Upstairs, Downstairs In The Age Of The Pandemic

Who gets released early and who gets COVID-19?

Bill Cosby thinks Pennsylvania should release him from prison because some of the other inmates are infected with COVID-19. He claims the state is trying to execute him. Pennsylvania has been temporarily releasing some vulnerable and nonviolent prisoners, but not sex offenders like Cosby. Some states are letting prisoners out early and some aren't. And there's no national standard for who gets out and who doesn't. "Celebrity criminals" like former Trump fixer Michael Cohen and Mafia boss Vincent Asaro are allowed to confine themselves in their swank digs... while others, guilty of lesser crimes, are allowed to become exposed to the deadly disease. In a hellish Ohio prison in Marion, Ohio that holds around 2,500 inmates, 1,828 detainees and 108 staff members have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Betsy Sweet, the progressive candidate for the Maine Senate seat occupied by Susan Collins, reminded her supporters yesterday that it was 4/20-- and a time to send a strong message on marijuana. "Early on," she wrote, "I fought hard to ensure that people had access to marijuana for medical reasons. It became increasingly clear that the war on drugs was really a war on the poor and communities of color. These are the people who are going to jail for possession and recreational use, filling up our prisons and creating a lifetime of negative consequences for them." She is certain that it's "time to legalize marijuana nationally. I believe all individuals incarcerated on marijuana charges should have their records expunged-- a crucial and necessary next step. We need to give these folks their lives back." The idea that being arrested for possessing some weed could be a death sentence, is horrifying.

CNN reported yesterday that "Prison and jail populations across the United States are becoming a breeding ground for the coronavirus, sickening thousands of inmates and detainees as well as the staff and employees that work in the facilities." Jail situations are even more shocking, since well-off detainees who haven't been convicted of anything can get out on bail while poor inmates are... condemned.

In Illinois, a fourth detainee of Cook County Jail died Sunday, a press release from the Sheriff's Office said.

To help fight the spread of the virus the jail released almost a fourth of its population. Of the roughly 10,000 detainees previously housed in Chicago's Cook County Jail only 4,200 remain in custody.

Part of the decrease can be attributed to bail reform, which cut the jail's initial population by almost half. But 1,300 more inmates were released in the last month.

"We want to make sure that we're creating conditions whereby people who don't need to be there aren't there and the people who are there have optimal conditions for their health and safety," Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx said.

...A total of 215 detainees in custody of the jail are currently positive, including 21 who are being treated at local hospitals, according to the release. It also said 180 have already recovered.

But detainees aren't the only ones infected. A total of 191 correctional officers have tested positive and 34 other Cook County Sheriff's employees have also tested positive for coronavirus, the release said.

Billionaires who have led lives of seriously anti-social criminality, of course, are the least likely of anyone to face any consequences, including being exposed to coronavirus. Bloomberg News' Olivia Carville reported that rich Americans are activating pandemic escape plans-- not from prison but from the rest of us. "As coronavirus infections tore across the U.S. in early March," she wrote, "a Silicon Valley executive called the survival shelter manufacturer Rising S Co. He wanted to know how to open the secret door to his multimillion-dollar bunker 11 feet underground in New Zealand. The tech chief had neve­r used the bunker and couldn’t remember how to unlock it, said Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Co. 'He wanted to verify the combination for the door and was asking questions about the power and the hot water heater and whether he needed to take extra water or air filters,' Lynch said. The businessman runs a company in the Bay Area but lives in New York, which was fast becoming the world’s coronavirus epicenter. 'He went out to New Zealand to escape everything that’s happening,' Lynch said, declining to identify the bunker owner because he keeps his client lists private. 'And as far as I know, he’s still there.'" Too bad there are no one-way flights to the moon or Mars.

For years, New Zealand has featured prominently in the doomsday survival plans of wealthy Americans worried that, say, a killer germ might paralyze the world. Isolated at the edge of the earth, more than 1,000 miles off the southern coast of Australia, New Zealand is home to about 4.9 million people, about a fifth as many as the New York metro area. The clean, green, island nation is known for its natural beauty, laid-back politicians and premier health facilities.

In recent weeks, the country has been lauded for its response to the pandemic. It enforced a four-week lockdown early, and today has more recoveries than cases. Only 12 people have died from the disease. The U.S. death toll stands at more than 39,000 41,000, meaning that country’s death rate per capita is about 50 times higher.

The underground global shelter network Vivos already has installed a 300-person bunker in the South Island, just north of Christchurch, said Robert Vicino, the founder of the California-based company. He’s fielded two calls in the past week from prospective clients eager to build additional shelters on the island. In the U.S., two dozen families have moved into a 5,000-person Vivos shelter in South Dakota, he said, where they’re occupying a bunker on a former military base that’s about three-quarters the size of Manhattan. Vivos has also built an 80-person bunker in Indiana, and is developing a 1000-person shelter in Germany.

Rising S Co. has planted about 10 private bunkers in New Zealand over the past several years. The average cost is $3 million for a shelter weighing about 150 tons, but it can easily go as high as $8 million with additional features like luxury bathrooms, game rooms, shooting ranges, gyms, theaters and surgical beds.

Some Silicon Valley denizens have already made the move to New Zealand as the pandemic has escalated. On March 12, Mihai Dinulescu decided to pull the plug on the cryptocurrency startup he was launching to flee to the remote country. “My fear was it was now or never as I thought they might start closing borders,” said Dinulescu, 34. “I had this very gripping feeling that we needed to go.”

