Free Republic

Criminal justice reform has been a hot topic lately. It’s something that both Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on. However, I get the sense that many Americans aren’t convinced that it would benefit them personally. Most of us are probably law-obeying citizens whom would never dream of being involved in illicit activities. We don’t have regular run-ins with the police. We don’t sell or use illegal drugs. We’re just normal people trying to do what’s right and take care of our families. So, why should non-criminals care about criminal justice reform? First, eliminating or reducing mandatory minimum sentences would benefit...

When a Vacaville woman tried to end her relationship with a former Baptist minister in late 2013, he told her that she'd created a monster. On Wednesday, Sarah Nottingham explained to a Solano County Superior Court judge that for a week, then-Pastor Mark Lewis showed her what a monster he could be. Nottingham's words came during the sentencing hearing for Lewis, who in January pleaded no contest to charges of arson and stalking. Judge Dwight C. Ely sentenced Lewis to eight years in prison Wednesday in connection with the case that proceeded to a jury trial earlier this year, only...

**SNIP** Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, says authorities have now managed to recover roughly 16,000 Lerner emails. This has led Johnson to send Koskinen a letter in which the senator writes, “I respectfully request your assistance in better understanding the IRS’s document-retention and -production process.” We prefer the way the senator put it on Fox News: “I smell a rat. I smell a number of rats, and that’s what we are going to get to the bottom of.” We’re as curious as anyone about why the IRS told us the Lerner...

Criminal justice reform is a contentious political issue, but there’s one point on which pretty much everyone agrees: America’s prison population is way too high. It’s possible that a decline has already begun, with the number of state and federal inmates dropping for three years straight starting in 2010, from an all-time high of 1.62 million in 2009 to about 1.57 million in 2012. But change has been slow: Even if the downward trend continues, which is far from guaranteed, it could take almost 90 years for the country’s prison population to get down to where it was in 1980...

Twenty-eight inmates escaped from a Brazilian jail after three women in fantasy police costumes "seduced" prison wardens. Police found three wardens naked and handcuffed inside the Nova Mutum public jail, near Cuiaba, central Brazil, the morning after the mass break-out. The women reportedly drugged the prison guards by giving them spiked whisky after convincing them to take part in an orgy, according to investigators. Inmates then left the prison through the main doors, even taking with them guns and munitions they had taken from prison caches. Police later found a bag of lingerie and dominatrix police uniforms believed to have...

End prison perks for ‘fake’ Muslims President Obama and his administration seem quick to assert that the multitude of terrorist acts perpetrated in recent history are done by individuals who do not represent the religion of Islam. This is their justification for not identifying these enemies of freedom as Islamic radicals or Islamic terrorists. The Obama administration would have America believe that killers such as Sept. 11, 2011, mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and U.S. Army “workplace violence” purveyor Nidal Hasan are somehow false Muslims because their terrorist crimes are not in accordance with the tenets of Islam. If all this...

A Texas prison bus carrying 15 people veered off a road and was hit by train on Wednesday, prison officials said, with local media saying at least 10 people were killed in the accident. The bus with 12 inmates and three corrections officers was traveling from Abilene to El Paso when it skidded off a highway and ended up on railroad tracks, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said based on preliminary reports. The accident took place near the western Texas city of Odessa.

When I was in prison, I used to work out with heavy weights constantly. But when I started to understand that my best chances of survival were actually centered on education, I focused more on that instead, and it has made all the difference in the kind of life I now have. When I was released, having a student aid package was what kept me from having to go back into the underground economy in order to survive. On Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced a Correctional Education Guidance Package designed...

**SNIP** That troubling question is increasingly being repeated at parole hearings across California as the number of inmates with life sentences who are granted release skyrockets under Gov. Jerry Brown. Currently nearly 2,000 murderers, hit men and robbers who spent decades locked up and now range from middle-aged to elderly are trying to find their way. Most succeed, but each month a few more fail, returning to the drugs and crime that put them in prison and raising public safety concerns. California is one of four states in which the governor has final authority over parole decisions. A Times analysis...

The ACLU calls the U.S. the largest jailer in the world, holding roughly 25 percent of the world’s prison population despite the fact that national population represents only 5 percent of the world’s. After a three-year decline in the incarcerated population that began in 2010—a hopeful counter to decades of growth—the number of people in prison in the United States increased again last year, according to a report released on Friday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The U.S. has the highest prison population rate in the world, according to the U.K.-based International Centre for Prison Studies’ most recent...

