The clock is ticking: Aboriginal Leaders

Aboriginal leaders say only immediate action will remedy the appalling state of remote communities in the Northern Territory, writes.

Tracker Tilmouth points angrily at a tin shanty where 23 Aborigines are living in squalor. "Take a look. That's not only a disgrace. It symbolises what I believe amounts to a form of cultural and social genocide," he says. "This is as bad as anywhere on earth, right here on Australian soil."

Tilmouth knows more than most people about Aboriginal poverty, poor health, high crime, alcoholism and substance abuse.

Snatched from relatives living in an Alice Springs creek bed when he could barely walk, Tilmouth has spent most of his life in remote indigenous communities, where new research reveals that a population explosion and 30 years of underfunding in education, health and infrastructure have created a social time bomb.

"I have to speak out now because things are getting worse for people in these communities," says Tilmouth, 53, a former head of the Central Land Council, the peak Aboriginal body in central Australia. "The system delivering services to these places has collapsed. But nobody wants to talk about it. Governments have one last chance to get it right or else they will be dealing with a catastrophe."

Bob Beadman probably knows more about the problems of Aboriginal Australians than any other non-indigenous person. He also says it is time to speak out to shock Australia about the state of remote indigenous communities.

The former senior public servant, who is chairman of the Northern Territory Grants Commission, says that 30 years of multilayered policies that bureaucrats considered generous failed tragically because they denied Aboriginal people any effective role in their own lives.

"We are now on the rocks," he says. "We need to fundamentally set a new course and abandon the old tiller settings. People need to be shocked. They need to be moved from their tacit acceptance that everything is OK. A huge task confronts the nation, and particularly Aborigines themselves."

Beadman says people need to abandon political correctness and tackle the taboos of indigenous communities such as "child molestation, family violence, or even diet or personal hygiene. Only when the dirty linen is put out for the wash will it be washed."

But above everything else Aboriginal people need to become re-engaged so momentum for change comes from them, Beadman says. "They have been encouraged to think inadvertently that government would prefer them to be paid to sit down rather than to work," he says. "Billions of dollars have been thrown at this problem and we still have a deteriorating outcome."

Steve Sunk, a lecturer at Charles Darwin University, has decided to blow the whistle on what is happening in remote indigenous communities, where he has worked for the past eight years. He told the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin, in a letter that some children in the communities are starving and begging for food from teachers. Appealing for urgent government action, including providing protection and daily meals, he said children were being raped and "there is a lot of molesting and incest going on with the kids and it's too disgusting to mention the facts".

"They [children] are sleeping on concrete floors, they don't have the luxury of a mattress even to share with a camp dog," Sunk said in the previously unpublished letter. "Kids have sores all over which are not healing up because of lack of proper food."

The Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research has found that fertility rates in 1300 remote indigenous communities are so high that the present total population of about 100,000 could double in 20 to 25 years. John Taylor, a senior fellow at the centre, says that unlike the rest of rural Australia, where economies are shrinking and populations declining, the "clock is ticking for remote indigenous communities".

Speaking in Wadeye, the largest remote community, 420 kilometres south-west of Darwin, Taylor warns that unless there is an immediate response from governments the cost of trying to fix the inevitable social dysfunction in the future will be enormous. He says the communities have remained largely out of sight of mainstream Australia, which for years "managed to avert its glance, so to speak".

But he says that as the communities become increasingly accessible and open to the outside world "Australia cannot afford to avoid them any more".

The problems confronting Wadeye, a former Catholic mission with a population of about 2100, are similar to those of other remote communities. An average of 17 people are living in each sweltering, graffiti-covered house such as the one Tilmouth pointed out. Almost half the population is under 15 and most of the teenagers cannot speak English. Infant mortality is four times the national average and life expectancy is 20 years less than that of non-indigenous Australians. Up to 80 per cent of the prisoners in the Northern Territory's jails are indigenous, many from remote communities.

The administrators and elders in almost all the remote communities complain about a lack of basic services that are available to other Australians.

