---
--->
15 year late June 2017 webpage UPDATE: Reforming an American prison
Norwegian jail superintendent, Jan Strømnes, wants to revolutionize Attica Correctional Facility, the supermax prison in New York State. Strømnes runs Halden Prison, one of the world's most humane jails. Can he change Attica's notorious ways? CLICK here for great video documentary
Vol. 3, 2002
"PRISONERS IN USA -- AS HOPELESS AS BREAKER MORANT"
First, the most important 3 men to email if you want to get rich on the commercial prisons stock market bull run before it quiets down like dot.com's:
John D. Rees, Vice-President, Corrections Corporation of America
Wayne Calabrese, President, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation
Marvin Wiebe, Vice President, Cornell Corrections
WACKENHUT CORRECTIONS CORP.,
our #1 Paramilitary Inc.
(WAK)
... for a complete and official table, dilineating ALL the main nuclear and radiation bad guys, many working for or with Wackenhut or the Carlyle Group, click here!
WACKENHUT! Think Westinghouse! World Leader in Private Prison Construction & Management and Paramilitary Security at our Nuclear Waste Disposal Facilities ... hey look, if you have been lucky enough not to have been locked down in prison in our present "no-justice" democracy, then at least invest in this prisons craze and get rich while you're still on the outside!
TODAY'S HEADLINES:
"Experts say it is the most
lethal garbage in the world"
THE SAVANNAH RIVER, S.C.
NUCLEAR
WEAPONS DUMP PROJECT, S.C.
Summarized from an article by MATTHEW L. WALD, of the New York Times
"The Curse of Yucca Mountain and Benzene"
COLUMBIA, S.C. For years the Energy Department has promised to clean nearly all the radioactivity out of bomb wastes here that are to be secured in giant concrete blocks. Now, faced with a cleaning technology that it has been unable to make work properly for more than a decade, department officials have reversed themselves.
A $2.4 billion factory at Savannah River, S.C., is processing the giant amounts of radioactive sludge ... mixing it with molten glass, and pouring the mixture into stainless steel canisters. The mixture cools into glass logs, and about 1,200 of them have been made since production began in 1996. The plan is to bury them deep underground [some of the cannisters will be 1000 feet underground], presumably at Yucca Mountain, Nev. [Yucca Mountain is near Las Vegas groundwater and exactly adjacent to the Nevada Nuclear Weapons Test Sites of the 1950s], where they are supposed to be secure for thousands of years.
The new proposal to mix a sizable portion of the waste with cement without cleaning it is adding to tensions between the federal government and Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina, who has threatened to use state troopers to block new shipments of plutonium into the site, the Savannah River nuclear reservation here.
[On Friday, a federal judge in South Carolina ordered the Energy Department to wait 30 days before beginning to ship weapons-grade plutonium from Colorado to Savannah River. The order, which means that no shipping can begin until June 15, came a week after Governor Hodges filed suit to stop the shipments, which he opposes because of uncertainties about the technology that would be involved in converting the former nuclear weapons to still toxic powerplant fuel.]
Stored in 51 giant tanks, the mix of radioactive sludge, liquid and salts is a legacy of the factories here that produced the United States' atomic arsenal. Experts say it is the most lethal garbage in the world.
The Energy Department [DOE], which designs, builds and maintains our nuclear weapons, has a powerful motive to simplify the cleanup. Any method that proves effective here will be duplicated at sites in Idaho [most radionuclide wastes from our U.S. Navy nuclear operations are currently stored at the Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Facility], and Hanford, Washington [The Hanford Nuclear Site is a 560-square-mile tract of semi-arid land located within the Columbia River Basin in southeastern Washington, about 50 miles north of the Oregon border. The Columbia River flows through the Hanford Site boundary. In early 1943, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers selected the Hanford Site as their main location for nuclear reactor and chemical processing facilities for the production, separation, and purification of plutonium].
