Free Republic

A prison guard who acknowledged being a member of white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan has been fired for belonging to a subversive or terrorist organisation, a violation of the county agency's code of ethics. Wayne Kerschner, an Alachua County Sheriff's Office corrections officer, was fired on Tuesday following a 10-month internal investigation. The investigation revealed that Kerschner applied online for membership to the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan a year ago, paid $US30 a month for access to a members-only Klan web site and that the group did a thorough background check that...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad will die by lethal injection when he is executed next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Prosecutors are investigating claims that the former head chef and chief groundskeeper at the Oklahoma governor's mansion raped three female prison inmates assigned to work on the mansion's grounds. Neither man has been charged, but the Department of Central Services fired both of them Sept. 29 for violating departmental policies after a three-month Department of Corrections investigation.

BISHOPVILLE, SC (WIS) - Department of Corrections officers are using tear gas to quell a large fight that broke out among dozens of inmates at Lee Correctional Institute in Bishopville Saturday. Corrections spokesman Josh Gelinas said the fight started at around 4:30pm among about 60 inmates of the Chesterfield Dormitory that were out of their cells. Two officers approached the dorm to try to stop the fighting, Gelinas said, but realized there were too many inmates involved to safely intervene. The officers exited the dorm, blocked the doors and called for backup. The fighting continued for about 20 minutes, Gelinas...

California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass plans to strip the most controversial provisions from a Senate-approved plan that would have trimmed the state's prison population by 27,000 inmates. The Assembly version would keep about 10,000 more inmates behind bars and leave the state with a new, nearly $200 million budget hole, Bass said early Friday. Bass said the new plan -- to be considered Monday -- would do away with proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to allow home detention with electronic monitoring for inmates with less than 12 months to serve, who are over age 60 or who are medically incapacitated....

BURGIN, Ky. (AP) - Rioting inmates started several fires at a central Ky. prison, and damage to several buildings was so extensive that officials have to bus some of the facility's 1,200 prisoners elsewhere, police said Saturday. State police Lt. David Jude said firefighters had extinguished the blazes set at the medium-security Northpoint Training Center in a rural area 30 miles south of Lexington. Buses started to transport the first prisoners shortly after 6 a.m., but it wasn't immediately known where they were going and whether all the inmates would have to be moved. "To me it would seem like...

Gov. Bill Ritter's plan to cut the state budget through inmate releases could reduce Colorado's prison population by 1,000 in a year and immediately save $19 million. It will also almost certainly accelerate the commission of new crimes, and could force layoffs from a privately run prison. Ritter's plan calls for trimming parole supervision for some inmates already out of prison, and releasing some non-sex-offender inmates early and placing them on parole. A total of 5,700 inmates or parolees could see their status change as a result of Ritter's cut. A Metropolitan State College of Denver professor says it's unavoidable...

BALTIMORE (AP) ― Maryland is moving forward with plans for two new detention centers in Baltimore, one for teens facing adult criminal charges and another for women. The two projects, which are expected to cost the state more than $280 million, would keep adult male detainees separate from women and teens as required by federal law. Currently, the three groups share hallway, classroom and booking space. The projects are the first in a long-term plan to overhaul a complex of at least a dozen prison buildings. A state architectural board is expected to review the design for the teen detention...

SNIPPET: "Since 9/11, the general focus on prison radicalism in the media and in government has been on the process of certifying imams and literature available to inmates. Fully understanding the impact of this phenomenon, however, requires a historical look back at Islam in prison. The seeds of jihad were planted in the prison soil by men like Warith Deen Umar long before we were attacked in 2001. Having spent 26 years working in New York 's Department of Correctional Services, I have witnessed this process of radicalization first-hand. Sometimes it was monitored; sometimes a recruitment cell was infiltrated. As...

LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that HOPE SPINATO, 42, of Pinebush, New York, was sentenced yesterday to eight months in prison by United States District Judge KENNETH M. KARAS in White Plains federal court. SPINATO, a former correctional officer at Federal Correctional Institute Otisville (“FCI Otisville”), pleaded guilty on April 21, 2009, to one count of aiding and assisting an inmate escape from FCI Otisville. According to the Information filed in White Plains federal court and a previously filed Complaint: On or about July 15, 2007, SPINATO, who was...

