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(Source: yesimanatheist)

KY Set to Pay Disgusting Maggot-Serving Company to Feed Kentucky Kids

Funny how every time Aramark manages to bribe persuade its critics to praise it, we hear yet another vomit-inducing story of how the company actually uses the tax dollars it does not use to properly feed people.

 

Yes, of course you are going to be paying Aramark to pretend to feed Kentucky children in juvenile detention, even though Aramark has just been caught - again - feeding shit to human beings.

 

Wonkette:

Are you guys super into privatization, that cool thing where we take away duties from the mean rotten government and give them to cool companies that will magically, simply by being private companies, make everything better? It’s the best, right? Just look how awesome it has worked out in Michigan’s prison system, where Aramark, the private contractor that now gets oodles of money to feed Michigan’s prisoners, has brought super great benefits like maggots in the meals, food shortages, and really sketchy employees.
 

Seven months ago, Michigan switched the prison food service contract from state workers to Aramark in a move that was theoretically supposed to save the state a cool $12 million. They don’t seem to have considered the possibility that the savings was going to come from entrepreneurial innovations like not actually feeding the prisoners.

Prison officials confirm at least two instances of meal shortages have been reported this month. [...] When menu items run out, Aramark substitutes, in one case using hot dog buns to make pizza. Another time, “instead of getting juice for breakfast this morning, everyone got 2 Minute Maid popsicles.”

Now, you may be thinking that doesn’t really sound like a big deal, but then you should remember food shortages IN PRISON are probably a different level of problem and danger than when your office cafeteria runs out of those little pudding parfait things you like so much. Also too, did we mention the maggots? Maggots. And rotting meat that may or may not have yet hit the maggot stage, so what the hell, serve that shit. Aramark is pretty sure it is just a conspiracy against them though.

While many view the discovery of live maggots in Michigan prisons — quickly followed by similar reports from Ohio, where Aramark took over prison food services in September — as an indictment of Aramark, the company finds the events suspicious. “Aramark has served billions of meals, to millions of inmates, at hundreds of correctional facilities around the country and never encountered sudden incidences like those reported in two states in the span of one week,” company spokeswoman Karen Cutler said. “Each corrections system is operated independently and the only common denominator is that both of them recently privatized their food services in a decision that has drawn criticism from some special-interest groups.”

Um, no, spokeslady. The other common denominator is YOUR SHITTY COMPANY RUNS BOTH SYSTEMS NOW. Besides bringing terrible food or a terrible lack of food to Michigan’s prisoners, Aramark also employed some really swell employees.

74 of the roughly 300 Aramark employees who are supposed to work on the contract have been banned from Michigan prison facilities for violations including showing up drunk to work, having sexual contact with inmates, and attempting to smuggle drugs into the prisons.

So, basically one-quarter of the people that Aramark hired are too terrible SERVE FOOD IN PRISON, which is not, let’s admit, the sexiest most fun time sought after job. Congrats, Aramark. You are pretty much the literal worst.

Think that now, surely, Kentucky will throw Aramark'as bid out and bar its employees from ever setting foot in the Commonwealth again ?  HA! Kentucky officials have known about Aramark for years and just don't give a flying fuck.

Adam Beam at AP, on July 4:

The $12 million contract to feed Kentucky's 21,200 prison inmates is up for bid for the first time since a 2010 audit found significant problems with the state's current contractor.

But some of Kentucky's biggest critics of Philadelphia-based Aramark now say they are satisfied with the company's response to the criticism.

Aramark has held the contract since 2005 when Kentucky first privatized inmate meals. At the time, it cost the state $3.49 per meal. Aramark provided the meals for $2.34 each. The difference has saved Kentucky taxpayers about $51 million over the 10-year contract.

But lawmakers started asking questions about the food service after a 2009 riot at the medium-security Northpoint Training Facility when inmates started a fire that injured several inmates and officers. An official Department of Corrections investigation concluded the food was not the primary cause for the riot. But it prompted lawmakers to ask then state Auditor Crit Luallen to investigate the state's contract with Aramark.

In 2010, the auditor's office found billing errors of more than $36,000 that benefited Aramark. The audit also could not confirm that Aramark used proper ingredients or followed food safety standards.

What Laws for the Rich?

Guess somebody must have let slip how inmates treat child rapists. Especially rich, fat, privileged rapists of their own three-year-old children.

Funny how the question of how well someone might do in prison never seems to be an issue when the person in question is not white, male, xian, hetero, and what's that other thing? Oh, yeah. Filthy. Motherfucking. Rich.

Emily Bazelon at Slate:

What is wrong with Delaware Judge Jan Jurden, who gave a DuPont heir, Robert H. Richards IV, probation for raping his 3-year-old daughter?* In her mind-boggling order suspending Richards’ eight-year prison sentence, Jurden gave one rationale that should launch a tidal wave of hate mail: Richards “will not fare well” in prison. To ask the obvious, so what?

There are three crucial justifications for criminal punishment: retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. It’s the first two of those goals that should be front and center when the crime is the sexual abuse of a child, with the welfare of the rapist coming in a distant third. Probation for raping a child is the kind of leniency that gives mercy a terrible name.

It’s also part of a disturbing pattern of late in which judges treat sexual assault crimes as worthy only of a slap on the wrist.

