Tag: Corrections

Thirteenth Amendment, Schmirteenth Amendment………

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It appears that private prison operators are coercing “voluntary” labor out of immigration detainees, in violation of the 13th amendment, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.“

Apparently, the Constitution of the United States of America is not something that concerns the Department of Homeland Security:

Officials at a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in rural Georgia locked an immigrant detainee in solitary confinement last November as punishment for encouraging fellow detainees to stop working in a labor program that ICE says is strictly voluntary.

Shoaib Ahmed, a 24-year-old who immigrated to America to escape political persecution in Bangladesh, told The Intercept that the privately run detention center placed him in isolation for 10 days after an officer overheard him simply saying “no work tomorrow.” Ahmed said he was expressing frustration over the detention center — run by prison contractor CoreCivic — having delayed his weekly paycheck of $20 for work in the facility’s kitchen.

Those in ICE custody often work for as little as $1 per day and cannot legally be compelled to work.

Ahmed’s account adds to a growing chorus of ICE detainees who allege that they have been forced to work in for-profit ICE facilities or else risk punishment with solitary confinement — a harsh form of captivity that, if prolonged, can amount to torture. Late last month, ICE detainees at a CoreCivic-run facility in California sued the private prison contractor, alleging that they had been threatened with solitary confinement if they did not work. In October, The Intercept reported that officials had placed another detainee in solitary confinement for 30 days for “encouraging others to participate in a work stoppage” at the same privately run facility where Ahmed was disciplined, the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.

CoreCivic has said that its practices of segregating detainees in individual cells are humane and has disputed the term “solitary confinement,” arguing that its harsh connotation does not apply to the publicly traded firm’s practices. “Use of the term in your coverage with regard to Stewart would give readers a false impression of the reality of restricted housing at the facility,” CoreCivic spokesperson Jonathan Burns said in an email.

But over the course of two interviews with The Intercept over a fuzzy detention center phone line, Ahmed used rudimentary English to describe being subjected to the isolating conditions of solitary confinement as it is generally understood. “The room is at all times locked,” Ahmed said. “If you talk, the sound does not go outside. And nobody comes to talk with us.”

“Sometimes I think I will be mentally sick,” Ahmed said of his time in isolation. “I feel pain in my head.”

In addition to severe isolation, Ahmed spoke of being subjected to restrictive treatment in segregation that might be more expected for a violent and volatile criminal than for an immigration detainee under punishment for encouraging a work stoppage.

………

In recent years, current and former ICE detainees have filed class-action lawsuits alleging forced labor against private prison contractors in Washington state, California, and Colorado. Across the country, detainees and advocates have said that the ICE contractors used solitary confinement as a cudgel to force work, and allege that the for-profit facility operators are profiting off the bonded labor.

“These big corporations are circumventing the traditional labor market,” said Lydia Wright, an attorney at the Burns Charest law firm who represents current and former ICE detainees suing CoreCivic in California. “If they weren’t requiring detainees to work for $1 per day, they would have to hire cooks and janitors at minimum wage.”

In an October response to a suit from detainees in Colorado, major private prison contractor GEO Group appeared to echo this point. “Were a court to conclude that GEO must pay thousands of detainees a minimum wage, it would significantly affect the prices that GEO would have charge for its services,” stated a GEO Group court filing. The Colorado class-action suit, which demands that detainees be paid minimum wage for their labor, “poses a potentially catastrophic risk to GEO’s ability to honor its contracts with the federal government,” the firm stated in a separate filing.

One obstacle such suits against ICE’s private contractors may face: Many of the immigrant plaintiffs are only fleetingly in the country before often being deported, making it potentially difficult, for instance, to find former detainees who may be entitled to back wages.

How convenient.

Arbeit Macht Frei

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Oklahoma and surrounding judges are sending accused criminals to slave labor camps, in particular, they get sent to Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR):

The worst day of Brad McGahey’s life was the day a judge decided to spare him from prison.

McGahey was 23 with dreams of making it big in rodeo, maybe starring in his own reality TV show. With a 1.5 GPA, he’d barely graduated from high school. He had two kids and mounting child support debt. Then he got busted for buying a stolen horse trailer, fell behind on court fines and blew off his probation officer.

Standing in a tiny wood-paneled courtroom in rural Oklahoma in 2010, he faced one year in state prison. The judge had another plan.

“You need to learn a work ethic,” the judge told him. “I’m sending you to CAAIR.”

McGahey had heard of Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery. People called it “the Chicken Farm,” a rural retreat where defendants stayed for a year, got addiction treatment and learned to live more productive lives. Most were sent there by courts from across Oklahoma and neighboring states, part of the nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.

………

There wasn’t much substance abuse treatment at CAAIR. It was mostly factory work for one of America’s top poultry companies. If McGahey got hurt or worked too slowly, his bosses threatened him with prison.

And he worked for free. CAAIR pocketed the pay.

“It was a slave camp,” McGahey said. “I can’t believe the court sent me there.”

………

But in the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.
The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they’ve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.

The beneficiaries of these programs span the country, from Fortune 500 companies to factories and local businesses. The defendants work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina.
Perhaps no rehab better exemplifies this allegiance to big business than CAAIR. It was started in 2007 by chicken company executives struggling to find workers. By forming a Christian rehab, they could supply plants with a cheap and captive labor force while helping men overcome their addictions.

………

Chicken processing plants are notoriously dangerous and understaffed. The hours are long, the pay is low and the conditions are brutal.

………

Those who were hurt and could no longer work often were kicked out of CAAIR and sent to prison, court records show. Most men worked through the pain, fearing the same fate.

