The announcement this week by Sheriff Lee Baca that he agrees with and intends to implement all 63 recommendations laid out in a new report by the Citizens' Commission on Jail Violence is welcome news. At a press conference Wednesday, Baca said of the recommendations, “I couldn’t have written them better myself,” continuing that by implementing them, “we will be a stronger and safer jail.”
Congress is back in session, so we've got a busy week ahead.
Today, the ACLU, along with several other groups, is launching a weeklong campaign called "Stop Cyber Spying Week" to draw attention to the massive civil liberties problems in H.R. 3523, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011, better known as CISPA. CISPA is scheduled to be voted on by the House of Representatives next week. Tomorrow ACLU Legislative Counsel Michelle Richardson will speak at a House Hill Briefing called "The False Choice: Cybersecurity vs. Civil Liberties."
On any given day, more than 15,000 federal prisoners are in "the hole."
With a population of over 215,000 prisoners, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is the nation's largest prison system. At a Congressional hearing chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il) last summer, Bureau Director Charles Samuels said that the Bureau holds about 7 percent of its population in solitary confinement at any given time. That's a shockingly high proportion. Many states have a much smaller percentage of prisoners in solitary, even though state prisoners are far more likely than federal prisoners to be serving time for a violent offense.
I’m writing from Buenos Aires, where I’m representing the ACLU at the Inter-Governmental Expert Meeting (IGEM) on the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Established in 1955, the SMRs are the leading international standards on protecting the human rights of prisoners. They’ve profoundly influenced the law in many countries, and have been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A new report released today finds L.A. County's Men's Central Jail, the largest and most violence-plagued in the nation, can be shut down by the end of 2013.
Last week the ACLU and Human Rights Watch released a report about the solitary confinement of young people in America’s jails and prisons. Kids in solitary often spend 22 to 24 hours a day alone, sometimes without access to books, let alone other people. The isolation can last for days, weeks, or even months at a time.
Gang-like cliques of sheriff's deputies operating with impunity inside L.A. County jails. Department top brass encouraging a culture of violence and brutality against inmates. And a sheriff with his head in the sand.
At its meeting in Pittsburgh earlier this month, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted by an overwhelming margin to accept a resolution recognizing that the use of solitary confinement can be a form of torture.
