Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“In one of my posts, I discussed the issue with the inmate rules of conduct procedures. Well, that is not the only problem with how inmates are treated in these institutions. The inmate grievance procedure is every bit as corrupt and dysfunctional.”
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Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
The Dobbs Wire: Time sensitive request. Do you have a friend or loved one who is locked up in jail, prison or a sex offense civil commitment facility? They may be eligible for a $1,200 stimulus payment and not know it, or unsure what to do. Please send them information and forms so they get a chance at a check like everyone else! Get the materials to them quickly as time is short. For individuals who need to file a form to get a payment, the postmark deadline for paper filings is Nov. 4. For those with internet access the deadline for online filings is Nov. 21.
The IRS had been falsely claiming incarcerated individuals were not eligible for payments. A class action lawsuit exposed what the IRS was doing and there’s important news – a federal court has ordered the IRS to stop interfering with the checks and start making the payments. Now the information needs to get inside as soon as possible.
Here’s the list of what to send –
# # #
The best website for information and updates, set up by lawyers for the class action: CARES Act Prison Case – https://caresactprisoncase.org/
Below are some news stories about the case. There’s a big push around the country on this, your help is needed and appreciated.
–Bill Dobbs, The Dobbs Wire If you would like to join The Dobbs Wire email list, drop us a line: info@thedobbswire.com We’re on Twitter: @thedobbswire
NOTE – some of these stories were written before the court extended the postmark deadline to November 4.
Detroit Free Press | Oct. 19, 2020
Nov. 4 deadline near for prisoners to apply for COVID-19 stimulus checks
Los Angeles Times | Oct. 12, 2020
Federal stimulus checks must go to prison inmates, U.S. judge in California rules
New York Times | Oct. 15, 2020
Prisoners cannot be denied virus relief payments, a judge rules.
Prison Policy Initiative | Oct. 5, 2020
Update: Court says IRS can’t deny economic stimulus payments to incarcerated people.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/10/05/checks-update/
Excellent background
The Appeal | July 8, 2020
Prisoners Face ‘Undue Punishment” as the IRS Claws Back Their Stimulus Checks
Politicians and advocates say the IRS is illegally denying CARES Act payments to incarcerated people.
https://theappeal.org/prisoners-stimulus-checks/
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
The web site for Frank Fuster was very out of date. So I’m doing some work on it.
Visit https://fuster.ncrj.org/
-Bob
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
September 28, 2020
Dave Olson, Editor
The Salem News
300 Rosewood Drive, Suite 107
Danvers, MA 01923
Dear Editor,
My name is Robert Chatelle and I live in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Since its founding in April of 2002, I have served as Executive Director of the National Center for Reason and Justice (NCRJ), an advocacy group for people falsely accused or wrongfully convicted of crimes against children.
A friend recently forwarded to me a flyer for an exhibit at Salem’s Peabody-Essex Museum, entitled “The Salem Witch Trials 1692.” The flier concludes:
“The victims of the Salem witch trials had complex emotions, fears, and doubts just like we do,” said Dan Lipcan, head librarian at Peabody Essex Museum’s Phillips Library. “To empathize and understand their experience emboldens us to speak out against injustice and cruelty in our own time.”
Sadly, the Peabody-Essex has not always boldly “spoken out against injustice and cruelty in our own time.”
The Daycare Panic of the 80’s and 90’s was in many ways a replay of the Salem witch hysteria. In January of 1997, Carol Hopkins of the Justice Committee had arranged a seminal two-day conference, Day of Contrition, that was to take place at Peabody-Essex. Presenters included DA (now Judge) Alan Rubenstein, Bucks County, Pennsylvania; internationally renowned psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus; journalist Debbie Nathan, the first to write critically about the hysteria; Mark Pendergrast, author; Professor Frederick Crews, University of California, Berkeley; Donald Connery, author and former Time-Life correspondent, Dr. Richard Leo, the leading expert on false confessions; and (by videotape) playwright Arthur Miller and author William Styron; and many others. Also attending were many victims of the hysteria.
Unfortunately, word got out and true believers in daycare sexual abuse complained to Peabody-Essex. Their response was far from bold. At the last minute, they told Carol Hopkins that she and her presenters were not welcome at Peabody-Essex.
Fortunately, the Hawthorne Hotel stepped up and the conference went on. Alliances were formed and many of us are still fighting for justice. The National Center for Reason and Justice, for example, grew out of discussions that occurred at that conference.
We appreciate that Mr. Lipcan has worked for Peabody-Essex for less than two years. We are optimistic that he means what he says about speaking out against cruelty and injustice and we wish him success.