Dinulescu packed his bags and left his furniture, television, paintings and other belongings with friends. He bought the earliest plane ticket available and within 12 hours the Harvard University alum and his wife were on a 7 a.m. flight bound for Auckland. In San Francisco, “the entire international section of the airport was empty-- except for one flight to New Zealand,” Dinulescu said. “In a time when pretty much all planes were running on a third occupancy, this thing was booked solid.”

Four days later, New Zealand closed its borders to foreign travelers, which could thwart some refugee travel plans. Dinulescu said he has connected with about 10 people in New Zealand who made the jump before the shutdown, but “a lot of venture capital people I know were not afraid enough in time for the border close,” Dinulescu said. “And now they can’t get in.” After the shutdown was announced, however, local press reported a slight increase in private plane landings in the country.

Dinulescu is now working for Ao Air, a small startup that's designing an air filtration mask to rival the N95. Its co-founder, New Zealander Dan Bowden, said he’s fielded inquiries from about a dozen hopeful employees from the U.S. tech industry since the start of the pandemic, but that generally he’s wary of these requests.

"Some people are scared and reaching out just because they want a visa," Bowden said. One potential U.S.-based investor even asked if he would be eligible for New Zealand residency if he boosted his investment in the startup. Notably, New Zealand does offer an investor visa for about $6 million for three years.

The current travel restrictions complement another order, passed in August 2018, banning foreigners from buying Kiwi homes, partly in response to Americans gobbling up swaths of the country's prime real estate. That’s been a hurdle for New Zealand luxury real estate agent Graham Wall, who said that in recent weeks he’s gotten about half a dozen calls from wealthy Americans hoping to buy up properties on the island.

"They have all said it looks like the safest place to be is New Zealand right now,” he said. “That’s been a theory since before Covid-19.”

Over the years, the moneyed North Americans who have managed to wrangle properties there include hedge-fund pioneer Julian Robertson, Hollywood film director James Cameron and PayPal Holdings Inc. co-founder Peter Thiel, who has two estates in New Zealand, one of which features views of snow-capped mountains and has a safe room.

Though not in a mansion, Dinulescu has no plans to return to the Valley until the pandemic recedes. He is now holed up on Waiheke Island with his wife in a two-floor, three-bedroom house with ocean views for $2,400 a month—more than a third less than what they were paying for their two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

The couple chose Waiheke, with a population of about 9,000, for the proximity to its other elite residents. Dubbed “the Hamptons of New Zealand,” the island is home to epic cliff-top mansions and world-class wineries. Sir Graham Henry, former coach of the All Blacks rugby team, owns a home there, as does the packaging tycoon Graeme Hart.

“Frankly, we were billionaire hunting,” Dinulescu said. “We wanted to figure out where all the other Silicon Valley people would be.” So far, he said he hasn’t rubbed shoulders with any tech elite: “Everyone has been in self-isolation.”

Perrin Molloy, a local builder who has lived on the island since he was 11, described Waiheke as a “billionaire’s playground.” Molloy is often called to do repair jobs inside mega-mansions on the island, many of which are empty almost year-round. “These homes are designed to be a sanctuary for wealthy billionaires when they need to get away from what’s happening in the rest of the world,” he said.

On Waiheke, it’s common for builders to not know the identities of the homeowners they’re working for, Molloy said, and doomsday-related renovations are fairly routine. One of Molloy’s colleagues helped build a $12 million house in a private bay that had an “air tunnel” marked in the foundation plans that could easily fit four people walking shoulder-to-shoulder. “It was quite obviously an escape tunnel in the basement,” he said.

The virus is likely only to fuel the disaster preparedness industry in New Zealand and beyond. “Obviously the coronavirus is making people realize how vulnerable we all are, but what people are really concerned about is the aftermath,” said Vicino, the Vivos founder, who believes the wealthy fear an economic collapse or global depression could lead to uprisings against the top 1%. “They don't want to have to defend their homes when the gangs of looters or marauders show up.”

Sam Altman, former president of Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator and chief executive officer of OpenAI, has helped boost New Zealand’s reputation as a respite, previously telling the New Yorker that in the event of a pandemic he planned to escape there with Thiel. However, in an interview last week he said, “It’s a very lovely place, but I don’t know anyone who has run away to New Zealand.” Some fellow entrepreneurs have headed up to Napa Valley, but Altman says he hasn’t heard of any peers escaping internationally because of the virus.

Instead, Altman is sheltering in place in his San Francisco apartment, he said. Currently, like so many others, he’s growing his facial hair and watching Tiger King on Netflix.

The actual Tiger King, Joe Exotic, is now on Trump's radar for a celebrity pardon. And the mini-series about his life, Tiger King is good-- although the just-released third season of Fauda is better-- but facial hair? Maybe not. "[B]eard wearers aren't totally in the clear. A hairy face can play host to germs. If you're sick, Adalja warns, a beard could trap debris from coughs and sneezes, potentially infecting other people in close contact. In a study published last year, researchers in Europe found that men's beards harbor more harmful bacteria than the fur on dogs' necks." And a beard makes a facial mask less effective.

Sinking of the U.S.S. Économie

Private For-Profit Prisons Are Following Wasserman Schultz's Career Down The Toilet

With the dreadful, odious Wasserman Schultz falling from power and fighting for her political life, some of the criminal elements she has protected are losing their battles against the public. Predatory loan sharks, one of the foundations of her rise to power (payday lenders have given her $68,100 in direct pay-for-play bribes since she was elected to Congress), are battling for survival without her now. And one of her other big boosters, the private prison industry is also falling on its face without her ability to use her clout to protect them. Thursday Matt Zapotosky reported in the Washington Post that the Department of Justice is ending its relationship with private prisons, having concluded that Debbie's pals are "both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government."

