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Justice Dept. Numbers Show Prison Trends
"About one in every 31 adults in the United States was in prison, in jail or on supervised release at the end of last year, the Department of Justice reported yesterday.
Land of the "free," huh? And it is ONLY GOING to GET WORSE!!
An estimated 2.38 million people were incarcerated in state and federal facilities, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2005, while a record 5 million people were on parole or probation, an increase of 1.8 percent. Immigration detention facilities had the greatest growth rate last year. The number of people held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities grew 43 percent, to 14,482 from 10,104.
The data reflect deep racial disparities in the nation’s correctional institutions, with a record 905,600 African-American inmates in prisons and state and local jails. In several states, incarceration rates for blacks were more than 10 times the rate of whites. In Iowa, for example, blacks were imprisoned at 13.6 times the rate of whites, according to an analysis of the data by the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group.
But the report concludes that nationally the percentage of black men in state and federal prison populations in 2006 fell to 38 percent, from 43 percent in 2000. The rates also declined for black women, while rates for white women increased.
Over all, the number of women in state and federal prisons, 112,498, was at a record high. The female jail and prison population has grown at double the rate for men since 1980; in 2006 it increased 4.5 percent, its fastest clip in five years.
The report suggests that state prison capacity has expanded at roughly the same rate as the prison population, with prisons operating at 98 percent to 114 percent of capacity, a slight improvement over 2005.
Still, many prison systems are accommodating record numbers of inmates by using facilities that were never meant to provide bed space. Arizona has for years held inmates in tent encampments on prison grounds. Hundreds of California prisoners sleep in three-tier bunk beds in gymnasiums or day rooms. Prisons throughout the nation have made meeting rooms for educational and treatment programs into cell space.
Private prisons have also been a growing option for crowded corrections departments. And local jails contracted with various government agencies to hold 77,987 more state and federal inmates last year."
So what is your future, readers?
Detainees ask Supreme Court to grant hearings
WASHINGTON - Imprisoned without trial for years at Guantanamo Bay with no end in sight, a group of detainees yesterday begged the Supreme Court to grant them hearings before a federal judge so they can challenge the Bush administration's accusation that each is a terrorist.
"All have been confined at Guantanamo for almost six years, yet not one has ever had meaningful notice of the factual grounds of detention or a fair opportunity to dispute those grounds," said the prisoners' lawyer, Seth Waxman, who was the Clinton administration's solicitor general from 1997 to 2001. "Each maintains . . . that he is innocent of all wrongdoing."
But Paul Clement, the Bush administration's solicitor general, urged the justices to rule that the Constitution gives detainees no such right to a day in court. He said the justices should instead uphold laws enacted in 2005 and 2006 that limit detainees to a hearing before a panel of military officers, without a lawyer or a right to see the government's evidence against them.
Clement said the military hearings represented the "best efforts" of both Congress and the White House "to try to balance the interest in providing the detainees" with hearings while still meeting "the imperative to successfully prosecute the global war on terror."
The Guantanamo case is being watched closely both in the United States and overseas. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling before its term ends in June 2008, ensuring that its decision will become part of the national debate amid the presidential campaign.
Despite falling snow, about 50 people camped out overnight on the court's steps to get in line for a seat at yesterday's showdown, and protesters in orange prisoner jumpsuits and black hoods chanted slogans against the Guantanamo policy outside the court.
God Bless 'em!
Inside the packed courtroom, the current and former solicitors general dueled throughout the hearing. Waxman, who went first, faced repeated demands by Justice Antonin Scalia to cite historical precedents for courts giving hearings to foreign prisoners who were being held overseas.
"Do you have a single case in the 220 years of our country or, for that matter, in the five centuries of the English empire in which [the right to a hearing challenging detention] was granted to an alien in a territory that was not under the sovereign control of either the United States or England?" Scalia said.
Replied Waxman: "The answer to that is a resounding yes."
Waxman rattled through an array of cases and statutes that he said supported the prisoners' right to a day in court. But Scalia rejected each example on various grounds, eventually prompting Waxman to jokingly "plead exhaustion" from trying to overcome the conservative justice's skepticism.
Clement faced intense grilling from the court's liberal members. Justice David Souter said that sometimes the military's review panels decided that a prisoner should be released, only to have the Pentagon order a do-over hearing that "conveniently" found that the detainee should stay at Guantanamo.
He really turned out to be a great judge!
