"Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere"

MARTIN LUTHER KING
...Letter From the Birmingham Jail, 1963

"Peep Game" The NPSCTAPP Video Channel

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” HAILE SELASSIE

Vision Without Action Is A Daydream. Action Without Vision A Nightmare.

The National Public Service Council To Abolish Private Prisons made a concerted effort when choosing its name to erase any possibility of ambiguity regarding who we are and our mission statement. It is our unwavering organizational belief that as long as our government permits Private Prisons For Profit to operate as legal businesses, the American Criminal Justice System, in particular, will never have the capacity to develop -in theory or otherwise- a credibility that the people of this great nation can respect and feel morally comfortable with. This is not a complicated matter. In spite of the endless assortment of political debates and the countless number of discussions among independent committees appointed to research and examine the economic pros and cons of privatization, and in spite of all the "other" arguments created by design, to distract, divide, frighten and confuse the citizens of this country and prevent them from using humane common sense, one cannot ignore or pretend not to see the flashing red flag draped around the philosophical question standing at attention in the middle of the room. Arguably, the criminal justice system is not designed to be a "moral compass." However, it cannot ignore or deny the inherent components at the core of its foundation: equality, fairness, and the humane practice of justice. These are more than lofty concepts to be arbitrarily applied when convenience allows. Our justice system must offer unequivocal, resplendent and reliable standards of "right and wrong" ..."just and unjust" because the people cannot respect or pledge an allegiance to a justice system that fails to demonstrate the difference between "right and wrong" in its own application. The inherent and most fundamental responsibility of the criminal justice system cannot be shirked, avoided, taken lightly or "jobbed out." Like it or not, when an institution is the definitive symbol representing authority and judicial proceeding, your function must reflect a fundamental fairness, and above all else, it must be accountable to all of its citizens. If ever there was a reason for second guessing the process or the ability of the United States Government (Federal & State) to perform its duty when addressing the important task of corrections and rehabilitation in the criminal justice system, the cornerstone of that uncertainty sits squarely upon the shoulders that permit private prisons for profit to operate in the United States of America. Clearly, this immoral profit driven system is without parallel in its resemblance to the most heinous institution to ever exist upon American soil. Slavery.

Aristotle wrote, "It is the peculiarity of man, in comparison with the rest of the animal world that he alone possesses a perception of good and evil, of the just and the unjust"

INCARCERATING PEOPLE FOR PROFIT IS IN A WORD WRONG

All law emanates from the people, so that, when the laws thus enacted are not executed, the power returns to the people, and is theirs whenever they may choose to exercise it.

We are mindful that the Supreme Court is the final interpreter of the constitution...we are also mindful that the federal and state correctional facilities originate from government design and, therefore, must be regulated and maintained by the government.

We must restore the principles and the vacated promise of our judicial system. Our government cannot continue to "job-out" its obligation and neglect its duty to the individuals confined in the corrections and rehabilitation facilities throughout this nation, nor can it ignore the will of the people that it was designed to serve and protect.

There is urgent need for the good people of this country to emerge from the shadows of indifference, apathy, cynicism, fear, and those other dark places that we migrate to when we are overwhelmed by frustration and the loss of hope.

My hope is that you will support the NPSCTAPP with a show of solidarity by signing our petition to send one million signatures to congress expressing the will of the people to abolish the private prison for profit industry. Ahma Daeus

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality"... DANTE

The Single Voice Project

"until all private prisons in America have been abolished and outlawed, “the promise” of fairness and justice at every level of this country’s judicial system will remain unattainable."
--Ahma Daeus

"Practicing Humanity Without A License"

My photo
"Kindness Is The Greatest Wisdom"

Man In The Mirror

No man can emancipate himself, except by emancipating with him all the men around him. My liberty is the liberty of everyone, for I am not truly free, free not only in thought but in deed, except when my liberty and my rights find their confirmation, their sanction in the liberty and the rights of all men, my equals. -BAKUNIN

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

By IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILL
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.

“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”



Private Prison Concerns

NEWS OK.COM
By: State Representative Richard Morrissette
POINT OF VIEW: PREVENTION SHOULD BE PRIORITY
I have several concerns with private prisons. First, they are in the business of profiting from other people’s misery and their motive is not to find alternatives to incarceration but to lock up more people. But the fundamental problem I have with privatization is based in the law.

