Calif. gov. bristles at releasing more prisoners

California Governor Jerry Brown is asking the Supreme Court to intervene in a battle over the state's prison population.

A federal court has ruled the state's prison system is over-crowded, and it's ordered thousands of prisoners to be released by the end of the year.

Over the years, California has sent far more criminals to state prisons than it has room for.

California's prisons are built to accommodate 80,000 prisoners, but there are almost 120,000.

Terminally Ill Inmates Dying in Prison When They Don’t Have to

30 years ago, Congress passed a measure that stated that terminally ill prisoners could be released before their sentence was up. This is called compassionate release, and it is something that many prisoners and their families try to take advantage of. It makes sense — when someone is terminally ill, they want their family members surrounding them all the time, something that is not possible in a prison.

What it Costs When We Don't Educate Inmates for Life After Prison

By EMILY DERUY from ABC News
read original article here
May 27, 2013

Right now, taxpayers spend up to $70 billion each year to house the nation's two to three million prisoners. That works out to about $31,000 per inmate. One would think that with such a stiff price tag, we'd be doing a better job of rehabilitation. The truth is that the prison system still does a particularly questionable job of educating inmates for life after incarceration, with only about 6 percent of corrections spending used on education programs. And that matters more than the average person realizes.

Currently, less than 15 percent of students in juvenile detention centers finish high school or complete a GED. Few prisons offer opportunities for adult inmates to pursue college degrees. That can make finding a job and reintegrating into society in a positive way much more difficult.

Justices Make It Easier for Inmates to Challenge Convictions

WASHINGTON — In a pair of 5-to-4 decisions that divided along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Tuesday made it easier for inmates to challenge their convictions.

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In McQuiggin v. Perkins, No. 12-126, the majority said a one-year filing deadline for prisoners seeking federal review of their state court convictions under a 1996 law may be relaxed if they present compelling evidence of their innocence. The new “miscarriage of justice exception” to the deadline, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority, “applies to a severely confined category” — cases in which no reasonable juror aware of the new evidence would have voted to convict the defendant.

Emailing your Inmate

CorrLinks is a way for family and friends to communicate with their loved ones incarcerated in prison. Established through a relationship between a corrections agency and ATG, this system allows family and friends to subscribe to CorrLinks services. 

How Do We Avoid a Civil Society Dominated by Violence?

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in an interview with MSNBC on March 25, 2010, spoke of the "fine line" we have in our society between allowing "free speech" and maintaining a civil society not dominated by violence.

Speaking for myself, I believe that we need to allow the broadest latitude to our right of free speech, as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. When someone utters an outrage, it must be with consequence. Those consequences can be myriad, and totally justified.

The Ghetto Balance

In truth, most people that reside in the places called ghettos are involved in inner & outer conflict. The struggles to attain happiness are conflicted in many ways, but the goals are always for prosperity, unified joy, and harmony. These expressions are expressed in the committed arts from the people in the condition. Therefore, the dynamics explaining the people & many solutions are also expressed. Styles of music have expressed problems in the past, but only one art form seems to express problems and solutions through the variations of styles within it. The easiest way to understand those themes and places of living seems to come from hip-hop music. In the 1st volume of this book I briefly mentioned an organization called "The Temple of Hip-Hop", and the principles created from it. These principles fully apply in dynamic forms for the understanding of most of humanity. I will try to explain why and how. 

The Bitch and The Big Society!

Well Darlings, 

If you scan through the recent news headlines, you could easily become depressed. Wars and civil disturbances are raging in many parts of the world, with other huge areas battling unrelenting freak weather conditions, while at home in the UK massive pay rises and bonuses for many of our big bosses are seeing the rich-poor divide continue to widen, and despite its screening efforts, our health service reports cases of breast cancer are increasing alarmingly. And as if that wasn't enough bad news, we now hear that in the bastion of all things cultural, Liverpool, any hopes of David Cameron's 'Big Society' have hit the dirt with a resounding bang.