http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/prison/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2730/rechecking_the_balance_of_powers/ The U.S. Supreme Court's June 29 ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld--that the Bush administration's military tribunals violated federal law and the Geneva Conventions--resoundingly rejected the theories of radical executive power that the administration has used to justify a whole array of controversial governmental programs. But for now, it seems that the Bush administration remains intent on defending its actions while doing the minimum to comply with the ruling. In early July, the administration announced that it would amend a previous executive order that denied detainees the protection of the Geneva Conventions. Bush has also sought a congressional rubberstamp for a review of the National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping program. Such halfway measures are efforts to sidestep the failure of the… prison iraq David Moberg Wed, 17 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2982/americas_slave_labor/ U.S. prisoners working for a computer-recycling operation run by Federal Prison Industries (FPI) are being exposed to a toxic cocktail of hazardous chemicals through their prison jobs while efforts by some prison officials to protect them have been met with stonewalling and subterfuge. Since 1994, FPI has used inmates to disassemble electronic waste (e-waste)--the detritus of obsolete computers, televisions and related electronics goods--for recycling. According to a new report, "Toxic Sweatshops"--published jointly by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Center for Environmental Health,** California-based Computer TakeBack Campaign and the Prison Activist Resource Center--the waste contains high levels of arsenic, selenium, mercury, lead, dioxins and beryllium--all considered dangerous by the Environmental Protection Agency. The report follows three years of mounting scrutiny of… labor prison David Moberg Tue, 06 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3015/families_behind_bars/ Named after the co-founder of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the T. Don Hutto Correctional Center in Taylor, Texas, opened as a medium-security prison in 1997. Today, the federal government pays CCA, the nation's largest private prison company, $95 per person per day to house the detainees, who wear jail-type uniforms and live in cells. But they have not been charged with any crimes. In fact, nearly half of its 400 or so residents are children, including infants and toddlers. The inmates are immigrants or children of immigrants who are in deportation proceedings. Many of them are in the process of applying for political asylum, refugees from violence-plagued and impoverished countries like Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Somalia and Palestine.… immigration central america prison David Moberg Mon, 12 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3024/8_reasons_to_close_guantamo_now/ The first detainees arrived in Guantánamo four months to the day after the 9/11 attacks. From the opening of Camp X-Ray--the first site of imprisonment, notorious for its tin-roofed open-air cages--to the recently completed permanent prison known as Camp 6, critics have called for its closure. Even President Bush has said, "I'd like to end Guantánamo. I'd like it to be over with." Yet he refuses to close it because, he says, it holds detainees who "will murder somebody if they are let out on the street." It's time to look at the powerful reasons to close Guantánamo, both the standard ones enumerated below--and also what may be the most compelling, if unspoken, one of all: Guantánamo must be closed… guantanamo prison civil liberties David Moberg Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3023/inside_americas_gulag/ According to the U.S. government, Guantánamo Bay is leased to Uncle Sam by the Cuban government. However, Cuba does not recognize U.S. claims to the Bay and has not accepted lease payments for decades. Therefore, while Guantánamo is officially Cuban territory, it is effectively a fiefdom of the United States military. Guantánamo's bizarre political status makes it a perfect haven for the parallel legal universe the Bush administration has created for "enemy combatants." This parallel legal universe is populated by the likes of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. On January 17, Gonzales shocked the Senate Judiciary Committee with his statement that "the Constitution doesn't say, every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right… civil rights guantanamo prison David Moberg Wed, 14 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3019/interrogations_behind_barbed_wire/ His psychiatrists call it "Groundhog Day." José Padilla--the once-renowned "dirty bomber" who is now little more than a dim light in the government's galaxy of desperadoes--has spent almost five years in solitary confinement. Whenever his lawyers attempt to discuss his case with him, he has the same response, begging them over and over again not to. When they try, his face seizes in tics and his body contorts uncontrollably. "Mr. Padilla may be suffering from some form of brain injury," writes a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated him for his lawyers. His story illuminates what has happened to many prisoners of America's war on terror. In addition to being tormented psychologically, Padilla and other Guantánamo detainees say the U.S. military has… guantanamo prison torture David Moberg Mon, 02 Apr 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3091/rethinking_lineups/ In the mid-'90s, inspired by a spate of DNA exonerations, academics began to study whether eyewitness identifications using traditional police lineups were less reliable than previously believed and found that a