After Wasserman Schultz was cornered and caught like a rat taking bribes from the Corrections Corp of America and other for-profit prison operators, she tried to cover her tracks. Starting with the 2014 cycle she stopped taking bribes from them. The private prison industry's biggest advocates-- and the ones who get the most payoffs from them now-- are Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Diane Black (R-TN), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), John Culbertson (R-TX) in the House and crooked senators Rob Portman (R-OR), Jon Tester (D-MT), Bob Corker (R-TN), Dean Heller (R-NV), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Boozman (R-AR). These people have opposed the bill banning private prisons that was introduced by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and by Raúl Grijalva, Keith Ellison and Bobby Rush in the House last September. Of the nearly 1.6 million people in federal and state prisons in 2013, 8.4 percent were in private, for-profit prisons. That includes over 41,159 federal prisoners in private facilities and 91,885 state prisoners in private facilities.

"We cannot fix our criminal justice system," Sanders said when introducing his bill, "if corporations are allowed to profit from mass incarceration." Grijalva added that "Our corrections system exists to uphold justice-- not to house innocent refugees or feed the greed of corporate interests. By treating prisoners and detainees as a means to a profit margin, we’re incentivizing jailors to lobby for ever more inmates, and for inmates to be denied even the basic staples they’re entitled to. The result is a corrections system collapsing under its own weight as the prison industry gets rich and countless innocent men, women and children are ensnared in their trap."

Thursday when the Department of Justice made their announcement, Sanders that that "Our criminal justice system is broken and in need of major reforms. The Justice Department’s plan to end its use of private prisons is an important step in the right direction. It is exactly what I campaigned on as a candidate for president. It is an international embarrassment that we put more people behind bars than any other country on earth. Due in large part to private prisons, incarceration has been a source of major profits to private corporations. Study after study after study has shown private prisons are not cheaper, they are not safer, and they do not provide better outcomes for either the prisoners or the state. We have got to end the private prison racket in America as quickly as possible. Our focus should be on keeping people out of jail and making sure they stay out when they are released.  This means funding jobs and education not more jails and incarceration."

Meanwhile Bloomberg reported that private prison stocks, which have been following Wasserman Schultz's career down the toilet, tanked Thursday with the Department of Justice announcement.

Corrections Corp. fell 35 percent to $17.57 at the close of trading, the real estate investment trust’s biggest drop since its initial public offering in 1997. GEO Group plummeted 40 percent to $19.51, also the largest decline in its 22-year history as a publicly traded company. The stocks pared losses of about 50 percent as analysts said the impact may be less severe than initially expected. Corrections Corp. climbed to $18.85 in after-hours trading after saying that today’s decision relates to facilities that represent just 7 percent of its business. GEO Group rose to $20.72.

...Corrections Corp., the largest U.S. owner of private prisons, owned or controlled 49 facilities and 25 halfway houses, and managed an additional 11 sites owned by its government partners as of June 30, according to its second-quarter regulatory filing. At GEO Group, U.S. government agencies accounted for 45 percent of revenue in 2015, according to the company’s annual report. GEO Group has been trying to win new clients and also operates facilities in Australia, South Africa and the U.K.

So far this cycle, the biggest recipients of legalistic bribes from Corrections Corp are shown on this chart from OpenSecrets, based on data from the FEC:

None of these crooked politicians are willing to give back the blood money or donate it to charity. Reached by phone and asked if Lamar Smith would return the bribes from Corrections Corp., a spokesperson for one of Texas' sleaziest bribe vacuums cursed up a storm, using words we don't publish at DWT. Tim Canova, the progressive Democrat running against Wasserman Schultz in south Florida, has a platform plank dealing with the for-profit prison system and how to right the wrongs, #DebtTrapDebbie and her self-serving colleagues on both sides of the aisle have caused.

Bernie Sanders Scores Big Win; Breaks Major Fundraising Record

"Killer Mike" interviews Bernie Sanders. Could this dynamic be a game-changer in southern Democratic primaries?

by Gaius Publius

In the most recent underwatched Democratic debate, there was a lot of ISIS-this and terror-that thrown around — and not one climate word, as near as I could tell. It was therefore presumed, by those who know their job is to tell us what to know, that Clinton "won" (example here).

And yet, and yet, when when people who are paid to tell you what to know are removed from the equation, stuff like this happens (go ahead; take the poll yourself to see the most current result).

From the Sanders campaign:

Bernie Sanders Scores Big Win; Breaks Major Fundraising Record

MANCHESTER, N.H. – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders won a major victory in Saturday night’s third Democratic presidential debate, according to social media measures and in polls by Time, The Wall Street Journal and other major media websites.

During the debate, Sanders also reached a major milestone in grassroots financial support. His campaign has now received more contributions than any other candidate at this point in any White House bid — more than 2.3 million contributions.

President Barack Obama was the record holder. Through Dec. 31, 2011, his re-election campaign reported 2,209,636 donations. The Sanders campaign crossed that mark during the debate as grassroots supporters flooded the BernieSanders.com website. The average contribution for the night to the Sanders campaign was below $25.

On social media, where Sanders’ grassroots revolution began, there were more Google searches for Sanders than for any other candidate. His campaign had the most retweeted tweet of the night, according to Twitter. He gained more followers on Twitter than any other candidate and Facebook said people talked about Sanders more than any other candidate online.

After the debate, Sanders was named the winner by viewers who voted in large-sample polls from Time, PBS, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Telegraph.co.uk and The Washington Times.

On Time’s website, for example, 84 percent of the 27,246 who had taken the poll in the first 90 minutes after the debate said Sanders won.

Sanders is winning support from Democrats hand over fist. Will that be enough to win him the actual nomination? I guess we'll see. If you'd like to lend your support to Sanders and to those courageous candidates who have dared to stand with him, you can do so here (adjust the split any way you like at the link).

Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina

These are the states that count for Sanders, the states that will keep him viable or secure the nomination for Clinton — in order, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. According to the latest polls, Clinton has a narrow lead in Iowa (+5), Sanders has a large lead in New Hampshire (+14), Clinton has a very large lead in South Carolina (+36), and a decent lead, according to one out-of-date poll, in Nevada (+16).

I wouldn't count this a done deal, however. A Sanders win in Iowa would go a long way to stretch his viability. Nevada is not out of reach — Sanders has DREAM activist Cesar Vargas working for him there — and even the South Carolina lead that Clinton has depends on almost-automatic institutional support for mainstream Democrats by a community for whom, especially, "black lives matter." Clinton, remember, has a track record on racial justice issues, and even today supports the (clearly racially biased) death penalty. The pro-institutional-Democrat dynamic could easily shift, especially if more like the video at the top turns up.

All of which is to say — if you're a Sanders supporter and not a surrender kind of person, the time to lift your hand to the task is now. (For example, got time to spend in Iowa?)

GP

Maybe NYS prison staff who went nuts on inmates trying to track the two escaped murderers should have tried torturing themselves

NYT caption: A group of corrections officers leaving work at the Clinton Correction Facility, a week after the escape.

Night had fallen at the Clinton Correctional Facility in far northern New York when the prison guards came for Patrick Alexander. They handcuffed him and took him into a broom closet for questioning. Then, Mr. Alexander said in an interview last week, the beatings began.

As the three guards, who wore no name badges, punched him and slammed his head against the wall, he said they shouted questions: “Where are they going? What did you hear? How much are they paying you to keep your mouth shut?”

One of the guards put a plastic bag over his head, Mr. Alexander said, and threatened to waterboard him.

Hours earlier, Richard W. Matt and David Sweat had made their daring escape from the unit — called the “honor block” — where they were housed. Now it appeared that Mr. Alexander, a fellow convicted murderer who lived in an adjoining cell, was being made to suffer the consequences.

-- the start of the NYT report "After 2 Killers Fled,
New York Prisoners Say, Beatings Were Next"

by Ken

You might think that "Mr. Alexander," being both "a fellow convicted murderer" of the two escaped convicted murderers and an inmate "who lived in an adjoining cell" would be an obvious subject of interest of Clinton Correctional Facility, and obviously the enforcers would have been remiss not to try to find out what if anything he knew. But the brutality unleashed on him seems to have been part of a general orgy of violence weeks between the escape, on June 6, and the discovery and killing of Richard Matt on June 26 and the capture of David Sweat two days later.


NYT caption: David Sweat, left, and Richard W. Matt escaped from the prison in June, leading to a three-week manhunt.

The NYT report by Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip continues:

For days after the June prison break, corrections officers carried out what seemed like a campaign of retribution against dozens of Clinton inmates, particularly those on the honor block, an investigation by The New York Times found. In letters reviewed by The Times, as well as prison interviews, inmates described a strikingly similar litany of abuses, including being beaten while handcuffed, choked and slammed against cell bars and walls.

They were also subjected to harsh policies ordered by the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision: Dozens of inmates, many of whom had won the right to live on the honor block after years of good behavior, were transferred out of Clinton to other prisons. Many were placed in solitary confinement, and stripped of privileges they had accrued over the years — even though no prisoners have yet been linked to Mr. Matt’s and Mr. Sweat’s actions.

The NYT reporters suggest that the frenzied behavior of the Clinton corrections officers had something to do, not just with tracing the escapees, but possibly with a desire to "exonerate themselves for the security lapses that contributed to the breakout." And in the process, they report, the COs "resorted to brutal tactics that most likely violated department regulations." I'm going to guess that those "brutal tactics" violated not just department regulations but all sorts of laws.

Which brings us to the kicker: that while no prisoners have been implicated in the escape, a host of prison staffers have been. "One has pleaded guilty to aiding the escape; another faces criminal charges; nine officers have been suspended; and the leadership of the prison, in Dannemora, has been removed."

This presumably comes as a shock to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who toured the facility the day the prison break was discovered, making snarly faces at inmates which were presumably intended to let them know who's boss. According to the NYT report, "Later, the governor said he would be 'shocked' if any corrections officers had been involved." Since the governor wouldn't renege on a promise, I'm assuming he's duly shocked.


NYT caption: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo toured the prison on the day the inmates were discovered to be missing.

Yeah, he's one tough hombre, is our governor. As long as the nastyguys are safely locked behind bars. During his jaunt through the prison, Andrew the Terrible lingered at the cell of the aforementioned Patrick Alexander, the escapees' neighbor, and shot him a withering, "Must have kept you awake with all that cutting, huh?" This is a point that would be pressed on him frequently, and by less genteel interrogators than the Terrible Andrew.

Twice during the day of the escape, Mr. Alexander said he was questioned by investigators from the State Police and the corrections department inspector general’s office.

Then, around 8 p.m., he was handcuffed and taken to a broom closet where, he said, three corrections officers whom he had never seen before interrogated him. An officer wearing a jacket with the initials C.I.U. — Crisis Intervention Unit — sat down and asked him, “Do you know the difference between this interview and those other interviews?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

This time, the officer warned, there were only uniformed guards in the room, Mr. Alexander said.

“The officer jumps up and grabs me by my throat, lifts me out of the chair, slams my head into the pipe along the wall,” he said. “Then he starts punching me in the face. The other two get up and start hitting me also in the ribs and stomach.”

With each punch, Mr. Alexander said, the officers shouted another question.

