The Prison Thread
 

For all things prison/prisoner-related.

Rachel Maddow Exposing private prisons role in Arizona's 'Papers Please' roots



I think this is an interesting twist on the Arizona law. It takes her a while to get there, but half-way through she finally gets to it (minute 6).
and a follow-up:

Based in central Austin, the Inside Books Project (IBP) is an all volunteer, non-profit organization sending free books and educational materials to people in prison in the state of Texas. It is the only project in the state offering this vital resource to Texas' prisoner population, which now exceeds 171,790.

There's a pretty good book called "Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison".
The writer talks about his time in prison and is now a human rights advocate due to all of the things he endured. Powerful stuff.

I don't think that the population has ANY idea as to what it is like to be in prison in America.

Which is frightening considering the rate at which we fill up our prisons.

I do think we need to be clear on one thing. Prison is NOT about rehabilitation. The programs available that even take a small crack at rehabilitation are few and far between.

Prison Systems: The Man's Way of Continued Opression
 

while in college my son, my baby, my life was arrested with possession of a fire arm in NYS. During that time they were really cracking down on gun laws and violent crimes. He spent quite a bit of time in prison. I stayed in NYS and for 4 years I followed him from hub to hub seeing him every single weekend until I knew he was going to be ok. It was the most difficult time of my life. I didnt date, I barely slept. I saw plenty, heard plenty but nothing prepares you for that feeling of feeling like you have no control. That no matter what you do, nothing can change what is happening. Thats how I felt. Imagine how they feel especially when they are used as an example or wrongly convicted.

The thing that always really got to me tho was that he had people and I was there all the time, he could call me often, our family and lots of visits, letters etc. a very large % of inmates families and friends forget and they are alone. Some deserved it, some didnt.

It scares the shit out of me that a device like this even exists but I need to do some research because Im remembering an article from a long time ago that outlined how "crowd control" devices were always tested in prisons first before being moved to the "public sector".


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...88&ft=1&f=1001

My real father was incarcerated from 1951-1964. I found him with the help of the FBI in 1983. I wanted to tell him that I was alive. I never knew about him until my mom and I sat down to a heart to heart and a bottle of Black Velvet for about 4 hours when I was 17.

Once I found him we talked a few times on the phone. He was excited that I had found him and wanted to know about my life. After a few phone conversations, I severed ties.

I was raised as an only child. I didn't know that I had 9 other brothers and sisters in California where I found him.

I am overwhelmed.....thank you so very much for sharing your story. While it won't help you, I am truly sorry that this happened to you but am grateful that you have a gift of turning the nightmare you endured into words, words that moved me. thank you.

"Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist bruce jackson visited a Texas prison in huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of worksongs by inmates of the Ellis Unit."



An unaccompanied song by prisoners in Texas Jail circa 1930 - a recording by John Lomax

When I get back from my trip next week I will donate to this project. I think often about how books literally saved my life, my mental state, and taught me so many things. Mostly, they have been an escape. I think at the very least, no matter what someone's crime, they are entitled to books.

Irish

Thanks for this video!

Help Free the Scott Sisters <-- click to sign petition

Read the following petition to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, and add your name on the form to your right
September 14, 2010

Dear Governor Barbour,

Jamie and Gladys Scott – the “Scott Sisters” – have been incarcerated in Mississippi for the last 15 years for an armed robbery which, according to court testimony, yielded $11. They have consistently denied involvement in the crime. Although neither of the Scott Sisters had a prior criminal record, they were each sentenced to an extraordinary double life sentence.

The presiding judge in their trial, Judge Marcus Gordon, has a history of racially biased rulings, including granting bail to the KKK murderer of the three civil rights workers: Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.

Furthermore, Jamie Scott now has lost renal function in of her kidneys and cannot survive without a transplant. She has suffered repeated infections and been hospitalized due to unsanitary prison conditions. The Department of Corrections will not allow tests for kidney compatibility even though numerous volunteers have come forward.

