Butner told NPR the prison has issues of its own, including delays in care and staffing shortages.

 

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