SNIP

Richards, who had no previous record, also has the benefit of money and family connections. He pleaded guilty to one count of fourth-degree rape after his daughter told her grandmother, at the age of 5, that she didn't want “my daddy touching me anymore.” (Richards was convicted in 2009—the details of the case are only coming out now because of a lawsuit his ex-wife recently filed against him.) In Delaware, fourth-degree rape is characterized as a violent felony, and the sentencing range goes up to 15 years in prison. But Jurden seems to have decided to treat Richards primarily as a patient, noting that he had “significant treatment needs which must be met.”

SNIP

Sentencing reform for truly nonviolent crimes, especially drug and gun possession, is very much in the interest of justice. But to let off a convicted child rapist, who just happens to be living off his trust fund in a mansion, thanks to his wealthy and famous family? That seems like the definition of injustice.

Judget Who Sold Kids to Private Prison Gets 30 Years; Corporation That Bought Them Walks

The question is no longer whether corporations have rights in this country; it's whether anyone else does.

Divine Irony:

Pennsylvania Judge Sentenced For 28 Years For Selling Kids to the Prison System

Mark Ciavarella Jr, a 61-year old former judge in Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for literally selling young juveniles for cash. He was convicted of accepting money in exchange for incarcerating thousands of adults and children into a prison facility owned by a developer who was paying him under the table. The kickbacks amounted to more than $1 million.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned some 4,000 convictions issued by him between 2003 and 2008, claiming he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles – including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Some of the juveniles he sentenced were as young as 10-years old.

Ciavarella was convicted of 12 counts, including racketeering, money laundering, mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also ordered to repay $1.2 million in restitution.

His “kids for cash” program has revealed that corruption is indeed within the prison system, mostly driven by the growth in private prisons seeking profits by any means necessary.

Gitmo Comes Home

Why reserve those tactics for innocent foreigners when they'll work just as well on innocent Americans?

Digby:

Unbefuckinglievable:

Browder was a 16-year-old sophomore in high school walking home from a party in the Bronx when he was arrested on a tip that he robbed someone three weeks earlier. He was hauled off to Rikers Island, a prison known for punishing conditions and overuse of force, and was held because he couldn’t pay the $10,000 bail. Browder went to court on several occasions, but he was never scheduled for trial. After 33 months in jail, Browder said a judge offered freedom in exchange for a guilty plea, threatening that he could face 15 years in jail if convicted. He refused. Then one day, he was released with no explanation.

“They just dismissed the case and they think it’s all right. No apology, no nothing,” he told WABC-TV. Now at age 20 with his teen years behind him, Browder is first faced with finishing his GED and trying to make up for three years of his teen years lost.

Browder says he spent more than 400 days in solitary confinement, was deprived of meals, and was assaulted and beaten both by officers and fellow inmates. Browder attempted suicide at least six times. Last month he filed a lawsuit last month against the city and several agencies. The Bronx District Attorney’s office has declined to comment.

Huh? What is going on here? This young man has lived out a Kafkaesque nightmare right there in the middle of New York.

Browder’s story lays out a laundry list of some of the most prevalent problems with the criminal justice system. Browder was stopped in the Bronx, where the New York Police Department came under particular fire for its over-aggressive use of stops and unsubstantiated charges of “trespassing.” He was purportedly jailed based solely on one report to police, reinforcing race disparities in the criminal justice system. He was held in jail pursuant to bail policies that routinely punish the impoverished. And he was held in solitary confinement as a juvenile, even though the draconian punishment has particularly detrimental long-term effects on youths.

That's also known as torture.

It looks as though Gitmo has come home --- no trials, solitary confinement and physical abuse. It was always inevitable that it would happen. Once you say that universal principles of human rights as enshrined in our Constitution are only applicable to people the government believes are "worthy" of them, this is where you end up.

It's true that most of the victims of this kind of unconstitutional treatment are young black men without the money or connections to fight it.  But if they can successfully transfer Gitmo tactics from Cuba to the mainland, then they can certainly transfer them from minorities to the rest of us.

Dying for Health Care? "Just Pray."

We don't talk enough in this country about "inhumanity." Both in the sense of denying certain "different" human beings the status of full humanity, and in the sense of the inhuman treatment we deal out to those we view as less than human.

From Salon:

A new report alleges illegal and deadly mistreatment of Arizona inmates whose medical care the state contracted out to the country’s largest private prison health care provider.

The report, released last week by the American Friends Service Committee, a progressive Quaker group, comes as an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections awaits an appeals court ruling over the state’s challenge to its class action status. The ACLU alleges “grossly inadequate” care that creates “grave danger” for inmates, including “critically ill” people who were told to “be patient” or “pray” for healing, or that “it’s all in your head.”

SNIP

In 2011 and 2012, the deaths of thirty-seven total inmates were reported in the Arizona Republic. In contrast, writes the AFSC, fifty people have died in custody in the first two-thirds of this year. Last year, the Arizona Republic charged that “Arizona’s prison system has two death rows”: Those “officially sentenced to death” and those who “die as victims of prison violence, neglect and mistreatment.”

