CT prisoner Bill Coleman being Forcefed since 2008

Guards from Camp 5 at Joint Task Force Guantanamo escort a detainee from his cell to a recreational facility within the camp. (Flickr/Kilho Park)

By Ann Neumann

I know a hunger-striking prisoner who hasn’t eaten solid food in more than five years. He is being force-fed by the medical staff where he’s incarcerated. Starving himself, he told me during one of our biweekly phone calls last year, is the only way he has to exercise his first amendment rights and to protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act.

The prisoner has lost half his body weight and four teeth to malnutrition. He and his lawyer have gone to court to stop the force-feedings, but a judge ruled against him in March. If I asked you to guess where Coleman is being held, you’d likely say Guantánamo — “America’s offshore war-on-terror camp” — where a mass hunger strike of 100 prisoners has brought the ethics of force-feeding to American newspapers, if not American consciences. Twenty-five of those prisoners are now being manually fed with tubes.

But William Coleman is not at Guantánamo. He’s in Connecticut. The prison medical staff force-feeding him are on contract from the University of Connecticut, not the U.S. Navy. Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners — who are on U.S. soil and not an inaccessible island military base — are routinely and systematically force-fed every day.

The accounts of force-feeding coming out of Guantánamo, including Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s “Gitmo is Killing Me” in The New York Times two weeks ago, are consistent with how Coleman has described the process to me — and to the Supreme Court of Connecticut.

On Oct. 23, 2008, medical staff and corrections officers first strapped Coleman at four points to a vinyl medical table and snaked a rubber tube up his nose, down his throat and into his stomach. When the tube kinked, they thought his reaction to the pain was resistance and tied him across the chest with mesh straps. They reinserted the tube and Coleman gagged as they drained Ensure, a nutrient drink, into it. He continued to gag. He bled. He vomited. He felt violated, not medically treated. Coleman is still being force-fed; sometimes the staff put a semi-permanent tube up his nose, sometimes they don’t. They no longer strap him down. He knows the staff. They are, he says, following orders.

Continue Reading @ Waging NonViolence

Related articles

• Guantánamo is not an anomaly – prisoners in the US are force-fed every day – Waging Nonviolence (aboriginalpress.wordpress.com)
• Gitmo is not an anomaly (salon.com)
• Guantánamo Is Not an Anomaly – Prisoners in the US Are Force-Fed Every Day by Ann Neumann (zcommunications.org)

This is Zero Tolerance in effect…

Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children – Police state madness – more and more children being arrested for trivial things….fueling the school to prison pipeline, mass incarceration…Zero Tolerance in full effect.

 

 

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police. The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back….

“Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old”.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

HERE ARE THE LINKS:

http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/texas-student-sa rah-bustamantes-12-arrested-for-spraying-perfume/13250/

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=150 77292

Check out this video on YouTube:<br/><br/>http://youtu.be/wk2b_twCCdw

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools?cat=world& type=article

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html?hpt=C1

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/feb/11/port-st-lucie-schools-confines-6-year-old-with/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/29/nc-high-school-senior-suspended-charged-possesion-small-knife-lunchbox/#

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/2009/june09/zero-tolerance-states.html

http://m.tauntongazette.com/wkdTGazette/pm_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Mateo-pays-family-of-boy-pepper-sprayed-by -cop-2384518.php

http://django.medianewsgroup.com/mobile/interstitial/?r=http%3A%2F%2F www.middletownpress.com%2Farti cles%2F2011%2F06%2F14%2Fnews%2 Fdoc4df7b12331ec9768149316.txt %3Fmobredir%3Dfalse&d=iphone

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/cops-called-for-school-kiss-657831

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/27/hercules-family-battles-playground-sex-assault-claim-against-6-year-old/

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/01/02/charlton-library-sends-police-to-collect-overd ue-books-from-5-year-old/ — with Your Son or Daughter next

 

Related articles

• In Texas, Police in Schools Criminalize 300,000 Students Each Year (alternet.org)
• More and More Children Being Arrested For Trivial Things… (revivalandreformation.wordpress.com)
• Texas Student Sarah Bustamantes, 12, Arrested for Spraying Perfume (hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)

Who’s Getting Rich off the Prison-Industrial Complex?

This is definitely worth a blog post and some thought people…..

By Ray Downs

You likely already know how overcrowded and abusive the US prison system is, and you probably are also aware that the US has more people in prison than even China or Russia. In this age of privatization, of course, it’s also not surprising that many of the detention centers are not actually operated by the government, but by for-profit companies. So clearly, some people are making lots and lots of money off the booming business of keeping human beings in cages.

