Free Republic

For decades, the tough-on-crime movement has well served vote-pandering politicians (remember Jane Orie?), but hasn't reduced crime and imposes an ever-increasing burden on taxpayers. More specifically, the war on drugs is a dismal failure. Saying “drugs are a serious problem” is an understatement, because drug-related offenses aren't limited to possession and distribution. Many violent and property offenses are also drug-related — another understatement.

SMYRNA, Del. (AP) -- Inmates at a Delaware prison took five corrections department workers hostage Wednesday, a move the inmates told a local newspaper was due to concerns about their treatment and the leadership of the United States. The hostage situation drew dozens of officers and law enforcement vehicles to the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna and prompted a statewide lockdown of all prisons. One hostage was released Wednesday afternoon, but four remained in custody and negotiations were ongoing as the evening stretched on, authorities said. A preliminary investigation suggests the incident began around 10:30 a.m. when a...

A 70-year-old Kansas City man pleaded guilty to robbery in a Kansas court Monday, but he’s not afraid to go to jail. In fact, Lawrence John Ripple said the reason he robbed the bank in the first place was because he preferred to go to jail rather than go home to his wife, who was also in court. Ripple is accused of robbing the Bank of Labor in Kansas City on September 2, 2016. After collecting cash at gunpoint from the teller, Ripple went into the lobby of the bank, sat down and waited for the police. When officers...

Most of the 230 rioters arrested after violent protests erupted in Washington D.C. following Donald Trump's inauguration will be charged with felony rioting, federal prosecutors said on Saturday. The charge carries a punishment of up to ten years in jail and a $25,000 fine. Thousand of protesters launched a violent rampage just blocks away from the White House as anti-Trump demonstrators smashed store windows, set fire to cars and threw bricks at police. Many of those arrested are due to appear in court on Saturday, according to WUSA 9. Heated clashes broke out in McPherson Square and along K Street...

Prison (Jail) interview of remorseless woman convicted of torturing (3 days) and killing a supposed snitch.

Wife of Bill Clinton Here is my chosen theme Song for 2017-2018 for one of the greatest criminals in our nations history. (Performed by Johnny Cash)

Watch out, guys! An Austrian femme fatale known as the “Ice Cream Killer” will have plenty of new men to choose from at her new lockdown. Estibaliz Carranza, 38, will be transferred to an all-male prison because she’s too dangerous to be locked up at a women’s facility, but authorities might be playing right into her hands. The maniacal murderess has a history of luring men into her web and then killing and slicing up their bodies with a chainsaw. In 2012, she was sentenced to life behind bars for the dismemberment murders of her ex-husband and her onetime lover...

Ponzi king Bernie Madoff is seeking new business ventures behind bars — in the hot chocolate market. Madoff , 78, has bought up all Swiss Miss packets from the commissary at the Butner federal correction complex in North Carolina, and is reselling them for a profit, according to a report. “Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” journalist Steve Fishman told MarketWatch after interviewing Madoff at length for his new podcast “Ponzi Supernova.” “He made it so that if you wanted any, you had to...

State Police responded to the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Facility in Shirley after dozens of inmates refused to be locked in their cells Monday evening. The Department of Corrections says 51 inmates in the P-1 Housing Unit at the maximum security prison were involved in the incident. All corrections officers were safely evacuated from the unit and the prison’s Special Operations team regained control of the inmates at approximately 7:00 pm. Souza Baranowski prison cell (WBZ-TV) Souza Baranowski prison cell (WBZ-TV) The situation is still being assessed, but there were no injuries to any officers. A source tells WBZ the unit was...

If Hillary Clinton thinks the investigation of her private, unsecured email server ended with her failed bid for the presidency in November, she’d better think again, because now the top GOP investigator says a House Republican probe could zero in on “a lot of other characters” involved in the Clinton scandal. “This was never a political targeting in the beginning, and just because there was a political election doesn’t mean it goes away,” House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Monday. “There were a lot of other characters involved in this that we have to look at.”...

