Showing posts with label corrections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corrections. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 June 2014

FBI exposes L.A. County Jail guards (video)

Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Victoria Kim (latimes.com, June 4, 2014); Rob Halford and Judas Priest, Chris Barnes and Six Feet Under
Jailhouse Sheriff's deputies walk past cells on the 3000 floor of the L.A. County Men's Central Jail in downtown, housing 19,000 detainees and inmates (Jay L. Clendenin/LA Times)


Police (Sheriff's deputies) eager to commit felonious assault with great bodily injury to create climate of terror and oppression for all awaiting their day in court. Innocent until proven guilty is reversed in this upside down world of darkness, the rotting -pool nestled in the center of the City of Lights.

One officer recently pleaded guilty to assembling an automatic weapon for private off-duty use, and 19 or so are up on felony charges of conspiracy and impeding an investigation... -- because the worst thing one can do in jail is fink on another. This is not the lore of prisoners, it is the active mantra of the jailers. To tell on them and expose their crimes means the full weight of the Force will be brought down on you to silence you and continue their illegal behavior. Exposure might stop the police brutality, homosexual officer-on-prisoner rapes, and unwarranted murders of prisoner (framed to look as if they committed suicide or were killed by other inmates, when more often than not a simple form of killing an inmate is by exposing him to great danger by placing him defenseless in closed quarters with deadly inmates and then saying it was "just one of those things" that happens in jail).

No one wants to hear about it. None of us wants to believe police of all people commit the most heinous crimes under color of uniform sanctioned by the state and all of complicit by our silence, police revenge killings, deputy sexual assaults, predatory-police and sociopathic-jailer torture. And so it continues. 

Accused criminals are blamed. They must be "causing" good, wholesome officers to behave this way. The Stanford Prison Experiment tells us that the social context contributes a great deal, but who becomes a police officer, a jailer, a punishment-meting patrolman (most are men)? The average person doesn't. Troubled, thrill seeking misfits do, as do many damaged people back from war, who enjoy wearing uniforms, vastly outgunning "enemies," and acting with impunity.

Breaking the Law? "There I was completely wasting, out of work and down/ All inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town/ Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die/ So I might as well begin to put some action in my life!/ CHORUS: Breaking the law, breaking the law.../ So much for the golden future, I can't even start/ I've had every promise broken, there's anger in my heart/ You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue/ If you did, you'd find yourselves doing the same thing, too!/ CHORUS/ You don't know what it's like!" (Judas Priest/Rob Halford).
 
(Judas Priest) These were to good ol' days when a British rock band led by a closeted gay singer dressed extravagantly in leather and chains could sing staccato of "breaking the law."
 
Jail deputy told FBI agent of "unwritten rule" on fights with inmates
Victoria Kim (latimes.com)
Cop vs. cop, FBI vs. Sheriff's deputies
On top of the many protocols and regulations he learned in training, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy William David Courson was taught one "unwritten rule": If an inmate fights with a deputy, that inmate ends up at the hospital [or the morgue].
 
He learned the rule at a jail operations training session led by a sergeant and two deputies in a classroom full of about 50 deputies, Courson testified Wednesday [June 4, 2014]. Courson, who has worked at Men's Central Jail since graduating from the academy in early 2008, described [police] violence and [police] coverups among jail guards at the federal trial of six sheriff's officials on charges of obstruction of justice.
 
The "unwritten rule" was among the things Courson told [a female] FBI agent investigating the jails. He had asked the agent out on dates after seeing her at the jail facility. Over meals at a taco joint and a breakfast cafe, he talked to her about the jail's culture and specific incidents -- not realizing that all the while, she was wearing a wire and recording him as a potential target in the investigation into excessive force and corruption in the sheriff-run jails.
 
(6FU) Fast forward a few decades, and it's now the bad new days, as Florida Bigoot/yakkha/skunkape Chris Barnes growls "No Warning Shots," Six Feet Under, "Maximum Violence."
 
Courson said that during pill call one night not long after he started working at the jails, he saw a deputy come up from behind an inmate and start a fight. That same day, a senior deputy came up to him and asked him what he saw.
 
"I asked him what did he want to hear," Courson said. The senior deputy responded: "Say you were upstairs running the showers," he recalled the senior deputy saying.
 
