#Tennessee Department of Correction

[realjdobypr]

Tennessee HBCU Partnership Empowers Incarcerated Students' Historical Graduation Inside Prison

Six men, incarcerated at the Northwest Correctional Complex (NWCX), made history in November 2023, as they proudly marched across the stage, receiving their Bachelor of Science in Business degree from Lane College an HBCU. This monumental achievement is a testament to the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative (THEI), which continues to blaze a trail, offering education to those behind the prison…

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#Education #HBCU #Incarcerated Students #Lane College #Prison Education #Prison Reform #Tennessee Department of Correction #Tennessee Higher Education in Prison Initiative #THEI

[opencommunion]

incarcerated people are shutting down Alabama prisons and asking for your solidarity

Alabama prisons are the deadliest and most crowded prisons in the US. Their violence extends to gas chamber executions and illegal organ harvesting. The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is currently facing two federal lawsuits: one for enslaving Black detainees by denying them parole and leasing out their forced labor and another for targeting strike organizers. ADOC rakes in more than $450 million annually in profits from forced labor, and that's not including the profits incarcerated people generate for private corporations such as McDonald's and Raytheon. In response to these abuses, and in particular the horrific beating of six handcuffed detainees by Lt. Edmonds at Donaldson Prison on February 22nd, the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) has organized a minimum 90-day statewide prison shutdown/work stoppage. They are calling on supporters outside the prison walls to show solidarity. If you're located in or around Alabama, show up to the protest at St. Clair Prison in Springville, AL on Saturday March 2nd. For rideshare coordination contact the Tennessee Student Solidarity Network on IG or by email: [email protected] "Outside support for us starts at the prisons. That's where we need people. Come to one of the protests, show your face, and tell us that you support us. That's how we know that you support us. Outside support is the first step." - FAM

Everyone in the US, call Donaldson Prison at [phone] and ask them to fire Lt. Edmonds for his brutal violence against incarcerated people.

#action #prison abolition #turtle island

[svalleynow]

Tennessee Population Now at 25,000 Inmates

Tennessee’s prison population is growing faster than the majority of states, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Justice. The report found that from the end of 2021-2022, Tennessee saw a nearly 8% increase in incarcerated people, with 1,740 more individuals in state prisons. The only states with a higher percent increase were Colorado, Montana, and Mississippi. According to the…

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#Bledsoe County News #Chattanooga News #Dunlap News #Grundy County News #Haletown #Jasper News #Kimball News #Marion County News #Monteagle #New Hope #Pikeville #Sequatchie County News #Sequatchie Valley News #South Pittsburg News #Tennessee #Tennessee Department of Corrections #Whitwell News

[thewritingofspencerrose]

Freefall Masterlist

The Contract

"You... you want me to what?" I ask lowly, looking up at the group across from me from under my lashes.

It really wasn't fair that they all get to have each other, and I'm on the other side of the table, on my own.

I should have had my father's public relations specialist come with me.

"We would like you to, as a part of your job here with Scuderia Ferrari, pretend to date Mr.Leclerc for a six month period, with a one month soft launch period and a five month relationship, which would then end on 'mutual terms'. During the time, you will be compensated while completing your classes, with the promise of a position on our engineering team," Frederic Vasseur is the one to explain, his position as team principle known to the entire room, including his driver, who sits to his left, reading over the paper that outlines this whole mess.

"I- I don't understand why- how this would be beneficial to you all? I'm just a university student."

He laughs. Frederic Vasseur laughs at me. "Ms.Earnhardt, you're not just anything. Your father is and your grandfather was motorsport legend. You're a well known name," He explains.

"Exactly, my father and grandfather, no one gives a damn who I am unless I'm with them," I try to explain.

"We don't need you to be the next Kardashian," Vasseur assures, "You would be most to fix Charles' reputation with female fans and overall."

"Have you seen social media?" I can't help but question, turning to Charles for the first time. "You are basically every woman's one true love right now."