Many of the communities look like Third World refugee camps. There are no banks, high schools, libraries, bitumen roads, child-care centres, restaurants, nursing homes or even privately owned service stations, milk bars or hardware stores, the sort of facilities you would see in a town of similar size in other parts of Australia.

While thousands of well-paid public servants from federal and territory departments work on indigenous matters in air-conditioned offices in Darwin and Alice Springs, administrators in remote communities complain that their pleas for help go mostly unanswered.

Ngukurr, a community at the edge of Arnhem Land, asked for eight months for help on chronic petrol sniffing among teenagers. One social worker with expertise on the problem visited for one day.

Wadeye, which has a new invigorated governing body based on centuries-old traditions, has declared that enough is enough. It is planning to sue the Territory Government for years of neglect of its children's education.

A report written by Taylor says the community receives less than 50 cents in the dollar for the education of a local child, compared with the full dollar distributed to children on average across the Territory. But the average is weighed down by other remote communities and Taylor says a direct comparison between Wadeye and Darwin is likely to be many times worse.

The revelations about remote communities come amid signs that a bold experiment by the Howard Government to trial a "whole of government" approach to delivering services to 10 indigenous communities, including Wadeye, is faltering.

In early August, the federal Minister for Family and Community Services, Kay Patterson, was taken aback when she was told during a visit to Wadeye that community elders were close to quitting the second stage of the Council of Australian Governments trial.

Patterson, whose department leads the trial in Wadeye, was not aware that the community was missing help from government departments it should have been receiving because it was wrongly believed it was getting all the help it needed from COAG.

A report written in August by Wadeye's Thamarrurr council told COAG the trial was "placing unsustainable pressure on council members and staff and on council resources". The report suggests the trial has caused the community to chase its tail. "We have come across our own tracks many times," the report said. "Our people ask how can this be?"

Of $1.3 million allocated to another COAG trial in the far-east Kimberley region of Western Australia, only $327,000 was spent on Aboriginal people and programs over 2? years. The rest went on salaries, travel and other related administrative expenses of the Department of Transport and Regional Services, which administers the program.

Tilmouth describes COAG as a Band-aid solution and a waste of time. "There are so many meetings they have to hold more meetings to discuss the problem of so many meetings," he says.

As the Howard Government pushes shared responsibility agreements it has negotiated directly with communities such as Wadeye, Aboriginal leaders and administrators in central and northern Australia question how much of the federal funds sent to the Territory Government to tackle Aboriginal disadvantage actually reaches the communities.

Norman Fry, chief executive officer of the Northern Land Council, the peak indigenous organisation in northern Australia, says spending on indigenous health, housing and other social indicators within the Territory Government remains a "deep, dark secret" that his organisation wants investigated. He says the truth about Aboriginal funding "must be exposed so that the true causes of dysfunction in remote communities may be addressed".

The council's chairman, John Daly, told the National Indigenous Times last month that "every indicator and every report points to serious concerns with the NT Government's expenditure of monies targeted for Aboriginal disadvantage".

Indigenous leaders point to reports that just over $1.5 billion of the $4 billion of the GST revenue expected to be collected in NSW and Victoria in 2005-06 will go the Territory Government to meet the needs of Territory Aborigines. They say that $1.5 billion is more than the entire national budget of the now dismantled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

They point out that while the commission's taxpayer funds were spent primarily on work-for-dole and infrastructure maintenance programs, the Territory Government is responsible for education, health and infrastructure.

Indigenous leaders in the Territory regard education as the most important priority and want to see an exact account of where the money is being spent. Taylor says that only 25 per cent of children of school age in remote communities actually sit down behind a desk on any one day at school. But the Territory Government continues to receive 100 per cent of federal funding for the education of these children.

The delivery of health services is another area of concern. The Territory receives about $115 million from the Federal Government for Aboriginal health.

