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TEEN LIBERTY/TEEN TORTURE INDUSTRY NEWS

Snoop Dogg taking youth football league to Chicago--July 27th, 2010--According to RivalsHigh, Calvin Broadus, a.k.a Snoop Dogg, will be bringing his youth football league to Chicago next year.

Broadus started the league back in 2005 in Los Angeles, featuring kids from all over the area with criminal, weapons and drug charges. Not only has the league taught these kids the correct way of life, but has connected them with role models, and some, even their fathers.

Broadus is planning on holding a clinic with about 200 kids in Chicago’s Housing Authority next year. According to the article, Broadus, who founded the league with $1 million of his own money, started it since there were no inner city football programs for the youngsters in Los Angeles. 

His league in the West Coast has helped troubled teens become great players, some even recruited by top colleges. One can only imagine what this league can do with the talent in Chicago.  (Complete Article Shown--source examiner.com)

 

 

Youth lock-ups blasted--Star investigation Hearings order release of children found not to have mental disorders--July 7th, 2010  Canada seems to be seeing the light.  When will the US?  We're waiting.  For more on the story, click here.

 

N.S. teen abused at facility, say advocates--

 
 

An advocacy group is calling for an investigation into allegations that a Nova Scotia youth struggling with a conduct disorder was physically abused on the weekend by staff at a treatment facility in eastern Ontario.


Roch Longueepee, founder of Restoring Dignity, a non-profit group that seeks justice for victims of institutional child abuse, said Monday that the 15-year-old should be removed from the Bayfield facility in Consecon until a specialized treatment program can be set up for him in Nova Scotia.


Longueepee said the youth, who can’t be named, told his aunt that two male staff members refused his request to go to the washroom on Sunday, then threw him to the floor, punched him in the ribs and kneed him in the throat.


The aunt issued a statement saying he was left with a black eye, cuts to his head and scratches on his body.


"We have to react and respond to this boy’s cry for help," Longueepee told a news conference. "We are concerned that the situation is out of control . . . I am concerned that this boy is in danger."


The accusations have not been proven. Sharlene Weitzman, chief operating officer for the privately run facility, declined comment citing privacy concerns.


However, Longueepee released a copy of a Justice Department document that shows the province received a call from Bayfield on Sunday at 4:25 a.m., stating that the youth had been allegedly inciting others to attack staff before punching and kicking at some of them.


The document, produced by the Provincial Emergency Duty Program, says the boy was "placed in a position of control." No other details were provided.


Court documents show the boy has been receiving government help since he was four years old, having been in the care of foster homes, group homes and other programs for years.
 

 
 
He has been in the care of Nova Scotia’s Community Services Department since November 2008, when it was deemed he required intensive, long-term care because he was a risk to himself and the community.


Longueepee said the boy is a sexual abuse victim who was abandoned by his parents before he was five.
As well, he said the boy has "cognitive issues," but none of the diagnoses he has received are conclusive.
Last summer, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court approved the department’s plan to send him to the Bayfield facility near Trenton, Ont., because the province had exhausted its options.


"It was evident that none of those services had achieved the goal of preventing the situation then faced by the minister and the adolescent’s grandparents," Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Beryl MacDonald wrote in a decision released in April.


MacDonald said the adolescent was "totally out of control," would not obey instruction and "presented as a risk to himself and to his community."


The judge also noted that the province had to send the boy outside the province because it does not have a secure, residential facility that can provide long-term, intensive treatment.


At first, the court agreed to send the youth to a facility in Utah, but that fell through and Bayfield was recommended.
Vicki Wood, the department’s director of child welfare, also declined to comment on the allegations.


"I have no knowledge that a child was punched in the ribs or kneed in the throat," she said.


Wood said the department would investigate any allegations of abuse, noting that under an interprovincial protocol, the Ontario facility is expected to follow Nova Scotia rules pertaining to the use of physical restraint of youths who put themselves or others in danger.


"They would never restrain a child for punitive reasons," she said. "It’s to intervene in a situation of danger."
Wood confirmed that the department and the boy’s family can’t agree on the treatment he should receive.
"There’s a forum for the family to bring forward their concerns — that would be the court, not a press conference," Wood said. "The judge is going to make a decision based on information presented to the court, not a third-party organization such as Mr. Longueepee’s, which has no real knowledge of the case."
 

Longueepee later took exception to Wood's comments, saying it's ``false, absolutely false'' that he has no knowledge of the case.


``I have the entire collection of files from the courts,'' he said, adding he's also interviewed the boy.
The boy's grandparents, who have been caring for him for most of his life, approached the advocacy group in March after they learned of the boy's complaints at Bayfield.


Longueepee said his organization has received complaints of abuse from former residents of Bayfield and their families.
He said the problem is that provinces like Ontario and Nova Scotia continue to cling to the belief that the best place for troubled teens is in an institution.


"These institutions can't be the parents for these children,'' he said.


His group is proposing a specialized foster care program that would cost the province about $175,000 to set up in the first year.


The plan has been submitted to the provincial government, but it has yet to respond, he said.  (Complete Story Provided Above.)
 

 

Youth mentor arrested on charge of raping girl--July 24th, 2010--MOBILE, Ala. -- A mentor in a program that works with Strickland Youth Center to help troubled teens was arrested Friday and charged with raping a young girl, prosecutors said.

Sherman Fitzgerald Tate, 33, was being held in Mobile County Metro Jail on charges of second-degree rape and second-degree sodomy.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ex-US judge pleads guilty to child prison scam--July 23rd, 2010--Conahan received bribes from a for-profit juvenile detention centre after closing a county-run facility  Former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan has pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge for helping put juvenile defendants behind bars in exchange for bribes.

He is accused along with former judge Mark Ciavarella of taking $2.8m (£1.8m) from a profit-making detention centres. Mr Ciavarella denies wrongdoing.

The two pleaded guilty last year but a federal judge tossed out part of the plea agreement for being too lenient.

Conahan faces up to 20 years in jail.

US District Judge Edwin Kosik rejected the 87-month jail term set out last year in Conahan's agreement. Under that deal, the former judge would have been able to back out if he was dissatisfied with his sentence.

Judge Kosik has accepted Conahan's current plea agreement with prosecutors, which has no such get-out clause.

Cash for kids
Prosecutors in a federal court in Scranton, Pennsylvania, said Conahan had closed a county-owned juvenile detention centre in 2002, just before signing an agreement to use a for-profit centre.

Prosecutors say Mr Ciavarella, a former juvenile court judge, then allegedly worked with Mr Conahan to ensure a constant flow of detainees.

The two men were originally charged in early 2009 with accepting money from the builder and owner of a for-profit detention centre that housed county juveniles in exchange for giving children longer, harsher sentences.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Southern Poverty Law Center Files Suit After 6-year old Hand-Cuffed and Shackled for "Acting Up" in First Grade Class--July 16th, 2010--It's not right for a 6-year-old boy to be handcuffed and shackled to a chair by an armed security officer because he "acted up" in school. But that's exactly what happened at the Sarah T. Reed Elementary School in New Orleans. In keeping with our work to reform the abusive juvenile justice system in the Deep South, we've filed a lawsuit against the school district to stop the brutal and unconstitutional policy of chaining students who break minor school rules.

Our client, J.W., is a typical first-grader. He's just four feet tall and weighs 60 pounds. He enjoys playing basketball, being read to by his parents, coloring and playing outside with friends. But his school treated him like an animal. Within one week, he was twice forcibly arrested, handcuffed and shackled to a chair for talking back to a teacher and later arguing with a classmate over a seat. The amount of force used on J.W. was simply ridiculous and, predictably, inflicted severe emotional distress. Shockingly, this level of punishment is official school policy. We're not just fighting for the rights of J.W., but for all the students at Reed Elementary.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Federal Oversight for Troubled N.Y. Youth Prisons--July 14th, 2010--Four of New York’s most dangerous and troubled youth prisons will be placed under federal oversight, strict new limits will be imposed on the use of physical force by guards, and dozens of psychiatrists, counselors and investigators will be hired under a sweeping agreement finalized on Wednesday between state and federal officials.

The agreement will usher in the most significant expansion of mental health services in years for youths in custody, the vast majority of whom suffer from drug or alcohol problems, developmental disabilities or mental health problems.

Currently, the state does not have a single full-time psychiatrist on staff to treat young offenders.

Guards at the youth prisons, known as youth counselors, will be barred from physically restraining youths except when a person’s physical safety is threatened or a youth is trying to escape from the institution.

Guards will be allowed to use the most controversial method — in which a youth is forced to the ground and held face-down — for at most three minutes, with evaluation by a doctor to follow within four hours.

The accord comes almost a year after the Justice Department threatened to take over New York’s juvenile justice system unless the state took significant steps to rectify problems at the four prisons, where physical abuse was rampant and mental health counseling was scant or nonexistent.

“It is New York’s fundamental responsibility to protect juveniles in its custody from harm and to uphold their constitutional rights,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “We have worked cooperatively with New York officials to craft an agreement to ensure that the constitutional rights of juveniles at the four facilities are protected, and we commend New York and the New York State Office of Children and Families for their willingness to work aggressively to remedy these problems.”

Federal investigators found that staff members at the four institutions — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center, in Lansing, and two residences, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown — routinely used physical force to discipline the youths, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions and dozens of other serious injuries in a period of less than two years.

Gov. David A. Paterson said in a statement, “With this historic settlement agreement, New York takes another step towards achieving true transformation of our juvenile justice system.”

Mr. Paterson, who has been trying to address problems plaguing the juvenile system, introduced legislation in June to let judges sentence youths to juvenile prisons only if they had been found guilty of a violent crime or a sex crime or were deemed to be a serious threat to themselves or others. Juvenile prisons house those convicted of criminal acts, from truancy to murder, who are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.

The federal inquiry began in 2007 after a spate of episodes, including the 2006 death of a disturbed 15-year-old after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground.  For complete story, click here.
 

Rampant sexual abuse puts teens in danger at juvenile prisons--July 13th, 2010--Juvenile prisons are supposed to rehabilitate troubled teens, but thousands of Indiana's inmates, some as young as 13, have been placed at risk of rampant sexual violence and harassment -- often from the men and women paid to watch over them.

Sex crimes inside juvenile prisons have long escaped public scrutiny in Indiana. Although incidents of rape and other sexual assault have broken into news headlines on occasion, the frequency with which state workers -- on the job and paid with tax dollars -- have had sex with young inmates was hidden behind a curtain of denial, unspoken acceptance and complacency.  For complete story, click here.

 

Family Says Nephew of Justice Clarence Thomas Was Beaten and Tased at West Jeff Hospital: July 10th, 2010

  

 

City, police grapple with problems at Benchmark--July 9th, 2010--WOODS CROSS —Woods Cross officials are worried that Benchmark Regional Hospital is struggling with ongoing violence, escapes and even a riot by patients, including sex offenders and troubled teens. But getting detailed information from the hospital itself is proving problematic.

And that’s frustrating city officials who say hospital administrators are stonewalling the release of information to the city.

“We don’t know what they are going to do,” Woods Cross City Administrator Gary Uresk said. We’re just looking at all our options. The city feels that it needs to take a pro-active stance. I think there are other issues there that need to be looked into,” he recently told the Clipper. He said he and council members are also concerned that the hospital is hiding behind federal privacy laws to keep city officials from finding out.  For complete story, click here.

 

Juvenile dies in detention in East Tennessee--July 2nd, 2010--CHATTANOOGA — Police are investigating after a juvenile died at a detention center in East Tennessee.

Hamilton County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Janice Atkinson said investigators are not yet saying what caused the juvenile’s death at the center in Chattanooga.

She says the death was reported to her about 6:30 p.m. Thursday, but further information on the youth wasn’t yet available.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Arrests Made in Child Abuse Allegations--June 6th, 2010--

Four people are arrested on allegations of child abuse at a Bay County boarding school.

48-year-old Clayton Maynard, 40-year-old Robert Unger, and 20-year-old Russell Maynard were all arrested. They are all charged with one count of aggravated child abuse and five counts each, of child abuse. 22- year-old Marcus Kurbatoff was arrested and charged with resisting an officer during the course of arrest of Maynard and Unger.

The men were responsible for running the Heritage Boys Academy. The academy is an all boys’ boarding school in Bay County, right behind the asphalt plant, on Highway 231.  For complete story, click here.

 

Federal Panel Questions Sex Abuse At Juvenile Prison--June 4th, 2010--WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Indiana Department of Correction officials told a federal panel they are working to correct a pattern of sexual victimization of young inmates at a state juvenile correctional facility.

Department of Correction Commissioner Edwin Buss and his staff testified Thursday before a three-member Department of Justice review panel on prison rape,6News' Joanna Massee reported.

It comes after a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 36 percent of inmates at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility reported being sexually abused, about three times higher than the national average.

Pendleton Superintendent Linda Commons said she was aware of sexual abuse at the facility, but was shocked by the report.  For complete story, click here.

 

Federal panel hears of sexual abuse TN juvenile detention facility--June 4th, 2010--WASHINGTON — Tennessee officials who were "flabbergasted" at the level of sexual abuse reported at Woodland Hills Youth Development Center told a federal panel Friday the steps they've taken to reduce staff misconduct.

But Steven Hornsby, deputy commissioner of the Department of Children's Services, also questioned the survey results that found one in four youths at Woodland reported sexual abuse by staffers, which ranked the facility among the worst in the country.

Hornsby, a former trial lawyer and judge, said Woodland Hills routinely gets top grades from outside auditors. He questioned the lack of corroboration for children anonymously reporting abuse when counselors, teachers and guards hadn't reported anything.

"I don't want to sound defensive," he told the Justice Department's Review Panel on Prison Rape, which held a hearing on the survey results. "There were no students -- zero reports -- of student sexual victimization during the time period that information was requested" during the survey.

The January results of the National Survey of Youth in Custody surprised Hornsby because a national accreditation panel gave Woodland Hills a nearly perfect score -- penalizing only the ventilation system and the size of cells -- and state-level investigators found no widespread abuse. Another accreditation review is scheduled in August.

"We were shocked," Hornsby said. "I think my word was just flabbergasted."  For complete story, click here.

 

New Charges Pending For Boot Camp Dragging Case--May 28th, 2010--CORPUS CHRISTI - Nueces County district attorney plans to re-file charges against two boot camp instructors accused of dragging a teen back in 2007.

Charles Flowers and Stephanie Bassitt are accused of tying a 15-year old girl to the back of a van and dragging her down a road in Banquete.

Officials say these are pictures the girl's injuries.

Back in 2008 felony charges were dismissed after a mistrial was declared because the jury could not agree on verdict.

Prosecutors say Flowers and Bassitt will be charged with misdemeanor assault.

If convicted they face up to a year in the county jail and/or a $4,000 fine.

We're told teenager is expected to testify in the new trial.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Dallas jail instructor gets 10 years for molesting youths in custody--May 27th, 2010--An instructor who taught juveniles at the Dallas County jail was sentenced this morning to 10 years in prison for molesting youths in his classes.

The sentence was handed down by State District Judge Gracie Lewis shortly after a jury found Luis Enrique Santos guilty of two counts of sexual assault of a child.

The judge sentenced de los Santos to 10 years on each count, with the sentences to run concurrently.

De Los Santos, who testified in his own defense, claimed he was innocent and that his accusers were liars.

When the guilty verdicts were read, he shook his head.

Jurors returned to the court after finishing their deliberations so they could watch the judge sentence de los Santos. The jurors declined to comment afterward.

During closing arguments Wednesday, prosecutor James Bagnall showed jurors a Kit Kat bar, a 20-ounce Coca-Cola and a McDonald's bag.

He said the items were representative of the gifts de los Santos used to lure incarcerated boys into sex. The prosecutor said de los Santos developed "a sexual molester relationship" with the youths, who were 14 to 16.

Calvin Johnson, de los Santos' attorney, said in his closing argument that the youths accusing his client were "not regular kids" and could not be trusted. The youths were in jail after being ordered to stand trial as adults for crimes including aggravated assault of a police officer and capital murder.

Testifying in his own defense Wednesday, de los Santos said of his accusers, "They lied about everything."

He was accused of performing oral sex on at least two boys in a jail bathroom near the classroom in 2008.

Prosecutors said de los Santos, an instructor who worked for the Dallas Independent School District, wrote sexually explicit notes to students and promised them marijuana and pornographic photos.

De los Santos testified that he used bad judgment in writing the notes. In bringing them candy and other foods from the outside world, he said, he was trying to reward the students.

Two youths testified that de los Santos threatened to influence their criminal cases to make their punishments worse if they did not cooperate with his advances.  For complete story, click here.

 

Scathing Report Details Abuse At Juvenile Prison--May 17th, 2010--INDIANAPOLIS -- Federal authorities are calling on Indiana to address abuses within its juvenile correction facilities after reports of young inmates sexually assaulted by guards and living in filth.

A Jan. 29 letter and report from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez to Gov. Mitch Daniels details troubles within the former Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility, including a mentally ill inmate left dirty and pulling out her hair and male guards having sex with and performing strip searches on young female inmates, 6News' Joanna Massee reported.

"The sexualized environment at the facility appears rampant," the letter read.

The letter follows a civil rights investigation launched by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2008 that documented inadequate abuse investigations, excessive use of force and isolation, inadequate mental health care and inadequate special education services.  For complete story, click here.

 

"The age of American children being medicated with prescription psychiatric drugs is getting younger and more widespread every year."--May 3, 2010--The age of children being medicated with prescription psychiatric drugs is getting younger and more widespread every year. 

According to a 2010 study of data on more than a million children reported by American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry's journal, the use of powerful anti-psychotics with privately insured U.S. children, ages 2 through 5, doubled between 1999 and 2007.

In the 2007 study, the most common diagnoses of anti-psychotic treated children were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2 percent), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (23.7 percent) and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9 percent).

Fewer than half of drug-treated children received a mental health assessment, a psychotherapy visit, or a visit with a psychiatrist, during the year of anti-psychotic drug use.

"Anti-psychotics, which are being widely and irresponsibly prescribed for American children -- mostly as chemical restraints -- are shown to be causing irreparable harm." Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, warns. She further asserts that long-term use of these drugs can have hazardous effects on cardiovascular and metabolic systems.  For complete story, click here.

 

Investigators: Starved to Death in State Care--April 30, 2010--(WXYZ) - For several months, the Action News Investigators dug deep into Michigan’s tragically-flawed foster care system. During our investigation, we uncovered the heartbreaking story of a 10-year-old boy who starved to death while a facility banked cash to care for him.

We began telling Johnny’s story over the last two days here on WXYZ.com. In that time, the response has been overwhelming and your comments confirm that Michigan’s children need a better foster care system.

Johnny’s mother, Elena Andron, dedicated her life to caring for her wheelchair-bound son. All she wanted was a little help.

The state’s answer was to put him in a foster care facility. One year later, Johnny starved to death.  For complete story, click here.
 

Florida to Punish Kids for Crimes They Haven't Committed Yet--April 21, 2010--I knew it was easy to get locked up in Florida. Apparently, you can  get punished in the state before committing a crime, too.

An extremely troubling new partnership between the Florida Department  of Corrections and IBM wants to use software to predict which  juveniles will commit crimes in the future, so "the best course of  treatment" can be chosen. Hey, why wait for juveniles to commit  crimes, if we can start their "rehabilitation" now?

The Florida DOC says that by using predictive analytics software, it  can "analyze key predictors such as past offense history, home life  environment, gang affiliation and peer associations to better  understand and predict which youths have a higher likelihood to  reoffend."

What about talking to the kids to determine the best course of  action? People are unpredictable and complex; they aren't data  points. Juveniles should be taught that the world is open to them,  and that they are the agents of their own destiny — not that they fit  into the bottom half of a spreadsheet, and therefore need extra  mandatory counseling or placement in a group home.  For complete story, click here.

 

Feds: No civil right charges in teen's boot camp death--April 16th, 2010--More than four years after the death of 14-year-old Florida boot camp inmate Martin Lee Anderson, the U.S. Department of Justice has announced no federal criminal civil rights charges will be filed against eight staff members.

The announcement effectively closes the case.

"After a careful and thorough review, a team of experienced federal prosecutors and FBI agents determined that the evidence was insufficient to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges. Accordingly, the investigation into this incident has been closed," the Justice Department said in a news release.

In 2007, a Florida jury found seven guards and a nurse not guilty of manslaughter and related charges in Anderson's death. Anderson was African-American, and the guards were white and African-American.  (Webmaster Note:  This is outrageous.  Martin Lee Anderson was beaten and kicked mercilessly and died as a result.  That is HEAL's opinion.  For more on this story, click here, here, and here.

 

Former teacher pleads guilty in teen sex case--April 9th, 2010 (Bromley Brook School)--MANCHESTER – A former educator at the Bromley Brook School pleaded guilty on Wednesday to having sexual contact with a 16-year-old student at the school on three occasions between Sept. 1 and Oct. 14.

Stephen F. Peters, 40, of Woodford, pleaded guilty in Bennington District Court to three misdemeanor charges of sexual exploitation of a minor. The state dismissed a felony charge of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child that had been brought in December.

Bennington County State's Attorney Christina Rainville said the state had dismissed the charge because her office's investigators believed that while the student was credible, the incident did not constitute a criminal act. The lewd and lascivious conduct charge involved a different student who was 12 when she spoke to police.

Under a plea agreement, Peters is expected to serve six to 12 months in prison on each count with the sentences to be served consecutively, but the prison time will be suspended. Instead, Peters is expected to serve five years on probation under sex offender conditions and undergo sex offender treatment.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ala. commune head has new project despite past--April 9th, 2010--

EMELLE, Ala. — Pentecostal preacher Luke Edwards is the shepherd of a forlorn flock: For years his disciples have traveled the nation begging amid allegations of abuse and ruinous mismanagement.

Five youngsters have died in fires at his west Alabama commune, the Holyland, where parents and youngsters are separated for weeks at a time. The state has described the education provided at the commune’s church-based school as substandard; Edwards’ one-time followers tell of beatings and sexual misconduct by male elders.
 
Edwards, 84, has outlasted all the criticism and troubles, and an Associated Press review found he is involved in a new multimillion-dollar plan that could bring even more young people into his fold — a prospect that worries one-time followers now living on their own.

Edwards preaches self-sufficiency, yet former members say his disciples bring in thousands of dollars daily panhandling outside stores in the name of abused children. Those under his care get free rent yet little of the money. If they leave, they depart virtually penniless.

Now he is part of a project to build a residential school for troubled high-schoolers on hundreds of acres of cow pasture and forest in Sumter County just east of the Mississippi line. The goal is to bring prison-bound youth from churches and cities all over the nation to Edwards’ corner of west Alabama.

Edwards is among the founders of Greentown-USA, envisioned as a sprawling complex that is supposed to open in 2012. Plans include a private school with dormitories, a gym, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a recording studio, laboratories and a chapel for worship.  For complete story, click here.

 

Abundant Life Academy and Child Labor in the Bahamas!--April 2nd, 2010--Kanab, UT (PRWEB) April 2, 2010 -- A group of 6 troubled teen students and 2 staff members from Abundant Life Academy (www.abundantlifeacademy.com) recently returned from a week long mission trip to James Cistern, Eleuthera in the Bahamas. The team from ALA was working with a mission organization called Bahamas Habitat. The main work of Bahamas Habitat is to provide quality housing to those in need. This work includes both needed improvements to existing homes, as well as construction of new homes. The ALA team was involved in the building of a new home for Ms. Pinder.  (Webmaster Note: Title changed by webmaster for editorial effect.)

