Mo $ for Mass Incarceration in federal prisons subsidized by private prisons

New Federal Budget: Plenty of Money for Prisons by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

The following article originally appeared on MotherJones.com.

President Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2013 includes cuts to everything from Medicare and Medicaid to defense and even homeland security. But federal prisons are among its "biggest winners," according to an analysis by the Federal Times. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is seeking a 4.2 percent increase, one of the largest of any federal agency, which would bring its total budget to more than $6.9 billion.

So what kind of criminals are we spending all this money to incarcerate? If you're thinking terrorists and kidnappers, think again. According to the Sentencing Project, only 1 in 10 federal prisoners is locked up for a violent offense of any kind. More than half are drug offenders—hardly surprising, since federal prosecutions for drug offenses more than doubled between 1984 and 2005. The 1980s also produced mandatory minimum sentences, which meant we were not only sending more people to prison, we were keeping them there far longer—a perfect formula for an exploding prison population.

Indeed, the federal prison population ballooned from fewer than 25,000 inmates in 1980 to 210,000 in 2010—an eightfold increase—while the federal prison budget grew by a whopping 1,700 percent. Nowadays, as state prison populations have begun to fall for the first time in decades—the product of a steady decline in violent-crime rates, lawsuits over prison conditions, and deficits that have forced state officials to rethink their incarceration policies—the number of federal inmates continues to grow by about 3 percent a year. The projected 2013 federal prison population is 229,268 inmates—6,500 or more than in 2012. "Increasing funding for more prison beds has been shown to be a self-fulfilling prophecy," notes the Justice Policy Institute. "If you build it, they will come."

According to Obama's new budget, new federal prisons opening in Mississippi and West Virginia will house some 2,500 of those additional prisoners. Another 1,000 will be placed in private prisons—which now hold 18 percent of federal prisoners, far more than most state systems. The remainder of the new inmates will presumably be jammed into the existing federal prison facilities, which are already operating at 142 percent of capacity.

Factored into the budget request is $44 million in savings from an expansion of programs that let prisoners shave time off their sentences by behaving well and participating in educational and vocational programs, plus a compassionate release program for seriously ill inmates who have served most of their time—a smart move for the BOP, since it would shift its costliest medical cases onto Medicaid. But there's no guarantee that these "program offsets" will pass, especially given that Congress nixed similar proposals last year.

Conspicuously absent from the Obama budget is an item the administration requested for 2011 and 2012: money to purchase and retrofit a disused Illinois prison to serve as Gitmo North, a home for detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay. Since late 2009, Obama has floated plans to buy Thomson state prison and convert it into a second supermax for Gitmo residents who were tried and convicted on American soil. But Congress has yet to come through with the cash, and it seems, at least in this budget, that the White House has thrown in the towel.

If the federal government acquires Thomson, it will not be for the purpose of replacing Guantanamo, but "to meet critical federal prison capacity needs," a Department of Justice spokesperson told TPM. In other words, we could end up with Gitmo on top of a new federal supermax like the one in Florence, Colorado—the closest thing to a torture chamber that exists in America today.

Another great article by the TAC center ~~

Incidents Involving Mental Illness Are Creating Public and Police Safety Issues, Senior Law Enforcement Officials Say

Service calls involving individuals in psychiatric crisis are a "major consumer of law enforcement resources," according to a study published by the Treatment Advocacy Center. The calls also are believed to be a significant factor in officer casualties.

"Law enforcement agencies being overwhelmed by service calls involving individuals with untreated severe mental illness."

Arlington, VA (PRWEB) December 20, 2011

Senior law enforcement officials say incidents involving serious mental illness are increasingly diverting officers from the streets and exposing them to risk of injury or death because of illnesses that can be treated, according to a study released Monday by the Treatment Advocacy Center.
A nationwide online survey of more than 2,400 senior law enforcement officials conducted in conjunction with a project for the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Homeland Defense and Security found:

•     Widespread unfamiliarity or confusion about using state emergency hospitalization laws to get help for individuals experiencing acute psychiatric crisis.
•     Widespread belief that mental illness is a significant factor in the injury and death of on-duty law enforcement officers.
•     Widespread reports that incidents involving people with mental illness are a “major consumer of law enforcement resources.”
•     Widespread perception that service calls involving individuals with mental illness take more time than routine larceny, domestic disputes or traffic accidents.