[... The suggested method of disposal] is cleaning the radioactive salts by washing out radioactive cesium-137 and then mixing the salts with cement. But the washing process also produces a volatile compound, benzene, which makes the waste tanks vulnerable to fire or explosion.
The U.S. Dept. of Energy's record with cement is spotty. In the 1980's it tried to clean up a contaminated pond at the Rocky Flats plant, in the suburbs of Denver, by mixing radioactive material with cement to produce what officials called pondcrete. In months, the pondcrete crumbled. A solution here will be a model for Hanford, Wash., where there are more tanks, in worse condition, and where the department recently broke ground for another glass factory.
At the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, James Hardeman, manager of the Environmental Radiation Division, said, "They can call it mudpies, it's still high level waste." [regarding the nearby Savannah River Project]
"It should be buried at Yucca Mountain," Mr. Hardeman said.
MORE PROFITS FOR
WACKENHUT Managed Commercial Prisons:
Mentally Disordered in U.S. Swing Between Jail, Hospital
May 14, 2002
Summarized from an article by Alan Elsner, National Correspondent
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (Reuters) - Project Link, a six-year-old program spearheaded by University of Rochester psychiatrists Steven Lamberti and Robert Weisman, aims to identify severely mentally ill patients like Collier and help them re-establish some semblance of a normal life. The benefits to society could be immense.
"Jails and prisons have become the final destination of the mentally ill in America. It's a huge problem. There are more mentally ill folk in state prisons than in state hospitals. The Los Angeles County Jail has become the nation's largest mental institution," said Lamberti.
"So many people are trapped in what I call a Bermuda Triangle of prison, hospital and the streets," he said.
Project Link takes severely mentally ill patients -- there are currently 45 enrolled -- and given each one a case worker, who makes sure they take their medications, keep in touch with medical and social service providers in the community.
Most private landlords are reluctant to rent rooms to mentally ill tenants. But without stable housing, they are almost impossible to treat.
COSTS DRASTICALLY CUT
The program also drastically cut the costs of caring for participants, from an estimated average of $62,500 per person to $14.500.
There is an estimated 5.6 million people with severe mental illness currently living in the United States.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the number of available beds in mental hospitals plummeted while the commercial prison population more than doubled to around 2 million, of whom around 15 percent are believed to be suffering from severe mental illness, according to various studies. That totals out at around 300,000 people.
In Rochester, a city of around 750,000 near the shores of Lake Ontario, a regional psychiatric hospital which once held over 3,000 inmates was cut to just 200 beds in the 1990s.
[summarized from a recent New York Times article, by Henri E. Cauvin]
The Wackenhut Corrections Corp., (WAK)
based in Florida, has become the world leader in private prison construction and management. They are currently expanding into South Africa, after having made great strides in the USA [especially Austin, Texas], the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Carribean islands. WCC is now building a 3,024 bed maximum security prison in South Africa, financed by a consortium of SOUTH AFRICAN BANKS.
It is hoped by the consortium that this is only the first step of a long and lucrative relationship that will rapidly expand.
WACKENHUT SERVICES, INC.,
the largest commercial builders of prisons in the world, is also the contractor for the Department of Defense [USA] and the contractor who is both well paid and responsible for human security at the Savannah River Site[SRS], the largest nuclear waste disposal compound in the world, ... Bechtel, Westinghouse, and the US Army Corp of Engineers all pay WACKENHUT to get rid of unneccesary risks and problems ... take for instance, prisoners, and yes, nuclear toxins too! [it is assumed the prisoners will be liquidated long before the nuclear "cakes" are vitrified]
[quoting directly from the NEW YORK TIMES:]
" [...] Authorities in Texas reclaimed control of a Wackenhut run prison
in Austin after a dozen former employees were indicted late last year on charges of sexually assaulting and harrassing inmates ... earlier this year, authorities in Louisiana transferred the ENTIRE POPULATION of a JUVENILE PRISON run by Wackenhut
after federal investigations contended that inmates [JUVENILES] were beaten and deprived of adequate food and clothes."
