Death Row inmates last meal requests

Here is a series of photographs documenting former Death Row prisoners’ requests for their last meal before execution. There are some commonalities as well as some that are just plain bizarre.

19 dead, 20 injured in Mexico prison fight

MEXICO CITY — A fight among inmates Friday at a prison in northern Mexico killed 19 inmates and left more than 20 injured, Durango state officials said. The battle apparently involved inmates jailed on drug or organized crime charges.

Durango state Public Safety Department spokeswoman Barbara Ramirez said only inmates — not prison guards — were killed and injured in the afternoon clash at the prison in the city of Gomez Palacio, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) south of the Texas border.

State Public Safety Secretary Jorge Torres Castillo said in an interview with the Televisa television network that the fighting was "a dispute for dominance" among inmates at the prison. He suggested the presence of drug and organized crime suspects — who are being held on federal charges at a state-run, low-security prison — were responsible.

"We have a significant number of criminals linked to organized crime," Torres Castillo said. "I think it is precisely the federal inmates who disturb the internal dynamics of the penitentiary, and they place the governance of it at constant risk."

Ramirez said the facility had been secured and that no escapes were reported. Video from the scene showed smoke rising from the prison, and shots were heard as police surrounded the facility.

"The penitentiary at Gomez Palacio continues to be a time bomb," Torres Castillo said, adding that state officials had previously asked that federal inmates be moved to other facilities.

Mexican drug gangs have participated in prison fights in the past and have staged escapes and raids to free drug suspects from prisons.

Drug violence has claimed more than 11,000 lives in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and launched a major offensive against cartels, filling prisons with thousands of drug suspects.

Mexico's often overcrowded and loosely run prisons were the scene of over 40 inmate deaths in fighting in 2008.

In October, 21 prisoners died in a fight between inmates at an other state prison in the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.

And in September, two riots at La Mesa state prison in the border city of Tijuana, across from San Diego, California, killed at least 23 people, including two inmates from the U.S.

La Mesa prisoners argued that officials weren't giving them food and water, but prison officials blamed troublemakers for the violence.

The Alcatraz Hotel

The Alcatraz Hotel in the western city of Kaiserslautern, Germany. Former German prison turned hotel offers guests a jailhouse feeling, with a possibility of walking out whenever they like.