“The Impact of Mental Illness on Law Enforcement Resources” was conducted by Chief of Police Michael Biasotti as part of a thesis project for the Naval Postgraduate School. The survey was designed “to gauge and identify areas of law enforcement resource consumption directly related to involvement with severely mentally ill persons.” Most of the respondents reported having more than 20 years of experience in their field.
“There is no shortage of anecdotal reporting these days about law enforcement agencies being overwhelmed by service calls involving individuals with untreated severe mental illness, but official tracking of those impacts is scarce or non-existent,” said James Pavle, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which excerpted and published the survey results.
“What Chief Biasotti has done is to provide quantifiable data on issues that affect police and sheriff’s departments and everyone they serve. These issues stem from conditions that could be treated. The Department of Justice should be collecting data mental illness in its routine reporting so these issues can be better identified and addressed.”
Biasotti is chief of police for the Town of New Windsor, New York. The Treatment Advocacy Center is the only national nonprofit focused exclusively on eliminating legal and other barriers to treatment for people with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder.
###

An Analogy of a Drone ~~

 Drones

In the search for prison administrators many states took the task to hand and followed the patterns of our armed forces and began looking for human drones. In their minds, these drones would undoubtedly be most effective in doing their job in a most robotic manner disregarding the elements of human life and dignity for others as these remotely but strategically placed drones took over prison administrative positions to set the pattern that resembles Abu Ghraib DNA and generally cold and insensitive in presence and delivery of their messages.

Drones are assassins in nature and burst upon the scene to destroy the very moral fiber of good versus evil. Catching us by surprise it has taken a few years to recognize the ploy and planning of that special envoy that came back from Iraq to take over U.S. prisons with an agenda for mass incarceration and making profit from the prisoners caught in their evil web that trapped them with no other place to go but jails and prisons operated by private prison entrepreneurs and public prison administrators on the take by the lobbyist for the private prisons.

These drones came out of nowhere yet when you review their resumes they all share a presence in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq just a glimpse before the scandal broke public and their well timed exit back to the states was a strategized plan to allow them to expand their plan to offer private prison beds to the public prisons allowing contractual obligations to expand their prison populations by thousands at a time. These human drones are being built to perfection and are the personal evildoers of many governors who endorse the privatization of prisons and profit that has put billions of dollars into the pockets of corporations that are not interested in justice but profit.

A drone performs just like any other drone (bees for example) and is much larger [politically endorsed and recruited] than the worker bee. Their job is to scrutinize areas where profit can be made thus they have more eyes [spies and snitches to inform the drone of internal strife] , a larger body [political clout] and stouter abdomens to stomach the sickness, the pain and death they incur as their policies are geared for mass incarceration without reformation or rehabilitation. Described to be “lazy” and unproductive, they are just the opposite for corporate purposes as they are eager to seek out those who disagree with them and dispose of them at will.

Drones don’t make honey, which is the job of the worker bees. Their job is to inject hate, discontent and suffering into the making of honey.

A broken promise

http://www.youtube.com/v/cKBpuchg0rU&feature=plcp&context=C33b49f6UDhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKBpuchg0rU&feature=plcp&context=C33b49f6UDOEgsToPDskIJMbzdVfgFbLvDnpoEkZ5WOEgsToPDskIJMbzdVfgFbLvDnpoEkZ5Whttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKBpuchg0rU&feature=plcp&context=C33b49f6UDOEgsToPDskIJMbzdVfgFbLvDnpoEkZ5WOEgsToPDskIJMbzdVfgFbLvDnpoEkZ5W

Recent events dating back to 2009 when Governor Brewer appointed an interim director to run the Arizona Department of Corrections, have illustrated a severely broken system in the way Arizona runs their prisons. There are no doubts that the current director has found himself in hot water more than once over the controversies that exist in his agency as well as in the public view with his management style and strategies supervising private prisons on contract  with the state. It appears the time has come for him to seek the help of another corrections expert to determine the correct strategies and the appropriate approaches on how to run the prison system.

Charles L. Ryan, the current director must have been desperate to seek the help of his former boss and mentor who currently acts as a consultant for a private prison contractor. He must have realized that this man can help determine direction, overcome obstacles and resolve complex matters with the precision of a surgeon cutting on a cadaver. In a way, its exactly the way the governor wanted it to be when the former director left and the void had to be filled with someone who knew the prison system and its necessary. Thus a former love affair is rekindled and reconnected to operate prisons with a goal of privatizing the public prisons to the competition. I am sure when its all said and done, this is something that Director Ryan wanted to do all along for the past couple of years but didn’t have the opportunity to sneak the consultant in without criticism. Most likely not to reveal or announce such a secret partnership or close personal friendship they meet often but depart separately in different vehicles. Looking at the shadow’s resume, it is quite impressive and one could say much better than the current director in place. Perhaps he is the de facto director and blessed by the governor’s office that requires strict control on media coverage, institutional gossip and failures and public opinion.

