Stephen Fry And Friends Slam U.S. On Prison Population
British comedian/actor Stephen Fry and his pals ham it up on British TV show ‘QI’, making some very salient points about the ridiculously high levels of incarceration in the United States. You might think they are being anti-American, but listen more carefully: they are actually anti-human rights abuses.
Schwarzenegger Asks: Why Not Build Prisons in Mexico?
Kevin Yamamura writes on the Sacramento Bee:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday offered yet another way California can save on incarcerating illegal immigrants: pay to build prisons in Mexico.
Schwarzenegger said in a Sacramento Press Club speech that rather than raise taxes, the state could find money by cutting pension costs, allowing offshore oil drilling and lowering prison expenditures.
His budget calls for an $880 million infusion from the federal government to pay for housing illegal immigrant prisoners who have committed crimes in California. The governor also wants to rely more on private prison companies.
Make your own prison wine, aka “Pruno”
Low on cash with lots of time on your hands? Tired of being sober all the time?
via Brokelyn
Here’s one worth a try: making some good old, 25-to-life, brewed-in-a-bag prison wine.
Brewing at home usually requires a pricey set-up and lots of time—usually just enough to scare off the casual brewer. Prison wine, or “pruno” does not. The stuff’s been made since the dawn of law enforcement and comes from the even older tradition of home brewing. Pruno can be made from almost anything, but it relies on the simple brewing principle that sugar + yeast + time = alcohol.
Traditionally, oranges and grapes are the preferred sugar in the equation, and moldy bread is the yeast (given that yeast packets probably aren’t sold at the prison commissary). But we’d rather not poison anyone with home-made botulism, so we’ll use the store-bought stuff, since we can go out and all. Also, since the genuine issue pruno generally is brewed on the DL, conditions are far from sanitary. We’ve added a few steps to replace just dumping everything into a trash bag and letting it molder under the bed. So, follow our advice, use the recipe below, and you’ll be imibing like a con in under a week.
Ingredients
10-12 oranges (or in a pinch, other sweet items you have around, like grape jelly or cake frosting)
1 large can of fruit cocktail (for a nice finishing flavor)
1 packet of dried yeast
3 cups of sugar
1 one-gallon plastic bag with strong seal
Ohio Has New Method Of Lethal Injection
LUCASVILLE, Ohio — State prison authorities are preparing to use a new method of lethal injection to execute a convicted killer next week.The change will make Ohio the only state in the nation to use the new method.
On Monday, reporters and photographers, including News Center 7, were allowed inside the Death House at Lucasville Correctional Facility, where the death penalty will be carried out. Prison officials readily admitted that Ohio will be the first state to use this lethal injection method for executions. They said it is both humane and effective.
Since the state began using the death penalty again in 1999, officials used a series of three drugs to execute inmates. First, to sedate and then to stop the heart and lungs.
Now, authorities are switching to a new…
CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found at Fancy Horseback Riding Academy
Matthew Cole and Brian Ross break an exclusive story for ABC News:
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.
Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.
“The activities in that prison were illegal,” said human rights researcher John Sifton. “They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions.”
[go to ABC News for a video report]