SNIP

AFDC argues that the privatization of medical services exacerbates such ills. The report notes that the state’s budget bill for fiscal year 2010 included language requiring the Department of Corrections to “issue a request for proposal to privatize correctional health services” and stated that the new contract must “Cost less than these services did in FY 2007-08…” After two years, with no such contract secured, the legislative requirement was changed and the government issued a request for proposals stating the winning contractor would be “the most qualified bidder.” AFDC concludes that “Contracting out the medical care at ADC has resulted in more bureaucracy, less efficiency, and decreased quality of care. What is required to correct the problem is transparency and accountability. Privatization functions only to hinder those processes.”

“I am a 58 year old man who is classified as SMI [Seriously Mentally Ill], my mental impairment is such, that I recognize that without the assistance of an advocate helping me to maneuver through this web of misdirection, confusion, and uncaring medical caregivers, I will simply be allowed to continue deteriorating at a fatally unhealthy rate,” an inmate diagnosed with cancer wrote to the Faith Lutheran Church’s prison ministry in a January letter cited by AFDC. “To say that I’m terrified would be an understatement. But I simply do not know what to do.” The man, Mackie McCabe, died in June.

But hey, he was a criminal who deserved whatever torture he suffered in prison, right?

At about 12.40pm on 2 January 1996, Timothy Jackson took a jacket from the Maison Blanche department store in New Orleans, draped it over his arm, and walked out of the store without paying for it. When he was accosted by a security guard, Jackson said: “I just needed another jacket, man.”

A few months later Jackson was convicted of shoplifting and sent to Angola prison in Louisiana. That was 16 years ago. Today he is still incarcerated in Angola, and will stay there for the rest of his natural life having been condemned to die in jail. All for the theft of a jacket, worth $159.

Jackson, 53, is one of 3,281 prisoners in America serving life sentences with no chance of parole for non-violent crimes. Some, like him, were given the most extreme punishment short of execution for shoplifting; one was condemned to die in prison for siphoning petrol from a truck; another for stealing tools from a tool shed; yet another for attempting to cash a stolen cheque.

How to Guarantee 100 Percent Drug Offender Recidivism

Just starve them back to prison. It's working like a charm.

Maya Schenwar at Truthout:

With another cruel cutback in food stamps approaching November 1, we're reminded that many states ban stamps for ex-prisoners, who face a 50 percent unemployment rate, making prison the only sure place they won't starve.

As the debate rages over whether poor people deserve to eat, it's an apt time to acknowledge that in some states, the right to food stamps has long been denied to a large group of poor people: those with felony drug convictions.

The current national conversation around food rights is an exercise in heartlessness. Regardless of congressional action, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits - otherwise known as food stamps - will decrease sharply for all recipients on November 1, when a temporary boost expires. At that point, the SNAP allowance for a family of three will wither to about $1.40 per person, per meal. House Republicans recently pushed through an additional cut, which likely won't pass the Senate, but still reflects a sense of ingrained, oppressive disregard for the 47 million people on food stamps.

However, the drug felony ban, which renders untold numbers of Americans ineligible for SNAP, is no sneaky Republican plot. It came to us courtesy of President Clinton, who, true to his "wars" on both drugs and crime, signed off on the ban as part of his 1996 welfare "reform" law.

SNIP

Fortunately, the 1996 law carries an opt-out clause, and 20 states have tossed the ban entirely. Yet in 10 states, anyone who has been convicted of a drug felony (mostly nonviolent offenses) is still out of luck - for life. Twenty more states (including Kentucky) have set up a partial ban: People with drug offenses can earn back the "privilege" of receiving SNAP benefits through mandatory drug treatment. At first glance, that modification encourages positive steps, but in reality, it is infantilizing, inhumane and unjust. People who continue to use drugs - or to struggle with drug addiction - should not have to forfeit food in exchange. Plus, it's a whole lot harder to recover from addiction if you're struggling to eat.

SNIP

An ex-prisoner who can't get a job and can't afford food may well return to the activities that got them locked up in the first place, to survive. Often, that means selling drugs, perpetuating a long cycle of recidivism and re-offending.

Ironically, these SNAP-ineligible people are returning from a place where food was free - a place where, although meals may have been meager and sometimes moldy, they knew that every day, they would eat. That place would be prison.

Even if you think anyone caught with a bud in her pocket deserves to either starve or stay locked up for life, do you think her children should suffer?  If she can't get SNAP, neither can her kids.

Denying food stamps to drug offenders who have served their time helps no one, injures many and costs the taxpayers billions.  The only reason to do it is to prevent poor people from ever becoming self-sufficient.

Again, at the cost to the taxpayers of billions of dollars every year.

How to End Prison Rape: Fire All the Guards, and Their Bosses, and Their Lawyers

Also, you shouldn't get arrested for burglarizing someone's house if that person is really really rich and flaunting their expensive belongings and therefore asking for it.

Aviva Shen at Think Progress:

A Louisiana parish is trying to get out of paying a 14-year-old who was repeatedly raped by her prison guard, with lawyers arguing last week that the girl wanted the sex.

The guard, Angelo Vickers, is serving a 7-year sentence after pleading guilty to molestation of a juvenile. The woman, known anonymously as Mary Doe, is now an emotionally traumatized 20-year-old. Mary Doe sued the Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government as well as her attacker, alleging the parish officials should have protected her from Vickers.

Rather than assume liability or try to shift the scrutiny solely on the guard, the parish’s defense strategy is simply to blame the victim. Court papers claim, “Vickers could not have engaged in sexual relations within the walls of the detention center with [the victim] without cooperation from her. Vickers did not use force, violence or intimidation when engaging in sexual relations.”