The shadow has been back from Iraq for a while now and perhaps took a silent role in the background to do some stealthy reconnaissance for the director as his scouting skills are sharp and able to find qualified candidates to assist the director with his management team selection. For sure, he has sent a pocketful of “players” the director’s way in the past several years to bolster the team to function as a unified work crew. Actively seeking employment with the private prison contractors as a consultant, he landed one that is amidst one of the most damaging scandals in Arizona prison history, the Kingman escape. He has been seen at community meetings sitting among the top officials of the department and chatting with them on a very personal basis. It is unknown whether or not his role is limited exclusively to consulting the private prison contractor or if it has been unofficially extended to include Arizona public prisons.

Being a consultant up there in the best seats in the house is a privileged position and with good reason to suspect who is really running the prisons. Is it Charles L. Ryan or is the man in the shadows. Breaking tradition to operate the prisons and prevent privatization of public prisons as promised to his staff, it appears Director Ryan is looking internally for help to continue his control of his agency with the help of an unrestricted friend, consultant and free agent in prison practices.

Illinois Governor Proposes Closing Controversial Tamms Supermax Prison

New post on Solitary Watch

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway In a budget briefing held this afternoon, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn proposed closing the state's notorious Tamms supermax prison. The proposal is part of a package of deep spending cuts to nearly all areas of state government, which Quinn called a "rendezvous with reality." Tamms holds more than 200 prisoners in long-term solitary confinement in conditions that have been denounced as torturous. Prisoners at Tamms spend at least 23 hours a day locked down in small cells, leaving them only to shower or to exercise alone in a concrete pen. They are fed through slots in their cell doors, and are allowed no communal activities, no phone calls, and no contact visits. As in most supermax prisons, a high percentage of prisoners at Tamms suffer from serious mental illness, and for them the torment is even worse. In its 14-year history, Tamms has witnessed inmate suicides, suicide attempts, and self-mutilations. When it opened in 1998, Tamms was purported to be a short-term solution for prisoners with disciplinary problems. Yet ten years later, a third of the original prisoners were still there, held in solitary for more than a decade. In addition to its human costs, incarcerating prisoners at Tamms is also extraordinarily expensive: According to one calculation, the cost of keeping an inmate in the supermax exceeds $92,000 per year--two to three times the cost of the state's other maximum security prisons. With Illinois several years into a serious fiscal crisis, the immediate impetus for the proposed closure of Tamms is clearly financial. But years of activism and litigation, along with  scathing press exposes, undoubtedly helped sway the state to put Tamms on the chopping block. Grassroots advocacy, spearheaded by the group Tamms Year Ten, began in earnest in 2008, on the tenth anniversary of Tamms' opening. In addition to mounting various educational and organizing efforts, the Tamms Year Ten campaign exerted pressure on state legislators, the governor, and the Illinois Department of Corrections--which in 2009 announced a "ten-point plan" for reforming the supermax. Subsequently, however, the head of the IDOC was pushed out, and most of the reforms were never implemented. The movement gained traction, nonetheless, as a result of a series of investigations by reporters at the Belleville News-Democrat, which released its series "Trapped in Tamms" in August 2009. The series portrayed a nightmarish place where sane prisoners were driven mad, and where those with underlying mental illness suffered daily as a result of their extreme isolation. In 2010, following a ten-year legal battle by Chicago's Uptown People's Law Center, a federal judge ruled that inmates at Tamms were being denied their Constitutional rights by being placed in long-term solitary without any semblance of due process. The same judge found that the "crushing monotony" and total deprivation of human contact were likely to "inflict lasting psychological damage and emotional harm on inmates confined there for long periods." Prisoner advocates were today affirming Quinn's decision to promote the closure of Tamms, calling it "long overdue." Tamms Year Ten leader Laurie Jo Reynolds told the Belleville News Democrat: "From the day it opened, Tamms has been a financial boondoggle and a human rights catastrophe. The staff to prisoner ratio is the highest in the system and the mental health worker to prisoner ratio is vastly higher...Because men can't work or leave the cell, we just pay for excess correctional staff to shackle them, move them around, and push food into their cells. Then we pay to treat them when they become insane due to the isolation." But they also warned that the closure of Tamms is far from accomplished, and will face resistance from a number of directions--including not only corrections officials and unions and Republican legislators, but also Democrats from the southern tip of the state where Tamms is located. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "The rumored Tamms closure was drawing heavy criticism from Southern Illinois legislators throughout the day Tuesday. The criticism was directed at Quinn, a Chicagoan. 'I'm mad as hell. I don't know where this guy is coming from,' state Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, wrote in a Twitter feed." Advocates urged backers of the Tamms closure to immediately contact the governor's office to state their support for the plan.