The US corrections population dropped to its lowest point since 2003, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday. The number of Americans in prison, jail, parole, or probation dropped to less than 6.9 million in 2013, down 41,500 compared to 2012 and hitting the lowest point since 2003, according to a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Until 2008, the corrections population had been steadily growing for decades as all levels of government enforced tough-on-crime policies — particularly against drug offenses — that tied up more people in the criminal justice system. But states and the federal government, facing...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of eight federal drug defendants on Wednesday, including four who were set to die in federal prison, as part of a new initiative to reduce harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes. Sidney Earl Johnson, Jr., Rickey Marcell McCall, Larry Nailor and Israel Abel Torres had received life sentences and were going to die behind bars. But now Obama has commuted their sentences and those of four others who were convicted of drug crimes, and all eight inmates will be released in 2015. Obama has taken heat for not making full use of his clemency and...

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a ruling ordering Massachusetts prison officials to provide taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery for an inmate convicted of murder. Michelle Kosilek, born Robert Kosilek, is serving a life sentence for killing spouse Cheryl Kosilek in 1990. Kosilek has waged a protracted legal battle for the surgery she says is necessary to relieve the mental anguish caused by gender-identity disorder. [Snip] Kosilek, now 65, told The Associated Press in 2011 that the surgery is a medical necessity. "Everybody has the right to have their health care needs met, whether they are in prison or out...

One of the senior officials of terror group ISIS has shared in an interview that it was the American Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq that facilitated the birth of the terror group, as it gave jihadists the unique opportunity to congregate and build their plans and ideology. The revelations came in an extensive interview The Guardian conducted with a man who chose to identify himself by the name of Abu Ahmed. The man admitted that he has grown disillusioned with many of the extreme actions ISIS has taken over the past year. Bucca, established in the wake of the...

Two years ago in February, a 59-year-old federal inmate went under the knife at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton to have his diseased left kidney removed. He emerged from the procedure with his tumor-laden kidney still intact. The surgeon, Dr. Charles Coonan Streit, a urologist who has had his license for 41 years, mistakenly had taken out his healthy right kidney. Last week, the California Medical Board disciplined Streit for the error, placing him on probation for three years. According to the medical board, on the day of the operation Streit relied on memory to decide which kidney to...

Gotnews.com has finally confirmed that Louis Head, the stepfather of Michael Brown, is a member of the Bloods gang. Through text messages a top-ranked Ferguson cop confirmed that Head and the Brown family are members of the notorious street gang. Head called for Ferguson to riot.

Today in Texas, former prosecutor and judge Ken Anderson pled guilty to intentionally failing to disclose evidence in a case that sent an innocent man, Michael Morton, to prison for the murder of his wife. When trying the case as a prosecutor, Anderson possessed evidence that may have cleared Morton, including statements from the crime's only eyewitness that Morton wasn't the culprit. Anderson sat on this evidence, and then watched Morton get convicted. While Morton remained in prison for the next 25 years, Anderson's career flourished, and he eventually became a judge. In today's deal, Anderson pled to criminal contempt,...

It sounds like a radical idea: Stop incarcerating women, and close down women’s prisons. But in Britain, there is a growing movement, sponsored by a peer in the House of Lords, to do just that. The argument is actually quite straightforward: There are far fewer women in prison than men to start with — women make up just 7 percent of the prison population. This means that these women are disproportionately affected by a system designed for men. But could women’s prisons actually be eliminated in the United States, where the rate of women’s incarceration has risen by 646 percent...

**SNIP** After his conviction, Wright faced up to eight years in prison, but in September, a judge sentenced him to just 90 days and barred him from ever holding public office again. On Friday, Wright reported to the Los Angeles County jail to begin serving his term. But California’s prison system is overflowing with so many inmates that they have no room for a nonviolent offender with no prior convictions. Wright was processed, booked and released after just over an hour. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department told the Sacramento Bee that Wright received no special treatment....

On Friday afternoon, family spokesman Jonathan Franks told the AP that captive Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi will be released from a Mexican prison immediately, per a judge's order. Sgt. Tahmooressi served two tours in Afghanistan and was back home in the United States when he inadvertently crossed the border into Mexico while his legally purchased and legally owned guns were in his truck. He was imprisoned in Mexico and has been there for almost 8 months. After the judge made the ruling, which did not address the question of guit or innocence of the charges against him, the family issued...