“These girls in the detention center are not Little Miss Muffin,” one official told the Tri-Parish Times.

Of course, the defense is flagrantly at odds with Louisiana law, which states no one under 17 years old can consent to sex. Moreover, the obvious power a guard wields over a prisoner makes any sexual relationship suspect, even without proof of physical force or overt threats.

The Terrebonne juvenile prison was exposed by a Department of Justice investigation in 2010 for arbitrarily putting children in isolation cells and leaving guards unsupervised. Several staffers were fired and even indicted for exchanging candy, fruit, time on the telephone, and other favors in return for sex with the underage inmates.

Still, prison employees all over the country often get away with rape, and few actually serve time. One Department of Justice study found that only 56 percent of staffers who were clearly caught sexually abusing inmates were referred for prosecution, while many are released on low bonds or given negligible sentences on the grounds that their victims were in prison.

More than 1,700 boys and girls reported being sexually assaulted, but the number is likely much higher given inmates’ reluctance to report rape. Prison guards usually begin their abuse by sharing personal stories and giving young inmates gifts to create a semblance of intimacy, according to another DOJ survey.

Wonkette offers assistance:

Since it’s just so hard to know when you’re not supposed to rape a child (wink wink) and when you’re not supposed to rape a child but no seriously, DON’T DO THAT, here is a handy little guide to help those men who are so easily confused. Sure, it’s a little complex to comprehend at first, but if you commit it to memory — or hey, tattoo it on your dick if you’re not that good with memorization — you should be able to navigate these oh-so-muddy waters. And, bonus, it doesn’t apply just to fucking kids. It’s a universal catch-all rule that applies to sex with anyone.

So here it is: When can you have nonconsensual sex with someone? NEVER. Not even if she’s really hot or mature for her age. Not even if she’s wearing make-up. Not even if she has older friends. Not even if she’s “egging” you on. Not even if she’s drunk. Not even if she’s a total slutbag who has had sex with, like, a million other dudes so one more shouldn’t make a difference. Not even if you’re really horny. Not even if she only says no twice. Not even if it’s a day that ends in “y” or pigs flew by your window or you watched some porno where the chick said no but seemed to like it or your mother didn’t love you or some Republican said there are varying degrees of rape and some of it isn’t really rape or you think you can get away with it and no one will ever know.

Because if you do sex to someone who does not give you her permission to do sex to her — or cannot give you her permission because of how she is a child — you are a rapist and a bad person and if there is in fact a hell, you will burn in it. Even if a judge takes sympathy on you and the legal system lets you off the hook with a warning (or, in Yale’s case, a written reprimand). It is wrong and bad, and you are wrong and bad, and seriously, it should not be that difficult to understand that you should only fuck grown adult women (or men, whatever floats your boat, we don’t judge — UNLESS YOU’RE RAPING SOMEONE) who can and do give their consent for you to fuck them.

There. Hope that clears things up. You’re welcome.

Send This Murdering Corporate Person to Prison

People who destroy evidence of a crime go to prison.  In fact, people who destroy evidence of a crime during the commission of which other people DIE, get convicted of felony homicide.  According to the Supreme Court, corporations have all the rights of people.  Why isn't Halliburton going to prison? 

TPM:

Halliburton Energy Services has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence in connection with the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the Department of Justice said Thursday.
Federal officials said in a news release that a criminal information charging Hallburton with one count of destruction of evidence was filed in federal court in Louisiana.

Halliburton has agreed to pay the maximum fine, be on probation for three years and continue to cooperate with the government’s criminal investigation, said the news release, which did not spell out the fine amount.

The Houston-based company has also made a $55 million voluntary contribution to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. It was not a condition of the court agreement, the news release says.

Halliburton was BP’s cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The blowout triggered an explosion that killed 11 workers and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Tell ya what: I'll settle for Halliburton surrendering all its assets to the U.S. government, going completely out of business, and preventing all its executives from ever doing business with the U.S. government. No, make that ever doing business with any public or private entity in or of the United States.

Compared to prison, that's extremely lenient.

American Exceptionalism: Two Years in Solitary Without Trial

When I was in school in the '60s and '70s, we'd read a lot about foreign countries that lacked the many blessings Americans took for granted: not just our cutting-edge consumer products and roaring economy, not even just our example-setting constitutional system and self-correcting democracy, but most of all the civil liberties (yeah, I know) that ensured innocent citizens enjoyed freedom from the capricious imprisonment rampant in less enlightened nations.

It makes me wonder what the children in socialist hellholes like Scandinavia, Brazil and Australia are learning
about freedom in the United States today. Whether they read stories like this one:

A $15.5 million settlement to a man who was confined in isolation for almost two years after he was charged but not convicted of driving while intoxicated is shedding light on the horror that can befall someone incarcerated even on mere allegations of criminal activity.

Stephen Slevin, arrested for a DWI and accused of driving a stolen car that he said he borrowed from a friend, was placed in solitary confinement shortly after he arrived at Dona Ana County Detention Center in New Mexico because he declined to post a $40,000 bond. After one medical examination, Slevin, who was severely depressed even before his arrest, was deemed suicidal and placed in a padded isolated cell with no natural light for 23 hours a day.