None of the five [police] men and one woman on trial are accused of civil rights violations or excessive force [felonies they committed and commit on a routine basis]; they faces charges of attempting to impede the investigation by hiding a federal informant and threatening the case agent with arrest... More

"No Warning Shot"
Lyrics by Chris Barnes
Vientiane, Laos (Ianh3000)
"Die, die!/ The end of all law/ Four shots fired, another body falls/ I execute the guilty, violently/ Undercover killing spree, no warning shot// CHORUS: Die, [mister], die, die/ Die, [mister], die, die!/ Die, [mister], die, die! / I'll put a bullet between your [blooming] eyes// Pull the trigger, cock the hammer back/ Fifth shot to the back of your neck/ You're not a threat, you're a [blooming] disease/ Eradicate the enemy/ Dead body, another crime scene/ Blood-stained pavement, chalk outline/ Bullet holes, you're dead and cold/ The end of all law, no warning shot// CHORUS// I put the gun to the side of your head/ Squeezing the trigger/ Powder burnt skin, breaking through cranial bone/ Decayed brain tissue implodes/ Just another life that you thought you could control/ Just another pig, dead, with some extra holes/ You better think again, before I kill again/ You won't survive, when the bullets start to fly/ Protect and serve yourself/ Dug your own grave, now rot/ In that hole decay/ The murder will never stop, no warning shot// CHORUS

Thursday, 13 March 2014

Why for-profit prisons fill with inmates of color

"Kids for Cash" is a shocking and riveting real-life documentary thriller that rivals fiction.

"Kids for Cash" examines the notorious true story of judicial scandal that has recently rocked the nation. Beyond the millions of dollars paid to corrupt judges to jail kids by private for-profit prisons, it exposes a shocking American secret. In the wake of the shootings at Columbine, a small town celebrates a law-and-order judge who is hell-bent on keeping kids "in line." Then one parent dares to question the real motives behind his brand of "justice." This real-life story reveals the untold stories of the masterminds at the center of the scandal to fill up for-profit prisons with any children available, guilty or not, and the chilling aftermath of lives destroyed in the process. It is a stunning emotional roller coaster.

A new study by a UC Berkeley graduate student has surprised a number of experts in the criminology field. Its main finding is that private prisons are packed with young people of color.
 
The concept of racial disparities behind bars is not new. Study after study, report after report, working group after working group has found a version of the same conclusion [ -- the country and courts are affected by ethnic prejudice, economic biases, and subtle racism that people find too uncomfortable to discuss or recognize]. 

Prisons for Profit (WQ)
The Sentencing Project estimates that one in three black men will spend time behind bars during their lifetime, compared to one in six Latino men, and one in seventeen white men. Arrest rates for marijuana possession are four times higher for black Americans than white Americans. 
 
Black men spend an average of 20 percent longer behind bars [when everything else is controlled for] in federal prisons than their white peers do for the same crimes.
 
These reports and thousands of others have the cumulative effect of portraying a criminal [in]justice system that disproportionately incarcerates black Americans and people of color in general.
 
An inmate walks through the yard at the North Central Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, which recently switched to private management.
Ruining lives the racist way: a young inmate of color walks through yard at the North Central Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, which recently switched to private for-pro management (Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images).
  
Int'l Women's Day, L.A. (WQ)
Berkeley sociology Ph.D. student Christopher Petrella's finding in "The Color of Corporate Corrections," however, tackles a different beast.

Beyond the historical over-representation of people of color in county jails and federal and state prisons, Petrella found that people of color "are further overrepresented in private prisons contracted by departments of correction in Arizona, California, and Texas."

This would mean that the racial disparities in private prisons housing state inmates are even greater than in publicly-run prisons. His paper sets out to explain why -- a question that starts with race, but takes him down a surprising path.

Age, race, and money
Prisoner (themonastery.org)
First, let's look at a bit of background. Private prisons house 128,195 inmates on behalf of the federal government and state governments (in 2010 numbers, which have increased by 2014). There is a continual debate among legislators and administrators as to which is more cost effective -- running a government-operated prison, with its government workers (and unions), or hiring a private for-profit company (like GEO or Corrections Corporation of America) to house prisoners. States like California, Arizona, and Texas use a combination... More