 

Homicide charges possible in SageWalk student death--March 30th, 2010--Officials with the parent company of Redmond's SageWalk Wilderness School could soon be facing homicide charges, for the death of a Portland teen on a class hiking trip last August.  That is, if the Lake County district attorney goes along with the recommendation of the chief investigator in the case.  For complete story, click here.

 

We thought we were helping troubled teens--March 26th, 2010--When I tell people that I am a lawyer working on juvenile delinquency cases, they usually commend me for choosing a socially  useful career. But ever since the release of reports detailing the horrid treatment of teenagers at four New York juvenile detention  facilities, I have been wary of talking about my job.

For 20 years I have worked in New York Family Court, doing legal research for judges who hear juvenile delinquency cases. I take pride in helping judges conduct fair proceedings, which hopefully encourage youths to respect the justice system.

When sentencing a teenager who has broken the law, one of the goals is to provide them with the services they need to change their behavior and better their prospects. This is difficult, as many of the teens have mental illnesses, and come from impoverished, broken homes, where they have been exposed to drugs and violence.

Most juveniles convicted in Family Court receive services while living in their home communities, while others are sent away to detention centers for a year or more.  Before a youth is sentenced, social workers and psychologists produce extensive reports aimed at formulating a service plan. Court hearings are held to determine the best course of action.

I assumed that the people working in our juvenile facilities were as committed as we were in Family Court to giving detainees a chance at redemption. But recent federal and state investigations have revealed a far different story.

Instead of the well-intentioned treatment I thought they were getting, juveniles in detention facilities repeatedly face physical abuse, which has resulted in concussions, broken bones and lost teeth.  Staff members regularly handcuff detainees behind their backs, and force them to lie face down on the floor, for infractions such as sneaking an extra cookie or slamming a door. And teens suffering from bi-polar disorder, posttraumatic stress syndrome and drug addiction receive infrequent or no treatment.  For complete story, click here.

 

Goodman woman pleads guilty in teen center sex-abuse case--March 22nd, 2010--A former night supervisor at a residential center for troubled teens has pleaded guilty to one of five sex-abuse charges she was facing with respect to three boys in the program.

Jana E. Carter, 46, of Goodman, changed her plea to guilty in Jasper County Circuit Court on a single count of second-degree statutory sodomy. She has been facing three counts of second-degree statutory sodomy and two counts of second-degree statutory rape concerning alleged acts with boys who were staying at the Scott Greening Dependency Center at 818 W. Fourth St. in Joplin, when she worked there in 2008.  For complete story, click here.

 

Offenders referred to Pa. school--March 21st, 2010--Deep in rural Pennsylvania, some 300 miles from Providence, The Glen Mills Schools appears to offer much to troubled teenaged boys. The school’s glossy brochure depicts a lush, green campus with neat athletic fields, a football stadium and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Vocational programs range from auto body repair and landscaping to dentistry and golf course management.

Glen Mills has so impressed Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr. that he recently referred a dozen delinquent boys there.

But state child welfare officials say no matter how good the school may be, troubled teens generally do better when they stay close to their families and communities. More than a decade ago, officials at the state Department of Children, Youth and Families concluded that juveniles with behavioral or emotional problems could be helped more cheaply, and with better results, closer to home. For complete story, click here.

 

"Head Case: Can Psychiatry Be a Science?"--March 1st, 2010--For complete story, click here.

 

People power blocks controversial children's home--March 17th, 2010--RELIEVED neighbours were today celebrating "people power" after plans to build a controversial children's home were dramatically thrown out.

 
Delighted cheers raised the roof of Blackpool Town Hall as around 100 protesters, who battled against the home for troubled teens being built on Preston New Road, Marton, rejoiced at the sensational council U-turn.  For complete story, click here.

 

Psychiatrist gets warning from FDA--March 16th, 2010--A South Florida psychiatrist who was treating a 7-year-old foster child before the boy committed suicide last year has received a warning from federal drug regulators who say he failed ``to protect the rights, safety and welfare'' of children enrolled in clinical drug trials.

In a strongly worded letter dated Feb. 4, regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Dr. Sohail Punjwani over-medicated children who were enrolled in clinical trials for undisclosed drugs. One girl, the letter said, slashed her wrists while hallucinating.

Another, a 13-year-old, ``experienced sedation and dizziness during the study,'' the letter said.

The warning letter, a harsh and rare form of discipline by the agency, says Punjwani failed to ``adhere to the applicable statutory requirements and FDA regulations governing the conduct of clinical investigations.''  For complete story, click here.

 

Marines reject candidate schooled at Wyo youth ranch--March 14th, 2010--CODY -- A woman who spent thousands of dollars to put her son through a Park County program for troubled boys is seeking a refund after learning that the correspondence school diploma he earned there does not meet U.S. Marine Corps admission standards.

Dawn Cooper of Birmingham, Ala., took out a loan and cashed in an annuity she had set aside for retirement. She used the money to pay $36,000 for her son to attend the Mount Carmel Youth Ranch in Clark and a related program for adults, Bear Tooth MT Ascent. Both programs share staff and facilities on a 40,000-acre cattle ranch.  For complete story, click here.

 

Disciplinary policy brings incarceration--March 14th, 2010--One of the most alarming trends affecting our children today is what has become known as the “school to prison pipeline,” a term used to describe an all too common reality for poor-performing students. First they are academically unsuccessful, then their misbehavior results in school disciplinary action, then their misbehavior puts them into the juvenile justice system, then they leave school prematurely and eventually end up as incarcerated adults.For complete story, click here.

 

Shepherd's Hill Farm is a hell-hole--February 27th, 2010--

Got problem kids? Man, when they hit those teenage years they all get rebellious and willful, and start thinking independently, and often start doing things their parents would rather they didn't. This is one of the tough responsibilities of being a parent — you have to be willing to let your children grow into independent human beings.

But let's say you never got that memo, and you think your job is to raise children who are just like you: insecure, a little bit angry, shackled tightly into a fearful belief system that says all human beings are evil. Independent thinking is the last thing you want in your obedient little repressed child-slave! Well, there's help for you: Shepherd's Hill Farm, an accredited Christian boot camp that will stomp his wild soul right back down into the mud of conformity and obedience.

It's way out in the middle of nowhere, so there will be no place for the wayward teen to escape to…and no one to hear them scream.

Shepherd's Hill Farm is a counseling center, so they will also take care of the mental health of your child. Trace Embry, the director, knows absolutely nothing about mental health and even gives dangerous advice against all the evidence, but you don't have to worry — he's a very vocal Christian. God will forgive him.

We have testimonials from inmates residents of the camp about the other benefits of attending. Does your child have special medical needs, like seizures? They will take his medicine away, but their staff is well-trained in being able to simultaneously wrestle a child to the ground and pray for him. Is your child a bit on the hefty side? He will get 'special meals' — a can of beans, a bit of vegetable, and a piece of bread — until they reach that ascetic ideal. Your child will be 'brainwashed in the blood of the lamb,' so it's all OK — even the beatings serve to transfigure hooligans into robots for Jesus.  For complete story, click here.

 

Group homes for troubled teens closing after 18 years--February 26th, 2010--St. Paul, Minn. — Hearthstone of Minnesota, a Twin Cities nonprofit that ran small group homes for deeply troubled teens, closed its doors Friday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ohio youth prisons ordered to ensure inmates fed--February 26th, 2010--COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal judge has ordered Ohio youth detention facilities to alter a practice of withholding food from inmates who don't report for meals in the cafeteria.

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley says in the order filed Friday in Columbus that a meal refusal policy used at the Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility and others did not put a priority on inmates' health and safety.  For complete story, click here.

 

Bridgeport 'inspirational speaker' charged with masterminding area robberies--February 22nd, 2010--

A Bridgeport man who billed himself as an "inspiration speaker" to inner-city youths was arrested by Greenwich police Monday and charged as the mastermind behind string of robberies throughout the region.

Gregory Jetter, 48, of 182 Wheeler Ave., Bridgeport, was taken into custody at a federal courthouse in New Haven where he was appearing on an unrelated violation of probation charge.

He was charged with first-degree robbery, first-degree conspiracy at robbery and first-degree larceny, police said.

Jetter's arrest comes after several months of a multijurisdictional armed-robbery investigation into incidents in Fairfield and New Haven counties, police said. Greenwich police were the first to identify Jetter as being involved in the string of robberies, when they said he was the getaway driver in a July 2009 robbery of Estate Treasures in Riverside. During the incident, Lakeem Jetter,19, and Moses McCree, 20, were charged with stealing more than $250,000 worth of jewelry at gunpoint.

Although initial reports indicated that McCree was the mastermind to the robberies, Detective Pasquale Iorfino said further investigation revealed Gregory Jetter, a convicted felon with an extensive arrest history, was the brain behind the operation.

Jetter used "being an inspiration speaker for inner-city children to draw in troubled teens," said Iorfino.

Iorfino said once teens and young men became part of his group, called the McCree Foundation Inc., he led them down a dangerous path.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Buffalo Soldiers Founder Released from Prison--February 18th, 2010--

PHOENIX - The leader of a boot camp for troubled teens who served six years for the death of a boy was released from prison Thursday.

Charles Long ran the Buffalo Soldiers boot camp.  He was sent to prison after the death of 14-year-old Anthony Haynes, who died of dehydration and near drowning after being forced to exercise in the hot sun.

Long was convicted of reckless manslaughter and aggravated assault.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen raises funds to support prison visits--February 18th, 2010--

St. Joseph High School senior Ciara Main and her classmates sell bowls of rice at lunchtime as a fundraiser for the program “Get on the Bus.” The program unites inmates at the California Mens Colony and their families on Father’s Day. //Len Wood/Staff

 

Each year, thousands of children visit parents incarcerated in the California penal system.

Ciara Main, a senior at St. Joseph High School, can sympathize with them, and on Wednesday she helped organize a “Get on the Bus” fundraiser to make those visits a little more comfortable.

Main and her fellow club members sold bowls of rice at the school – in an Ash Wednesday “Rice Bowl Day of Fasting” – to help raise money and awareness for their cause. The students are putting together “Stay In Touch Bags” for the children who participate in the program.

The bags include note cards, pens and stamps, which allow them to write letters to their parents, along with a disposable camera and a photo frame. Each child also receives a teddy bear for the journey home.

Children from Santa Rosa to San Diego participate in the program, which covers seven prisons throughout the state, including California Men’s Colony outside San Luis Obispo.

 

When she was very young, Main visited her father, who was in jail at the time. That experience inspired her to become president of the school’s Get on the Bus Club, a small portion of a statewide effort to unite families.  For complete story, click here.

 

Editorial: Where's the justice?--February 15th, 2010--Another day, another $10 million legal settlement for high-powered plaintiffs' attorney Thomas R. Kline.

Kline has won a number of eight-figure awards for clients injured or killed due to negligence or incompetence by businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit health-care providers.

The latest settlement ends a lawsuit brought on behalf of Omega Leach, a 17-year-old boy who died while in the care of the city's Department of Human Services.

The settlement provides Leach's family with a financial reward, but no justice.

The Inquirer broke the story. Leach was one of dozens of troubled teens DHS sent to a private mental health facility in Tennessee owned by Universal Health Services Inc., a hospital chain based in King of Prussia. A family court judge sent Leach there after he violated probation by missing a court hearing and testing positive for marijuana.

At the facility, Leach got into a scuffle with a worker. A surveillance camera showed the worker strangling Leach. Witnesses said the boy was slammed to the ground and banged into a wall. Leach died the next day.

Tennessee authorities ruled his death a homicide. Yet, no criminal charges have been filed. Instead, DHS stopped sending kids there. The facility changed names, and the worker left. An attorney for Universal Health Services says "no one admits fault." A fat check has been written in place of the dead boy.

Accountability still awaits.  For complete story, click here. (Universal Health Services also owns notoriously abusive Provo Canyon School and many CEDU-cult programs.)

 

6-Year-Old Student Handcuffed, Committed by School--A little girl was sent to an adult mental institution for being unruly--February 11th, 2010--The same school district that allowed an autistic boy to be voted out of kindergarten class for being a bit unruly has a far worse penalty for 6-year-old little girls.

Handcuffs and straight jackets.

A Parkway Elementary School student was cuffed and sent to an adult mental institution earlier this month after she through a temper tantrum in the middle of class, reports TCPalm.com. The little girl was handcuffed by a Sheriff's Office deputy "for her safety and the safety of others," a police report said.

The incident report said the girl was hitting school officials and screaming, although it's unclear what brought on the tantrum. The handcuffs worked because the little girl calmed down after an hour in the tight silver bracelets, but her troubles were just beginning.

A few days later, the girl had another fit, allegedly hitting the school's principal in the stomach. The principal, who was eight months pregnant, called the same deputy, who then tossed the little girl in the back of his patrol car and transported her to the local adult mental institution.  For complete story, click here.

 

For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer--February 10th, 2010--Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson has been the administrative judge of  the New York City Family Courts for nine months, in charge of the  judges responsible for the detention of dozens of young people  charged with crimes, the vast majority of whom suffer from some form 
of mental illness.

But it was not until last September that she was informed of what 
struck her as a startling fact: The State of New York does not have a 
single full-time staff psychiatrist charged with overseeing treatment 
of the 800 or so young people who are detained in state facilities at 
any given time.

“There wasn’t one human being on-site overseeing all the mental 
health needs of the population,” Judge Richardson-Mendelson said in 
an interview. “When we place these children in these facilities, we 
expect their needs to be met, especially their mental health needs.”

Yet all 17 psychiatrists at the detention facilities in the state’s 
deeply troubled juvenile justice system work on contract and part 
time. Weeks often pass between their visits with each troubled youth, 
and officials say their turnover rate is extremely high.  For complete story, click here.

 

Downriver minister charged in child sex case--February 9th, 2010--River Rouge --A minister who police say has a reputation for reaching out to troubled teens was charged Monday with six counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for allegedly having sex with an under-aged boy.  The Rev. Russell Schaller, 35, of River Rouge, senior pastor at Greater St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church on Detroit's east side, was arraigned in 26th District Court and ordered held in the Wayne County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond.   For complete story, click here.

 

Sex Abuse Allegations At Home For Troubled Teens--February 6th, 2010--CLERMONT -- A children's home for at-risk teens released a statement Friday to News 13 about allegations that a boy sexually abused five others.

The alleged victims came forward back in November and told Executive Director Steve Zepp at Green Isle Children's Ranch.
 
In a statement, the children's ranch said, “The resident accused in the incident was removed from the program at Green Isle Ranch during the summer for reasons not associated with the allegations, and the executive director was replaced in mid-December.”  For complete story, click here.

 

Foster father charged--Man allegedly offered money to teens in exchange for sex--February 5th, 2010--Sex charges have been laid against a former Foster Family of the Year award winner who has cared for up to 55 children over the past two decades.

In June 2009, police received information that Garry Prokopishin, a director for the Calgary and District Foster Parents Association, was allegedly offering troubled teens in his care money for sexual acts.

This has prompted an immediate review by Alberta Children and Youth Services.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lake investigates sex abuse allegations at children's ranch--February 4th, 2010--Lake County officials are investigating a complaint that a juvenile living at the Green Isle Children's Ranch abused another as many as five other kids living at the facility, the Lake County Sheriff's Office said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Home for troubled teens slated to close--February 2nd, 2010--BENNINGTON – A local long-term residential educational facility for at-risk youth, 204 Depot Street, will be closing this week and leaving 10 people without jobs, according to William Bryan, president of the Board of Directors of SEALL Inc.

"The decision was made to cease making referrals. Statewide (the Department of Children and Families,) told us, they have to cut between 12 and 18 beds. We were only filling roughly 10 of those beds so that their other programs will have to feel our pain as well," Bryan said.

204 Depot Street, which will close on Feb. 6, serves older adolescent boys, between the ages of 15 and 17, through a residential educational program that lasts at least a year. It is run by SEALL Inc., a local nonprofit organization with a board of eight people.  For complete story, click here.

 

Troubled Teen Hospital Closing--January 26th, 2010--Tuesday, Newschannel 9 confirmed that Cumberland Hall is shutting it doors at the end of this month.  For complete story, click here.

 

Woman sues Starbucks over underage sex--January 25th, 2010 (Story references Integrity House)--

The relationship came to an end in July 2006, when her mother called Integrity House, a home in Utah for troubled teens. Counselors from Integrity House "abducted" Moore with her parents' consent, shoving her into a car and driving her to their facility, where she lived for the next year.

During her stay, Moore wrote a "come clean letter" — a sort of confession to her parents — in which she listed the men she'd had sex with.

In a deposition, a counselor at Integrity House said that after Moore lost her virginity, she had a "mind-set that she was damaged goods, so it didn't matter what she did."

Moore "thought she loved" Horton, counselor Carol Williams testified. She thought she could "be with him for the rest of her life," Williams said.

Moore's family has sued Starbucks in federal court, claiming the company failed to protect the minor. They asked for $16.8 million in damages, including $10 million in punitive damages, and $200,000 in loss of earnings to date.  For complete story, click here.

 

Trial Under Way For Childcare Workers In Teen’s Death--January 25th, 2010-- The trial for three former childcare workers accused of causing the death of a teenager is getting under way Monday.

The three women worked at Parmadale, a local treatment center for troubled teens in Parma.

Prosecutors said they caused the death of 17-year-old Faith Finley, who suffocated while being restrained on the floor at the facility.  For complete story, click here.

 

School For Troubled Teens Faces Closure--January 18th, 2010--Clarksville's Genesis Learning Center May Close Due To Funding Shortage...  For complete story, click here.

 

Landmark Federal Class-Action Lawsuit Charges Los Angeles County With Failure To Educate Youth In Probation Camps--January 12th, 2010--  LOS ANGELES – An alliance of legal groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Southern California today filed a ground-breaking class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County 
Probation Department and top county education officials for their total failure to provide youth in the county's largest juvenile probation facility with basic and appropriate education. The failure has resulted in children not being adequately prepared to re-enter society and the workforce. 
For complete story, click here.

 

Four Years Later: Martin Lee Anderson Boot Camp Death--January 6th, 2010--By now, the story of Martin Lee Anderson's death has been well-documented. During his first day at the Bay County Juvenile Boot Camp, Anderson collapsed during a fitness run.

Boot camp drill instructors thought he was faking to get out of the exercise, so they pushed Anderson to complete the run. The camp's cameras recorded an agonizing twenty-minute confrontation, which thrust the case into the worldwide spotlight.

Once the guards realized Anderson was truly in distress, they called for help. But, it was too late. The teen died early the next morning, January 6, 2006, in a Pensacola hospital.

The Medical Examiner's initial autopsy found Anderson died as a result of complications from sickle cell trait. Those results, and the results of a second autopsy conducted several months later, became the central evidence in the criminal trial of seven of the drill instructors and the camp nurse. A year and a half after Anderson's death, they were all acquitted of aggravated manslaughter charges.

Since the trial, Anderson family supporters, including the local NAACP chapter, have continued to push for federal civil rights violation charges against the defendants.

Bay County NAACP president Rev. Rufus Wood said, "I want it to be clear that this is not as much about black and white as it is about right and wrong. This is about right and wrong, and it's about wrong. What happened to Martin was wrong."  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

U.S. says sex abuse high at 13 juvenile centers--January 7th, 2010--WASHINGTON (AP) — A government study issued Thursday finds 13 juvenile detention facilities around the country have high rates of sex abuse and victimization, where nearly 1 out of every 3 inmates reported some type of victimization.  A Justice Department study has found that nationwide, about 12% of youths held in state-run, privately-run, or local facilities reported  some type of sexual victimization — but those rates varied widely  from place to place.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Schools face accreditation issues--January 5th, 2010--...Smith said the school is applying for accreditation from another body, the Pacific Northwest Association of Independent Schools. And if that body accredits the school, it will satisfy the state's accreditation requirement.

Several other private schools also face advised or warned status. Utah Helicopter Inc., a postsecondary school in Spanish Fork, is being recommended for advised status; Cross Creek Academy, a private residential school in La Verkin for troubled teens, for advised status; Top Flight Academy, also a private residential school in Mt. Pleasant, for warned status; private school Dorius Academy in Layton for warned status.

Attempts to reach Utah Helicopter, Dorius and Top Flight Academy this week for comment were unsuccessful. Karr Farnsworth, administrator at Cross Creek, said he was unaware of the school's recommended advised status and said he doesn't know how it got that status.  For complete story, click here.  For more information on Utah, click here.

 

 

NY Accused of Abusing Troubled Teens--January 6th, 2010--(CN) - The New York State Office of Children and Family Services subjected 500 troubled youths in state detention to violent physical restraint, and routinely denied them legally required mental health care services, nine children and their parents claim in a federal class action.
     Among other wanton acts, state employees regularly employ a dangerous form of control known as prone restraint - having two adults hold the youth face-down on the floor while his hands are held or cuffed behind him. Prone restraint exposes the victim to risk of cardiac and respiratory arrest, back, arm and neck injuries, abrasions, strained muscles and head injuries, according to the complaint.
     Such treatment led to the 2006 death of a Bronx teen at the Tryon Boys' Residential Center in Johnston, and serious mental and physical injuries to scores of others, the complaint states.
     The families claim that OCFS Commissioner Gladys Carrion allowed the behavior to continue despite red flags raised by the U.S. Justice Department and a blue-ribbon panel appointed by Gov. David Patterson.
     The nine named plaintiffs, all of whom are identified by only their initials, said their treatment violated the 14th Amendment, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Trapped in a Mormon Gulag--January 5th, 2009 (Rec'd January 5th, 2010)--This story is about Eric Norwood's personal experiences at a place called The Utah Boys Ranch, which models itself as a "tough-love" prep-school, but while Eric was there, he witnessed some unbelievable atrocities. It is a Mormon-funded and staffed facility, and religious indoctrination is a fundamental aspect of the school. There was sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, suicide, staff corruption, and escape. A major Utah political figure, Senator Chris Buttars, was the executive director while Eric was there.  See Video below or click here for more on this story.

 

Former Whittell dean indicted in Georgia--December 6th, 2009 (Rec'd January 2nd, 2010)--A grand jury in Georgia has indicted a former Whittell High School administrator on felony charges of aggravated battery, invasion of privacy, and four counts of first degree cruelty to children.

Richard Darrington, 37, was hired as Whittell's dean of students at the beginning of the school year, but lost the position when the Nevada Department of Education revoked his substitute teaching license after learning of outstanding battery charges facing him in Georgia.

The charges stem from Darrington's time in the southern state, where he operated a private school for teens called Darrington Academy for five years.

The bill of indictment, which lists 23 grand jurors of the Superior Court of Fannin County, alleges that Darrington “did maliciously cause bodily harm” to one of his students “by seriously disfiguring his tooth,” resulting in the aggravated battery charge.

The invasion of privacy charge alleges that Darrington placed a recording device in a girls' room and observed and recorded their activities without consent.

