Yesterday U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a major policy shift for how the Justice department plans to handle mandatory minimum sentencing.

The gist is that Justice will no longer enforce mandatory minimums for low-level drug salesmen. According to the United States Bureau of Prisons, about 48% of the U.S. federal prison population — that's 90,000 people — are in the clink for drug offenses. Many of them are there for a long time due to mandatory minimum sentencing. That may sound like not too many people, but it's important to remember that America — always striving to be #1 — has the highest prisoner to general population rate in the world as a result. Check out this graphic from Reuters that hammers that sad fact home: http://www.businessinsider.com/one-chart-that-will-make-you-ashamed-minimum-sentencing-reform-only-happened-now-2013-8#ixzz2bsyRxQsw

Sex Trafficking is Modern-Day Slavery (in the news or not)

People who deprive young girls of their freedom for years and years are obviously crazy sickos who need to be put away for life. Nobody’s going to argue about that. Except that for most of history, treating women like they’re ownable was the normal thing to do. In many places in the world, it’s still the normal thing to do. And although they don’t always get the coverage that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are receiving, women are being held against their will all the time in the U.S.


About a month before the voluble Charles Ramsey (who turns out to have been a repeat domestic abuser) was helping to kick down the door to free Berry and her daughter, Julio Cesar Revolorio Ramos of Adelphi, Md., was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for sex trafficking a 15-year-old girl. He was part of a multi-state kidnapping and prostitution ring that has victimized hundreds of women and girls since at least 2008.

And then in New York on April 30, just a week before the Ohio case, seven women were freed when another prostitution ring was broken up and 13 people arrested. Most of the women had been trafficked through Mexico, typically by men whom they believed at the time to be their boyfriends. The U.S. attorneys prosecuting the case allege that the women were beaten, threatened with physical harm to them and their family, sexually assaulted, and verbally abused if they declined to have sex with strangers for money. Or sometimes even if they didn’t. This doesn’t sound all that different from what we know about what happened in Ohio, or in Austria (twice!), or in Utah, or in California or in any of the high profile cases where girls have been kidnapped and held captive for long periods. But unless you’ve been looking, you may not have heard about the rescued prostitutes, even though their story is arguably a bigger one.


Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/09/cleveland-viewpoint-there-are-sex-slaves-all-over-the-u-s-right-now/#ixzz2WVGXyQlb

Prison-based gerrymandering in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow

Prison-based gerrymandering in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow
by Leah Sakala, April 10, 2012

In a recent op-ed, Professor Jess Rigelhaupt argues that the Obama administration needs to prioritize ending mass incarceration. He draws on Michelle Alexander’s powerful arguments about how mass incarceration fuels racial inequality in Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow. Both Professor Rigelhaupt and Professor Alexander point to the problem of prison-based gerrymandering in state legislative districts as an example.

As Professor Alexander explains on page 188:

Under the usual-residence rule, the Census Bureau counts imprisoned individuals as residents of the jurisdiction in which they are incarcerated. Because most new prison construction occurs in predominantly white, rural areas, white communities benefit from inflated population totals at the expense of the urban, overwhelmingly minority communities from which the prisoners come. This has enormous consequences for the redistricting process. White rural communities that house prisons wind up with more people in state legislatures representing them, while poor communities of color lose representatives because it appears their population has decreased. This policy is disturbingly reminiscent of the three-fifths clause in the original Constitution, which enhanced the political clout of slaveholding states by including 60 percent of slaves in the population base for calculating Congressional seats and electoral votes, even through they could not vote.

Her book provides a comprehensive picture of how mass incarceration is jeopardizing our democratic system and our wellbeing as a nation.

And if you’re interested in learning more about the parallels between prison-based gerrymandering and the infamous three-fifths clause, check out John Drake’s new journal article, “Locked Up and Counted Out: Bringing an End to Prison-based Gerrymandering,” or my blog post about prison-based gerrymandering in Wisconsin.

Jailing Americans For Profit: The Rise Of The Prison Industrial Complex

Jailing Americans For Profit: The Rise Of The Prison Industrial Complex
April 10, 2012
By John W. Whitehead

“Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”—Adam Gopnik, “The Caging of America”

In an age when freedom is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business. At one time, the American penal system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order to protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private corporations, the flawed yet retributive American “system of justice” is being replaced by an even more flawed and insidious form of mass punishment based upon profit and expediency.

