This mass incarceration crisis wasn’t created by crime rates but by politics and racism. History shows us that mass incarceration went up when crime rates were low and went up when crime rates were high. It is the result of deliberate choices made by elected officials around the country, Democrats and Republicans alike, to lock up more people.
via Criminal Justice Reform Is on the Midterm Ballot | American Civil Liberties Union
It was 12 months before Benjamin’s mother passed away and his husband applied for an extension to his six-month visa on compassionate grounds but this was refused.
Now Benjamin’s father is battling lung cancer and Brian says he refuses to leave his husband who fell into a “deep, dark depression” after the bereavement.
In a bizarre-sounding story, a police sergeant in London was cleared of misconduct this week for ordering his officers to strip search a philosophy lecturer who was detained after reportedly trying to give a 15-year-old a legal contact during a search. There’s a lot here, so bear with me.
The Guardian reports that Konstancja Duff, a lecturer at Nottingham University, was arrested in May 2013 during a stop-and-search sweep at an East London estate. Duff had reportedly been trying to hand a 15-year-old a card with legal services contacts and advice, when she was arrested by Metropolitan police. The card was given to her by a police watchdog organization, and at a recent Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) panel, Duff testified that she’d been trying to help the teen.
via London Cop Cleared After Ordering Strip Search of Woman Who Refused to Give Him Her Name
While we celebrate that a record number of women are running for office, it’s worth considering the shit they put up with just to be heard. A group of current and former candidates talked to the New York Times about the harassment they’ve dealt with while campaigning. Their stories are depressing and sometimes frightening, the harassment predictable.
From Mya Whitaker, a Democrat running for City Council in Oakland, California:
“Being a black woman and existing, in some cases, is enough to piss people off.”
And Kim Weaver, an Iowa Democrat who dropped out of a race against white supremacist Rep. Steve King in 2017 in part because of the threats against her and her family:
via Brianna Wu, Kim Weaver Talk About Harassment on Campaign Trail
Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration will announce its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council, citing “hypocrisy and criticized as biased against Israel.”
According to their sources, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, will announce the United States’ departure Tuesday at 5 p.m. While the United States has long threatened to leave this arm of the United Nations, its final straw may have been the council dunking on the Trump administration’s wildly inhumane child separation policy. Or this is, once again, the administration acting impulsively on its own tempers and whims. Or just John Bolton fulfilling a decade-long dream. Who the fuck knows.
via Report: The Trump Administration Is Withdrawing From the United Nations Human Rights Council
The former US First Lady Laura Bush has condemned a controversial policy that splits up families who illegally enter the country at the Mexican border.
Writing in the Washington Post newspaper, she describes the separation of children from their parents as cruel, immoral and heart-breaking.
Her comments follow growing controversy over President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.
Earlier Melania Trump made a rare statement expressing concern.
Mrs Trump “hates to see children separated from their families”, her spokeswoman said.
via US child migrants: First ladies speak out on Trump separation policy – BBC News
An emergency room physician has been suspended after a video of her mocking a patient claiming to be suffering from an anxiety attack was posted to Facebook, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In the video, Dr. Beth Keegstra, of El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos, is seen doubting Samuel Bardwell’s account of what happened to him, saying, “You are the least sick of all the people who are here, who are dying. So you put your head up. Don’t try to tell me you can’t move. Come on. Sit up.”
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She tries to force Bardwell to sit up by pulling at his arm, even though he clearly tells her that he is unable to.
via ER Doctor Suspended After Mocking Patient Suffering From Anxiety Attack
NBC News reports that at around 11 a.m. on Sunday, immigration officials stationed near the town of Big Wells in southwest Texas spotted three SUVs they believed to be smuggling undocumented immigrants. Agents stopped two of the cars, they said, but chased after a third, which was reportedly speeding along Highway 85 at around 100 miles per hour. Border Patrol agents and a local sheriff’s deputy chased the car until it ran off the road, ejecting several passengers.
“Border patrol was pursuing a vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban, and one of my deputies assisted and took over the pursuit just west of Big Wells,” Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd told ABC News. “The vehicle was traveling around 100 miles per hour and from what we could tell the vehicle ran off the road, caught gravel, then tried to recorrect and that caused the vehicle to turn over several times.”
via Five Undocumented Immigrants Killed in Texas in a High-Speed Car Chase With Border Patrol
And even before Sessions announced that the new policy was official, parents were allegedly being separated from their kids at the border, a practice that a federal judge called “brutal, offensive, and fails to comport with traditional notions of fair play and decency”:
Ms. L explained that she wanted to apply for asylum and passed a crucial interview with an asylum officer. She was then taken and held in a detention center in the San Diego area.
Less than a week after arriving at the border, her daughter, called S.S. in court documents, was forcibly taken from her and brought to a detention facility in Chicago for minors who are unaccompanied, the lawsuit states.
“When S.S. was taken away from her mother, she was screaming and crying, pleading with guards not to take her away from her mother. That was the last time Ms. L saw her daughter,” the lawsuit reads.
via Kirstjen Nielsen Says Family Separation Policy Doesn’t Exist
She tweeted after learning that the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail had changed its house style to only refer to medical doctors by their titles. Instead, academics would just be called by their surname and prefix such as Mr, Mrs or Ms.
The BBC style guide also has this rule and both organisations apply it to male and female academics.
“It is outrageous,” Fern told the BBC. “This is our expertise and people need to know when someone is an expert. I am a firm believer that any academic – whether male or female – should have their title used as that is their qualification. That’s what my tweet was about.”
