Free Republic

The convicted killers shared the same cell at Corcoran State Prison. Jaime Osuna, 31, had decapitated and dissected the body of his cellmate, Luis Romero, 44, with a makeshift knife... But after prison guards made their rounds, they reported that both men were alive...

After a long battle, Hank Wise was charged with stalking from behind bars this month. Almost 12 years ago, Nikki Goeser's world was shattered when Hank Wise, a man who had been stalking her, fatally shot her husband Ben inside a crowded Tennessee restaurant. Yet, his subsequent conviction for second-degree murder in Davidson County Criminal Court hasn't squashed her anxiety. According to Goeser, Wise has continued to send sordid love letters to her from behind bars while for years being touted by prison officials for his "good behavior." "For 11 years, I have tried as best as I can to...

On the campaign trail, President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have repeatedly highlighted their efforts to reform the broken criminal justice system. President Trump and Vice President Pence have rightly touted the First Step Act of 2018, which expanded options for inmates looking to get back on the right side of the law. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has advocated for job training for incarcerated individuals, as well as utilizing alternatives to prison, such as rehabilitation facilities.  While these proposals are wholly reasonable, Biden has unfortunately muddied the conversation on criminal justice reform by vilifying private prisons. These non-government institutions...

The FIRST STEP Act is the beginning of a transformation of America’s federal criminal-justice system into what it should have always been: a system that makes America safer. This legislation unites conservatives, police and civil rights advocates, civil libertarians, business leaders and supporters of social justice. Supporting this legislation means supporting ideas that all Americans want - from police to Democrats to Republicans - an America that is fair, an America that puts Americans first, and that makes America safe. The fact that law enforcement groups like the Fraternal Order of Police and The International Association of Chiefs of...

The US government has created a business out of putting people in jail, a quite lucrative one at that. Privately run prisons thrive due to those minimum sentencing practices, while taxpayers pay for often disproportionately long prison times for people that are no immediate harm to anyone but themselves. And as a reaction those individuals are persecuted to the fullest extent, lives are being destroyed, and the nation’s workforce is diminished while the costs are paid by society. Instead of a helping hand, the U.S. has introduced the tradition of handing out handcuffs to those related to drugs. And that...

America prides itself on being the land of the free, but over the past four decades our prison population has risen tenfold. We have by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and as a consequence, at least 2.7 million children have at least one parent in prison. Some fathers have abandoned their children, but others have been locked away from them. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the federal prison population is 37 percent black, 32 percent Latino, and 28 percent white. Professor Michelle Alexander of Ohio State University went so far as to compare...

Los Angeles County jails have “deplorable” conditions that have contributed to a dramatic increase in suicides and the system isn’t doing enough to help mentally ill inmates, according to a federal report released Friday. Fifteen inmates have killed themselves in less than 2½ years, with the number increasing from four in 2012 to 10 the next year, and “dimly lit, vermin-infested, noisy, unsanitary, cramped and crowded” conditions contributed to the suicides, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s assessment of jail mental health care. …

America is known as “The Land of the Free,” but with the world’s highest prison population where more than 12-million arrests were made in 2012 alone, the statement’s accuracy is open to question. According to the Wall Street Journal, more than half of American men will be arrested at least once in their lifetime, and a 2011 study reported by TIME suggests that one out of three young adults will be arrested at least once by the time they turn 23. In an “arrest-first-ask-questions-later” system, innocent citizens routinely find themselves in front of a mug shot camera -- and as...

Michael Hough, a second-term Republican state legislator from Frederick County, Md., is about as conservative as blue-state legislators come. He played a prominent role in opposing the state’s new gay marriage law, holds an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, and received a 100 percent score from the state’s business lobby. The major focus of his legislative agenda, however, crushes any stereotypes that might come to mind, given his résumé. Hough wants to reform America’s prisons and help the more than 500,000 people who come home from correctional facilities every year. In the past few years, he’s successfully pushed...

"It is now time to return the control of our prison system to California," Gov. Jerry Brown declared at a news conference Tuesday morning. Amen to that. Federal lawsuits and federal judges have taken over the state's prison system. Unelected judges don't have to worry about paying for what they command. Nor need they worry about losing their jobs should they incite the public's wrath. Thus, judges have ordered massive increases in inmate health and mental health spending. Those orders have driven up the annual cost per inmate to more than $55,000. About $17,000 of that sum goes toward health...

