National Geographic: 'Lockdown Prison Oakville Maximum Security Prisons Documentary'

Source:National Geographic- a corrections officer at Oak Park Maximum Security Prison, in Minnesota. 

"Lockdown Prison Oakville Maximum Security Prisons Documentary" 

From Larry Long 

It's hard to feel hard for people who not just hurt innocent people, or hurt innocent people for a living, or just hurt innocent people for prison, but then hurt innocent people while they're in prison. At some point the Department of Corrections has to take a stand and not just say that they're not going to tolerate this horrible behavior, but then do whatever they can within the law and Constitution, to prevent that violent behavior from happening again. 

The whole point of maximum security and supermax prisons is to prevent further violence in prisons. It's said that maximum security and supermax's are designed to house the worst of the worst, but not from society, because once you enter prison, you leave the free society, at least, but these prisons are designed to house the worst of the worst in the Department of Corrections. Meaning the inmate population regardless of what state you're talking about.  

Having said all of this, it's called the Department of Corrections for a very good reason, when you're talking about Minnesota or any other state. So these institution are supposed to be designed to at least make the inmates better inmates and responsible people while they're in prison at least, if not prepare the inmates for life on the outside, if they're released from prison at some point. And even in a supermax or even in solitary confinement, the inmates need to be incentivized to get with the program and cooperate with the prison staff and not have to come back to solitary in the future.

Youth Justice NC: North Carolina's School to Prison Pipeline

Source:The FreeState

If you look at our current prison inmate population, you’ll see a lot of prison inmates who didn’t finish high school before they came to prison, or barely finished high school. If you look at a lot of our juvenile inmate population, kids that should be in school, but because of their bad behavior and committing felony’s while still being juveniles, or have been expelled from high school. You see a lot of juveniles that our education system hasn’t reached yet. 

You see people who are headed down the road of starting criminal careers and entering our criminal justice system as adults. After they’ve committed crimes against society. If you look at our criminal gangs, organized crime families, you see a lot of people who dropped out of high school to become a criminals. And of course end up in jail or prison at some point in their careers.

So I believe the answers to solving the problems of overcrowded prisons and bringing down our prison population in the future are fairly simple. But hard to apply and it gets to public education. Quality public education, graduating more students from high school with good educations, so they can move on to college, vocational school, the military, law Enforcement, foreign service, to use as examples. 

So they can go down the road of becoming productive citizens in society and not becoming criminals by simply preventing crimes in the future by preventing people from becoming criminals. And that gets to a better public education system, including educating our juvenile offenders before they become career criminals. Crime prevention really is about public education. 

I would argue especially for students in low-income high crime areas. Where there may be more opportunities to get involved in organized crime. So the better we educate our students and the more students we reach, the less career criminals we’ll have in the future.

Rina Palta: ACLU: Counties Opting For Incarceration, Not Rehabilitation

Source:The FreeState 

California has so many people in their corrections system as far as inmates. And so many inmates that they are now under a court order to reduce the size of their inmate population. Not by accident because they arrest too many people. Fill up their prisons with inmates, basically just warehousing them. There are some exceptions and are left to wonder what to do with them once they reach overcrowding, for a State thats apparently as blue as California, That hasn’t voted Republican for President since 1988, they have a lot of “Bad Laws”, they simple incarcerate too many people who don’t represent a major threat to society. And after they do incarcerate these people, they don’t do a lot to prepare them for once they are released from prison.

California has what I would call a non-violent offender crisis. They incarcerate way too many people for drug abuse and drug obsession, when getting these people into drug rehab and halfway houses at their expense would save California taxpayers a lot of money. California had an opportunity to repeal one of their “Bad Laws” in 2010. To decriminalize marijuana and stop arresting people for use or possession of marijuana, which would’ve save their corrections system and Law enforcement billions of dollars, but that failed. 

And California is back where they started. But they could do things like drug rehab and halfway houses at the inmates expense. For Petty Offenders, people who are in prison for dumb mistakes. Like shoplifting and Drug Crimes. California could save its corrections system and law enforcement billions of dollars just with sentencing reform, keeping a lot of their non-violent Offenders out of prison and into halfway houses or drug rehab at the offenders expense. 

This would save California a lot of prison space for people who need to be there, putting their inmates to work and paying them so they can cover their cost of living and repealing their bad laws. And they would dramatically lower the size of their inmate population and still be able to protect the state.