--->>> check your Wall Street stocks and see which WACKENHUT prison shares are ahead of the pack this week!! It's one of the best deals in our "democracy" and "nuclear family" --- you can afford a pension and your own private health insurance if you invest in penal colonies and supernatant radioactive salts and RADIOACTIVE SALT CAKES!!!! <<<---
from the "SACRAMENTO BEE"
Q: Have you ever heard that the private prison industry is a
good investment? I heard that Wackenhut stock has soared
lately. What do you think?
-- M.E., Sacramento
A: Wackenhut Corp. (ticker symbol WAK) is an international
provider of security services that also manages privatized
correctional facilities.
For the 39 weeks ended Oct. 1, revenues rose 17 percent to
$1.85 billion, but net income fell 4 percent to $13.5 million.
Late last month, the security service company advised Wall
Street that it expects to post earnings[.]
WACKENHUT, in bed for several lost weekends with the Pentagon, gets two juicy prison contracts in Arkansas ... click here to read how WACKENHUT is literally drooling over their company being selected to expand Arkansas's 600-bed facility for
adult female offenders to lock down over 800 teenage females in prison beds.
Excerpts from a three part investigation by THE NEW YORK TIMES
by Jane Fritsch and David Rohde
"[...] Thirty-eight years after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that indigent defendants have a right to legal cousel, NYC offers representation to the poor that routinely falls short of even minimum standards recommended by legal experts.
In a 7-month analysis of thousands of city records and court cases in 2000, the NYT found that almost NO PART OF THE INDIGENT defense system functions as it was intended."
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who plays a central role in shaping the indigent defense system, declined to be interviewed.
[...] The LEGAL AID SOCIETY has been hobbled by budget cuts since its lawyers went ON STRIKE in 1994, angering Mayor Giuliani. The cuts came JUST as the mayor's crackdown on quality-of-life crimes FLOODED the courts with defendents in need of lawyers.
[...] "The system as it is makes bad lawyers even out of good lawyers."
[...] Only 36% of the lawyers [ever] made the trip to RIKERS ISLAND, the city's vast jail complex in the East River near La Guardia Airport.
[...] In New York, the nonprofit LEGAL AID SOCIETY is the closest thing to a public defender's office [which almost every other US urban area provides]. But it represents fewer than 10% of ... defendants."
--------- "RE: Words of Leonard Peltier" ---------
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 13:23:12 -0500 (CDT)
From: freedom@prairienet.org (Freedom Heart Rising)
Subj: Words of Leonard Peltier!!!
UUCP email
Following is the letter from Leonard, from the new issue
of "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse", the LPDC newsletter. I always love to
read _his_ words!
++++++++
Statement of Leonard Peltier:
Greetings, my friends,
I cannot express to you the anxiety and frustration I have been dealing
with, first with the sudden transfer, then with the surgery, and now as we
wait for a decision from the United States Parole Commission. I extend my
deepest gratitude to everyone who sent postal money orders, soft cover
books, cards and letters. Your generous and compassionate thoughts are
truly helping me to recover.
I am proud of everyone who took part in the February 6th Day of Action.
It was not easy to take time from work, and brave the cold winds blowing in
so many places. My heart goes out to everyone for that wonderful sacrifice.
It keeps me strong, knowing that on the outside, beyond these terrible
walls, stand so many good people. In prison, I often meet those whose faith
in humankind has been defeated, mutilated beyond recognition. I thank the
Creator every day that my support system is so strong, vibrant, courageous,
and caring.
We must reach out to those who are standing so alone, whether they be young
or old, regardless of race or religion. Here at the medical facility I see
sick and lonely men, desperate to hear from friends or family. I am sorry
for them. It makes me wonder about kids in foster care, and elders in
nursing homes.