The four counts of cruelty to children allege that Darrington forced students to stand outside in freezing weather with no shirts, shoes or socks on two separate occasions, that he slammed a girl's head into a wall, and that he stood on a boy's ankles while in a “tripod” position and also slammed his head into a wall.

In addition to Darrington, three other teachers at the school were included in the indictment; one for invasion of privacy and six counts of cruelty to children, and the other two for two counts each of cruelty to children.  (For complete story, click here.)

 

 

Treatment of Youths in New York Prisons Spurs Suit--December 30th, 2009--Youths detained in some of New York’s juvenile prisons have  suffered bruises, cuts and a host of other injuries from aggressive  physical restraining practices that violate their legal and  constitutional rights, according to a federal lawsuit filed on  Wednesday.

The class-action suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf  of roughly 500 youths in 10 of the prisons, also accuses the Office  of Children and Family Services, the state agency that runs the  facilities, of failing to provide adequate mental health services

The legal claim follows two withering reports from the United States  Department of Justice and a state task force that portrayed the  state’s juvenile justice system as so riddled with problems that it  needed a complete overhaul.

The suit seeks an injunction that would sharply limit the use of  force by youth counselors and require the state to provide the youths  with more treatment for mental health problems, which affect a vast  majority of those in custody.  For complete story, click here.

 

Md. official would like to 'blow up' girls' detention center--December 28th, 2009--LAUREL — - As you approach Thomas J.S. Waxter Children's Center, a  sign cautions that you are under camera surveillance. Notices warn 
against bringing in contraband - glass bottles, cigarettes, weapons.

A metal detector sits in the front hall. You pass through a locked  metal door to reach the residential wings.

Down the hallway, the staff supervision room is separated from the  children by a thick metal cage.

On a Wednesday in September, a girl stands shackled in the hall, the  cuffs around her hands and ankles connected by a metal chain.

This is Waxter, the only long-term, secure treatment facility for  female juvenile offenders run by the state.

"Nothing's worse than Waxter, dead serious, nothing's worse," said  Britney McCoy, 19, who has been in and out of Waxter and other  facilities since she was 12. She was most recently in Waxter in 2008.

McCoy is not Waxter's only critic. The Juvenile Justice Monitoring  Unit of the attorney general's office has noted a litany of problems  at Waxter, including: allegations by girls that they are physically  abused by staff members; mingling of girls convicted of serious  crimes with girls held for minor offenses; inadequate physical  facilities; and overcrowding and understaffing, which lead to violence.

"No one should have to live there. No one should have to work there,"  said Claudia Wright, who monitors the facility for the Juvenile  Justice Monitoring Unit.  For complete story, click here.

 

ACLU says youth tortured at state prison--December 17th, 2009--A 17-year-old boy suffering from mental illnesses was so traumatized by his deplorable treatment in the Montana State Prison that he twice attempted to kill himself by biting through the skin on his wrist to puncture a vein, a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana alleges.

The lawsuit filed in Lewis and Clark County District Court claims that the boy, “Robert Doe,” has been treated illegally and inhumanely and has been detained for about 10 months in solitary confinement.  Doe was Tasered as part of a “behavior modification plan,” pepper-sprayed and stripped naked in view of other inmates, the complaint states.  For complete story, click here.

 

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics--December 12th, 2009--New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.  For complete story, click here.

 

Saving Troubled Teens: A Greedy Industry?--December 10th, 2009--..."If you're going to do it right, it's going to be costly," said Behar. The biggest expense for these programs is staffing well-trained, qualified people who can make good decisions in an emergency situation. In Behar's 32 years of experience overseeing state-run facilities, she knows it's very difficult to turn a profit. Yet many of these private facilities are making money, hand over fist. "In order to make a profit, they have to cut in some way, and since manpower is the biggest expense, that's where the cuts come," Behar said. The companies are saving money by hiring younger, less experienced people and are providing less expert supervision. Critics argue this cost-cutting measure puts the children at risk.

Dana Blum believes the staff's negligence is to blame for her son's death. "They killed my child when they didn't attend to him. I feel like he was murdered." The Salt Lake City District Attorney took Aspen to court. But ruling there was no "intent" to kill Brendan, a Utah judge dropped the criminal charges filed against the two employees. The state put Youth Care on probation, requiring it to retool its employee training. The facility never faced any fines, and remained open for business.

Devastated and distraught, Dana began looking online into Aspen's public financial statements. She learned that the Cupertino-based company is actually owned by a health care corporate giant, CRC Health. And Bain Capital, a multibillion dollar private equity firm, owns CRC.

Dana has filed a civil suit against the financial goliath, which could settle out of court. Critics believe this is why so few stories of abuse, neglect, and death at these facilities are made public. Aspen has enough money in its war chest to make these allegations go away. "If you look at their daily profit numbers compared to what they charge, it's obscene," Dana said. "It made me very angry that they couldn't provide better emergency services for my son."...  For complete story, click here.

 

Governor Pat Quinn Refusing to Shine Light on Juvenile Prisons--December 10th, 2009--Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is not allowing WBEZ to examine the state's juvenile prisons.  For four months WBEZ has been trying to negotiate some access to the prisons. Last week, Quinn's staff told us there would be none. We said we would report that denial. Later that day, we were offered a single tour of one of the better facilities, an offer WBEZ accepted, but an offer which would not allow the public meaningful insight into the hundred million dollar department that has care of some of the
most troubled and troubling kids in Illinois. Bob Reed is the governor's spokesman. He says they're working on their own review of the facilities.  For complete story, click here.

 

14-Year-Old Accuses Officer Of Assault--December 9th, 2009-- A school resource officer in Rutherford County who helps keep at-risk youth on the right track is accused of assaulting one of the troubled teens.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Duchesne nurse charged with sex abuse of teens--December 8th, 2009--(Cedar Ridge Academy in Utah)--ROOSEVELT — A man who worked as a nurse at a boarding school for troubled teens has been charged with sexually abusing two of the school's teenage residents.

Geary David Oakes, 57, of Cedarview, Duchesne County, is charged in 8th District Court with two counts of forcible sodomy, a first-degree felony, and two counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.

A nurse at Cedar Ridge Academy, Oakes engaged in sex acts with two 15-year-old students from the school, the charges state.

One of the teens told deputies that Oakes gave him pain medication, according to the Duchesne County Sheriff's Office, and that he "provides pain and sleeping medications for the kids at Cedar Ridge and tells them to keep it a secret." Oakes denied that he had supplied anyone with medication that was not prescribed, authorities said.

Cedar Ridge Academy, located north of Roosevelt, is billed as a therapeutic boarding school. Investigators believe Oakes' alleged activities with the teens occurred at the school and at his home during November.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here and here.

 

Kin sue Harvard over son’s suicide--December 4th, 2009--Harvard sophomore John Edwards was studying to become a doctor and training for the Boston Marathon in June 2007 when he sought help at the university’s Health Services because he could not study for as many hours as some of his friends.

A nurse practitioner prescribed a drug to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a condition the overachieving Edwards had never been diagnosed with. Later, she prescribed two powerful antidepressants, Prozac and Wellbutrin, when he began complaining of anxiety, depression, and other side effects. Meanwhile, he was taking a fourth drug for acne, Accutane, that has been linked to suicidal thoughts.

 

“The Wellbutrin is having the effect that we were seeking . . . but unfortunately I feel like it has canceled out the anxiety-reducing effects of the fluoxetine [Prozac], as recently I’ve been pretty nervous,’’ Edwards wrote in a Nov. 27, 2007, e-mail to the nurse practitioner, Marianne Cannon. “Let me know if I should schedule to come in and meet with you soon, or if I should change the med plan.’’

 

Cannon replied that she was concerned and told Edwards to schedule an appointment with her. Two days later, Edwards, 19, of Wellesley committed suicide in a bathroom at Harvard Medical School by suffocating himself with a plastic bag.

 

His father, John B. Edwards II of Wellesley, filed a suit Wednesday in Middlesex Superior Court alleging gross negligence by Cannon; Dr. Georgia Ede, who was the doctor who supervised her; and Harvard College, for causing his son’s wrongful death.  For complete story, click here.

 

Outdoor Therapeutic Program to close Dec. 31--December 3rd, 2009--Camp Appalachian Wilderness, a state-subsidized facility north of Cleveland that helps troubled teens, is set to close Dec. 31.

The Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities announced last week that the White County program was no longer financially sustainable.  For complete story, click here.

 

Truancy Officer Preyed on Girls--November 27th, 2009--A Hamilton truancy officer convicted of sexually abusing four female students used a school pilot scheme to identify and groom troubled teens, a court has been told.

Mark Pene, 54, was sentenced yesterday in the Hamilton District Court to six years and three months' jail after pleading guilty to indecent assault, having sexual connection with a girl under 16, doing an indecent act with a girl under 16 and doing an indecent act on a girl under 12.

The charges related to offending against four girls, aged 11 to 17, between 2005 and 2008.

At the time, Pene was employed as a truancy officer in Hamilton, working with troubled teenagers and their families.

Pene gained access to two of his victims by inviting them to take part in a school pilot scheme. The programme included such benefits as free lunches, payment of school fees and money for clothing.

Pene yesterday sat impassively in the dock as details of his offending were revealed, moving only to shield his face from a Waikato Times photographer.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lawsuits raise more questions about troubled youth program in Hastings--November 25th, 2009--Lawsuits against Hastings Youth Academy, a 165-bed facility for troubled teens in St. Johns County, accuse staff members of repeatedly using excessive force and conspiring to cover it up.

G4S Youth Services, which contracts with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to run the boys program, is accused in one of the suits of negligence on behalf of a teen whose shoulder was shattered by an employee in February 2008.

That suit, filed this month, claims G4S and the department ignored past problems and didn't properly protect Anthony Vessels, 16. The boy's attorney said surveillance video shows the employee throwing the youth to the ground, then sitting on him as he writhed in pain.

Vessels, now 18, lives in Orlando and is pursuing his GED, his attorney said, but continues to suffer physically and psychologically from the injury.  For complete story, click here.

 

Court upholds ruling against home for troubled teens--November 21st, 2009--YOUNGSTOWN — The 7th District Court of Appeals has upheld a township zoning appeals board ruling that a group home for emotionally and behaviorally troubled teenage boys doesn’t belong in a single-family residential neighborhood.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court unanimously ruled Friday in support of the Ellsworth Township board’s decision that the Redemption House group home, 11780 W. Western Reserve Road, does not constitute a single-family housekeeping unit as defined in the township zoning code.

In making its ruling, the appeals court backed an August 2008 ruling by Judge Timothy E. Franken of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that affirmed the December 2006 ruling of the Ellsworth Township board.

“This is not the proper location for them to do this type of activity,” said Atty. Scott Cochran, who represented neighbors opposed to the group home’s location.

“There was nothing to indicate to us that this was, in any way, a family environment,” he added.  For complete story, click here.

 

American Youth in the 21st Century: Pathologized, Criminalized and Disposable--November 16th, 2009--Punishment and fear have replaced compassion and social responsibility as the most important modalities mediating the relationship of youth to the larger social order. Youth within the last two decades have come to be seen as a source of trouble rather than as a resource for investing in the future, and in the case of poor black and Hispanic youth are increasingly treated as either a disposable population, cannon fodder for barbaric wars abroad, or the source of most of society’s problems. Hence, young people now constitute a crisis that has less to do with improving the future than with denying it. As Larry Grossberg points out, “It has become common to think of kids as a threat to the existing social order and for kids to be blamed for the problems they experience. We slide from kids in trouble, kids have problems, and kids are threatened, to kids as trouble, kids as problems, and kids as threatening.” This was exemplified when the columnist Bob Herbert reported in the New York Times that “parts of New York City are like a police state for young men, women, and children who happen to be black or Hispanic. They are routinely stopped, searched, harassed, intimidated, humiliated and, in many cases, arrested for no good reason.” No longer “viewed as a privileged sign and embodiment of the future,” youth are now increasingly demonized by the popular media and derided by politicians looking for quick-fix solutions to crime and other social ills. While youth have always had to bear the misplaced fear and distrust of adults, how youth are represented, talked about, and treated has changed dramatically in the last two decades. For complete story, click here.

 

DEATH ROW SERIAL MOLESTER CONNECTED TO CEDU--November 12th, 2009--California Department of Justice (DOJ) investigators are researching the possibility that serial child molester and child murderer, James Lee Crummel, 65 of San Quentin State Prison, had years of free, unsupervised access to the students at the now defunct CEDU School in Running Springs.


   The CEDU schools in Running Springs were founded by Mel Wasserman in 1967 and promoted itself as an emotional growth-boarding school for troubled youths.  Monthly costs to board a student reportedly ran as high as $3,500 dollar a month.   The school closed its doors in 2005 amidst allegations of financial improprieties, allegations of sexual and physical abuse of the students, by other students and staff members and citations issued by the State of California for various violations.  At a non-compliance conference, CEDU officials reportedly admitted that the rights of students under their care were systematically violated.  For complete story, click here.

 

Superjail for youth raises troubling questions--November 9th, 2009--Troubled teens promised cutting-edge treatment at Ontario's new $93 million superjail for youth have instead been deprived of food, denied programming and subjected to questionable body cavity searches, according to a review by a senior provincial official.

Irwin Elman, Ontario's advocate for children and youth, is investigating cases of excessive force used by some staff at Roy McMurtry Youth Centre in Brampton, which holds 102 male and female youths, 90 of whom are still awaiting trial. Police are looking into at least one of these incidents, he said. What's more, despite the centre's much-publicized commitment to "state-of-the-art" programming – a proven tool in preventing young people from becoming repeat offenders – it simply doesn't exist, he said.  For complete story, click here.

 

State finds child abuse and neglect at school--November 4th, 2009--The state of Oregon has shut down a boarding school for troubled teens in Central Oregon after allegedly finding a pattern of child abuse and neglect of its students, forcing parents around the country to scramble to bring home their children.

"Our first priority is to ensure the safety of the students at Mt. Bachelor Academy," Erinn Kelley-Siel, Director of the Children, Adults and Families division of the Department of Human Services, said Wednesday in a statement. "Ultimately, the investigations revealed such serious abuse and widespread violations of Oregon's licensing rules that we decided we needed to take immediate action."

The results of the Oregon Department of Human Services seven-month investigation of the Mount Bachelor Academy outside Prineville, Ore., were given to Crook County authorities to decide whether to pursue criminal charges.

Triggered by a complaint, the investigation found nine cases of alleged abuse and neglect involving five students since 2007.

Most came out of a mandatory treatment program called Lifesteps. At least two students were forced to act out sexual roles in front of staff and other kids during treatment sessions, one had to act out past physical abuse, one was not properly supervised on a trip to Europe, and others were subjected to obscene and degrading comments from staff, the investigators alleged. For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here , here, here, here, and here.

 

State suspends license from central Oregon school for troubled teens--November 4th, 2009--State officials have told parents to remove their children from a central Oregon boarding school after investigators found students were subject to inappropriate sexual role-play, public humiliation and physical deprivation.

Following a seven-month investigation, the Oregon Department of Human Services has temporarily suspended Mount Bachelor Academy's license. Investigators found nine substantiated allegations of child abuse and neglect as well as numerous licensing violations.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here  and here.

 

Group sues Idaho county over teen treatment center--BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A company that pushed to build a residential treatment center for troubled teens in rural western Idaho is suing Boise County in federal court, saying commissioners violated the Fair Housing Act when they scuttled the center's proposal amid staunch local opposition.

Development firm Oaas-Laney sought approval in 2007 to build Alamar Ranch, a 72-bed facility that would have treated teens with behavioral problems or addictions.

But neighbors fought to keep the ranch from being built, citing traffic, fire and safety concerns and even holding a fundraising event featuring a local folk singer, according to the lawsuit.

Boise County eventually approved the project, but under conditions that Alamar Ranch officials said were arbitrary, discriminatory and made the project financially impossible.

Boise County maintains the decision was based on legitimate government interests.  For complete story, click here.

 

Troubled teens on powerful drugs--October 28th, 2009--Has your teen’s best friend just transformed from Taylor Swift to Rosie O’Donnell overnight? 

She might just have ADHD.

A study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association says second-generation anti-psychotics like Risperdal, Ablify, Zyprexa and Seroquel are being given to teens with common conditions like ADHD, leading to obesity in just 11 weeks.

The side-effects common to these drugs may be worse in kids and teens than adults, the study concludes.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen’s parents settle abuse case--October 26th, 2009--GONZALES — The parents of a Prairieville teenager who allege he suffered abuse and related temporary kidney failure at a Louisiana National Guard Youth Challenge facility last year have reached a $95,000 out-of-court settlement with the state of Louisiana, the teen’s attorney said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Autopsy: Teen had heat stroke at summer camp, killing him--October 21st, 2009--BEND, Ore. – Preliminary autopsy findings in a summer camp death may lead to criminal charges for staff members. [HEAL Note:  This occurred at an Aspen Education Group program called SageWalk.]  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Troubled teens buckle under weight of jibes--October 20th, 2009--Teenagers who are told they are too thin or too fat by their parents - even if the comments are well- intentioned - suffer headaches, feel stress or get depressed more than those who are not, a study has found.  For complete story, click here.

 

Roswell teacher charged in teen contact--October 14th, 2009--[Roswell, NM  Youth ChalleNGe Academy] 

ROSWELL, N.M. (KRQE/KBIM) - A Roswell teacher accused of making sexual advances to a teen he was mentoring is out of jail but not back at work.

James Ogas, 38, faced a judge for the first time Wednesday charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor. The charges are 3rd-degree felonies.

Investigators say the alleged contact happened inside the automotive shop at Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell where Ogas is a part-time automotive-technician teacher.

According to court documents, twice last month Ogas inappropriately touched the 17-year-old who was part of a program for troubled teens sponsored by the New Mexico National Guard.

Investigators said along with the touching, Ogas frequently wrote the teen letters, which were described as sexually suggestive.  For complete story, click here.

 

Six-year-old Suspended for Bringing Cub Scout Tool to School--October 13th, 2009--

Our authorities may not be able to track down Osama bin laden, but never fear, they’re keeping us safe from budding little terrorists such as first grader Zachary Christie. Caught red-handed, the Newark, Delaware, six-year-old was suspended from his school and may face 45 days in reform school for violating the Christina School District’s “zero tolerance” policy on weapons. His offense?

Bringing a camping utensil set to school.

The “weapon” in question is a “hobo tool” the first grader had received after recently joining the Cub Scouts; it contains a fork, spoon, and knife. Zachary was so excited about his new acquisition — as any normal boy would be — that he brought it to school to use during lunch period. School officials then suspended him, saying they have no choice because the district’s code of conduct prohibits the possession of knives “regardless of the possessor’s intent.”

Unfortunately, little Zachary’s story is a common one today, with well-meaning students being subjected to disproportionate punishment across the nation in the name of zero tolerance. Writing about Zachary’s case in the New York Times, Ian Urbina provides one of these other examples, that of a third-grade girl who “was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. The teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake.”  For complete story, click here.

 

Employee of school for troubled teens sentenced for sexual abuse--October 6th, 2009--TOOELE -- A man who was supposed to help troubled teens in Tooele County was sentenced Tuesday for sexual abusing one of them.

A judge sentenced Jonathan Carver to serve 1 to 15 years for each of five counts of forcible sexual abuse of a 17-year-old girl.

Carver pleaded guilty to the charges in August.

He had worked as a house parent at Alpine Academy in Erda, where the girl was being treated. He admitted to a long relationship with her. The relationship was discovered when the girl left the school and her parents became concerned that Carver was still contacting her. They contacted police.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teenage girl left brain-damaged after receiving cervical cancer jab 05 Oct 2009 A teenage girl has been left brain-damaged after suffering epileptic seizures just days after being given the controversial cervical cancer jab. Stacey Jones, 18, suffered her first seizure in March when she was 17, days after she had the Cervarix injection. In the following weeks she had several more fits, causing such severe brain injury that she had to be admitted to a rehabilitation unit, where she is relearning simple tasks.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen tamers need to get real--October 4th, 2009--

TELEVISION programs claiming to tame toddlers and troubled teens may do more harm than good, parenting experts have warned.

The families of Australian teenagers who appeared in World's Strictest Parents on Channel Seven – in which the teens were sent overseas for a week to learn discipline from strict parents – said the program helped turn their lives around.

But the methods used have been questioned since the final episode, aired last week, revealed how the teens have fared since going home.

Serial runaway Jono Denny, 16, was sent to South Africa to live with Portia Bethe and her family.

After returning to his home at Ballina on the North Coast he re-enrolled in high school and behaved himself for six weeks. Then he was arrested after a night of heavy drinking. He was released after being cautioned.

Psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg said World's Strictest Parents, Brat Camp and Supernanny offered unrealistic solutions to behavioural problems.

"I would prefer to see programs which are more instructive," he said. "Obviously, no one is going to send their teenager off to a different country for a week to teach them a few life lessons. It's just not practical or realistic."

Mr Carr-Gregg said his research showed 80 per cent of parents lack confidence in their ability to raise their children. World's Strictest Parents drew more than 1 million viewers a week.

He said most child psychologists would not recommend the strict discipline promoted on the show.

"What I would like to see from these shows is a focus on authoritative parenting rather than authoritarian parenting," he said.

"The problem is that authoritative parenting – which teaches parents about creating boundaries, negotiating skills and so on – does not make very exciting television.

"Authoritarian parenting, with a focus on strict discipline and punishment, is more likely to create fireworks."

A parenting guide author and chairwoman of Early Childhood Australia's publications committee, Pam Linke, said the programs provided a simplistic view of managing behavioural problems.

"The families being filmed would have to be influenced by the fact that there is a camera on them.

"It's not a realistic approach to solving behavioural problems with children. There is no instruction about how these parenting models would work in real life."  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Abusive programs have regularly been featured and promoted by US television programs.  Including the deadly SageWalk, an Aspen Education Group program that recently voluntarily relinquished their license to Oregon authorities after another death at the program, was used as a setting for "Brat Camp" on ABC.  Dr. Phil McGraw has repeatedly placed children in Aspen Education Group programs as well as Provo Canyon School.  Other talk show icons have placed children in the notoriously abusive and internationally criminalized WWASPS programs.  Turn off your TV and think for yourself, please.)

 

“Out of the Mouths of Babes: False Confessions and the Wrongful Convictions of Youth”--Also see: http://progressillinois.com/node/7229

 

Troubled teens playing it for laughs in comedy class--September 26th, 2009-- — Drugs, violence, teen pregnancy and incarceration — not exactly the stuff of punch lines and laugh tracks. 

Unless it's the teens telling the jokes. And the material is coming from their own experiences.

San Diego County high school students who struggle to cope with these issues are confronting them head-on in an unlikely stand-up-comedy class that also serves as therapy of sorts.

Paid for with $6,500 in federal stimulus money, this new course was designed for students who are interested in the entertainment industry. But it has also helped teenagers face their demons and relate to classmates at the county Office of Education community school in National City.  For complete story, click here.

 

Community meeting tonight on youth home in Craney Island Farms--September 24th, 2009--

Residents in a Hanover County neighborhood are concerned about a home for troubled teens in their subdivision.

A community meeting is scheduled for tonight to address issues raised by those who live near Healthy Solutions, a foster home for four at-risk males ages 12 to 17 that opened this summer on Cudlipp Avenue in the Craney Island Farms community off U.S. 301. The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at Cool Spring Baptist Church.