STANDISH, Mich. -- Federal officials visited a maximum-security prison in rural Michigan on Thursday to assess its suitability to house Guantanamo Bay inmates. Representatives of the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments toured the prison in Standish, 145 miles north of Detroit. The Standish prison and a military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., are being considered to house the detainees if the prison in Cuba is closed by 2010, as ordered by President Barack Obama. The Guantanamo Bay facility houses 229 suspected al Qaeda, Taliban and foreign fighters. Some locals favor bringing the detainees to Standish if necessary to keep...

<p>LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A former chief of staff for Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas' governor has been charged with attempting to smuggle contraband goods into the state's death row.</p> <p>Betsey Wright, of Rogers, faces 51 felony charges stemming from her arrest May 22 at the state's Varner Unit. An Arkansas State Police report claims she attempted to smuggle in a box cutter, a pocket knife, tweezers and tattoo needles.</p>

LEBANON, Ohio (Map, News) – A man from Clermont County’s Union Township, who admitted to shooting and killing a teenager with a shotgun who refused to heed his warnings to stay off his lawn, has committed suicide in an Ohio prison. The 15-year-old victim, Larry Mugrage Jr. was shot by 69-year-old Charles Martin in March 2006. He was indicted for Aggravated Murder, but the jury in the Clermont County Common Pleas Court found him guilty on a lesser charge of murder. He had originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but jurors rejected that argument. Martin, who received a...

Hundreds Hurt in 11-Hour California Prison RiotSOLOMON MOORE Published: August 9, 2009 LOS ANGELES — Rioting inmates smashed and burned a large California prison on Saturday night and Sunday morning, injuring 250 prisoners and hospitalizing 55. The 11-hour riot, at the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, broke down along racial lines, with black prison gangs fighting Latino gangs in hand-to-hand combat, the authorities said. No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said. But 10 of the 33 prisons in...

AUGUST 7, 2009 California Scrambles to Prepare for Inmate Release BOBBY WHITE and RYAN KNUTSON California state and local officials, already reeling from budget cuts and public-safety layoffs, are struggling with a federal order to release about 40,000 inmates to reduce prison overcrowding and bracing for the impact on their communities. State officials have said they will appeal the decision, but as a contingency are cobbling together proposals to comply with the order. At the same time, cash-strapped local governments in places such as Los Angeles and Fresno are grappling with how to monitor and support thousands of released inmates...

Sean Hannity had some fun at Attorney General Eric Holder’s expense last night. On a special segment of his FOX News program, Hannity ran a video clip of Holder addressing the American Bar Association. On the tape, Holder told the ABA audience that, “spending on prisons continues to rise. This is unsustainable…” Hannity said he found it amusing that Holder represented the very same administration addicted to “unsustainable spending” on “everything from dinky airports to crab trapping.” Holder’s address touched on familiar liberal talking points — taking it as a given that society needs an “alternative” to prisons — without...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. judges on Tuesday told California to prepare to release more than 40,000 of its 150,000 inmates to reduce overcrowding in state prisons, which suffer from massive healthcare problems. The cash-strapped state already plans to release ailing and short-term inmates for budget issues. That would clear up to 37,000 beds over two years, estimated California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Matthew Cate. But he said an order from federal judges would set a "dangerous precedent" and argued at a news conference that California had cleaned up prisons and hired medical professionals to fill chronic gaps...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has outlined a plan to save $1.2 billion in prison spending. In all, the governor says, the plan would reduce the California prison population of 167,700 by about 27,000 inmates. Some details: Felony no more: Petty thefts, writing bad checks and receiving stolen property will no longer be charged as felonies. Vehicle thefts: Stealing a car won't automatically be considered a felony anymore. Grand theft: Stealing an item valued at more than $400 won't automatically be considered grand theft. Alternative custody: Certain prison inmates deemed low-risk offenders would be eligible to serve their sentences outside of prison....

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FUTURE, Iraq, July 20, 2009 – An instructor shouts commands in Arabic. Recruits snap into fighting stances. The instructor tests the recruits, shaking them and kicking their legs. One recruit makes a mistake, and the instructor drops him for push-ups. This training may seem like Army boot camp, but these men aren't preparing to be soldiers. They are training to become Iraqi correctional officers. At the Iraqi National Training Academy on Victory Base Complex near Baghdad, Iraqi instructors are training four platoons of recruits to become the foundation of the Iraqi correctional system. The academy is the...

