The Myriad Ways Political Corruption and Mass Incarceration Go Hand and Hand

Eric Zuesse | AlterNet | January 23, 2016

Even if it might be the case that incarceration rates don’t necessarily correlate with corruption, they do necessarily reflect the extent to which a given nation’s government is (by means of its laws and its enforcement of those laws) at war against its own population; and, so, technically speaking, incarceration rates (the percentage of the population who are in prison) are supposed to reflect the prevalence of law-breaking within a given nation.

After all, by definition, people are presumed to be in prison for law-breaking, irrespective of whether the given nation’s laws are just — and if they’re not just, then this fact reflects even more strongly that the nation itself is corrupt. So, a high incarceration rate does strongly tend to go along with a nation’s being highly corrupt, in more than merely a technical sense — it’s almost more like being the definitive measure of “corruption.” So, the correlation between incarceration rates and corruption must be assumed to be high, and any measure of corruption which fails to at least include countries’ incarceration rates should be rejected.

Out of the world’s 223 countries, the U.S. has the world’s second-highest incarceration rate: 698 per 100,000, just behind #1 Seychelles, with 799 per 100,000. Seychelles doesn’t even have as many as 100,000 people (but only 90,024 — as many people as are in the city of Temple, Texas). By contrast, the U.S. has 322,369,319; so, the U.S. is surely the global leader in imprisonment. And, furthermore, #3, St. Kitts and Nevis, with an incarceration rate of 607 per 100,000, has only 54,961 people (as many people as are in the city of Columbus, Indiana). The only other country that might actually be close to the U.S. in imprisoning its own people is North Korea, which could even beat out the U.S. there, but wouldn’t likely beat tiny Seychelles: North Korea is estimated to have “600-800 people incarcerated per 100,000,” and a total population of “24,895,000.”

Read more

An Inmate Dies, and No One Is Punished

The high-profile escape of two murderers from Clinton Correctional Facility in June attracted extraordinary attention to the maximum-security prison. (photo: Jacob Hannah/NYT)

 

Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz | New York Times | December 14, 2015

nmates who have served time at the Clinton Correctional Facility here tell of being taken aside by a sergeant soon after they arrive and given a warning: Cross the guards, and bad things can happen.

And they do. Inmates describe being ambushed by guards and beaten, taunted with racial slurs, and kept out of sight, in solitary confinement, until the injuries inflicted on them have healed enough to avoid arousing suspicion.

One story in particular has been passed along over the last few years as a kind of parable of brutality and injustice on the cellblocks. Leonard Strickland was a prisoner with schizophrenia who got into an argument with guards, and ended up dead.

Read more

Brutality behind bars: School & job training out of reach for many inmates

 

RT America | August 14, 2015

Inmates that leave prison have few jobs prospects. Recidivism rates for ex-cons from cities like Los Angeles, as well as those being released from prisons across the country, have been growing over the past two decades. In the third part of her special report on the US prison system, Lindsay France takes a look at how inmates try to reenter society with little opportunity for education, rehabilitation or jobs.

Find RT America in your area: http://rt.com/where-to-watch/
Or watch us online: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/

Report: US Jails Face Suicide Epidemic

Demonstrators hold up signs for women who authorities claim committed suicide in jail. (photo: Shannon Stapelton/Reuters)

 

Jenifer Fenton  | Al Jazeera America | Reader Supported News | August 6, 2015

 

More than a third of deaths at jails are self-inflicted, and the rate is increasing, says Bureau of Justice Statistics

 

uicides in local jails are the leading cause of death for U.S. inmates, according to a recent report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

More than a third — 34 percent — of all inmate deaths at local jails are self-inflicted, and the rate is increasing, according to the BJS report released Tuesday. Covering all causes of mortality, the report found that jails have a higher suicide rate than prisons, and many of those who kill themselves have not even been convicted of a crime.

The report comes after several recent high-profile deaths of black women arrested and taken to jail. An autopsy recently ruled that Sandra Bland, who was taken into police custody on July 10 after a routine traffic stop, killed herself. Bland was held at the Waller County jail in Hempstead, Texas and found dead three days after she was arrested. The FBI and the Texas Ranger Division are investigating her death, which friends and family contend was not suicide.

Read more

Why Americans Don’t Care About Prison Rape

(Krystiano, CC BY 2.0)

Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig | The Nation | March 2, 2015

In June of 2012, the New York Times “Room for Debate” feature considered whether or not convicted youth offenders should be treated differently than adult convicts in the penal system. Those in favor of trying some youth offenders in adult courts included a victims’ advocate, and an attorney from the conservative Heritage Foundation; those against included an inmate at California’s San Quentin prison, and a human rights activist. The victims’ advocate and the attorney from the Heritage Foundation talked about extreme cases of violence and the benefits of stern consequences. The inmate and the human rights activist talked about rape.

“The suicide and sexual abuse rates of younger prisoners are higher than those of the physically mature,” Gary Scott, the inmate, noted: “how can rehabilitation be possible in such a dangerous environment?” Scott was incarcerated at age sixteen.

T.J. Parsell, the human rights advocate, put it like this: “In early 2003, I testified on Capitol Hill with Linda Bruntmyer, a mother from Texas whose 17-year-old son was incarcerated after setting a trash bin on fire. In prison, he was raped repeatedly. He later hanged himself inside his cell. I felt a special bond with Linda, because I too had been raped in prison at 17.”

Read more

Record number of US prisoners exonerated

Prison State America: Inmates becoming corporate slaves in for-profit facilities

How Prisons Rip Off and Exploit the Incarcerated

Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges discusses the forms of slavery and exploitation that thrive in today’s U.S. prison system with Eddie Conway, a former leader of the Black Panthers who was imprisoned for over 40 years.

 

US Executions Fall to 20-Year Low as Death Penalty Politics Shift

US Executions Fall to 20-Year Low as Death Penalty Politics Shift (photo: AP/Eric Risberg)

Naureen Khan | Al Jazeera America | Reader Supported News | January 1, 2015

s 2014 draws to a close, the United States will have executed the fewest inmates since 1994 as public views surrounding capital punishment continue to shift and the act of putting prisoners to death becomes more politically and practically difficult.

There were 35 inmates executed this year, in only seven states, with three — Missouri, Texas and Florida — responsible for 80 percent of them, according to the year-end annual report of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that focuses on capital punishment. Moreover, the number of death sentences handed down this year, at 72, dipped to a 40-year low.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the historically low numbers are the result of changes that began in the early 2000s, when the advent of DNA testing began exonerating death row inmates and exposed the weaknesses of the justice system. An additional seven former death row inmates were exonerated in 2014, continuing that trend.

Read more

 

Meet the Prison Bankers Who Profit From the Inmates

Daniel Wagner | Center for Public Integrity | Reader Supported News | October 1, 2014

With the ultimate captive markets, prison bankers and state jailers make money off high fees for financial services.

 

at Taylor doesn’t believe in going into debt. She keeps her bills in a freezer bag under her bed, next to old photo albums, and believes in paying them on time religiously. For Taylor, living within your means is part of being a good Christian.

Lately, Taylor, 64, has felt torn between that commitment and her desire to be a loving, supportive mother for her son Eddie.

Eddie, 38, is serving 20-year prison sentence at Bland Correctional Center for armed robbery. He’s doing his time at a medium-security Virginia state prison located 137 miles northwest of Johnson City, across the dips and valleys of the Blue Ridge Mountains here in the heart of Appalachia. The cost of supporting and visiting Eddie keeps going up, so Pat makes trade-offs.

Read more