As author Adam Gopnik reports for the New Yorker: “[A] growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed as cheaply as possible.”

Consider this: despite the fact that violent crime in America has been on the decline, the nation’s incarceration rate has tripled since 1980. Approximately 13 million people are introduced to American jails in any given year. Incredibly, more than six million people are under “correctional supervision” in America, meaning that one in fifty Americans are working their way through the prison system, either as inmates, or while on parole or probation. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the majority of those being held in federal prisons are convicted of drug offenses—namely, marijuana. Presently, one out of every 100 Americans is serving time behind bars.

Little wonder, then, that public prisons are overcrowded. Yet while providing security, housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for cash-strapped states, to profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the leaders in the partnership corrections industry, it’s a $70 billion gold mine. Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, and here’s the kicker, the prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.

The problem with this scenario, as Roger Werholtz, former Kansas secretary of corrections, recognizes is that while states may be tempted by the quick infusion of cash, they “would be obligated to maintain these (occupancy) rates and subtle pressure would be applied to make sentencing laws more severe with a clear intent to drive up the population.” Unfortunately, that’s exactly what has happened. Among the laws aimed at increasing the prison population and growing the profit margins of special interest corporations like CCA are three-strike laws (mandating sentences of 25 years to life for multiple felony convictions) and “truth-in-sentencing” legislation (mandating that those sentenced to prison serve most or all of their time).

And yes, in case you were wondering, part of the investment pitch for CCA and its cohort GEO Group include the profits to be made in building “kindler, gentler” minimum-security facilities designed for detaining illegal immigrants, especially low-risk detainees like women and children. With immigration a persistent problem in the southwestern states, especially, and more than 250 such detention centers going up across the country, there is indeed money to be made. For example, GEO’s new facility in Karnes County, Texas, boasts a “608-bed facility still smelling of fresh paint and new carpet stretch[ing] across a 29-acre swath of farmland in rural South Texas. Rather than prison cells, jumpsuits, and barbed wire fencing, detainees here will sleep in eight-bed dormitory-style quarters, wearing more cozy attire like jeans and T-shirts. The facility’s high walls enclose lush green courtyards with volleyball courts, an AstroTurfed soccer field, and basketball hoops, where detainees are free to roam throughout the day.” All of this, of course, comes at taxpayer expense.

“And this is where it gets creepy,” observes reporter Joe Weisenthal for Business Insider, “because as an investor you’re pulling for scenarios where more people are put in jail.” In making its pitch to potential investors, CCA points out that private prisons comprise a unique, recession-resistant investment opportunity, with more than 90% of the market up for grabs, little competition, high recidivism among prisoners, and the potential for “accelerated growth in inmate populations following the recession.” In other words, caging humans for profit is a sure bet, because the U.S. population is growing dramatically and the prison population will grow proportionally as well, and more prisoners equal more profits.

In this way, under the pretext of being tough on crime, state governments can fatten their coffers and fill the jail cells of their corporate benefactors. However, while a flourishing privatized prison system is a financial windfall for corporate investors, it bodes ill for any measures aimed at reforming prisoners and reducing crime. CCA understands this. As it has warned investors, efforts to decriminalize certain activities, such as drug use (principally possession of marijuana), could cut into their profits. So too would measures aimed at reducing the prison system’s disproportionately racist impact on minorities, given that the incarceration rate for blacks is seven times that of whites. Immigrants are also heavily impacted, with roughly 2.5 million people having been through the immigration detention system since 2003. As private prisons begin to dominate, the many troubling characteristics of our so-called criminal justice system today—racism, economic inequality, inadequate access to legal representation, lack of due process, etc.—will only become more acute.

Doubtless, a system already riddled by corruption will inevitably become more corrupt, as well. For example, consider the “kids for cash” scandal which rocked Luzerne County, Penn., in 2009. For ten years, the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile offenders, paid two judges to jail youths and send them to private prison facilities. The judges, who made over $2.6 million in the scam, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings. When the scheme finally came to light, one judge was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison and the other received 28 years, but not before thousands of young lives had been ruined.

In this way, minor criminals, from drug users to petty thieves, are being handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. This is the culmination of an inverted justice system which has come to characterize the United States, a justice system based upon increasing the power and wealth of the corporate-state.

