Free Republic

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Imagine there are no prisons; it may be hard to do. Yet that is exactly what social activist Angela Davis challenged an audience of about 725 people to do Monday night at Lehigh University in Bethlehem. The program’s topic was “Mass Incarceration: The Prison Industrial Complex.” **** She also is the author of eight books, including “Are Prisons Obsolete?” and a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex by “challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.”

PENDLETON, Ind. -- Indiana inmates will repair transmissions used on postal vehicles under a contract the state has signed, officials said. Inmates at the Pendleton Correctional Facility will repair the transmissions in a contract with Alabama-based Ready-Built Transmission. Only inmates with more than three years left on their sentences and who have shown good conduct will work on the transmissions, said prison spokesman Tim Horan. The prison does not want to train workers only to have them leave in a few months, he said. Inmates will work a maximum of 20 hours a week. Two four-hour shifts will take place...

DENVER, March 3 — As migrant laborers flee Colorado because of tough new immigration restrictions, worried farmers are looking to prisoners to fill their places in the fields. In a pilot program run by the state Corrections Department, supervised teams of low-risk inmates beginning this month will be available to harvest the swaths of sweet corn, peppers and melons that sweep the southeastern portion of the state.

U.S. prisons swell by nearly 900 inmates per week in 2004 SIOBHAN McDONOUGH Associated Press WASHINGTON - Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week over the span of a year, the nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one for every 138 U.S. residents, as of June 30, the government reported Sunday. That's 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3 percent, more than the year before, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The figures compare inmate population from June 30, 2003 to June 30, 2004. The total inmate population has hovered around...