ACLU pushes prison to stop cutting out Bible passages included in letters from the outside.

Mich. in talks to possibly take Calif. prisoners By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN Associated Press Writer Monday, Jun. 29, 2009 LANSING, Mich. -- Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter Monday to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally offering to house - for a fee - some of the Golden State's prison inmates. Michigan plans to close two prisons by the end of September: the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility about 145 miles northwest of Detroit and a medium-security prison in Muskegon, located in central Michigan. Michigan could save the jobs of about half of the 1,000 prison guards it plans to lay...

LANSING, Mich. -- Empty Michigan prisons could become home to hundreds of California inmates if a deal can be struck. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter Monday to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally offering space for some of the inmates California is running out of room to house to Michigan. Download: Ganholm Letter To Schwarzenegger Michigan plans to close two prisons by the end of September. They are the Standish Maximum Correctional facility about 145 miles northwest of Detroit and a medium-security prison in Muskegon, about 45 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. Michigan could save the jobs of about...

The coin of the realm in the Big House - as penitentiaries are inevitably called in prison films - isn't money. Prisoners make only a tiny amount for their labor and are not allowed other valuables. Instead, they gamble and barter for supplies using . . . cigarettes. A sign of the times in all federal, and many state, prisons But not so much in real life any more. Last year, pressured by health advocates, officials banned smoking - even in exercise yards - in the nation's 115 federal prisons. And state pens - even in places like Florida, where...

INDIANAPOLIS — Two Muslim inmates held in a special unit at the U.S. prison in Terre Haute say they aren’t allowed to pray in groups as often as their religion commands and have asked a federal judge to ease limitations on worship imposed by the Bureau of Prisons. The prison in western Indiana houses several high-security inmates, including American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence for aiding Afghanistan’s now-defunct Taliban government. The June 16 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana challenges limits on Islamic worship in the prison’s restrictive Communications Management...

TROY, Va. (AP) - For more than a year, Virginia's largest women's prison rounded up inmates who had loose-fitting clothes, short hair or otherwise masculine looks, sending them to a unit officers derisively dubbed the "butch wing," prisoners and guards say. Dozens were moved in an attempt to split up relationships and curb illegal sexual activity at the 1,200-inmate Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, though some straight women were sent to the wing strictly because of their appearance, the inmates and corrections officers said. Civil rights advocates called the moves unconstitutional punishment for "looking gay." The warden denied that any...

ATLANTA (AP) - The recession is hitting home for inmates ...

JAILED music legend Phil Spector has posted a string of astonishing internet blogs before and after being sentenced to 19 years for murder. The producer, who has been allowed to keep a laptop computer and iPod in his cell at Los Angeles County Jail, has been rattling off revealing messages via the chat site Twitter. In them, Spector, 69, who was convicted by a retrial jury last month for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, tells how: The authorities took his wig; He has befriended a cockroach – “I’m naming him Wilson” – and is playing air chess with him;...

Amid all the shocking details in the disrupted plot to bomb Bronx synagogues and fire missiles at American military aircraft, one component of the case should come as no surprise - three of the alleged culprits converted to radical Islam in prison. Radical Islamists have targeted prison populations for recruitment for years. That's where Jose Padilla, suspected of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb and convicted of conspiracy to murder people overseas and of providing material support to terrorists, converted and was radicalized. That's where a California man, Kevin James, created his own cell, called the Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS),...

The possibility that the alleged New York bomb plotters converted to Islam in prison and adopted radical views could provide evidence of how the criminal-justice system can be fertile ground for terrorist recruitment. Authorities said they believed all four men charged in the attack were Muslim and that some may have converted in prison. It isn't clear whether these conversions were linked to the radical views officials say they espoused while plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down U.S. military planes... According to New York state corrections records, alleged ringleader James Cromitie and David Williams gave...

The possibility that the alleged New York bomb plotters converted to Islam in prison and adopted radical views could provide evidence of how the criminal-justice system can be fertile ground for terrorist recruitment. Authorities said they believed all four men charged in the attack were Muslim and that some may have converted in prison. It isn't clear whether these conversions were linked to the radical views officials say they espoused while plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down U.S. military planes. The men were arrested Wednesday in a months-long undercover operation that ended with them allegedly...

