*
The prison reform bill was voted out by Senate in December of 2018. The vote was 88 to 12. As of this postingon Dec 19, 2018 it goes to the House where Paul Ryan has been delaying action His number is 202 224 3121. Trump has said he would sign the bill.
Prisoners have rights. Some of them are
a right to life, an end to federal and state executions
abolition of the bail system
abolition of mandatory sentencing
abolition of private prisons with their profiteers
who make money if people are left in jail
abolition of prison farms which murder animals, birds
abolition of solitary confinement
access to lawyers
access to spiriual texts
ankle bracelets which are free
blankets
cleanliness of surroundings
communal time with nonviolent prisoners
computers
conjugal visits
crack and cocaine sentences should be equal
daily showers, shampoo, soap, clean towels
decriminalization of marijuana
drug rehab programs
end to saltpeter and other harmful additives
end to racist sentencing and executions
end to economic bias in which a hedge fund billionaire who steals billions has a light or no sentence while a pickpocket is jailed for many years
exercise out of doors
free phones
freedom from slave labor
freedom from work which violates spiritual beliefs
freedom for all marijuana prisoners
fresh fruit
high school and college education
jails close to families
law books
libraries
medical attention
meditation or other spiritual time 30
popular election of Supreme Court and federal judges
privacy in bathing
protection from medical eperiments
quiet
right of noncitizens to contact consulates
right to refuse medication
safety from rape and other attacks
separation of gang members into different prisons
sunlight
temperatures avoiding extremes
transition support for those released
vegan food
vocational food
voting rights
Prison Facts Some numbers may need to be updated.
1. The US has more prisoners, per capita, than any other country in the world including China which has 5 times the population. 6,937,600 people in the U.S. are under some form of criminal justice supervision (incarcerated, on parole, or probation). 2.2 million are in jail, 1.9 million more than in the 70's The US has 180,000 federal prisoners as of Dec 2018, at a cost of almost 32,000 per prisoner or 576 million dollars annually. Billions more are spent on state prisons.
2. 56% of these prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent drug use.
3. One million guards, prison cooks, and others depend on this large prison population for their livelihoods. Prisons were built in poor, white, rural counties to provide jobs. Privatized prisons give profiteers a motive to keep
people imprisoned.
4. In addition, the federal ATF agency and several others have higher budgets because of the high prison populations.
5. Corporations make huge profits from the privatizing of prisons.
6. Mandatory sentencing laws passed by Congress are harsher than what 99% of jurors want.
7. The average prisoner costs the taxpayer $27,000 a year. The average is more than doubled for older prisoners serving life sentences with medical problems.
8. Glenn E Martin stated in a radio show that a robbery in which no one was home is still classed as a violent crime.*
9. Sentencing of prison populations has involved much heavier incarceration rates for blacks and for the poor. Bernie Madoff is perhaps the only member of his economic class in jail, and that, say some, is because he stole from the 1% who were richest and not the other 99%.
10. One example of the racism in sentencing is that crack cocoaine guidelines are much harsher than those for cocaine. A white cocaine user had to have 100 times as much of his drug as a black crack user to land in jail. That was changed. Now it's 18 to 1 instead of 100 to 1.
11 'Why call prisons correctional facilities when their goal is punishment not rehabilitation'
was the statement of a caller to Tom Ashbrooks radio show On Point.
12. Senator Rand Paul, candidate for President: Youthful mistakes should not cause someone to be punished for his entire life. (paraphrased)
13. Joblessness creates idleness which is a climate for crime.
14. Between 1990 and 2000, says Judge Mark Bennett, in a mere 10 years the prison population went from 1 million to 2 million.
15. Tom Ashbrook reported that both Bill Clinton and Joe Biden created 3 strikes legislation, requiring that those who have been convicted 3 times of felonies receive life sentences.
16. In many prisons, religious and ethical dietary principles are not respected.
17. At least 14 prisoners in Texas since 2007 have died of temperatures as high as 130 degrees.
18. Prison guard violence has caused untold deaths and beatings.
19. In 2018 only 8 of 50 states murdered prisoners. These were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. 5 are Southern states with centuries of racist executions.
20. Louisiana has more prisoners per capita than any other state.
21. Why is it that the most
imprisoning states per capita
are in the south
and the least imprisoning
are in the north (Minnesota and
Maine)
22. Private prisons have fewer programs, a financial incentive to keep people in jail, less ability to take action against brutal guards.
23. There is a pentocracy of Republican injustices on the Supreme Court, all of them defining themselves as prolife as they ratify war and torture, prisoner murder, and animal slaughter. They are all judicial serial killers who have voted for many executions, It is important to impeach Trump so that he has no more chance to nominate executioners to the Court. Who are guilty of contempt for this court? The entire world.
24. 12 GOP Senators voted no on the prison reform bill 1 abstention Please vote them all out of office.
Barrasso (R-WY) Cotton (R-AR) Enzi (R-WY) Kennedy (R-LA) Kyl (R-AZ) Murkowski (R-AK) Risch (R-ID) Rounds (R-SD) Rubio (R-FL) Sasse (R-NE) Shelby (R-AL) Sullivan (R-AK) Not Voting - 1 Graham SC
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/US_Adult_Incarceration_Rate_by_State.svg
aclu.org
amnestyusa.org
deathpenaltyinfo.org
innocenceproject.org
naacp.org
tcadp.org
otse.org
fadp.org
Discussion of prison reform bill
https://www.c-span.org/video/?456081-2/washington-journal-news-headlines-viewer-calls&playEvent
lionheart.org