Once in that cell, Slevin faced an insurmountable battle in changing his circumstance, in spite of neglect so severe that his toenails grew to curl around his foot, he pulled out his own decaying tooth and fungus grew on his face. He sent letters saying “I’m afraid to close my eyes” and “I don’t know much longer I can go on.” But the only response he received was greater sedation, his lawyer told NBC News. After two years in this circumstance, the charges against Slevin were dropped and he was released, having never been found guilty of any crime. Slevin later sued and won a $22 million jury award, an amount that was upheld by a federal judge in a decision that sums up the horror of the conditions he withstood:

[The] evidence included letters written by Plaintiff seeking help, and sick call requests documenting Plaintiff’s suffering from bed sores on his thighs, fungus growing on his face, rotting teeth, pain, inability to sleep and nightmares where he could not sleep. … Medical records kept by the Detention Center similarly documented Plaintiff’s experience of pain and suffering, and the lack of treatment for his many medical and dental conditions. … Plaintiff … spent six months along in his cell with virtually no human contact before his release.

Although first attempting to explain away his lack of recreation time by testifying that Plaintiff refused to come out of his cell, [Detention Center Director Christopher] Barela testified that he would not have put his dog in a cell like Plaintiff’s cell and left him there for a month at a time, even if his dog refused to come out. He admitted that, if his dog refused to come out, he would wonder what was wrong with her and take her to the veterinarian. Barela also acknowledged that he knew it was not acceptable to leave his dog or Plaintiff in the conditions in which Plaintiff was left [...]

With regard to the injurious effects of administrative confinement on Plaintiff, his expert, Dr. Grasisan, … testified that Plaintiff was “more massively impaired by the PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, than [he] ha[d] ever seen in [his] entire professional life.” According to Dr. Grassian’s testimony, Plaintiff’s life “is kind of torture.”

To compound matters, Slevin is now suffering from lung cancer, and he accepted the county’s settlement offer of $15.5 million even though the higher $22 million judgment was upheld by a judge. Even that lower sum is one of the largest prisoner civil rights payouts in history – an unsurprising fact considering the extremity of the mistreatment of an individual who, it is worth repeating, was never found guilty of any wrongdoing whatsoever. But the solitary confinement of individuals with identified mental health concerns is alarmingly common, in spite of evidence that the mentally ill are particularly vulnerable to long-term psychological harm from isolation. As in many detention facilities around the country, it was the policy of Dona Ana County jail to put people with mental health issues into solitary confinement — one of several issues that also prompted a class lawsuit by the ACLU of New Mexico that yielded reforms in 2010.

The rampant use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons for not just the mentally ill (who are increasingly jailed in place of mental health treatment) but also children as young as 13 has become so severe that the federal agency tasked with overseeing prisons agreed last month to undertake a closer examination of the practice, which has been deemed torture, cruel and inhumane, and worse than being held hostage in Iran.

That's the kind of story American conservatives used to use to justify military coups in countries that dared elect leftist governments, like Chile and Guatemala and Iran.

Stories about anti-democratic horrors that could never happen here.

Prison Deform

I've been reading the Washington Monthly for more than 30 years, and while its passion for neoliberalism has led it into some nasty conservative traps before - welfare deform at the top of that list - this piece takes the cake.

Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform. Is this how progress will happen in a hyper-polarized world?

No, of course not. What a stupid question.

There is no conservative "war on prisons."  There is a conservative war on government-run prisons, and a conservative war on all non-white, non-Xian, non-straight prisoners.

Sure, conservatives would like nothing better than to fire all the government-employed prison guards and set free all the Aryan Brotherhood lynch mobs.

But when it comes to keeping dusky-hued, muslim and/or gay prisoners in the privatized hellholes run by corporate criminals like Corrections Corporation of America, conservatives are all about wasting as many billions of tax dollars as possible.

Yes, we desperately need massive prison reform as close as we can get to tearing the whole stinking edifice down and starting from scratch.  The only way to do that is with trillions of dollars in anti-poverty programs, education, substance abuse treatment, drug legalization and a huge expansion of social services.

But that's not what we're going to get if we let conservatives take the lead and set the rules.

Seriously, Monthly: Do you not, after the overwhelming evidence of the last four years, accept the fundamental truth that conservatives are interested in two things only:

 - establishing permanent white xian male supremacy

 - diverting all tax dollars to rich, white, xian males.

Interpreting conservative claims and efforts through any other lens is political malpractice and terminal naivete.

Give the Power to Unlock Worlds

Feeling the urge to give to the less fortunate this holiday season? Looking for something different, something secular, something that immediately helps those not helped by the usual charity suspects?  How about something that exceeds even the usual "for just pennies a day you can change a life" standard?

Vicky Wright at AP:

For people behind bars in six Appalachian states, the books are one of the few forms of escape — hundreds of used volumes, wrapped in brown paper and stacked thigh-high under a table, just waiting to be shipped.

Parenting and self-help books. History and law. Dictionaries, biographies and fiction. Whatever the subject, volunteers with the Appalachian Prison Book Project believe they hold the power to unlock worlds.



From a small room in a historic house next to the Morgantown Public Library, they organize requests, exchanging letters to find just the right read and getting permission from prison administrators while simultaneously scrambling to raise money for shipping.