No matter what the politicians or corporate heads might say, prison privatization is neither fiscally responsible nor in keeping with principles of justice. It simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. This perverse notion of how prisons should be run, that they should be full at all times, and full of minor criminals, is evil.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book The Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org



Read more: http://njtoday.net/2012/04/10/jailing-americans-for-profit-the-rise-of-the-prison-industrial-complex/#ixzz1rh0JAxph
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The Caging of America: Why do we lock up so many people?

PHOTOGRAPH: American Poverty: The New Yorker January 2012

The New Yorker: A Critic at Large
The Caging of America
Why do we lock up so many people?
by Adam Gopnik

"... The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. Ours is, bottom to top, a “carceral state,” in the flat verdict of Conrad Black, the former conservative press lord and newly minted reformer, who right now finds himself imprisoned in Florida, thereby adding a new twist to an old joke: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a conservative who’s in one.

"The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized. Though we avoid looking directly at prisons, they seep obliquely into our fashions and manners. Wealthy white teen-agers in baggy jeans and laceless shoes and multiple tattoos show, unconsciously, the reality of incarceration that acts as a hidden foundation for the country. ..."

How did we get here?

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz1rUzIoXL6

Food Chain Slaves in USA

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/2011/10/201110108583163675.html
Today, 27 million men, women and children are held, sold and trafficked as slaves throughout the world. In Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, Rageh Omaar embarks on a worldwide journey to uncover the truth about the flourishing 21st century slave trade. Episode by episode, his investigation will expose the brutal reality of modern slavery and unpick the reasons why this age-old evil persists.

In the opening episode of Slavery: A 21st Century Evil, Al Jazeera's Rageh Omaar investigates food chain slavery, considered the easiest form of slavery to stamp out, in the US.

The US has been leading the global fight against modern slavery. But, according to conservative estimates, there are between 40,000 and 50,000 slaves in the US today.

So in this episode, Rageh questions why a nation built on the abolition of slavery - a country that had to go through a painful civil war to formally bring an end to slavery - is failing to address the problem inside its own borders.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/

The investigation begins in the poor villages of Thailand, where agents for the US slave masters trick desperate peasants with promises of well-paid jobs abroad.

But far from fulfilling their American dream, many end up in slave labour farms in Hawaii, California and Florida - unable to return home and working to pay off the debts they incurred in the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families.

Modern-day slaves' story repeats daily in plain sight

HUMAN TRAFFICKING SOUTH FLORIDA
The case of dozens of Filipino workers held captive spotlights a widespread human- trafficking problem.

BY AUDRA D.S. BURCH
aburch@MiamiHerald.com

For up to 16 hours daily, they worked at posh country clubs across South Florida, then returned to deceptively quiet houses in Boca Raton where they were captives -- and in the most dreadful cases, fed rotten chicken and vegetables, forced to drink muriatic acid and repeatedly denied medical help.

The 39 servers, lured to the United States by the cliché of a decent dollar and a promising next chapter, instead became imported modern-day slaves two continents away from their homeland. Their story repeats in plain sight most every day in South Florida: barely paid -- or unpaid -- people forced to toil in fields, work as domestics in hotels and restaurants or in the sex industry, an outsized regional problem authorities are emphasizing in January, Human Trafficking Awareness Month.

``This is organized crime where humans are used as products. We are talking about selling a person over and over and making large sums of money,'' says Carmen Pino, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations Assistant Special Agent in Charge. ``What people need to realize is that human trafficking is happening here, it's a big problem. It could be happening in the restaurant where you eat, at your nail salon, in your neighborhood. It's not just something that happens in foreign countries.''

While difficult to pluck the numbers from a landscape of silence and fear, federal, state and local authorities know South Florida is among the nation's three top capitals of human trafficking, a $36 billion industry defined as the recruitment and harboring of a person for labor or services through force, fraud or coercion.

South Florida's mix of cosmopolitan lifestyles, rural landscapes and tourism makes it a natural entry point for human traffickers. To fight the rising statistics and heighten awareness, a coalition of law enforcement and government agencies formed the South Florida Human Trafficking Task Force in 2008, charged with monitoring a wide swath of the state, from Key West to Fort Pierce.

That year, ICE initiated 432 investigations resulting in 126 convictions on human trafficking charges. In 2009, the number of investigations jumped to 566 and 165 convictions.

The task force also partners with social-service agencies and churches for outreach and to help rescued victims find housing and build new, legitimate lives in America.

