The U.S. Justice Department has issued a new set of guidelines designed to stem prison rape, which "may afflict one out of every 10 prisoners," according to the NYT. The guidelines are mostly basic standards of staffing, planning, and other common-sense measures. But I submit to you that the following bit of the overview is as bracing a section as you're likely to find in a government report:
The Justice Department has conceded that a year of your life is worth just shy of $47,000. While that may not sound like a lot to those of you who live in New York, or even just like your lives, it's a hell of a lot higher than the $5,000 per year they were originally trying to play ball with.
On the left: Stephen Slevin in 2005, when he was arrested in New Mexico's Dona Ana County on suspicion of driving under the influence and driving a stolen vehicle (Slevin says the car was lent to him by a friend). On the right: Slevin in 2007, just before he was released after spending nearly all of two years in solitary confinement in the county jail.
Here in America, our jails are full of old people, and it's costing us a ton of money to keep them in there. Huh. Now there is a problem which certainly could not have been foreseen by craven "Law and order" politicians prosecuting a useless "War on Drugs" for the sake of public popularity, nor by the simplistic bloodthirsty voters who repeatedly elected them in order to satisfy a primal hatred of "the other." Anyhow, we have a solution: let the old people out of jail.
A small town in Alabama is offering non-violent offenders the choice between doing prison time and paying a fine, or working their sentence off by going to church every week.
The New York City's Department of Corrections' failure to develop an Irene-related evacuation plan for all the prisoners trapped inside Rikers Island has pissed off people who still remember what happened to prisoners during Katrina, and also those people who oppose drowning. There are still many such people in America (they're all on Twitter).
It's never a good idea to drink and drive. But it's especially not a good idea when you are driving to the police station. To pick up your daughter's dog. After she was arrested for a DUI.
Though she escaped the death penalty in the trial over her daughter's death, Casey Anthony has been sentenced to four years in jail for lying to police during the investigation into Caylee Anthony's disappearance. A smiling Anthony wore her hair down at today's sentencing hearing—between good behavior and time served, her stay in the slammer may not be much longer. [NYT, image via AP]
A blogger from Taiwan who complained about the food and service at a local restaurant was fined $7,000 and sentenced to 30 days in detention.
People are constantly coming up with new and occasionally ingenious ways to smuggle contraband into jail. There's the butt trick, the prosthetic leg stuff, the penis tuck, and of course, vaginas. Lots of vaginas. And last week, when a woman in Iowa was pulled over for driving drunk and hotboxing, she went with the vagina — a mistake that could cost her money and extra jail time. From the Press-Citizen:
People with half a human soul still extant in their corporeal shells tend to be creeped out by the concept of "private prisons," what with its overtones of prison-industrial complex run amok. But hey, private prisons save a few bucks, so bring em on! Right? No.
You thought Alaska was some kind of free-for-all no-rules paradise, where you could just ride an ice floe to your polling place and elect whomever you want to be governor? Think again! As 18-year-old Mikey Poland learned, that's illegal. (Well, the ice floe part is—you can still vote for as many idiots as you want.) Poland and some friends were "jumping on ice" on the Chena River over the weekend when Poland hopped onto a 10' x 15' piece that had broken off and was floating in the river. His friends, responsible till the end, gave him a milk crate to sit on and a cooler lid to use as a paddle; Poland floated downriver about a quarter mile before getting hung up. After being rescued by the fire department, he was immediately cuffed and charged with "disorderly conduct for creating a hazardous condition for the firefighters who rescued him." He didn't fight the charges, and was sentenced to "days in jail with all 10 suspended, 50 hours of community service," and a $100 fine. [AP]
