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Prisons

California Prison Hunger Strikers Continue Their Resistance

By News & Current Affairs, War on the “War on Drugs” Posts

By Dylan Murphy
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) refuses to negotiate with prison hunger strikers as they enter day 56 of the protest at solitary confinement and inhumane conditions. The hunger strikers are in increasing danger from heart attacks but maintain their resolve to continue their resistance until the CDCR agrees to negotiate around their five core demands.

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The Plight of California’s Prisoners: Hunger Strike, Sterilization and Valley Fever

By Commentaries/Opinions, War on the “War on Drugs” Posts

By Jean Trounstine

It’s been two years since Governor Jerry Brown was court ordered to fix California’s ailing prisons and the situation is still life-threatening and possibly illegal.

It’s been all over the papers and many bloggers are tackling the horrendous conditions in California. A prison system that in 2011 was ordered by the Supreme Court to figure out what to do with 30,000 people who because of the system’s overcrowding were suffering “cruel and unusual punishment.”

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Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. has been sentenced to almost three decades in jail after conspiring with private prisons to trade kids for cash.

By News & Current Affairs

by Emily Smith

In the private prison industry, longer sentences earn more money from the state.

Since 2003, Ciavarella received millions of dollars in bribes for condemning minors to maximum prison sentences. In one case, Ciavarella sentenced a 10-year-old to two years in a detention facility for accidentally bottoming out his mother’s car.

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