Free Republic

Wardens in prisons in the UK (and throughout the West) are failing “to stop jihadi poison spreading in jails: Staff face being labelled racist if they stand up to hate preachers.” Calling out jihadist doctrine renders one a so-called “islamophobe,” and this label — intended to browbeat the infidel — must be fully resisted. UK prisons today show why: this label is enabling jihad activity. In America, it’s no different, as federal prisons are described by experts as “breeding grounds” for terrorists. The implications are severe…. “Prisons have long been criticized for a culture that can make some inmates more...

In places like Louisiana and Texas, sweltering states where elected officials cherish tough-on-crime credentials, it is politically poisonous to be perceived as coddling prisoners. And many officials simply say that temperatures are not anywhere near as dire as prisoners and their lawyers claim. A spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which is facing an array of lawsuits over the issue of jail temperatures, including a class-action case, said in a statement that “the well-being of staff and offenders is a top priority for the agency and we remain committed to making sure that both are safe during the...

A North Carolina man who spent 28 years in prison on murder charges has been released after a judge ruled his trial was unfair. Authorities will now consider whether Johnny Small, 43, should face a second trial in the 1988 murder of Pam Dreher. Judge W Douglas Parsons ruled that there was not enough evidence to convict Small. He also found that during the 1989 trial witnesses lied and police withheld key evidence. On his first night in nearly 30 years outside of prison, Small slept on a cousin's sofa. After years of sleeping in cell, he preferred sleeping in...

I-TEAM Prison guards, police warned of possible 'Black August' attacks VIDEO AND IMAGE AT ABC7 By Dan Noyes Thursday, August 04, 2016 07:11PM SAN FRANCISCO -- An urgent bulletin is going out to law enforcement Wednesday, warning of a new threat of attacks against officers on the street and in prisons. It has to do with what's called Black August. A reporter for KGO-TV - KABC's sister station in San Francisco - obtained the bulletin from a law enforcement source. The bulletin from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Sacramento Intelligence Unit and the FBI's National Gang Intelligence Center warns of...

'Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow' Barack Obama is, rather famously, a non-violent drug offender. In his youth, he roamed Hawaii with the Choom Gang and indulged in the local fare. As he wrote in his book, Dreams of my Father: I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though—Mickey, my potentional intiator had been just a little too eager for me to go through with that.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is cutting short the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including 67 serving life sentences. The White House says it's the largest batch of commutations on a single day in more than a century. Almost all the prisoners were serving time for nonviolent drug offenses. The commutations bring to 562 the total number of sentences Obama has shortened. The White House says that's more than the past nine presidents combined. Almost 200 of those who have benefited were serving life sentences. White House counsel Neil Eggleston says Obama will continue granting clemency to more inmates...

Hillary hit hard August 2, 2016 Arcadia It was a typical summer celebration in small-town Iowa. The sun was shining on children carrying bags full of candy as the Arcadia Fire Department was celebrating its 100th anniversary on Saturday with a parade, a party in the park and a big water fight that would serve as the grand finale. A young blond boy, no more than 8 years old, ran out into the street near the intersection of West Center and South Gault streets because one float was handing out water balloons. The child grabbed his balloon, took aim and...

DENVER (CN) — Citing the state's "Make My Day" law, which immunizes the use of force to protect one's dwelling, a Colorado appeals court found that the same logic shields inmates who stab fellow prisoners to death.     As its name suggests, Colorado's "Make My Day" statute draws inspiration from the famous line Clint Eastwood delivers as Dirty Harry in the film "Sudden Impact."     Antero Alaniz, who is already serving life without parole for a 2005 conviction, invoked the law when he was charged for the 2011 murder of a fellow inmate at Sterling Correctional Facility.     State records show that Alaniz, 36, has since...

NASHVILLE — When she was just 16, Cyntoia Brown climbed into a pickup truck with a stranger, drove to his home, got into his bed — then shot him in the back of the head with a .40-caliber handgun as he lay naked beside her. Brown, now 28, is serving a life sentence at the Tennessee Prison for Women for the murder of Johnny Mitchell Allen, a 43-year-old Nashville real estate agent.

Why I Can’t Stand Author Piper Kerman of Orange is the New Black Piper Kerman’s Orange is the New Black was a best seller several years ago, which spawned a popular Netflix T.V. series of the same name. Less than 50 pages into the book I couldn’t stand her. Her behavior and attitude later in the book confirmed that feeling. The actual charge she does time for doesn’t bother me nearly as much as what kind of person Piper is – and isn’t. Among other things, Piper Kerman is a self-centered elitist snob, and I straight up do not like...