“The whole time he’s holding me up by my throat,” he added.

When Mr. Alexander repeatedly insisted that he had no information, one officer pointed to a plastic bag hanging on some pipes, asked if he knew what it was for and said, “You know what waterboarding is?” Mr. Alexander recalled.

The officer then put the bag over his head and started beating him again, Mr. Alexander said.

He said the interrogation lasted about 20 minutes, and he was then taken, bleeding, back to his cell.

Later, Mr. Alexander said, the same officer “began quietly taunting and threatening me, telling me, ‘Don’t worry, Fat Boy, we’ll be seeing you really soon.’ ”

NYT caption: Officers patrolling an area near Owls Head, N.Y., during the search for the inmates.

At some point it must finally have begun to occur to the investigation and enforcement teams that it wasn't only inmates like Patrick Alexander who should have heard noise from the digging. Why didn't any of the staff hear anything, or know anything? This turns out to be an interesting question. Eventually we learn:

Investigators have found that it was a corrections officer and civilian supervisor who smuggled in the tools that aided Mr. Matt and Mr. Sweat. And because of security lapses, officials say, Mr. Sweat was able to spend night after night preparing an escape route, cutting through the backs of their cells, a brick wall and a steel steam pipe.

Investigators and inmates say that instead of making hourly rounds of the cellblock each night, as they were supposed to do, most guards slept through much of their shift.

Uh-oh!

Another inmate of the "honor block," Paul Davila, who has his own tales of brutalization to tell, makes the point: “Laziness caused that incident, not privileges.” The NYT report concludes: "Inmates joked that the only ones walking the cellblocks on the overnight shift were the cockroaches."

State authorities apparently have been looking into the conduct of NYS employees, and have issued a statement, as reported by the Times-men:

After The Times published its findings, the corrections department released a statement saying the inmate complaints had been under investigation for several weeks and “have been also been referred to the state inspector general.”

“Any findings of misconduct or abuse against inmates will be punished to the full extent of the law,” the statement continued.

Yeah, right. If the NYT hadn't been doing its reporting, would we have heard from those corrections people anytime soon? Or ever? Does anyone believe they have any thought of doing anything other than the minimum they have to in order to get through the unfortunate publicity?


I'M APPENDING THE WHOLE OF THE NYT REPORT


Read more »

Who Does The Law Prosectute-- And Who Gets A Free Ride For Even The Most Heinous Criminal Behavior?

Just a fantasy

At the end of 2011 there were 2,266,800 adults in prison and another 4,814,200 on parole or probation. Add to that 70,792 juveniles in detention. Almost 40% of those in prison are black. By age 18 almost a third of all black males and just over a quarter of all Hispanic males have already been arrested, compared to just 22% of white males. 5 years on and almost half of all black males have been arrested, as have 44% of Hipsanic males (38% of white males). Bias? Absolutely-- and it goes beyond race to class. Angela Davis and other critics of the U.S. gulags have been pointing this out for years. She's written that the country's prisons have "become venues of profit as well as punishment." 

In his new book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, Matt Taibbi argues that the expanding disparity of wealth and the increasing criminalization of those in poverty have culminated in the U.S. having the largest prison population in the history of human civilization. Wall Street banksters and Beltway politicians may be enriching themselves and ripping off the system to the tune of billions of dollars, but Wall Street banksters don't get prosecuted and grotesquely crooked politicians from Rick Scott (R-FL), Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and Gina Raimondo (D-RI) to Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Bruce Rauner (R-IL) were not indicted but were all just elected governors a couple of weeks ago, despite very public and very overwhelming evidence that all of them are personally very criminally corrupt.

But it isn't just the rich who escape criminal prosecution. Police get away with murder-- literally (in fact 400 per year). Alex Vitale, an author and associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, explained for Al Jazeera America why police are rarely indicted for misconduct. Vitale writes that "successful criminal prosecution of a police officer for killing someone in the line of duty, if no corruption is alleged, is extremely rare. Even when officers are convicted, the charges are often minimal. For example, Coleman Brackney, a Bella Vista, Oklahoma, police officer who was convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide in 2010 after shooting an unarmed teen to death while in custody in his cruiser, went on to rejoin the police and was recently appointed chief of police in Sulphur Springs, Oklahoma."

There are significant structural barriers to successful police indictment or prosecution. For one, investigations are usually conducted by a combination of police detectives and investigators from the prosecutors’ office. Prosecutors tend to take a greater role when there is a reason to believe that the shooting might not be justified. However, they must rely on the cooperation of the police to gather necessary evidence, including witness statements from the officer involved and other officers at the scene. In some cases they are the only living witnesses to the event.

The close collaboration between police and prosecutors, which is an asset in homicide investigations, becomes a hindrance in police shooting cases. In most cases, the prosecutors’ reliance on the cooperation of police creates a fundamental conflict of interest. As a result, prosecutors are often reluctant to aggressively pursue these cases.

Moreover, the local elected district attorneys often want to avoid being seen as inhibiting police power. Even in communities where distrust of police is common, no prosecutor ever got thrown out of office for defending the police. At its core, the public sees the DA’s office as a defender of law and order and expects these officials to uphold them.

...There are also huge legal hurdles to overcome. State laws that authorize police use of force, which are backed up by Supreme Court precedent, give police significant latitude in using deadly force. In the 1989 case Graham v. Connor, the Supreme Court ruled that officers may use force to effect a lawful arrest or if they reasonably believe that the person represents a serious physical threat to the officer or others. This means that police may use force over any resistance to arrest and that if the resistance escalates, officers may escalate their force. The court also said that the totality of circumstances must be judged with an understanding of the split-second nature of police decision-making.