ICE gives temporary legal immigration status -- called Continued Presence, typically for one year -- to victims of trafficking. They can receive work permits and other benefits and eventually can apply for a visa. In 2009, ICE authorized 447 CP requests and extensions.

Two years ago, the Broward Human Trafficking Coalition was launched to raise awareness and also to help social organizations on the front lines to recognize the warning signs. ``One of the largest hurdles we are facing is getting people to see it,'' says President Adriane Reesey. ``We've done training sessions with homeowner organizations, webinars and gone to the churches.''

In the latest case, Alfonso Baldonado Jr. and his wife, Sophia Manuel, owners of Quality Staffing Services, were behind an elaborate plot to bring Filipino nationals to South Florida, then pressure them into slave labor at local country clubs and hotels including Indian Creek Country Club, Miami Shores Country Club and nine others in Palm Beach County. Federal officials say the clubs were not aware of the illegal scheme.

Manuel was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison; Baldonado received a 51-month sentence. She also was sentenced for visa fraud and making false statements to the government to procure foreign labor certifications and visas.

``Human traffickers target vulnerable victims, including minors, who desire a better life and end up being lured into a situation where they are deprived of their basic human rights,'' ICE Director John Morton said just after sentencing.

It was a frantic call to a hotline about a ``hostage'' situation at a Boca Raton home -- Filipino workers held against their will -- that launched the probe. A familiar story of the tainted American Dream soon emerged.

In July 2006, Manuel held a recruiting meeting in the Philippines to a captive audience of workers who had responded to newspaper advertisements and word-of-mouth. She collected a $1,500 job security deposit from each of the 36 applicants. No jobs were delivered or refunds given for the deposits. The following year, the couple returned to a group that included some of the 2006 applicants, this time with the promise of jobs that would pay $1,400 monthly for up to three years. They each paid $4,000 in up-front fees.

Neither the promised jobs nor the salary ever materialized.

For nearly two years, the victims were squeezed into several Boca Raton homes. The couple, also of Filipino origin, ruled by the victims' palpable fear of arrest or deportation if they tried to escape. Their passports were taken and they were isolated. They worked exhausting hours seven days a week. At home, some slept on the floor. They were given water and fed a ``diet of rotten vegetables, chicken innards and feet,'' according to the indictment.

``On the outside, the houses blended into a typical suburban subdivision,'' Pino says. ``Inside, it was crowded and absolutely disgusting, substandard squalid conditions.''

And when one worker complained that the drinking water was bad, the couple provided toxic acid instead.

The workers were often denied timely medical care. A worker who broke his wrist wasn't allowed to see a doctor for 10 days. Another worker suffering from stomach pain and spitting up blood wasn't allowed to see a doctor.

On Sundays, they were herded into a van and taken to a nearby church, but forbidden from speaking to other Filipinos.

The couple contracted with 11 South Florida country clubs and resorts, providing staff of servers mostly, for seasonal or supplemental work. Federal authorities say the businesses were not complicit.

The Miami Shores Country Club used Quality Staffing for less than a year beginning in November 2007 for a total of 239 hours. ``We were absolutely not aware of the situation with these workers who we used for banquets,'' said Alberto Pozzi, general manager of the Miami Shores Country Club. ``The company came highly recommended from other clubs. The company [owners] told us they would be providing a qualified staff that had been trained on cruise ships.''

Indian Creek began contracting with Quality in the fall of 2007 to help with events during the winter season. ``At one event, almost all of the temporary wait staff was a `no show.' When we inquired why, we weren't satisfied with the answer, and we terminated the relationship immediately,'' General Manager Michael Yurick said in an e-mail response. ``Subsequently, we learned from a federal investigation that the agency was treating its employees in an inappropriate and illegal manner. We worked closely with the Federal investigators, and helped them in their investigation. ''

With the help of a network of social agencies, those workers have settled in South Florida in new homes, with new jobs.

As a victim specialist for the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking for two years, Martha Mino worked with some of the rescued Filipino victims, along with others from Mexico and Honduras.

``They were very still traumatized, very scared and mistrusting,'' says Mino, now working at the Mexican Consulate.

``They were too scared to ask for their most basic needs. They were still learning that they are human beings that deserve to be treated properly. For them, they are starting over.''



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/23/v-fullstory/2030710/modern-day-slaves-story-repeats.html#ixzz1C4pdaOkV