As I noted yesterday and many times in the past, the four Muslims caught trying to blow up New York synagogues and U.S. planes converted to Islam in prison, where the Muslim chaplaincy is controlled by CAIR, ISNA, and an alphabet soup of extremists and jihadists. Today, Bill Warner points out that the men met at Masjid Al-Ikhlas, a Newburgh, New York mosque, whose imam is Salahuddin Muhammad, a New York prison chaplain. Hello . . .? Yet, authorities refuse to do anything to this guy. And they continue to refuse to overhaul the Muslim prison chaplain system and who...

LAS VEGAS (AP) ― Inmates in Nevada's prison system are preparing for life without cigarettes as they prepare for a smoking ban to take effect July 1. The majority of other states already ban tobacco use in prisons. Nevada is joining them because of health care costs, cleanliness and a 2006 state law that bans smoking indoors. But inmates won't get aids like gum and patches to help them quit, only instructional DVDs to tell them how to stop.

Text size: Indictments reveal prison crime world Officers, inmates charged in drugs, extortion By Justin Fenton | justin.fenton@baltsun.com April 17, 2009 The court records read like a scene out of Goodfellas: From their prison cells and with the help of corrections staff, authorities say, members of a violent gang were feasting on salmon and shrimp, sipping Grey Goose vodka and puffing fine cigars - all while directing drug deals, extorting protection money from other inmates and arranging attacks on witnesses and rival gang members. A seven-month investigation that included wiretaps on contraband prison cell phones led to the indictment on...

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives. We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences...

<p>McALESTER, Okla. — A 23-year-old inmate beaten to death at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary had been put in a cell with convicted killer he had testified against.</p> <p>Prison spokesman Jerry Massie says Paul Duran Jr. fought with one cellmate and then was put in a cell with Jessie James Dalton.</p>

PRISON isn't as rough as it once was for Michael Alig. The former leader of the notorious "Club Kids," who in 1996 was sentenced to 10-20 years behind bars for his role in the murder of drug dealer Andre "Angel" Melendez, was moved last week from a maximum-security prison in upstate Coxsackie to the more lax Washington Correctional Facility near Lake George, according to his friend, nightlife writer Steve Lewis. "I just visited him, and he's doing better," Lewis tells Page Six. "He's getting to be more involved with the general prison population. He's alert, he's dynamic, he's even become...

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca talks during an interview in downtown Los Angeles on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. Baca says he may have to release nearly 4,000 inmates early and eliminate deputy positions to cope with cuts to his department's budget. The head of the nation's largest sheriff's department is warning that nearly 4,000 jail inmates might be released early and about 600 deputy and professional positions could be eliminated to meet budget cuts. Owing to the economic crisis, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department faces a $71 million cut to its $2.5 billion budget in the coming fiscal...

Feb 4, 2009 22:34 | Updated Feb 5, 2009 10:12 UN: IDF did not shell UNRWA school By TOVAH LAZAROFF AND YAAKOV KATZ A clerical error led the UN to falsely accuse Israel of shelling one of its Gaza schools in the Jabalya refugee camp during Operation Cast Lead, the international organization admitted this week. The site hit by an IDF mortar shell near a UN school in Gaza. For close to a month, the UN accused the Israel of hitting the educational compound ran by its Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which was sheltering more than 1,300...

Washington, D.C. (January 28, 2009) -- Can't afford a new High-Definition TV? Well, steal one. If they catch you, you'll still be able to watch it in prison. At least in Massachusetts, that is. The Boston Herald reports that the Massachusetts Department of Corrections has purchased 117 new High-Definition TVs for inmates to watch this Sunday's Super Bowl. The sets, which include 32-inch LG sets and 26-inch Sharp LCDs, cost the state $76,958 at a time when Massachusetts is laying off workers and cutting social programs. The sets are being installed in the common areas of all state DOC prisons...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Department of Corrections Director Matthew Cate and state Finance Director Mike Genest today announced that California Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed a motion in federal district court in San Francisco to replace the federally appointed receiver. Brown, on behalf of the state, seeks instead a special master who would be an expert appointed by the federal court to advise the state and the court. His motion also asks the court to establish a process during the transition to ensure the receiver's compliance with state and federal law and to terminate the receiver's construction plan. Receiver...

