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Video: Death Row Inmates Blogging From Behind Bars
Saddam’s Prison Diaries Show He Was Afraid Of Catching AIDS
The Pentagon has released excerpts of Saddam Hussein’s diary that he wrote in daily while being held in an American detention facility in Iraq.
According to his writings, Saddam feared catching AIDS when he discovered that his U.S. military guards sometimes used his clothes line to dry their clothes.
When Saddam found out his U.S. military guards were also using his laundry line to dry clothes, he wrote that he demanded they stop, according to the excerpts.
“I explained to them that they are young and they could have young people’s diseases,” Saddam wrote. “My main concern was to not catch a venereal disease, an HIV disease, in this place.” He said some soldiers ignored his request.
Obviously, Saddam was about 20 years behind in common knowledge about AIDS since he thought it could be transmitted via clothes line.
Also, it’s not like we were gonna let him live long enough to catch anything anyway.
Our Prison System Must Be Reformed
There’s an interesting editorial in today’s NY Times that looks at the U.S. prison system and it’s numerous failures. Currently the United States has the largest prison population in the world. 1 in 100 Americans is behind bars bringing the total prison population to around 1.6 million people.
Nearly every prison in the U.S. is dangerously overcrowded and understaffed which creates an environment that is both deadly to staff and to inmates.
The novel idea of “rehabilitation” is something that has long since left America’s prison system. The idea now revolves around “warehousing” inmates until such time as they can be released, executed, murdered, or die of natural causes.
There is no funding for school, trades, or anything that might better prepare someone for the outside world. Most prisons have a “revolving door” meaning that 80% of those released come right back in less than a year.
I’m not naive, I know full well that there’s a lot of people who belong in prison and should be kept their for the rest of their lives. Anyone who doubts this should just watch a couple of hours of “Lock-Up” on MSNBC.
The roots of the U.S. prison system in it’s present form can be traced back to the 1980’s when the public demanded that prisons be a place for punishment and not a vacation.
This is a valid argument and one that I share. Prisons absolutely should be about punishment, however that’s not all it should be about. We are only doing further damage to our society when people who are sent to prison don’t come out any better than when they went in.
Does anyone really believe that sending a drug-addicted high school drop-out to prison for 5 years is gonna solve anything?
When he gets out he’ll be the same drug addicted high-school drop-out he was only a little older. He’ll also have convicted felon and ex-con to add to his decidedly short resume which will guarantee that not even his local McDonald’s is likely to hire him.
Contrast that with a drug addicted high-school drop-out who undergoes extensive, mandatory drug treatment over his five years of incarceration plus a GED and at least two years of college. A guy like that can leave prison feeling better about his future than he ever has and society as a whole will benefit from having another productive member added to it.
Obviously a prisoner has to want to help himself before anyone else can help him. There will be many who just don’t give a damn and whose anti-social personality is beyond anyone’s reach.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that we know exactly what to do with those kind of people. I also understand that programs like I’m describing will not be cheap and taxpayers dislike the idea of “wasting” tax payer money on criminals and thugs.
However, in the long-run I believe people will come to see it not as wasting money. Right now for ever 1 person released from prison 3 are coming in.
Imagine what are society would be like if fewer criminals were leaving our prisons than were coming into it?
We must save our “punishment only” incarceration for those who cannot be helped, but offer an aggressive rehabilitation/education program for the rest.
-Chris Jones
Wrongfully Convicted Texas Man Freed After 26 Years
Three times during his nearly 27 years in prison, Charles Chatman went before a parole board and refused to admit he was a rapist. His steadfastness was vindicated Thursday, when a judge released him because of new DNA evidence showing he indeed wasn’t. The release of Chatman, 47, added to Dallas County’s nationally unmatched number of wrongfully convicted inmates.
“Every time I’d go to parole, they’d want a description of the crime or my version of the crime,” Chatman said. “I don’t have a version of the crime. I never committed the crime. I never will admit to doing this crime that I know I didn’t do.”
Chatman became the 15th inmate from Dallas County since 2001 to be freed by DNA testing. He served more time than any of the other inmates, four of whom were in court Thursday to show their support.
Dallas has freed more inmates after DNA testing than any other county nationwide, said Natalie Roetzel of the Innocence Project of Texas. Texas leads the country in prisoners freed by DNA testing, releasing at least 30 wrongfully convicted inmates since 2001, according to the Innocence Project.
Chatman was 20 when the victim, a young woman in her 20s, picked him from a lineup. Chatman said he lived five houses down from the victim for 13 years but never knew her.
She identified him in court as the attacker, and serology tests showed that the type of blood found at the crime scene matched that of Chatman—along with 40 percent of other black males.