But who are these people?

Using NASDAQ data, I looked through the long list of investors in Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, the two biggest corporations that operate detention centers in the US, to find out who was cashing in the most on prisons. When we say “prison-industrial complex,” this is who we’re talking about.

Henri Wedell
The individual who’s invested the most in private prisons is Henri Wedell, who started serving on CCA’s board of directors in 2000, when the company was struggling with scandals related to prisoner abuse and mismanagement. He now owns more than 650,000 shares in the company, which is far more successful these days. Those shares are worth more than $25 million.

I called Wedell to ask him what it was like to make a fortune from the incarceration of others, and whether it bothered him to profit off a system that puts more people in prison than any other country in the world.

“America is the freest country in the world,” he told me. “America allows more freedom than any other country in the world, much more than Russia and a whole lot more than Scandinavia, where they really aren’t free. So offering all this freedom to society, there’ll be a certain number of people, more in this country than elsewhere, who take advantage of that freedom, abuse it, and end up in prison. That happens because we are so free in this country.”

Presumably, when he’s referring to all the freedom Americans have, he’s not including the 80,000 inmates in 60 prisons operated by CCA.

George Zoley
Another prison profiteer who presumably has no moral qualms about the business is George Zoley, the CEO of GEO Group and the second-biggest investor in the incarceration industry. In fact, he’s so proud of his business, which has committed a laundry list of human rights abuses, he tried to get a college football stadium named after it.

Zoley made nearly $6 million last year through salary and bonuses alone, but the real money is in stocks—he owns more than 500,000 shares in GEO, and he has made $23 million in stock trades during one 18-month period. But you can’t accuse him of not earning his pay, exactly. GEO saw a 56 percent spike in profits in the first quarter of 2013, and the company’s executives reassured investors that the incarceration rate wouldn’t be dropping any time soon when announcing its earnings. Zoley will be mega rich for years to come.

Jeremy Mindich and Matt Sirovich
Both Wedell and Zoley are big donors to the Republican party, but that doesn’t mean those from the left side of the aisle can’t play their game. Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich both donate to Democratic politicians and are involved with progressive-leaning organizations like Root Capital, a nonprofit lending company that offers loans to farmers in developing countries to alleviate poverty.

Their day job, however, is running Scopia Capital, a hedge fund that is the one of the largest shareholders of GEO Group. The fund owns about $300 million in shares in that company, which represents 12 percent of its entire portfolio. Like Zoley, they are good at what they do—their fund outperformed the market by 20 percentage points, and the State of New Jersey hired Scopia to manage $150 million worth of pensions.

I called them up to ask their thoughts about being politically liberal but heavily invested in private prisons, but Mindich refused to answer any questions and Sirovich was unavailable.

It should be pointed out that while being far to the left politically might seem incompatible with investing in prisons (or managing a hedge fund in the first place), the Democratic party is totally fine with the incarceration rate. Although Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan are largely responsible for the drug-war policies that caused the prison population to skyrocket, Bill Clinton was a “tough on crime” president who continued their ideas. And Vice President Joe Biden was a principal player in the Clinton era’s crime policies—he wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which, among other things, called for $9.7 billion in increased funding for prisons and stiffer penalties for drug offenders.

Though the US prison population is shrinking slightly, the number of inmates in federal lockup is increasing, and while Obama keeps saying he’s ending the war on drugs, he’s also proposed budgets that call for increasing the amount of money spent on the Bureau of Prisons. So it’s not such a stretch that a Democratic donor would also be in the men-in-cages industry.

Retired People and Probably You
The Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments are America’s top two 401(k) providers. They are also two of the private prison industry’s biggest investors.

Together, they own about 20 percent of both CCA and GEO. That means if you have a 401(k) plan, there’s a good chance you benefit financially from private prisons. And even if you don’t, there are many more mutual funds, brokerage firms, and banks that invest in private prisons—it being a growth industry and all—so if you have money somewhere other than your wallet or your mattress, it’s a good bet you’re involved in some way with companies that are locking up and probably abusing inmates.