SNIP

Many prisons lack the money to develop a good library, and most inmates have no way to buy books themselves, Ryan said. Her team receives requests that range from pragmatic (a Scrabble dictionary to settle fights) to heartbreaking (a mother determined to become a better parent.)“I have MS and am bound to a wheelchair, so I spend most of my time reading,” one Tennessee prisoner wrote. “I don’t have anyone on the outside that can help me with finances or packages. You are very special people to do this for us.”

SNIP

For more information on the book project, go to http://aprisonbookproject.wordpress.com.

On November 18, Melissa Harris-Perry had a great show that focused on prison reform.  The whole show is worth watching, but this segment eliminating - not reducing, but eliminating - recidivism through inmate education is riveting.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Kids in Solitary

Next time you hear some politician babbling on about "protecting the children," ask her what she is doing to stop American prison officials from torturing children with solitary confinement.

Christie Thompson at The Nation: 

PUNISHING KIDS: “Jordan E” was 15 when he was sent to an adult prison in Colorado. Over three years, he would spend a cumulative 365 days alone in a tiny cell, for offenses as small as not making his bed.

Jordan’s is one of 127 testimonials published by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch in a new report, “Growing Up Locked Down,” which sheds light on the use of solitary confinement on juvenile prisoners. “It’s not surprising that this practice has increased, [as] youth in adult facilities have increased,” says author Ian Kysel. Though in theory kids are sometimes segregated for their own protection, in reality it’s harshly punitive. In 2009, the Justice Department found that 62 percent of youths who committed suicide in detention had experienced some kind of enforced isolation.

Despite research showing the trauma of long-term isolation, nearly one in six youths reported being in solitary for more than two months. As one described it, “The only thing left to do is go crazy…. Sometimes I feel like, why am I even living?” To read the report, visit aclu.org.  

This is how you create new generations of hardened criminals impervious to rehabilitation.

Privatization Always Costs More and Performs Worse Than Public Service: Example # 7 Million

If you think bad prisons are no big deal, let me tell you that as a Kentucky taxpayer I severely resent the millions of dollars it cost to rebuild the Northpoint prison in Danville after a riot caused by poor food that a private contractor served.

Aviva Shen at Think Progress:

An Ohio prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest private prison companies in the US, has failed to meet state standards in food quality, sanitation, hygiene, and many other areas, according to a recently concluded audit. In total, the CCA prison had 47 violations.

CityBeat details the abysmal conditions at the Ohio facility, the first privately owned state prison in the country:

The local fire plan had no specific steps to release inmates from locked areas in case of emergency, and local employees said “they had no idea what they should do” in case of a fire emergency.

The audit also found all housing units provided less than the required 25 square feet on unencumbered space per occupant. It found single watch cells held two prisoners with some sleeping on the floor, and some triple-bunked cells had a third inmate sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

Inmates claimed laundry and cell cleaning services were not provided and CCA could not prove otherwise, recreation time was not always allowed five times a week in segregation as required, food quality and sanitization was not up to standards, infirmary patients were “not seen timely,” patients’ doctor appointments were often delayed with follow-ups rarely occurring, the facility had no written confined space program, the health care administrator could not explain or show an overall plan and nursing competency evaluations were not completed before the audit was conducted. Many more issues were found as well.

Despite the many abuses discovered at private prisons all over the country, CCA and other industry giants have greatly benefited from cash-strapped states’ attempts to save money. However, recent studies show that private prisons actually cost more than state-owned ones. Undeterred, CCA has started offering states millions to buy state facilities like the Ohio prison. Ohio sold the prison to CCA last year to help balance the state’s 2012-2013 budget, and CCA recently offered to buy another one in exchange for the state’s guarantee of 90% occupancy for 20 or 30 years.

Would David Williams Care About Fabian Avery?

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is reportedly contemplating appointing state senate president and infamous vicious bully David Williams to a judgeship - a traditional way of getting political rivals out of the way.

Somehow I doubt one of the considerations is how suspected or even convicted criminals are likely to fare at the hands of Williams - a man so lacking in human compassion he named Ritchie Farmer as his gubernatorial running mate.

Because in 2012 America, even the shortest prison sentence - or confinement while awaiting trial - is condemnation to torture, if not death.

William Fisher at Firedoglake:

Fabian Avery III was seventeen when he died.

And were it not for how he died, we might offer our condolences, maybe we’d say he was in prison anyway, but we probably would not be reading this story. There'd have been no one to write it.

You’re reading about his death because he was yet another victim of a prison system that is utterly broken and whose inmates are just about utterly forgotten.

If you have a strong stomach, here’s Fabian’s story as told by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

He died last year in solitary confinement. He died because the jail he was locked up in had only the services of a doctor and a nurse who allegedly failed to try to get any specialist professional help from anywhere else.

Fabian was sick, very sick. He died of appendicitis and complications from a bowel obstruction, according to investigative documents compiled by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He first reported being ill on Feb. 24, 2011 and was given minimal attention. He complained of nausea, stomach pains, vomiting and lower back pains, as well as frequently vomiting and defecating on himself and failing to clean himself up – reportedly the reason he was placed in solitary. Jail staff allegedly did little to help get Avery the necessary care.