It's so easy to make someone's day a little brighter. For example, on the
cover of this newsletter are several very happy children. They are happy
because kind-hearted people decided to sponsor them for Christmas. In all,
we had nearly fifty children in the Christmas program, which I am hoping to
start year-round. Why make these beautiful kids happy only one day a year?
For those interested in becoming a bigger part of childrens' lives, please
contact Lisa at the LPDC and she will place you on a list of individuals
interested in getting such a program started.
Remember, this is an election year, and while I am deeply and consistently
touched with this ceaseless call for my freedom, also use this opportunity
to voice our shared concerns about prison rights, judicial inequities, human
rights, and hardship for children and elders living on our reservations and
in our inner cities. These are the issues that should concern our
leadership; not whether a same-sex couple should marry! I am appalled by
some of the rhetoric and mudslinging.
Do they expect us to care about the private lives of individuals, where we
have no business, or about kids having kids and dropping out of school? Or
grandparents freezing in their apartments? Or babies born to single
mothers, their father's denying their responsibilities? Or the blatantly
disproportionate number of minorities in prisons?
Please, my friends, be loud, be heard!
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier
++++++++
<
BERNARD KERICK, 45, Prisoners call him "bedwetter". A high school dropout with an equivalency diploma, Kerik has been taking courses through Empire State College and is 24 credits short of a bachelor�s degree. He was former Mayor Giuliani's Chief Corrections Officer, and now is NYPD Police Commissioner. Last week he heroically stopped a man [using deadly force and arresting his victim, suffering from a painfully overtaxed bladder], from urinating on the side of the interstate, several miles from any public urinal or roadside toilet. Three cheers for tubby! Man, do we feel safe now! We don't need more toilets and schools, we need more tubbies.
Monica Lewinsky's Rap Sheet on PRISONS
Levi Strauss & Company sued for peonage and involuntary servitude, on Saipan Island, a U.S. Territory ... first documented case of prisoners being used for free labor on American soil
from a very recent NEW YORK TIMES article by William K. Rashbaum
[excerpted]
"CHINESE COMPANY USES FORCED PRISON LABOR TO MAKE LAWYERS BRIEF CLIPS FOR 80% of U.S.A. LEGAL MARKET"
"A manufacturer of widely used [law firm] metal clips for binding documents ... using forced prison labor ... pleaded guilty to the federal charge in New Jersey.
[...] The women [prisoners] were not paid, and worked so many hours that their fingers were sometimes bloodied, a federal official said.
[...] The [one third share of the U.S. legal clips market share] investigation has left AIMCO in a shambles. Customs agents seized and detroyed 24 million of the company's clips in Newark, Los Angeles, and other cities [unnamed], forcing the closing of the Aimco spring clip factory in Nanjing, believed to be the largest in the world.
[...] Aimco pleaded guilty to violating a 1932 law that was passed to prevent human rights abuses and protect American ... workers from unfair competition."
SUMMER, 2001
The Judges on Monica Lewinsky's Panel, and her Scribes with this cyberpublication, would like to congratulate JUSTICE EMILY JANE GOODMAN for her courageous interpretations of the laws of the State of New York, and for her concern for prisoners rights, and for the plight of the homeless.
from the current issue of the ...
THE NEW YORK LAW JOURNAL
"Ban on Waiving Inmate Court Fees is Lifted"
[excerpted from the article by Cerisse Anderson]
"A STATE Supreme Court Justice has declared that indigent prison inmates should be treated like other poor litigants when applying for a waiver of filing costs in a civil action in state court.
Justice Emily Jane Goodman ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL an amendment to Civil Practice Law and Rules Sec.1101(f), which took effect nine months ago, eliminating a judge's discretion to APPROVE the WAIVER of an inmate's filing fee in civil litigation.
[...] the law [amended] requires indigent inmates to pay a FILING FEE of no less than $15 or more than $50. If an inmate does NOT HAVE THE MONEY, the state gets a LIEN AGAINST THE INMATE'S PRISON TRUST FUND.
[...] Ruling in GOMEZ v. EVANGELISTA, filed in Supreme Court ... Justice Goodman raised the constitutional question herself [.].