Teshia Naidoo: Sane Drug Laws

Source:The FreeState

California is the perfect example of why and how the War on Drugs in America is stupid. This is a State thats swamped in debt, that still has double figure unemployment. That still has a high crime rate and one of the highest inmate populations per-capita in the country as well as the largest inmate population in numbers. They are also one of the highest taxed states, so if I was a Californian I would be asking why, I’m not getting much of a bang for my tax bucks.  

And yet California has been doing the same things for the last ten years. They recalled GOV. Grey Davis partially because of its debt issues and the economy wasn’t doing very well. Ten years later they are still facing the same problems and have even more people locked up in this State. If I was a Californian, I would want my State Government to look at what its doing. Admit the obvious finally and change course. Find ways to get more out of the taxes that Californians are forced to pay every year. And its corrections system, probably the most expensive in the Union, is a great first place to start and overhaul it.  

Start with the War on Drugs, stop arresting free adults for smoking or possessing marijuana. Stop sending heroin and cocaine addicts to prison and get them in drug rehab at their expense. Stop sending non-violent offenders to prison who don’t represent a major threat to society. And get them in halfway houses at their expense. Stop sending these people to prison and save the prisons for the offenders who need to be there. 

With GOV. Jerry Brown being a former Attorney General, he should know exactly how overcrowded their corrections system is and that it needs to be reformed and be more cost- effective. And hopefully he’ll put in the reforms to make that happen and save Californian Tax Payers billions of dollars.

Yuram Abdullah Weiler: Profit From Prisons: How UNICOR Capitalizes On Inmate Labor

Source:The FreeState

The United States has a high convict recidivism rate, i.e., a large percentage of our prison inmates come back to prison after they finish their sentences.   70 % of ex-convicts return to prison. We also have a relatively large prison population.  About 1 of every 100 Americans is either in prison, on parole, or under some other type of supervised probation.

Because of these factors, we have high prison costs.  Prisons, as they are currently structured do not pay for themselves. There are a few exceptions to that among state prisons that are like family farms.  There are a few prisons in Louisiana where inmates work full-time producing food and other products for the institution but also to sell on the market and to other government agencies.

This post is about how to reduce the recidivism rate, the prison population and the associated  high costs.  The first step is educating the inmates who've decided that they want to improve themselves and end their criminal careers.  Once they have marketable skills, they can  work in prison factories and other prison business's and make a living for themselves and their families.

We should make prison industries real enterprises producing products for the prisons but also for other government agencies and the open market as well.  Local business could manage these industries  using the inmate population as their staff.  Instead of paying the inmates 20 cents or a dollar an hour, as is done now, they could pay them the local going rate for the work that they do. 

FOX News: 'New Regulations On Way For Halfway Houses'

Source:FOX News Toledo- a halfway house in Toledo, Ohio.

"You could soon see more convicted felons in your neighborhood.

As Ohio leaders move more nonviolent offenders out of state prisons to save money, Toledo's elected officials are preparing for the after-effects: an expected increase in the number of halfway houses.

Toledo only has two state-licensed halfway houses right now, including a Volunteers of America treatment center in North Toledo. But local leaders expect to see applications for several more, as convicted felons move from a life behind bars to a community-control setting."  

From FOX News Toledo

Anytime you have a slow, economy, with high unemployment, like we have today, you are going to have states and localities, like Toledo, Ohio, run deficits. And as a result they're going to look for ways to make saving without hurting their public services. 

I'm not a resident of Toledo, Ohio, actually I've never even been there, but that's what's going on here. Prisons and jails are expensive and when they're filled with nonviolent offenders, like drug addicts, they become more expensive. And when economic and financial times are tough, getting those folks out of prison and jail and having them live in places like this that are privately run, where the residents there pay for their own cost of living, makes a lot of financial sense, especially for taxpayers.

Live Green Tennessee: 'Prison Farming'

Source:Live Green TN- Sergeant Doug Griffith: Tennessee Department of Corrections.

"We think its great news that several Tennessee Prisons are choosing to Go Green, and Live Green Tennessee recently visited Sergeant Doug Griffith of the Tennessee Department of Corrections. 

Griffith explained a recycling program that turns leftover food from five prisons into rich, fertile mulch thats then used on a 100-acre kitchen garden. The inmates working the farm save the prison system—and you, the taxpayer—money...

But more important is the responsibility, the fresh air, and the opportunity to learn practical, employable and life-long skills to help trustees adjust to life upon release." 

From Live Green Tennessee

Prisons are obviously designed to punish people who commit felons in America and who hurt innocent people either intentionally or by being very irresponsible, like drunk driving. But that punishment should be about taking the inmates freedom away and getting them out of society as long as they represent a threat to society. 

