Subjects Archives: Incarceration

  • Saturday Mothers of Turkey

      “The silent vigils started with the disappearance of Hasan Ocak, who was detained by police in Istanbul on March 21, 1995.  55 days later, his tortured body was uncovered in a graveyard for unidentified people.  Ocak’s family and friends led the first sit-down protest. . . .” Bijoyeta Das is an independent multimedia journalist […]

  • Arresting Latinos for Marijuana in California: Possession Arrests in 33 Cities, 2006-08

      Highlights: In the last twenty years, California made 850,000 arrests for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and half a million arrests in the last ten years, disproportionately of young Latinos and blacks. U.S. government surveys consistently find that young Latinos use marijuana at lower rates than young whites.  Yet from 2006 through 2008, major […]

  • The Scandal That Wasn’t or How Not to Reform the Prison System in Illinois

    As if Illinois didn’t have enough real scandals, the state’s political and journalist classes — Democratic and Republican — created another one out of whole cloth, and it’s a whopper.  It has led to the firing of a respected chair of the Prisoner Review Board, the forced resignation of a newly appointed and progressive director […]

  • The Rwandan Patriotic Front’s Bloody Record and the History of UN Cover-Ups

      On August 26, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed the existence of a draft UN report on the most serious violations of human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an eleven-year period (1993-2003).1  The massive draft report states that after the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s takeover of Rwanda in 1994, it proceeded to […]

  • Take Action against Isolation — Free Ahmad Sa’adat! International Days of Action, October 5-15, 2010

      Imprisoned Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat will be returning to court in mid-October 2010 challenging his isolation and the isolation of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons.  Write letters today and take action from October 5-15, 2010 in support of Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for freedom — demand an end to isolation! Ahmad Sa’adat, the General […]

  • Cruel But Not Unusual: The Punishment of Women in U.S. Prisons, An Interview with Marilyn Buck and Laura Whitehorn

    Marilyn Buck died on 3 August 2010, less than a month after her release from federal prison.  The interview below was first published in the July-August 2001 issue of Monthly Review.  — Ed. After years of neglect, the issue of women in prison has begun to receive attention in this country.  Media accounts of overcrowding, […]

  • Paris, October 1961

      Leïla Sebbar, The Seine Was Red. Paris, October 1961: A Novel (translated by Mildred Mortimer).  Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008.  xxiv + 116pp.  $17.95 U.S. (pb).  ISBN 10-0253-2202-38. The official French obfuscation of the police violence against Algerians in Paris in October 1961 has inspired long-term personal and collective memory retrieval that […]

  • Peter Erlinder to be Released

      Peter Erlinder received “unconditional medical release” from the Rwandan court. Thursday, June 17, 2010 (Washington, DC) — Peter Erlinder, Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, MN and Lead Defense Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was arrested in Kigali, Rwanda on May 28, 2010.  On […]

  • ‘Rich People Always Get Away’: Bhopal — Chronic Denial of Justice

      Anxiously waiting outside the court of the chief judicial magistrate Mohan Tiwari in Bhopal on 7 June, 36-yearold Raghu Jaidev and many other victims of the Bhopal catastrophe were crestfallen, some of them, outraged, upon hearing the verdict of the trial that had lasted 23 long years.  “Rich people always get away”, said Jaidev, […]

  • The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration

      Executive Summary: The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world.  The U.S. incarceration rate — 753 per 100,000 people in 2008 — is now about 240 percent higher than it was in 1980. We calculate that a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate […]

  • Vigorous Legal Advocate Arrested in Rwanda

      New York — The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) demands the immediate release of its former president, Professor Peter Erlinder, whom Rwandan Police arrested early today on charges of “genocide ideology.”  He had traveled to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, on May 23, to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.  Erlinder is […]

  • We Accuse!

      Today is the 21st day since the arrest of Ameer Makhoul at his home in Haifa, Israel, under the cover of darkness, by the International Crimes Investigation Unit and General Security Service (GSS or Shabak) officers.  The arrest was conducted in a brutal and terrifying manner.  Our house was raided, its contents ransacked, and […]

  • Thailand: What YOU Can Do — Don’t Forget the Prisoners

    I often get asked about what people can do outside Thailand to help in the struggle for democracy and social justice.  After the appalling events of the past few days we can all help in the campaign against the Abhisit Government’s misinformation in our local media.  We can also help support any campaign to bring […]

  • Palestinian Children in Israeli Prisons

      Children . . . Detainees / أطفال . . . معتقلین Mohammad Saba’aneh, born in 1979, is a Palestinian cartoonist in Jenin.  His Web site is <www.jffra.com>.  This cartoon was published in Maktoob.com on 6 May 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  According to Defence for Children International – Palestine Section […]

  • Statement of Solidarity with Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal, Who Have Been Unjustly Detained in Iran since July 31, 2009

      We are writing in support of Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal who have been unjustly detained for more than nine months.  These three young people are active members of a global community opposed to US aggression in the Middle East.  They do not deserve to be punished for the policies of their […]

  • $14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests

      Were you arrested at IAC demonstration on April 15, 2000 in Washington, D.C.? $14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests $18,000 to each arrestee — IF you file before May 17, 2010! Spread the Word! Ten years ago this month, the International Action Center initiated a major demonstration focused on the Prison Industrial Complex. […]

  • Prisoners’ Day in Beit Ummar

    “April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, is an important commemoration for the Palestinian people.  Over 30% of Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel, and there are more than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners currently languishing in Israeli jails.  Israeli abuses of power further include administrative detentions, i.e. those without charges or trial, juvenile incarceration, and torture and […]

  • Cuban Prisoners, Here and There

    For more than half a century Western political leaders and their corporate media have waged a disinformation war against socialist Cuba. Nor is there any sign that they are easing up. A recent example is the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an inmate who died in a Cuban prison in February 2010 after an 82-day hunger strike.

  • Teach-in on Political Prisoners

    Tuesday, April 6 at 5:00 to 7:00 pm at the Riverside Church, Room 9T 490 Riverside Drive (between 120th Street and 122nd Street) entrance at Claremont Ave. & 121st Street The James Earl Chaney Foundation, the Social Justice Ministry of the Riverside Church, and the National Coalition for Prisoners of Political Conscience, invite you to […]

  • Letter from Ofer Military Prison: “Missing the Five-year Anniversary of Our Struggle in Bil’in Will Be Like Missing the Birthday of One of My Children”

    It has been two months now since I was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken from my home. Today news has reached Ofer Military Prison that the apartheid wall on Bil’in’s land will finally be moved and construction has begun on the new route. This will return half of the land that was stolen from our village. For those of us in Ofer, imprisoned for our protest against the wall, this victory makes the suffering of being here easier to bear. After actively resisting the theft of our land by the Israeli apartheid wall and settlements every week for five years now, we long to be standing alongside our brothers and sisters to mark this victory and the fifth anniversary of our struggle.