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WASHINGTON — After a week of controversy surrounding its abrupt removal of pork dishes from the national menu for federal inmates, the government did an about-face this week and put pork roast back on the prison bill of fare. The Bureau of Prisons disclosed the decision to The Washington Post hours after a Republican Senate leader expressed dismay at what he implied was a wasteful survey of inmates’ food preferences and a lack of transparency in the decision. “The pork industry is responsible for 547,800 jobs, which creates $22.3 billion in personal incomes and contributes $39 billion to the gross...

President Obama's weekly remarks Hi, everybody. Thirty years ago, there were 500,000 people behind bars in America. Today, there are 2.2 million. The United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Every year, we spend $80 billion to keep people locked up. Now, many of the folks in prison absolutely belong there — our streets are safer thanks to the brave police officers and dedicated prosecutors who put violent criminals behind bars. But over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more non-violent offenders than ever before, for longer...

The nation’s pork producers are in an uproar after the federal government abruptly removed bacon, pork chops, pork links, ham and all other pig products from the national menu for 206,000 federal inmates. The ban started with the new fiscal year last week. The Bureau of Prisons, which is responsible for running 122 federal penitentiaries and feeding their inmates three meals a day, said the decision was based on a survey of prisoners’ food preferences: They just don’t like the taste of pork. “Why keep pushing food that people don’t want to eat?” asked Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the...

Hillary Clinton reportedly told leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement on Friday she will get rid of private prisons. The meeting with Black Lives Matter comes a day after Clinton was heckled by a protester at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala over her ties to the private prison lobby. The former first lady spoke with activists for 90 minutes in Washington, D.C., and discussed the policies she will promote in her yet-to-be-released racial justice platform. Activist Deray McKesson, who was in the meeting, said on MSNBC’s “Live with Thomas Roberts” that Clinton "did come out and say she...

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is going whole hog in cutting pork from its menu. With this month’s start of fiscal year 2016, there will be no bacon, no pork chops, no pork roast, no pork sausage — no pork-related food at all — served to the nation’s 205,723 federal inmates, including those at FCI Fort Worth or FMC Carswell.While there have been grumblings from some inmates’ family members that the prohibition had to do with Muslim or Jewish dietary restrictions, Bureau of Prisons spokesman Ed Ross said that isn’t the case.

American prisons to free 6,000 drug traffickers in biggest-ever inmate release October 30 will see 6,000 drug dealers freed from American jails as the country struggles to cope with the world's largest prison population By Harriet Alexander, New York 07 Oct 2015 Six thousand drug traffickers are to be freed from American prisons at the end of this month, in the country's largest-ever mass release of prisoners. The men and women will be freed as part of a plan to reduce overcrowding. America is the world's biggest jailer, and a quarter of the whole world's prison population is in the...

Occasionally, students actually notice when they are in a biased course. “I felt a certain idealistic giddiness upon enrolling in ‘Prisons & Punishment,’ a government course introduced during my senior year of college,” Danny Funt writes in the September/October issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. “It was exciting to attach a resonant cause to academic inquiry, and about 95 percent of my classmates—Republican and Democrat—identified as supporters of criminal justice reform.” “Our professor had a childhood friend who was wrongfully imprisoned for murdering his parents and then exonerated 17 years later. ‘This will be the most important course you take...

There’s an overcrowding problem with both. This is by no means unsolvable. The amount of money in California that gets wasted and squandered on meaningless garbage is astonishing. This is the kind of crap that goes on in states totally owned by Democrats. Oh yeah...psst, there are only 21 jumpsuits... Maybe prisoner number 22 in a metaphorical sense is the viewer, for still living golden moldin' state.

A Bronx man died in police custody last week after police responded to a 911 call. An Iraq combat veteran in El Paso, Texas, serving a two-day DWI sentence died after being subdued by guards. A woman died after being Tasered by sheriff's deputies in a Fairfax, Va., cell. What they had in common, besides expiring abruptly while in the hands of law enforcement officers, is mental illness. Denis Reyes was afflicted by bipolar disorder. James Brown reported being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Natasha McKenna had a history of schizophrenia. We used to warehouse the mentally ill in overcrowded,...

Fouad El Bayly, an Egyptian-born imam who in 2007 said that Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali should be killed, has been hired by the Department of Justice Bureau of Prisons to teach classes and provide leadership and guidance to Muslims who are in federal prison. Bureau of Prisons Director Charles Samuels, Jr. sees no problem with hiring El Bayly, “as I understand it, Hirsi Ali is an apostate. Under the tenets of Islam she should be put to death. That El Bayly has said so merely demonstrates his bonafides as a genuine Muslim scholar. If anything, this should vindicate our...