Behind the Prison Riot in California

The bloody riot at California's prison at Chino raged for 4 long hours, injuring 175 inmates, with 55 with such serious wounds that they were rushed to local hospitals. 16 inmates were still hospitalized on Monday. Inmates suffered vicious stab and head wounds as prisoners attacked each other with makeshift weapons including shards of glass and broken water pipes. Sixteen inmates remained hospitalized Monday.
This violence was predicted in 2007 by the former director of the Texas Prisons, Wayne Scott, based on his evaluation of the prison at Chino. "If the prisoners wanted to take over the dorm they could do so in a second and no one would know," Scott reported after he visited Cleveland Hall located in Chino's West Facility, where Saturday's riot occurred. The dorms were built in the 40's during World War II. They house 198 inmates, guarded by only two officers, one of them separated from the living area in an office. The bunks are so close together that there is no way that the officers can observe the entire dorm at once.
Inmates arrive at Chino to be assessed as to the danger they pose to staff. After they are classified, they are bused to one of the 33 prisons in California sprawling corrections system. Inside the prison at Chino the inmates range from low level offenders doing time for check kiting or technical parole violations to murderers and rapists returning to prison after multiple prior stays. Violent prisoners are mixed with vulnerable offenders in dorms where there are no cells and no place to hide. The prison, originally designed to hold 3,000 prisoners is now bulging at almost double that number - 5,900.
Imagine the conditions in which these prisoners are held. The prison is in a hot, desert with the Sun baking the compound and its inhabitants. Packed inside are twice as many inmates as it was designed for. A constant flow of bodies jostle through the narrow aisles between the sea of bunk beds. The inmates hassle over toilets and wash basins because there are only half as many as are needed. With the men stacked like cords of wood, the noise, heat and smell of sweat is overwhelming.
In this roiling cauldron of tension add the twin curses of loneliness and boredom: the inmates spend hour after hour liked rats in a cage with nothing productive to occupy their time. The budget cuts have eliminated the educational and addiction treatment programs that used to fill their hours and give them hope. Then add in the racial tensions that permeate our inner cities and our prisons and you have an extremely volatile mixture.
This was the atmosphere in Chino's Cleveland Dorm when it exploded in violence last weekend. When the officers finally took back control, many inmates had been permanently maimed.
Don't blame the corrections officers for these conditions. They are merely carrying out the policies adopted by the legislature and the governor. Unfortunately, meting out long sentences gets more adoring headlines than appropriating the money to pay for them. Corrections leaders have warned of the dangers of crowded prisons for years, but the legislature and the governor haven't responded with enough money to solve the problem.
Comments on several news sites suggest that we shouldn't care about these inmates. Some writers said that the guards should have held back and let the inmates fight until they had all killed each other. My hunch is these attitudes would be very different if one of their sons or brothers were housed in Chino.
When the government incarcerates an inmate it strips him of all control over his life, even the ability to defend himself. The inmate has no choice over where he sleeps, whom he lives next to, when he gets up, where he goes, where and what he eats. If the lights are out in the shower room - a very dangerous situation - he can't shower somewhere else and can't fix the light. He is prohibited from arming himself. He is vulnerable. When the government takes away all ability of an inmate to defend himself, it assumes responsibility to keep him safe. In many cases, the government has failed in this responsibility. It certainly failed at Chino last weekend.
And some in government don't seem to care. The local Assemblyman for the Chino area, Curt Hagman, commented, "By nature prisons are violent". With a shrug he accepted the stabbings and broken bones, the eyes gouged out and the heads cracked open that occurred over the weekend. Assemblyman Hagman's remark reminds me of a similar callous remark by a Massachusetts Corrections Official who, when asked about prison rape, said, "What can I say. It's prison."
Actually there are prisons where violence is not a problem and where beatings and rapes do not occur. Rather than shrugging off the violence, leaders like Assemblyman Hagman should be supporting corrections leaders who are trying to make prisons safe and restore the programs that allow prisoners to prepare to live contributing and law-abiding lives after they are released.
Prisons can be safe. In Louisiana, Angola State Prison is the largest maximum security prison in the US. Until a few years ago it was also America's most violent prison. The inmates slept with metal plates or phone books on their chests to prevent stabbings to their chests.
Under the leadership of Warden Burl Cain, all that has changed. Angola is now the safest prison in the US. Cain shows the men respect. Although 98% of the inmates will die in that prison, he promises them good food, good medicine, good fun and good praying. I have visited Angola and have seen the difference in the prisoners. They look you in the eye. Most inmates in maximum security avoid your eyes out of fear. At Angola, the inmates are taught how to prepare delicious food for their fellow prisoners by New Orleans chefs. There is a seminary in the prison, training men to become pastors for their fellow prisoners. The inmates have a great time at the annual rodeo, which draws thousands of local residents who get a chance to see that the inmates are human just like them.
As a member of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission and also a member of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's prisons, I had the chance to learn from corrections professionals what steps can be taken to make prisons safe rather than descending into violence. Leadership is a critical element in establishing a safe environment for staff, inmates and volunteers. But good leaders have a harder time if the inmates are packed liked sardines in a can. Both commissions identified prison crowding as one of the key factors leading to physical assaults and rapes in prisons.
All of us should care what happens to inmates while they are incarcerated because 95% will serve their time and be released back to our communities. When they are released, what kind of neighbors will they be? The skills the inmates develop to survive violent prisons like Chino make them dangerous when they are released. You can't cage men like animals and then expect them to be model citizens when they return home.
The next time a politician promises to lengthen sentences, ask him if he is willing to support more money to house the increase in inmates caused by the longer sentences. Hold your representatives' feet to the fire. If they aren't willing to spend the dime, they should not be voting for more time.

Beauty pageant…in a women’s prison

Supermax

Supermax is the name used to describe "control-unit" prisons, or units within prisons, which represent the most secure levels of custody in some countries' prison systems. The object is to provide long term, segregated housing for inmates classified as the highest security risks in the prison system - the "worst of the worst" criminals and those who pose a threat to national security of a nation.

An early form of supermax-style prison unit appeared in Australia in 1975, when "Katingal" was built inside the Long Bay Correctional Centre in Sydney. Dubbed the "electronic zoo" by inmates, Katingal was a super-maximum security prison block with 40 prison cells having electronically operated doors, surveillance cameras, and no windows. It was closed down two years later over human rights concerns, and was finally demolished in late 2006. The term "supermax," however, originated in the United States as a portmanteau of "super-maximum," and the concept developed from the 23-year lockdown of the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The lockdown, which began in 1983 and lasted until September 2006, was initiated when two corrections officers at that prison were murdered by inmates in two separate incidents on the same day. Since then, some maximum-security prisons have gone to full lockdown as well, while others have been built and dedicated to the Supermax standard. The Federal Bureau of Prisons' solitary confinement units are known as Special Housing Units (SHU).

There is a nationwide trend in the United States to downgrade Supermax prisons, as has been done with Wallens Ridge State Prison, a former supermax prison in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Other Supermax prisons that have gained notoriety for their harsh conditions and attendant litigation by inmates and advocates are the former Boscobel (in Wisconsin), now named the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility, Red Onion (in Western Virginia, the twin to Wallens Ridge), Tamms (in Illinois), and the Ohio State Penitentiary. Placement policies at the Ohio facility were recently the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case (Wilkinson v. Austin) where the Court decided that there had to be some, but only very limited, due process involved in Supermax placement. There is only one supermax prison in the United States federal system, ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado. However, many states now have created supermax prisons, either as stand-alone facilities or as secure units within lower-security prisons. State supermax prisons include Pelican Bay in California and Tamms in Illinois. The USP in Marion, Illinois was recently downgraded to a medium-security facility. In September 2001, Australia opened a facility in the Goulburn Correctional Centre to the supermax standard. While its condition is an improvement over that of Katingal of the 1970s, this new facility is nonetheless designed on the same principle of sensory deprivation. It has been set up for 'AA' prisoners who are deemed a risk to public safety or believed to be beyond rehabilitation.

