Showing posts with label prisoners abroad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prisoners abroad. Show all posts
Miami Herald ✒ Witnesses called it a vicious mugging. The alleged ‘perps’: prison guards.

Carli Teproff

Ryan Dionne held the emotionally distraught woman down and Keith Turner kneed her repeatedly in the head and back, according to witnesses to the brutal daytime assault.

The two men then allegedly dragged their victim across a long field and a pavilion — her head “bobbing” off the ground, her eyes rolled back in her head — as they ordered potential witnesses: “Look away! Look Away!” 

Some did as they were told. But others looked on.

Now they are telling their stories as part of a lawsuit that seeks to recover money for Cheryl Weimar, 51, who is paralyzed from the neck down as a result of the Aug. 21, 2019, attack.

But because it happened at Lowell Correctional Institution and Weimar was an inmate, afforded few rights and little dignity, and Dionne and Turner were staff members, the alleged attackers have not been charged with a crime, and one of them remains on staff, his salary covered by the taxpayers of Florida. 

Continue reading @ Miami Herald.

Witnesses Say Staffers Beat Florida Inmate Viciously

From The Marshall Project on a tip that led it to a little-known program that affected hundreds of poor workers. 

By Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu

The tip we got at Mississippi Today seemed a little unlikely: a woman in state prison was also working at McDonald’s—and not voluntarily. But sure enough, we found Dixie D’Angelo, a woman with court-ordered debts of $5,000 because she damaged a friend’s car. She had been sentenced to something called a restitution center, where she worked four different restaurant jobs to try to earn enough to pay off her debts and get out of jail. 

Two reporters, Anna Wolfe and Michelle Liu, ultimately found that hundreds of people were in similar situations because of the state’s little-known restitution center program. Basically, we discovered, Mississippi was running a modern-day debtors prison.

We met with inmates and their employers across Mississippi, beginning at fast food restaurants around Jackson, traveling to the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf Coast. We found people using court documents and a list of work-camp inmates that the corrections department later removed from its website.

We interviewed more than 50 current and former restitution center inmates and a dozen national experts. We filed 30 public records requests. Using more than 200 sentencing orders, we built a database detailing how judges ordered people to the centers and how much money they had to pay.

Continue reading @ The Marshall Project.

How We Investigated Mississippi’s Modern-Day Debtors Prisons

Casa Murphy with a piece from her blog Casa Murphy USA about her friendship with long term prisoners in the American penal system. It is reproduced in TPQ with permission. 

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For nearly a decade now I've written weekly to three Jewish inmates in California prisons. Alan is one we have a special bond with. We visit him four or five times a year at the prison in Tehachapi. He will be released in 2017, which after nearly twenty-five years of incarceration feels to him like five minutes. Spuds is in elementary school when we first visit Alan and will (we hope) have graduated from college when Alan is released. Alan is a person I would choose, and am fortunate to have, as a friend. I enjoy our visits and reading his letters. I send him stamps and books and do research that he needs on my computer. When he leaves prison at age 57 he will have never operated a computer or even held a cell phone. 

My Friend the Murderer