In Texas, "Squeaky" Fromme left prison today after serving 34 years on her life sentence. She's now 60. (Background here.)

In California, Bruce Lisker was released after 26 years. (Background here.)

Lisker was released on bail at 7 a.m., a week after a federal judge overturned his murder conviction, ruling that he was prosecuted with “false evidence” and his defense attorney did not adequately represent him.

What Lisker, locked up since age 17, now a bald middle-age man, is looking forward to:

[He wants] to go for bike rides on the beach and smell the ocean breeze, eat a bowl of French vanilla ice cream and go running in a straight line for as far as he wants to without having to jog in circles like he did in prison. He needs to apply for a driver’s license, get a copy of his Social Security number and birth certificate so he can find a job — another condition of his bail.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme will be paroled on August 16, after serving 34 years for pointing a gun at President Gerald R. Ford. She is 60 years old.

The former Manson disciple (she was not part of the Tate/LaBianca murders) was eligible for parole in 1985 but did not request it. She was granted parole in 2008, but had to do extra time due to a separate sentence imposed for a 1987 escape attempt from a West Virginia prison. [More...]

A three judge panel in California has issued a "scathing" 184 page opinion ordering California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 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. In a scathing 184-page order, the judges criticized state officials, saying they had failed to comply with previous orders to fix the health care system in the prisons and reduce crowding, and recommended remedies, including reform of the parole system.

How bad are prison conditions? [More...]

This is pretty funny. Officials at Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado have turned down an inmate's request to read the two books written by President Obama. Why?

The federal government's most secure prison has determined two books written by President Barack Obama contain material "potentially detrimental to national security" ....

What standards did the use to make the determination? Ones supplied by the F.B.I. Who requested the books?

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush.

Sexual violence in prisons is widely acknowledged, rarely discussed, and inexplicably tolerated. Given the culture of vengeance that has been the driving force behind the nation's philosophy of punishment for the last 30 years, it may be that people figure that prisoners deserve whatever happens to them in prison, including rape. Or it may be that people just don't care. They should, because the consequences of prison rape affect society at large, not just the imprisoned victim.

Fortunately, Congress cared enough in 2003 to pass the Prison Rape Elimination Act. While the Act could have done much more to address the problem, it represents an important beginning. Among its other requirements, the law created a commission to recommend national standards to address sexual violence in correctional facilities. That task was recently completed, and the Justice Department now has a year to promulgate a final set of standards that will be binding in federal prisons. State prisons will also need to adopt the standards if they don't want to lose a measly 5 percent of the federal funding they receive that relates to corrections.

[more ...]

Another legacy of the War on Drugs and the punitive lock-em-up mentality of the get tough on crime crowd is coming home to roost: Children of the incarcerated.

Federal data shows that 1.5 million kids have a parent in prison. Usually it's the father:

The chances of seeing a parent go to prison have never been greater, especially for poor black Americans, and new research is documenting the long-term harm to the children they leave behind. Recent studies indicate that having an incarcerated parent doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behavior, social isolation, depression and problems in school — all portending dimmer prospects in adulthood.

“Parental imprisonment has emerged as a novel, and distinctly American, childhood risk that is concentrated among black children and children of low-education parents,” said Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who is studying what some now call the “incarceration generation.”

Sentencing laws are at least partially to blame. [More...]

The ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit in Indiana against the Bureau of Prisons over the creation of "CMU's" -- "secretly created housing units inside federal prisons in which prisoners are condemned to live in stark isolation from the outside world."

Who is in these CMU's? Mostly muslims.

The government says it created CMUs to house prisoners it views as terrorists, but today they are disproportionately inhabited by Muslim prisoners – many of whom have never been convicted of terrorism related crimes. In addition, these CMUs were established in violation of federal laws requiring public scrutiny, without any opportunity for public comment or oversight in a clear effort to skirt obligations of accountability and transparency.

[More...]

Related to my long post on Shoe Bomber Richard Reid's hunger strike at Supermax in Florence, Colorado, I see that the Canadian press is reporting that convicted terrorist Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, serving life at Supermax, is also on a hunger strike:

Mohammed Mansour Jabarah has refused to eat since mid-April and prison officials are allegedly pumping food into his stomach using a tube inserted in his nose. The convicted al-Qaeda terrorist is protesting restrictions on his mail, his lawyer said, but his father said Jabarah and other Muslim inmates also want to pray together.

The ACLU condemns force-feeding here.

Shoe Bomber Richard Reid, serving a life sentence at Supermax in Florence, Colorado for intending to blow up an American Airlines commercial flight in December, 2001 by lighting a match to put to an explosive in his shoe, has been on a hunger strike for months and is being force-fed. He is too ill to attend depositions in his civil lawsuit against BOP officials and the Attorney General. His lawsuit alleges that his First Amendment rights are being violated by conditions at the prison and, in particular, SAMS, which limit his contact with the outside world, ability to attend group prayer and take religious correspondence classes.

The Court recently denied the Government's motion to partially dismiss his complaint. The report of the Magistrate Judge is here (pdf.) The District Court Judge's order accepting the Magistrate's report is here (pdf). The Government's pleading describing the hunger strike is here. (pdf) From the Magistrate Judge's order finding Reid's complaint was sufficient to survive dismissal on First Amendment grounds: [More...]

The inmates are opposed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to consider selling San Quentin to earn money for the state.

They live two inmates to a 4-by-9-foot cell. And it's fine with them. Why? The opportunities for learning and rehabilitation.

One inmate says:

"Some places you go for punishment," said inmate John Taylor, a catcher for the prison baseball team, the San Quentin Giants. "Here, it's more rehabilitation. I just don't know why the governor would want to shut us down."

Taylor's job at the prison: cutting weeds. He says:

"This is the first place visitors see when they come in," he said. "We want it to look good."

[More...]

The BBC has an interesting article about a program in France in which 194 prison inmates are about to take off on a 1,500 mile bicycle tour that ends in Paris. They will be accompanied by 124 guards.

The goal: To get the inmates "back in the saddle," and learn "team work and self-esteem."

There's a video showing them training for the race.

They will have to cycle in a pack, will not be ranked and, for obvious reasons, breakaway sprints will not be allowed.

According to a prison official:

"We want to show them that with some training, you can achieve your goals and start a new life,"

I just found this cool site about prison photography among TalkLeft's twitter followers. This is clearly an art site, with a viewpoint. The site's objectives:

To bring to attention things previously unsaid.

To bring attention to things said but unrecorded.

To present a consistent textual and visual editorial voice, to which I am held accountable.

To highlight pre-internet work (digitally unpublished) and give it some exposure.

To joust in the melee of contested meanings in surveillance, fine-art, documentary, amateur, institution, and virtual photographies of prisons and other sites of incarceration.

Hope you check it out.