HEAL is an
egalitarian network of activists self-empowered to plan events, create
change, and make the world a better place for all life. Our goals
include the liberation of humans, nonhuman animals, and the earth! We
work in cooperation with like-minded organizations that put compassion
in action!
This site is dedicated to passing on and reporting the real news.The real news is
that which is
often neglected by
mainstream media and that
which you must know to be an informed
citizen.We have organized the news by subject.Links
to complete reports are in blue.
Please scroll down to view the stories or choose from the menu
below:
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)
N.S. teen abused at facility, say advocates--By
MICHAEL MacDONALD The Canadian Press
Tue, Jul 20 - 4:52 AM
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Schaller is a River Rouge resident and the events he is accused of took place there over the past six months with a youth under the age of 16, police said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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--MURFREESBORO,
Tenn.
--
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Plan21
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
day11
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MIAMI -- 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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 ovaries24 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.
(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.
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.
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 2009By 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.
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.
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.
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.
More bodies go unclaimed as
families can't afford funeral costs21 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.
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.
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.
Kevin Zeese, who is filing complaints on Monday
against three CIA lawyers who facilitated torture
said: "The United States must face the reality of
the extent of the torture program under the
Bush-Cheney administration. War crimes were
committed. The toxic poison of torture will not be
removed from the body politic unless the rule of law
is applied." Zeese said "the filing of complaints
against CIA torture lawyers is a first step in
ensuring an independent legal review of the U.S.
torture program."
According to the New Yorker
report authored by Jane Mayer "A forensic examiner
found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been
crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having
been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering
broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the
case a homicide." Mayer further reports "No criminal
charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A.
officer involved in the torture program, despite the
fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by
agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment."
For complete story,
click here.
Lawsuit accuses Xe contractors
of murder, kidnapping, child prostitution02 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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