Craney Island Farms resident David Liggan, who lives off Cudlipp Avenue, said he's concerned about a business operating in a residential area.

"We were never notified . . . or asked our opinion about the facility going into our area," Liggan said, referring to the home that provides 24-hour adult supervision and counseling services to teens who have behavioral issues.

Peggy Nicholls, who lives on Cudlipp Avenue, said the county should have alerted homeowners if a business was going in on their street. "I feel like the wool was pulled over our eyes," she said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Former Boys Ranch resident sues Sedgwick County--September 23rd, 2009--A former Boys Ranch resident has sued Sedgwick County, alleging it failed to protect him from being raped while he lived at the home for troubled teens in late 2004.

The plaintiff — who is 19 now and was 14 at the time he says he was raped — filed a lawsuit in June in state district court that has been moved to federal court in Wichita.  For complete story, click here.

 

Don't forget detainees at home--September 21st, 2009--Torture is wrong. Our nation believes this, and we are concerned about torture tactics used on detainees, as we should be. Shouldn't we also be concerned about abusive tactics used on our own population, particularly our children?

The Aug. 25 Ithaca Journal article headlined, "Staff severely injured youths," describes a U.S. Justice Department report that found staff at two juvenile-detention facilities in Tompkins County used excessive force in controlling some of their residents. Some might argue that the staff behavior is not torture, but if the results are injuries and even death, what name should we give it? We put them in detention centers in the hopes that they will reform themselves and become positive, productive citizens. How can they learn to behave in a peaceful manner when they are treated with violence?

Get-tough, boot-camp programs purport to help troubled teens, but they don't work. A review of the scientific evidence by the National Institutes of Health found that programs using fear and tough treatment are ineffective and may make teen criminal behavior even worse.  For complete story, click here.

 

Redmond wilderness school [SageWalk--Aspen Education Group] suspends operations--September 15th, 2009--A Redmond-based wilderness school said Tuesday it has agreed to suspend operations amid state and Lake County investigations into the death of a 16-year-old Portland boy on his first hike with the school, in a remote area east of Bend late last month.

Word of the halt to operations came one day after Lake County sheriff's deputies traveled from Lakeview and executed a search warrant at the Redmond office of SageWalk Wilderness School, as part of its continuing investigation into the death of Sergey Blashchishen.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

I'm OK, but you're not.--September 16th, 2009--So you have a troubled or problem teen. Let me guess, they come home from school and virtually lock themselves away in their bedroom. If they do come and join the family, they are plugged into their MP3 player or PSP. You actually have to demand putting the electronics away when at the dinner table; that is if they even join you for dinner. It’s a pretty common problem; I’d venture to say across Western society.  Let’s think back – when I was a teen, I’d plug into the cassette player with earphones on (I’m old enough that CD’s were not around). Once I was driving, I’d not even come home – I’d go driving. I was usually busy enough after school with work and theatre that there were some weeks I’d barely see my parents. Was I a problem or troubled child? My parents probably thought so, but guess who I thought had the problem?  It’s not any different today. Oh, the script may have changed some, the technology and access to information has drastically changed, but how we communicate (or lack of communication) remains the same. I’m curious though, have you ever asked your teen why they stay away from the family so much? Some of this is natural child development for certain, but choosing to stay home to study instead of joining the family for a ‘night out bowling’ is something else.  Yes, our teen can be defiant; sometimes it’s what they do best. But every now and then, we must remember to turn that magnifying glass away from them and onto ourselves. What are we doing to drive wedges into that gap? If we don’t know then we need to ask. So many teens feel they cannot talk to their parents, when in reality that is what everyone, both teens and parents, really want!  For complete story, click here.

 

Real life horrors revealed in Boot Camp--September 5th, 2009--The most disturbing aspect of Christian Duguay's Boot Camp is the fact that places such as that depicted actually exist. Places that promise rehabilitation for troubled youths that are nothing more than entities of torture that do more damage than good.  For complete story, click here.

 

3 charged in Ohio in teen's restraint death--September 2nd, 2009--COLUMBUS, Ohio — Three former employees of a Cleveland residential center for troubled teenagers were indicted Wednesday in the death of a 17-year-old girl who choked on vomit and suffocated after she was restrained face down, a control technique the governor has since banned.

Cynthia King, 32, of Warrensville Heights, Lazarita Menendez, 28, of Bedford Heights and Ebony Ray, 33, of Broadview Heights were indicted in Cuyahoga County on involuntary manslaughter and child-endangering charges in the death of Faith Finley at the Parmadale Family Services center in Parma.  For complete story, click here.

 

Portland teen collapses and dies during wilderness camp hike--September 1, 2009--(Webmater Note:  Aspen Education Group kills another kid) 

The Lake County Sheriff's Office is investigating the death of a Portland teen who collapsed during a hike as part of a wilderness camp exercise, a spokesman said today.

Sergey Blashchishen, 16, died Friday after collapsing about 2:30 p.m., said Deputy Chuck Pore. An autopsy was performed on Sunday but the results are incomplete and a cause of death has not been determined, Pore said.
 

Investigators are trying to find out if Blashchishen, who lived in Northeast Portland, had any medical problems that might have contributed to his death, Pore said. He had passed a physical the day before he died.

Blashchishen was attending the SageWalk wilderness school, a program for troubled teens based in Redmond. He was hiking with a group in northern Lake County between Burns and Bend when he got sick.

"He said he didn't feel good and shortly after that collapsed," Pore said.

The Bureau of Land Management has suspended the permit for SageWalk to operate on BLM land, pending the outcome of the investigation. It could not be confirmed if Blashchishen was on BLM property when he collapsed.  For complete story, click here.  (For more on this story, click here, here, here, and here.

 

Gay reparative therapy isn't advisable, says APA--August 31, 2009--The American Psychological Association has finally confirmed what MySpace Zach and his supporters knew back in 2005 – gay reparative therapies don’t work.


In an update to a 1997 resolution "Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation," the APA now advises that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.

"Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation," said Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the task force which examined the efficacy of so-called reparative therapy.”

APA appointed the six-member Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation in 2007 to review and update APA's 1997 resolution, "Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation," and to generate a report. APA was concerned about ongoing efforts to promote the notion that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy or approaches that mischaracterize homosexuality as a mental disorder.

The task force examined the peer-reviewed journal articles in English from 1960 to 2007, which included 83 studies. Most of the studies were conducted before 1978, and only a few had been conducted in the last 10 years. The group also reviewed the recent literature on the psychology of sexual orientation.

"Unfortunately, much of the research in the area of sexual orientation change contains serious design flaws," Glassgold said. "Few studies could be considered methodologically sound and none systematically evaluated potential harms."

Looking back at Zach
Zach Stark was for many the face of the vulnerable, oppressed gay teen.

Stark, then 16 and living in Bartlett, Tenn., chronicled his coming-out story in his MySpace blog.

He detailed his parents unfavorable reaction and wrote, “Today, my mother, father and I had a very long 'talk' in my room, where they let me know I am to apply for a fundamentalist Christian program for gays."

It would take place at Refuge, a youth program of Love in Action International, a Memphis group that runs a religion-based program intended to change the sexual orientation of gay men and women.

As mandated by Refuge, Stark's blog posts stopped the day he entered the facility, but debate and outrage over such programs did not.

A New York Times story published July 17, 2005, shortly after Stark entered Refuge, brought the matter to the forefront of the mainstream media with the headline “Gay Teenager Stirs a Storm.”

In that story, former teacher and GLSEN Executive Director Kevin Jennings told the New York Times, “All reputable health and education professional organizations have clearly and unequivocally denounced this ‘treatment’ as quackery.”

Closer to home, young people from the area organized a protest outside the Love In Action facility soon after the Stark was admitted to the program.

As days passed, the group's numbers swelled as the teens were joined by a wide range of people from the community forming what they called the Queer Action Coalition (QAC), concerned about Stark’s mental health after reading his ominous blog posts.

"It's like boot camp," Stark wrote before entering the facility. "If I do come out straight, I'll be so mentally unstable and depressed it won't matter."  For complete story, click here.

 

Caging Children--August 28th, 2009--Children under the age of 18 can't vote, serve as jurors, or join Blockbuster, but in the U.S. – the only developed nation with such a policy – they can be tried in adult courts and imprisoned in facilities designed for adults. A groundbreaking study from the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs could kick-start a national discussion about the foolishness of that policy.

The report, "From Time Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System," was compiled by Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor at the LBJ School, and her students. Its roots were tragic: Deitch and her group worked with the UT Law School Supreme Court Clinic on the case of Christopher Pittman, who, at age 12, was charged with killing his grandparents. He received a 30-year sentence – the mandatory minimum in South Carolina. After the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, Deitch explained, "we were sitting on a ton of research that we had done, so we thought it was vital to get it out there."  For complete story, click here.

 

Zoning board votes against home for troubled teens--August 26th, 2009--

Jeff Deerr does not want a group home for troubled teens in his neighborhood.

"I am definitely opposed to the idea," he said. "I go to work and I come home after working an eight-hour day and I have a peaceful neighborhood. I don't believe that doing something like this is right."

Deerr was among more than 25 residents from the Vinton Heights subdivision who sat in an Area Board of Zoning Appeals meeting Wednesday night for nearly four hours to speak out against proposed home.

The group home, proposed by Seeds of Hope Community Ministries, was slated to operate out of a residence at 2012 Valdez Drive in Lafayette if approved.

But the Board of Zoning Appeals voted 6-1 against the proposal, which led to a sea of cheers from residents in attendance.  For complete story, click here.
 

'All God's Children:' Exposing the abuses of children of missionaries--August 25th, 2009--Marilyn Shellrude Christman of Seattle was only 7 years old when she was sent to a boarding school for children of missionaries in Guinea, West Africa, in 1961.

For eight years, in the remote, isolated school, she says, she was emotionally and spiritually abused. At times, she was also physically and sexually abused — in some cases by a man who served as a dorm parent there, she said.

It wasn't until decades later that she realized she hadn't been the only abused child at Mamou Alliance Academy, a now-closed boarding school run by the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), an evangelical Protestant denomination.  For complete story, click here.

 

NY detention system faulted in juveniles' injuries--August 24th, 2009--ALBANY, N.Y. — Workers at four youth detention centers in New York caused dozens of serious injuries, including broken bones and teeth, when they routinely used force as a primary way to restrain juveniles and not just as a last resort, according to federal investigators.

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division also reported that youths in the state system failed to get needed counseling and mental health treatment, though most have psychological problems. The findings released Monday were the result of a nearly two-year probe.

Gladys Carrion, commissioner of the state Office of Children and Family Services, said they have begun overhauling the troubled system she took over 18 months ago, including a new restraint policy and hiring more mental health workers. "Much more still needs to be done," she said.

Investigators said conditions they found last year at the Lansing and Louis Gossett Jr. residential centers outside Ithaca and the Tryon residential centers for boys and girls in Johnstown violated the teens' constitutional rights as well as department policy.  For complete story, click here.

 

Payout over teen's boot camp tragedy--August 24th, 2009--The parents of a teenager beaten to death by staff at a boot camp in Hubei Province this month have been awarded 350,000 yuan (US$51,000) in compensation.

The money, which will be paid by a local education bureau, comes less than three weeks after Yao Jian, 14, died on an outward-bound training program intended to boost his confidence.

"The money will not ease the agony of losing our son," his father Yao Jun, 37, told China Daily yesterday. "We can only hope this tragedy will ring alarm for parents and the government to avoid such incidents."  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Really?  China is better at swift action than the US?  What's up with that?!  Strengthen and Pass HR 911 already.)

 

NEA Attacks Administration's Education Reform Plan 21 Aug 2009 The nation's largest teachers union sharply attacked President Obama's most significant school improvement initiative on Friday evening, saying that it puts too much emphasis on a "narrow agenda" centered on charter schools and echoes the Bush administration's "top-down approach" to reform. The National Education Association's criticism of Obama's $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" initiative came nearly a month after the president unveiled the competitive grant program...  For complete story, click here.  (No charter schools.  Improve Public Education!!!)

 

Woman sues state over sexual assault--August 18th, 2009--A 19-year-old who was sexually assaulted by a guard at a state juvenile-detention center last year has filed a lawsuit claiming the state failed to properly supervise the guard or protect her from his advances. 

In a lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court last month, the young woman's attorneys claim the state failed to properly train and supervise the on-call temporary guard at Echo Glen Children's Center or to fully investigate previous complaints about him.

The guard, 39-year-old Robert H. Fox, pleaded guilty in February to first-degree custodial sexual misconduct in connection with the assault, according to court documents. He now is serving an eight-month sentence in the King County Jail.  For complete story, click here.

 

One third of all children in jails are 'wrongly imprisoned' 13 Aug 2009 More than a third of children sent to prison last year were wrongly jailed, a report into child custody rates says. The study by Barnardo's found that the Government had breached its own guidance on child custody by allowing so many 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds to be imprisoned for a non-serious offences.  For complete story, click here.

 

DNA database has 300 children added a day 11 Aug 2009 More than 300 children a day are being put on to the DNA database fuelling fresh fears over the growth of the "Big Brother" state. Almost 1.1 million youngsters aged between ten and 17 have had their profiles recorded by the police since 2000, with a large proportion aged under 15, the Daily Telegraph can disclose. And around one in six are likely to have never been convicted of any crime.  For complete story, click here.

 

Teen sent to PEC home--August 10th, 2009--The grandmother of a teenaged boy being housed at a youth residential treatment facility in Prince Edward County. wants to know why he can't be treated closer to home.  The 14-year-old Cole Harbour boy, who was the subject of a recent Supreme Court of Nova Scotia case regarding his care, suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and related behavioural problems.   He was recently enrolled at the Bayfield Treatment Centre in Consecon by the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services. His grandmother -- who cannot be named in order to protect the boy's identity -- told The Intelligencer she wanted the boy to get help, but did not expect him to be moved out of the province.  "All we did was ask for help, not for him to be shipped away," she said.  She said she and her husband asked Community Services for help with the boy, whom she admits suffers from considerable behavioural issues, last year. As reported by the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, Community Services originally made arrangements for the boy's treatment at a facility in Utah after the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled it was permissible to send him there for treatment unavailable in his home province. However, after arrangements at both Cinnamon Hills Youth Crisis Centre and Provo Canyon School fell through, the boy was moved to Bayfield - a decision Patrick Eagan, the family's lawyer, says shows a definite motive. "It's just somewhere to shove this kid," he said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Former employee admits sex with teen at school for troubled girls (Alpine Academy in UT)--August 5th, 2009--An employee at a live-in treatment school for troubled girls in Tooele County admitted Wednesday to having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old female student.  Jonathan R. Carver, 29, of Kaysville, pleaded guilty in 3rd District Court to five counts of second-degree felony forcible sexual abuse.  He faces up to 15 years in prison on each count when he is sentenced Oct. 6 by 3rd District Judge Stephen Henriod.  Court documents detailing the original charges -- four counts of rape, two counts of forcible sodomy and one count of witness tampering -- indicate Carver had sex with the girl at least 20 times between October and December of 2008.  Carver and his wife were "house parents," responsible for taking care of eight girls every day as they underwent treatment for emotional and behavioral problems at Alpine Academy in Erda, according to the school's program director Janet Mulitalo.   For complete story, click here.

 

 

Chinese Youth Beaten to Death at "net addiction" "boot camp"--August 4th, 2009-- China's anti-internet addiction industry has claimed another victim, after supervisors at a rehabilitation camp allegedly beat a 16 year old inmate to death.  Deng Senshan had been sent to Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to "cure" him of his internet addiction, the AFP reports. His parents were paying $1000 for the treatment.  However, the youth ended up in solitary confinement shortly after arriving at the establishment, and was subsequently beaten to death by supervisors for "running too slowly", according to the news agency.  For complete story, click here.

 

Controversial Treatment Center Shuts Down--July 31st, 2009--Some Tri-State teens undergoing drug and alcohol rehabilitation at a controversial treatment facility may be home tonight after the last of the centers closed this week in Indianapolis.

Pathway Family Center had vacated its building earlier but was still housing teens in various homes. Sources tell the I-Team that ended this week with calls to parents to pick up their children. No one from Pathway returned the I-Team’s calls today, and the longtime emergency number for the center has been disconnected.

In the Cincinnati area, the program in Milford originally was called Kids Helping Kids. It used controversial methods that removed teens from their homes for months and sometimes more than a year. Teens spent entire days in classes that included hand motions, toddler's songs and other means some likened to a cult, but others said saved their lives.

After the I-Team’s original report, the program changed names and then shut down in Milford. Those teens were transported to the Indianapolis site instead.
(Pathway Family Center is CLOSED!!!!)  For complete story, click here. (Story does not include the fact that HEAL, ISAC, and other youth advocates fought diligently to expose and close Pathway.)

 

AHCA report cites kicking, spitting on teens, other reported abuses at Devereux House--July 29th, 2009--A Tallahassee group home for troubled teens currently under criminal investigation by law-enforcement officials was shut down by state health-care regulators in May following troubling reports of physical and verbal abuse of residents by center employees.  For complete story, click here.

 

Deadly Restraint & Seclusion--SILENT VICTIMS--July 21st, 2009  Click here for complete article from www.ktnv.com.

 

 

ADHD Drugs Linked to Sudden Death in Kids--Received July 25th, 2009 (Article: June 15th, 2009)--MONDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- Stimulant medications commonly prescribed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are associated with an increased risk of sudden death, but those deaths are still rare, new research finds.  For complete story, click here.

 

Report alleges multiple problems at Hinds juvenile facility--July 24th, 2009--Unreported suicide attempts, poor staff relations and failure to provide timely mental health evaluations continue at Hinds County's Henley-Young Juvenile Detention Center, according to a state  inspection report.

The state Juvenile Facilities Monitoring Unit inspected the detention  center on June 23 and gave its report to the county July 22.

Juvenile Facilities Monitoring Unit Director Donald Beard and Henley- Young's detention director Darren Farr did not return calls.

The report, obtained by The Clarion-Ledger, makes 14 recommendations.  It's unclear what could happen to the center if it doesn't follow  them, but county officials say they plan to.

"A crucial step in recognizing problems associated with a juvenile's  behavior is a mental health evaluation," the report states.

The inspection came after Hinds supervisors learned that seven  juveniles have attempted suicide at the center since January.

In one case, a girl was found with several socks tied around her  neck. In another, a boy repeatedly hit his head on the door of his cell.

Detention center staff never reported the cases to the county or  state, which must be done immediately, according to the most recent  report. For complete story, click here. (Webmaster note:  This is what happens at a "regulated" and state-run facility that has safeguards in place to prevent violations and harm to youth.  Now, take away the "regulation" and government oversight and what kind of abuses and violations do you think are probable?  The unimaginable happens to youth every day in behavior modification programs throughout the United States.  Keep your children at home.)

 

Court: Keep cleared juveniles' files--July 23rd, 2009--ALLENTOWN - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday ordered the preservation of court records of juveniles who are suing a corrupt Luzerne County Court judge.

Previously, when it overturned the convictions of youths who appeared in former Judge Mark Ciavarella's courtroom, the court said the records should be destroyed, prompting complaints from attorneys for the juveniles.

The attorneys said loss of the records could imperil the youths' ability to recover damages from the judge and others implicated in the corruption scandal.  For complete story, click here.  (For an update on this story, click here ,here or here.)

 

The APA's Nuremberg Defense By Scott Horton 20 Jul 2009 ...[T]he disclosures surrounding the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida give further proof that beginning in 2002, healthcare professionals, specifically psychologists, played an essential role at every stage in the development and application of torture techniques. The failure of professional organizations, and specifically the American Psychological Association, to acknowledge this and take appropriate countermeasures is disturbing...Professional oversight bodies have engaged in consistent evasion, and now the APA is focused on the relaxation of its ethics standards to provide defenses for psychologists who joined in the Bush Administration’s torture program.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Behavior Modification Programs for Teens Are Experiments In Torture.)

 

Detroit Public Schools moves closer to bankruptcy and privatization By Walter Gilberti 16 July 2009 Detroit teachers and schools employees are in danger of having their jobs, wages and benefits sacrificed in the interest of an anti-public schools agenda driven by Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb and the Obama administration. In a two-pronged attack on the continued existence of public schools in Detroit, Bobb has hired four private professional education management firms to oversee instruction at 17 Detroit high schools, while, at the same time, ratcheting up his earlier threat to institute bankruptcy proceedings.  For complete story, click here.

 

LDS seminary principal in court, hands over evidence--July 13th, 2009--PROVO — Officers came to court Monday morning prepared to re-arrest a former LDS seminary principal accused of sexual misconduct with a 16-year-old student.

Michael J. Pratt, 37, the former principal at Lone Peak High School's LDS seminary program, was arrested Thursday on numerous allegations, but was bailed out on $20,000 cash-only bail at 3:37 a.m. Saturday.

"Look," an emotional Pratt told the media upon exiting the courtroom. "I am hopeful that the truth will be fully presented at the appropriate time."

Officers from the Utah County Special Victims Task Force came to 4th District Court Monday for Pratt's review of bail hearing to express concern that Pratt may have been tampering with evidence on his laptop computer.

Prosecutor Guy Probert told Judge Steven Hansen that there were some "evidentiary questions" relating to the laptop, which had been sent out of the area with Pratt's family after the allegations surfaced. It is believed that the computer belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but Probert could not officially confirm that.

"The laptop is being returned by mail. A copy of the hard drive is being produced today," Probert said.  For complete story, click here.  For story update, click here.  (Webmaster note: Don't send your kid to Utah!)

 

One teen runaway found, two missing--July 9th, 2009--Update on three runaways who escaped abusive wilderness program...A national organization is pleading for information about a 15-year-old girl missing from McDowell for more than a year.  In separate cases, sheriff's deputies have located one of two teenage runaways for whom they've been searching. The other one hasn't been spotted.  As part of its ongoing search, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is again asking for the public's help in locating Diana Hernandez Yanez, 15, of Yancey Street in Marion. She was 14 when she left her home on July 21, 2008. Neighbors told police that they saw her get into a red pickup truck that morning. Friends say the truck, a red 2000 Chevrolet S-10 low-rider pickup, belonged to 19-year-old Andres Velasquez Tinoco of Coxes Creek Road, whom Diana reportedly met just a couple of weeks prior to her disappearance.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

PRISON NEWS

Innocent prisoner's angry outburst delays release--July 28th, 2010--A Houston man expected to be freed today after being imprisoned 27 years for a rape he did not commit will have to wait one more day after reacting "emotionally" to the reality of his release this morning.

Bob Wicoff, an attorney for Michael Anthony Green, said his client was angry and would need another day to compose himself before having a bond set while the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal rules on his actual innocence.

"He was upset," Wicoff said. "Hopefully he'll be fine tomorrow."

Green was expected to be granted a personal recognizance bond by visiting state District Judge Mike Wilkinson this morning. He was not brought into the courtroom, but loud shouting could be heard from behind the door to the court's holdover cell.

Wicoff said the shouting was Green.

"This has been a gross perversion of justice and he's a smart guy and he knows it," Wicoff said. "He's angry."

The release was the next step in proceedings to declare Green actually innocent of a 1983 sexual assault.