Punishment can't be the only thing that prisons should be about, otherwise they and the inmates simply become too expensive for taxpayers. The time that inmates do in prison should also be productive for taxpayers, the prisons and staff itself, but the inmates themselves, because most of them eventually leave prison and return to society. Educating our inmates and putting them to work doing real jobs and like producing food for the prisons, is a great way to rehabilitate the inmates in prison.

University Behind Bars: 'When You Learn, You Don't Return'

Source:University Behind Bars- talking about education in prison.

"Listen to the voices of students from a sociology course, "Sociological Imagination", as they explore the greater sociological, historical, and personal implications and antecedents of incarceration. Through the University Behind Bars, prisoners in medium security custody of a Washington State Prison are offered free education and an opportunity for greater insight and understanding of themselves and society. Please visit:SEDU for more information. 

In Development: A feature length documentary exploring the effects of liberal arts education on transformative experience in prison and its impact on the inmates sense of agency in community issues." 

From University Behind Bars

Education alone won't prevent inmates, especially violent inmates from ever committing another felony, especially a violent felony and returning back to prison and now serving an either longer sentence than they had before and becoming a even more of a drain on the free society. But without a real education that includes high school, but college or vocational, as well as real work experience in the legitimate field that they've been trained to work in, these men will definitely return to prison. 

If the only thing that prison inmates learn in prison is how to survive in prison and become better criminals and pick up additional criminal skills in prison, then that's what they're going to return to on the outside, if they're released from prison. And most people in prison today will be released from prison. And most of those folks today will return to prison in the future, especially if all they learned in prison was how to become better criminals.

RT America: Thom Hartmann- 'No Mercy For American Convicts'

Source:RT America- Left-wing talk show host Thom Hartmann, appearing on President Vladimir Putin's Russia Today.

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled[1] international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government.[15][16] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an "autonomous non-profit organization" founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[10][17] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia.[18][19][20] RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[21] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,[5][6][7] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.[8][9]

RT has been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation[42] and conspiracy theories.[48] UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast "materially misleading" content.[55] RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Ministry of Defence and stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world".[16][56] In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a "foreign agent" with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[57] RT has been banned in Ukraine since 2014,[58] and in Latvia[59] and Lithuania[60] since 2020." 

From Wikipedia

"Reeducation vs. lock-up: what's right for American convicts? In Europe authorities work to reeducate and reintegrate the prison populations. In the US however authorizes prefer to lock them up for as long as possible. Radio Host Thom Hartmann argued that historically, due to the massive size of the United States, people were viewed as disposable, whereas in Europe people were more closely connected to one another because of the denser population centers. Today the US is confronting this issue head-on as US population density increases.  The US is large and hosts at least six distinct cultures, said Hartmann, which makes reform even more challenging."

From RT America

As long as you have what's called a corrections system, then that should mean something. That if you send people to prison for years and decades at a time, but you know they are one day going to get out because they do their time and don't get additional time by avoiding committing more felony's in prison, then we should make the term and system and corrections system actually mean that.

Otherwise we no longer have a corrections system, but a prison system or a human warehouse system. Where we just send people way to warehouse them do our best to make sure their human needs are met at tax payer expense at the expense of people who work for a living. And have made good decisions with their lives and avoided going to prison. We have now approaching 2M people in the corrections system in America.

And there are several factors we have so many prison inmates: our education system isn't doing a good enough job preparing our young people for life as adults. These kids don't get the education they need to survive in life and prosper in a legal way. So they end up hanging out with the wrong crowd, organized crime getting into trouble.

If you look at our prison inmate population, maybe half of them even graduated high school, very few have even ever been to college. We don't do a very good job of rehabilitating our prison inmates or even make the effort in some cases. San Quentin Prison in California is an example of a prison that tries to rehabilitate its inmates and they've had some success. And they ned up in prison with very little if any education and leave prison with the same situation.

What we should be doing is several things: I'm not making the argument for being soft on crime, or giving convicted felons amnesty and slapping them on the hand and hoping they don't do it again. It's called crime and punishment and prison for a reason. And prison inmates need to know they are in prison and why they are there. They shouldn't feel like they are getting a free vacation or going to summer camp for free either.

But having said all that it needs to be a productive experience for, the tax payers who are putting up the bills and deserve to have some security in their lives, the prison staff to make their jobs a little less dangerous. But also for the Prison Inmates so they know why they are there and get themselves the skills that they need to avoid coming back to prison in the future, by putting an end to their criminal careers. And having the skills that they need to get a good job and live a productive life legally in the free world. Something like 2/3 of all of our prison inmates end up back in prison. About the same percentage end up being released from prison while they are still living. We can do much better with our corrections system.