"But he still needs a boost in the reputation department," Ferrari's PR strategist reminds. "And being seen as a good man? Good boyfriend? The perfect move. So, what do you say?"

How can Charles be ok with this? He and his most recent woman of the hour just broke up last month, and I also look nothing like the others.

"It's up to Charles," Is the response I give, making Vasseur and Charles look up to me in surprise. "If you want to spend the entire season being fake together, if you think it'll help, then I'm in. Anything for the scuderia."

"That's what we love to hear," Vasseur practically cheers, wrapping an arm around Charles' shoulders. "So, you in Charles?"

And he pauses, looks down at the papers in front of him and back to me, looking me over, and then back to his boss. "Of course."

"Great! We would like this to start immediately, so if you could both fill out these surveys about yoursel-"

"Absolutely not, Pri," I interupt Prianka, the PR woman's eyes growing triple in size. "If we're doing this, we're sitting down for coffee and getting to know each other. No 'favorite color is' and 'favorite animal is'."

"I love the idea!" She nearly hollers. "This morning, directly after this meeting, you two can go out to coffee in the city. Lynleigh, I assume, being from the area, you know a spot?"

"I'm from Nashville. That's in Tennessee, not Florida, Prianka," I find myself having to correct, reminding myself that she's from London and has no reason to know. "But I can text Logan and see? Or go find him in the paddock, I'm sure as a local he has some idea," I offer, her nodding brightly.

"Perfect!"

liked by dalejr, charles_leclerc, diana.mae and 257 more

lynleigh03 me: how do you like your coffee? him: with you

victoria.ham baby, call and tell mama who that handsome hand belongs to

will_hamlin mom don't support this

alexander_hamlin ma, get off of instagram

marcus.hamlin if you don't want to call mom, call me instead lynnleigh. i know where to find you

dalejr i actually agree with your mother here lynn

f1fan ...what is charles doing here???

lesainzlver babe, she is the next up and coming engineering candidate, every f1 team has been trying to lock her in for months and she doesn't even graduate till June!

f1fan damn, girl's impressive

liked by lynleigh03, scuderiaferrari, maxverstappen1 and 824,757 more

charles_leclerc a perfect way to bring in the first race of the reason with my favorite person

carlossainz55 that's not my hand... am i not your favorite person

f1fannn OH MY GOD IT'S A WOMAN'S HAND

ferraritime who who who is it?? we need to knowwwww

fav.earnhardt wait a minute...

#original character #the writing of spencer rose #fake dating #he fell first #f1 social media au #charles leclerc #f1 #f1 fanfic

[mariacallous]

Last week, WIRED published a deep-dive investigation into Trickbot, the prolific Russian ransomware gang. This week, US and UK authorities sanctioned 11 alleged members of Trickbot and its related group, Conti, including Maksim Galochkin, aka Bentley, one of the alleged members whose real-world identity we confirmed through our investigation. Coincidence? Maybe. Either way, it's a big deal.

In addition to the US and UK sanctions, the US Justice Department also unsealed indictments filed in three US federal courts against Galochkin and eight other alleged Trickbot members for ransomware attacks against entities in Ohio, Tennessee, and California. Because everyone charged is a Russian national, however, it is unlikely they will ever be arrested or face trial.

While Russian cybercriminals typically enjoy immunity, the same may not remain true for the country’s military hackers. The lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) says the ICC will begin pursuing charges for cyber war crimes. The prosecutor, Karim Khan, did not name Russia, but the move follows a formal petition from the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley’s School of Law asking the ICC to prosecute Russia’s Sandworm hackers for war crimes. Part of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, Sandworm is responsible for causing blackouts in Ukraine, the only known instances of cyberattacks shutting down an electrical grid. Sandworm also released the NotPetya malware against Ukraine, which ultimately spread globally and caused an unprecedented $10 billion in damages worldwide.

