Roughly 230,000 prisoners, the population size of Orlando, Florida, are serving life sentences within U.S. prisons. Writing for the Associated Press, Michael Virtanen reports on the debate taking place regarding older prisoners and whether they should be released from prison due to overcrowding.
Gibson Guitar hand crafts more than 160,000 guitars every year in Nashville, TN and generates revenue of $500 million.
In a recent article, Newsmax reports that the guitar maker lost an estimated $2 to 3 million in revenue over the raid.
Imagine being freed from prison. Now, think about the challenge of being released at midnight with no place to go.
Brandi Grissom, writing in The New York Times, reveals what happens when prisoners are released in the wee hours of the morning with no home, no money, no phone and no plan other than living on the street.
In an October 14 commentary in the Orlando Sentinel, Prison Fellowship vice president and director of Justice Fellowship Pat Nolan talks about the growing population in Florida prisons, and the problems that is causing. “Florida’s population has almost doubled since 1980, but the state’s prison population has grown even faster — five-fold during those years,” says Nolan.
On the night of September 21, as the nation focused on the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, another man was being executed in Texas. Unlike the Davis case, there was little question about the guilt of the prisoner, and little outcry over his execution.
A recent article in the Western Recorder reveals the dire need for chaplains to minister in prisons. In the piece, reporters Yonat Shimron & Adelle Banks do a good job of exposing the hole that results in the prison systems when chaplains are cut from the state budget.
The news headline reads like a sad country song. The Nashville-based guitar maker has made news, but for a much different reason than you might suspect.
On August 24, federal agents stormed Gibson Guitar’s facilities in both Nashville and Memphis, seizing guitars, computers, and records.
Like a scene straight from Minority Report, police departments are looking into policing based on future indicators.
Erica Goode, writing for the The New York Times, reports on predictive policing. Predictive policing is the new term for deploying officers in places where crimes are most likely to happen in the future based on several indicators.
I hear the train a comin’, it’s rollin’ ’round the bend, and I ain’t seen the sunshine, since, I don’t know when. I‘m stuck in Folsom Prison, and time keeps draggin’ on. . . ”
– Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues
The prison portrayed in Cash’s song is a far cry from Norway’s Halden Prison, where the mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik may end up serving time.
Whether unpacking the moral debate occasioned by capital punishment or finding larger meaning in the prison rodeo, documentary filmmakers are often quite at home behind the razor wire of America’s high-security penitentiaries. They love the prison milieu and enjoy unlocking the many complicated stories that lurk behind bars.
Whether it’s a greeting card, phone call, or gift of a new gadget, Father’s Day gives us a chance to express our thanks to our fathers. This week I am particularly thankful for the blessing my children are to me — not because of the thoughtful note or the hedge trimmer, but because I am able to spend time with them and be involved in their lives.
Richard Rosario was convicted of a murder that took place on Turnbull Avenue in the Bronx on June 19, 1996, based on the testimony of two witnesses who had picked his picture out of a book of police photos.
There was no other evidence linking him to the crime.
A psychologist who examined more than a dozen death row inmates for intellectual disabilities has been barred from performing future evaluations. George Denkowski, who has been a witness for prosecutors and defendants in death penalty cases, reached a settlement with the State Board of Examiners of Psychologists after other doctors and defense lawyers questioned his methods.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that on average 124 adult and juvenile inmates are sexually assaulted in US prisons every day. The Attorney General has announced plans to significantly weaken the standards that will hold prison officials accountable for eliminating rape in their prisons.
SHORTLY before the Supreme Court released its ruling in Snyder v Phelps, which rightly upheld the rights of the Westboro Baptist Church to stage their noxious protests near military funerals, the court released another ruling that should please anyone who thinks America locks up too many people for too long.