This is especially true for government employees like public school teachers because their retirement funds are some of the biggest investors in private prisons. According to NASDAQ data, the retirement funds for public employees and teachers in New York and California together have about $60 million ($30 million each) invested in CCA and GEO. Teacher retirement funds in Texas and Kentucky have $8.3 million and $4 million invested in prisons respectively, and public employees in Florida ($10.3 million), Ohio ($8.6 million), Texas ($5.6 million), Arizona ($5.3 million), and Colorado ($2.25 million) are also connected to the industry. Except for New York, which has only one privately run detention facility, each of these states has several prisons run by CCA and GEO Group facilities. And it’s not just Americans who have ties to prisons. Foreign investors have money in them as well, including the pension fund for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which recently sold off its $5.1 million worth of GEO Group stock.

Most of these employees are probably unaware that their pensions are tied to prisons—and it’s hard to say that these are “bad” investments from a purely capitalistic perspective, since these prisons are making money hand over fist. The private prison industry is entrenched in our society. And the only way to make sure that we’re not individually and collectively profiting off of it is to close these things.

Follow Ray on Twitter: @RayDowns

Via VICE

 

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The Casualties of Justice

By Max Eternity, Truthout

Christopher Graham, who said police hit his head against the wall while frisking him, in the neighborhood near the 46th Precinct in New York, August 5, 2012. (Photo: Victor J. Blue / The New York Times)

The death of Jim Crow laws in 1965 was supposed to mean the end of government persecution of African-Americans, while a scathing new report and data from a growing chorus of experts say otherwise.

 

 

International terrorism always gets headlines. Getting much less attention is the ongoing government-sanctioned terror against blacks in America.

This is not hyperbole. The problem is real, and systemic, and a new report out this month confirms it.

Terror is terror, and it often ends in incarcerating the innocent – or worse.

Domestic terror against blacks includes a death count at the hands of “police, security guards and vigilantes,” resulting in the fatality of an African-American every 28 hours.

That calculation comes from new research by Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a nonprofit that has chapters in Atlanta, Oakland, New Orleans, Detroit and elsewhere.

Entitled “Operation Ghetto Storm,” MXGM’s report is detailed and extensive in its findings and includes abundant annotations for the 313 wrongful deaths that they cite. “The practice of executing Black people without pretense of a trial, jury or judge is an integral part of the government’s current overall strategy of containing the Black community in a state of perpetual colonial subjugation and exploitation,” reads part of its preface, and one of the most horrifying aspects revealed by the report is that 66 percent of the “extrajudicial killings” were of individuals between the ages of 2 and 31.

Continue Reading @ TruthOut

 

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Union Of the Snake: How California’s Prison Guards Subvert Democracy

• Sagar Jethani

Union Of the Snake How Californias Prison Guards Subvert Democracy

 

 

After being threatened with contempt by a panel of federal judges for failing to sufficiently reduce the number of prisoners in California’s jails, Governor Jerry Brown reluctantly unveiled a plan this month to further reduce the Golden State’s overcrowded prisons by another 9,000 inmates. Enthusiasm in Sacramento was in short supply.

Governor Brown argued that court orders were forcing him to jeopardize public safety by transferring prisoners to county jails and offering some of them early release.

Prisons chief Jeffrey Beard was more direct: “The plan is ugly. We don’t like it.”

Two years ago, California’s prisons held twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold, and that led to serious problems. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that California was violating prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court estimated that an inmate in California’s prisons died every six to seven days due to inadequate medical care caused by overcrowding. Suicidal inmates were forced to stand in metal cages for 24 hours without access to restrooms. California was ordered to reduce inmate populations over two years from 150,000 to 110,000. When Jerry Brown crowed this January that California had done enough to satisfy the court’s requirements, he was threatened with contempt unless he continued reducing prison rolls down to the mandated target.

How did California’s prisons get so crowded in the first place? Golden State voters contributed to this crisis by approving some of the most stringent sentencing measures in the nation, including the 1994 Three Strikes Initiative. The law mandates 25 years to life in prison for three-time felons, even for nonviolent crimes. Strict sentencing laws enjoy bipartisan support in Sacramento. Republican legislators exult in preaching a tough-on-crime mantra — especially to the older, white demographic that tends to vote for them. And Democrats are surprisingly among the loudest voices calling for tougher sentencing laws lest they be called-out for being soft on crime.

Enter the California Correction Peace Officer’s Association, CCPOA, better known as the prison guards union.

Continue Reading @ PolicyMic

 

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What Life Is Like For The 2 Million People Behind Bars In America

 

REUTERS/Jason Redmond

An inmate stands in his cell at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles, California October 3, 2012.

