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MIAMI -- When Melvin Garcia was sent to prison almost a decade ago for racketeering, he had never used a computer. Now he sends 50 e-mails a month from a federal prison in West Virginia, punctuating notes with emoticons. Garcia, 38, is among thousands of prisoners at more than 20 federal facilities where inmates now have inboxes. By the spring of 2011, all 114 U.S. prisons are expected to have e-mail available for inmates. The program, started several years ago, has reduced the amount of old-fashioned paper mail that can sometimes hide drugs and other contraband. Just as important, officials...

The federal receiver in charge of California's inmate health care system is asking a judge to seize $8 billion from the state's treasury over the next five years. Court-appointed receiver Clark Kelso on Wednesday said he needs the money to build new medical units for 10,000 sick or mentally ill inmates.

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

For decades, corrections officials assigned inmates of the same race to bunk together to keep the peace among race-based prison gangs. That's about to change as the prison system prepares to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that effectively deemed the practice unconstitutional. A group of white inmates gathers around a bunk bed in a packed prison dormitory at California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, north of Los Angeles. The dorm is integrated. But each double bunk bed is its own racially segregated island. Steve Cecala, 38, is serving time for drug possession. He says he has no problem with...

Handcuffed and shackled, Randal Rushing blew the awaiting media a kiss as he was led from a Wilkes-Barre apartment Thursday afternoon. Handcuffed and shackled, Randal Rushing blew the awaiting media a kiss as he was led from a Wilkes-Barre apartment Thursday afternoon. “I had fun,” the man accused of a triple homicide in Scranton said when asked whether he had killed three people. Ten hours after a grizzly discovery at his residence on South Irving Avenue — three people so badly bludgeoned that the manner of death was difficult to determine — Rushing, 25, was taken into custody just after...

WASHINGTON -- Listening to political talk requires a third ear that hears what is not said. Today's near silence about crime probably is evidence of social improvement. For many reasons, including better policing and more incarceration, Americans feel, and are, safer. The New York Times has not recently repeated such amusing headlines as "Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling" (1997), "Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops" (1998), "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction" (2000) and "More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime" (2003). If crime revives as an issue, it will be through liberal complaints...

WASHINGTON, June 9, 2008 – Officials who manage detention centers in Iraq are getting a valuable look inside the mind of al-Qaida in Iraq, a senior U.S. military officer said here today. U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, commander of Task Force 134, conducts a press conference, about his recently completed 14-month tour as deputy commanding general for Detainee Operations with the Multinational Force Iraq, at the Pentagon, June 9, 2008. Defense Dept. photo by Cherie Cullen  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “We have learned so much about who al-Qaida is; we have learned so much about...

'Cushy' prisons see dozens trying to break in By Robert Winnett and Christopher Hope Last Updated: 12:50AM BST 04/06/2008 Tens of thousands of prisoners are opting not to apply for early release amid allegations that Britain's prisons are now so comfortable that they are effectively "expensive bed and breakfasts". The figures were released on Tuesday by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, who also disclosed that dozens of people have been caught trying to break into prisons over the past few years. The news was seized upon by the Conservatives who described the mismanagement of prisons by Labour as "ludicrous". Shadow...

WASHINGTON, June 2, 2008 – Four years ago, Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison was center-stage amid allegations of detainee abuse, and coalition forces suddenly cast as conquerors instead of liberators, losing the trust of the Iraqi people. Video Conscientious decisions and new detainee programs have helped the coalition turn the corner on the road to regaining that lost trust, Multinational Force Iraq’s commander of detainee operations said yesterday in a Baghdad news conference. “Today, we are still trying to regain that trust, and I want to tell you once again there was no justification for what happened at Abu Ghraib,”...

<p>A human rights group alleges the U.S. has operated detention facilities for terror suspects aboard Naval vessels, according to a published report in a European newspaper Monday.</p> <p>A study compiled by Reprieve says the U.S. may have used as many as 17 vessels as 'prison ships' where terror detainees were subjected to interrogation as part of the acknowledged rendition program operated since 2001, The Guardian reported.</p>

San Quentin State Prison inmate Lexy Good is white, hangs out with whites on the prison exercise yard and must be careful not to associate with blacks and Latinos. No cards, no basketball outside the color lines. Those are the unwritten inmate rules of prison life. People stick to their own race. Good, who's doing a short stretch for receiving stolen property, likes it that way. "We segregate amongst ourselves because I'd rather hang out with white people, and blacks would rather hang out with people of their own race," said Good, 33, of Walnut Creek. "Look at suburbia. Look...