In SHU, prisoners are generally allowed out of their cells for only one hour a day; often they are kept in solitary confinement. They receive their meals through ports, also known as "chuck holes," in the doors of their cells. When Supermax inmates are allowed to exercise, this may take place in a small, enclosed area where the prisoner will exercise alone. Prisoners are under constant surveillance, usually with closed-circuit television cameras. Cell doors are usually opaque, while the cells may be windowless. Conditions are spartan, with poured concrete or metal furniture common. Often cell walls, and sometimes plumbing, are soundproofed to prevent communication between the inmates.

Supermax and Security Housing Unit (SHU) prisons generate controversy, as some claim[3] that the living conditions in such facilities violate the United States Constitution, specifically, the Eighth Amendment's proscription against "cruel and unusual" punishments. In 1996, a United Nations team assigned to investigate torture described SHU conditions as "inhuman and degrading". The U.S. government houses a number of convicted terrorists, gang leaders and similar prisoners in a Supermax prison known as ADMAX, the Federal administrative maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, west of Pueblo. Al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced to life without parole at Florence upon his conviction on May 4, 2006. Residents also include Theodore Kaczynski, a terrorist otherwise known as the Unabomber who once attacked via mail bombs, Robert Hanssen, American FBI Agent turned Soviet spy, Terry Nichols, an accomplice to the Oklahoma City bombing, and Richard Reid, an Islamic fundamentalist jailed for life for attempting to detonate explosive materials in his shoes while on board an aircraft.

Solitary confinement

Solitary confinement, colloquially referred to in American English as "the hole", lockdown, M2030D, "the SHU" (pronounced 'shoe') or "the pound" (or in British English "the block"), is a punishment or special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is denied contact with any other persons, excluding members of prison staff. Usually cited as an additional measure of protection (of society) from the criminal, it has also been called a form of torture. In some cases it is also used as a form of protective custody.

Those who accept the practice consider it necessary for prisoners who are considered dangerous to other people ("the most predatory" prisoners), those who might be capable of leading crime groups even from within, or those who are kept 'incommunicado' for purported reasons of national security. Finally, it may be used for prisoners who are at high risk of being attacked by other inmates, such as paedophiles or witnesses who are in prison themselves. This latter form of solitary confinement is sometimes referred to as protective custody.

In the US Federal Prison system, solitary confinement is known as the Special Housing Unit (SHU), pronounced /ˈʃuː/. California's prison system also uses the abbreviation SHU, but it stands for Security Housing Units. In other states, it is known as the Special Management Unit (SMU), pronounced /ˈsmuː/.

Opponents of solitary confinement claim that it is a form of cruel and unusual punishment[4] and torture because the lack of human contact, and the sensory deprivation that often go with solitary confinement, can have a severe negative impact on a prisoner's mental state that may lead to certain mental illnesses such as depression or an existential crisis and death.

One of the most notable and renowned cases of solitary confinement comes from the story of pastor Richard Wurmbrand who ranks fifth among the greatest Romanians of all time according to the Mari Români poll. In 1948, Wurmbrand was imprisoned for 14 years and sentenced to solitary confinement for his involvement in underground churches. Wurmbrand endured years of solitary torture, both mentally and physically all the while composing hundreds of sermons, delivered nightly to an unseen (fictional) congregation. He later committed them to memory by summarizing them in rhymes. Wurmbrand authored 18 books about his solitary confinement experience and traveled across the world forming what would be known as The Voice of the Martyrs.

Life imprisonment

Life imprisonment

Life imprisonment or life incarceration is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious crime, often for most or even all of the criminal's remaining life, but in fact for a period which varies between jurisdictions: many countries have a maximum possible period of time a prisoner may be incarcerated, or require the possibility of parole after a set amount of time. Examples of crimes which can result in life imprisonment include murder and rape and drug trafficking under the American Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), especially if the person in question has committed these acts multiple times. In almost all jurisdictions without capital punishment, life imprisonment (especially without the possibility of parole) constitutes the most severe form of criminal punishment. Only a small number of jurisdictions have abolished both.

Children under 18

Like other areas of criminal law, sentences handed to minors may differ from those given to legal adults. A few countries worldwide allow for minors to be given lifetime sentences that have no provision for eventual release. (Although South Africa does allow life imprisonment for children below 18 years of age, it is with the possibility of release. In terms of parole laws, a person sentenced to life will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years.) Of these, only the United States actually have minors serving such sentences, according to an updated 2008 joint study by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. As of May 2008, Human Rights Watch has calculated that there are 2,484 youth offenders serving life without parole in the United States.