...Juror mindset creates yet another challenge to successful indictments and prosecutions. Grand juries and criminal court juries consist of local residents. Even in periods of heightened concern about police misconduct, most citizens retain a strong bias in favor of police. Popular culture and political discourse are suffused with commentaries about both the central importance of police in maintaining the basic structural integrity of society and the dangerous nature of their work. In addition, the legal standard for judging police misconduct calls on jurors to put themselves in the officers’ shoes, further strengthening the tendency to identify with the police.

Another important dynamic in police prosecutions is the state of race relations in the United States. Despite the rhetoric about being a postracial society, racial divisions and bias remain omnipresent in American society and nowhere more than in the realm of criminal justice. There is abundant evidence of jury bias in a variety of racially disparate criminal justice outcomes, including false convictions, application of the death penalty and drug convictions. Research shows that whites have a generally more positive view of the police than blacks do. The sad reality is that white jurors are much more likely to side with police, regardless of the race of the officer and the person killed. This was seen in the Rodney King prosecutions in California, in which a mostly white suburban state court jury did not convict four Los Angeles Police Department officers in the severe beating of King after a high-speed car chase, despite the incident’s being videotaped. (The jury acquitted three of the four officers and deadlocked on a charge of excessive force against one officer.) A more diverse federal jury later found two of the officers guilty of violating King’s civil rights.

...[S]tates should create a police prosecutor’s office, or blue desk, that is more removed from local politics. While relying on state attorneys general has its own challenges, the outcomes are likely to be viewed as more legitimate. These blue desks could become repositories of expertise on police prosecutions. Even if tied to state politics, they might be better able to insulate themselves from accusations of overly aggressive prosecutions as well as charges of not supporting the police.

Laws on the use of force need reform. Police shootings were much more common in the 1970s when regulations about the use of force were even looser. In response to public outcries and rioting in the 1960s and ’70s, local police began to tighten up regulations and offer training to officers, resulting in significant reductions in shootings. The 1984 Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner institutionalized some of these changes nationally, including making it unlawful for police to shoot a fleeing suspect. Since then, however, the courts have mostly expanded police authorization to use force.

Finally, the U.S. needs to dial back the dramatic expansion of police power over the last 40 years. For example, the growing prevalence of paramilitary SWAT teams and the ongoing war on drugs have significantly contributed to excessive use of force. In part this happened through the combined direct enforcement practices of these two types of policing. But they also contributed indirectly to a larger ethos of militarized patrolling that equates policing with the use of force and a war footing. The public and its representatives need to realize that there are better ways to prevent crime and serve the community than licensing excessive police force.

Michael Krieger posted a tangentially related article at his Boulder-based blog Liberty Blitzkrieg over the weekend. It's part of his concern about "how the percentage of sociopaths within a group of humans becomes increasingly concentrated the higher you climb within the positions of power in a society, with it being most chronic amongst those who crave political power." Makes sense? Continue reading-- and don't be disturbed that it's "about" England; it's about all of us.

Those with the sickest minds, and who wish to act upon their destructive fantasies, understand that they can most easily get away with their deeds if they are protected by an aura of power and ostensible respectability. They believe that as a result of their status, no one would dare accuse them of horrific activities, and if it ever came to that, they could quash any investigation. Unfortunately for us all, this is typically the case. I previously covered the issue of powerful pedophiles in the UK in the piece: Former BBC Host “Sir” Jimmy Savile Exposed as Major Player in Massive Pedophile Ring.

Now we have evidence of yet another case.

The Guardian reports that:

The security services are facing questions over the cover-up of a Westminster paedophile ring as it emerged that files relating to official requests for media blackouts in the early 1980s were destroyed.

Two newspaper executives have told the Observer that their publications were issued with D-notices-- warnings not to publish intelligence that might damage national security – when they sought to report on allegations of a powerful group of men engaging in child sex abuse in 1984. One executive said he had been accosted in his office by 15 uniformed and two non-uniformed police over a dossier on Westminster paedophiles passed to him by the former Labour cabinet minister Barbara Castle.

Ah, national security. Remember that the next time you are lectured that we need to give up our civil liberties in the name of “national security.” Think about what that really means. It really means the security of the status quo to continue to behave like insane criminals with zero accountability.

Following the announcement that the grand gury declined to indict the police officer who murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson, Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison both released statements urging calm. “As emotions continue to run understandably high," said Grijalva, "it is crucial to bear in mind a lesson history has taught us time and again: justice is not won through destruction or violence, but through unity and perseverance. Just as violence can tarnish peaceful protestors standing for justice, excessive force by law enforcement can only further divide our nation. We must honor Michael through peace, and by fixing the failures in our system, from racial profiling to the militarization of local police." Ellison was even more pointed: "Our country has an indefensible history of racial violence. The same violence that killed Emmett Till and beat Rodney King is alive today as Michael Brown’s family grieves. I understand the anger and fear that many in Ferguson and around the country feel, but all must remain peaceful. Protest injustice, but do not meet violence with violence. I urge the federal government to continue its investigation of Michael Brown’s shooting. The fight for equality is not over. We have tremendous work to do, including protecting the right to vote. But right now, my thoughts are with Michael’s parents, whose son will not be coming home." 

But let's leave off with a powerful and wrenching performance from rapper Killer Mike in St. Louis about an hour and a half after the grand jury decision was announced:

Why Would Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz Vote To Send Patients Like This To Prison?

A radio host asked me a few days ago why Debbie Wasserman Schultz was one of the 17 mostly right-wing Democrats in the House to cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans against a bill to lighten up on medical marijuana in states that have legalized it. I suggested that with anything involving Wasserman Schultz, one of the most transactional politicians in Congress, just follow the money. This week Americans for Safe Access were asking a similar question-- in the form of the above TV ad.