Will Barack Obama go down in history as our least merciful president? With less than two weeks to go in his first term, this reputedly progressive and enlightened man has a strong shot at winning that dubious distinction. December, a traditional season for presidential clemency, has come and gone, and still Obama has granted just one commutation (which shortens a prisoner's sentence) and 22 pardons (which clear people's records, typically after they've completed their sentences). Barring a last-minute flurry of clemency actions, his first-term record looks weaker than those of all but a few previous presidents. Which of Obama's predecessors...

Now a whistleblower who worked with the alleged rapist has come forward, saying the problem is widespread. A retired prison guard said he worked along side Kenneth Carrejo for years. When he heard about the rape allegations, he had to come forward. "He's a pervert, that's all he's ever been. I would tell that to his face." The former prison guard is exposing Carrejo and a number of other guards at the Central New Mexico Corrections Facility in Los Lunas. "I never feared an inmate, I feared administration. I feared people like Kenneth Carrejo."

One of the difficulties facing corrections departments around the country is that their directors don’t keep their jobs very long. The average tenure for prisons chiefs is 2.4 years – not enough time to have a real impact, said Rod Hickman, the head of California’s prison system, in an interview earlier this year. "I don’t know that I can tell you exactly the right amount of time, but the one thing I do know that you can see from systems that are performing how people would like them to, albeit not perfectly: They had continuity in leadership," he said. Three...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Corrections Secretary Roderick Q. Hickman, a reform-minded appointee of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, plans to resign from the post he has held for more than two years, a newspaper reported Sunday. The Los Angeles Times reported that Hickman, 49, said in a telephone interview that he was quitting because he lacked the political support to reform the prison system. Hickman, who is the Schwarzenegger administration's highest-ranking black bureaucrat, said the governor would receive an official letter of resignation Monday. "I think we've built an excellent foundation, but I just don't see the courage and will we need to...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The California prison system's use of some of its toughest, most feared inmates to help keep order behind bars led to the slaying of a guard, state investigators say. And the FBI is looking into whether the practice contributed to a second killing. Although the practice is banned in some states, California's top corrections official defends the limited use of "peacekeepers." These influential inmates are entrusted to help the staff, smooth racial tension and in some cases control fellow prisoners. Critics worry the freedom accorded peacekeepers lets them run drugs, order inmate assaults and commit other crimes....

A federal judge threatened to put the state's prison system into receivership after warning that a prison guard contract renegotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger harms reform efforts in the nation's largest state correctional system. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the guard's union, already has a pattern of interfering with investigations and employee discipline, U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson wrote Monday in a letter received Tuesday by Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger's proposal would worsen problems by granting even more concessions to the union in return for postponing pay increases, despite numerous warnings from a federal court special master, witnesses at Senate...

The jaw-dropping moment came right at the beginning of a hearing in a room tucked away near the top of the state Capitol building. Lawmakers wondered: Was anybody managing spending at the state's adult prisons, which had blown their budget by a half-billion dollars this year? The one-word answer they got from a Finance Department official at the March hearing: No. More than two decades after California started toughening its sentencing laws and building new prisons to deal with rising crime rates, the mammoth penal system it created is embroiled in financial and management turmoil. The adult corrections system has...

<p>Citing evidence of a massive coverup within the highest levels of California's corrections department, a court-appointed investigator has found that the state's prison system has ``lost control'' of its ability to investigate and discipline guards for abusing inmates and is in dire need of major reforms.</p>

<p>A pair of state Senate committees portrayed California's Department of Corrections on Thursday as a bumbling, wasteful giant that relies heavily on hundreds of temporary workers even as it pays full salary and benefits to dozens of employees who never come to work.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO --California's prison system is asking for another $69 million because of overspending on its budget, fueled in part by rising overtime costs. Critics, however, consider the request another example of the Department of Corrections' failure to control runaway costs -- even as the state faces a record budget deficit that could spur tax increases and cuts to programs that serve the most needy.</p>