Russia is far from the only country that engages in offensive cyberwar tactics. China-backed hackers have repeatedly targeted the US and other countries, and they may be getting some help finding unpatched vulnerabilities. A Chinese law passed in 2022 demands that any network technology company operating in the country share details about vulnerabilities in its products with the Chinese government within two days of their discovery. Information about these vulnerabilities may then be shared with China’s hackers. It’s unclear how many Western companies comply with the law or provide enough information to allow Chinese hackers to exploit the products’ flaws.

Speaking of Chinese hackers, Microsoft this week finally explained how China’s state-sponsored hackers managed to steal a cryptographic key that allowed the attackers to successfully access the Outlook email accounts of at least 25 organizations, including US government agencies. According to Microsoft, the hackers broke into the account of a company engineer using token-stealing malware. They then used that account to access a cache of crash data that accidentally contained the signing key they then stole and used to go on an Outlook hacking spree. None of this was supposed to be possible, and Microsoft says it has corrected several flaws in its systems that allowed the attack to happen.

Before he died in a mysterious plane crash last month following an attempted coup against Russian president Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin wasn’t just the leader of the Wagner Group mercenaries. He was also the head of the notorious Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian outfit responsible for widespread disinformation campaigns. While the IRA was reportedly shut down, new research shows that pro-Prigozhin trolls continue to push his agenda. Many of the accounts spreading disinformation on X (formerly Twitter) have been banned. But since when has that stopped them?

Elsewhere, we explained how prompt injection attacks against generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT take advantage of a flaw that’s difficult to fix. We detailed how hard it is to opt out of allowing Facebook to use your data to train its AI. We have a rundown on Proton Sentinel, a suite of tools that are similar to Google’s offerings but with a strong emphasis on privacy and security. We also co-published a story with The Markup into Axon’s quest to build Taser-armed drones. And we got the inside scoop on a meeting between top US spies and civil liberties groups over Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

But that’s not all. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Your New Car Is a Privacy Nightmare

Car companies are collecting and selling extremely detailed personal data from drivers who have no real way to opt out, a new report from the Mozilla Foundation found. Researchers spent hundreds of hours studying 25 privacy policies for major car brands and found that none of them met the foundation’s minimum standards around privacy and security.

According to the report, modern cars, stuffed to the roof with sensors, collect more information about you than just about any other product in your life. They know where you go, what you say, and how you move your body. Nissan’s privacy policy, for example, allows the company to collect and share drivers’ sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information, according to the report.

Eighty-four percent of the brands that researchers studied share or sell this kind of personal data, and only two of them allow drivers to have their data deleted. While it is unclear exactly who these companies share or sell data to, the report points out that there is a huge market for driver data. An automotive data broker called High Mobility cited in the report has a partnership with nine of the car brands Mozilla studied. On its website, it advertises a wide range of data products—including precise location data.

This isn’t just a privacy nightmare but a security one. Volkswagen, Toyota, and Mercedes-Benz have all recently suffered data leaks or breaches that affected millions of customers. According to Mozilla, cars are the worst category of products for privacy that they have ever reviewed.

Update Your iPhone: Apple Fixes No-Click Zero-Days

Apple has just released a security update to iOS after researchers at Citizen Lab discovered a zero-click vulnerability being used to deliver Pegasus spyware. Citizen Lab, which is part of the University of Toronto, is calling the newly discovered exploit chain Blastpass. Researchers say it is capable of compromising iPhones running the latest version of iOS (16.6) without the target even touching their device. According to researchers, Blastpass is delivered to a victim’s phone through an iMessage with an Apple Wallet attachment containing a malicious image.

The Pegasus spyware, developed by NSO Group, enables an attacker to read a target’s text messages, view their photos, and listen to calls. It has been used to track journalists, political dissidents, and human rights activists around the world.

Apple says customers should update their phones to the newly released iOS 16.6.1. The exploit can also attack certain models of iPads. You can see details of the affected models here. Citizen Lab urges at-risk users to enable Lockdown Mode.