 

Rebecca Baird-Remba

 

The United States keeps 2.26 million people behind bars, by far the world’s highest incarceration rate.

So many prisoners are expensive, costing taxpayers $68 billion annually.

So many prisoners are also exceeding available infrastructure, with capacity crises in Texas, California, Arizona, and other states. The war on drugs has quadrupled the number of prisoners behind bars since 1980. Nonviolent offenders now make up 60% of America’s prison population.

Overcrowding has led to rising levels of violence and unsafe and uncomfortable living conditions.

Click here to see photos

On Mothers, Mothering and Mass Incarceration

In this Mother’s Day tribute, law professor and advocate Sheila Bedi learns how “having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body.”

By Sheila Bedi , Truthout

(Image: Hand holding fence via Shutterstock)

 

 

When I was a teenager, my mother posted this quote on her mirror: “having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body.” Back then, the sentiment made me roll my eyes, but even then I knew I had an exceptional mother. She is fierce, yet gentle, demanding, supportive and self-sacrificing. My mother taught me to feel deeply, think rigorously and to find my own voice and use it loudly. I’ve carried a piece of my mother and her teachings into my work as an attorney and activist who works with and for people caught up in the criminal justice system. And I recognize my own mother’s fierceness and love in so many of the mothers I have worked with over the years – the mothers of children and young people who are imprisoned in this country’s prisons and jails.

I’m talking about mothers like Mrs. W. I represented her fifteen year old son, who was locked up in a maximum security adult prison. One day she and I drove together to the prison to meet with the Warden to discuss her son’s education. Once we arrived, the security staff wanted to shake her down – remove her head scarf, shake out her bra. I tried to put a stop to the intrusive and humiliating search, but Mrs. W. told me to fall back – she told me that the prison staff had her baby’s life in their hands and she wasn’t about to piss them off over her head scarf and a pat down. She directed me to save my fire for what mattered – protecting her son.

Mothers like Mrs. G., who testified before the state legislature about seeing the light going out in her fourteen year old son’s eyes after he spent months in solitary confinement. She told lawmakers about the pain and powerlessness she felt as she watched her son endure tortuous conditions in a juvenile prison. She channeled her pain into working to protect other children who were imprisoned in abusive prisons.

Let’s be clear about who these mothers’ children are. The vast majority of young people who end up behind bars are there because of non-violent offenses. They are overwhelming poor and come from communities of color. Communities where schools look more and more like jails. Communities targeted by prisons run on the cheap by corporations that exist solely to enrich shareholders.

Private prison companies only make money when they ensure that the revolving door to and from prison remains well-greased. Mass incarceration and the war on drugs have ravaged many of the communities these mothers and their children came from. But even in the face of these realities, many of these communities have developed strength and resilience: a deep faith, a strong sense of interconnectedness and family. My experience has been that when one looks to find the source of this strength – it’s the mothers. Watching each other’s children, attending a know-your-rights meeting in between working all day and getting dinner on the table, calling 100 phone numbers to find an advocate who can help her help her child. It’s the mothers who end up holding it all together.

After well over ten years of representing people who are locked up, I have had the privilege to know many mothers who move heaven and earth to fight for their children. Too often these mothers must fight against a criminal justice system that targets black and brown youth. Mothers who save and scrimp and travel hundreds of miles to visit their children behind bars for an hour a week. Mothers who endure in the face of learning that their children survived the unspeakable abuse that is endemic to our nation’s prisons and jails: sexual violence, prolonged shackling, months in solitary confinement, beatings, stabbings. I could go on and on listing the tortuous conditions that exist in this nation’s prisons and jails. Much of that story has already been told in lawsuits and consent decrees. What remains untold and largely ignored, is the strength and resilience of the people who lived through these abuses – the children and young people, their families and communities. And the mothers. Especially the mothers.

After spending over a decade working with mothers like Mrs. G. and Mrs. W. and after having many conversations with my own mother about the pain and the joy of mothering, I thought I had an understanding about what it meant to be a mother. And then a year ago, I became a mother myself. And I realized that I had no idea. None.

Motherhood is hard and wonderful and terrifying and humbling. During this past year, I’ve struggled to become the kind of mother my son deserves, I’ve thought often about the mothers I’ve known. The best part of my day is when I rock my baby boy to sleep, and I whisper to him: you are safe, you are loved, and I can’t wait to see how you’re going to love the world back. I simply do not know how I could keep breathing if he wasn’t safe. If he ever had to endure the conditions endured by the imprisoned children I’ve worked with and for. Yet, because of the United States’ addiction to incarceration, millions of mothers do it every day. They not only keep breathing – but they keep fighting. These mothers leave me in awe.