Sincerely,
Robert B. Chatelle
Executive Director, National Center for Reason and Justice
CC: Dan Lipcan, Carol Hopkins, Day of Contrition presenters and attendees
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
When I began my incarceration back in 1996, the staff were professional, non-biased, and knew the O.A.C.s and O.D.R.C. Policies that governed their jobs. In essence, they knew the rules they had to follow. Gradually, this changed, and in no way for the better. Today, staff members like sergeant (correctional counselor) Stephanie Craft are of the false belief they can do what ever they want to inmates. I wish I could tell you she is among the few who act this way. Truth is, the old guard is slowly disappearing.
These staff mistreat inmates in every possible way they can, and then act incredulous when the inmate calls them on it, or asks their superior to intervene. It is rather amazing just how bewildered they are that “an inmate” could ever question anything they say or do. How dare they! If you actually have the heart to stand up for yourself, staff like Craft begin threatening you, having their peers harass you, will try to get you fired from your institutional jobs, moving you to the locks where all the chaos is, and a host of other things.
Read the rest of Shane’s post.
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“Dealing with the parole board is an agonizing affair. You can spend months, if not years, preparing. Taking all the re-entry approved programs the state has to offer. Obtaining support letters from family, friends and potential employers. Then, the day finally comes for you to speak to them. They immediately begin to ask you questions about the crime you were charge with and the subsequent trial. It is at this point you realize, all they want to do is retry your case in the hearing, and they fully intend on giving you more time. Nothing you have done through the years of your incarceration matters. Not the community service hours you have amassed, the educational course you have taken, the career preparedness programs, nor the self improvement programs the state gets money for providing to inmates.”
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-Bob
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
Everyone always talks about rehabilitation, but no one seems to want inmates to have anything of value. There can be no greater contradiction. The vast majority of inmates will, at some point, be released. The question everyone should be asking themselves is, “do we want inmates to have everything they need to be successful, or do we routinely poke at and antagonize them so they are like wild animals when they come home?” Keep in mind, many of these inmates will become your neighbor or a neighbor to someone you know and love. Personally, I would hope our self described civil society demand we treat every person with dignity and respect. Yet, I keep reflecting on something Thomas Paine once wrote,”A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
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-Bob
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“Judging others seems to be a special pastime in prisons. Staff and inmate alike pass judgment on people for the wrong reasons. Yet, they never want the maggot things they are doing to be seen by others. These staff and inmates even think of themselves higher than they should. It reminds me of high school in a way. You and another classmate both like a girl, and the only way for the other guy to be noticed is for him to poison your name and character. He has to talk bad about you just so he can shine for a second. Then his true nature comes out when everything is said and done. I usually phrase it as,” A nobody trying to be a somebody to a bunch of nobodies.”
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Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
“When an inmate is accused of breaking an institutional rule, the incident is written up by the charging staff member as a conduct report (a.k.a. “a ticket”). Minor offenses are handled by a hearing officer, which is a unit sergeant. Major offenses are referred to the Rules Infraction Board (R.I.B.) by the unit sergeants. Whether a ticket is handled by a hearing officer or R.I.B., the inmate has the right to call witnesses, present evidence, and a few other things much like a court of law. Among the reasons this is so important is that the Parole Board can deny parole to an inmate for rules violations, educational programming can be denied, inmates can be rejected for institutional work assignments, and judicial releases can be turned down by judges.”
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Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
The Times Literary Supplement in a rave review of JoAnn Wypijewski’s provocative new book states: “It is thrilling and cathartic to watch Wypijewski slice through our culture’s flabbiest orthodoxies.” On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Wypijewski talks to host Robert Scheer about the “haste to castigate” that has led to shoddy reporting of the true meaning of trials she has covered, ranging from the media frenzy trial of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein to the framing of five teenagers known as the Central Park Five on rape charges, which she offers as a shocking example of a “scandal media” lynching mob.
And it’s not just the media that control narratives, but also prosecutors who wield wildly disproportionate power against even the rich and famous. To the journalist, the two very different cases of the Central Park Five and Weinstein reveal that not only is the presumption of innocence always under threat in a court case, but that there is “no one who [can match] the resources of the state,” making a fair trial nearly impossible.
Throughout her long career as a journalist for Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, and Mother Jones, Wypijewski has not only examined sex scandals, but everything from the Matthew Shepard murder to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, always incisively formulating the questions that few in media seem to want to ask. Listen to the full conversation between Wypijewski and Scheer as the two journalists tackle some of the most controversial and therefore crucial questions of our timListen to the podcast here.
Listen to the podcast.
Read JoAnn’s book.
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