A broken promise ~~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKBpuchg0rU

Cultural Diversity in Prisons

http://youtu.be/oGzKKVRXlIo

Solitary Confinement

How Many Prisoners Are in Solitary Confinement in the United States?

February 1, 2012

tags: Bureau of Justice Statistics, data, isolated confinement, numbers, supermax prisons, vera institute of justice

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

The number of inmates held in solitary confinement in the United States has been notoriously difficult to determine. Most states do not publish the relevant data, and many do not even collect it. Attempts to come up with a figure have been denounced as imperfect, based on state-by-state variances and shortcomings in data-gathering and in conceptions of what constitutes solitary confinement.
A widely accepted 2005 study found that some 25,000 prisoners were being held in supermax prisons around the country. And in the last year, that figure seems to dominate in the mainstream press. The Washington Post, in a recent front-page article on solitary confinement in Virginia, noted that “44 states…use solitary confinement,” and cited an “estimated 25,000 people in solitary in the nation’s state and federal prisons.” The problem here is that the 25,000 figure (as well as the 44) applies to supermax prisons only. It does not claim to account for the tens of thousands of additional prisoners held in the Secure Housing Units, Restricted Housing Units, Special Management Units and other isolation cells in prisons and jails around the country. Yet it is being cited as a total for the nation’s overall use of solitary confinement.
An alternative figure does, however, exist–and while it may not be perfect, we believe it more accurately reflects the total number of prisoners held in isolated confinement on any given day. A census of state and federal prisoners is conducted every five years by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. The most recent census for which data are available is 2005. It found 81,622 inmates were being held in “restricted housing.” This number was recently cited by the Vera Institute of Justice‘s Segregation Reduction Project. The 80,000 figure has also been used by National Geographic and The New Yorker, among others.
An earlier version of this number, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s 2000 census, was cited by the widely respected Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, convened by Vera. The Commission further broke the figure down to show types of ”restricted housing.” In 2000, the BJS found 80,870 inmates in some form of segregation, including 36,499 in administrative segregation, 33,586 in disciplinary segregation, and 10,765 in protective custody. The Commission noted that the 2000 figures represented a 40 percent increase over 1995, when 57,591 inmates were in segregation. During the same period of time, the overall prison population grew by 28 percent. (See page 56 of the Commission’s 2006 report, Confronting Confinement).
The census uses the term “restricted housing,” which clearly includes segregation units outside of supermax prisons. Since it captures where prisoners are housed on a given day (June 30, 2005), it is meant to include both long-term or indefinite isolation (years or decades) as well as shorter stints in solitary (weeks or months). It may include a small number of prisoners who are held in 23-hour lockdown in double cells, a practice popular in some states. (For this reason, some advocates prefer the term “isolated confinement” to “solitary confinement”). The number  is based on self-reporting by wardens and state corrections departments, so it may reflect some errors and inconsistencies. But prison officials are not, as a rule, known for their tendency to overrreport the number of inmates they hold in solitary.
It is also worth noting that the census figures do not include prisoners in solitary confinement in juvenile facilities, immigrant detention centers, or local jails; if they did they would certainly be higher. We know that New York’s jails alone contain 990 isolation cells, according to the New York City Department of Corrections.
A survey of available data from a handful of states also suggest that the 80,000 figure is likely low, rather than high. Just eight states and the federal government hold some 44,000 prisoners in isolated confinement.