Mr. Gomez was seeking poor person status to initiate a proceeding under the Freedom of Information Law AGAINST the New York City Police Department[.].
The new restriction on INMATE FILING FEES was passed last year as part of the State's Budget Package. GOV. PATAKI and the bill's supporters pushed for this [.].
[... JUSTICE GOODMAN] "This court can discern no rational basis for the State's discriminating between poor persons who are non-inmates and poor persons who are inmates, such as petitioner Gomez. Prison inmates, no less than other persons, are to be afforded unhampered and equal access to the legal system."
[Justice Goodman then proceeded to cite a copy of Gomez's prison trust fund account statement, that showed he had a ZERO "spendable" balance. She then directed the Court to issue an index number to Mr. Gomez FREE OF CHARGE.]
PRISON INMATES BATTLING FIRES FOR $1 an Hour !!!
[excerpted from a recent NEW YORK TIMES article]
"[...] About 13,000 people belong to crews assigned to the fire lines ... of these, more than 2,000 are inmates ... with the most operating in California, home to the nation's largest inmate-firefighter program.
[...] Bryan Kawa, 32, of South Ogden, Utah, who was convicted on a weapons charge ... is housed in a minimum security dormitory, 30 men to a room, when he is not on the fire lines.
[...] In California, where the state prison population now stands at 162,000, it costs $21,000 a year to house a prisoner behind walls but just $13,000 a year at one of these conservation camps.
[...] the Utah crew is better paid than any other inmate teams, though the rate is just a fraction of civilian wages. A civilian firefighter with the same elite status would make about $15 an hour plus overtime ... two fellow inmate firefighters were killed last week in Utah ... raising questions about just how much value might be attached to an inmate's life. The State of Utah has paid only for the inmates' funerals, and state officials say they cannot be confident that the two prisoners will become eligible for federal death benefits of nearly $150,000 that is routinely paid to firefighters slain in action."
"JUDGE BLASTS NEW YORK CITY AGENCY OVER EVICTION"
"Man who Grew Up in General Grant Housing Project since 1956 Evicted for Jumping Turnstile. Only Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman Holds Giuliani's Militia at Bay"
[excerpted from the April 26, 2000 THE NEW YORK LAW JOURNAL; article by Bruce Balestier]
"[...] Mr. Faison, who is black, was born in 1956 in the apartment in question ... in Manhattan, and lived there with his mother ... until his mother died in November 1995. After his mother's death, he applied for remaining family member status and to be listed as the tenant of record.
But in January 1996, the Housing Assistant of General Grant Houses notified Mr. Faison that he had been found "ineligible for the tenancy" in light of a "criminal verification check" that showed he had been convicted several times of misdemeanor transit fare evasion.
[...] Judge Goodman noted that the burden of proof was wrongly placed on Mr. Faison to prove he met the new applicant eligibility criteria and that "the Hearing Officer failed to honor Mr. Faison's explicit request to bring in character witnesses and, in fact, made light of it in a cruel and demeaning manner."
[she continued] ... "Because of the cycle of homelessness and imprisonment, it cannot be overlooked, that over 30 percent of African American males nationwide, between the ages of twnety and twenty nine, were under criminal justice supervision in 1994 ... if Mr. Faison were to be made homeless by the Housing Authority prevailing in this case, because of the crime of farebeating [called "blackriding" in Europe among university students, it is such a popular activity] his chances of entering the criminal justice system, in a profound way, would significantly increase."
[...] Finally, Judge Goodman asserted that the Housing Authority decision to seek evictions based on turnstile jumping convictions was an improper expansion of federal eligibility standards.