California State Assembly Approves Prison Legislation

By: Solomon Moore
NEW YORK TIMES
LOS ANGELES — The California State Assembly narrowly passed legislation on Monday to reduce the state prison population by 27,000 inmates and the state corrections budget by about $1 billion. After several hours of debate in Sacramento, the bill passed 41 to 35, without any Republican support and only about half of the Democratic majority.

Legislators ask Beshear to end private prison contract

Courier-Journal.Com
By: Stephenie Steitzer
FRANKFORT, Ky. — House Speaker Greg Stumbo and eight other legislators sent letters Friday to Gov. Steve Beshear asking him to end the state's contract at a private women's prison in Eastern Kentucky that has been plagued by allegations of sexual assaults by corrections officers.

America’s jailed youth: tortured and abandoned

TRUE/SLANT
By: Allison Kilkenny
Unreported
While Americans rightfully demand justice for the horrendous acts of torture at Guantanamo many prisoners here at home are victims of America’s overburdened incarceration system. Youth are the most vulnerable prisoners in our overcrowded and understaffed jails. A report by the United States Department of Justice highlights abuses at four juvenile residential centers and raises the possibility of a federal takeover of the state’s entire youth prison system. The investigation found that excessive physical force was routinely used to discipline children at several juvenile prisons in New York, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions and dozens of other serious injuries over a period of less than two years.

Hawaii to Remove Inmates Over Abuse Charges

New York times
By Ian Urbina
Hawaii prison officials said Tuesday that all of the state’s 168 female inmates at a privately run Kentucky prison will be removed by the end of September because of charges of sexual abuse by guards. Forty inmates were returned to Hawaii on Aug. 17. This month, officials from the Hawaii Department of Public Safety traveled to Kentucky to investigate accusations that inmates at the prison, the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, including seven from Hawaii, had been sexually assaulted by the prison staff.

California Is Failing the Prison Test

New York Times
Opinion
The California Legislature has failed several times to change backward sentencing and parole policies that keep the state’s prisons dangerously overcrowded with too many minor offenders sent to jail for too long. These failures, which have driven up corrections costs by about 50 percent in less than a decade, came home to roost earlier this month, when a federal court ordered the state to cut the prison population significantly. Days later, an ominous riot broke out in the men's prison in Chino. The time for ducking this issue has clearly passed, but a reform plan approved by the State Senate after being championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in danger of being gutted in the Assembly. Democratic lawmakers who should know better are running scared of the prison guards’ union and of being labeled “soft on crime.”

Legislature to vote on sweeping prison reforms

By: Mike Zapler
MERCURY NEWS.COM
Sacramento - Democratic lawmakers and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are poised as soon as today to enact a package of far-reaching prison reforms that would allow some prisoners to serve the last 12 months of their sentences under house arrest, reclassify some property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and create a new sentencing commission to examine how sentencing laws contribute to prison overcrowding.

Tennessee appeals court rules that public records laws apply to CCA

By Kate Howard • THE TENNESSEAN
Prisons run by Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America perform a government function and must follow public records laws, the Tennessee Court of Appeals has ruled. The prison giant appealed the ruling issued last year by Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman, who ruled that the corporation was the functional equivalent of government and that its administrators must turn over all records requested by prison reform advocate Alex Friedmann.

Defiance doomed Ciavarella, Conahan's plea deals

By Michael R. Sisak (Staff Writer)
Citizens Voice.Com
U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik dissected the flawed logic of two disgraced former judges a few minutes after their partner in kickbacks, attorney Robert J. Powell, pleaded guilty early last month to corruption charges. Kosik stood near an elevator outside his courtroom and casually discussed what had just happened therein, including an attempt by Powell's attorney to portray some payments to the judges as a "finder's fee" - not as an incentive for them to send a steady stream of juveniles to the detention facilities co-owned by Powell.

U.S. to Reform Policy on Detention for Immigrants

By NINA BERNSTEIN
New York Times
Details are sketchy, and even the first steps will take months or years to complete. They include reviewing the federal government’s contracts with more than 350 local jails and private prisons, with an eye toward consolidating many detainees in places more suitable for noncriminals facing deportation — some possibly in centers built and run by the government.

