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Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd in a highly contested decision, was knifed on Friday and almost died. The prison officials didn’t even bother to call his mother, Carolyn Pawlenty. Alpha News reported that she found out through media reports. “How the hell do these news agencies know, and his own mother doesn’t even know? And that [prison] has an emergency contact number [for me],” Pawlenty said, adding that she is “worried and scared” about her son’s condition. “I can’t even think what to say. I haven’t been to bed and made a...

The Bureau of Prisons failed to adequately monitor thousands of communications from more than 500 inmates with ties to terrorism, according to a Justice Department inspector general report released Wednesday. In the nearly 70-page report, Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz wrote that the Bureau of Prisons did not take appropriate steps to review the mail, email, phone calls, video sessions and cellblock conversations of domestic and international terrorist inmates. For example, the bureau failed to flag a letter that a high-risk inmate received from his wife detailing her intent to compromise a staff member at his prison. The BOP also...

The Obama administration has banned bacon, pork chops, pork links, ham and all other pork products from all federal prisons. But for those concerned that the U.S. government is bending to the will of Muslim inmates, the Bureau of Prisons, which falls under the charge of the Justice Department, insists the change was made based on a survey of prisoners’ food preferences, the Washington Post reported.[snip]“In general we welcome the change because it’s facilitating the accommodation of Muslim inmates,’ said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. “We hope it’s not an indication of an increasing number of Muslims in the prison system.”[snip]The...

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is going whole hog in cutting pork from its menu. With this month’s start of fiscal year 2016, there will be no bacon, no pork chops, no pork roast, no pork sausage — no pork-related food at all — served to the nation’s 205,723 federal inmates, including those at FCI Fort Worth or FMC Carswell.While there have been grumblings from some inmates’ family members that the prohibition had to do with Muslim or Jewish dietary restrictions, Bureau of Prisons spokesman Ed Ross said that isn’t the case.

The federal government has removed bacon, pork chops, ham, and all other pig products from the menu at its 122 federal prisons, impacting the nation’s 206,000 federal inmates. The Washington Post reported that the ban went into effect when the new fiscal year began last week. According to the Bureau of Prisons, the decision was made after surveys revealed that inmates do not like the taste of pork. The bureau runs the country’s federal penitentiaries, which includes providing inmates with three meals per day. “Why keep pushing food that people don’t want to eat? Pork has been the lowest-rated food by inmates for several years,” Edmond Ross, spokesman for...

The federal Bureau of Prisons, a subdivision of President Barack Obama's Justice Department, has banished all pork products from the menus in all federal prisons ... The government says it made the decision to do this because a survey showed that inmates do not like eating pork products. The Council on American-Islamic relations said “we welcome” the move by the government to deny pork to prisoners, but warned that it might spark “Islamophobia.” ... They just don’t like the taste of pork…. “The National Pork Producers Council isn’t buying it. 'I find it hard to believe that a survey would...

Bids from 'Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses' sought by June 29 Another branch of the federal government is poised to make a massive purchase of ammunition, including hollow points, an expanding bullet designed for “maximizing tissue damage and blood loss or shock.” A new Federal Bureau of Prisons shopping list includes: 1 million 9 mm Lugar 124 Grain Jacketed Hollow Point rounds; 1 million 9 mm Lugar 124 Grain Jacketed Ball rounds; 1 million 9 mm Lugar 115 Grain Jacketed Hollow Point rounds; 1.5 million .223 caliber 55 Grain Full Metal Jacket rounds; 40,000 12 Gauge #4 Buckshot 27...

The Justice Department (DOJ) is banning smoking and all tobacco products in federal prisons, according to a final regulation to be published Monday.All federal prison inmates will be prohibited from smoking, unless they receive a religious exemption. Staff will also still be able to smoke in designated areas. The government said they are moving forward with the regulation, which goes into effect in 30 days, out of concerns of the health of their inmates.The rule will affect the estimated 80 percent of prison inmates that smoke.“The revised regulations generally prohibit smoking in and on the grounds of Bureau institutions and...

Rod Blagojevich is peeling potatoes in prison Rod Blagojevich is "a lovely guy," according to defense attorney Sam Adam Sr. Apparently he isn't the only one with that assessment. Adam says that Blago's fellow prisoners "just adore him." So what does the Bureau of Prisons have him doing? "They've got him working in the kitchen peeling potatoes just like I did in the Army! They've given him a lot of time to run and exercise. He’s settled in now, which knowing the Bureau of Prisons, they’ll probably transfer him!"

U.S. prison warden: Muslim prayers led to gangs The warden of a U.S. prison holding high-risk inmates, including American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, insisted Thursday that he was obeying a court order to allow daily group prayer by permitting inmates to pray in pairs within their cells. Warden John Oliver told a federal judge that when the prison allowed group prayer earlier this year, Muslim inmates formed gangs and bullied other prisoners. Lindh attended the hearing by video conference from the high-security unit that houses him and about 40 other inmates, including several convicted on terror charges. A U.S....

INDIANAPOLIS – An American-born Taliban fighter imprisoned in Indiana will try to convince a federal judge that his religious freedom trumps security concerns in a closely watched trial that will examine how far prisons can go to ensure security in the age of terrorism. John Walker Lindh was expected to testify Monday in Indianapolis during the first day of the trial over prayer policies

President Obama finally listened to the outcry of New York, and is considering moving the trial of 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other al Qaeda members out of the city, perhaps to Guantanamo Bay. Finally, some wisdom. It would be better there. It's military. They're not going to mess around. These dangerous terrorists will not be allowed to spread their hate, or hurt anyone else. Nobody knows better than me. I was a federal prison guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. In 2000, I was with a prisoner, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, taking him back to his cell....

Bureau of Prisons can suspend attorney-client privileges One month after the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Justice issued an interim rule that gave its Bureau of Prisons the right to scrap traditional notions of attorney-client privilege in order to monitor conversations between inmates suspected of terrorism and their lawyers. Last month, the department announced that the final version of that rule, which will become effective on June 4, extends from four months to one year the time period during which such intrusive monitoring of those jailhouse conversations can take place. The final rule also extends the authority to impose such...

While the media has obsessed over two high-profile cases in recent months involving improper handling of classified information, communications involving terrorists have been getting translated by people without any security clearances—and there’s been nary a whimper from most of the Washington press corps. There are 119 inmates in the federal prison system with “specific ties” to international Islamic terrorist organizations, and almost all of them are able to communicate with the outside world through phone calls and letters. (Full disclosure: this journalist broke the story on the front page of the Washington Times two weeks ago.) Not only did the...

Many branches of government need to understand Islam, but probably none deal with Muslims and their religious practices in so practical and detailed a way as do the wardens of prisons. It is therefore particularly dismaying to see that the highest prison authority in the United States, the Bureau of Prisons (which oversees all federal correctional facilities), has bought the Islamist line. My evidence for this comes from the Annual Refresher Training (ART) that all BOP staff must participate in. The 2005 course includes a lesson plan, "Islam in the Correctional Environment," designed by the Training and Staff Development Branch...

Former attorney general to serve time in Texarkana Associated Press AUSTIN (AP) - Former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales, who was sentenced to prison last month after pleading guilty to mail and tax fraud, has been transferred to a federal prison in Texarkana to serve four years. Morales had been held in the Caldwell County Jail in Lockhart since his sentencing Oct. 31. Caldwell County Sheriff Daniel Law confirmed Monday that Morales was transferred Friday, the Austin American-Statesman reported in its online edition. Carla Wilson, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, said Morales was moved to...