"JUDGE BLASTS NEW YORK CITY AGENCY OVER EVICTION"
"Man who Grew Up in General Grant Housing Project since 1956 Evicted for Jumping Turnstile. Only Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman Holds Giuliani's Militia at Bay"
[excerpted from the April 26, 2000 THE NEW YORK LAW JOURNAL; article by Bruce Balestier]
"[...] Mr. Faison, who is black, was born in 1956 in the apartment in question ... in Manhattan, and lived there with his mother ... until his mother died in November 1995. After his mother's death, he applied for remaining family member status and to be listed as the tenant of record.
But in January 1996, the Housing Assistant of General Grant Houses notified Mr. Faison that he had been found "ineligible for the tenancy" in light of a "criminal verification check" that showed he had been convicted several times of misdemeanor transit fare evasion.
[...] Judge Goodman noted that the burden of proof was wrongly placed on Mr. Faison to prove he met the new applicant eligibility criteria and that "the Hearing Officer failed to honor Mr. Faison's explicit request to bring in character witnesses and, in fact, made light of it in a cruel and demeaning manner."
[she continued] ... "Because of the cycle of homelessness and imprisonment, it cannot be overlooked, that over 30 percent of African American males nationwide, between the ages of twnety and twenty nine, were under criminal justice supervision in 1994 ... if Mr. Faison were to be made homeless by the Housing Authority prevailing in this case, because of the crime of farebeating [called "blackriding" in Europe among university students, it is such a popular activity] his chances of entering the criminal justice system, in a profound way, would significantly increase."
[...] Finally, Judge Goodman asserted that the Housing Authority decision to seek evictions based on turnstile jumping convictions was an improper expansion of federal eligibility standards.
Monica informs us: "I'm not really worried cause I know how secure and private and confidential the Internet is and how the service providers don't allow access into users' personal accounts to just any government feds, intelligence spooks, or very rich people who OWN the entire telecommunications industry. I'm just worried that they will use REMOTE VIEWING [see links in footer] on me and READ MY MIND [and there is SO MUCH in there, you just wouldn't believe me!]
My last two ghostwriters couldn't understand my diction, and it wasn't because I had something naughty in my mouth. Not even a specially marinated Cuban Cigar. They said I didn't no how speak English. [they were REALLY mean]. If they skank on me again I'm gonna have to call my friend Ally McBeal and get really drunk with her, cause they make fun of her weight too! I hope Calista finds a job back here in NYC after being canned from Ally McBeal!"
I feel really sorry for all the underrepresented, innocent, and harshly sentenced PRISONERS in our penal colonies, those new FRANCHISES that are now pulling down big MONEY on WALL STREET, selling shares of incarceration square footage at BOWKOO profits, especially Wackenhut! [WAK]. [my writers are helping me here again too].
I swear to you all out there that I will NEVER invest my MILLION$$ from JENNY CRAIG for shedding some adipose into ANY of these sweet PRISON deal investments. SO TAKE THAT!! Michael Moore of "Roger & Me" and "TV Nation". You'd better not make a "MONICA & ME" or I'll sit on your face!!!
MAKING THESE DAMN BURGERS AIN'T NOTHIN BUT HEARTBREAK IN THE HEAT OF SUMMER!
SUIs ... State Use Industries in Prisons!!!
from the WASHINGTON POST
"[MARYLAND] STATE SAYS GIVING JOBS TO INMATES PAYS OFF"
by Paul W. Valentine
[excerpted]
[...] The prison population as a whole has grown by 63 percent [in Maryland] from 13,765 in 1989 to 22,500 today.
[...] The proposal working its way through the [Maryland] General Assembly, where most lawmakers favor the concept of prison industries ...
[...] SUI programs occasionally encounter public disapproval. Last year, a telemarketing project for female inmates who had been soliciting financial pledges for nonprofit organizations, including the AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY, was halted.
[...] SUI has another major purpose: to save money for the state. Inmates typically are paid $1 to $2.50 a day ... churning out a wide variety of items ... all at a fraction of what they would cost on the open market.
