Free Republic

After 25 years of explosive growth in the U.S. prison system, is this country finally ending its love affair with incarceration? Perhaps, but as in any abusive relationship, breaking up will be hard to do. Since 1980 the U.S. prison and jail population has quadrupled in size to more than 2 million. In the process, prisons have embedded themselves into the nation's economic and social fabric. A powerful lobby has grown up around the prison system that will fight hard to protect the status quo. There are some positive signs, as set forth in Vincent Schiraldi's Nov. 30 article in...

War and Disabilities Michael Arnold Glueck and Robert J. Cihak Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004 New Diagnoses and Strategies Create Both Short- and Long-term Problems for Medicine and the Military War is hell and becoming even more hellish. The "advancement" of technology has provided new ways to live and terrible ways to die. Those who live because of body armor now face hellish injuries to what's left of limbs and looks. These in turn provide new challenges to medicine and the military. The Body Armor Trap While there has been a generational decline in infantry skills, the American infantry still widely...

The Associated Press WASHINGTON Nov. 30 — Saudi Arabia, known for harsh criminal penalties such as beheadings, is trying a gentler approach to get information from some al-Qaida captives. Saudi interrogators often bring clerics and a Quran to their prison interviews to establish a religious connection, a technique that has proved successful in eliciting information from terrorist suspects and reorienting them to less violent religious beliefs. The tactic, similar to the way cult deprogrammers work in the United States, has impressed American counterparts enough that Saudi intelligence was permitted to use some of the principles on their citizens being held...

Terri is not out of danger yet. Those who don't believe will say that Jeb's intervention was his and not HIS. We know different.

There is nothing I would like more than to see Rush back on the radio. I've been one of his long-time fans. I will continue to be one. However, I have watched rehabilitation programs and the people who use them for about two decades. The position of chaplain gives one an unusual vantage point. You aren't patient, or healthcare provider, or visitor. You are spiritual counselor to all of the above. You hear comments and thoughts of both clients and those close to them. You hear the concerns of those who provide care, who hope against hope that those who...

Terri's Call to Action Part 1 is over 5000 posts. If you don't want to get caught up to speed at Part 1: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/971896/posts?q=1&&page=5167#5167 Simply visit Terri's official web site at: http://www.terrisfight.org There are contact numbers at her web site for her core media team, legislators, media and for press updates. See flash movies of Terri interacting with her mother, responding to a physician and see for yourself that she's not in PVS "persistant vegetative state"). In addition to access a text file with a lot of information see: http://bellsouthpwp.net/p/c/pc93/FedCourtDktCaseNo8_03-cv-1860-T-26TGW.txt If you want to join Terri's fight, it's important for...

WHEN TAMERLANE retook Baghdad in 1401, delivering mail and feeding babies weren't post-conflict priorities. Ticked that the Baghdadis had the cheek to revolt, the warlord put the city to the sword. There was no Fox or CNN to report the massacre. Tamerlane's signal--a message all too often sent by Mesopotamian tyrants past and present--was received nonetheless: Resist and you will die. Pity General Tommy Franks or, for that matter, any American military commander tasked with overseeing a post-Saddam Baghdad. For in that amorphous, dicey phase the Pentagon calls "war termination," they will be radically departing from the Tamerlane template. U.S....

MCNEIL ISLAND, Pierce County — John Mathers needs to get a life, and the state of Washington is eager to help. A vocational specialist helps the sex offender look for a job, and state real-estate brokers are house hunting. His probation officer offers her golf clubs. His therapist is giving advice on dating. It's not going well. Every time he ferries over from McNeil Island's Special Commitment Center, he has to tell prospective employers that he's a sexually violent predator. He must recite his convictions for child molestation, rape and serial escape, crimes that have kept him behind bars most...

DAVID Blunkett is poised to scrap a £300million anger management scheme which Home Office research shows has failed to stop criminals reoffending. The Home Secretary is alarmed at cost of the programmes around the country when none has cut reoffending by the target of 15 per cent. Three-quarters of criminals drop out of the rehabilitation scheme and many are thought to return to crime. Harry Fletcher, of the probation union Napo, said: "The failure rate is staggering. The money would be better spent on teaching some of these people to read or write." The scheme was set up three years...