The most imprisoned people in history: rolling US criminal justice & law enforcement thread

We've needed a thread like this for a while imo!

Document it all here: police, prosecutors, prisons, the drug war, the whole crazy shebang.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/

Small police departments across America are collecting battlefield-grade arsenals thanks to a program that allows them to get their hands on military surplus equipment – amphibious tanks, night-vision goggles, and even barber chairs or underwear – at virtually no cost, except for shipment and maintenance.

Over the last five years, the top 10 beneficiaries of this “Department of Defense Excess Property Program” included small agencies such as the Fairmount Police Department. It serves 7,000 people in northern Georgia and received 17,145 items from the military. The cops in Issaquah, Washington, a town of 30,000 people, acquired more than 37,000 pieces of gear.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/law-3

^ I have no words.

everyone needs to read The New Jim Crow

Goddamnit.

Back and forth between this and a piece on the gutting of philly public schools. Too angry.

could his lawyer have done a habeas corpus writ

idk mediaeval detention suggests mediaeval solution

im imagining his lawyer as being like the one in noted antipodean crime drama 'animal kingdom' but more slovenly and uselesss

general qn has the obama administration done anything significant wrt criminal justice

I think you have to exhaust other remedies before using habeas corpus, iirc

yeah that article suggests if someone really gave a fuck about him he wouldnt have served nearly as long

Oklahoma prison officials unveiled new execution procedures on Tuesday to replace those used in April when an inmate writhed and moaned before being declared dead 43 minutes after his lethal injection began – a situation that renewed debate over what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The new guidelines allow the state to keep using midazolam, a sedative used in flawed executions earlier this year in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona, although it calls for increasing by five times the dose it gave Clayton Lockett in April.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/19/1345972/-How-to-shoot-and-kill-an-immigrant-Georgia-Tech-student-and-only-pay-a-500-fine

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/

good news i think, bipartisan move (at least a step) for criminal justice reform

http://www.crewof42.com/wire/koch-brothers-naacp-unite-on-justice-reform-safe-justice-act/

http://www.thecrimereport.org/archive/2015-06-will-new-bipartisan-criminal-justice-reform-plan-fly

NYC corrections officers' union head arrested, fired, seems to be a thief.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/09/norman-seabrook-nyc-jail-guard-union-boss-with-a-taste-for-luxury-gets-pinched.html

http://www.wnyc.org/story/union-boss-norman-seabrook-held-tight-grip-rikers/

East St. Louis mother charged in connection with fire that killed her five children https://t.co/lbYVCNzmdY pic.twitter.com/Low3elL1xY

— Robert Cohen (@kodacohen) November 4, 2021