Green's family members who spoke as they walked from the courtroom said Green should have been immediately released regardless of his behavior.

"He's been in jail too long already," said a woman who identified herself as a relative and did not give her name as reporters swarmed her as she walked to the elevators in the Harris County Criminal Courthouse.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

NYC Jail Doctor Arrested for Sexually Abusing Inmate--July 28th, 2010--A Rikers Island doctor was charged with sexually abusing a female inmate, authorities said Wednesday.

Dr. Frank Leveille, a 12-year employee at the jail, was arrested  in the early morning hours on two charges of sexual misconduct.

Leveille, a 70-dollar-an-hour doctor who worked with female inmates, is an employee of Prison Health Services, a private company that handles medical care at Rikers.

“The physician is charged with... violating his fundamental professional responsibility,” said Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.

A prison spokesperson declined comment and Leveille's attorney did not immediately return a call for comment.

A female inmate alleges the sexual abuse occurred on March 28 at 2 a.m.  New York law says it is illegal for a prison facility employee to have any sexual relations with an inmate.

Leveille’s arrest marks the second medical scandal at Rikers in as many weeks.  Dr. Trevor Parks resigned on July 14th amid allegations he was not certified to provide medical care to prison inmates -- yet he was managing the health care of 12,000 inmates.

Critics charge Prison Health Services provides second-rate care in order to save money, the for-profit firm has a $123-million-dollar New York State contract.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Inmate's case puts focus on a flawed system--July 28th, 2010--The victim testified at Derrick Williams' kidnapping and rape trial that her assailant pulled his gray T-shirt over her head to keep her from seeing his face.

A few moments later, she managed to escape her attacker, driving away with that telltale T-shirt still in the car.

The gray shirt, identified vaguely by Williams' girlfriend as similar to one he owned, provided prosecutors with their only physical evidence in the 1993 Manatee County trial that sent Williams to prison to serve two consecutive life sentences for kidnapping and sexual battery.

This week, that same gray T-shirt became crucial evidence of another kind. Tests of sweat stains and skin cells from inside the collar of the shirt excluded Williams ``as the contributor of this biological material,'' according to a motion filed by the Innocence Project of Florida in Manatee Circuit Court Tuesday.

``These DNA results transform the evidentiary value of the primary piece of physical evidence the state used to link Williams to the crime,'' the motion stated. ``What at trial was the state's most powerful physical evidence of guilt is now powerful evidence of innocence.''

Williams, 47, remains in prison. Twelfth Circuit prosecutors told reporters Tuesday that they intend to fight his motion for an evidentiary hearing.

``We asked for a sit down and try to talk this through,'' Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida, said Wednesday. ``They said they won't meet with us. Well, we'll have our meeting in court.''

Earlier this month, after an embarrassing string of DNA exonerations, the state Supreme Court appointed an innocence commission to examine the procedural flaws that led to so many wrongful convictions in Florida. The case of Derrick Williams, though he's technically still a convicted rapist, featured several recurring themes in those lousy cases.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Prison Heat: Hunger Strike Highlights Summer’s Deadly Toll on U.S. Inmates--July 26th, 2010--As heatwaves swept the Northeast earlier this month, 30 inmates in solitary confinement at New Hampshire State Prison went on hunger strike to protest stifling temperatures inside the prison’s Special Housing Unit. According to the Concord Monitor, “Inmates in SHU cannot open windows and must remain in their cells, usually alone, for 23 hours a day. Unlike inmates in the prison’s general population, they also can’t go outside.” One visitor to the prison said that inmates were “sitting in pure sweat,” and had begun flooding their cells with a few inches of water in order to cool off.

A Department of Corrections spokesperson told the Monitor that inmates were refusing to eat until fans were installed, wither in cells or in nearby hallways. According to the paper, fans had recently been removed due to “safety concerns”: Many prisoners, the DOC claimed, “were tearing them apart and fashioning them into weapons.” Yet the prison also refused to place fans in the unit’s hallways, where they might have benefitted both staff and inmates.

When purposefully used against prisoners in the so-called War on Terror, “extreme temperatures”–including high temperatures reaching 100 degrees–have been widely decried as torture, or at least as cruel and inhuman treatment. Yet temperatures at this level are not unusual in many U.S. prisons, especially in the South, and rarely arouse resistance from anyone but the prisoners themselves. The New Hampshire hunger strikers gave up after about a week. But their protest highlights the brutal and sometime deadly conditions that persist in America’s prisons every summer.

In one high-profile case in 2009, Marcia Powell, a 48-year old inmate at Arizona’s Perryville Prison, was baked to death in the midday sun. Powell, whom court records show had a history of schizophrenia, substance abuse, and mild mental retardation, was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution. On a day when the Arizona sun had driven the temperature to 108 degrees, she was parked outdoors in an unroofed, wire-fenced holding cell while awaiting transfer to another part of the prison. A deputy warden and two guards had been stationed in a control center 20 yards away, but nearly four hours had passed when she was found collapsed on the floor of the human cage. Doctors at a local hospital pronounced Powell comatose from heat stroke, and she died later that night after being taken off life support. (Two local churches stepped in to provide a proper funeral and burial.) The Maricopa County Medical Examiner ruled the death an accident, caused by “complications of hyperthermia due to environmental heat exposure.” This despite the fact that Powell had blistering and first and second degree “thermal injuries” on face, arms, and upper body.

Following Powell’s death, the Arizona Department of Corrections banned most uses of unshaded outdoor holding cells in Arizona, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” Most Southern states already restrict their use. But baking in the sun is only one of many ways to die in America’s prisons in the summertime. Recent years have seen scattered reports of heat-related prison deaths in California and Texas, among others. The prevalence of mental illness among the victims may be linked to anti-psychotic drugs, which raise the body temperature and cause dehydration, and at the same time have a tranquilizing effect that may mask thirst.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Va. corrections department sued--July 22nd, 2010--Two civil rights groups have sued the Virginia Department of Corrections for banning a handbook from state prisons that explains the court system, methods for legal research and constitutional rights, according to reporter Anita Kumar.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild filed suit Wednesday morning in the Western District of Virginia, claiming that the state violated the 1st and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

"Virginia prisons are banning a document that explains to prisoners how they can exercise their constitutional rights to protect themselves from physical abuse, poor conditions and other mistreatment,'' center attorney Rachel Meeropol said. "If it is dangerous to educate people about the Constitution, there are a lot of law schools who are going to be in trouble."  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Judge Rules Procedures at Tamms Supermax Violate Constitution--July 21st, 2010--A federal judge yesterday ruled that current procedures for sending prisoners to the Tamms Correctional Center in southern Illinois–and keeping them there indefinitely–is in violation of the 14th Amendment to U.S. Constitution, which guarantees due process of law. The judge ordered that significant changes be made at the notorious state supermax.

George Pawlaczyk, whose award-winning coverage last year exposed abuses at Tamms, reports in theBelleville News-Democrat:

A federal judge has ruled that even inmates termed the “worst of the worst” by state prison system officials have a constitutional right to a hearing before they are sent to what many consider the harshest prison in Illinois — the solitary-only Tamms Correctional Center.

U.S. District Court Judge G. Patrick Murphy, sitting in federal court in East St. Louis, has ruled that all inmates transferred to Tamms, the state’s only supermax prison, must be given a swift hearing and told why they are being sent to the lockup, where most prisoners spend 23 hours a day in their cells and are let out only to walk alone in a steel cage.  For complete story, click here.

 

Dallas County Sheriff’s lieutenant fired for filming female inmates in shower--July 20th, 2010--An 18-year Dallas County Sheriff’s Department veteran has been fired for using cameras to look at female inmates in the shower, officials said Monday.

Lt. Steven Gentry, a manager at the south tower jail, was found to have violated department policy, sheriff’s spokeswoman Kim Leach said. She said an internal affairs investigation found he exhibited “conduct unbecoming.”

“We followed procedures, and he was terminated according to our policies,” Leach said.

Sheriff Lupe Valdez’s April 2009 newsletter has a photo on the front page of Gentry speaking with the media about the new jail building.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Lawsuit accuses Ohio jail of stun-gun abuses--July 17th, 2010--COLUMBUS - Corrections officers at a central Ohio jail regularly use pain-inducing stun guns to subdue inmates when there's no physical threat and when inmates are restrained, outnumbered, disoriented or mentally disabled, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court by the Ohio Legal Rights Service on behalf of three inmates, says the alleged actions at the Franklin County jail in Columbus violate constitutional rights as well as jail policy.

It seeks class action status to include current inmates as well as those who become jailed while the suit is pending.

The Legal Rights Service, an independent state agency, says video and written reports show that guards have improperly used stun guns several times since at least January 2008 "to inflict pain, fear, corporal punishment and humiliation" when inmates wouldn't obey commands or used profanity or insults.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

ACLU says California DNA law violates privacy--July 14th, 2010--Challenging a California law that requires police to collect the DNA of all suspected felons, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer told a federal appeals court Tuesday that the government should not be allowed to take the "genetic blueprint" of someone who hasn't been convicted of a crime.

One-third of the 300,000 Californians arrested on felony charges each year are never convicted, but the state now can "seize, search and analyze the DNA of everyone," attorney Michael Risher told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

He said the voter-approved law allowing DNA testing after all felony arrests sacrifices privacy in exchange for questionable gains in identifying criminals.

The three-judge panel questioned whether DNA sampling is a major invasion of privacy, but indicated that the California law may be vulnerable because of a year-old ruling in another case.

Judge Milan Smith said DNA testing, taken with a swab from the inner cheek, is no more intrusive than fingerprinting and is "a really good way of identifying people." He said Risher was asking government officials to be "Luddites (who) can't use modern technology."

But Smith said the court is bound by the precedent of its June 2009 ruling in a case from Las Vegas. That 2-1 decision said police violated the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches when they extracted DNA from a man who was under arrest - but was not suspected of any other crimes - so they could enter it into a criminal database.

'hands are tied'

If the California case is similar, "our hands are tied" and the court must overturn the law, Smith told Deputy Attorney General Daniel Powell, the state's lawyer. Smith said the state would have to ask the full 27-judge court to order a new hearing before a larger panel, which would have the authority to overturn the Nevada ruling.

Powell argued that the current case is different because California has a law that authorizes post-arrest DNA testing and Nevada does not. He also said the California law protects privacy by making it a crime to release DNA information to anyone but a law enforcement officer.

California voters approved Proposition 69 in November 2004 to expand a previous law allowing police to collect DNA samples only from suspects who had been convicted previously of a sex crime or a violent felony. The new law, implemented in two stages, extended the requirement to anyone who had been convicted of a felony or arrested on a felony sex charge and, starting in January 2009, to anyone arrested on any felony charge.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Elizabeth Haskell of Oakland, was arrested in March 2009 at an anti-war rally in San Francisco on suspicion of forcibly trying to free another demonstrator, but was eventually released without charges, the ACLU said. She said she agreed to provide a DNA sample after police told her she would be charged with another crime and held in jail if she refused.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Washington County jailers used inmate as enforcer--July 14th, 2010--Washington County jailers used a violent inmate to physically assault and otherwise discipline other unruly inmates, sending at least one to the hospital, according to federal prosecutors and a former correctional officer on Wednesday.

That officer, Valeria Wilson Jackson, pleaded guilty to obstructing justice Wednesday morning in federal court in St. Louis and admitted that she lied to the FBI to cover up the assaults.

She also claimed that her father, the former chief deputy of the sheriff's office, was one of those who enlisted that violent inmate in the assaults, rewarded him with cigarettes and subsequently altered jail documents to cover up his actions.

In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Fara Gold, of the civil rights division in Washington, mentioned multiple inmates who were allegedly assaulted in this way. The inmates were identified only by their initials, as was “T.M.,” the inmate used in the assaults.  For complete story, click here.
 

2 state prison inmates dead in apparent suicides--July 12th, 2010--FLORENCE - Arizona Department of Corrections officials say two prison inmates died Sunday after apparent suicide attempts.

Robert Medina was found unresponsive in his cell at the Eyman state prison near Florence. Prison officials say efforts to revive the 29-year-old failed.

Medina had been sentenced 2009 in Maricopa County to serve 15 years for kidnapping and armed robbery. He was being held in the prison's maximum security unit.

Anthony Lester was held at the state prison in Tucson and died after being taken to a hospital late Sunday. The 26-year-old was serving a 12 year sentence for aggravated assault in Maricopa County.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

ACLU alleges use of ‘squirrel cages’ at jail--July 10th, 2010--NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana jail routinely humiliates suicidal prisoners by forcing them to wear skimpy shorts that say “Hot Stuff” on the rear and confines them in tiny “squirrel cages” for weeks at a time, a civil liberties group said Thursday.

In an open letter to St. Tammany Parish officials, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana says it is unconstitutional for the parish jail to confine prisoners in cages that are three feet wide, three feet long and seven feet tall. Guards and prisoners refer to them as squirrel cages, the ACLU says.

“We understand that the cages have been frequently used to hold more than one prisoner at a time, and that staff often ignore prisoners’ requests to use the bathroom, forcing people to urinate in discarded milk cartons,” wrote Marjorie Esman, the group’s executive director.
A St. Tammany Parish code requires dogs to be kept in cages that are at least six feet wide and six feet deep, larger than the cages that prisoners are using, Esman wrote.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Supermax Prisons: Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading--July 9th, 2010--This week the European Court of Human Rights temporarily halted the extradition of four terrorism suspects from the United Kingdom to the United States. The court concluded that the applicants had raised a serious question whether their possible long-term incarceration in a U.S. “supermax” prison would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “torture or … inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The court noted that “complete sensory isolation, coupled with total social isolation, can destroy the personality and constitutes a form of inhuman treatment which cannot be justified by the requirements of security or any other reason,” and called for additional submissions from the parties before finally deciding the applicants’ claim.  For complete story, click here.

 

Illnesses blamed on prison recycling program--July 7th, 2010--MARIANNA -- (AP) -- When former prison worker Freda Cobb developed sores on her arms, legs and back in 1997, she didn't connect them to an inmate work program that recycles computers and other electronic goods at a penal institution in the Florida Panhandle.

Nor when her hair fell out, when she had abdominal pains, when her weight shot up or when she developed other symptoms.

Now, however, the 49-year-old medically retired guard and cook supervisor at the Marianna Federal Correctional Institution is certain that byproducts of the electronic recycling program are to blame for those ills, as well as her memory loss, temporary blindness, ear pain and migraine headaches. Her uterus was removed after its size tripled.

She and hundreds of other federal prison workers, inmates and others with similar complaints in Florida and six other states say the program -- which has been criticized in a government report for inadequate safety procedures -- exposed them to high levels of heavy metals and other toxic materials.

Cobb says victims inhaled metallic dust that filled the air like pollen and took it home or back to prison dormitories and dining facilities on their clothing. Fans blew the dust throughout buildings that housed the recycling activities. People who came to buy computers at flea market-like sales say they also were exposed.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

ACLU Strikes Deal To Shutter Notorious Unit 32 At Mississippi State Penitentiary--June 4th, 2010--NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) today struck a deal to shutter the notorious Unit 32 at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, the subject of a longstanding ACLU lawsuit challenging inhumane conditions and a lack of medical and mental health care.

As part of the deal, which paves the way for resolving the ACLU lawsuit, MDOC officials have pledged to transfer the entire population of Unit 32 to other facilities over the course of the next several months, move all seriously mentally ill prisoners to MDOC's mental health facility in Meridian, MS and remedy the inadequate medical and mental health care in Unit 32 so long as any prisoners remain there. As part of the agreement, the ACLU will also monitor during the next year the medical and mental health care provided at all of the facilities in the state to which Unit 32 prisoners will be transferred to ensure they meet constitutional requirements.

"We applaud MDOC Commissioner Christopher Epps' decision to take this important step, and the work that he and his staff have undertaken during the course of the Unit 32 litigation to reform one of the worst prisons in the nation," said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. "These reforms have resulted in considerable savings to the taxpayers of the state of Mississippi, and more importantly the community is far safer as a result of these reforms because prisoners are not doing their time in an incubator for violence and mental illness."

The ACLU, in collaboration with the law firm Holland & Knight, filed a lawsuit in 2002 on behalf of all of Unit 32's death row prisoners, charging that they were held 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, in cells where summer heat indexes reached 120 degrees, the toilets were non-functional, the housing areas were routinely awash in sewage from broken plumbing and they were subjected day and night to the ravings of severely psychotic prisoners whose mental illnesses were left untreated. For complete story, click here.
 

 

Prisoners Unfairly Assigned To Draconian And Unconstitutional Units--June 2nd, 2010--WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretive housing units inside federal prisons in which prisoners are condemned to live in stark isolation from the outside world are unconstitutional, violate the religious rights of prisoners and are at odds with U.S. treaty obligations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

In comments filed today with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the ACLU called for the immediate closure of all Communications Management Units (CMUs), which were ostensibly created to house and control the communications activities of prisoners with suspected terrorist ties. But because the criteria for placement in a CMU are so vague and overbroad, and because those criteria are applied by prison officials with no outside review or accountability, CMUs in fact house prisoners who have never been convicted or even accused of any terrorism-related crime.

"These units are an unprecedented attack on the constitutional rights of prisoners and those in the outside world who wish to communicate with them," said David Fathi, Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. "There is no justification for forcing prisoners who have never been convicted of any crime of terrorism to serve their sentences in severely isolated housing units, especially since prison officials are already able to address any legitimate security concerns by monitoring the mail, telephone calls and visits of people in their custody."

The Bureau of Prisons has long been operating two CMUs without regulatory authority – one at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana and one at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The ACLU's comments oppose proposed federal regulations which, if adopted, would formally authorize the CMUs' operation.

The ACLU last year filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Bureau's creation of the CMUs on behalf of Sabri Benkahla, an American citizen who has been imprisoned at the Terre Haute CMU since October 2007, despite being found not guilty of all terrorism-related charges against him and praised as a "model citizen" by his sentencing judge, who said the chances of his ever committing another crime are "infinitesimal."  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Unattractive Defendants 22 Percent More Likely to Be Convicted, Study Finds--May 17th, 2010--According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences - an average of 22 months longer in prison.

The study, "When Emotionality Trumps Reason," was authored by Cornell graduate Justin Gunnell and Stephen Ceci, a professor of developmental psychology. It examines how some jurors make decisions rationally, based on facts and logic, while others reason emotionally, taking into consideration factors unrelated to the case - attractiveness being one of them.

The study consisted of 169 Cornell psychology undergraduates, who were classified as either rational or emotional decision-makers through an online survey. They were then given case studies of defendants, complete with a photograph and profile, were read jury instructions and listened to the cases' closing arguments.

In serious cases with strong evidence, there was little difference in the conviction rate between attractive and unattractive defendants. But in more minor cases, with ambiguous evidence, jurors were more biased toward the good-looking.

Gunnell, who works as a litigator in New York City, said the findings could impact how attorneys select juries.  For complete story, click here.
 

Publisher Prevails in Public Records Suit Against GEO Group; Obtains Records and $40,000 in Attorney Fees--May 12th, 2010--Palm Beach, FL – Prison Legal News, a non-profit monthly publication that reports on criminal justice-related issues, announced today that it had prevailed in a public records suit filed against Boca Raton-based GEO Group, the nation's second-largest private prison company.

Prison Legal News (PLN) filed the suit in 2005 under Florida's public records law, after GEO failed to produce documents related to contractual violations and litigation against the company that resulted in settlements or verdicts. Under state law, GEO is required to comply with public records requests.

Over the past five years the Circuit Court granted four motions to compel against GEO ordering the company to produce the records. GEO finally did so just before a summary judgment hearing in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, providing a spreadsheet of successful litigation against the company and agreeing to pay $40,000 to PLN in attorney's fees. GEO also produced copies of the complaints and settlements in ten lawsuits filed against the company that had resulted in the largest monetary payouts.

"While we are pleased with the eventual outcome of this case, we are disappointed that GEO decided to drag it out over five years, which was clearly a delaying tactic," stated PLN editor Paul Wright. "The public, which funds GEO's for-profit prison operations through taxpayer dollars, deserves better in terms of compliance with Florida's public records law."

PLN's attorney, Frank Kreidler, who specializes in public records and Sunshine Law litigation, agreed. "This was a long, tough case in which GEO failed to produce the requested records years ago, which would have made them available to the public through PLN's reporting. It is a disservice to the public when GEO fails to comply with the state's public records statute."

The case is Prison Legal News v. The GEO Group, Inc., Fifteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida for Palm Beach County, Case No.50 2005 CA 011195 AA. PLN was ably represented by attorney Frank A. Kreidler.

In other recent news, a report by the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy released on April 9 found it was uncertain whether private prisons in Florida produce savings of at least seven percent as required by state law. Further, the report found that there was insufficient data to determine the efficacy of education and rehabilitation programs provided by private prison companies. On April 13, Florida officials announced that GEO Group was losing its contracts to operate the Graceville and Moore Haven correctional facilities. _____________________________

Prison Legal News (PLN), founded in 1990 and based in Brattleboro, Vermont, is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting human rights in U.S. detention facilities. PLN publishes a monthly magazine that includes reports, reviews and analysis of court rulings and news related to prisoners' rights and criminal justice issues. PLN has almost 7,000 subscribers nationwide and operates a website (www.prisonlegalnews.org) that includes a comprehensive database of prison and jail-related articles, news reports, court rulings, verdicts, settlements and related documents. PLN is a project of the Human Rights Defense Center.

For further information, please contact:

Paul Wright, Editor
Prison Legal News
P.O. Box 2420
Brattleboro, VT 05303
(802) 257-1342
pwright@prisonlegalnews.org

Frank A. Kreidler, Attorney
1124 S. Federal Highway
Lake Worth, FL 33460
(561) 586-6226
faklaw@yahoo.com
(Press Release Complete Entry)
 

Prison officials open "full investigation" into abuse claims--May 11th, 2010--State prison officials said Monday that they had dramatically broadened their investigation of alleged racism and cruelty by guards at the High Desert State Prison in Susanville, California. The move came in response, officials said, to a Bee investigation published on Sunday and Monday about claims of abuse of prisoners in a special behavior modification program.  For Complete Story, Click Here.
 

 

California prison behavior units aim to control troublesome inmates--May 11th, 2010--Standing over a small metal sink, a prisoner pours water over his head and face. It's usually the only way to bathe, and offers a brief respite from staring at barren, pockmarked walls in a tiny cell.

Such is daily life inside the behavior unit at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, said Tally Molina, an inmate allowed out of his cell once every third day for a quick shower.

Asked how he occupies his time, Molina spoke of meals and some reading, but added: "Nothing really breaks the monotony."

Behavior units were created in six California prisons as a middle ground between the general prison population and security housing that inmates call "the hole." The behavior units were designed for troublemakers or those who reject cellmates. Since their inception in 2005, well over 1,500 inmates have passed through behavior units, where reduced privileges are supposed to be combined with "life skills" classes.

A Bee investigation found that the units are marked by extreme isolation and deprivation. Most of the classes were halted by budget cuts. Some inmates endure lives devoid of exercise, social interaction, even time outside of the cell – for months on end. In interviews, many seemed confused about the purpose of the units and desperate about their future.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

'Three strikes' can count juvenile convictions--April 20th, 2010--The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld California judges' authority to count adult felons' convictions in juvenile court in determining whether to sentence them to life in prison under the state's "three strikes" law.

