In the News - July 2013

As I write this blog, over 12,000 inmates in the California prison system are on a hunger strike. They strike for more humane treatment and decent living conditions, better food, eased overcrowding, improved medical care.

            Two years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that California’s prison system violated the constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. At the time, California’s prisons were at 157% of capacity. On average, two inmates were dying each week. It was a corrections system devoid of correction making a mockery of the state’s justice system.

            The court ordered California to reduce the prison population by approximately 30,000 inmates within eighteen months. Since then, California has thumbed their noses at the court, transferring thousands of state inmates to local jail control rather than releasing them. California DOC has crippled local law enforcement who are now burdened with caring for too many incarcerated state inmates.

            The state of California daily violates the constitutional rights of its incarcerated. What, I ask, does that say about our respect for the “rule of law?” And, what does it say about the men behind bars who continue to press their case for lawful incarceration conditions?

            Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said you should judge a man when things are at their worst. Dr. King would be proud of the hunger strikers.

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            At Guantanamo Bay, a number of Muslim prisoners, also on a hunger strike, are being force fed on instruction of the Obama Justice Department. More disturbing, these force feedings are occurring during the Ramadan fast period.

            A Federal Judge has skewered the force feeding policy. It is important to remember none of the men currently being held at Guantanamo have been convicted of any crime. The United States Government has lost two major Supreme Court actions involving detention of “enemy combatants.”

            Benjamin Franklin reminded his founding father brethren that “surrendering your liberty in the name of security leaves you with neither.” I wonder what old Ben would say about the power of the federal government to hold a foreign national for more than ten years without charge and trial?