North Korean Hackers Target Security Researchers Again

North Korea-backed hackers are targeting cybersecurity researchers in a new campaign that is exploiting at least one zero-day vulnerability, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) warned in a report released Thursday. The group did not provide details about the vulnerability since it is currently unpatched. However, the company says it is part of a popular software package used by security researchers.

According to TAG, the current attack mirrors a January 2021 campaign that similarly targeted security researchers working on vulnerability research and development. Like the previous campaign, North Korean threat actors send researchers malicious files after first spending weeks establishing a relationship with their target. According to the report, the malicious file will execute “a series of anti-virtual machine checks” and send collected information—along with a screenshot—back to the attacker.

Georgia DA in Trump RICO Case Gets Doxxed

In order to shield prospective jurors from harassment, District Attorney Fani Willis asked the judge in Donald Trump’s racketeering trial to prevent people from capturing or distributing any sort of image or identifying information about them. The motion, filed in Fulton County Superior Court on Wednesday, revealed that immediately after the indictment was filed, anonymous individuals on “conspiracy theory websites" had shared the full names, ages, and addresses of 23 grand jurors with “the intent to harass and intimidate them.”

Willis also revealed that she had been the victim of doxxing when the personal information of her and her family—including their physical addresses and “GPS coordinates”—was posted on an unnamed website hosted by a Russian company. Willis, who is Black, had previously disclosed that she faced racist and violent threats after the announcement of her investigation into the former president.

[sataniccapitalist]

How Prisoners Are Planning to ‘Shut Down’ the US’s Hidden Slave Labor System

Formerly and currently incarcerated organizers are fighting back against Alabama's rigged carceral system, an institution upholding a system of modern-day slavery in the southern state. Organizers imprisoned at the St. Clair Correctional Facility have organized a “shutdown” of the prison to protest the shockingly inhumane conditions of state facilities and the draconian policies of the state’s Department of Corrections. Cecilia Prado and Induja Kumar with the Tennessee Student Solidarity Network and A Luta Sigue, join the show to discuss The Free Alabama Movement and the DOC’s systematic denial of parole to inmates – a practice that feeds the $450 million-per-year prison labor industry.

#Youtube

[ausetkmt]

Former Memphis police officer on the SCORPION unit and the fired cops charged in Tyre Nichols' death - CBS News

Memphis police "permanently deactivate" SCORPION unit Memphis police "deactivate" SCORPION unit whose officers are charged in death of Tyre Nichols 03:51

A former veteran Memphis city police officer who knew those involved in Tyre Nichols' violent arrest spoke to CBS News about one of the five ex-officers charged in the case, and the so-called SCORPION unit those five were members of. 

He described the "proactive" approach of the ex-officer as someone who thought, if you didn't go after the bad guys aggressively you were not doing your job as a police officer.

"I never thought this would happen," the former officer told CBS News. The former officer, who recently left the department after 10 years, spoke only on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

He said he knew each of the charged ex-officers and worked closely at times with one of them, Demetrius Haley. The five were fired from their jobs and are facing charges of second-degree murder for the brutal beating of Nichols after a Jan. 7 traffic stop. 

Morale is very low at the Memphis Police Department right now, according to the former officer.

"This is not an indication of who the department is," he said. "We deal with very bad people. There are fights and foot chases but we all have an understanding when it's time to stop."

Tyre Nichols was arrested after Haley and and the four other officers — Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — stopped him for reckless driving. Video from the scene, released by the city on Friday, shows Nichols was severely beaten. He died three days later in the hospital.

The Director of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation David Rausch said he was "sickened" and "shocked,'' by the video footage he viewed of the beating. "Let me be clear: what happened here does not at all reflect proper policing. This was wrong. This was criminal.''

Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy joined Rausch at the news conference Thursday to announce the charges against the five fired officers.

"We want justice for Tyre Nichols," Mulroy said. "…The world is watching us and we need to show the world what lessons we can learn from this tragedy."

In the interview with CBS News, the former Memphis police officer described 30-year-old Haley as "a young, athletic, confident guy." 