[...] In the one exception to the ban on PRIVATE SECTOR participation, SUI recently has been permitted to venture into the FEDERALLY APPROVED PRISON INDUSTRY Enhancement program. SUI contracted last yer with a New Jersey bottle maker for ... inmates ... to inspect perfume bottles and other glass containers for chips and hairline fractures.
[...] While the MINIMUM or prevailing WAGE requirement is calculated to keep prisons from undermining the private economy, inmates RETAIN only a portion of the higher pay. The cost of their ROOM and board in prison is deducted, as well as TAXES, family support payments and contributions to the state's victim assistance program -- as much as 65 PERCENT of the inmate's gross income.
[...] Among SUIs biggest operations is its MEAT PROCESSING PLANT ... [with] scores of men in white butcher's coats and sanitized caps, cutting, shaping and packing stew meat, roasts, beef patties, sausage and turkey loaf.
[...] a quality control supervisor in the meat plant ... averages $4.38 a DAY
in pay ... ."
++++++++++
The Tombs of Manhattan
was mainly a prison for detention where persons accused of
crimes were confined until trial and sentence, if any. About 50,000
prisoners were annually confined in it. As soon as they were sentenced, the
convicts were sent to the institutions where they immediately started
serving their terms, except those sentenced to be hanged. These remained
at the Tombs for execution.
Even the new
Department of Correction's first official reports in 1896 called it the Tombs.
The massive edifice of granite was built between 1835 and 1840, and took up the square bounded
by Centre, Elm, Franklin and Leonard streets. Its design had been inspired by an ancient mausoleum
that a traveler to Egypt, John I. Stevens of Hoboken, N.J., illustrated and wrote about in his book
"Stevens' Travels."
Some Tombs granite came from
old Bridewell in City Hall Park,
a pre-Revolutionary prison torn down in 1838.
More than 20 years before construction, the Common Council had argued over where to build the
jail that all agreed was needed to replace jails the British had erected before the American
revolution. Finally chosen was the site of the former Collect Pond, a small sheet of water separated
from the river by a strip of marshland. The Collect once supplied the city with drinking water. John
Fitch used it for early steamboat experiments. A small island in the Collect was once the site of a
British gallows. Long after Independence, filling in the marshland became a jobs project designed to
give work to the poor.
In 1902 a massive, gray building replaced the Tombs but its chateau-like
appearance could not displace in common parlance the name of the
original structure whose architectural style had been based on a steel
engraving of an EGYPTIAN TOMB.
Seven decades later that replacement was itself replaced by the
present Manhattan Detention Complex but still "THE TOMBS" name persists. [see current New York Times article below for update].
What served as one of the city's principal jails for more than a half century was originally named "The
Halls of Justice." But the commonly-used term for the structure was "The Tombs."
EXCERPTS FROM PRISON
coverage in the THE NEW YORK TIMES, Millenium 2000
"Citing 1996 Federal Law, States & Cities Are Wresting Control of Prisons From the Courts"
"[...] Correction Officials have FILED SUIT to end 22 years of strict [reform] standards for ALL ASPECTS OF PRISON LIFE, standards that advocates for inmates have credited with improving conditions."
[...] Before the 1970s, JUDGES were reluctant to become directly involved in running prisons, although COURTS did intervene in some cases, typically involving religious freedom.
That changes when lawyers, often fresh from civil rights battles, began to argue that the conditions in many prisons were so horrendous they violated protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
One of the earliest cases came in NEW YORK CITY, after a riot in a notorious Manhattan jail know as THE TOMBS.
After six years of litigation, the city agreed in 1978 to settle the case. The city's jails have been under court supervision ever since.
[...] In November 1998, the court ordered the city to correct serious fire violations at jails in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and on RIKERS ISLAND. The violations included broken fire alarms and sprinklers, and INOPERABLE fire doors.
[...] "There is a continuing infestation of INSECTS and RODENTS ... in jails," ... "when we went to the infirmary ... there was no heat." [John Boston, director of the LEGAL AID SOCIETY'S Prisoners Rights Project].
