Subjects Archives: Incarceration

San Francisco voted on June 7 to recall its district attorney, Chesa Boudin, a reformer who had challenged the traditional “lock ’em up” policies of big-city prosecutors.

Alexander and Mikhail Kononovich were detained on March 3 following the Russian invasion, part of a crackdown on left and opposition groups.

Our nation incarcerates more than 1.2 million people in state and federal prisons, and two out of three of these incarcerated people are also workers. In most instances, the jobs these nearly 800,000 incarcerated workers have look similar to those of millions of people working on the outside.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel has authorized the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to be tried under the Espionage Act in a case which seeks to set a legal precedent for the prosecution of any publisher or journalist, anywhere in the world, who reports inconvenient truths about the U.S. empire.

In his new memoir, ‘Sacred Oath,’ former U.S. Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, who served under President Donald Trump at the time of the arrest of Alex Saab in Cape Verde, effectively admits that the White House was quite aware of the fact that Saab was a diplomat at the time of his capture.

The decision will leave thousands of people barred from challenging their sentences in federal court in situations where they have exonerating evidence that their lawyers failed to submit at trial.

New Jersey’s highest court on Tuesday, May 10th, ordered the parole of 85 year old political prisoner Sundiata Acoli, a Black Liberation Army activist, imprisoned for 49 years.

“Extraditing Julian Assange to face allegations of espionage for publishing classified information would set a dangerous precedent and leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders.”

With Julian still, for no rational reason, held in maximum security, the legal process around his extradition continues to meander its way through the overgrown bridlepaths of the UK’s legal system.

Alya Zoabi has advocated for countless Palestinian families whose loved ones have been attacked by Israeli forces. But the injustice of the Israeli system hit home last month when her own brother was beaten and arrested by Israeli police in Jerusalem.

Twenty years ago, on 11 January 2002, the United States government brought its first ‘detainees’ abducted during the so-called War on Terror to its military prison in Guantánamo Bay.

Can those prosecuted for acts of violence and recklessly endangering the public order, with no program, no proposals for positive change, be considered political prisoners?

The National Lawyers Guild International calls for the immediate release of Venezuelan Special Envoy Alex Saab, imprisoned in a Miami federal prison by the United States in a violation of diplomatic norms and protections.

Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab “is suffering torture and inhumane treatment everyday in the United States,” decried his wife Camila Fabri Saab during a solidarity event for the diplomat, hosted last Friday, February 3, by the US-based human rights organization Alliance for Global Justice.

Indigenous activists and supporters held a news conference in Tampa, Florida, on Jan. 31 to announce that Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier had contracted COVID-19 in prison, endangering his life.

The functioning of the Establishment, the way it forms a collective view and how that view is transmitted, is a mystery to many.

Last Friday, it became known that the 77-year-old Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier was sick with COVID-19. Peltier has been in prison for over 46 years, which makes him the oldest political prisoner in the United States.

The information shared by Wikileaks has strengthened the resistance against repressive governments by exposing the gaps between their actions and their carefully crafted narratives.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who took office January 1, wasted no time getting in the headlines, telling his prosecutors (New York Times, 1/6/22) that they should seek “jail or prison time only for the most serious offenses—including murder, sexual assault and economic crimes involving vast sums of money.”

One county prosecutor asked oil company Enbridge for reimbursement to help with some of the prosecutions clogging up rural courts.