President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that there’s an extra special place in his heart for incarcerated criminals, but this is a bit much. The administration spends a lot more money on the medical care of jailed convicts than retired seniors on Medicare, active U.S. military personnel or veterans, including an extra $100 million in one year alone, according to a federal audit released this month. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) consistently pays outside doctors and hospitals more to treat inmates than Medicare or other federal agencies would pay for the same services, according to the report which is the...

Martha Stewart says Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” pales in comparison to “the real thing.” In an interview with comedian and talk show host Chelsea Handler, Stewart spoke fondly of her time in women's federal prison. "When you live through something like 'Orange is the New Black' ... the real characters are better," said Stewart, who served five months behind bars in 2004 to 2005 for insider trading. She conceded that she does not watch the Netflix series, premiering its fourth season on June 17. “Too close to home?” Handler asked. “Well, no. It’s not as good as the...

Trump calls for Clinton to be jailed By Jeremy Diamond, CNN Updated 12:27 AM ET, Fri June 3, 2016 San Jose, California (CNN)Donald Trump on Thursday called for his likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned. "I will say this, Hillary Clinton has got to go to jail," Trump told supporters here as he slammed Clinton's foreign policy speech earlier in the day in which Clinton called Trump dangerous and "temperamentally unfit" to be president. "Folks, honestly, she's guilty as hell," Trump said of the Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state....

If the founders could see the leader we have, and how vulnerable to collapse we are at present, they would weep A while back I was invited to tour a newly opened maximum-security prison. My host, an upper echelon officer of the state’s Department of Corrections, drove me to the big gate at the multi-facility prison grounds. Along the way were a half-dozen subsequent checkpoints with mirrored, bulletproof windows that housed the vaguely-silhouetted guards who monitored dozens of cameras. At the huge, brick and concrete ‘New Max’, we walked among twenty-foot-high cyclone and barbed-wire walls topped with concertina wire. The...

Backers of the criminal justice reform bill pending in Congress are intent on reducing the population of the federal prisons. Their premise? Prisons are overflowing with minor drug offenders who have no reason to be incarcerated – “mass incarceration” is the term they like to use. As many have pointed out, that premise is a lie. Less than one percent of the federal prison population is there for drug possession, and most of those pled down from a more serious offense. But the left is intent on releasing prisoners anyway – mostly before their sentences run. Those to be let...

Mass murderer of children gets a computer, a Playstation, and his own kitchen—but that’s not enough for the Norway court that called his prison conditions “degrading.” A Norway court just ruled that the prison where mass-murderer Anders Breivik is being held violated his human rights—but the perks he enjoys at the Scandinavian lock-up are downright plush. On Wednesday, an Oslo district court awarded Breivik—who killed 77 people in a 2011 shooting spree, including 69 children at the Utoya summer camp—with 331,000 kroner (roughly $40,600) and a promise for improved living conditions. Ruling from a makeshift courtroom in the prison gym,...

Oslo, Norway (CNN) — Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has won part of his lawsuit against the state over his solitary confinement in a high-security prison, a court announced Wednesday. The Oslo district court found the 37-year-old's treatment in prison violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, prohibiting "inhuman or degrading treatment," and ruled that his conditions must be eased. The court also ordered the government to pay legal costs of 331,000 kroner ($40,600) for the right-wing extremist, who killed 77 people in a shooting rampage and bombing attack in 2011.

Responding to petitions and pleas of a minority of millennials who are as tired of being coddled as they are of being offended, the government has completed construction for the nation's first ever safe space. Constructed under the authority of an agency that was newly formed via an executive order by President Obama the Department of Understanding Millennials Better (DUMB) plans to open the 10,000 facility up to its first inhabitants in the coming weeks and already has a waiting list that is ten times that capacity. The facility will be known as "The Safe Space," or "the SS" for...

A Texas judge ordered Wednesday that "affluenza" teen Ethan Couch spend 720 days in jail -- nearly two years -- as a condition for his continued probation for a 2013 fatal drunken-driving crash. However, the judge said he'd give the defense two weeks to make an argument against the order. "Nothing is set in stone, so I might reconsider," the judge said in a court hearing in the case in Tarrant County, Texas.

A former soldier, who served in East Timor, is fighting for his life after a brutal attack by an ISIS supporter who was locked in the same prison cell of a New South Wales jail. The pair were placed together at Kempsey prison’s maximum security section, on the state’s Mid North Coast on Thursday morning, just a few hours before the unprovoked attack. It is believed the 18-year-old attacker choked the 40-year-old and carved ‘e4e’ into the front and back of the victim's head with a sharp object during the attack, to signify the group’s ‘eye for an eye’ torture...