………

Legal experts said forcing defendants to work for free might violate their constitutional rights. The 13th Amendment bans slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, except as punishment for convicts. That’s why prison labor programs are legal. But many defendants sent to programs such as CAAIR have not yet been convicted of crimes, and some later have their cases dismissed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Noah Zatz, a professor specializing in labor law at UCLA, said when presented with Reveal’s findings. “That’s a very strong 13th Amendment violation case.”

CAAIR has become indispensable to the criminal justice system, even though judges appear to be violating Oklahoma’s drug court law by using it in some cases, according to the law’s authors.

Drug courts in Oklahoma are required to send defendants for treatment at certified programs with trained counselors and state oversight. CAAIR is uncertified. Only one of its three counselors is licensed, and no state agency regulates it.

………

Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime.

………

“That’s fraudulent behavior,” said Eddie Walker, a former judge with the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission. He said workers’ comp payments are required to go to the injured worker. “What’s being done is clearly inappropriate.” 

Everyone involved in this atrocity should be prosecuted to the fullest extant of the law:  The people who run CAAIR, the judges who illegally send them there, the senior executives at poultry and pet food companies who knowingly used slave labor.

This is just f%$#ing evil.

Private Prisons

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In Estancia, New Mexico, a private prison is threatening to close unless the authorities throw some more people in prison:

The company that has operated a private prison in Estancia for nearly three decades has announced it will close the Torrance County Detention Facility and lay off more than 200 employees unless it can find 300 state or federal inmates to fill empty beds within the next 60 days, according to a statement issued Tuesday by county officials.

“This is a big issue for us,” Torrance County Manager Belinda Garland said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s going to affect Torrance County in a big way.”

Jonathan Burns, a spokesman for CoreCivic — formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America — had this to say about the closure:

“The city of Estancia and the surrounding community have been a great partner to CoreCivic for the last 27 years. CoreCivic is grateful for the support the community has shown through the years and we’re honored to have been a part of that community. Unfortunately, a declining detainee population in general has forced us to make difficult decisions in order to maximize utilization of our resources.”

Garland said the prison’s imminent closure will affect the county in a number of ways, not the least of which is that the county, which does not have its own jail, will have to find another place to house the 40 to 75 inmates it sends there each month.

Seriously, holding a town for ransom in an attempt to get law enforcement to lock up more people.

That is pretty f%$#ing cold.

For Once, Maryland Politics Works

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About a month ago the Maryland state Supreme Court ordered an overhaul of the bail system so that people do not spend weeks or months in pre-trial detention simply because they are poor:

Maryland’s highest court voted unanimously Tuesday to overhaul the state’s bail policies, essentially abolishing a system in which poor people could languish behind bars for weeks or months before trial because they could not post bond.

 The rule change, which takes effect July 1, requires judges to impose the “least onerous” conditions when setting bail for a defendant who is not considered a danger or a flight risk.

 That means Maryland will join a handful of states, including New Mexico, Kentucky and New Jersey, that have moved away from bail as part of a larger criminal-justice overhaul movement.

 Judges will be required for the first time to consider whether a defendant can afford to make bail before setting their pretrial release conditions. They must also weigh whether defendants pose a risk of committing another crime or of not appearing for their next court date.

 The directive approved by the rules committee of the Maryland Court of Appeals says that “preference should be given to additional conditions without financial terms,” court spokesman Kevin Kane said.

 Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D), who has been pushing for an overhaul of the system, called the rules change a “huge step forward” that will lead to “more justice in Maryland.”

Of course, there is a politically connected group who promptly got the state Senate to pass a bill eviscerating this ruling, but following an overwhelming vote against this bill by Maryland black caucus in the House of delegates, it appears it won’t even make it to the floor there:

In what could be a devastating blow to bail bondsmen, Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus voted overwhelmingly Thursday to oppose legislation that would partially restore the role of cash bail in pretrial release.

The caucus voted, 31-5, to oppose a bill favored by the bail bond industry — and approved by the state Senate — that would overrule the Court of Appeals’ instruction in February that court commissioners and judges consider other forms of pretrial release before resorting to cash bail.

Opponents of the bill said the vote gives House Speaker Michael E. Busch the political cover he needs to keep the legislation off the House floor. Busch later acknowledged that the vote affects the bill’s future.

“This sends a clear message to House leadership that the issue is dead for this year,” Del. Curt Anderson said.

The question of how the General Assembly should respond — if at all — to the Court of Appeals rule has been one of the hardest-fought battles of this legislative session. The caucus came down firmly on the side of letting the rule stand.

………

The industry objected to a provision of the Court of Appeals rule that diminished the role of cash bail in pretrial release. “Preference should be given to additional conditions without financial terms,” the rule reads.

The Senate bill would supersede that provision and put cash bail on a par with other conditions, which include steps such as drug treatment, monitoring and home detention.

The bill is now bottled up in the House Rules & Executive Nominations Committee because the Senate passed it after a legislative deadline. Opponents want the speaker to keep it there, and the caucus action bolsters their case. Members of black caucus make up about 40 percent of Democrats in the House.

I’ve gotta contact Busch’s office and ask him to keep the bill off the floor.

BTW, like all recipients of corporate welfare, the bail bondsmen have set up a sophisticated and expensive lobbying and PR campaign.

All this to fight a rule that basically says, “If the defendant is not a risk, don’t throw him in jail for being poor.”

These ratf%$#s make Comcast look like Albert Schweitzer.

About that Clinton Credit Card Post………

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It turns out that the report of many multiple unauthorized charges against donor’s credit cards by the Clinton campaign was reported by the Observer, and their publisher is Jared Kushner, who is Donald Trump’s son-in-law. (Thanks Daniel)

I looked around the internet, and with one exception, all the stories come link back to the Observer.

The exception, dating from June, is a TV report about he travails of a single donor who experienced problems.

As such, this story is unsubstantiated, and I refract retract it.

I will continue to follow this though.