Given these serious concerns, we ask that you:

1) Grant a pardon or commute the sentences of Jamie and Gladys Scott to time served, and

2) Grant Jamie Scott a “compassionate medical release” given the serious medical condition she is facing.

There is no greater form of violence than injustice. Please review this case and bring justice to the Scott Sisters who have suffered excessive incarceration for a crime in which their participation is questionable.

Miss. judge tosses out 31-year-old rape, murder convictions

HATTIESBURG — Two men imprisoned since 1979 for a rape and murder that DNA evidence now shows was committed by someone else are free men today.

Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich this morning threw out the convictions of Phillip Bivens and Bobby Ray Dixon and ordered evidence be presented to a grand jury on Andrew Harris, whose DNA matches that of evidence from the crime scene. Harris already is serving a life sentence at the State Penitentiary in Parchman for another rape in Forrest County two years after Eva Gail Patterson was raped and murdered on March 4, 1979.

“Thank God, thank God,” Bivens said after Helfrich’s ruling.

Dixon, 53, who is out on medical release given inmates who have a terminal illness, said, “It feels good. It feels real good. I thank God. I feel blessed.”

Dixon has advanced lung cancer and a brain tumor and is undergoing chemotherapy.

The third man convicted of the crime, Larry Ruffin, died in prison in 2002.

Helfrich said he will take up the posthumous exoneration of Ruffin after the grand jury meets.

He appointed District Attorney Jon Mark Weathers as special prosecutor in this case. Weathers has been investigating Harris ever since he found out the DNA at the crime scene matched Harris.

The Innocence Project pushed for the DNA tests that ended up clearing Ruffin, Dixon and Bivens in Patterson’s rape and murder.

Ruffin’s case is the first time in Mississippi and the second time nationally that DNA has cleared an inmate posthumously, according to the Innocence Project. The first was last year in Texas when DNA tests cleared Tim Cole, who died in 1999, of the 1985 rape of a Texas Tech University student.

Dixon and Bivens had pleaded guilty and fingered Ruffin as the rapist after allegedly being beaten.

Of the 259 DNA exonerations since 1989, 63 have involved false confessions and 19 have involved false guilty pleas, according to statistics kept by the Innocence Project.

http://cmsimg.clarionledger.com/apps...W=318&Border=0
Phillip Bivens (left) is hugged by Teresa Strickland , the sister of Larry Ruffin, after Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich ordered the release of Phillip Bivens and Bobby Ray Dixon, and said the two will be fully exonerated pending a presentation of DNA evidence to a grand jury. (Matt Bush/Hattiesburg American)

http://cmsimg.clarionledger.com/apps...W=180&Border=0
Dixon (George Clark/Hattiesburg American)

http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/shared-blo...C0_9-thumb.JPG

Lawyers for relatives of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed for the 1991 arson murder of his three young daughters in Corsicana, on Friday petitioned a judge in Travis County to hear evidence and determine whether Willingham was wrongly convicted.

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Willingham’s execution has caught national attention for the specter that Texas may have killed an innocent man. Several arson experts in recent years have rejected the science that the investigators who testified at Willingham’s trial used to determine that the fire that killed his daughters was intentionally set.

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Willingham, above right, was convicted of murder in 1992 in the deaths of his children —1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron and 2-year-old Amber — who died of smoke inhalation after a fire at the family’s house in Corsicana, about 55 miles northeast of Waco.

He maintained his innocence until his 2004 execution.

Willingham’s lawyers have claimed that local and state fire investigators relied on faulty scientific methods in concluding that the fire at Willingham’s house had been intentionally set.

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Willingham was executed during (Governor) Perry’s tenure (February 16, 2004) and Perry was accused of playing politics with the case last year when he replaced three members of the nine-member Texas Commission on Forensic Science, including the chairman, Austin defense lawyer Sam Bassett. The members, whose terms had expired, were replaced just days before the commission had been scheduled to hear the findings of the expert they had hired to evaluate the case. That presentation was postponed indefinitely.