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By Edward W. Said
By Shlomo Sand
$23.07
$23
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AP/Danny Johnston, File
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By Chris Hedges — The decision to execute William Van Poyck, who in his writings from death row has chronicled our penal system’s depravity, is one more footnote to our perverted belief in the regeneration of society through violence.
Posted on May 12, 2013
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AP/Stephen Chernin
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By Chris Hedges — Lynne Stewart, who as an attorney spent her life defending the poor, the marginalized and the despised, is suffering from stage 4 cancer in a Texas prison. Her crime was to steadfastly fight for justice in courts that have surrendered their independence to serve the security and surveillance state.
Posted on Apr 21, 2013
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Illustration by Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — U.S. prisons are the engines of a system of neo-slavery in which corporations feed on the bodies of people of color. Reform is unlikely in the face of enormous profits.
Posted on Mar 17, 2013
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By Amy Goodman — Albert Woodfox has been in solitary confinement for 40 years, most of that time locked up in the notorious maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary known as “Angola.”
Posted on Feb 27, 2013
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Flickr/Truthout.org
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By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law —
John Kiriakou was charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, allegedly disclosing classified information to members of the news media after speaking out against waterboarding in 2007. He pleaded guilty in October as part of an agreement that would sentence him to 30 months in prison.
Posted on Jan 23, 2013
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By Chris Hedges — Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s most famous political prisoner and one of its few authentic revolutionaries, continues his fight for social justice after three decades in prison.
Posted on Dec 9, 2012
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Still from "The House I Live In" courtesy Derek Hallquist
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By Peter Z. Scheer — A new documentary about prison and the drug war makes the science fiction dystopias of “Looper” and “Dredd 3D” feel disturbingly plausible.
Posted on Oct 1, 2012
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AP/Steve Miller
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By Chris Hedges — A disturbing pattern of gross infringements on basic civil liberties, put in place in the name of national security, has poisoned our legal system.
Posted on Oct 1, 2012
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AP/Misha Japaridze
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A Moscow judge on Friday ordered three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot to remain in jail awaiting trial for an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s major church, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, in February.
Posted on Jul 21, 2012
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mikecogh (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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If you’re going to commit a jailable offense, do it in Norway, where officials at the high-security Halden prison believe that providing inmates with a “light and positive” environment will make them better people when they re-enter society.
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Photo by (CC-BY)
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Californians headed to the polls to elect our next president will have another big decision to make: Should the state abolish capital punishment and commute all death sentences to life in prison?
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AP/Gerald Herbert
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Five ex-officers from the New Orleans Police Department found themselves on the other side of the law Wednesday, as they were sentenced to jail for their respective roles in the shootings of six unarmed civilians in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005.
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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune —
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AP/Mel Evans
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It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that U.S. Supreme Court justices voted along party lines when approving, on a 5-4 vote, the expansion of strip-searching guidelines to include anyone who’s been arrested for any offense and is en route to jail.
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY)
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By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout —
There is nothing more feared by right-wing fundamentalists than people who can think critically and reflectively and are willing to invest in reason and freedom.
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AP / Fernando Antonio
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One inmate’s reported death wish led to the immolation of more than 300 people at a Honduran prison after the apparent instigator set fire to his mattress on Wednesday in the town of Comayagua, where some 356 others were still missing after the blaze, according to The Associated Press.
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AP / Brennan Linsley
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The indefinite detention center that has undermined American justice since the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan 10 years ago Wednesday is still open for business in Cuba. (more)
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“Democracy Now!” hears from Alaa Abd El Fattah, a prominent Egyptian activist and blogger just released after 56 days in one of the country’s worst prisons on charges of inciting violence against the military. Fattah, who denies the charges, is optimistic about the revolution “completely renegotiating the order of power in Egypt and across the Arab world.”
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codepinkhq (CC-BY)
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The Obama administration puts the cost of holding each of Guantanamo’s 171 prisoners at about $800,000 per year, or a total of $136 million taken from taxpayers’ pockets annually. That’s more than 30 times what it costs to keep an individual captive on U.S. soil. (more)
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Alberto.. (CC-BY)
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In one part of Southern California, if you do the crime, there’s a chance you’ll pay both the time and the price of imprisonment. Due to a measure passed Tuesday by Riverside County’s board of supervisors, county jail inmates deemed able will be forced to pay $142.42 per day during their stay in the clink. (more)
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AP
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By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy — Essam Atta died Thursday at Qasr El-Eini hospital in Cairo after prison guards allegedly tortured him by sodomization.
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By Michelle Alexander —
Is the massive surge of imprisonment a contagious disease? Does the answer lie in the structure of our democracy? Two new books suggest so.