Democracy Behind Bars

By: Anthony Thompson
Op-Ed Contributor -New York Times
WHEN do communities want prisoners in their backyards? When the census rolls around.Counting inmates as residents — which is permitted under the Census Bureau’s “usual residence” rule — skews political power, clout and resources. Unless the Obama administration acts soon to change the residence rule, these imbalances will be built into the 2010 census.

Prison Gets First Inmates

By: Adam Koob
The Natchez Democrat
Approximately 40 inmates are calling the prison home. Between now and March inmates will continue to arrive until the facility’s capacity for more than 2,500 inmates is reached. The prison population will be comprised of criminal aliens, which have come to the country either illegally or legally and committed a federal crime, or have been found to have an illegal status in the states, Laughlin said.

California Prisons Must Cut Inmate Population

New York Times
By
SOLOMON MOORE
LOS ANGELES — A panel of federal judges ordered the California prison system on Tuesday to reduce its inmate population of 150,000 by 40,000 — roughly 27 percent — within two years.
The judges said that reducing prison crowding in California was the only way to change what they called an unconstitutional prison health care system that causes one unnecessary death a week.

A Loss For Voting Rights

nytimes.com
Editorial
Voting rights advocates have had little success challenging felon disenfranchisement laws in court. Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, became the latest federal court to uphold a ban on voting by convicted felons. Despite these setbacks, the cause is important. Voting rights advocates should keep fighting in the courts, state legislatures and Congress.

Oklahoma prisons to take other states' maximum-security inmates

Private Prisons in Oklahoma soon could be housing maximum-security inmates from other states under a law approved in the waning days of the 2009 legislative session. The language inserted into an omnibus corrections bill changes state policy that previously allowed only minimum- and medium-security inmates from other states to be housed in private prisons. But Judith Greene, director of the New York based criminal justice research institute Justice Strategies, said similar policies in other states have been disastrous. "I think it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Greene, who has analyzed criminal justice practices and private prisons for years.

With new attorney, Anderson will try to get out of prison

Anchorage Daily News
By: Richard Mauer
Former state Rep. Tom Anderson, the only Alaska corruption defendant currently in prison, has a new attorney and is about to seek release from federal custody nearly three years before his sentence is complete. Anchorage lawyer Fred Dewey filed notice last week in U.S. District Court that he was now representing Anderson. In a brief interview Friday, Dewey said he planned to follow the lead of two other former legislators who served time in prison, Pete Kott and Vic Kohring, in trying to get Anderson out.

The Dreamer

Just Seeds

Just Seeds
Prison Portfolio Project

Click The Cage To Read "Silja Tavi's" Compelling "Women Behind Bars"

Click  The Cage To Read "Silja Tavi's" Compelling "Women Behind Bars"
Never Forget We Are More Than This Situation

Women And Prison

Women And Prison
Writer's Block...The Voices of Women Inside

Strength To Love

Strength To Love
"Human Salvation Lies In The Hands Of The Creatively Maladjusted"... Martin Luther King Jr.

Ask Yourself

Ask Yourself
CLICK THE BANNER

Sign The Petition

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JOIN THE SYMPHONY OF ONE

BOSTON LEGAL'S "GUARDIANS AND GATEKEEPERS"

http://www.abc.com/ This dramatic second episode of Boston Legal's 5TH season highlights the moving court case of a young girl allegedly raped in a private "for profit" prison by one of the prison guards. To view this compelling episode, go to abc.com and follow the prompts. Click on "full episodes"... then click on "Boston Legal" and continue to follow the prompts to the episode titled "Guardians And Gatekeepers" This really is a compelling and provacative "must see" episode

Ahma Daeus' Favorite Quotes

  • "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" JOHN F. KENNEDY
  • "We must be the change we want to see in the world".........GANDHI
  • "We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies".... M.L. KING JR.
  • "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty, the obedient must be slaves"
  • "The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free"..... HENRY DAVID THOREAU
  • "The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear" ................AUNG SAN SUU KYI
  • "When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, it becomes less & less important whether I am afraid"................... AUDRE LORDE
  • "The function of freedom Is to free someone else".............TONI MORRISON