http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/prisons/ 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 Mon, 04 Sep 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2797/follow_the_prison_money_trail/ While New Mexico's landscape may make the state the Land of Enchantment, its rapidly growing rates of incarceration have been utterly disenchanting. What's worse, New Mexico is at the top of the nation's list for privatizing prisons; nearly one-half of the state's prisons and jails are run by corporations. Supposedly, states turn to private companies to cope better with chronic overcrowding and for low-cost management. However, a closer look suggests a different rationale. A recent report from the Montana-based Institute on Money in State Politics reveals that during the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, private prison companies, directors, executives and lobbyists gave $3.3 million to candidates and state political parties across 44 states. According to Edwin Bender, executive director of… economy prisons Fred Weir Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2832/end_medical_experimentation_on_prisoners_now/ One of the most powerful movies ever to be made about the Holocaust was the 2003 made-for-TV movie, Out of the Ashes, which highlighted the sickening crucible faced by medical professionals held captive in the Third Reich's torture-and-killing camps. Medical experimentation on Jewish and Roma (Gypsy) women was one of Dr. Josef Mengele's favorite forms of entertainment. In the movie, Dr. Gisella Perl (Christine Lahti) faces an ethical crisis when she is forced to comfort a young pregnant Roma woman and then stand by and watch as Mengele, the Angel of Death, marks up and slices open her stomach without the benefit of anesthesia. Mengele's sadistic detachment as he walks away from the remains of the dead woman and her… medical and health prisons Fred Weir Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:55:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3248/can_habeas_corpus_be_restored/ Democrats and civil libertarians have been understandably livid over the administration's demolition of the writ of habeas corpus. But remedying the problem isn't quite as simple as it should be. For starters, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), signed by President Bush last October, didn't end habeas in a straightforward, easily reversible way. It ended habeas by inference--first, by denying the writ to "unlawful enemy combatants," and then by defining that term broadly enough that it could, in some cases, include American citizens. Today, an enemy combatant is anybody "engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." It was through that legal two-step that the government held, tortured, and denied trial to… civil liberties congress prisons Fred Weir Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3377/prison_breakdown/ Halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco is Solano Correctional Facility, nestled against a series of rolling hills, on the outskirts of the small city of Vacaville. From the prison's guard towers, the view is fairly beautiful: a Mediterranean-type vista of sun-browned grass and squat trees covering green hills, underneath the endlessly deep California sky. But from the windows of the dorms and cellblocks where the inmates live, all they can see is a slender patch of sky. Inside some of the housing units at Solano, inmates take showers in rooms open to the entire dorm--including guards, both male and female. As naked men soap themselves off, other inmates go about their business in front of them. Hundreds of men share… criminal justice drugs prisons Fred Weir Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:00:00 -0600 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3488/nj_closes_death_row/ It's official. Before 2007 came to a close, New Jersey became the first state in the United States in 40 years to abolish the death penalty. With a stroke of a pen, Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine signed a law eliminating the state's death sentence and replacing it with life without the possibility of parole. The measure was the culmination of a concerted statewide campaign. In January 2007, a 13-member, appointed commission--including a police chief, a couple of prosecutors and a father who lost his daughter to a violent crime in 2000--recommended abolishing the death penalty. In addition to citing concerns about the risk of executing an innocent person, the commission found that the death penalty was a poor deterrent to… death penalty prisons Fred Weir