Samia El Alaoui Talibi walks her beat in a cream-colored head scarf and an ink-black robe with sunset-orange piping, an outfit she picked up at a yard sale. After passing a bulletproof window, El Alaoui Talibi trudges through half a dozen heavy, locked doors to reach the Muslim faithful to whom she ministers in the women's cellblock of the Lille-Sequedin Detention Center in far northern France. It took her years to earn this access, said El Alaoui Talibi, one of only four Muslim holy women allowed to work in French prisons. "Everyone has the same prejudices and negative image of...

Prison life is so comfortable and the drugs are so cheap that prisoners don't want to escape, says prison officers chiefLast updated at 17:59pm on 24th April 2008  Prisoners are ignoring chances to escape because they would rather stay in their cushy jails where drugs are cheaper than on the outside, a prison chief officers has said.  Lags at Britain's 'toughest' prisons are treated to breakfast in bed, have Sky TV in every cell and are given cash bonuses for good behaviour. At one prison in Yorkshire, drug dealers and hookers regularly break IN to ply their trade by...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration today proposed $7 billion in state spending to bring health care in state prisons up to constitutional standards. The plan includes $6 billion to design and construct new health facilities and housing for 10,000 inmates with medical or mental health needs; and $1 billion to improve existing health care facilities at state prisons. That spending, most of which would require borrowing, nearly triples the $2.5 billion the governor had proposed in his budget submitted to lawmakers in January.

Less than two years ago, Italy's prison system faced a crisis: Built to hold 43,000 inmates, it was straining to contain more than 60,000. So the government crafted an emergency plan. It swung open the prison doors and let more than a third of the inmates go free. Within months, bank robberies jumped by 20%. Kidnappings and fraud also rose, as did computer crime, arson and purse-snatchings. The prison population, however, fell so much that for awhile Italy had more prison guards than prisoners to guard. In Italy, it sometimes seems that no bad deed goes unpardoned. The nation's legal...

ATF added another weapon to its gang-fighting arsenal Nov. 28 with the formal opening of a new facility in Northern Virginia that will house 80 intelligence analysts, agents, prosecutors and support personnel — all from different agencies — and all working together to investigate and dismantle the most violent gangs in the United States. “Coordination has brought us success in the past, and can yield even more in the future,” said ATF Acting Director Michael Sullivan, speaking during the formal opening of the new facility. The new site brings together two separate gang deterrence units — the National Gang Intelligence...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Lawmakers from California to Kentucky are trying to save money with a drastic and potentially dangerous budget-cutting proposal: releasing tens of thousands of convicts from prison, including drug addicts, thieves and even violent criminals. Officials acknowledge that the idea carries risks, but they say they have no choice because of huge budget gaps brought on by the slumping economy. "If we don't find a way to better manage the population at the state prison, we will be forced to spend money to expand the state's prison system — money we don't have," said Jeff Neal, a spokesman...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

Crime: The number of adults imprisoned in the U.S. has hit an all-time high, a new report says, bringing with it fresh concern about "our priorities." Don't know about you, but we think this is a good thing.The 1.5 million people now in U.S. prisons represent nearly 1% of the adult population — an all-time high, according to the Pew Center on the States. This, Pew says, has led to much higher costs. Last year alone, states spent $49 billion on corrections, an outlay that's been growing at a real rate of 6% for 20 years. Over the same period,...

U.S. incarcerates more than any other nation: report Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:20pm EST By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world and for the first time in the nation's history, more than one in every 100 American adults is confined in a prison or jail, according to a report released on Thursday. The report by the Pew Center on the States said the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults at the start of the year. The far more populous nation of China ranked second with...

" For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs."

