44 Of Many Categories Of Prisoner Rights
One reason the US has the biggest per capita prison population in the world is that privatized prisons' profiteers have a financial motive to keep people in jail.
44 Of Many Prisoner Rights
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Prisoners have a right to
abolition of the bail system
abolition of mandatory sentencing
abolition of private prisons with their profiteers
who make money if people are left in jail
abolition of prison farms which murder animals, birds
abolition of solitary confinement
access to lawyers
access to spiriual texts
ankle bracelets which are free
blankets
cleanliness of surroundings
communal time with nonviolent prisoners
computers
conjugal visits
daily showers, shampoo, soap, clean towels
decriminalization of marijuana
end to saltpeter and other harmful additives
end to racist sentencing and executions
end to economic bias in which a hedge fund billionaire who steals billions has a light or no sentence while a pickpocket is jailed for many years
exercise out of doors
free phones
freedom from slave labor
freedom from work which violates spiritual beliefs
freedom for all marijuana prisoners
fresh fruit
high school and college education
jails close to families
law books
libraries
life
medical attention
meditation or other spiritual time 30
popular election of Supreme Court and federal judges
privacy in bathing
protection from medical eperiments
quiet
right of noncitizens to contact consulates
right to refuse medication
safety from rape and other attacks
sunlight
temperatures avoiding extremes
vegan food
vocational food
voting rights
Prison Facts Some numbers may need to be updated.
1. The US has more prisoners, per capita, than any other country in the world including China which has 5 times the population. 6,937,600 people in the U.S. are under some form of criminal justice supervision (incarcerated, on parole, or probation). lionheart.org
2. 56% of these prisoenrs are incarcerated for nonviolent drug use.
3. One million guards, prison cooks, and others depend on this large prison population for their livelihoods. Prisons were built in poor, white, rural counties to provide jobs. Privatized prisons give profiteers a motive to keep people imprisoned.
4. In addition, the federal ATF agency and several others have higher budgets because of the high prison populations.
5. Corporations make huge profits from the privatizing of prisons.
6. Mandatory sentencing laws passed by Congress are harsher than what 99% of jurors want.
7. The average prisoner costs the taxpayer $27,000 a year. The average is more than doubled for older prisoners serving life sentences with medical problems.
8. Glenn E Martin stated in a radio show that a robbery in which no one was home is still classed as a violent crime.*
9. Sentencing of prison populations has involved much heavier incarceration rates for blacks and for the poor. Bernie Madoff is perhaps the only member of his economic class in jail, and that, say some, is because he stole from the 1% who were richest and not the other 99%.
10. One example of the racism in sentencing is that crack cocoaine guidelines are much harsher than those for cocaine. A white cocaine user had to have 100 times as much of his drug as a black crack user to land in jail. That was changed. Now it's 18 to 1 instead of 100 to 1.
11 'Why call prisons correctional facilities when their goal is punishment not rehabilitation'
was the statement of a caller to Tom Ashbrooks radio show On Point.
12. Senator Rand Paul, candidate for President: Youthful mistakes should not cause someone to be punished for his entire life. (paraphrased)
13. Joblessness creates idleness which is a climate for crime.
14. Between 1990 and 2000, says Judge Mark Bennett, in a mere 10 years the prison population went from 1 million to 2 million.
15. Tom Ashbrook reported that both Bill Clinton and Joe Biden created 3 strikes legislation, requiring that those who have been convicted 3 times of felonies receive life sentences.
16. In many prisons, religious and ethical dietary principles are not respected.
17. At least 14 prisoners in Texas since 2007 have died of temperatures as high as 130 degrees.
18. Prison guard violence has caused untold deaths and beatings.
19. In 2018 only 8 of 50 states murdered prisoners. These were Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. 5 are Southern states with centuries of racist executions.
20. Louisiana has more prisoners per capita than any other state.
aclu.org
amnestyusa.org
deathpenaltyinfo.org
innocenceproject.org
naacp.org
tcadp.org
otse.org
fadp.org
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