He had been arrested in December 2010 on armed robbery charges. He was transferred from the Fulton County jail in late February 2011 to alleviate overcrowding and placed in a small-town lockup at the Mize Street Municipal jail in the South Georgia town of Pelham.According to Casela and Ridgeway, Fabian Avery III weighed 153 pounds when he was transferred to Pelham. He was found dead nearly a month later — on the morning of March 18, 2011 — on a mattress on the floor of his 6-by-10-foot isolation cell. They write that his 6-foot-1-inch frame had shriveled to 108 pounds.

Three weeks ago, Melissa Harris-Perry did a great segment on prison reform - or rather the lack of it.

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Denying Medication = Death by Torture

Denying life-saving medication to jail inmates is a long-standing problem at the Jefferson County jail in Louisville. The lethal policy appears to have spread east to Lexington.

Valerie Honeycutt-Spears at the Herald:

Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said on Monday that he has ruled the death of a Fayette County jail inmate an accident.

Jeffrey McKinney, who was serving a 10-day sentence for driving under the influence of alcohol, was pronounced dead about 45 minutes after jail officials tried to subdue him on May 22 for "combative behavior."

Ginn's comments provided more information about McKinney's case. Earlier this month, his family had asked investigators for more information, but said they had been shut out.

McKinney, 37, had a seizure during the struggle with jail staff. He choked on his vomit and died of asphyxiation, Ginn said.

SNIP

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/09/17/2340652/coroner-says-fayette-inmates-death.html#storylink=cpy

When McKinney first began serving his sentence, he told family members he wasn't being given his antiseizure medication.

McKinney was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 19 and had suffered a head injury in an ATV accident in 2006, family members said.

The family has said McKinney could be disoriented and rebellious following a seizure.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/09/17/2340652/coroner-says-fayette-inmates-death.html#storylink=cpy

McKinney, who is white, apparently was considered by Lexington jail officials to be a member of the torturable class.

If only there were a way to get the Jaime Dimons and the Dick Cheneys and the David Kochs of this world classified the same way.

The New Debtors' Prisons

This is how absolute monarchs kept themselves rich: criminalizing debtors and imprisoning the poor for being poor.

And that is why the founders specifically banned imprisonment for debt in the Constitution: because it is economic tyranny.

So why are local jurisdictions like Lexington, Kentucky using lies and tricks to re-instate unconstitutional debtors' prisons?

Beverly Fortune at the Herald:

Lexington's Urban County Council voted Thursday night to increase the amount Fayette County jail inmates pay for medical care and prescription medicine, and to increase booking fees at the jail.

"Booking fees," Gracie? So if my nasty neighbor calls the cops anonymously and reports that I'm selling pot, so I get arrested even though it's a lie, I have to pay for the cops' mistake?

Then, because the cops wouldn't let my take my very expensive heart medication with me, I have to pay for that mistake, too?

And if I'm so broke from paying for my expensive heart medication that I can't afford to pay for the cops' mistakes, then what? Wait - let me guess. Fines plus interest multiply every day I don't pay, even after I'm found innocent of the original charge, and I don't have any income because I'm in jail for not paying the always-multiplying fees that started because I did nothing wrong.

Right, motherfucker?

Rodney Ballard, director of the Division of Community Corrections, said increasing the booking fee will offset costs associated with taking a person into custody. Increasing the fee by $15 could bring in as much as an additional $200,000 a year.

Money from booking fees and medical co-pays goes into the city's general fund to help offset operating the institution, Ballard said.

SNIP

At Thursday's meeting, several people spoke against increasing the fees. Cory Dunn, who said he had been an inmate in the Fayette County jail, said the ordinance will not affect the criminal — "It is going to affect families of the criminal," many of whom are poor, he said.

SNIP

The city will make no attempt to collect bills that go unpaid. An unpaid balance will not affect the inmate's credit rating, and inmates' families will not be billed.

LIAR. If that were true, no one would ever pay.

Want to know how it really works? Watch this:

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BREAKING: Kentucky Debates Treating Inmate Humanely

Yes, that "BREAKING" is sarcastic. This story has been picked up by papers around the country since it broke in the Herald last week.

I don't know whether it's popular because people are horrified that Kentucky might spend tax dollars to spare a convicted felon from excruciating pain, or it's popular because people are horrified that Kentucky is still - after a year and a half - debating the necessity of spending tax dollars to spare a convicted felon from excruciating pain.

I do know is that what horrifies me is the large number of intelligent, educated, otherwise compassionate people who start foaming at the mouth and screeching in fury at the idea that imprisoned human beings might experience a moment of humane treatment.

A condemned killer’s fight to receive surgery for agonizing hip pain pushed Kentucky officials into an uncomfortable debate over security, politics and even the possibility of inviting scorn from Fox News pundits.

Emails and memos obtained by The Associated Press show corrections officials struggling for a year to reconcile their duty to provide medical care with the political ramifications of spending tens of thousands of dollars for surgery on a man they plan to execute. A key problem would turn out to be security issues that led several hospitals to balk at treating inmate Robert Foley, who still hasn’t had the surgery.

Read the whole disgusting thing.

Foley was sentenced to death, not to 18 months and counting of excruciating pain.

Anyone who has suffered a degenerated hip, knee or back that needs surgery knows that the pain quickly surpasses the ability of even the strongest painkillers to quell it.

Again, no one sentenced Foley to the continuous torture of unending pain for months on end.