The Northern Territory's Aboriginal leaders believe that after the demise of ATSIC the Howard Government should establish regional authorities that would receive and distribute Commonwealth funds earmarked for Aboriginal disadvantage rather than send them first to mainstream government departments and agencies.

Beadman, a former head of the Territory Office of Aboriginal Development who has written a report on the future of Aboriginal youth for the Menzies Research Centre, says the establishment of strong regional authorities would be a "better co-ordinating mechanism for state and territory-level funding and federal funding".

Leon Melpi, a Wadeye elder, is fed up with bureaucrats coming to the community with pieces of paper to discuss one solution or another. "They should stay away and do their business and not come back until they have a final solution," he says. "All I will say is that we want to deal directly with the people who actually make the decisions that affect us. We want to cut out the middleman."

In the meantime, Melpi plans to build an ecologically friendly motel on his land above a magnificent white sand beach that few non-indigenous people have ever set foot on.

"We just want to be a normal part of Australia with all the services and opportunities that are available to the rest of you," he says.

"Remote?"

Apartheid Australia?

Absolutely

By Lindsay Murdoch posted 18 September 05

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US incarceration rate climbs

The US penal system, the world's largest, maintained its steady growth in 2004, the US Department of Justice reported.

The latest official half-yearly figures found the nation's prison and jail population at 2,131,180 in the middle of last year, an increase of 2.3 per cent over 2003.

The United States has incarcerated 726 people per100,000 of its population, seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies.

The rate for England is 142 per 100,000, for France 91 and for Japan 58.

The figures issued by the department's statistical unit showed that 12.6 per cent of black males in their late 20s were behind bars.

The comparable rate for Hispanic males was 3.6 per cent and for whites 1.7 per cent.

"Unless we promote alternatives to prison, the nation will continue to lead the world in imprisonment," said

Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a [stink]-tank that studies prison issues.

According to the Justice Department, violent crime in the United States fell by over 33 per cent from 1994 to 2003 and property crimes fell by 23 per cent.

Yet the prison population has continued to climb, increasing an annual average of 3.5 per cent since 1995, partly due to high recidivism.

Within three years of their release, two of every three prisoners are back behind bars.

Criminologists attribute the growth in the prison population to "get tough on crime" policies that have subjected hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug and property offenders to long mandatory sentences.

"We have to be concerned about an overloaded system which sentences many offenders quickly and is not doing a good job of sorting out people who should be incarcerated from people for whom other responses would produce better, less expensive results," said

Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington [stink]-tank.

The rise in the prison population varies by state.

Since 1998, 12 states experienced stable or declining incarceration rates but crime rates in those states declined at the same rate as in the other 38.

Texas, with 704 per 100,000 people in state prisons, incarcerates almost seven times as many as Maine, at 149 per 100,000.

It costs around $22,000 to lock up one person for a year.

The United States spends about $57 billion annually on its prison and jail system.

Women remain the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, increasing by 2.9 per cent over the year to over 103,000.

In 1980, the United States imprisoned 12,000 women.

In addition, the United States jails around 283,000 people with serious mental illnesses and almost 92,000 foreigners.

By Just Us posted 26 April 05

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NZ: Once a world leader in restorative justice, New Zealand is regressing by locking more people up for longer, visiting expert Sir Charles Pollard says.

The former chief constable of Thames Valley Police in England, who will speak at a restorative justice conference starting in Auckland today, said it was concerning that four new prisons were being built and others extended to cope with longer terms under the Sentencing Act 2002 and more arrests.

"I think New Zealand is taking a step backwards, actually. If what you are doing is building more prisons that actually is the most guaranteed way to increase the rate of crime," Sir Charles, who is in Wellington, said yesterday.

Prisons were crime colleges for people who would eventually be released.

"What you've got coming out are people who now - if they were damaged before - are seriously damaged now."

It was understandable the Government had toughened sentencing laws because of public anger over crime but Sir Charles said restorative justice - where the victim, offender and government agencies together decided a punishment and rehabilitation plan - was effective and not a soft option.