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Pascal (CC-BY)
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Federal prisons must now provide “current, accepted standards of care” for transgender inmates. “Care” could mean therapy, hormones and possibly even gender reassignment surgery. The change in policy was outlined in a May memo sent by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to 116 federal facilities. (more)
Posted on Oct 3, 2011
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AP
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After speculation that Iran might allow two imprisoned American hikers to return home in exchange for a steep bail, Iran’s foreign minister hinted Saturday that the timetable for their release could depend on the willingness of the U.S. to release Iranian prisoners. (more)
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Princeton University professor Dr. Cornel West spoke to a crowd of almost 3,000 people at the Riverside Church in New York City on Friday during an evening of remembrance for another sort of 9/11. (more)
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Flickr / Ryan Vaarsi
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Gus Speth, environmental lawyer, former Clinton adviser and founder of the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute, who was arrested Sunday at the White House while protesting a proposed oil pipeline, has some bad news for American optimists. (more)
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AP
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Iranian authorities have sentenced two American hikers to eight years in prison for espionage, according to an unnamed source on Iran state television. (more)
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Flickr / Possum1500
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After Georgia’s new immigration law chased away many of its farm laborers, the state launched a dubious plan to fill the void with probationers, who lack the experience needed to do harvesting work, especially in the current heat wave. (more)
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Warner Home Video
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At a time of record unemployment, American companies are increasingly exploiting the low-cost labor of 2.3 million Americans behind bars. This means fewer jobs available for free citizens, which leads to more unemployment, which produces more crime ... (more)
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AP / Ng Han Guan
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It took two months and not-so-subtle protests from within and beyond the art world, but on Wednesday the Chinese government freed 54-year-old artist Ai Weiwei from prison, hinting at tax issues and not artistic dissent as the reason behind his stint in lockup.
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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On this week’s episode of Truthdig radio in collaboration with KPFK: Unconstitutionally crowded prisons, battlefield medicine, a very special segment on the Marines who collect their dead in Iraq, and just a little bit of Jesus. Plus: Reese Erlich reports from Egypt.
Posted on Jun 15, 2011
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On this week’s episode of Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Unconstitutionally crowded prisons, battlefield medicine, a very special segment on the Marines who collect their dead in Iraq, and just a little bit of Jesus. Plus: Reese Erlich reports from Egypt. Update: Full transcript.
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Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — The draconian legal mechanisms that condemn Muslim Americans who speak out publicly about the outrages we commit in the Middle East have left many wasting away in supermax prisons.
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AP / California Department of Corrections
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By Bill Boyarsky — Much as it did with the South regarding segregated schools and other public facilities in the Jim Crow days, the Supreme Court has ordered a recalcitrant California to obey the Constitution.
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Rob Shenk (CC-BY-SA)
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California’s overcrowded prisons have “fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements,” causing “needless suffering and death,” according to a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. The state, which imposes draconian sentences on repeat offenders, must now find a way to reduce its prison population by at least 38,000 inmates.
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Flickr / JTF Guantanamo
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A detainee accused of being an al-Qaida operative committed suicide in a Guantanamo Bay prison yard, U.S. officials say. His death brings the total number of Guantanamo “suicides” to six since the U.S. began sending foreign captives there in 2002. (more)
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Brave New Films sent us this must-watch primer on the big business (to the tune of $5 billion annually) of immigrant imprisonment. Watch and connect the dots between shady right-wing lobbyists, state legislators and private dungeons.
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State Department
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells The Atlantic that China’s “deplorable human rights record” is “a fool’s errand” to “stop history.” That’s some tough talk from the global representative of a country that throws its enemies in an island gulag when it isn’t remotely executing them.
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AP / Jeff Chiu
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By Bill Boyarsky — The racism within the police-court-prison system is one of America’s most neglected evils, as is the impact it has on the poor African-American and Latino communities that are home for so many released convicts.
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Truthdig / Peter Scheer
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A Swiss judge fined the former banker who gave confidential files to WikiLeaks roughly $6,250, but spared the whistle-blower a prison sentence. Rudolf Elmer was found guilty of violating Switzerland’s confidential banking laws, which have protected such people as tax-dodging Americans and the Nazis.
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Flickr / World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CC-BY-SA)
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If Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, signs off on the legislation, Illinois will become the 16th state to eliminate the death penalty. The state has not executed anyone since 1999, after it was discovered that innocent convicts had been put to death.
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Flickr / Ludovic Bertron (CC-BY)
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By Chris Hedges — The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” It turns out they were both right.
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AP
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Pvt. Bradley Manning, who has been held in solitary confinement since June on suspicion of leaking documents to the WikiLeaks site, is reportedly ailing, according to his lawyer, with his health declining for the last four months.
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AP / Karel Prinsloo
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was given a bit of a break on Tuesday when a British judge ordered that he be released from jail for the small bail fee of $310,000. However, this small measure of freedom comes with a few strings—and an electronic monitor—attached.
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guardian.co.uk
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Liu Xiaobo’s empty chair spoke volumes at Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. The Chinese dissident is serving out an 11-year prison term in his homeland, and no family members were permitted to travel to accept his award—the first peace laureate not formally represented in 75 years.
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AP / Marc Israel Sellem
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Amid rhetoric that could be coming straight out of Arizona, the Israeli Cabinet has voted to build a facility in the desert to hold detained illegal migrants, who arrive mostly from Africa.
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Flickr / Arasmus Photo
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An investigation by National Public Radio has found that prison companies that were set to make significant gains from the criminalization of immigrants helped write and pass Arizona’s controversial law SB 1070.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Now that retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens no longer has to see his former colleague Justice Antonin Scalia in the lunchroom every day, he’s free to tell tales out of the top court, which he did earlier this month in a speech criticizing Scalia’s handling of a case from 1991.
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AP / Mark A. Stahl
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By Chris Hedges — Staughton Lynd and his wife, Alice, also a lawyer, are soldiering on in the economic and social ruins of Youngstown, Ohio, where the only growth industry is locking people away.
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