Continue Reading @ TruthOut

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• How prison keeps many Americans locked into poverty (tv.msnbc.com)
• Bonding Through Bars: The Health And Human Rights Of Incarcerated Women by Samantha Sarra (zcommunications.org)
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Willie Manning deserves DNA testing before May 7 execution

by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld

Last week the Mississippi Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision denied Willie Manning the opportunity to do DNA testing that could prove he is innocent of the crime that landed him on death row. Tragically, Manning is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday and may never get the opportunity to do the testing that could prove whether he is innocent as he has always maintained.

We urge Gov. Phil Bryant to issue a stay so the testing can be done. While people can differ on whether the death penalty is an appropriate form of punishment, nearly everyone would agree that it should be used only in those cases where we are certain of guilt. DNA testing could provide that certainty or prove, as Manning insists, that he is innocent. It could also, as the Mississippi Supreme Court judges noted in their dissent, provide the identity of alleged second perpetrator who has never been caught.

Eighteen people who served time on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence since it became available two decades ago. One of those men, Kennedy Brewer, was convicted in Mississippi. Like Manning, Brewer was convicted based on circumstantial evidence and unvalidated forensic science. In Brewer’s case, the prosecution relied on widely discredited bite mark testimony, and in Manning’s case the prosecution presented hair microscopy, which because of its unreliability will be subject to a recently announced FBI nationwide review. The DNA evidence in Brewer’s case proved his innocence and identified the real perpetrator who confessed to the crime and another murder for which someone had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life. Fortunately, that man, Levon Brooks, was also exonerated.

We don’t know what the DNA evidence will ultimately prove in Manning’s case, but there is a good chance that it will be highly probative — and much more reliable than the kind of evidence that was used to convict him of the 1992 murders of Pamela Tiffany Miller and Jon Stephan Steckler. The two students were kidnapped after leaving a party at Mississippi State University and were driven to a remote location and both were shot to death. At trial, there was no physical evidence linking Manning to the crime. The prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence. At one point the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned his conviction because Manning’s lawyers weren’t allowed to fully cross-examine the informant, but the court later reconsidered its decision and let the conviction stand.

Since 1994, Manning has been seeking DNA testing of the rape kit, fingernail scrapings that were recovered from both victims and hairs recovered from the scene. Rape kits and fingernail scrapings are routinely tested today because the testing can prove with near certainty who committed the crime. Before DNA evidence, prosecutors would often rely on hair microscopy to place a defendant at the scene even though the practice was never scientifically validated. After DNA evidence exonerated three people who had been wrongly convicted in part based on this type of evidence, the FBI announced this year that it would undertake a massive review of all cases in which one of its analysts testified about this type of evidence. Given that the FBI performed the hair microscopy in this case, it would seem that Manning’s case should be subject to this review — if he isn’t put to death first.

As the dissenters noted, given that it is alleged that two perpetrators committed the crime, it’s puzzling that the district attorney is so resistant to testing.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has said that the DNA testing is unnecessary because there is other overwhelming evidence of guilt. But appeals courts were also wrong in the cases of all 306 DNA exonerations, including the 18 who served time on death row. DNA testing has the potential to tell us once and for all who committed these two tragic murders, and that’s something we all should want.

- – - – -

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld are co-founders and co-directors of the Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent injustice.

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• Mississippi Denies Inmate DNA Test, Set to Execute Him on Tuesday (gawker.com)
• Willie Manning Will Die in Mississippi Unless YOU Ask for His DNA Test TODAY (badgals-radio.com)

The “School to Prison Pipeline” IS reality…..

and if California was not enough to anger you…read this….we all should be outraged! Take action & sign the petition at the bottom of this post and share with others, please!

16-Year-Old Girl Arrested and Charged With a Felony For Science Project Mistake

No one was hurt. Nothing was damaged. The criminalization of school kids has gone too far.

Photo Credit: WTSP-TV

 

A Florida teen with an exemplary record is facing federal charges after conducting what a classmate calls “a science project gone bad.”

16-year-old Kiera Wilmot is accused of mixing housing chemicals in a small water bottle at Bartow High School, causing the cap to fly off and produce a bit of smoke. The experiment was conducted outdoors, no property was damaged, and no one was injured.