San Francisco To Vote On Alcatraz As Peace Center SAN FRANCISCO (CBS) ― It would literally take an act of Congress before a city ballot proposal to turn Alcatraz into a global peace center could become reality. The measure's purely symbolic, given that the legislative branch would have to formally switch the island prison from federal to city hands, and that the proposal faces a host of other obstacles, including a lack of funding or legal force. That doesn't meant the measure on Tuesday's ballot hasn't gotten attention - much of it negative. "VOTE NO ON THIS RIDICULOUS PROPOSAL," the...

GABRIELS, N.Y. — After 17 years of marriage, Joy and Richard Gonyea managed to save enough to trade their trailer in November for a cozy prefabricated home with a room for each of their two children and a pool in the backyard. The home overlooks the pine trees on the edge of their two-acre property in rural Vermontville, eight miles from the secluded state prison where Mrs. Gonyea works. “This home is all we’ve ever dreamed of,” said Mrs. Gonyea, 43, a registered nurse who runs the medical department at the prison, Camp Gabriels, a minimum-security facility in this minuscule...

WASHINGTON - “Unlocking America: The Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population,” a report by the JFA Institute, found increased incarcerations did little to reduce crime. "In the United States, every year since 1970, when only 196,429 persons were in state and federal prisons, the prison population has grown. Today there are over 1.5 million in state and federal prisons. Another 750,000 are in the nation’s jails,” said the report. “The growth has been constant—in years of rising crime and falling crime, in good economic times and bad, during wartime and while we were at peace. A generation of...

Officials at a prison in Vänersborg (Sweden) have confiscated boxes of chocolates bought by the inmates to celebrate Christmas. As the chocolates contained traces of alcohol, management became concerned that the yuletide celebrations might get a little out of hand. With the festive season approaching, prisoners at the Brinkeberg facility in western Sweden submitted a wish list to the jail authorities. Seeing no harm in it, staff took the inmates' money and went out to buy 25 boxes of Marabou's tasty Aladdin chocolates to help brighten up a Christmas spent behind bars. But management saw the matter differently. "They are...

Even the LA Times had to admit this plot had something to it ! Usually they blow terror plots off as "exaggerated", but this one was in (Gasp !) California - rather than in Flyover country.

To activists concerned about AIDS and prisoners' rights, it's an urgent, commonsense step that should already be nationwide policy -- letting inmates have condoms to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases behind bars. Yet their efforts have run headlong into a stronger political force: Authorities' desire not to encourage inmates who flout prison rules against sex. Only one state, Vermont, and five cities regularly hand out condoms to inmates. Mississippi does so only for inmates receiving conjugal visits from their spouses. Left out are the vast majority of America's 2.2 million prisoners -- many held in facilities where sex...

The US prison population has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to the taxpayer, researchers say. There are more than 1.5 million people in US state and federal jails, a report by a Washington-based criminal justice research group, the JFA Institute says. Inmate numbers are projected to rise by 192,000 in five years, costing $27.5bn (£13.44bn) to build and run jails. The JFA recommends reducing the number and length of sentences. The Unlocking America report, which was published on Monday, also advocated changing terms of parole and finding alternatives to prison as part...

(Michael P. Tremoglie is a former Philadelphia police officer and the author of "A Sense of Duty," available at Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com.) ONCE AGAIN, another killing - this time a double murder - in the city. Once again, the murderer has at least one prior violent felony conviction. Mustafa Ali has allegedly confessed to killing two armored-car security guards while they were collecting money from an ATM in Northeast Philadelphia. He has a federal conviction for bank robbery. He served just six of the seven years he was sentenced to in 1993, followed by seven years of supervised release after...

I seek the advice of FReepers on home-schooling an academically gifted 8 year-old. We've had it up to 'here' with Creekland Middle School in Gwinnett County. (Georgia) How to get started? Best Curricula? Best web sites? Ideas? Challenges? Risks?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Religious materials are being returned to prison chapel libraries, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said Thursday, confirming plans to modify a program designed to remove religious books and videos that could incite violence. The change follows objections by members of Congress and religious groups. Removal of religious material grew out of congressional inquiries and a 2004 Justice Department Inspector General report suggesting that chapel books and videos should be reviewed to ensure they were allowed under prison security policies. In response, the prison system's religious services branch agreed to provide an automated list of appropriate materials and...