• In 2010, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons told CNN that there were about 11,150 federal inmates being held in “special housing.” ADX Florence holds approximately 400 of these inmates in ultra-isolation.
• In California in 2011, Scott Kernan, Undersecretary of Operations of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, testified before the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee that approximately 3,000 inmates were held in California’s Security Housing Units, including over 1,100 at the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU alone. A 2009 report from California’s Inspector General found 8,878 inmates in Administrative Segregation Units. This means that, all told, there are close to 11,000 prisoners in solitary confinement in California.
• As reported by the Houston Chronicle based on figures from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in 2011 there were over 5,205 inmates in long-term isolation in administrative segregation, and approximately 4,000 more serving shorter terms in solitary for disciplinary violations–for a total of more than 9,000.
• According to a 2003 report by the Correctional Association, New York state had approximately 5,000 inmates in disciplinary lockdown in 2003.
• At the end of 2011, Pennyslvania Department of Corrections reported that 2,406 inmates were held in segregation in the state’s Restrictive Housing Units.
• A 2011 study carried out in Colorado by independent researchers funded by the National Institute of Corrections found that nearly 1,500 inmates, or 7% of the prison population, were in administrative segregation and a further 670 in disciplinary segregation–for a total of more than 2,100.
• In Virginia, according to a 2012 article in the Washington Post, there were 1,800 inmates in solitary confinement, 500 of whom are held at the supermax Red Onion State Prison.
• A 2007 report by the American Friends Service Committee found 1,623 inmates held in isolation in Arizona’s SHUs.
• In a 2008 report to the state legislature, the Michigan Department of Corrections said that that the daily average number of inmates held in administrative segregation in FY 2007-08 was 1,294.

In our opinion, the most accurate possible description of how many prisoners are solitary confinement in the United States would go something like this: “Based on available data, there are at least 80,000 prisoners in isolated confinement on any given day in America’s prisons and jails, including some 25,000 in long-term solitary in supermax prisons.”

Research for this article was provided by Sal Rodriguez

Suicides by incarcerated veterans

http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=rBrKGMnS91I&feature=plcp&context=C3d17fe2UDOEgsToPDskIJMbzdVfgFbLvDnpoEkZ5W

Veterans with PTSD going to prison ~~ what can we do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJmJVqDWE5M

Ron Paul Says........

Private Prison System

Submitted by WTF Finance on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 16:57

in  Politics & Law

 

There's not much that the government doesn't do. It continues to grow in size, control, and cost while ignoring its limitations per the founding document.

As much as Government does what it shouldn't do it outsources the things it should be doing. Look at the control over the monetary system that Congress "handed" to the Federal Reserve in 1913 and how wars have been privatized for profit.

A topic that few people discuss in the liberty movement is the privatization of the prison system. Please read and share this article with your friends and call your representative to have Government in charge of the prison system.

http://www.wtffinance.com/2011/02/the-profitability-of-the-p...It's more than obvious how it's a profit driven industry and no "free" Nation should put a system in place where incarceration is motivated by profiteering. Just as no free Nation should fight a war on drugs. It's more than clear how the two are connected.

Tony Lester's Death - Marginalized and Forgotten?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUEUy2EokL0

Deliberate Indifference for the sake of $$$$$

No help for the mentally ill once behind the prison walls ~~

Running prisons and taking care of the custodial responsibilities takes a backseat on the primary goal of incarceration = making profit from human beings and neglecting their custodial needs according to our own US Constitution that is being ignored and sanction as such by the politiicans that signed up for this ride to mass incarcerate America ~~

Preventable Suicides in Solitary Confinement

The full story on Tony Lester's death

There are many questions still unanswered why there were no administrators disciplined for the death of inmate Anthony Lester, a mentally ill person, incarcerated and sentenced to die at his own hands. Diagnosed with a severe mental illness, his judgment and sentence report contained a recommendation by a judge to be admitted for psychiatric care while in prison. In addition, his medical and mental health files was covered with his treatment needs and were ignored by the Arizona Department of Corrections as he was admitted, classified and sent to a non-mental health unit in Tucson, Arizona. Soon months after his incarceration, Anthony was put on a mental health watch for suicide risks and self-harm statements made to staff and mental health providers. His watch didn't last long and he was released back to general population but instead of going to the yard, he was placed in isolation via a stay in a detention cell. His needs of the "voices" he was hearing was not addressed nor was he on any medication that was part of his treatment. Shortly after being put in a detention cell, Lester, with the help of a cellmate, took a razor erroneously given to him by an officer and removed the blade. He then cut his body in many places and finally, he wrote the words "voices" in his own blood before he cut his jugular vein and bled to death.