Considering that Kentucky's death penalty has come under increasing criticim lately, Foley could easily spend another 40 years on Death Row, with no relief from unrelenting, unbearable pain.

Sounds to me like the Kentucky Department of Corrections is deliberately and with malice aforethought using torture to force Foley to demand immediate execution, just to make the pain stop.

Motherfuckers.

Shame on the Department of Corrections. Shame on the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Shame on everyone who thinks of prison inmates as animals who deserve torture and abuse to which they were never sentenced.

How to Make More Poor People

I used to think that jailing deadbeat dads for not paying child support was really stupid - how are they supposed to earn money to pay child support if they're in jail? Silly me - the new debtor's prisons are really smart. And they're not just for deadbeat dads anymore.

Here's the really cool thing about jailing people for being poor; while they're in jail, they can't earn any money to pay off the debts, so the debts just grow even more, necessitating more jail time, ad infinitum. And if your jails are privatized (why not?), then every jailed poor person is more money for private prison corporations. Except for the fact that money is coming from taxpayers, including the now-jailed poor people, it's a win all around!

Diane Sweet at Crooks and Liars:

Our nation has taken yet another giant step backwards with the criminalization of poverty.

Via:

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs."

Although the U.S. abolished debtors' prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don't pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff's deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.

Under the law, debtors aren't arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing "contempt of court" in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can't pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.

Illinois isn't the only state locking up residents for being too poor to pay their bills. A report from the ACLU found that Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington were also doing this, and at "increasingly alarming rates."

A report from the New York University's Brennan Center for Justice found that states are also adding "poverty penalties," including late fees, payment plan fees, and interest:

Alabama charges a 30 percent collection fee, for instance, while Florida allows private debt collectors to add a 40 percent surcharge on the original debt. Some Florida counties also use so-called collection courts, where debtors can be jailed but have no right to a public defender.

Being denied a public defender seems to me would be a violation of the Constitution, but I'm no law expert. Any of you legal eagles want to weigh in?

Congress Critters Now Ordering Solitary Confinement for Emailers

So, you're doing a six-month stint at your local minimum-security federal prison farm for disturbing the peace and a little property damage while celebrating UK's win over Indiana in the NCAA tournament.

Your congress critter, to whom you have sent emails criticizing his votes and questioning his ancestry, puts in a call to the Bureau of Prisons and gets you transferred to solitary confinement at the SuperMax hellhole in Marion, Indiana.

Wait, what?

Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake:

Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher, who was given a two-year sentence in prison for making fake bids in a Utah public land auction that was later found to be corrupt, has reportedly been moved to solitary confinement after a member of Congress contacted the Bureau of Prisons.

Peaceful Uprising, a climate change activism group which DeChristopher co-founded, states in a press release posted on March 27:

On the evening of Friday March 9th, Tim DeChristopher was summarily removed from the minimum security camp where he has been held since September 2011, and moved into the FCI Herlong’s Special Housing Unit (SHU). Tim was informed by Lieutenant Weirich that he was being moved to the SHU because an unidentified congressman had called from Washington DC, complaining of an email that Tim had sent to a friend. Tim was inquiring about the reported business practices of one of his legal fund contributors, threatening to return the money if their values no longer aligned with his own. According to Prison officials, Tim will continue to be held in isolated confinement pending an investigation. There is no definite timeline for inmates being held in the SHU — often times they await months for the conclusion of an investigation.

In the SHU, Tim’s movement and communications are severely restricted. In the past two weeks, he has been allowed out of his 8 X 10 cell (which he shares with one other inmate) four times, each time for less than an hour. The SHU could have been designed by Franz Kafka. Tim is allowed one book in his cell, and four in his property locker. His writing means are restricted to a thin ink cartridge which makes correspondence extremely difficult. He can still receive mail from the outside, but has no other form of communication other than 15 minutes of phone calls per month.

First off, this congress person who ordered DeChristopher into solitary confinement is a coward and should be unmasked. DeChristopher is powerless in prison. He is already being punished.

If the description of events is correct, it seems like a congressman is trying to intimidate DeChristopher for wanting to return money. To amplify the punishment because of an email is cruel. That the punishment is to place DeChristopher into solitary confinement is even more inhumane. In fact, it is what a fascist country would do to a political prisoner.

There do not appear to be any other instances known where a congressman called up the Bureau of Prisons and was able to get a prisoner moved. That seems terribly arbitrary and unjust. So, why is the Bureau of Prisons granting the unnamed congressman this power? Did DeChristopher violate some regulation he is supposed to abide by when he wrote the email?

Peaceful Uprising is correct. To get this sorted out could take months. It took months to get Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, moved out of solitary confinement at Quantico Marine Brig to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Though there was political support for the pre-trial confinement conditions being imposed, no congressman is known to have ordered the brig authority to keep Manning under the prevention of injury (POI) watch that led to his cruel and inhumane treatment. So, what is happening to DeChristopher may be even more appalling.

Note also that what DeChristopher did was entirely non-violent and far less damaging to society than setting a sofa on fire in celebration. He shouldn't be in prison at all. His real crime, of course, was fighting the plutocracy.

This is what comes of treating elected officials like petty princelings instead of the servants of the people they are supposed to be.

The motherfuckers work for us, and it's way past time they got reminded of that.