A prison staff training centre in southern Sudan has opened as part of efforts by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to rehabilitate the country’s dilapidated prison service and to help reintegrate former combatants from the north-south civil war into civilian life. The Lologo regional training centre, which opened yesterday, is expected to receive up to 1,500 ex-soldiers from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the former rebel group from the south, over the next six months, UNDP said in a press release. The first 550 ex-soldiers have started on a three-month orientation course, while specialist courses will also be...

Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries. The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons or donated by churches and religious groups. Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew,...

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups. Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureau’s actions violate their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed...

The U.S. Army is authorized to create civilian prison labor camps on military installations, according to a little-noticed regulation. The camps are allowed if the request comes from the Federal Bureau of Prisons or state corrections facilities under leasing requirements defined by federal law. WND's discovery of the regulation comes shortly after Bush administration directives expanding presidential powers during an emergency. The Army prison camp policy is defined in Army Regulation 210-35, entitled "Installations: Civilian Inmate Labor Camps," signed Feb. 14, 2005, by Sandra R. Riley, then-administrative assistant to the secretary of the Army. The regulation revises an earlier civilian...

RICHMOND — Illegal aliens comprise between 6 percent and 10 percent of Virginia's jail population and about 2 percent of the state's prison population, according to a report released by the state crime commission yesterday. The 13,735 illegal aliens in jail committed 27,148 offenses in fiscal 2007, according to the report. The majority of offenses for which illegal aliens are held in the state's jails involved alcohol or the possession of fake identification documents. There were 3,064 illegal aliens in prison from fiscal 2003 to fiscal 2007, according to the report. The top offenses committed by illegal aliens in state...

Woman was defended by legendary Houston attorney Richard 'Racehorse' Haynes. By Isadora Vail AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Thursday, August 16, 2007 GEORGETOWN — An Austin woman was sentenced to 23 years in prison Wednesday for having sex with a 16-year-old whom she lived near last year in Round Rock. Phill Raije Rian, 41, shook vigorously as a Williamson County jury sentenced her. She was convicted Monday of three counts of sexual assault of a child. The jury recommended 10 years for one count, 13 for the second and 10 years' probation for the third. Judge Billy Ray Stubblefield stacked the first two...

BOISE, ID, August 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Federal district Judge Mikel Williams ruled on Friday that the Idaho Department of Correction must provide an inmate with estrogen therapy. The inmate believes that he is a woman trapped in a man's body. The man, who castrated himself using a disposable razor blade while in prison, demanded female hormone therapy, and also changed his name from Randall Gammett to Jenniffer Spencer. After prison officials refused estrogen therapy, but instead offered testosterone therapy to replace the hormones lost to castration, the inmate sued, alleging he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and...

1,000 danger convicts are set free without tagsBy JAMES SLACK - More by this author » Last updated at 22:00pm on 20th July 2007  Out: An early-release scheme prisoner leaves jail Nearly 1,000 criminals freed early to ease the prison overcrowding crisis had previously been rated too unsafe to be let out with an electronic tag, it has emerged. They were ordered to remain behind bars because governors rated them a high risk of re-offending. Despite these fears, they have been freed under Labour's controversial early release scheme announced as an emergency measure last month after the prison population...

SAN FRANCISCO, June 1 — Gay and lesbian prisoners in California will be allowed overnight visits with their partners under a new prison policy, believed to be the first time a state has allowed same-sex conjugal stays.

LAGS' NEW TOILETS ARE £12K HOLES IN GROUND 22 April 2007 By Julian Gavaghan BARMY jail chiefs tore out two loos and replaced them with £12,000 holes in the ground for Muslim lags. They installed the squatover toilets - with a buried ceramic bowl - because many of the foreign inmates did not know how to use a regular toilet. But last night the bosses at Canterbury Prison in Kent were blasted for the decision. An insider said: "We thought it was a joke. I could have dug them two holes in the floor for 50p." Blair Gibbs, of the...