**SNIP** Through all the craziness, we knew that we were doing the right thing in spreading the message, because we realized that true journalism in the US was failing the American Public. The US media let the Clintons wipe away the messages of their crimes, and the news stories just covered the Kardashians and other vapid blather... but through the Hillary For Prison Movement, the AMERICAN PUBLIC said "NO, we want to talk about Benghazi, we want to talk about Classified Emails, we want to talk about Perjury.” If the media won’t keep the conversation active, then WE need to...

A 57-year-old convicted killer serving a life sentence in California became the first U.S. inmate to receive state-funded sex-reassignment surgery, the prisoner’s attorneys confirmed Friday. California prison officials agreed in August 2015 to pay for the surgery for Shiloh Heavenly Quine, who was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery for ransom and has no possibility of parole.

"Economically, he is going to do for the country what has not been done in modern history." — The "Oracle of San Quentin"“Welcome to prison.” Rahsaan Thomas greets me with a firm handshake and a big grin inside the Catholic chapel at San Quentin. It's job fair day at the prison in December, and things are busier than usual. Thirty seven inmates, including Thomas, are interviewing with 33 potential employers from around the Bay Area. They are hopeful. In the bright scenario that they make it out of prison, they could get hired by the owners of yoga studios, dog...

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Mumia Abu-Jamal should be provided new medications by the state to treat his hepatitis C infection. [Snip] The state has about 7,000 inmates with hepatitis C, and treating them - at a cost of $84,000 to $90,000 per person - would cost $600 million. [Snip] Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and sometime radio reporter, was found guilty of the Dec. 9, 1981, slaying [of a 25-year old police officer]. He was sentenced to death in 1982, but that sentence was overturned by a federal appeals court and reduced to life without parole.

An appeals court reversed a lower court’s ruling on Tuesday saying two U.S. government agencies did not do enough to recover emails pertaining to the investigation involving former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state. The three-judge panel — comprised of Judges Stephen Williams, Brett Kavanaugh and Robert Wilkins — ruled that the lower court judge should not have thrown out the cases as moot after the State Department received thousands of emails from the FBI and Clinton. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of...

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is seeking a presidential commutation, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice. The longshot request comes more than four months after U.S. District Judge James Zagel reinstated the 14-year prison sentence Blagojevich, 60, is serving for a series of schemes that included his attempt to sell then-President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. The news of Blagojevich’s commutation request also comes days after Blagojevich’s lawyer, Leonard Goodman, filed a brief with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking for yet another sentencing hearing.

For more than a century, boys were sent to the Florida School for Boys reformatory in the north Florida town of Marianna. Many were beaten brutally and bear the physical and psychological scars to this day. Many boys, though, never came home. They died, some under mysterious circumstances. They were buried in unmarked graves and they were forgotten. Several years ago, a young anthropology professor from the University of South Florida decided she would try to answer the many questions about what happened to these boys and, if she could, return their remains to their families. To get to the...

Former Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) will have to appeal his corruption conviction from prison starting in January, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. Fattah, 60, was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison on charges of fraud, bribery and money laundering after a jury convicted him on more than 20 counts. He has been ordered to report to prison by Jan. 25. Fattah had argued a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that limits the legal definition of bribery would likely help his appeal, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. In his opinion, however, U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III...

President Obama slashed the sentences of over 200 prisoners Monday in an unusually flashy way — he bragged that no other president had done more. "Today, President Obama granted clemency to 231 deserving individuals — the most individual acts of clemency granted in a single day by any president in this nation's history," heralded the White House.

Most aldermen, most politicians are hos," corrupt Chicago Ald. Arenda Troutman said, rather famously, on federal tape. She wasn't speaking about gardening tools, was she? Troutman was talking about the politics of Chicago, which is, if you've forgotten, the political corruption capital of the United States. Troutman represented the South Side's 20th Ward. At her 2009 sentencing, she squirted a few tears, sobbed, prayed, begged and then got four years in federal prison anyway. And on Wednesday her replacement, Ald. Willie Cochran, a former Chicago police officer who campaigned as something of a corruption buster, was himself indicted on federal...