Chatman said he was working at the time of the assault, an alibi supported by his sister, who was also his employer. Nevertheless, Chatman was convicted of aggravated sexual assault in 1981 and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Mr. Chatman must be an incredibly strong person psychologically, and emotionally because I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be sent to prison for something you didn’t do.
The man has been incarcerated for more than 26 years!! How do you even begin to right a wrong of that magnitude? More than two decades were stolen from Mr. Chatman that he can never get back.
I think for starters he should get around $2 million dollars for every year he was in prison, which would give him a nice settlement of around $52 million dollars.
Money won’t even begin to make up for losing so many years, but at least he can spend the next 26 years living the good life and spending time with his family.
It’s so important that we revisit old cases where DNA testing is now possible to determine with absolute certainty that an innocent person is not rotting in prison.
-Chris Jones
Conrad Black Sentenced to 6 1/2 years in the Clink
Former newspaper mogul Conrad Black was sentenced Monday to 6 1/2 years in prison for swindling shareholders in his Hollinger International media empire out of millions of dollars.
Supreme Court: Judges Can Slash Crack Sentences
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal judges have the discretion to give “reasonably” shorter prison terms for crack-cocaine crimes to reduce the disparity with crimes involving cocaine powder.
The 7-2 ruling represents a victory for lawyers who argued that crack-cocaine offenders were unfairly targeted under U.S. sentencing guidelines.
Current federal penalties for selling 5 grams of crack cocaine can warrant the same prison sentence as dealing 500 grams of the powdered variety.
The especially harsh prison sentences for dealing crack were established as a way to get a handle on the crack epidemic that exploded in the late 1980’s. The hope was that if dealers knew they could potentially spend the rest of their lives behind bars for dealing crack, they would stop selling it.
The harsh laws may in some ways have helped to curb the crack epidemic, however, the program was largely a failure. We continue to build more and more prisons with no end in sight. We have locked thousands of 18 and 19 year old kids up for for 30, 40, 50+ years in prison for selling crack cocaine.
Not only is that incredibly unfair, but if they ever do get out they pose a significant risk to the community. A non-violent kid who ends up spending most of his adult life in prison does not have the necessary skills to live a normal and productive life on the outside.
What we are in fact doing is turning a misguided young person into a violent felon and then releasing him back into the community after a decade or two in prison.
The “war on drugs” is a joke, our prison system is broken, and something must be done. This Supreme Court ruling is at least one small step in the right direction.
-Chris Jones
Georgia Teen Finally Freed in Oral Sex Case
Georgia’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a young man who has been imprisoned for more than two years for having consensual oral sex with another teenager.
The court ruled 4-3 that Genarlow Wilson’s 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.
Wilson, 21, was convicted of aggravated child molestation following a 2003 New Year’s Eve party at a Douglas County hotel room where he was videotaped having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was 17 at the time.
The 1995 law Wilson violated was changed in 2006 to make oral sex between teens close in age a misdemeanor, similar to the law regarding teen sexual intercourse. But the state Supreme Court later upheld a lower court’s ruling which said that the 2006 law could not be applied retroactively.
Maybe if the black community would have marched as hard for this kid as they did for the “Jena 6″ this situation would have been resolved much sooner. Giving a kid 10 years for having oral sex with another kid is one of the most outrageous things I have ever heard.
-Chris JonesÂ
MASTERMIND OF 1993 TWIN TOWERS ATTACK CLAIMS HE HAS CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY
Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, claims he converted from Islam to Christianity, Scott Pelley reports in a story that brings viewers inside the secretive “Supermax” prison where he is being held. Pelley also reports that some 900 force feedings were performed on other al-Qaeda terrorists who went on repeated hunger strikes to protest conditions at the Colorado top-security federal prison. The 60 MINUTES segment will be broadcast Sunday Oct. 14 (7:30-9:00 PM, ET/7:00-9:00 PM, PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Anyone who’s read extensively about Yousef would know that the mere suggestion that he would convert to Christianity is ridiculous. In addition to being of nearly genius intelligence level and a master bomb maker, he’s also a true believer.
His uncle and mentor is Khalid-Shakh-Mohammed the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and top Al-Qaeda operative. It was with his uncle that he hatched the 1993 Trade Center bombing that ended in failure. Since Yousef was apprehended it was up to KSM alone to plan out the 2001 attacks.
The idea of using planes to crash into the the Trade Center was originally thought up by Ramzi Yousef back in 1992, but Osama Bin Laden thought the plan would take too much planning. So Ramzi and KSM decided on a truck bomb which they used in the ‘93 attack.
-Chris Jones
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