Wasserman Schultz's constituents favor medical marijuana legalization-- and overwhelmingly so. So why is she trying to fill Florida prisons with patients whose doctors think they would benefit from marijuana? Who's paying her off? Wasserman Schultz's big play to win the House Democratic leadership position after Nancy Pelosi is being financed, in part, by the prison-for-profit industry. She's their camel's nose in the Democratic tent. Although, the venal Corrections Corporation of America "donates" their bribe money primarily to right-wing Republicans like Steve Womack (AR), Kevin McCarthy (CA), John Culberson (TX) and Marsha Blackburn (TN), Wasserman Schultz is one of the few Democrats taking payoffs from them as well.

Wasserman Schultz is willing to send immigrants and her own sick and elderly constituents to for-profit prisons so they continue making money and continue schmearing her. And especially to a for-profit prison she's helping her Corrections Corporation of America donors build in Southwest Ranches against the will of the people there. Yesterday Alex Leary of the Tampa Bay Times tried to explain Wasserman Schultz's excuse for voting with the Republicans against her constituents (and history) without mentioning her propensity to vote for the interests of her donors. Slippery, arrogant and misleading, Wasserman Schultz wasn't very convincing. Florida Democratic Party super-donor, John Morgan, was so furious at Wasserman Schultz's idiotic remarks about medical marijuana that he was quoted in the Miami Herald Friday saying what everyone knows but no one has been willing to say aloud: "I know personally the most-powerful players in Washington, D.C. And I can tell you that Debbie Wasserman Schultz isn’t just disliked, she’s despised. She’s an irritant."

An irritant

Locking People Up As A Business Model... For Sleazy Corporations And Sleazy Politicians

A few weeks ago we talked about how our friends at Cuéntame were calling out corrupt hypocrite Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her scandalous role in the prison-for-profit system. Cuéntame wants to know why Wasserman Schultz, the head of the DNC is "siding with the Corrections Corporation of America and not her constituents in Southwest Ranches? 99% of her constituents DO NOT want a new for-profit immigrant detention center!" Although CCA "donates" their bribe money primarily to right-wing Republicans like Steve Womack (AR), Kevin McCarthy (CA), John Culberson (TX) and Marsha Blackburn (TN), Wasserman Schultz is one of the few Democrats taking payoffs from them as well.

Yesterday Russ Baker noted at WhoWhatWhy that fewer Americans are committing serious crimes than ever and wondered aloud why more Americans are getting locked up. He suggested we ask our friends at the "very lucrative private prison industry." He's right... them and the corrupt political hacks, like Wasserman Schultz, they buy off. In fact, he hones right in on Wasserman Schultz's pals at Corrections Corporation of America.

America’s system of detaining and monitoring “criminals” impacts more people than ever before. Including those who are either in some form of incarceration or in the parole and probation process, you’re looking at an affected population of….six million. One out of every 100 Americans is behind bars now. And every year, about 13 million Americans spend some time in jail for at least a brief spell.

State legislators faced with dwindling revenues are eager to offload inmates to “cheap” private facilities

The private prison industry grew 350 percent over the past fifteen years.

Two private companies-- Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group-- dominate the private prison industry. The biggest company, Corrections Corporation of America, is offering to buy prisons from states as long as they can promise an adequate supply of prisoners to make the deal worthwhile.

Studies show that private facilities perform badly compared to public ones on almost every metric-- prevention of intra-prison violence, jail conditions, rehabilitation efforts-- except reducing state budgets and adding to the corporate bottom line.

To keep their gravy train rolling, private prison companies need a few things from state and local government:

1) Lots of people arrested and convicted (often of essentially victimless crimes) and given long sentences. This most heavily impacts young black males-- about one in nine of whom is in prison, many for using or selling marijuana, or, to a lesser degree, harder drugs. (Although whites have comparable drug use rates, their prosecution rates are dramatically lower.)

2) Opposition to the decriminalization of drug use, which would cut sharply into prison industry profits. (As a result, it ain’t going to happen.)

3) The continued criminalization and detention of undocumented foreigners.

With serious crime rates dropping, the US has fewer and fewer of the hardest-core (mostly male) criminals who were once prime targets for incarceration. To replace them, the private prison industry needs more young people, more women and (thanks to the immigration snatch game) more children as fodder for detention facilities.

The privatization of prisons is yet another instance of how small-government advocates are driving more and more of our lives into the hands of companies whose only objective is to turn a profit-- without concern for larger social consequences. When public services like incarceration are handled as cheaply as possible, terrifying outcomes can result, including, in this case, unnecessary harm to minor offenders, the hardening of minor offenders into serious criminals, and calls for still more draconian law enforcement and punishment protocols, whose main justification is to keep those for-profit prisons filled.

How bad can it get? A private detention company in Pennsylvania bribed two judges to order youths imprisoned.

Lucky for them there are plenty of inherently corrupt politicians like Wasserman Schultz to push their agenda-- an agenda that includes inhumane and barbaric treatment of those unfortunate enough to fall into their clutches. Is it fair to blame this on politicians like Wasserman Schultz? 100%.

Whose Side Is Debbie Wasserman Schultz On? Well, Her Own, Of Course

Debbie Wasserman Schultz first came on DWT's radar some years ago when, as chair of the DCCC's Red to Blue program, she publicly set out to sabotage the Democrats running against 3 right-wing Republican allies of her political benefactors, the stunningly corrupt sugar barons, the Fanjul brothers. It was a breathtaking overreach, even for Wasserman Schultz and the uproar from the donor community was so intense that, after much stalling, the DCCC was eventually forced to kick her out of the job and tell her to pipe down with her support for her Republican pals. Americans, having short memories, next ran into her when she was, unfathomably, appointed head of the DNC. Another stepping stone in her malevolent quest to be the first Jewish Speaker of the House (formerly her mentor Rahm Emanuel's quest as well).