In Essex, in England, only 7 per cent of young offenders passing through a restorative family group programme had reoffended within two years, compared with 69 per cent in a control group.

Going through the court process meant an offender let his lawyer take charge and did not need to face up to the offence.

"To actually face the person you've harmed, the person you committed the crime against, is far tougher."

Sir Charles, who is a Youth Justice Board member in Britain, said restorative justice was satisfying for victims.

"They are quite frightened after a crime. They have this idea of a great big person, someone who looks violent, staring eyes, then they see this scruffy little kid, age 12, pathetic, had no chance in life."

Restorative justice for youths looked at underlying factors, such as inconsistent discipline, lack of boundaries, poor performance at school and peer pressure.

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The continuing increase in the prison population, despite a drop or leveling off in the crime rate in the past few years, is a result of laws passed in the 1990's that led to more prison sentences and longer terms, said Allen J.. Beck, chief of corrections statistics for the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and an author of the report.

At the end of 2003, there were 1,470,045 men and women in state and federal prisons in the United States, the report found. In addition, counting those inmates, [prisoners], in city and county jails and incarcerated juvenile offenders, the total number of Americans behind bars was 2,212,475 on Dec. 31 last year, the report said.

The report estimated that 44 percent of state and federal prisoners in 2003 were black, compared with 35 percent who were white, 19 percent who were Hispanic and 2 percent who were of other races. The numbers have changed little in the last decade. Statistically, the number of women in prison is growing fast, rising 3.6 percent in 2003. But at a total of 101,179, they are just 6.9 percent of the prison population.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said one of the most striking findings in the report was that almost 10 percent of all American black men ages 25 to 29 were in prison. Such a high proportion of young black men behind bars not only has a strong impact on black families, Professor Blumstein said, but "in many ways is self-defeating." The criminal justice system is built on deterrence, with being sent to prison supposedly a stigma, he said. "But it's tough to convey a sense of stigma when so many of your friends and neighbors are similarly stigmatized."

In seeking to explain the paradox of a falling crime rate but a rising prison population, Mr. Beck pointed out that F.B.I. statistics showed that from 1994 to 2003 there was a 16 percent drop in arrests for violent crime, including a 36 percent decrease in arrests for murder and a 25 percent decrease in arrests for robbery.

But the tough new sentencing laws led to a growth in inmates, [prisoners], being sent to prison, from 522,000 in 1995 to 615,400 in 2002, the report said.

Similarly, the report found that the average time served by prison inmates, [prisoners], rose from 23 months in 1995 to 30 months in 2001.

Among the new measures were mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which required inmates, [prisoners], to serve a specified proportion of their time behind bars; truth-in-sentencing laws, which required an inmate, [prisoners], to actually serve the time he was sentenced to; and a variety of three-strikes laws increasing the penalties for repeat offenders. In the three states with the biggest prison systems, California, Texas and Florida, the number of newly admitted inmates, [prisoners], grew last year, but the number of those released either fell or remained stable, Mr. Beck said.

Several states with small prison systems had particularly large increases in new inmates, [prisoners], led by North Dakota, up 11.4 percent, and Minnesota, up 10.3 percent. New York had a 2.8 percent decrease in new inmates, [prisoners], reflecting the continued sharp fall in crime in New York City, Mr. Beck said.

Over all, Mr. Beck said, the prison population is aging. Traditionally the great majority of inmates, [prisoners], are men in their 20's and early 30's, but middle-aged inmates, [prisoners], those 40 to 54, account for about half of the increase in the prison population since 1995, he said.

This is a result both of the aging of the general American population and of the longer sentences, Mr. Beck said.

But the number of elderly inmates, [prisoners], is still small, despite longer sentences and more life sentences. Those inmates, [prisoners], 65 and older were still only 1 percent of the prison population in 2003.

By FOX BUTTERFIELD posted 10 November 04

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We all know what prison mail censorship is about and it's certainly not about security: Those In Charge want Those Who Are Not to think that prisoners are illiterate, less than salvagable beasts. If the system had its way, prisoners would scrawl their appeals in crayon on toilet paper. It's all about the illusion.