The court denied a San Jose man's appeal of his 2005 sentence for possessing a gun as a convicted felon. Vince Nguyen's sentence was doubled, to 32 months, based on his assault conviction in a 1999 juvenile court proceeding, when he was 16. Under the three strikes law, he could have been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison if his record had included a second such conviction as a juvenile.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Mistaken IDs under scrutiny as Texas leads nation in wrongful convictions--April 14th, 2010--HOUSTON—Justice, equal and exact to all, is supposed to be blind. But in the case of Anthony Robinson, it also turned out to be deaf. 
These days, even with a practice in international law and  immigration, Robinson enters the Harris County Criminal Justice  Center only when absolutely necessary. Maybe that’s because 23 years  ago, he was brought to the courthouse in shackles.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Lawmakers challenge Forensic Science Commission chairman's priorities--April 8th, 2010--AUSTIN – State lawmakers suggested Wednesday that the prosecutor Gov.  Rick Perry placed in charge of the Texas Forensic Science Commission  is doing more to impede cases than investigate them.  The chairman, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, has  concentrated on clarifying the forensic commission's policies and  procedures and putting them into a manual rather than holding  hearings on a death-penalty case that has raised questions about  arson convictions statewide, members of the House Public Safety  Committee charged.  The lawmakers wanted to hear about changes that Bradley has attempted  to institute – including asking his fellow commissioners to destroy  most of their e-mails after a day and to not speak with the media. He  also has sought to discontinue the commission's practice of allowing 
members from the public to address them during their meetings, his  colleagues said.  Such directives "really undermine public confidence. That's what  we're asking about," said Rep. Stephen Frost, D-Atlanta.  In October, Perry abruptly replaced three members of the nine-person  forensics commission just as it was about to hear testimony from a 
fire expert in the arson case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was  executed in 2004.  Craig Beyler, a nationally recognized arson expert, is among a half- dozen prominent fire authorities who have questioned evidence in the 
case. Willingham was convicted of starting a Corsicana house fire  that killed his two children. The experts' examinations found the  fire investigation was fraught with what they called wives' tales and  junk science.  for complete story, click here.
 

 

Kentucky jailer jailed--March 31st, 2010--PARIS, Ky. — A jailer in central Kentucky has been sentenced to 90 
days in jail after a jury convicted him on criminal charges following the death of an inmate.  For complete story, click here.

 

ACLU Lawsuit Charges Idaho Prison Officials Promote Rampant Violence--March 11th, 2010--BOISE, ID – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Idaho today filed a class action federal lawsuit charging that officials at the Idaho Correctional Center (ICC) promote and facilitate a culture of rampant violence that has led to carnage and suffering among prisoners at the state-owned facility operated by the for-profit company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, the lawsuit charges that epidemic violence at the facility is the direct result of, among other things, ICC officials turning a blind eye to the brutality, a prison culture that relies on the degradation, humiliation and subjugation of prisoners, a failure to discipline guards who intentionally arrange assaults and a reliance on violence as a management tool. 

"In my 39 years of suing prisons and jails, I have never confronted a more disgraceful, revolting and inexcusable case of mass abuse and federal rights violations than this one," said Stephen Pevar, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU. "The level of unnecessary human suffering is appalling. Prison officials have utterly failed to uphold their constitutional obligation to protect prisoners from being violently harmed and we must seek court intervention."  For complete story, click here.

 

Solitary confinement poses a danger to everyone--February 26th, 2010--

The Maine Legislature is considering a bill to require constitutional safeguards when prisoners are relegated to solitary confinement — Maine’s segregation unit certainly qualifies as solitary confinement — and to preclude solitary confinement for prisoners suffering from serious mental illness. It is groundbreaking legislation and goes a long way to correct a historic wrong turn in corrections.

Back in the 1980s, explosive growth of the prison population combined with the closure — deinstitutionalization — of public mental hospitals resulted in massive overcrowding in the prisons and a large proportion of prisoners suffering from serious mental illness. Prison rehabilitation programs had also been drastically cut back.

There was good research showing that crowding and idleness result in sharp rises in the rates of violence, psychiatric breakdown and suicide in prisons. But instead of alleviating the crowding, re-instituting rehabilitation and finding somewhere that individuals suffering from mental illness could receive needed treatment, authorities took a wrong turn and reacted to the rising violence by locking down prisoners they castigated as “the worst of the worst” in their solitary cells. Recent research suggests that this kind of isolation fails to reduce violence in the prisons. But there are some harmful effects.

In solitary confinement, the prisoner is isolated from others in a cell nearly 24 hours per day. In Maine, the cell doors are solid metal, so the prisoner has to shout merely to be heard by staff or residents of adjacent cells. The prisoner eats meals alone in his cell and remains almost entirely idle with no programs to permit him to increase socially desirable skills. This is not “the hole” of yesteryear. Lights are on around the clock and the doors open by remote control. The isolation and idleness are near total. Staff pass by the cells and slide food trays through slots in the door, but meaningful communication rarely occurs.  For complete story, click here.

 

Defender, prosecutor in feud over evidence--January 15th, 2010--Broward's public defender has leveled a broadside against State Attorney Mike Satz's office, saying his prosecutors systematically sit on evidence favorable to defendants, cover up for bad cops and use a double standard of justice that favors the wealthy and influential.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Fake DNA prompts change in criminal forensics--January 13th, 2010--America’s fascination with the use of forensic science to solve crimes is best proven by the explosion of TV shows dealing with the topic, from dramas like CSI and Cold Case to reality shows like Forensic Files and The Bureau.


During the past two decades, advances in forensics — the use of 
science and technology to investigate and establish facts in courts 
of law — have led to a seismic change in how police work is conducted 
and what jurors expect when hearing a case.

Although forensic evidence is available only in 10 to 20 percent of 
all criminal cases, the public places great weight on its inclusion, 
a fact that’s keenly aware to prosecutors and defense attorneys. 
Perhaps the main reason is improvements made in DNA profiling, or the 
analysis of human material like blood, semen, skin tissue or hair 
that can be used to precisely identify an individual.

The best-known example of DNA profiling’s impact is the Innocence 
Project, a nationwide non-profit group that uses testing to determine 
if a prisoner has been wrongfully convicted. Since the group began in 
1992, more than 240 people in the United States have been exonerated, 
including 17 who were waiting to be executed on Death Row.

Just last month, the longest-incarcerated victim of a wrongful 
conviction was freed due to the Innocence Project’s work. James Bain 
— who had been imprisoned for 35 years for kidnapping, rape and 
burglary — was exonerated by DNA testing. Before the project’s 
involvement, his appeal was denied four times by the courts.

But forensics came under fire last summer when scientists in Israel 
were able to create DNA evidence capable of identifying the wrong 
person, causing profiling’s supposed infallibility to become suspect. 
The same bio-tech firm that did the research, however, has developed 
a system to detect the difference between natural and manufactured 
DNA, based on the lack of methylation — a chemical reaction — in the 
artificial sample.  For complete story, click here.

 

JUDGING THE JUDGES--December 30th, 2009--Just 12 chief federal judges wield almost exclusive power over secret 
misconduct investigations of more than 2,000 fellow jurists — though  some have themselves been accused of botching reviews or committing  ethical blunders, according to a Houston Chronicle review.


At least four current or former chief circuit judges have been the  subject of recent high-profile complaints about their behavior; one  posted photos of naked women painted to look like cows and other  graphic images on his publicly accessible Web site; another  manipulated the outcome of a vote in a death penalty case.


Not one faced formal discipline.


Nationwide, the integrity of the federal judicial misconduct system  relies heavily on chief judges. Each oversees complaints — more than  6,000 in the last 10 years — against all circuit, district, senior,  bankruptcy and magistrate judges in multi-state regions called circuits.  Third Circuit Chief Judge Anthony Scirica, who is also chairman of 
the executive committee of the Judicial Conference of the United  States, told the Chronicle, “The federal judiciary takes its ethical  responsibilities with the utmost seriousness. Every misconduct  complaint is carefully reviewed.”


He was the only chief circuit judge who directly responded to  Chronicle requests for comment, though other circuits' staff replied.  In seven circuits, according to the Chronicle analysis, supervising  judges took no public disciplinary action at all in the last decade,  meaning not a single federal judge faced any sanctions in 29 states  with more than 875 full-time federal judges, despite thousands of  complaints.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Dallas County jail guard quits after inmate's 'lap dance'--December 30th, 2009--A Dallas County jail guard has resigned while under investigation for  allowing a 20-year-old male inmate to perform a sexually suggestive 
dance for her to music earlier this month, according to Sheriff’s  Department reports.

The “lap dance” occurred in the county’s new direct supervision jail,  where guards supervise inmates from inside the housing pods — a  growing trend in corrections.  For complete story, click here.

 

Jails to limit inmate mail to postcards only--December 29th, 2009--Heidi Boghosian receives hundreds of letters each week from inmates across the country. Most are looking for someone to help them or just to hear their stories.

"The quality of the letters are so touching because they're looking to establish relationships with anyone who will listen to them," said Boghosian, the executive director of the New York-based National Lawyer's Guild, which publishes the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook.

Boghosian, and other civil rights advocates, are concerned about a policy that 12 Oregon counties, including Washington and Clackamas, will implement next month restricting inmates' outgoing social mail to postcards. By spring, incoming mail will also be limited to postcards.  For complete story, click here.
 

Inquiry Condemns Oversight at State Police Crime Lab --Analyst, undetected for 15 years, falsified test results and compromised nearly one-third of his 322 cases 18 Dec 2009 The New York State Police’s supervision of a crime laboratory was so poor that it overlooked evidence of pervasively shoddy forensics work, allowing an analyst to go undetected for 15 years as he falsified test results and compromised nearly one-third of his 322 cases, an investigation by the state’s inspector general has found. The analyst’s training was so substandard that at one point last year, investigators discovered he did not know how to operate a microscope essential to performing his job, a report released Thursday by the inspector general said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Former guard at halfway house sentenced--December 15th, 2009--A former contract guard at a Houston halfway house has been sentenced to five months in federal prison for sexual abuse of a person in detention.  U.S. Attorney Tim Johnson said 30-year-old Nathan Jones of Houston was sentenced to prison on Tuesday. He will serve five months in home confinement after completing the prison sentence.  Jones was convicted over the summer of the federal felony offense. He admitted that in 2007, while employed at Leidel Comprehensive Sanction Center, he engaged in a sexual act with a female federal prisoner in his office.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Court: 'Faith-based' substance abuse programs unconstitutional--December 15th, 2009--

TALLAHASSEE - Advocates for the separation of church and state scored a victory today when the 1st District Court of Appeal reversed the dismissal of their claim that state-funded, "faith-based" rehabilitation of ex-prisoners is unconstitutional.

The Council for Secular Humanism, a New York-based organization with membership in Florida, had appealed a Leon County circuit court judge's 2008 dismissal of the group's complaint that the state's contract with Prisoners of Christ and Lamb of God Ministries is unconstitutional.

Specifically, the appellant complained that the contracts violate the "no-aid" provision of the Florida Constitution, which bars the state from spending taxpayer money "directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution."  For complete story, click here.

 

HPD fingerprinting trouble not unique--Incorrect results at labs across the nation produce doubts about a discipline once thought of as an exact science--December 13th, 2009--For years fingerprinting has been viewed by the public as a  practically infallible crime-fighting tool with accuracy rates  approaching 100 percent.  But revelations like those in the Houston Police Department, where a recent audit showed analysts failing to analyze or missing 
fingerprints completely, are exposing hard truths about a discipline  that's not as exact as it appears.

Problems at fingerprint labs have often been traced back to common  themes such as inadequate supervision or training and a lack of  standards for analyzing fingerprints. Houston, in fact, didn't even  have a manual outlining standard procedures for analyzing prints,  according to an audit that was released last week.

But some experts say the situation in Houston is just an example of  fingerprinting's deep-rooted woes, which extend across the country.

“Everything needs to change,” said Jennifer Mnookin, a law professor  at UCLA who has studied fingerprint issues.

In fact, large fingerprint units have been repeatedly accused of  botching their work over the last few years.

Examples include:

Last year the Los Angeles Police Department acknowledged that its  fingerprint analysis unit was a sloppy operation where files were  left lying around, prints sometimes lost and at least two people had  been wrongly identified as criminal suspects because of botched  fingerprint analysis.

In 2007, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office in Florida disciplined  multiple employees after it discovered analysts cutting corners and  pegging fingerprints to the wrong suspects.

Experts say fingerprinting is far from an exact science. Unlike many  other forensic disciplines, there are few standards for confirming  fingerprints.

That means an analyst in Houston could conceivably come to different  conclusions from an analyst in Dallas about whether prints are  usable, or even whether they belong to the same person.  Lack of regulation...  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Six more inmate sex abuse suits filed in Oregon--December 7th, 2009--SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Six more current or former inmates at Oregon's prison for women have sued the state claiming they were sexually abused and harassed by male prison employees.

That makes a total of 11 such suits alleging sexual abuse at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville. It houses about 1,100 inmates.

The Salem Statesman Journal reports that among the allegations in the latest suits is that a corrections officer forced inmates to perform sex acts, and and that he demanded sex in exchange for letting women out of their cells or letting them off the hook for violating rules.  For complete story, click here.

 

Illinois inmates fight soy sentence in lawsuit--November 19th, 2009--Some Illinois inmates filed a suit against the soy diet they are served in prison, but the debate on soy originated outside prison walls. The argument is centered on the fact that most soy in America is genetically modified.

Genetically modified organisms are plants, animals, or bacteria, in which the genetic material, or DNA, has been altered in such a way that does not occur naturally, according to the World Health Organization. The genetic makeup of these organisms is altered using a special set of technologies.
 

“Genetically engineered soy now constitutes 90 percent of all soy growing in the United States,” said Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, Fairfield, Iowa. The organization’s purpose is to educate people about the health risks of genetically modified organisms.

Immune system problems, gastrointestinal problems, organ damage, deregulation of insulin, and accelerated aging have been linked to genetically modified feed in animal feeding studies, according to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine in Wichita, Kan. In May, the academy issued a statement calling on all doctors to prescribe a non-genetically modified diet to all patients.  For complete story, click here.  For more on this story, click here.

 

Lawsuit: Inmate died after water denied--November 17th, 2009--A federal lawsuit claims an inmate who died while on a work detail in Quitman County in June was denied water while picking up trash in the summer heat.  For complete story, click here.

 

KC crime lab urged to correct 13 essential deficiencies--November 9th, 2009--The Kansas City Police Crime Lab must correct 13 essential shortcomings or risk losing its accreditation, according to an inspection report.

Auditors found instances in which the lab failed to handle criminal evidence according to standards set by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.  For complete story, click here.

 

Hartford Police Investigating Three Of Their Own In Beating Of Prisoner--November 8th, 2009--HARTFORD - Police are investigating three of their own after a prisoner was beaten Nov. 1.  Police Chief Daryl K. Roberts said that the investigation began Thursday, shortly after police commanders learned of the assault, which was captured on the department's video monitoring system.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prison worker: Riot started over food quality--November 6th, 2009--FRANKFORT, Ky. — A Northpoint Training Center corrections officer testified Friday that inmates rioted at the prison in August because they weren’t being fed enough and the food they did receive was of poor quality.  For complete story, click here.

 

Justice Dept. to Review Bush Policy on DNA Test Waivers--October 11th, 2009--

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has ordered a review of a little-known Bush administration policy requiring some defendants to waive their right to DNA testing even though that right is guaranteed in a landmark federal law, officials said. 
The practice of using DNA waivers began several years ago as a response to the Innocence Protection Act of 2004, which allowed federal inmates to seek post-conviction DNA tests to prove their innocence. More than 240 wrongly convicted people have been exonerated by such tests, including 17 on death row.  For complete story, click here.

 

Federal Appeals Court Condemns Shackling Of Pregnant Prisoners In Labor --October 2nd, 2009--NEW YORK – Ruling in the case of an Arkansas woman who was shackled  to her hospital bed while in labor in 2003, a federal appeals court  today said that constitutional protections against shackling pregnant  women during labor had been clearly established by decisions of the  Supreme Court and the lower courts. This is the first time a circuit  court has made such a determination. The full Eighth Circuit Court of  Appeals made the ruling today in the case of ACLU client Shawanna  Nelson.

"This is a historic decision by a U.S. Court of Appeals that affirms  the dignity of all women and mothers in America," said Elizabeth  Alexander, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union"s National  Prison Project. "Correctional officials across the country are now on  notice that they can no longer engage in this widespread practice."  For complete story, click here.
 

DNA test error leads to wrongful conviction--October 2nd, 2009--

NSW Health has given its full backing to its criminal DNA testing, despite it leading to the wrongful conviction of a man for break and enter in 2008.

NSW Health commenced an exhaustive review of its DNA "cold links", where DNA evidence is matched to a person on a state DNA database.  For complete story, click here.

 

With little oversight in Texas, autopsies often careless--September 26th, 2009--

The man almost took the dirty secret of his death to his grave. The Tarrant County medical examiner’s office said injuries from a pickup wreck killed him. But after a funeral director hundreds of miles away found a bullet in the man’s head, authorities realized a killer was on the loose.

Worse has happened in the autopsy suites of Texas medical examiners.

A child molester faked his own death and almost got away with it after the Travis County medical examiner mistook the burned body of an 81-year-old woman for the 23-year-old man.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prisoners’ Rights--September 23rd, 2009--

In 1996, Congress passed a law that made it much harder for inmates to challenge abusive treatment. It has contributed significantly to the bad conditions — including the desperate overcrowding — that prevail today. The law must be fixed.  For complete story, click here.

 

Making Forensic Science Scientific--September 21st, 2009--With the busiest death chamber in the nation, it was only a matter of time before Texas positioned itself to become the first state to admit that it executed a person who was wrongfully convicted. And now that day is at hand.

According to a nationally respected fire engineer, the so-called scientific evidence used to convict Cameron Todd Willingham of setting a blaze that killed his three daughters in 1995 was not scientific at all. In his scathing report to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Craig Beyler found that the arson investigators on the case had a poor understanding of fire dynamics and based their conclusions on erroneous assumptions, sloppy research and a dash of mysticism. For example, one investigator determined that, because the house fire burned "hot and fast," an accelerant such as gasoline had been used to set it. But that theory -- still given credence in some investigatory circles -- is not factual. Gasoline fires are not significantly hotter than those started with wood, Beyler reported.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Click Here for Case Exposing Abusive/Torturous Behavior Modification in US Prisons!

 

Forensics Under Fire--September 18th, 2009--There has been much nail-biting in courthouse crowds across the country since the February release of the National Acade­my of Sciences report on the state of forensic science. The report, to put it mildly, was not flattering. Forensic labs are underfunded, and many of the areas in which forensic scientists toil – including handwriting, ballistics, and fingerprint analysis, just to name a few – are unsupported by rigorous empirical scientific testing, the report concluded. Of existing "forensic methods, only nuclear DNA analysis has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between an evidentiary sample and a specific individual or source," reads the report.That conclusion has, frankly, freaked out a lot of folks – including many prosecutors who are often the "end consumers" of forensic science, as Matthew Redle, Wyoming state director of the National District Attorneys Associ­a­tion, recently put it. In an effort to figure out what should be done, now that the forensic cat has been let out of the bag, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, convened a hearing Sept. 9 to discuss with experts how to proceed. "Much important work is done through forensics," but that is certainly not always so, Leahy noted, singling out Texas' execution of Cameron Todd Willingham for an arson-murder based on junk fire science as a disturbing recent example.  For complete story, click here.

 

Ohio ACLU against Strickland-endorsed reform bill--September 8th, 2009--A justice reform bill endorsed by Gov. Ted Strickland and passed by  the Senate designed to prevent wrongful convictions also includes a  controversial measure to expand the collection of DNA samples to  those arrested on felony charges.  Currently, Ohio takes DNA only from people convicted of felonies and  violent misdemeanors.  Law enforcement groups support the expansion, saying it gets violent  offenders off the street quicker and prevents future crimes.  But others say DNA collection before conviction crosses the line,  especially because the bill does not address what happens if a person  isn't convicted. 
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio opposes the measure,  saying it poses a "myriad of civil liberty risks" including violating  a person's constitutional protections against illegal search and  seizure, is ripe for abuse and is an invasion of privacy.  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Officers allegedly used inmate as prison fighter--September 16th, 2009--A prison sergeant and two former officers used an inmate known as `Monster' to beat up troublesome inmates at Dade Correctional Institution, a federal indictment alleges.  For complete story, click here.

 

Harris County criminal court judge indicted--August 27th, 2009--A Harris County Criminal Court-at-Law judge was indicted this morning for misdemeanor official oppression, officials said.  Few details were immediately available regarding the charge against Don Jackson, a 17-year judge, said Joe Stinebaker, spokesman for Harris County Judge Ed Emmett.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prisoners moved after riot controlled, officials brief media--August 22nd, 2009--BURGIN, Ky. — Rioting inmates started several fires at a central Ky. prison, and damage to several buildings was so extensive that officials have to bus some of the facility's 1,200 prisoners elsewhere, police said Saturday.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Drug-test suit alleges false imprisonment--August 21st, 2009--Five former probationers allege in a lawsuit filed Thursday that they were falsely charged and imprisoned in 2008 after drug tests that Treatment Associates conducted showed false-positive results.  The plaintiffs are suing Treatment Associates owner Jeff Warner, as well as two Bexar County supervisors, for unspecified damages. The Bexar supervisors named in the suit are Bill Fitzgerald, chief of the county's Community Supervision and Corrections Department, and Kathleen Cline, the probation department's director of operations.  According to the suit, filed in the county's 408th District Court, former probationers Michelle Archer, Rosa M. Rocha, Frank Viesca, Raymond Anthony and Jimmie Martinez were jailed after faulty drug tests showed their urine was positive for illegal substances.  “Jailing these individuals who had been successfully serving probation ... was devastating to the integrity of the criminal justice system and destructive to the ability of the system to protect the safety of the public,” said their attorney, David Van Os.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Inmates grow, gather veggies, make soup for hungry--August 18th, 2009--COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The nation's food banks, struggling to meet demand in hard times, are turning to prison inmates for free labor to help feed the hungry.

Several states are sending inmates into already harvested fields to scavenge millions of pounds of leftover potatoes, berries and other crops that otherwise would go to waste. Others are using prisoners to plant and harvest vegetables.

"We're in a situation where, without their help, the food banks absolutely could not accomplish all that they do," said Ross Fraser, a spokesman for Feeding America, a national association of food banks.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Isn't it wonderful that when financial times get tough, we can always return to slave labor?  And, with indefinite detentions and no criminal convictions as the current standard minimum for being held prisoner in the US, you too may get to be a slave.  Where do you draw the line?  If you do not stand up for others now, there will be no one left to take a stand.)
 

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show--August 17th, 2009--Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.  For complete story, click here.

 

Scalia says there's nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent. By Ian Millhiser 17 Aug 2009 In light of the very real evidence that Davis could be innocent of the crime that placed him on death row, the Supreme Court today invoked a rarely used procedure giving [Troy Anthony] Davis an opportunity to challenge his conviction. Joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized his colleagues for thinking that mere innocence is grounds to overturn a conviction: This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable.  For complete story, click here.

