Occupy 4 Prisoners Protest Outside San Quentin Prison

San Quentin - Occupy Oakland joined together with prison reform activists, forming Occupy 4 Prisoners, outside the infamous prison February 20th to protest against the high incarceration and living conditions.prevalent in the facility. Some of their issues involved the strict sentencing, ending solitary confinement, and children being tried as adults.


"I myself experienced more than 14 months of solitary confinement and after only two months my mind began to slip," said Sarah Shourd.  Shourd was one of three people, along with her friends Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who were imprisoned for in an Iranian jail in 2009. They have since focused their efforts toward prison reform.



"We have merged the prison rights movement with the Occupy Movement. The 99 percent has to be concerned about the bottom 1 percent," said activist Barbra Becnel said, quoting a message she said came from death row prisoner Kevin Cooper.


Demonstrators also held a moment of silence for Christian Alexander Gomez who died February 2 while on a hunger strike in California's Corcoran State Prison. He was one of the prisoners who staged a wave of hunger strikes in solidarity with other prisoners who united against the isolation unites in Pelican Bay State Prison.

Georgia May Lose Federal Funding over Excessive Jailing of Non-Criminal Juveniles

By Noel Brinkerhoff

 

The state of Georgia has for years thrown into jail juveniles who have committed no crime. But to continue doing so could now cost the state millions of dollars.

 

Those spending time in jail are what is known as “status offenders”—runaways, truants, curfew violators, underage smokers and drinkers whose actions would not be considered crimes if they were adults.

 

A study commissioned by the Georgia Governor’s Office for Children and Families has warned that the incarceration of such non-criminal youths could mean losing $2 million a year from the federal government.

 

Legislation has been introduced in the Georgia legislature that would overhaul how the state handles status offenders. The bill calls for creating a new agency, Children in Need of Services, modeled after what 16 other states have done with their non-criminal youths. The idea is to redirect these children and teens into community-based services instead of throwing them behind bars.

Commentary: Corporal Punishment Doesn't Work, Study Finds

Corporal Punishment Leaves Too Many Scars, Inter Press Service, Sunday, November 20, 2011 (posted by Global Issues)

What I'd really like to see is more things like this article showing corporal punishment doesn't work (especially for drug offenses) and, as noted in the piece, may cause them "to take even harder drugs than before, making their whole problem worse." It would also be great to see this kind of study done with America jailing people for non-violent drug use. Could it be called torture? If you're poor and/or non-white then the answer would definitely be yes. What happens to those people when they get out? How does society treat them? Why are don't they get the chance to go to state-funded rehabilitation (because the state providing it is way more cost-efficient than imprisoning them for an extended period of time, not to mention the human lives ruined by the prison system)?