Souter suggested that the military hearings were no substitute for a day in court. But Clement disagreed, insisting that Congress had decided the military hearings were adequate.
Isn't that what the court is for, fascista? To decide that?
There are three potential outcomes in the case. The justices could side with the government and throw out the detainees' lawsuit. Or they could side with the detainees and order district court judges to start holding fact-finding hearings for each detainee who says the government has made a mistake in accusing him of being a terrorist.
Finally, the justices could rule that the detainees have a constitutional right to some kind of hearing, but send the case back to a lower court to examine whether the military's hearings are an adequate substitute for a day in court. An appeals court had ruled that detainees have no right to a hearing, so the lower judges did not need to evaluate the quality of the military hearings.
Many observers predict that Justice Anthony Kennedy will decide what happens in the case because he often has been the swing-voter between factions of four liberals and four conservatives. Kennedy was mostly silent during the hearing, but asked several questions related to whether it made any legal difference that six years had passed since the detainees came to Guantanamo.
As we enter into the WORLD of ORWELL!!!
Legal "limbo," huh? Getting a TASTE of the coming FASCISM, readers?
Seizing the opportunity, Waxman told Kennedy that the men who have been at Guantanamo for six years should get their day in court now through regular hearings before a federal judge.
"This court should issue a ruling saying for these people, if the [right to challenge one's detention in court] means anything, the time for experimentation is over," Waxman said.
Clement downplayed the significance of the prisoners' long incarceration. He noted that Congress did not pass legislation setting up procedures for handling prisoner hearings until December 2005. "Of course, when you do something unprecedented, new questions will arise," he said.
Then you wouldn't mind taking up residence there, right, Clement?
And I must say, Bush's secret gulags sure are unprecedented!
The United States has brought about 800 men to Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and it is currently holding about 300."
Justices to Answer Detainee Rights Question
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 — When it comes to the rights of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the Supreme Court, and not the president or Congress, will have the last word.
Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, as his argument failed to gain traction, rather remarkably began throwing pieces of it over the side.
The new case, Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195, concerns the “combatant status review tribunals” the administration has set up to validate the initial determination that a detainee is an enemy combatant. The tribunals are panels of military officers, who are not required to disclose to the detainee details of the evidence or witnesses against him. The military assigns a “personal representative” to each detainee, but defense lawyers may not participate.
Under the Detainee Treatment Act, detainees may appeal the tribunal’s decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit under circumscribed appellate procedures, including a presumption that the evidence before the tribunal was accurate and complete. The District of Columbia Circuit is currently considering how it will handle these appeals, including such questions as how much of the evidentiary record the government will be required to disclose on appeal.
The details of the tribunal and appeal procedures are relevant to the Supreme Court only insofar as the detainees can claim a right to due process or other constitutional rights that the federal courts historically enforce for prisoners through writs of habeas corpus. The court’s precedents permit substitutes for formal habeas corpus procedures as long as the substitutes offer the same basic protections.
What fucking doublespeak is all this shit?
They don't have habeas, but they really do?
Then why they still imprisoned? Pffffffttttt!
During the argument on Wednesday, the justices’ focus on whether the detainees were being offered an adequate substitute appeared to assume that either a reasonable substitute or habeas corpus itself had to be provided.
Mr. Waxman, the detainees’ lawyer, listed several elements that he said were needed for an adequate substitute: “a fair notice of the fact,” “a fair opportunity to challenge them with the assistance of counsel before a neutral decision maker” and “the remedy of speedy release for somebody who is unlawfully being held in executive detention.”
These were “tried and true established procedures,” Mr. Waxman said, adding, “This court should issue a ruling saying for these people if the writ means anything, the time for experimentation is over.”
Mr. Waxman referred numerous times to the fact that the 37 detainees he represented have been held for nearly six years. After his second reference, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. interjected, “Your argument wouldn’t be any different with respect to the availability of habeas if these people were held for one day, would it?”
Roberts is an ASSHOLE!
I always wondered about the timing of Rehnquist's death!
That man wanted to live!
Dragged himself out in the cold to swear Bush in a second time in 2004!
And now asshole Roberts is the CJ? With Alito in his spot? STINK!!!!
Later, the chief justice suggested that the first few years of detention should not count because the procedures under review “weren’t available for the whole six-year period, were they?”
You GETTING THAT, AmeriKa?
INDEFINITE INCARCERATION!
For NOTHING except the ARBITRARY WHIM of the STATE!