The U.S. system of 'justice' is a tragic joke
US: Police abuse, and sometimes kill, innocent persons at will. Cops plant evidence, they lie, they coerce confessions and they commit perjury. Many are, simply, criminals.

The Long Trail to Apology
Native America: All manner of unusual things can happen in Washington in an election year, but few seem so refreshing as a proposed official apology from the federal government to American Indians - the first ever - for the "violence, maltreatment and neglect" inflicted upon the tribes for centuries.

Free-speech lockdown
As state prisoners, we have long been portrayed by advocates of the tough-on-crime movement as a faceless and heartless amalgam deserving extreme punishment and permanent incapacitation.

Abu Ghraib, USA
When I first saw the photo, taken at the Abu Ghraib prison, of a hooded and robed figure strung with electrical wiring, I thought of the Sacramento, California, city jail.

SACRAMENTO: Prisons to reform solitary confinement rules
US: Sacramento -- California corrections officials will revamp procedures used to keep thousands of prisoners isolated in tiny cells in some of the most remote lockups in the state, according to the settlement of a 10-year-old lawsuit brought by a jailhouse lawyer doing time at Pelican Bay State Prison.

Silencing the Cells: Mass Incarceration and Legal Repression in U.S. Prisons People without a voice are not people in any meaningful sense of the word. Silenced people cannot express their ideas; they can neither consent nor protest. They are reduced to being pawns in the schemes of the powerful, mendicants who must accept whatever is imposed upon them. In order to keep people in a state of subjugation, silencing their voices is essential. Nowhere is this clearer than in U.S. prisons.

USA: An ugly prison record
US: For a nation founded on slavery and genocide, Americans retain an astonishingly enduring faith in their continuing righteousness. They are sounding this note again as the prison torture scandal continues in Iraq.

From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib Doesn't It Ring a (Prison) Bell If the president wasn't so forthright about his disinterest in the world, it would have been hard to believe him Wednesday when he said the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison "doesn't represent the America I know." But being stripped, hooded and urinated on while your friend is forced to masturbate next to you? The only member of the Bush clan who knows about that kind of thing is Jenna.

Restorative Justice Practices
This is part one in a series of articles about restorative justice practices of Native American, First Nation and other indigenous people of North America. Part one of this series includes inter- views with three justice practitioners of the southwestern United States:

USA: Problems, blame abound in prison system
A correctional officer, [guard], watches over the central exercise yard at Folsom State Prison. California built 21 prisons and tripled prison staff as the statewide inmate, [prisoner], population grew in the '80s and '90s.

Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.
Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates, [prisoners], and human rights advocates.

A Catch-22 for Ex-Offenders
Tuesday, April 6, 2004 -- As the Bush administration focuses attention on ex-offenders with its modest program to help them return to the community, an eye-opening new study shows that the effort will require a lot more than re-entry programs.

A Quite Deliberate Failure: Reflections on the Politics of Crime
Though it is always difficult to predict the outcome of an election in the United States, it is quite a bit easier to make accurate pronouncements about the way in which an election campaign will unfold.

Personal Voices: America From Inside Federal Prison
I offer these thoughts to readers who may have an interest in knowing how the growing American prison population perceives the electoral process. Elections are the essence of democracy; they give each eligible voter an opportunity to be heard.

Fighting for Florida: Disenfranchised Florida Felons Struggle to Regain Their Rights US: TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush looked out over a roomful of felons appealing to him for something they had lost, and tried to reassure them.

Abolish the Security Housing Units: MIM
March 6 -- Protesters took to the streets in cities across the state of California to demand California prisons shut down the Security Housing Units (SHU). Like other control unit prisons across the country, the SHU are prisons within a prison. They are solitary confinement cells where prisoners are locked up 23 hours a day for years at a time. The one hour a day these prisoner sometimes get outside of their cell is spent alone in an exercise pen not much larger than their cell, with no direct sunlight.

