Mary Sutton: Members of the Los Angeles No More Jails Coalition took their fight against the expansion of LA County’s notorious jail system to one of the proposed construction sites at the Pitchess Detention Center in the city of Castaic.
The Prison Industrial Complex
For profit prison companies, businesses that supply goods and services to prisons, politicians who benefit by looking like they're "tough on crime", a misdirected "war on drugs" and other forces have merged to create the largest incarcerated population in human history right in the nation of the free and the brave.
Jerry Brown’s Corrections Budget: More Cages, Little Else
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Diana Zuñiga: Jerry Brown’s “plan” keeps California on the same road we’ve been down for 30 years: more money going to corrections and even more allocated to prison expansions.
Protesting 22 Consecutive Years in Solitary
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Angola3News: Ultimately, the people of the U.S. need to rise up and fight back against the imperial prison state, which is also an imperial torture state, decimating minds, bodies, and souls throughout the country on a daily basis.
How Los Angeles Wrestles with Mass Incarceration
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Dick Price: With jails straining to absorb thousands of prison inmates, jailhouse guard-on-inmate beatings grabbing headlines, and public concern rising about possible spikes in crime rates, public safety issues have Angelenos of all stripes scrambling for answers.
School to Prison Pipeline
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Anthony Samad: This new public discourse around the “school to prison pipeline” is not new at all. It was a predictable outcome of social control planning where the prison industrial complex started forecasting how many prison beds would be needed based on fourth grade test scores two decades ago.
Are California Prisons Punishing Inmates Based on Race?
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Christie Thompson: Prison officials have blamed crowding for contributing to “an increase in riots and disturbances.” And the more inmates there are, the more likely it is that prison officials will respond to violence with broad-brush security measures.
Torture, or Mental Health Treatment? Leaked Video Shows American Prison Conditions
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Bruce Reilly: Few Americans are privileged to see the “help” a mentally ill prisoner can expect to receive if they are acting out or “decompensating,” to use the medical term. This incident is nothing special; similar procedures happen in every prison across the nation.
Expecting Black Men to Play in Stadium Named After Prison
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Bruce Reilly: I highly doubt any of the 99 players of the Florida Atlantic Owls were consulted about playing in The GEO Group Stadium next year, named after the world’s largest prison-owning corporation. I also doubt I need to illustrate the percentage of the Owls roster who are Black, or the percentage of The GEO Group’s “roster” are Black.
People Are Changed
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Kevin J. McCarthy: When the public finally has to choose between educating its youth or building and maintaining another prison, it is my hope that reason and reasonable will start to prevail. The mighty social planners have attempted to stave off that dilemma by transferring state prisoners from one state to another to fill up any beds
Strategizing to Defeat Control Unit Prisons and Solitary Confinement
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Angola3News: Being sent to a control unit prison is tantamount to torture. Prisoners are held under conditions that today are not considered ‘humane’ even for animals. They are an extreme abuse of state power.
Graduate Them, Don’t Incarcerate Them!
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Diane Lefer: Los Angeles Unified School District has cut suspension rates in half, in part thanks to a new policy that was adopted after tireless advocacy by community groups
The Senate Needs to Rein in Brutal Prison Practices
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Jeremy Kuzmarov: While railing against social welfare programs and excessive government spending, law-and-order hawks have presided over an unprecedented prison boom funded by taxpayer dollars, and allowed prison conditions to deteriorate significantly in many states.
ACLU Next: Death Penalty on the Ballot — May 21
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Guest Speakers: Jeanne Woodford (former San Quentin warden) and Obie Anthony (exonerated after being wrongfully convicted of murder) Monday, 21 May
Selling State Prisons
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Bruce Reilly: ALEC and for-profit prison lobbyists are fighting to stop the decriminalization of marijuana, to lengthen sentences, eliminate Good Time credits, curtail parole, incarcerate immigrants, maintain mandatory minimums, and increase Three Strikes laws because these efforts will increase their profits. But is this in the public’s best interest?
Prison Realignment or Expensive Musical Chairs
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Sharon Kyle: Given the public’s short attention span, it’s no wonder juicy celebrity gossip and salacious headlines have come to dominate the “news”. This is great for those who don’t want us to pay attention.
Mass Incarceration: Points of Agreement on the Right and the Left
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Diane Lefer: When a community sees daily injustice and doesn’t see the rule of law equally applied, it becomes morally and ethically easier to choose to live in a lawless way.
America’s Top Lobbyists on Criminal Justice Reform: Legal? Proper?
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Bruce Reilly: For years I watched the full-time lobbyist of the Attorney General, their legislative specialist, testify against practically every attempt to reform the criminal justice system.
Seeking Unity Across Sex, Race & Class
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Diane Lefer: All women, she said, should be able to give their children what no one else can give, to have the right to stay home, if they want to, with their children up to the age of two or three without suffering loss of needed income.
Should We Crash the Prison System by Demanding Trials?
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Bruce Reilly: If everyone refused a plea bargain and went to trial, the system would crash. This maneuver is not new. I could have never organized these men to refuse plea bargains and go to trial for several reasons.
Dead Under the “Custody and Care” of…
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Bruce Reilly: Christian Gomez was one of thousands in California struggling for things such as food, sunlight, and changes to the segregation policies — the everyday torture in America’s prisons.
How Will Local Communities Cope with the Sudden Influx of Newly Released Prisoners?
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ACLU Forum: The number of nonviolent, non-serious, non-sexual prisoners the San Gabriel Valley alone will receive through 2012 is between 1,000 and 1,500. What will be the impact on local communities and families of these (primarily) men?
Census Bureau Prison Miscounts Burden Local Governments
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Leah Sakala: Rather than forcing counties and municipalities that house prisons to grapple individually with the distortions caused by flawed population data, it is far more logical for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place.
The Torture of Mumia Abu-Jamal Continues Off Death Row
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Hans Bennett: Abu-Jamal has asked for supporters to not just call for his release from the hole, but to challenge the very practice of solitary confinement and what are called in Pennsylvania “Restricted Housing Units.”
The Cooler Bandits: The New N-Word Is Felon
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The Cooler Bandits follows four friends struggling to re-enter society after 20 years in prison, only to confront their future in the old neighborhood.
California Ending Funding of Child Prisons
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Bruce Reilly: I am not too troubled possible financial bankruptcy due to prisons, particularly child prisons. The possible moral bankruptcy, however, runs much deeper than any bottom line.
Mom Jailed for Not Checking “Felony” Box
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Bruce Reilly: The cages of America look a lot more like Anita McLemore than most would believe. And the criminal justice system far too often endeavors to ensure that the ripples of a criminal conviction never stop.
From Behind Bars to Law School
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Bruce Reilly: I came to New Orleans knowing but a few criminal justice activists, legal professionals, and some friends of friends. It was good to have folks who knew I had spent twelve years locked in prison.
Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons
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Victoria Law builds upon her earlier prison abolitionist critique by discussing practical alternatives for effectively confronting gender violence without using the prison system.
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Is California Reducing Prison Overcrowding Without Fixing Its Cause?
Sharon Kyle: In a relatively short period of time, our nation has incarcerated enough people to create the second largest city in the United States. Releasing a few tens of thousand prisoners for overcrowding won’t change much or will it?