Not long after Wilmot’s experiment, authorities arrested her and charged her with “possession/discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device,” according to WTSP-TV. The school district proceeded to expel Wilmot for handling the “dangerous weapon,” also known as a water bottle. She will have to complete her high school education through an expulsion program.

Friends and staffers, including the school principal, came to Wilmot’s defense, telling media that authorities arrested an upstanding student who meant no harm.

“She is a good kid,” principal Ron Richard told WTSP-TV. “She has never been in trouble before. Ever.”

“She just wanted to see what happened to those chemicals in the bottle,” a classmate added. “Now, look what happened.”

Polk County Schools stands by its decision to expel Wilmot, asserting in a statement, “there are consequences to actions,” and calling Wilmot’s experiment a “serious breach of conduct.”

h/t Reason

Petitioning Joe Hall

State Attorney Jerry Hill: Drop charges against Kiera Wilmot

click here to sign

 

Related articles

• Teenager charged for science project gone awry (salon.com)
• Zero Tolerance Watch: Teen Faces Felony Charges for Science Experiment (reason.com)
• Florida schoolgirl charged with felonies for science experiment (communities.washingtontimes.com)
• AlterNet wrote now: 16-Year-Old Girl Arrested & Charged With a Felony For Science Project Mistake (childreninprison.wordpress.com)

California Prisons in the News

While Governor Brown protests ( read…cries) over the mandate handed down by the three Judge panel, one thing is certain- all 33 prisons in California remain critically over crowded. Brown and CDCr will make the best choice for public safety in releasing prisoners, which should be- releasing the lifer prisoners who sentenced indeterminate sentences. Meaning those that have done their time, plus many, many more YEARS, non violent drug offenders ( who should never have been sent to prison in the first place) and those who pose no danger to the public -the medically incapacitated.

FILE — In this Aug. 3, 2006 file photo, inmates are housed in three-tier bunks, in what was once a multi-purpose recreation room, at the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, Calif. Crowding in state prisons has been reduced under a two-year-old state law that is sending less serious offenders to county jails instead of state prisons. Gov. Jerry Brown faces a midnight deadline of May 2, to say how the state will further reduce its inmate population. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli

Brown and CDCr together will releases prisoners who will go on to re-offend, then scream “you see! this is what happens when you release prisoners early!!” The bottom line here is they want prisoner release to fail. It all comes down to the money… do not be fooled into thinking its about safety. They have viable choices and clearly it is not about public safety.  62 prisoners have died needless and preventable deaths from Valley Fever since 2005. Those are the ones we KNOW about. Suddenly its a public emergency and isbeing addressed. When Prison Reform Movement wrote to then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Human Rights Watch ( back in 05) it was a public health emergency then too. And NOW they want to take some action? How ridiculous is this? How do we explain to the families who have lost their loved ones? Inadequate medical care is no excuse.

Pleasant Valley Prison in Coalinga was built on a former dump site. The hospital directly behind that prison is also built on that same contaminated soil. The state has known about this for years…and done nothing. Not only are prisoners at risk, the staff at both facilities, as well as visitors.  On a positive note, the prisoners being kept in Solitary at Pelican Bay filing a class action law suit. IMO, all prisoners locked up in California should take part in a HUGE class action lawsuit against CDCr, the state and the receiver. Sue them all, force them to finally clean things up, once and for all.

California corrections officials say they are still trying to develop a plan to cope with outbreaks of soil-borne valley fever at two prisons, including Avenal. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation / April 29, 2013) Via LA TIMES

 

 

Here is a round up of articles detailing the incidents of this past week. I ask you all, where is the outrage?

Solitary confinement inmates seek class-action status

 

California details plans to reduce prison crowding

 

California ordered to move prisoners at risk of valley fever

 

Advocates for CA inmate rights blast Jerry Brown’s prison plan

Related articles

• Valley fever cases spur call to close Avenal prison (fresnobee.com)
• California details plans to reduce prison crowding (sfgate.com)
• Valley Fever Threatens Thousands of California Inmates (medicaldaily.com)
• Are California Prisons Punishing Inmates Based On Race? (prisonmovement.wordpress.com)
• California Prison Conditions Driving Prisoners to Suicide (moorbey.wordpress.com)
• CDC probing valley fever outbreaks in two California prisons (latimes.com)
• Motion denied, Governor: Medical neglect is still killing prisoners (prisonmovement.wordpress.com)