A phenomenal thing has happened in Washington: Progressive advocates and conservative forces have united around legislative action supported by the strong majority of the American people. Groups as disparate as the Center for American Progress and ACLU on the left and the Koch Brothers on the right; Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker; and over two-thirds of the American people all support major overhauls to America's criminal justice system. (SNIP) Yet it would appear Grassley just doesn't wanna change the rules. Grassley is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Simply put, given the generally powerful position...

Twice authorities have intercepted drones being used to deliver contraband into prisons, leaving German states planning new ways of keeping criminal activity away from criminals. But is the law behind the curve on this new technology? The justice ministry in Lower Saxony said that in future it might deploy so-called “drone-trackers”—devices equipped with infrared, night vision and sometimes even radar—at prisons. “We’re aware of this problem and are keeping an eye on it,” said Lower Saxony justice minister Antje Niewisch-Lennartz. Drones have only recently appeared on governments’ radars. At the end of January, a drone carrying a package containing a...

The Justice Department (DOJ) is banning smoking and all tobacco products in federal prisons, according to a final regulation to be published Monday.All federal prison inmates will be prohibited from smoking, unless they receive a religious exemption. Staff will also still be able to smoke in designated areas. The government said they are moving forward with the regulation, which goes into effect in 30 days, out of concerns of the health of their inmates.The rule will affect the estimated 80 percent of prison inmates that smoke.“The revised regulations generally prohibit smoking in and on the grounds of Bureau institutions and...

Crime in Michigan is falling. The rates of both violent crime and property crime are at long-term lows. Yet this has not translated into state budget savings. The $2 billion Department of Corrections budget has barely budged despite the fact that the prison population has fallen 15.6 percent from 2006 to 2015 – which ought to mean lower costs. With fewer prisoners, there are also fewer corrections officers. The number of full-time equated positions in the department was reduced from 17,782 FTEs in fiscal year 2007 to 14,179 FTEs budgeted for FY 2015. But higher prison worker employment costs and...

California officials agreed Wednesday to end a policy in which it segregated prison inmates after riots based on their race as a way to prevent further violence. […] Instead, officers can lock down every inmate in an affected area, or individual inmates suspected of being involved in the incident or the gangs that were involved. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation also agreed to provide inmates with opportunities for outdoor exercise any time a lockdown lasts longer than 14 days. …

Number of Federal Prisoners Declines for First Time Since 1980 Jasabet Munoz | October 14, 2014 | Add a comment In September, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released their annual report on the prison population of the United States. In 2013 an estimated 1,574,700 prisoners were held under the legal authority of state and federal correctional officials–a figure that excludes the population of local jails. This is an increase in over 4,000 offenders from 2012. However, while the number of people in prisons increased, for the first time since 1980 the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) imprisoned fewer inmates at...

Extremist Muslims are recruiting willing American blacks for violent jihad against their own fellow citizens. Fired food plant employee, Alton Nolen, a black Muslim, beheaded Colleen Hufford and stabbed another woman last week in Moore, Oklahoma, before he was shot and wounded by the company’s chief operating officer. Nolan reportedly attended a mosque headed by Suhaib Webb, an imam with ties to former al-Qaida mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki. Webb had been the leader of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City. Amazingly, Webb is head of the sister organization of the mosque attended by Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev....

We don’t know details yet of the murder of a woman [1] at Vaughan Foods — an Oklahoma distribution center — by a co-worker, but we do know that it was a beheading and we do know the alleged suspect — Alton Nolen, 30 — was a new convert to Islam.We also know that other workers at Vaughan say the suspect had tried to convert them to that religion.Some MSM outlets are emphasizing that the suspect was recently fired (it’s workplace violence, doncha know?), but the number of firings that lead to revenge beheadings is minuscule. In fact, I...

O.J. Simpson is set to convert to Islam. The former American footballer and movie star has been imprisoned in Nevada since 2008 on charges of kidnapping and armed robbery in relation to an armed robbery that took place at the Palace Station hotel-and-casino in Las Vegas in which sports memorabilia was taken. After seeing his appeal for a re-trial quashed last and being informed in July 2013 he will serve at least another four years, Simpson has embraced the religion in a bid to change his life.

Few U.S. institutions resemble today's prison system. Most Americans have little-to-no exposure to this quiet behemoth which has quadrupled its population since the 1980's, but for those who are exposed, the effects are dramatic. The system is wrecking families, hurting individuals, and costing our nation billions of dollars. We've seen some promising developments in the last year, but more Americans need to open our eyes to the dangerous path we've been headed down and push for continued reforms. I've lived several years of my life in a small Midwest farming town that owes much of its continued existence to our...