different lineup protocol appeared to be more dependable. So Sheri Mecklenburg, general counsel to the Chicago Police Department, and Ebbe Ebbesen, a psychology professor at the University of California at San Diego, decided to test it. Their one year field study, conducted in three different-sized Illinois cities--Chicago, Evanston and Joliet--was Mecklenburg's idea. As counsel to the police department, she says, "I want them to do the best job they can, and they want to do the best job they can. I'm not against any improvement." However, the Illinois results… criminal justice prison David Moberg Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3101/inside_the_death_chamber/ The following transcript was adapted from "Witness to an Execution," a radio documentary produced by Stacy Abramson and David Isay, which is included in the new book Writing for Their Lives: Death Row USA (University of Illinois Press), edited by Marie Mulvey-Roberts. "Witness to an Execution," which was originally presented on "All Things Considered," won a Peabody Award in 2000. To hear the complete broadcast or see more photographs by Andrew Lichtenstein taken during the making of the documentary, go to SoundPortraits.org. Warden Jim Willett: I'm Jim Willett. I've overseen about 75 executions at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas. I started as a guard here 29 years ago and have been warden since May of 1998. The Walls takes… criminal justice prison David Moberg Tue, 01 May 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3128/the_guantnamo_hunger_strike/ Guantánamo is in the grips of a hunger strike--an age-old form of protest that marked such world events as the fight for women's suffrage and Indian and Irish independence. The U.S. military's response to the hunger strike is not surprising: punitive force-feeding, a dangerous and painful approach. In March I was treated to a grisly demonstration of this procedure at a conference of Guantánamo attorneys in London and Oxford. We also met with members of the British Parliament and ambassadors from our clients' countries of origin (as well as ambassadors of countries that might be willing to offer asylum to former prisoners). But one of the main topics of the discussion was the current hunger strike, which is only now… guantanamo prison war on terror David Moberg Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3283/justice_denied/ Last summer, I had the chance to sit down with Flozelle Woodmore in a drab, cafeteria-style visiting room in the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF), located in the small town of Chowchilla. At 39 years of age, Woodmore has lived her entire adult life in prison. All of her movements are tracked by her prison number, W-26904. Although she's long been classified as a trouble-free, minimum-security prisoner, Woodmore is still packed with seven other women--some with maximum-security classifications and serious emotional disorders--in a cell originally designed for two women. As part of the world's biggest women's prison complex, CCWF is home to more than 4,000 female prisoners, with roughly the same number across the street at the Valley State Prison… prison civil liberties womens rights David Moberg Thu, 23 Aug 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3292/the_counterproductive_war_on_gangs/ When it comes to America's criminal justice policy, the cure is often worse than the crime. Nowhere is this fact more apparent than in the war on drugs, which has inflicted more social damage than drugs themselves. So too with the war on gangs, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute, released this July. The conclusion of the 108-page report is evident in its title, "Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics and the Need for Effective Public Safety Strategies." Written by Judith Greene and Kevin Pranis, the report persuasively argues that punitive policies of policing that specifically target gangs increase rather than decrease gang violence. "The current preoccupation with gangs is a distraction from very real problems… prison race David Moberg Thu, 18 Oct 2007 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3374/suicide_and_spin_doctors/ Now that the U.S. military has "cleared" my notes, I can tell you about my July meeting at Guantánamo with my client Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi. Al-Ghizzawi was visibly shaken when I entered the meeting room and he immediately told me of his despair over the May death of a fellow inmate, a young Saudi man named Abdel Rahman Al Amri. Al-Ghizzawi knew that Amri had been suffering from Hepatitis B and tuberculosis, the same two conditions from which he himself suffers. Like al-Ghizzawi, Amri had not been treated for his illnesses. Al-Ghizzawi, now so sick he can barely walk, told me that Amri, too, had been ill and then, suddenly, he was dead. Al-Ghizzawi also mentioned that Amri had engaged… guantanamo prison torture David Moberg Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:00:01 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3372/transgendered_behind_bars/ Alexis Giraldo, 30, a male-to-female transsexual was sent to Folsom State Prison, a men's facility in California, in January 2006 for a misdemeanor and separate parole violation. While there, she was repeatedly beaten and sexually assaulted, she says. According to her testimony, an abusive cellmate considered himself to be her "husband," and Giraldo made numerous requests to guards and healthcare workers for a transfer to a different facility. She says this yielded no protection. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation claims it moved her to a different unit as soon as physical evidence of abuse was clear. (Giraldo's injuries included visible signs of strangulation and cuts from a boxcutter.) "It's been a nightmare," Giraldo says. "They are doing people… lgbt prison David Moberg