But he said Haley did butt heads with others in the department for, in Haley's view, their not being aggressive enough in pursuing criminals.

CBS News is attempting to reach a representative of Haley's for comment.

Haley, a former Shelby County Corrections Officer, was a member of the hand-picked SCORPION team, a specialized unit formed in 2021 to fight violent street crime. 

The name SCORPION stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. There are more than two dozen officers assigned to SCORPION teams. They  wear black hoodies and tactical black vests with "POLICE" emblazoned across the front and back, and drive dark colored Dodge Chargers marked with a SCORPION seal. 

The crime-suppression teams patrol in groups and at times use justified low-level traffic stops as a way to find violent criminals, drugs or weapons.

"You have to be a go-getter, for the most part," to join the SCORPION unit, the former officer told CBS News. "You have to be someone who wants to make a difference, who wants to catch the bad guy."

In a news bulletin published on Jan. 27, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said, "Since this event happened, the SCORPION Unit has been and remains inactive," though he didn't clarify when the unit was deactivated. Strickland also said that the city is "initiating an outside, independent review of the training, policies and operations of our specialized units." 

Memphis Police Director Cerelyn "CJ" Davis told CNN that investigators "have not been able to substantiate" the initial report of reckless driving that prompted Nichols' arrest. And Nichols family attorney Antonio Romanucci questioned the justification for the stop, saying on CNN, "we know that the saturation and suppression units do use pretext to stop in order to carry out this … wolf pack mentality of policing."

The former Memphis officer who spoke with CBS News said with a large number of officers retiring from the department, younger, less experienced members of the department were being tapped for the specialized SCORPION teams. They were not well-trained and not properly managed, he said, describing the training as consisting of three days of PowerPoint presentations, one day of criminal apprehension instruction and one day at the firing range.

The Memphis Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The officers charged in Nichols' death were hired from 2017 to 2020. They were 24 to 32 years old.

"You have to have crime suppression units,'' the former officer said. "You can't get crime down by only showing up at schools and talking to the kids and putting up posters."

He stressed that the department is made up of truly dedicated officers committed to their mission, committed to helping people.

"They still have to go out each day and get to work. They still have to fight crime."

#Tyre Nichols #Memphis #scorpion unit #Former Memphis police officer on the SCORPION unit and the fired cops charged in Tyre Nichols' death #cops killing citizens #police violence #Memphis Police Dep #abuse of power

[fernreads]

America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains

by Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz and Ash Ngu, ProPublica, and Graham Lee Brewer, NBC News

Series: The Repatriation Project

As the United States pushed Native Americans from their lands to make way for westward expansion throughout the 1800s, museums and the federal government encouraged the looting of Indigenous remains, funerary objects and cultural items. Many of the institutions continue to hold these today — and in some cases resist their return despite the 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

“We never ceded or relinquished our dead. They were stolen,” James Riding In, then an Arizona State University professor who is Pawnee, said of the unreturned remains.

ProPublica this year is investigating the failure of NAGPRA to bring about the expeditious return of human remains by federally funded universities and museums. Our reporting, in partnership with NBC News, has found that a small group of institutions and government bodies has played an outsized role in the law’s failure.

Ten institutions hold about half of the Native American remains that have not been returned to tribes. These include old and prestigious museums with collections taken from ancestral lands not long after the U.S. government forcibly removed Native Americans from them, as well as state-run institutions that amassed their collections from earthen burial mounds that had protected the dead for hundreds of years. Two are arms of the U.S. government: the Interior Department, which administers the law, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest federally owned utility.

An Interior Department spokesperson said it complies with its legal obligations and that its bureaus (such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management) are not required to begin the repatriation of “culturally unidentifiable human remains” unless a tribe or Native Hawaiian organization makes a formal request.

Tennessee Valley Authority Archaeologist and Tribal Liaison Marianne Shuler said the agency is committed to “partnering with federally recognized tribes as we work through the NAGPRA process.”