Another Preventable Death inside Solitary Confinement

Tony Lester's Suicide in a Tucson Prison ~~

Making a stand for our veterans

Fri Nov 11, 2011 at 07:00 AM PST

Making a stand for our veterans

by Joe SestakFollow

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Today’s news is filled with discussion about our national debt and what we must do about it. On this Veteran’s Day, I would like to talk about another national debt--the one we owe to our 24 million American vets. This immeasurable debt can never be fully repaid, but as individuals coming together as a community, we can do a lot to pay down some of that debt.

This Veteran’s Day, I’ll be walking with our veterans in their annual parade in Johnstown. This western Pennsylvanian city showed what you can do when you stick together as a community by overcoming one of the greatest disasters in our nation’s history when they rebuilt their town after the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889.

In addition to parades, every Veterans' Day, I have visited veterans in federal prison. I feel compelled to go to penitentiaries to offer support to them because far too many prisoners are there as a direct or indirect result of their military service.

Approximately half of our vets in prison today are there because of drug and/or alcohol related crimes, often associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other mental illnesses that are caused or exacerbated by combat duty. When our Vietnam vets returned home, they were often treated with disrespect, and without any understanding of PTSD. For a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, our servicemembers have gone “outside the wire” into combat conditions almost every day for the 15 months of their deployment; returned home for 12 months, and then did it all over again…and again. It’s no surprise that over a third of them return home burdened with PTSD and/or other mental challenges. And when they are discharged, they have faced a recession, and now a jobless economy. Not surprisingly, our Iraq and Afghanistan vets are showing up in the homeless ranks more quickly than those who served in Vietnam or the Korean War.

When long-term factors such as PTSD and other disabilities are considered, research at Harvard University has shown the overall cost of America’s war in Iraq alone is over 3 trillion dollars. Some demographics are more adversely impacted, or more neglected. About one in five women seen in Veteran Hospitals respond “yes” when screened for Military Sexual Trauma (MST), and one in 15 of our homeless population is a female veteran.

Obviously, many vets struggle with – or without – these issues and remain singular achievers. I was honored to wear the uniform of this nation for 31 years in the U.S. Navy, inspired to serve by my father’s example, another career-Navy man who fought in both the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II. He returned home to a successful career and a strong, supportive family, with unlimited opportunities available to him. Unfortunately, that is not the case today for many of our veterans.

It will take the community of America—all of us—to ensure we address the job training, mental assistance, education and healthcare needs of our veterans. Undoubtedly, our national debt crisis necessitates a shared sacrifice going forward. But let us keep in mind that only one percent of American families sacrificed up front with a loved one who volunteered to serve in our recent wars overseas.

We have learned from the way we mistreated our Vietnam veterans. Now we embrace our troops as they return home. But, this is still not enough. The real value of Veterans Day is not so much to recognize their service; it is to remind us that our veterans live alone every day with the burden of the war they brought home. They should not do so. Otherwise, it can mean incarceration – in mental illness or prison, in unemployment or addiction – for so many who risked their life for our American way of life.

As we are forced to make the needed cuts to help get us back on track financially as a nation, it’s important that we also stand together for who we are as Americans by ensuring that our veterans are not short changed in the process. Not by speeches, but by deeds. As a church deacon once put it, it is more important that “…what you do speaks so loudly, that I cannot hear what you say.”

Follow Joe on Facebook and Twitter.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/11/1035419/-Making-a-stand-for-our-veterans

Our Administrative System of Criminal Justice

http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3485&context=flr


Great read on Inquisitional system versus the adversial system in our criminal justice system ~~ Click on link above to read entire Fordham Law document written by Gerald E Lynch

LAWYERS in the common law tradition like to emphasize the differences between the Anglo-American "adversarial" system of criminal justice and the continentalor civilian "inquisitorial" system. The conventional U.S. lawyers tends to glorify the American system, which is claimed to be more protective of liberty, more democratic, and less dominated by agents of the government establishment than the civil law tradition, thanks to the role of the lay jury, the formal equality between the representatives of the government and of the defendant, and the "neutral" independence of the judiciary. Increasingly, however, academic experts-and occasional public commentators influenced by them-tend to make the same sharp comparisons wisdom among  with a reverse twist, praising the inquisitorial system as more rational, more effective, and even more careful to avoid conviction of the innocent, thanks to the dominance of professional judges with a mandate for finding the truth.........

What Is Abu Ghraib DNA?? Have Forgotten??

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_Fl4YAoT6zBOGZmY2M1MjctYzYzNC00MTliLWFhNjctMzUxMDYyODZhMDBk&hl=en_US