More recently we've been writing about Wasserman Schultz's hypocritical whining about the Republican War Against Women and the Republican War Against Gays, while she supports Democrats who vote with the Republicans on their wars against women and gays. It's this kind of grotesque hypocrisy and Machiavellian politics that have come to define Wasserman Schultz as one of the most dangerous and deceitful political figures in America-- on either side of the aisle. Today our friends at Cuéntame sent us the above video of their campaign to force Wasserman Schultz to stop backing the predatory private prison system's campaign against immigrants. "Why," they ask, "is FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz siding with the Corrections Corporation of America and not her constituents in Southwest Ranches? 99% of her constituents DO NOT want a new for-profit immigrant detention center!"

They're calling on Wasserman Schultz to withdraw her endorsement of a private prison project in her district that the residents don't want and that flies in the face of human decency. The Corrections Corporation of America has only donated to 17 candidates for the House this year, 12 hideously right wing Republicans, like Steve Womack (AR), Kevin McCarthy (CA), John Culberson (TX) and Marsha Blackburn (TN) and 5 Democrats, one being-- no surprise here-- Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as corrupt as always.

The Obama Administration announced a change in the priorities for detentions and deportations, to focus on real national security concerns, not on separating parents from their children or deporting DREAMers who are only seeking a better future.

It is time for ICE to stop the immigrant money making machine and tell CCA to go away from Southwest Ranches.

There's a petition to her here and, if you're in a giving mood today, we've heard from excellent sources close to her that Blue America's Send The Democrats A Message page is driving her stark raving mad.

Regimes Of Systemic Rape Helps Prison Officials Keep Control-- "Keeps 'Em Out Of Our Hair"

When a criminal is found guilty and consigned to a real prison-- not a Club Fed where they put politicians and wealthy corporate types like Mike Carona or Duke Cunningham-- society is also consigning them to a special kind of hell that is rarely discussed in polite company. But we don't have to worry about that at DWT. Rape in prison is rampant-- the estimate from the Bureau of Justice Statistics was that 88,500 adults were sexually abused in prison last year; the Justice Department says it's 200,000-- and as much a part of the system as anything else-- another tool for a sociopathic internal gulag force which takes delight in its own virulent, uncontrollable homophobia. They claim they can't clean up the rape regimes in prison because it would be too expensive.

You've probably never heard of Scott Howard a career criminal from a Tennessee Baptist background and a gay lifestyle. In the late '90s, he discovered major security flaws in the payroll systems of large corporations and he used a Trojan program to steal data from corporate websites, then submitted payroll requests to staffing agencies, either in his own name or someone else's. It was a surprisingly simple and lucrative scam, as long as he moved quickly to the next pigeon before the fraud could be detected. He slipped up and was arrested in 1999, was sentenced to 8 years and didn't let the bars slow him down at all. He filed a bogus tax return, claiming a $17,155 refund-- and the IRS actually paid it. The next year he asked for $1.2 million, complete with forged letters on charity letterheads acknowledging enormous contributions. This time they caught him.

He was repeatedly raped, assaulted and extorted by the white supremacist 211 Crew. "That 211 shot-callers could simultaneously proclaim their hatred of 'fags' while engaging in sexual acts with said fags no longer baffled him. Logic was not the gang's strong point. Intimidation was. Prison officials called him a "whiner" and told him to try to get along and to "keep a low profile." He was disliked for filing too many grievances and considered a "strain on case management."

Rape and coercion have long been regarded as an inevitable part of prison life, particularly among the most targeted populations-- inmates who are young and slight of stature, effeminate or gay, the mentally ill and first-timers. Yet the national commission established by PREA found that a number of fixable problems, from poor staff training and inadequate screening of vulnerable inmates to overcrowding and an almost complete lack of prosecution of perpetrators, could and should be addressed to reduce the rate of assault.

Howard's journey through Colorado's prisons points to another problem the commission report scarcely mentions: the utter indifference of many staffers. Howard met with several case managers and supervisors at Sterling and filed grievances over his placement there. The officials have divergent stories about what happened in those meetings and how explicit Howard was about his plight. But their tendency to downplay his complaints and insist that he "name names" helps to explain why the system's number of reported assaults is so low.

...[S]everal 211 members surrounded [Howard] and showed him a single piece of paper. They figured it would persuade him to get busy raising the big cash needed for the defense fund.

There were two notable things about the document, an intake form from Howard's own file. It had to have come from a staff computer, which meant the Crew had a DOC employee working with them, either for pay or unwittingly. And it contained the names and address of Howard's parents, listed as emergency contacts. Someone was waiting on the outside, one of the group explained, to see if Howard was going to do what was expected of him.

Howard understood. "My family had never done anything to anybody," he says. "To know they could reach out and touch my parents-- that was a big move on their part."

..."Even after naming all the names, they just sent me back to my cell," Howard says now. "I told a captain these people were going to kill me if I didn't come up with $300,000 by March. Her response was, 'Let's see what happens in March.'"

After locking him in a cell with one of the rapists he had reported, the prison officials refused to turn over paperwork he needed to prove his court case. Boned again. Passed in 2003, Prison Rape Elimination Act created a national commission to study the causes and costs of sexual assault behind bars and to come up with federal policies to attack the problem. Seven years and several blown deadlines later, backers are still waiting for United States Attorney General Eric Holder to adopt new standards incorporating the commission's findings.