[...] "There is no enforcement power whatsoever to see that these changes are not made," she said. "The OVERSIGHT Committee can simply POINT things out, and state what they BELIEVE to be a trend, back to the original conditions, that caused the problem." [ Claire Drowota , Executive Director of the State of Tennessee's Legislature's CORRECTIONS COMMITTEE].
When is Bernard gonna stop playing soldier, and war, and do more than preach -- ... like his pal Rudy Giuliani? ... Will they "re-humanize" our New York prisons --- and Housing Projects? COME ON!!!!! Let's see more than a damned teeney weeney Waterford Crystal Ball for our HARD EARNED TAX money & and freebie Prison Labor from coast to coast!
==============
NEWS FLASH ---
from THE NEW YORK TIMES
[excerpted from an article by RAYMOND HERNANDEZ]
38 EMPLOYEES FOR THE NY STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS COLLECTED $65,000 FOR HOURS THEY DID NOT WORK
"[...] The trail of billing records generated from the E-ZPass and cellular phone use allowed auditors for the state comptroller, H. Carl McCall, to pinpoint where the state employees actually were at various times that they said they were in their offices. Details of the findings were in a report that Mr. McCall's office released today.
Mr. McCall's auditors found that 38 employees for the state's Department of Correctional Services collected $65,000 in pay for hours they apparently did not work. The audit, conducted from April 1996 to August 1997, focused on investigators in the state agency's offices here and in LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS. The investigators, among other things, track down inmates who have escaped from prison."
We want to know why OUR AMERICAN PRISONS now have more inmates than the GULAGS of Russia which Solzhenitzen excoriated against so eloquently. Why are there dozens of investment opportunities in companies with names like CORRECTIONS CORP. OF AMERICA, that rents out prisons to state and federal governments?? Why are so many firefighters in dangerous firefights underpaid prisoners, trotted out for the flames? Why doesn't the media cover Jesse Jackson's assessment of the deplorable fact that it is easier for a black brother to go to prison than to finish high school? Something like $29 worth of crack is enough for five years in prison if you're not white. Whereas, Caucasian undergrads smoke up hundreds of bucks of grass a month and get off with only a few sniffles to the judge??
"A federal judge granted preliminary approval yesterday to a $1.6 million settlement on behalf of D.C. inmates who claimed they were abused, denied adequate medical care and not properly separated from their dangerous counterparts at a PRIVATELY run PRISON in Youngstown, Ohio.
The proposed SETTLEMENT stems from a class-action lawsuit against CORRECTIONS CORP. of AMERICA, which runs the prison, and the District.
[...] More than 1,500 inmates have been transferred to the prison since it opened in May 1997.
[...] The family of at least one inmate killed last year has filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against CCA, former DC Corrections director Margaret A. Moore and the District.
[...] CCA did not return telephone calls seeking comment yesterday. The Ohio facility has had myriad problems since opening nearly two years ago. At least two DC inmates were killed by other prisoners ? more than 40 assaults have occurred, including 20 stabbings in the first 10 months of the prison's operation. Six inmates escaped last July.
The incidents prompted US Attorney General Janet Reno to order a review of the prison. The federal examination done by Corrections Trustee John Clark found a series of missteps by Nashville-based CCA and by Moore. They found a lack of policies and procedures, poor security and management, and inexperienced staff members."
In memory of Dolores Ann Adrian
THE ELECTRONIC WHIP archived online 2000: INDEX
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815064928/www.pcug.co.uk/~whip/usa/
[from The Way Back Machine] 1996 publication dates
STRIKE OUT AGAINST GLOBALISATION 1
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815233252/www.pcug.co.uk/~whip/usa/strike.htm
STRIKE OUT AGAINST GLOBALISATION 2
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815233259/www.pcug.co.uk/~whip/usa/strike1.htm
WHICH SECRET ORDER WILL DRIVE A STAKE INTO THE GOD OF WAR?
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815233231/www.pcug.co.uk/~whip/usa/dictator.htm