8 Former Prison Employees Accused Of Abuse TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Prosecutors issued arrest warrants on Tuesday for eight former prison employees accused of abusing inmates, including forcing some to clean toilets with their tongues. The eight were among 13 prison employees who had already been fired from the 605-inmate medium and minimum security at the Hendry Correctional Institution in the Everglades. The previous warden and an assistant warden resigned, and three others were reassigned after an inmates was beaten and choked by guards in March. State prisons chief Jim McDonough said the warrants include charges of battery and failing to...

Inside America's toughest jail  Grim ... Tent City in ArizonaPictures: MARK PETERMAN       From HARRY MACADAM in ArizonaApril 28, 2007           HIGH above the Arizona desert, a pink neon sign flashes the word “vacancy” from a watch tower manned by armed guards.  Surrounded by 25ft barbed wire fences, this is the welcome offered by America’s toughest jail — Tent City in Phoenix.Inside, nearly 1,000 prisoners live in army surplus tents, baking in temperatures of 122°F (50°C) in summer and freezing during winter.No matter how many criminals are locked up here, the vacancy sign is never...

SACRAMENTO — Facing mounting pressure from the federal courts, legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed Wednesday to spend $7.4 billion on new jail and prison beds while doing more to help inmates succeed once released. The complex deal, reached after weeks of negotiations, represents an effort to ease overcrowding in California's sprawling correctional system, where 172,000 convicts are packed into space intended for about 100,000. The crowding crisis has become so severe that federal judges, who already control large portions of the state system, are considering whether to cap the inmate population. Hearings on that issue are set for...

The politics of crime infused the 18th annual "Victims March on the Capitol" on Monday, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger imploring the several hundred people gathered on the west steps to "send a message to the legislators" to pass his $10.9 billion prison expansion plan. Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer of Orange also took to the podium to ask the families of murder victims who made up the bulk of the crowd, many of them hoisting posters depicting the faces of their slain loved ones, to "storm the Capitol" and "sit down" in the offices of the Democratic legislative leaders to oppose...

"I WOULD ban religion completely," British pop-music star Elton John said in a much-noted interview last November. "It turns people into hateful lemmings, and it's not really compassionate." It isn't exactly news that many people find religion odious, but what is being called the New Atheism has lately become a booming industry. A profusion of books, articles, and lectures extols secularism and derides faith in God as pernicious and absurd. Such antipathy to religion was once relegated to the edges of polite society. Today it shows up front and center. A California congressman is cheered for announcing that he is...

La Paz, Bolivia - Morning sunlight falls on two young girls clapping out the universal cadence of patty-cake. And, like little girls everywhere, when they tire of it, they run off, giddy with laughter, passing a group of boys hunched over a game of marbles. But this isn't a typical playground. These children are in prison. Here in San Pedro Prison, 250 children have moved into cells with their fathers who are among 1,500 male inmates incarcerated for crimes ranging from money laundering to murder. In some cases entire families squeeze in – turning cement cells into closets stuffed with...

Rockefeller mulls secret prison shutdown By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is questioning whether the CIA's secret prison program — which he fears has become a black eye to the United States — should continue. The review led by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., comes as the Bush administration deliberates an executive order, called for by Congress, that will establish new guidelines for the CIA's system for detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists. It is the agency's most publicly controversial intelligence collection program. Rockefeller says there is no doubt that intelligence from...

5. Both assume one solution for every individual. US justice policy incorrectly assumes that incarceration will solve many social problems, such as drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. The US Department of Education assumes that federal and/or state government standards should apply to every student. Both are incorrect assumptions. Nonviolent and white-collar offenders should be rehabilitated; parents and kids should have choice and options in education. One size does not fit all. 6. Both are unnecessarily expensive to taxpayers. Because politicians generally fear comprehensive solutions to problems, they end up throwing money at whatever doesn't work right. This is true to disastrous...

NORCO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured a prison for low-level offenders and drug addicts Tuesday while campaigning for an $11 billion reform and building package that he says will alleviate severe overcrowding at the state's 33 prisons. The governor toured parts of the California Rehabilitation Center and met with Warden Guillermina Hall before speaking with reporters in the prison yard. He was accompanied by Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary James Tilton. The prison, which sits on a hilltop below the snowcapped San Bernardino Mountains about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, was...