USA: Sobering Prison Statistics
US: If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 out of every 20 persons (5.1%) will serve time in a prison during their lifetime.

Helping Prisoners Find Their Way Home?
Antonio Pinder used to be scared of returning home from prison, stricken by fear that he would fall back into the life that landed him behind bars. He hadn't had a steady job before he was sent away 13 years ago, and he worried that he never would. A year out of prison, he is still searching for work.

US Prison system ending love affair with incarceration?
After 25 years of explosive growth in the U.S. prison system, is this country finally ending its love affair with incarceration? Perhaps, but as in any abusive relationship, breaking up will be hard to do.

CONS COMMIT CRIMES IN HASTE, NOW CAN REPENT AT LAWTEY - -- Gov. Jeb Bush, in a Christmas Eve address to prisoners at the nation's first ''faith-based'' prison, in North Florida.

CURE --- Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants
CURE --- is a nation-wide grass roots organization dedicated to reducing crime through reform of the criminal justice system.[Criminal Law System.]

The Truth About Private Prisons
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest operator of prisons for profit, is celebrating its 20th anniversary throughout this year "at both the company's corporate Nashville office and at all of the more than 60 prisons, jails and detention centers under CCA ownership and/or management."

CCA PRIVATE PRISONS: REPORT GRASSROOTS LEADERSHIP
New National Study of Corrections Corporation of America Warns Investors and Legislators of Risky Investment. Report explores continuing operational and financial problems; questions CCA's long-term viability as states reassess prison policies.

Finally, States Release The Pressure on Prisons?
US: After decades of massive prison growth, America may be ending its love affair with incarceration. Policymakers around the country, some of whom previously supported ratcheting up punishments, have begun to rethink the wisdom of unbridled prison expansion, and are advocating alternatives to simply "locking them up and throwing away the key."

California Parole System Deemed 'Broken'
SACRAMENTO, Calif: California spends $1.5 billion annually on parolees who mostly fail and are sent back behind bars because they are no better prepared for life on the outside than the day they entered prison, according to a report.

People with Mental Retardation in the Criminal Justice System
Based on the 1990 census, an estimated 6.2 to 7.5 million people in the United States have mental retardation. Various studies have suggested between 2 percent to 10 percent of the prison population has mental retardation.

USA: With Cash Tight, States Reassess Long Jail Terms
OLYMPIA, Wash., Nov. 6 - After two decades of passing ever tougher sentencing laws and prompting a prison building boom, state legislatures facing budget crises are beginning to rethink their costly approaches to crime.

A STRUGGLE ON TWO FRONTS: PRISONS & IMPERIALIST WAR
After a war waged by the U.S. military against Vietnam which took the lives of more than 3 million Vietnamese people and more than 58,000 GIs, the U.S. finally withdrew in 1975. It had suffered its first official major military defeat by a united people struggle led by the Vietnamese, along with a mass U.S. anti-war movement.

Report on State Prisons Cites Mental Illness
NEW YORK: Nearly one of every four New York State prisoners who are kept in punitive segregation [solitary confinement], confined to a small cell at least 23 hours a day are mentally ill, according to a new report by a nonprofit group that has been critical of state prison policies.

High court keeps alive case of prisoners held in solitary
NEW ORLEANS: The nation's highest court refused Monday to kill a lawsuit brought by two prisoners and an ex-prisoner at the Louisiana State Penitentiary who spent decades in solitary confinement.

US: Mentally Ill Mistreated in Prison More Mentally Ill in Prison Than in Hospitals (New York, October 22, 2003) Mentally ill offenders face mistreatment and neglect in many U.S. prisons, Human Rights Watch. "Prisons have become the nation's primary mental health facilities. But for those with serious illnesses, prison can be the worst place to be."

Shut down the Security Torture Units
San Francisco: October 18 In solidarity with other prison activist organizations, MIM, RAIL, the Barrio Defense Committee (BDC) and the Prison Reform Unity Project held a four hour rally in San Francisco demanding the Security Housing Units (SHUs) in California prisons be shut down.