The law required institutions to publicly report their holdings and to consult with federally recognized tribes to determine which tribes human remains and objects should be repatriated to. Institutions were meant to consider cultural connections, including oral traditions as well as geographical, biological and archaeological links.

Yet many institutions have interpreted the definition of “cultural affiliation” so narrowly that they’ve been able to dismiss tribes’ connections to ancestors and keep remains and funerary objects. Throughout the 1990s, institutions including the Ohio History Connection and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville thwarted the repatriation process by categorizing everything in their collections that might be subject to the law as “culturally unidentifiable.”

Ohio History Connection’s director of American Indian relations, Alex Wesaw, who is also a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, said that the institution’s original designation of so many collections as culturally unidentifiable may have “been used as a means to keep people on shelves for research and for other things that our institution just doesn’t allow anymore.”

In a statement provided to ProPublica, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville spokesperson said that the university is “actively building relationships with and consulting with Tribal communities.”

ProPublica found that the American Museum of Natural History has not returned some human remains taken from the Southwest, arguing that they are too old to determine which tribes — among dozens in the region — would be the correct ones to repatriate to. In the Midwest, the Illinois State Museum for decades refused to establish a cultural affiliation for Native American human remains that predated the arrival of Europeans in the region in 1673, citing no reliable written records during what archaeologists called the “pre-contact” or “prehistoric” period.

The American Museum of Natural History declined to comment for this story.

In a statement, Illinois State Museum Curator of Anthropology Brooke Morgan said that “archaeological and historical lines of evidence were privileged in determining cultural affiliation” in the mid-1990s, and that “a theoretical line was drawn in 1673.” Morgan attributed the museum’s past approach to a weakness of the law that she said did not encourage multiple tribes to collectively claim cultural affiliation, a practice she said is common today.

As of last month, about 200 institutions — including the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology and the nonprofit Center for American Archeology in Kampsville, Illinois — had repatriated none of the remains of more than 14,000 Native Americans in their collections. Some institutions with no recorded repatriations possess the remains of a single individual; others have as many as a couple thousand.

A University of Kentucky spokesperson told ProPublica the William S. Webb Museum “is committed to repatriating all Native American ancestral remains and funerary belongings, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony to Native nations” and that the institution has recently committed $800,000 toward future efforts.

Jason L. King, the executive director of the Center for American Archeology, said that the institution has complied with the law: “To date, no tribes have requested repatriation of remains or objects from the CAA.”

When the federal repatriation law passed in 1990, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would take 10 years to repatriate all covered objects and remains to Native American tribes. Today, many tribal historic preservation officers and NAGPRA professionals characterize that estimate as laughable, given that Congress has never fully funded the federal office tasked with overseeing the law and administering consultation and repatriation grants. Author Chip Colwell, a former curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, estimates repatriation will take at least another 70 years to complete. But the Interior Department, now led by the first Native American to serve in a cabinet position, is seeking changes to regulations that would push institutions to complete repatriation within three years. Some who work on repatriation for institutions and tribes have raised concerns about the feasibility of this timeline.

Our investigation included an analysis of records from more than 600 institutions; interviews with more than 100 tribal leaders, museum professionals and others; and the review of nearly 30 years of transcripts from the federal committee that hears disputes related to the law.

D. Rae Gould, executive director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Brown University and a member of the Hassanamisco Band of Nipmucs of Massachusetts, said institutions that don’t want to repatriate often claim there’s inadequate evidence to link ancestral human remains to any living people.

Gould said “one of the faults with the law” is that institutions, and not tribes, have the final say on whether their collections are considered culturally related to the tribes seeking repatriation. “Institutions take advantage of it,” she said.

Some of the nation’s most prestigious museums continue to hold vast collections of remains and funerary objects that could be returned under NAGPRA.

Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, University of California, Berkeley and the Field Museum in Chicago each hold the remains of more than 1,000 Native Americans. Their earliest collections date back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, when their curators sought to amass encyclopedic collections of human remains.

