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Two San Francisco County jails were placed on lockdown Sunday afternoon and a request for help from the National Guard was issued as officials reported that attacks against jail deputies are on the rise. "Recent incidents have shocked the community, including a sharp rise in prisoner fights, attacks on prisoners by other inmates, and injuries to both civilian employees and deputy sheriffs. These dangerous incidents underscore the pressing need for intervention to ensure the safety and security of all within the jails," The San Francisco Deputy Sheriff's Association (SFDSA) said in a statement on Sunday. Sheriff officials reported that since...

More than 200 political prisoners were released by Nicaragua this morning. The 222 prisoners were put on an early morning flight to Washington and will arrive in the next few hours. On state television a judge said the government had decided to "deport" the prisoners, saying they had been declared traitors and can never again serve public office. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Nicaragua made the decision "unilaterally," but that the United States had "facilitated the transportation" and the political prisoners would be admitted into the United States for "humanitarian reasons." Ever since anti-government protests erupted in Nicaragua in...

An inmate at New Jersey’s Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women (EMCFW) is speaking out against the transfer of trans-identifying male convicts into the facility. Speaking with Reduxx, incarcerated woman Miseka Diggs explained that the female inmates in EMCFW are “scared to death” of the men. Under the current policy, the men do not need to undergo any surgery, and Diggs asserts that most of the men are not on hormone replacement therapy. She stated that a majority of women incarcerated at EMCFW have past trauma, with many being victims of male violence, and the presence of men in the...

**SNIP** KAMALA HARRIS, 2013: I say with all love and warmth, that part of the concern also for people who are progressive thinking and liberal-minded or just 'fix it! fix it!' is that we all have these posters in our closet on a stick that we sometimes cart out to talk about criminal justice policy, and those statistics you heard... And we run around with the signs and say, "Build more schools, less jails!' "Build more schools, less jails!' 'Put money into education, not prisons.' There's a fundamental problem with that approach, in my opinion, and it is this: I...

The number of detainees testing positive for coronavirus at the Cook County Jail in Chicago skyrocketed over the weekend, leaving Sheriff Tom Dart grabbling with a dilemma that runs against the very grain of a veteran lawman and former prosecutor: whether to free alleged criminals instead of keeping them locked up. As of Monday afternoon, one of America's largest single-site jails had 134 inmates who have tested positive for COVID-19, up from just 38 on Friday, Dart told ABC News. Of all the inmates tested so far only nine were negative, he said. “This is beyond complicated," Dart said. "There...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) requested the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) release prisoners who are vulnerable to coronavirus to prevent an outbreak in federal prisons. The letter, addressed to Attorney General Bill Barr and BOP Director Michael Carvajal called on the agencies to “take immediate action to safeguard” the prisoners, specifically those who are elderly or have chronic health conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has designated these demographics as most susceptible to serious illness or death. The union requested the officials “increase the use of compassionate release” to...

Law enforcement agencies across the county have cut down the average number of daily arrests from 300 a day to just 60 over the weekend.Officials in Los Angeles County are releasing inmates and making fewer arrests to reduce the risk of a coronavirus outbreak in the jail and prison systems. "Our population within our jails is a vulnerable population just by who they are, where they are located, so we're protecting that population from potential exposure," Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva told reporters Monday. The potential for an outbreak of the coronavirus inside jails and prisons has been a growing...

More than 230 undocumented immigrants detained near the Mexico border were transferred this month to jails near New York City as the federal government struggles to house a growing number of asylum-seeking migrants. An immigration official said the transfer of 235 immigrant detainees to ICE jails in Bergen, Hudson and Orange Counties appeared to be the first time the New York City area had received such a large number of border crossers. “ICE is committed to the health and safety of all those in its custody. In response to a surge in border arrivals that began late last year, ICE...

Over the last decade, California has led the nation in reducing its prison population. The state has shortened sentences and diverted some offenders to the counties for incarceration and supervision, transforming California’s criminal justice system into what supporters hope will become a humane model around the country. But amid the changes, crime has increased in recent years, sparking debate about the causes and giving ammunition to those leading a new effort to roll back some of the reforms. An analysis by the Marshall Project and the Los Angeles Times found that California’s crime rates remain near historic lows, but overall...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish authorities have jailed a Kurdish teacher for her condemnation of the killing of civilians during anti-PKK operations in 2016. The teacher gave birth recently and will go to prison with her baby. “Do not stay silent… Do not let human beings and children die, and do not let mothers cry,” Ayse Celik said on-air during a phone-in show on Turkey’s Kanal D TV station in January 2016. She was reacting to military operations in her hometown of Diyarbakir and criticized Turkish media for their coverage of the events. “What is happening here is shown on...