 

Judge scolds parole officials over sex offender classification--August 7th, 2009--

A federal judge on Thursday issued a stern rebuke to state corrections officials for the way they classify some parolees as sex offenders even though the defendants have never been convicted of sex crimes.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks also voiced frustration with state parole officials for ignoring earlier court decisions and a previous directive by him and ordered the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to review whether to leave parolee Ray Curtis Graham on sex offender restrictions.

"It's time for the parole division and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to stop being defensive and start trying not to use technical defenses," Sparks said, in ruling that the restrictions were not imposed on Graham legally and that parole officials ignored a subsequent court warning about the deficiency.

"The undisputed evidence established no official involved in the ... process has ever made the necessary finding that Mr. Graham constituted a threat to society by his lack of sexual control."

Sparks also declared a mistrial in the case after a week of testimony when attorneys for the state objected to comments he made to the jury about a witness' testimony.

Graham filed suit against parole officials after they officially listed him as a sex offender in December 2007 — without allowing him to see the results of a psychiatric evaluation they ordered him to undergo or to appear with his attorneys at a hearing at which the decision was made. Graham, who served time in prison for burglary and attempted murder, was never convicted of a sex crime. He was arrested for aggravated rape in 1982, but was never convicted.  (Web Assistant Note: Sex offender status without a conviction in secretive parole officer circles?  Titles given without proof, sounds like troubled teen diagnosis. Who needs science or due process when we have (so-called) professionals making shit up?  (Sarcasm))  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Attorney: Further charges likely against Mobile judge accused of paddling prisoners--August 7th, 2009--

MOBILE, Ala. -- Herman Thomas' attorney, Bob Clark, said Thursday that he was "reasonably certain" that more indictments against the ex-judge soon would emerge from a special Mobile County grand jury.

The 48-year-old Thomas, who left the Circuit Court bench in October 2007 under pressure, was indicted in March on charges that included kidnapping, extortion and sodomy in connection with criminal court defendants.  For complete story, click here.

 

CSI Myths: The Shaky Science Behind Forensics--August, 2009--Forensic science was not developed by scientists. It was mostly created by cops, who were guided by little more than common sense. And as hundreds of criminal cases begin to unravel, many established forensic practices are coming under fire. PM takes an in-depth look at the shaky science that has put innocent people behind bars.  For complete story, click here.

 

Prisons ban inmates from having pen pal ads--July 29th, 2009--

In her online profile, Paula Jones says she is 42, "nonjudgmental" and likes fishing, gardening and cuddling. There's a catch, though. Jones' picture shows her in her blue Florida prison uniform. She won't be out until at least 2010.

Her listing is posted on a Web site called WriteAPrisoner.com. She's looking for a pen pal.

"If you're looking for someone genuine and true, I'm looking for you," her profile says. "I'm just a stamp away."

By posting her profile, however, Jones is breaking a rule. Florida officials have banned inmates from having the Match.com-style listings, saying prisoners just create problems for their outside-the-pen pals.

Other states - Missouri, Montana, Indiana and Pennsylvania - have similar restrictions. Now lawsuits in Florida and elsewhere say the bans are unfair and violate First Amendment rights.

"The public knows when they're writing to these people that they're prisoners," said Randall Berg Jr., a lawyer representing two pen pal groups - including Florida-based WriteAPrisoner.com - that have sued in the state. "Nobody is being duped here."

WriteAPrisoner.com president and owner Adam Lovell says the bulk of the people who use his site to write to inmates are from religious groups, military people stationed overseas and others affected by the prison. Fraud isn't as widespread as Florida corrections officials suggest, he said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Losing The Moral High Ground--July 23rd, 2009--The US military has, understandably and correctly, condemned the coerced video of a US soldier taken hostage by Taliban in Afghanistan. But I fear that the argument that the public humiliation of prisoners is against international law won't take the US very far after 8 years of Bush-Cheney.

After the evidence surfaced that the US military took all those humiliating pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to blackmail them by threatening to make them public, the US assertion of support for this principle of the Geneva Conventions will be met with, well, let us say substantial skepticism.

In fact, as I was reminded by a former ambassador, the Bush-Cheney-Yoo-Addison gutting of US conformance with the Geneva Conventions really makes it difficult for Washington credibly to complain about the treatment of any of our captured soldiers. The Taliban could hold the soldier hostage forever if they follow the principle put forward by Sen. Lindsey Graham. They could (God forbid) put him in stress positions naked and threaten to release the pictures to his family, and they would have done nothing that Rumsfeld's Pentagon had not done routinely and on a vast scale. For complete story, click here.

 

Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars--July 22nd, 2009--

"When I was 15, my friends started going to jail," says Victoria Law, a native New Yorker. "Chinatown's gangs were recruiting in the high schools in Queens and, faced with the choice of stultifying days learning nothing in overcrowded classrooms or easy money, many of my friends had dropped out to join a gang."
 

"One by one," Law recalls, "they landed in Rikers Island, an entire island in New York City devoted to pretrial detainment for those who can not afford bail."
 

Law shares this and other recollections in her new book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press). At 16, she herself decided to join a gang, but was arrested for the armed robbery that she committed for her initiation into the gang. "Because it was my first arrest -- and probably because 16-year-old Chinese girls who get straight As in school did not seem particularly menacing -- I was eventually let off with probation," she writes.
 

Before her release from jail, Law was held in the "Tombs" awaiting arraignment. While the adult women she met there had all been arrested for prostitution, she also met three teenagers arrested for unarmed assault. "Two of the girls were black lesbian lovers. In a scenario that would be repeated 13 years later in the case of the New Jersey Four, they had been out with friends when they encountered a cab driver who had tried to grab one of them. Her friends intervened, the cab driver called the police and the girls were arrested for assault." Law notes that "both of my cellmates were subsequently sent to Rikers Island."  For complete story, click here.
 

Anti-Supermax activist's records archived--July 20th, 2009--

PUEBLO, Colo.—Documents and videotapes made by an opponent of the federal Supermax prison are being archived at Colorado State University-Pueblo.

Archivists at the university's Southern Colorado Ethnic Heritage and Diversity collection are reviewing the papers of Mitchell Kaufman, who died in 1998.

Kaufman's brother Joel says Mitchell Kaufman initially opposed Supermax because he believed the prison system was inherently racist, citing its disproportionate numbers of Hispanic and black inmates.

Joel Kaufman says his brother also opposed Supermax for its small cells where inmates might be confined for all but a half-hour each day.

Supermax, built in 1994, houses the nation's most dangerous prisoners.

Mitchell Kaufman died at age 54 from a reaction to medication.  For complete story, click here.

 

State investigating abuse reports at private prison--July 16th, 2009--FRANKFORT, Ky. — The state Department of Corrections is investigating allegations of sexual abuse against as many as 16 Kentucky women housed at the privately run Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lab Analyst Decision Complicates Prosecutions--High Court Requires Scientists to Testify--July 15th, 2009--The predictions are dire. In New York, murderers could walk free. In Fairfax County, drunken driving cases could be dismissed. And nationwide, thousands of drug cases might have to be thrown out of court annually.

Legal experts and prosecutors are concerned about the results of last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires lab analysts to be in court to testify about their tests. Lab sheets that identify a substance as a narcotic or breath-test printouts describing a suspect's blood-alcohol level are no longer sufficient evidence, the court ruled. A person must be in court to talk about the test results.

The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, has prosecutors and judges shaking their heads in disgust and defense lawyers nodding with satisfaction at the notion that the Constitution's Sixth Amendment guarantee that defendants "shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him" is not satisfied by a sheet of paper.

"This is the biggest case for the defense since Miranda," said Fairfax defense lawyer Paul L. McGlone, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that required police to inform defendants of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He said judges "are no longer going to assume certain facts are true without requiring the prosecution to actually put on their evidence."  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Supermax prison blocked Obama books requested by detainee --Officials at the Florence, Colorado supermax prison deemed the bestsellers 'potentially detrimental to national security' 10 Jul 2009 He has been president of the United States for 172 days, yet it appears that Barack Obama is still deemed capable of producing writing that is "potentially detrimental to national security". That peculiar judgement was made following a request by a high-security prisoner to read Obama's two bestselling books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. The plea was made by Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who is being held at a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Abu Ali, a US citizen, was found guilty on 25 November of helping al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate the then US president [sic] George Bush.  For complete story, click here.

 

ACLU Seeks End To Censorship Of Religious Material By Virginia Jail--July 9th, 2009--STAFFORD, VA – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of  Virginia today demanded that officials at the Rappahannock Regional 
Jail immediately end their illegal practice of censoring religious  material sent to detainees.

In a letter sent today to the jail's superintendent, Joseph Higgs,  Jr., the ACLU asks for jail officials to guarantee in writing that  the jail will no longer censor biblical passages from letters written  to detainees and to revise the jail's written inmate mail policy to  state that letters will not be censored simply because they contain  religious material.

"It is nothing short of stunning that a jail would think it okay to  censor the Bible and other religious material for no reason other  than its religious nature," said David Shapiro, staff attorney with  the ACLU National Prison Project. "Such censorship violates both the  rights of detainees to practice religion freely and the free speech  rights of those wanting to communicate with detainees."  For complete story, click here.
 

 

Minority Report (Not the Movie starring Tom Cruise, the Real Deal)--Program helps identify likely violent parolees--July 8th, 2009--As part of an attempt to fight crime, Philadelphia is now the subject of an experiment never tried in another city: A computer is forecasting who among the city's 49,000 parolees is likeliest to rob, assault, or kill someone.

Since March, the city's Adult Probation and Parole Department has been using the system to reshuffle the way it assigns cases. Each time someone new comes through intake, a clerk enters his or her name and the computer takes just seconds to fish through a database for relevant information and deliver a verdict of high, medium, or low risk.

"It's a complete paradigm shift for the department," said chief probation and parole officer Robert Malvestuto. "Science has made this available to us. We'd be foolish not to use it."

Criminologists say the system works - it can identify those most likely to commit violent crimes. But whether Philadelphia can use that to intervene and change people's behavior is still not known. A full evaluation won't be done until the end of the year.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

Media release April 27, 2010
Mental patient challenges abuse

“The case of mental health patient Saeed Dezfouli shows an appalling abuse of power masked as health care," said JA Coordinator Brett Collins. "This degrades us all. I am proud to stand beside another vulnerable citizen subjected to government misbehaviour, even more embarrassing to the community than the Ferguson case.  I am now Saeed's Primary Carer and supporting his Supreme Court challenge.”
 
“Saeed presents no threat to the community. He needs support. When police ignored his distress for five months, he lit a fire in his workplace to draw attention – as he said he would. The fire escape was locked and a woman died of smoke inhalation. This would never have happened with proper health and police intervention” said Mr Collins.
 
“Despite being a non-violent patient, he has been held in the highest security cell for eight years. He is forcibly injected every fortnight, is refused a choice of psychiatrist, education and exercise, and is not permitted visitors who haven’t previously physically touched him. Compassion, the Mental Health Act s.68 rights and international treaties are ignored” said Mr Collins.
 
“The expenditure of $200,000 a year for his treatment and $1million a cell at the new Long Bay Forensic Hospital amounts to corruption. The lack of complaint from those around shows how widespread is the abuse and how compromised are those participating in the health system” said Mr Collins.
 
“We have a job and home for Saeed, and will continue the JA Mentoring relationship which is funded by Breakout DesignPrintWeb. We call on the Attorney General to support Saeed’s Supreme Court challenge on May 3” said Mr Collins.
 
Comments: Brett Collins 0438 705003.

More info http://tinyurl.com/ydplj5h  For original alert, click here.
 

 

Is practicing psychiatry a disorder in need of treatment?--February 21st, 2010--Psychiatrists are currently debating whether "sex addiction" should be added to the catalogue of psychological disorders that can be reliably diagnosed
and treated.

On the one hand, some are saying that sexual addiction, in the true sense of
a diagnosis, is a real disorder and anyone who works with sex addicts know
that they have a long array of behaviours. Others, however, believe the term
is simply used to excuse bad behaviour.

Next in line will be the Tiger Woods syndrome, along with catastrophic views
on the environment, an addiction to Starbucks, liking Barry Manilow and
singing the praises of Rush Limbaugh. Soon all of our lives will be illness
states, with some of us coping better than others in managing our daily
diagnostics and treating ourselves through counselling, psychiatry and
self-medication.

Everything is problematic

The quest to add sex addiction to the catalogue of recognized illness states
is just a part of the desire of psychiatrists to identify everything as
problematic. The handbook for diagnosis, known as the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), now in its 4th edition, is the
bible of mental illness.  A new edition, the fifth, is due in 2013.

The DSM itself is problematic. Diagnoses like "homosexuality", once
classified as an illness, come and go depending on societal pressures. By no
stretch of the imagination is it a scientific, evidence-based document. This
is not surprising. Freud was not a scientist who used evidence and data for
his treatment. Now Freud's ideas have been largely discounted and his
diagnostic category of "neurosis" is no longer used. Indeed, several forms
of therapy once popular have, on the basis of evidence, been sidelined. What
hasn't been revised is the approach to the definition of mental illness.  For complete story, click here.

 

Daylight Saving Time May Throw Off Internal Clocks--March 13th, 2010--

(March 13, 2010) -- On Sunday, thanks to daylight saving time, we are all due to lose precious time as we set our clocks forward an hour. Of course this is annoying on a number of levels -- who wants a shorter weekend? -- but there is also emerging scientific evidence that the change disrupts our natural rhythms.

 
Researchers have been trying to catalog the effects of daylight saving time for years, with conflicting results. 

 
A 1996 study in the New England Journal of Medicine claimed an 8 percent jump in traffic accidents on the Monday after the switch, but a follow-up report two years later suggested that figure was lower. In 2000, a group of Swedish researchers concluded that the change did not have any significant effects on the number of crashes in that country. Jump forward to 2009, though, and Michigan State University psychologists Christopher Barnes and David Wagner report that there are more workplace injuries on the Mondays following that lost hour.  For complete story, click here.

 

Supreme Court scales back 'Miranda,' eases rules for questioning suspects 25 Feb 2010 The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that investigators may resume questioning a suspect who invoked his Miranda right to a lawyer after the suspect has been out of police custody for 14 days. The 7-2 decision scales back a 1981 high-court decision intended to protest suspects from repeated police badgering to talk and to safeguard the rights established in the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling.  For complete story, click here.

 

Monsanto 'faked' data for approvals claims its ex-chief 09 Feb 2010 Former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan, is the latest to join the critics of Bt brinjal, perhaps the first industry insider to do so. Jagadisan, who worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations, spoke against the new variety during the public consultation held in Bangalore on Saturday. On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company "used to fake scientific data" submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India.  For complete story, click here.

 

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs'--After 40 years, Washington is quietly giving up on a futile battle that has spread corruption and destroyed thousands of lives--January 17th, 2010-- After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is  being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed,  confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from  South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under  review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow  its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of  billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of  people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be  the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow 
coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard  Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans  that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to  withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to  Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting  victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the  new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US 
establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.  For complete story, click here.

 

Supreme Court drops key case on limits of immunity for prosecutors--January 4th, 2010--The US Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case over whether prosecutors who knowingly procure false testimony that leads to a 
wrongful conviction can later be sued for damages.

Lawyers announced that the parties in the underlying lawsuit had agreed to end the case in a $12 million settlement.
The two innocent men, Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, had spent  nearly 26 years in prison for a murder they didn’t commit. After the  truth was discovered and they were released, they sued the  prosecutors in Pottawattamie County, Iowa.

An investigation revealed that the prosecutors helped assemble and  present false testimony that led to their convictions. Messrs.  Harrington and McGhee had been sentenced to life in prison at hard  labor with no possibility of parole.  For complete story, click here.

 

Drug giant General Electric uses libel law to gag doctor 20 Dec 2009 General Electric, one of the world’s biggest corporations, is using the London libel courts to gag a senior radiologist after he raised the alarm over the potentially fatal risks of one of its drugs. The multinational [GE Healthcare, a British subsidiary of General Electric] is suing Henrik Thomsen, a Danish academic, after he described his experiences of one of the company’s drugs as a medical "nightmare". He said some kidney patients at his hospital contracted a potentially deadly condition after being administered the drug Omniscan.  For complete story, click here.

 

Black leaders urge census to change how it counts inmates--December 17th, 2009--A coalition of African American leaders concerned about minorities being undercounted in the 2010 Census called Wednesday for inmates at
federal and state prisons to be tallied in their home communities instead of the towns where they are incarcerated.

Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League and chairman of a census advisory committee, said the practice now shortchanges communities in money and democratic representation. Census statistics are used to calculate the allocation of more than $478 billion in federal funds and to draw political boundaries.

Noting that about 1.2 million of the nation's 40 million African Americans are in prison, Morial said, "What we have in the prison population issue is a built-in undercount."

Morial and about a dozen other black leaders brought up the prison count during a meeting with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to discuss how to make the census more accurate, a perennial problem. In 2000, about 1.3 million people were overcounted, mostly because of duplicate counts of whites with multiple homes. In contrast, about 4.5 million people, mostly black and Hispanic, were not counted.  For complete story, click here.

 

Yahoo, Verizon: Our Spy Capabilities Would 'Shock', 'Confuse' Consumers By Kim Zetter 01 Dec 2009 Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies? That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public. Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter, that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it "to 'shame' Yahoo! and other companies -- and to 'shock' their customers." For complete story, click here.

 

Pfizer Broke the Law by Promoting Drugs for Unapproved Uses--November 9th, 2009--

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Prosecutor Michael Loucks remembers clearly when lawyers for Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company, looked across the table and promised it wouldn’t break the law again.

It was January 2004, and the attorneys were negotiating in a conference room on the ninth floor of the federal courthouse in Boston, where Loucks was head of the health-care fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. One of Pfizer’s units had been pushing doctors to prescribe an epilepsy drug called Neurontin for uses the Food and Drug Administration had never approved.

In the agreement the lawyers eventually hammered out, the Pfizer unit, Warner-Lambert, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of marketing a drug for unapproved uses.  For complete story, click here.

 

New US vaccine production techniques: Genetically modified insect cells, E. coli, caterpillar ovaries 24 Nov 2009 Spurred by $487 million in federal funding, a sprawling new vaccine factory is opening in North Carolina Tuesday that will produce shots using dog cells instead of chicken eggs. A Connecticut biotech company has also applied to sell a vaccine employing a radically different approach involving a genetically engineered virus infecting insect cells... Baxter International won approval last month to sell an H1N1 vaccine in Europe that uses a decades-old line of African green monkey kidney cells, and it is working on a vaccine for the United States. Protein Sciences of Meriden, Conn., has applied to the FDA for approval to sell a vaccine made by genetically engineering flu genes into a worm virus, which then infects cells from caterpillar ovaries to produce the necessary proteins to make vaccine. VaxInnate of Cranbury, N.J., for example, produced an experimental H1N1 vaccine using genetically engineered E.coli bacteria, and Vical of San Diego just won a $1.25 million contract from the Navy to develop an H1N1 vaccine that involves injecting DNA sequences from the virus directly into people.  For complete story, click here.

 

Students who question murder convictions under investigation--November 6th, 2009--

(CNN) -- It was two-and-a-half days before Illinois Gov. George Ryan was to leave office in 2003. I sat in a crowded auditorium in Northwestern University's Law School in Chicago, where Ryan was expected to make a major announcement on capital punishment.

"Half, if you will, of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois have been reversed for a new trial or for some re-sentencing." he said, his voice tired but clear.

Wrongful convictions had been all over the papers around that time -- the Anthony Porter case, the Ford Heights Four, Rolando Cruz.

"How in God's name does that happen? In America, how does it happen?" Ryan continued. "How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to occur before we can all agree that this system in Illinois is broken?"

On that day, the governor commuted the sentences of all death row inmates in the state and credited an unlikely source for helping him make his decision: Professor David Protess' undergraduate Investigative Journalism class at Northwestern University's Medill School.

In the previous decade, Medill students had uncovered some of the most high-profile wrongful convictions in the city. The class had worked to secure the release of 11 innocent prisoners, five of whom were scheduled to be executed.

As a wide-eyed journalism student at Northwestern, I remember feeling proud of my classmates, proud of my school and proud of the profession I was entering.

Today, six years later, Protess' class is far from the center of the same praise. Presented with evidence in a new case, the state attorney's office is questioning the motivations of the messenger -- the class itself. For complete story, click here.

 

Can Prosecutors Be Sued By People They Framed?--November 4th, 2009--Do prosecutors have total immunity from lawsuits for anything they do, including framing someone for murder? That is the question the justices of the Supreme Court face Wednesday.

On one side of the case being argued are Iowa prosecutors who contend "there is no freestanding right not to be framed." They are backed by the Obama administration, 28 states and every major prosecutors organization in the country.

On the other side are two black men — Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee — men who served 25 years in prison before evidence long hidden in police files resulted in them being freed.  For complete story, click here.

 

9yr-old boy tortured, says former Guantanamo detainee --'I was interrogated hundreds of times by the FBI, CIA and even MI5, beaten, and subjected to continuous torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution.' 30 Oct 2009 A British Muslim detained for three years at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison manned by the United States, revealed that the youngest detainee he knew of was a nine-year-old boy who was also tortured like the rest. Ruhal Ahmed’s story was among more accounts of atrocities committed against the detainees at Guantanamo, told before an open commission hearing which began Friday on the sidelines of an international conference to criminalise war. The testimonies before the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission Hearings will be submitted to a tribunal in conjunction with the Criminalise War Conference and War Crimes Tribunal 2009 spearheaded by former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Dr Mahathir said that the tribunal’s decision would be forwarded to the United Nations for further action. For complete story, click here.

 

California gives the poor a new legal right--October 17th, 2009--California is embarking on an unprecedented civil court experiment to pay for attorneys to represent poor litigants who find themselves battling powerful adversaries in vital matters affecting their livelihoods and families.

The program is the first in the nation to recognize a right to representation in key civil cases and provide it for people fighting eviction, loss of child custody, domestic abuse or neglect of the elderly or disabled.

Advocates for the poor say the law, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this week, levels the legal playing field and gives underprivileged litigants a better shot at attaining justice against unscrupulous landlords, abusive spouses, predatory lenders and other foes.

Although some analysts worry that it could swell state court dockets or eat up resources better spent on other needs of the poor, the pilot project that won bipartisan endorsement in the state Assembly will be financed by a $10 increase in court fees for prevailing parties.

Anybody confronted with criminal charges has a constitutional right to an attorney, as set out in the landmark Supreme Court decision in Gideon vs. Wainwright in 1963. But such a right does not apply in civil court, and the majority of citizens fighting what can be life- altering civil actions now attempt to handle their cases without professional guidance.

An estimated 4 million people seek to represent themselves in California in civil matters each year, the state Judicial Council estimates, not because they want to but because they can't afford to hire a lawyer.  For complete story, click here.

 

Mystery 'Police' Force Has Small Montana City on Edge--October 8th, 2009--When two brand new, shiny black Mercedes SUVs bearing a "Hardin Police Department" logo drove through the main thoroughfare of Hardin, Mont., last week, people took notice.