Solitary Confinement: Mental illness in prisons
As noted earlier, inmates [prisoners] with mental illness are over represented in our toughest prison settings. Symptoms of mental illness (i.e., delays in response time, paranoia, difficulty interpreting the actions of others, command hallucinations, and so on) can make complying with prison rules difficult.

Post-Incarceration Sentences
Pat: "The 1990s brought a new front in the war on drugs, featuring a new layer of the Prison Industrial Complex, which has the effect of ensuring that people coming in contact with the criminal punishment system remain within the grasp of the Prison Industrial Complex even beyond prison walls."

Inside Prison, Outside the Law
Every year, tens of thousands of prisoners in state and federal custody are attacked. The exact number who die is difficult to determine: According to the nonprofit Criminal Justice Institute, in 2000, the most recent year for which figures have been compiled, 55 prisoners were murdered, 39 died "accidentally," and 118 died for unknown reasons.

Day Seven of the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health:
PASADENA, CALIF: On the seventh day of a hunger strike by six psychiatric survivors to oppose human rights violations in the mental health system, the American Psychiatric Association faces a direct and unprecedented challenge from a Scientific Panel of 14 academics and clinicians.

Supreme Court Justice Criticises Sentencing Guidelines
San Francisco, August 9, 2003, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said today that prison terms are too long and that he favours scrapping the practice of setting mandatory minimum sentences for some federal crimes.

US prison population 2.1 million
The US prison population grew more than twice as fast last year as in 2001, bringing the total number of people held behind bars in the United States to more than 2.1 million, a record, according to a government report.

McKean Federal Prison: An Alleged Model
McKean, a federal correctional institution [? prison], does everything that "make 'em bust rocks" politicians decry--imagine, educating inmates [prisoners]! And it works. [Allegedly works.]

Prisoners Justice Day Press Release (Montreal)
On August 10th, 1974, Eddie Nalon bled to death in a solitary confinement unit at Millhaven Maximum Security Prison near Kingston,Ontario when the emergency call button in his cell failed to work. An inquest later found that the call buttons in that unit had been deactivated by the guards.

Notebook of a Prison Abolitionist
In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass recalls how as a slave he would occasionally hear of the "abolitionists." He did not know the full meaning of the word at first, but he heard it used in ways that he found appealing.

Study Warns of Rising Tide of Released Prisoners
Washington: More than 625,000 former prisoners will be coming back into U.S. society this year, part of a record flow of prisoners who will face crushing obstacles in finding work and housing and repairing long-fractured family ties, according to a newly released study.

Incite Statement Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex
We call social justice movements to develop strategies and analysis that address both state AND interpersonal violence, particularly violence against women.

Second International Conference on Human Rights & Prison Reform
**This second gathering will be much smaller and more in depth in participation. A report on the human rights violation of discrimination in regard to prisoners will be produced. This report will be given to the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights which will be having its annual meeting near our conference and is the"think tank" for the human rights agenda of the United Nations.

Judged Forever- The Orange County Register
US: California's largest job-placement program for parolees will be shut down May 31 after an Orange County Register investigation found that ex-convicts were sent to questionable jobs [?] and that the state was charged for placements that did not occur. [? According to the ruling-class]

California Family Visiting Case
US: CALIFORNIA: Today (5/03/08) in Superior Court around twenty friends and family members of inmates from CSP Solano showed up to show their support in the Gordon vs. CA Department of Corrections (Case #322862) which deals with the subject of bringing back Family Visits to all inmates.

Prison Rates Among Blacks Reach a Peak, Report Finds
An estimated 12 percent of African-American men ages 20 to 34 are in jail or prison, according to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department.

Justices question prison visitation policies
WASHINGTON: In a case that could affect the visitation rights of millions of prisoners, Supreme Court justices on Wednesday struggled with the question of whether inmates have a constitutional right to visits with friends and family.