... Si Kahn and Donna Red Wing, the outgoing and incoming leaders of Grassroots Leadership.
To Listen to the Interview
Showing posts with label Prison Industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prison Industry. Show all posts
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Progressive Radio: Si Kahn and Donna Red Wing -- the outgoing and incoming leaders of Grassroots Leadership
Progressive Radio
... Si Kahn and Donna Red Wing, the outgoing and incoming leaders of Grassroots Leadership.
To Listen to the Interview
... Si Kahn and Donna Red Wing, the outgoing and incoming leaders of Grassroots Leadership.
To Listen to the Interview
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Steve Weinberg: Eight Myths of Justice
Eight Myths of Justice: Innocent Americans are routinely convicted and incarcerated. The new book False Justice explains how.
By Steve Weinberg
In These Times
In the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Kansas v. March, Justice David Souter and Justice Antonin Scalia conducted a public debate within their opposing written opinions. Discussing the fates of death row prisoners, Souter opined that in such high stakes cases, innocent men and women are too often found guilty. The “unusually high incidence of false conviction” is probably caused by “the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases, and the corresponding incentive for the guilty to free the innocent,” Souter wrote.
Scalia countered that wrongful convictions are rare in capital cases because they “are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence is executed.”
For 40 years, I have researched, written about and obsessed over wrongful convictions. Souter’s thinking—heavily reliant on the research of Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor who has demonstrated that wrongful convictions are more prevalent than most law enforcement insiders understand—is spot-on. Scalia’s is misguided, informed by a judicial culture more interested in speedy convictions than thorough investigations.
To Read the Rest of the Article
By Steve Weinberg
In These Times
In the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Kansas v. March, Justice David Souter and Justice Antonin Scalia conducted a public debate within their opposing written opinions. Discussing the fates of death row prisoners, Souter opined that in such high stakes cases, innocent men and women are too often found guilty. The “unusually high incidence of false conviction” is probably caused by “the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases, and the corresponding incentive for the guilty to free the innocent,” Souter wrote.
Scalia countered that wrongful convictions are rare in capital cases because they “are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence is executed.”
For 40 years, I have researched, written about and obsessed over wrongful convictions. Souter’s thinking—heavily reliant on the research of Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor who has demonstrated that wrongful convictions are more prevalent than most law enforcement insiders understand—is spot-on. Scalia’s is misguided, informed by a judicial culture more interested in speedy convictions than thorough investigations.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Friday, October 29, 2010
Laura Sullivan: Prison Economics Help Drive Arizona Immigration Law
Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law
by Laura Sullivan
NPR
Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.
Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.
"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."
What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.
"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."
But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?
"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.
That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.
Behind-The-Scenes Effort To Draft, Pass The Law
The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it's upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally.
Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny
Among hundreds of bills drafted by an alliance of business, lawmakers: Arizona's immigration law.
When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state.
Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration.
But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.
He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law. Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country.
"Enough is enough," Pearce said in his office, sitting under a banner reading "Let Freedom Reign." "People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation."
To Read the Rest of the Report and/or Listen to it
by Laura Sullivan
NPR
Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.
Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.
"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."
What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.
"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."
But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?
"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.
That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.
Behind-The-Scenes Effort To Draft, Pass The Law
The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it's upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally.
Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny
Among hundreds of bills drafted by an alliance of business, lawmakers: Arizona's immigration law.
When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state.
Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration.
But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.
He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law. Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country.
"Enough is enough," Pearce said in his office, sitting under a banner reading "Let Freedom Reign." "People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation."
To Read the Rest of the Report and/or Listen to it
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)