Thousands of women, many with small children to take care of, were jailed in Turkey in an unprecedented crackdown and subjected to torture and ill-treatment in detention centers and prisons as part of the government’s systematic campaign of intimidation and persecution of critics and opponents, a new report titled “Jailing Women In Turkey: Systematic Campaign of Persecution and Fear” released by Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) has revealed.The motivation behind Turkey’s deliberate policy of imprisoning women who, in some cases, have just delivered babies or are pregnant, appears to be creating a chill factor in Turkish society and muzzle dissenting and...

Turkish government has arrested Mahmut Kahraman, a 47-year-old Kurdish bus driver, for wearing a T-shirt with the inscription ‘Kurdistan’.  Kahraman was accused by a Turkish court in Doğubayazıt district of Ağrı province of ‘propagating for a terrorist organisation.’It was reported that Kahraman was stopped by Turkish police as he passed by the municipality of Ağrı’s Doğubayazıt district because he was wearing a T-shirt with the inscription ‘Kurdistan’. Anti-terror police units were dispatched to the scene afterwards and detained Kahraman.Following three days in detention, Kahraman was referred to a local court with a demand for his arrest, and he was jailed...

Fearing a loss of millions of dollars for defying immigration authorities, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Thursday ordered county jails to comply with federal immigration detention requests — effectively gutting the county’s position as a “sanctuary” for immigrants in the country illegally. Gimenez cited an executive order signed Wednesday by President Donald Trump that threatened to cut federal grants for any counties or cities that don’t cooperate fully with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since 2013, Miami-Dade has refused to indefinitely detain inmates who are in the country illegally and wanted by ICE — not based on principle, but because the...

William La Jeunesse reports from Los Angeles

More than 140 prisoners escaped from a prison near the U.S. border on Friday, media said, the latest breach of Mexico's notoriously insecure jails that are helping to feed a violent drug war... on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo across from Laredo, Texas. In September, 85 prisoners escaped from jail in the nearby border city of Reynosa. Authorities discovered in July that prison officials had allowed convicts out of jail in northwestern Durango state to carry out revenge attacks before returning to cells for the night.

WASHINGTON – California and other financially strapped states will lose tens of millions of federal dollars that they spend to jail illegal immigrants charged with crimes, under Congress' latest spending bill. The $1.1 trillion plan, finalized by House and Senate negotiators Tuesday night, combines six of the large yearly appropriations bills passed by Congress to keep the government running. State officials and members of the California congressional delegation had lobbied hard once again to increase aid to the states for the program, hoping to cash in on California's increased clout in Washington this year. But their efforts fell flat, with...

DALI, China — Justin Franchi Solondz, an environmental activist from New Jersey who spent years evading charges of ecoterrorism in the United States by hiding out in China, was sentenced to three years in prison by a local court on Friday on charges of manufacturing drugs in this backpacker haven. After serving his time, Mr. Solondz, 30, who is on the F.B.I.’s wanted list, will be deported to the United States, where he faces charges stemming from what the authorities say was his role in an arson rampage that destroyed buildings in three western states as a member of a...

In this Friday, Sept. 24, 2009 picture, Albert Peterson with the Two Rivers Authority stands outside an empty jail that Hardin, Mont. built for $27 million. The authority wants a California security company, American Police Force, to take over the facility. Michael Hilton pitched himself to the city as a military veteran turned private sector entrepreneur - a California defense contractor with extensive government contracts who promised to turn the rural city's empty jail into a cash cow. But now a much different picture of Hilton is emerging from public documents and interviews with his associates and legal adversaries. (AP...

Two of the District's top law enforcement officials are warning that dozens of federal prisoners with ties to Colombian rebel groups and international drug rings are a threat to security at the D.C. Jail and pose a risk of escape into the surrounding neighborhood. The concerns have led city officials to ask the federal government for more money to provide security for the increasing numbers of prisoners, who are being held at the District's corrections campus in Southeast. Devon Brown, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC), outlined concerns about such prisoners in a U.S. District Court filing last...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes, according to current and former U.S. officials.