“How many police forces have Mercedes?” said Charlene Warren, a local business owner who has lived in Hardin for more than half a century. “That threw up a red flag.”

And speaking of flags, it did not go unnoticed that the emblem on the sides of the SUVs bore a strong resemblance to the Serbian national flag.

Furthermore, those "police department" cars were rolling through Hardin, a small southeastern Montana town of 3,600 that just happens not to have a police department.

Click here for a video.

The luxury vehicles that rolled through town belonged to the American Police Force (APF), a California-based security firm that is drafting a contract that will give it control over a $27 million medium-security prison that was built in Hardin more than two years ago, but has never held any prisoners.

But that contract is now on hold as the Montana State Attorney General’s Office investigates APF and the Big Horn County Sheriff's Department enters preliminary talks about incorporating a real police department in Hardin so a similar episode doesn’t occur in the future.  For complete story, click here.

 

Schoolgirl dies after GlaxoSmithKline HPV vaccination --HPV vaccine batch quarantined as 'precautionary measure' --Vaccination part of [insane] national immunisation programme 29 Sep 2009 An urgent investigation has been launched after a 14-year-old girl died shortly after receiving a cervical cancer vaccination at her school. Natalie Morton was a pupil at the Blue Coat Church of England School in Coventry, where she was given the human papilloma virus (HPV) jab yesterday. She was taken to Coventry University hospital, where she died at lunchtime. Three other girls from the school are reported to have experienced possible side effects of dizziness and nausea after receiving the Cervarix jab, which was given to female pupils as part of a national immunisation programme against HPV.  For complete story, click here.

 

American Police Force Corporation Takes Over Small Town Police Force and Prisoner-Less Jail 29 Sep 2009 (MT) This is the strange story of how American Police Force, a little known company which claims to specialize in training military and security forces overseas, has seemingly taken control of a $27 million, never-used jail, and a rural Montana town's nonexistent police force. After arriving in this tiny city with three Mercedes SUVs marked with the logo of a police department that has never existed, representatives of the obscure California security company said preparations were under way to take over Hardin's jail, which has no prisoners.  For complete story, click here.

 

Lawyers, judges find Web can entangle--September 13th, 2009--

Sean Conway was steamed at a Fort Lauderdale judge, so he did what millions of angry people do these days: he blogged about her, saying she was an “Evil, Unfair Witch.”
Scott Dalton for The New York Times

Judge Susan Criss said a Facebook page said a lawyer was drinking, not grieving, after a funeral.

 

“When you become an officer of the court, you lose the full ability to criticize the court,” said Michael Downey, who teaches legal ethics at the Washington University law   For complete story, click here.

 

Military Develops Arsenal of Non-Lethal Weapons 08 Sep 2009 Over the past 20 years, the U.S. military, as well NATO and UN troops, have had to defend a variety of locations, stop approaching vehicles, or disperse crowds without using deadly force or endangering themselves. But the weapons at their disposal have historically been designed to maim or kill. To give military leaders more options, the U.S. Defense Dept. established the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) in 1996. Based at the Marine Corps Base Quantico and under the direction of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the program develops, evaluates, and deploys nonlethal devices. Here are some of the weapons coming out of their laboratories and field testing...  For complete story, click here.

 

White House Backs Controversial Domestic Surveillance Provisions 16 Sep 2009 The Obama administration is urging lawmakers to extend three provisions of the controversial domestic surveillance law known as the USA Patriot Act. The U.S. Justice Department issued a letter Tuesday asking Congress to renew provisions of the law that allow authorities to conduct roving electronic eavesdropping, or wiretaps, access business records and track so-called "lone wolf" suspects with no known links to foreign powers or terrorist groups. The roving wiretaps would let agents track the communications of suspects who change their cell phones or other devices. The provisions are due to expire on December 31.  For complete story, click here.

 

"Capitalism is evil," says new Michael Moore film Capitalism is evil. 06 Sep 2009 That is the conclusion U.S. documentary maker Michael Moore comes to in his latest movie "Capitalism: A Love Story," which premieres at the Venice film festival Sunday. Blending his trademark humor with tragic individual stories, archive footage and publicity stunts, Moore launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty.  For complete story, click here.

 

Pfizer to pay record $2.3B penalty for drug promos--September 2nd, 2009--WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion in fines Wednesday and called the world's largest drugmaker a repeating corporate cheat for illegal drug promotions that plied doctors with free golf, massages, and resort junkets.

Announcing the penalty as a warning to all drug manufacturers, Justice Department officials said the overall settlement is the largest ever paid by a drug company for alleged violations of federal drug rules, and the $1.2 billion criminal fine is the largest ever in any U.S. criminal case. The total includes $1 billion in civil penalties and a $100 million criminal forfeiture.

Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it is the company's fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade. The allegations surround the marketing of 13 different drugs, including big sellers such as Viagra, Zoloft, and Lipitor.

As part of its illegal marketing, Pfizer invited doctors to consultant meetings at resort locations, paying their expenses and providing perks, prosecutors said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Proposed bill would allow state authorities to forcefully quarantine people during pandemic 04 Sep 2009 (MA) A new proposed bill designed to combat the threat of the H1N1 virus would allow the state to forcefully quarantine people in the event of a pandemic. Anyone who refuses to comply with the quarantine order could face jail time or a $1000 per day fine. The "Pandemic Response Bill" would also force health providers to vaccinate people, authorize forcible entry into private homes, and impose fines or prison sentences on anyone not complying with isolation or quarantine orders.  For complete story, click here.

 

Aiding Torture: Health Professionals' Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General's Report (PHR) 31 Aug 2009 This 6-page white paper, published August 31, 2009, after the new release of the May 2004 CIA Inspector General's report, shows that the extent to which American doctors and psychologists violated human rights and betrayed the ethical standards of their professions by designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program is worse than previously known. A team of PHR doctors authored the white paper, which details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations. It also refers to aggregate collection of data on detainees’ reaction to interrogation methods. Physicians for Human Rights is concerned that this data collection and analysis may amount to human experimentation and calls for more investigation on this point. If confirmed, the development of a research protocol to assess and refine the use of the waterboard or other techniques would likely constitute a new, previously unknown category of ethical violations committed by CIA physicians and psychologists.  For complete story, click here.

 

CIA in human experimentation row --Watchdog says US interrogation doctors may have committed unlawful experimentation 02 Sep 2009 Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a not-for-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood. PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA's secret "torture programme".  For complete story, click here.

 

Doctors' role in CIA abuse 'approaches unlawful human experimentation' - rights group --Doctors had 'central role' in CIA abuse 31 Aug 2009 A US-based medical rights advocacy group on Monday blasted health experts for playing a "central role" in advising and implementing the CIA's abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) issued its six-page white paper after shocking details about the range of techniques used by interrogators, including waterboarding, came to light one week ago with release of a 2004 CIA inspector general's report. "Health professionals played a central role in developing, implementing and providing justification for torture," PHR said in its report... PHR warned that such spy agency techniques -- and monitoring by doctors to gauge their effectiveness -- "approaches unlawful experimentation" on human subjects. The report's lead author, PHR medical advisor Scott Allen, said in a statement on the organization's website, "medical doctors and psychologists colluded with the CIA to keep observational records about waterboarding, which approaches unethical and unlawful human experimentation."  For complete story, click here.

 

The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina By James Ridgeway 28 Aug 2009 The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods," as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting "the insurgency in the city." Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force, told the paper, "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control." ...And while the government couldn't seem to keep people from dying on rooftops or abandoned highways, it wasted no time building a temporary jail in New Orleans.  For complete story, click here.

 

Health-care workers steer clear of swine flu vaccine --Many health-care workers have made it obvious that they are unwilling to be vaccinated. 26 Aug 2009 A new study finds that the majority of health-care workers refuse to take the swine flu vaccine due to its possible side effects. According to a study published in British Medical Journal, more than half of health-care workers around the world are worried about the side effects of the new vaccine. Doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccine are also reported as another main reason for them declining the vaccine.  For complete story, click here.

 

Exposed: The Swine Flu Hoax By Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D. 24 Aug 2009 If the current H1N1 swine flu virus does become abnormally lethal, there would be three leading explanations: first, that the virus was accidentally released, or escaped, from a laboratory; second, that a disgruntled lab employee unleashed the virus (as happened, according to the official version of events, with the 2001 anthrax attack); or third, that a group, corporation or government agency intentionally released the virus in the interests of profit and power. Each of the three scenarios represents a plausible explanation should the swine virus become lethal. The 1918 flu virus was dead and buried -- until, that is, scientists unearthed a lead coffin to obtain a biopsy of the corpse it contained. For complete story, click here.

 

Rendition of Terror Suspects Will Continue Under Obama 25 Aug 2009 The Obama administration will continue the Bush regime’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to insure they are not tortured, administration officials said on Monday. The administration officials, who announced the changes on condition that they not be identified, said that unlike the Bush administration, they would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees prisoners would not be abused. [See: Barack Obama: Change We Can Deceive In --A critique from the Left By Lori Price 19 Aug 2009.]  For complete story, click here.

 

Common Sense 2009 By Larry Flynt 20 Aug 2009 The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government. This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars.  For complete story, click here.

 

'The guard called a Homeland Security Officer who asked Thomas what he was filming.' Homeland Security cop arrests man for filming FBI building in NYC By Carlos Miller 20 Aug 2009 A 43-year-old man was jailed for six hours – and had his camera and memory card confiscated by a judge - after filming an FBI building from across the street in New York City Monday. Randall Thomas, a professional photographer, said he was standing on the corner of Duane Street and Broadway in downtown Manhattan when he used his video camera to pan up and down on the 42-story building at 26 Federal Plaza. He was immediately accosted by a security guard in a brown uniform who told him he was not allowed to film the building. For complete story, click here.

Police Taser use 'up nearly a third' 17 Aug 2009 Police use of Taser stun guns has increased by nearly a third, figures revealed today. Officers fired the electro-shock weapons 226 times in the first three months of this year - up from 174 in the last three months of 2008. For complete story, click here.

 

Second 9/11 Investigation Petition Moves Toward NYC November Ballot By Barbara G. Ellis for Portland 9/11 Legislative Alliance 20 Aug 2009 A second 9/11 investigation about the destruction of the World Trade Center and attack on the Pentagon--this one independent of the U.S. government--may start late this year if legal debris is cleared away for approval as a referendum issue on November 3 in New York City.   For complete story, click here.

 

Government's Tamiflu advice is wrong, says WHO 22 Aug 2009 Only seriously ill and vulnerable patients should be prescribed antiviral drugs to help them to get over swine flu, the World Health Organisation said yesterday, in advice which conflicts with the decision taken by the British Government to prescribe Tamiflu to everyone with swine flu. Most people will recover from swine flu within a week, just as they would from seasonal forms of influenza, the WHO said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Caregiver who raped disabled woman gets 8 years in prison--August 15th, 2009--A Kent man who raped a severely disabled woman in his care last year was sentenced Friday to 8 ½ years to life in prison for second-degree rape.

Joseph Thurura, 32, was arrested in June 2008 and charged with the rape of a 44-year-old patient at Integrated Living Services, where he was a caregiver.

The woman was impregnated but had a miscarriage.  For complete story, click here.

 

Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession--August 21st, 2009--MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge.  The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday.  For complete story, click here.

 

Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America 15 Aug 2009 A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter. The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins. It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. The letter, sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, is the first sign that there is concern at the highest levels that the vaccine itself could cause serious complications.  For complete story, click here.

 

Sheriff's Office defies judge on order for system password--August 15th, 2009--A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Friday ordered that the Sheriff's Office divulge the password it forcefully installed on a county computer system linked to sensitive state and federal criminal- justice data.

But Chief Deputy David Hendershott later said he will refuse to share the password - even if it means he goes to jail.

During the Friday hearing, Judge Joseph Heilman said that if the Sheriff's Office doesn't divulge the password by Wednesday, he will "hold someone in contempt of court."

"I assume it's going to be someone seated at this table," he added, referring to Hendershott.

Hendershott said he could not reveal the password under federal law. And if he goes to jail: "I bet I get a pretty decent place. Something with a view of the dump."

Heilman would not comment on the remark.  (Webmaster Note:  Hiding something, are we?)  For complete story, click here.

 

 

Antidepressant use doubles in U.S., study finds--August 3rd, 2009--WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday.

About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.

"Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  Drugs are not the answer!)

 

Gulags we can believe in: AP sources: Military-civilian terror prison eyed --The facility would operate as a hybrid prison system jointly operated by the Justice Department, the military and the Department of Homeland Security. 02 Aug 2009 The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison. Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 prisoners now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. The administration's plan, according to three government officials, calls for: long-term holding cells for undetermined number of prisoners who will never face trial; building detention cells for prisoners ordered released by courts but still held behind bars.  For complete story, click here.

 

New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit--July 24th, 2009--by Bill Maher--

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

 

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."

But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years. For complete story, click here.

 

Whistleblower tells of America's hidden nightmare for its sick poor --When an insurance firm boss saw a field hospital for the poor in Virginia, he knew he had to speak out. By Paul Harris 26 Jul 2009 Wendell Potter can remember exactly when he took the first steps on his journey to becoming a whistleblower and turning against one of the most powerful industries in America. It was July 2007 and Potter, a senior executive at giant US healthcare firm Cigna, was visiting relatives in the poverty-ridden mountain districts of northeast Tennessee. He saw an advert in a local paper for a touring free medical clinic at a fairground just across the state border in Wise County, Virginia. Potter, who had worked at Cigna for 15 years, decided to check it out. What he saw appalled him. Hundreds of desperate people, most without any medical insurance, descended on the clinic from out of the hills... Potter took pictures of patients lying on trolleys on rain-soaked pavements. For complete story, click here.

 

Jimmy Carter Leaves Church Over Treatment of Women--July 20th, 2009--After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced himself at odds with the Southern Baptist Church -- and he's decided it's time they go their separate ways. Via Feministing, the former president called the decision "unavoidable" after church leaders prohibited women from being ordained and insisted women be "subservient to their husbands." Said Carter in an essay in The Age:

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.
 

For complete story, click here.

 

More bodies go unclaimed as families can't afford funeral costs 21 Jul 2009 The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones. At the county coroner's office -- which handles homicides and other suspicious deaths -- 36% more cremations were done at taxpayers' expense in the last fiscal year over the previous year, from 525 to 712.  For complete story, click here.

 

Executives, other highly compensated employees receive more than one-third of all pay in U.S. 21 Jul 2009 The nation's wealth gap is widening amid an uproar about lofty pay packages in the financial world. Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data -- without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries. Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available. The compensation numbers don't include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits.  For complete story, click here.

 

CIA Supervisor Claimed He Used Fire Ants On Detainee By Aram Roston 16 Jul 2009 A recently released legal memo describing interrogation techniques showed that Bush Administration lawyers had approved the use of "insects" in interrogations. "You would like to place [Abu] Zubaydeh in a cramped confinement box with an insect," Jay Bybee, then a Justice Department lawyer and now a federal judge, wrote in 2002... A CIA supervisor involved in the "enhanced interrogation" program bragged to other CIA employees about using fire ants while during questioning of a top terror suspect, according to several sources formerly with the Agency. The official claimed to other Agency employees, the sources say, to have put the stinging ants on a detainee's head to help break him. The CIA insists, however, that no matter what the man said, it never took place.  For complete story, click here.

 

317 cars burned ahead of Bastille Day --Disaffected youths frustrated with high unemployment rates and their view of France's failure to integrate ethnic minorities 14 Jul 2009 French youths burned 317 cars and wounded 13 police officers overnight on the eve of the Bastille Day national holiday, police said Tuesday. By 6:00 am (0400 GMT), police headquarters in Paris had recorded 317 burnt out cars -- up 6.7 percent on 2008 -- and 240 arrests, almost double the total for the same period last year. These numbers were expected to increase as fresh reports came in.  For details, click here.

 

Some Guantanamo Bay Prisoners May Be Held Indefinitely --DoD lawyer: Any detainee, even if acquitted, could be held indefinitely 10 Jul 2009 An Obama administration official told Senators Tuesday that some detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility will most likely be held indefinitely if they pose a threat. The official spoke at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing... At a Senate hearing, Defense Department lawyer Jeh Johnson described one group of prisoners that will remain behind bars. "There will be at the end of the review a category of people that we in the administration believe must be retained for reasons of public safety and national security, and they're not necessarily people that we'll prosecute," Johnson said. Johnson also said any detainee, even if acquitted, could be held indefinitely. "And we've gone through our review period and we've made through the assessment the person is a security threat....I think it's our view that we would have the ability to detain that person," Johnson said.  For complete story, click here.

 

Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable--July 12th, 2009--

That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.

Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."

Stephens and his fellow Keele researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual's tolerance to pain. Because swearing often has an exaggerating effect that can overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person's tolerance.

As it turned out, the opposite seems to be true.

The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table.

Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word. For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster note:  Swearing is good for you.)

 

The Truth about the Flu Shot By Infowars 10 Jul 2009 If the government mandates a series of flu shots this fall -- so far they are only "recommending” the shots -- you can expect to get a dose of thimerosal (mercury), formaldehyde, detergent, MF-59 (an oil-based adjuvant), and other toxins. Incidentally, if you believe the government will not kidnap you at gunpoint and lock you in a concentration camp and possibly force you to take these toxins, check out Executive Order 13295 of April 4, 2003. It states that the government has the authority to establish "regulations providing for the apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases," including diseases at that time "not yet isolated or named." Of course, the government will decide if you have a deadly disease or not.  For complete story, click here.

 

Philadelphia opens Mental Health Court--July 8th, 2009--

When Philadelphia police shot and killed a homeless man brandishing a utility knife Friday in the concourse near City Hall, it had special meaning for state Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery.

Twenty years ago, McCaffery told an audience of Philadelphia court and municipal officials, he was a police sergeant with the subway unit.

"I know what those officers are going through down there dealing with the homeless," McCaffery said. "That's the kind of tragedy that we don't want to happen. These are human beings that we as a society need to step up to the plate and help."

Yesterday McCaffery got that chance, joining Philadelphia court officials to announce the creation of the city's first Mental Health Court.

The court, which begins today with a pilot group of 15 individuals, is to take a group of nonviolent inmates about to complete their jail terms and make sure they have the necessary therapy and supervision lined up to successfully live in the community.  For complete story, click here.  (Webmaster Note:  The "therapy" utilized to modify behavior in and out of prison is not based on science and actually causes severe psychological distress and trauma.  Let's not jump from the frying pan (current prison/sentencing system) into the fire (pseudo-science and cult-like brainwashing of "offenders" aka our fellow citizens.)

 

Abu Ghraib Crucifixion Death Demonstrates Need for Independent Criminal Investigation into U.S. Torture Program--June 29th, 2009--Washington, DC -- A report published in the June 22nd issue of The New Yorker magazine that a prisoner had been crucified by the CIA at the Abu Ghraib prison highlighted the need to apply the rule of law to the U.S. torture program. This issue will be discussed at a press conference at 9:30 on Monday morning at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

 

Lawsuit accuses Xe contractors of murder, kidnapping, child prostitution 02 Jul 2009 A just-amended lawsuit alleges six additional instances of unprovoked attacks on Iraqi civilians by Blackwater mercenaries. Three people, including a 9-year-old boy, are said to have died. Also added to the suit is a racketeering count accusing Blackwater founder Erik Prince of running an ongoing criminal enterprise involved in, among other things, kidnapping and child prostitution. The latest charges, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, bring to more than 60 the number of Iraqis allegedly killed or wounded since 2005 by armed Blackwater mercenaries guarding U.S. diplomatic personnel in Iraq. The Moyock, N.C.-based security company, since renamed Xe, earned more than $1 billion under that contract before the State Department, under pressure from the Iraqi government, let it lapse in May. For complete story, click here.

 

Former Marine Claims Illness From Mystery Vaccine --Military Source Believes Experimental Shots May Have Been Given 08 May 2007 (Received July 2nd, 2009)  Clermont County, OH) Target 5 has discovered that an alarming number of U.S. troops are having severe reactions to some of the vaccines they receive in preparation for going overseas. "This is the worst cover-up in the history of the military," said an unidentified military health officer who fears for his job. A shot from a syringe is leaving some U.S. servicemen and women on the brink of death. "When the issue, I believe, of the use of the vaccine comes out, I believe it will make the Walter Reed scandal pale in comparison," said the health officer. For complete story, click here.

 

ACLU Says Government Used False Confessions 02 Jul 2009 The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday accused the Obama administration of using statements elicited through torture to justify the confinement of a detainee it represents at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ACLU is asking a federal judge to throw out those statements and others made by Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who may have been as young as 12 when he was captured. His attorney argued that Jawad was abused in U.S. custody, threatened and subjected to intense sleep deprivation. "The government's continued reliance on evidence gained by torture and other abuse violates centuries of U.S. law and suggests the current administration is not really serious about breaking with the past," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Hafetz, who is representing Jawad in a lawsuit challenging his detention.  For complete story, click here.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS

Mysterious Tubular Clouds Defy Explanation 24 Aug 2009 These long, crazy-looking clouds can grow to be 600 miles long and can move at up to 35 miles per hour, causing problems for aircraft even on windless days. Known as Morning Glory clouds, they appear every fall over Burketown, Queensland, Australia, a remote town with fewer than 200 residents. Similar tubular shaped clouds called roll clouds appear in various places around the globe.  For complete story, click here.

 

 

ANIMAL RIGHTS NEWS

HEAL is currently focused on Human Rights, specifically, Teen Liberty and Prison Reform. Due to limited resources, we are unable to continue the Animal Rights News section of this website.  Looking for a story you found here?  Check out the News Archive for previous posts.

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS

Blackwater founder says he aided secret programs --CIA asset Erik Prince carried out secret missions as recently as two months ago 03 Dec 2009 The founder of Blackwater Worldwide acknowledged in an interview published Wednesday that he had helped the CIA with secret programs targeting top al-Qaeda leaders, a role he says was intended to give the agency "unattributable capability" in sensitive missions. Erik Prince, owner of the military contractor now known as Xe Services, told Vanity Fair magazine that he performed numerous "very risky missions" for the spy agency, some of which were improperly exposed in leaks to the news media. The magazine... said the former Navy SEAL had served a dual role for the CIA as both a contractor and an "asset," or spy, who carried out secret missions as recently as two months ago, when the Obama administration terminated his contract.  For complete story, click here.

 

Man killed in church after stone altar falls on him--September 10th, 2009--

Link, 45, died instantly as he was crushed under the ancient 860lb monument in the Weinhaus Church in Vienna, Austria.

Roman Hahslinger, a police spokesman, said: "He was a very religious man and had been scared when he was trapped in the lift and had prayed for release.

"A short while later he was pulled out of the elevator and he went straight to the church to thank God.

"He seems to have embraced a stone pillar on which the stone altar was perched and it fell on him, killing him instantly.  For complete story, click here.

 

Israel Makes Waves by Simulating an Earthquake --Experiment financed by DoD 25 Aug 2009 The Seismologic Division of the Ministry of National Infrastructure's Geophysical Institute will attempt to simulate an earthquake in the southern Negev on Thursday. The experiment, financed by the U.S. Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km/621 mile radius.  For complete story, click here.

 

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