SUMTER COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35, Orlando) -- FOX 35 is investigating reports of an inmate riot at a federal prison in Sumter County. Early reports indicate that there are mass casualties involving gun shot wounds at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, which is located approximately 50 miles northwest of Orlando and 35 miles south of Ocala. FOX 35 has a crew headed to the scene for more information and we will bring you more updates as they are confirmed. Coleman Federal Correctional Complex is located just south of the central Florida town of Coleman, off of Highway 301. The...

NEW YORK — Their budgets in crisis, governors, legislators and prison officials across the nation are making or considering policy changes that will likely remove tens of thousands of offenders from prisons and parole supervision. Collectively, the pending and proposed initiatives could add up to one of biggest shifts ever in corrections policy, putting into place cost-saving reforms that have struggled to win political support in the tough-on-crime climate of recent decades.

Midwest News Illinois Prison Inmate's Family Wins $13 Million Settlement January 6, 2009 An Illinois prison inmate who killed his cellmate after apparently warning guards three times that's what he planned to do must pay the dead inmate's mother $13 million. A federal judge in Springfield ordered the award for Sherree Daczewitz in her 2006 lawsuit against Corey Fox and prison officials over her son Joshua Daczewitz's strangling in February 2004. She alleged that the state Department of Corrections and officials at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester should have known the risk Fox posed but didn't prevent the killing....

A Prison Evangelist Answers the Bishops If the bishops truly wish to address crime they need to stop preaching generic values and start preaching the totality of Catholic morality.Russell L. Ford Homiletic & Pastoral Review – September 2001“As Catholic bishops, our response to crime in the United States is a moral test for our nation and a challenge for our church” [sic]. This is the opening sentence to a new document on criminal justice called Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice, issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) in November 2000. What follows is a...

FORT WORTH, Texas – A jail in northern Texas has been closed and its nearly 60 inmates transferred as authorities investigate what they call dangerous conditions for jailers and those behind bars — including cells that locked from the inside or contained recliners. Five inmates had already been moved from the Montague County jail to one in a nearby county this month after an FBI raid, said Jack McGaughey, district attorney for Montague, Clay and Archer counties. McGaughey declined to say what prompted the investigation, also being conducted by the Texas Rangers. But he said authorities found contraband in the...

Ministers claim the age-old term is not appropriate if criminals are to be treated with "respect and dignity". One prison officer leader attacked the move and warned jails have already become too soft as he called for a return to tough prisons in 2009. Opposition MPs said it was "politically correct nonsense". In a scathing outburst, Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, called for an end to the "namby pamby attitude" that has led to soft prisons. "It never ceases to amaze me, the hypocrisy of politicians and senior civil servants," he said. "On the one hand...

Federal immigration officials allowed scores of violent criminals — some ordered deported decades ago — to walk away from Harris County Jail despite the inmates' admission to local authorities that they were in the country illegally, a Houston Chronicle investigation found. A review of thousands of criminal and immigration records shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn't file the paperwork to detain roughly 75 percent of the more than 3,500 inmates who told jailers during the booking process that they were in the U.S. illegally. Although most of the inmates released from custody were accused of minor crimes, hundreds...

CLEVELAND -- R&B singer Sean Levert entered the Cuyahoga County Jail on March 24 clutching the prescribed medication he took regularly for anxiety. Jail staff took the bottle of Xanax away from him and failed to give him a single pill during the six days he was there, investigators said. Even when he began suffering horrifying delusions, he wasn't given his medication and never saw a doctor. Instead, on March 30, jailers strapped Levert into a restraint chair, still fighting the monstrous visions in his head caused by withdrawal from the medication. Minutes later, the 39-year-old son of O'Jays star...

ORANGE, Calif. — A Southern California county will allow jailed Muslim women to wear headscarves after settling a lawsuit with a woman who claims that deputies violated her religious freedom by making her remove her hijab. The settlement agreement signed by the county last week and released Monday specifies that Muslim women must be provided a private area to remove their headscarves after arrest and must be provided with county-issued headscarves to cover themselves when they are in the presence of men. The county, which did not admit wrongdoing, will also pay $45,000 in damages. Plaintiff Jameelah Medina will get...