“No, of course not,” Mr. Clement agreed. Alluding to the lapse of time and the multiple rounds of litigation, he continued, “Congress in this area was providing unprecedented review and, of course, when you do something unprecedented, new questions will arise.”
Couldn't you guys count that as TIME SERVED?
Defense Challenges Status of Guantánamo Detainee
"Challenging one of the central pillars of the Bush administration’s detention policies, lawyers for a detainee who is charged as Osama bin Laden's driver argued here Wednesday that he should be treated as a prisoner of war and should not be tried by military commission.
The military judge at a pretrial hearing of the former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, did not rule on the request but opened the way for the defense to present evidence on the issue at a hearing that is to begin Thursday.
The military judge, Capt. Keith Allred of the Navy, said it “will take a great deal of work” to decide the request, which reopens legal questions about whether the administration correctly decided that the Geneva Conventions protections for prisoners of war did not apply to the battle with Al Qaeda.
The argument came as military prosecutors pressed ahead with efforts to try Mr. Hamdan for what they say are the war crimes of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.
For many of the participants here, the proceedings were a counterpoint to a Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday at which the justices were considering a case raising questions about the basic rules governing the detainees held here.
In 2006, the justices struck down the administration’s previous system for war crimes trials at Guantánamo. The detainee in whose name that case was brought was the same one sitting in a white gown and headdress, with a hint of a confused smile, at the defense table here Wednesday, Mr. Hamdan.
A decision in Mr. Hamdan’s favor on the prisoner issue could again undercut the administration’s effort to try detainees in military commissions here because the Geneva Conventions require that a nation holding prisoners of war must try them in the same courts that would try the country’s own military officers, which in the United States are court-martial proceedings.
The defense argued that Mr. Hamdan, who they say was a low-ranking employee of Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan, was not an unlawful enemy combatant subject to the administration’s military commissions, which critics say do not offer the protections of the American military justice system.
“You’re not an unlawful enemy combatant if you’re a driver or you’re a farmer working for Mr. bin Laden on one of his farms,” Lt. Brian L. Mizer, a military defense lawyer argued.
But military prosecutors, who have been frustrated as war crimes trials have been stalled by a variety of logistical and legal challenges, argued that the law Congress passed after the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling in Mr. Hamdan’s case intended that the Geneva Conventions not apply to Guantánamo detainees like Mr. Hamdan, who are charged with being unlawful enemy combatants.
“The heart of the matter is that this hearing, your honor, is not under the language and guidance provided by the Geneva Conventions,” the chief prosecutor, Lt. Col. William B. Britt, argued.
Judge Allred called the hearing to decide whether Mr. Hamdan could be classified as an unlawful enemy combatant who could be tried in a military commission.
Unlawful combatants do not follow international laws of war, which include requirements that lawful fighters wear identifiable insignia, carry their arms openly and follow a command structure.
So that means CIA covert operator (and Mossad, and MI6) are UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS?
And HOW ABOUT CONTRACTOR MERCENARIES, huh??
But Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers argued that he might not have been a fighter of any kind. They asked to present evidence that he may have been a civilian who worked alongside Qaeda leaders without being a committed member.
Judge Allred said he would hear that evidence on Thursday and consider it along with prosecution evidence that Mr. Hamdan also worked for Mr. bin Laden as bodyguard and aide. The prosecutors say that Mr. Hamdan also transported weapons for terrorists.
Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers lost a battle that could have turned Thursday’s hearing into something of a spectacle. They asked that three of the Guantánamo inmates classified as high-value detainees be brought to the courtroom to testify. The inmates were Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an architect of the 9/11 attacks and other terror operations, and two other top Qaeda operatives, Abu Faraj al-Libbi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. The lawyers said the inmates might know that Mr. Hamdan was not a member of Al Qaeda.
Oh, right, we wouldn't want to probe too deeply into "Al-CIA-Duh" and 9/11 !
That would be a "spectacle!"
Colonel Britt, who is the deputy chief military prosecutor for Guantánamo, said security surrounding the three inmates was so tight that he had not interviewed them himself. Judge Allred denied the request, saying the defense lawyers had delivered it too late.
One of Mr. Hamdan’s lawyers Charles D. Swift, a retired Navy lawyer, said the defense had not known of a deadline.
“We get to the hearing and find we haven’t complied with a rule we didn’t know of,” Mr. Swift said. “How is that in the interests of justice?”
These tribunals and "terrorism" have nothing to do with justice, and everything to do with advancing the AIPAC/Clean Break/PNAC agenda!