Many anthropologists from that time justified large-scale collecting as a way to preserve evidence of what they wrongly believed was an extinct race of “Moundbuilders” — one that predated and was unrelated to Native Americans. Later, after that theory proved to be false, archaeologists still excavated gravesites under a different racist justification: Many scientists who embraced the U.S. eugenics movement used plundered craniums for studies that argued Native Americans were inferior to white people based on their skull sizes.

These colonialist myths were also used to justify the U.S. government’s brutality toward Native Americans and fuel much of the racism that they continue to face today.

“Native Americans have always been the object of study instead of real people,” said Shannon O’Loughlin, chief executive of the Association on American Indian Affairs and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

As the new field of archaeology gained momentum in the 1870s, the Smithsonian Institution struck a deal with U.S. Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to pay each of his soldiers up to $500 — or roughly $14,000 in 2022 dollars — for items such as clothing, weapons and everyday tools sent back to Washington.

“We are desirous of procuring large numbers of complete equipments in the way of dress, ornament, weapons of war” and “in fact everything bearing upon the life and character of the Indians,” Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian, wrote to Sherman on May 22, 1873.

The Smithsonian Institution today holds in storage the remains of roughly 10,000 people, more than any other U.S. museum. However, it reports its repatriation progress under a different law, the National Museum of the American Indian Act. And it does not publicly share information about what it has yet to repatriate with the same detail that NAGPRA requires of institutions it covers. Instead, the Smithsonian shares its inventory lists with tribes, two spokespeople told ProPublica.

Frederic Ward Putnam, who was appointed curator of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology in 1875, commissioned and funded excavations that would become some of the earliest collections at Harvard, the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum. He also helped establish the anthropology department and museum at UC Berkeley — which holds more human remains taken from Native American gravesites than any other U.S. institution that must comply with NAGPRA.

For the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Putnam commissioned the self-taught archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead to lead excavations in southern Ohio to take human remains and “relics” for display. Much of what Moorehead unearthed from Ohio’s Ross and Warren counties became founding collections of the Field Museum.

A few years after Moorehead’s excavations, the American Museum of Natural History co-sponsored rival expeditions to the Southwest; items were looted from New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon and shipped by train to New York. They remain premiere collections of the institution.

As of last month the Field Museum has returned to tribes legal control of 28% of the remains of 1,830 Native Americans it has reported to the National Park Service, which administers the law and keeps inventory data. It still holds at least 1,300 Native American remains.

In a statement, the Field Museum said that data from the park service is out of date. (The museum publishes separate data on its repatriation website that it says is frequently updated and more accurate.) A spokesperson told ProPublica that “all Native American human remains under NAGPRA are available for return.”

The museum has acknowledged that Moorehead’s excavations would not meet today’s standards. But the museum continues to benefit from those collections. Between 2003 and 2005, it accepted $400,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve its North American Ethnographic and Archaeological collection — including the material excavated by Moorehead — for future use by anthropologists and other researchers. That’s nearly four times more than it received in grants from the National Park Service during the same period to support its repatriation efforts under NAGPRA.

In a statement, the museum said it has the responsibility to care for its collections and that the $400,000 grant was “used for improved stewardship of objects in our care as well as organizing information to better understand provenance and to make records more publicly accessible.”

Records show the Field Museum has categorized all of its collections excavated by Moorehead as culturally unidentifiable. The museum said that in 1995, it notified tribes with historical ties to southern Ohio about those collections but did not receive any requests for repatriation or disposition. Helen Robbins, the museum’s director of repatriation, said that formally linking specific tribes with those sites is challenging, but that it may be possible after consultations with tribes.

The museum’s president and CEO, Julian Siggers, has criticized proposals intended to speed up repatriation. In March 2022, Siggers wrote to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that if new regulations empowered tribes to request repatriations on the basis of geographical ties to collections rather than cultural ties, museums such as the Field would need more time and money to comply. ProPublica found that the Field Museum has received more federal money to comply with NAGPRA than any other institution in the country.

Robbins said that among the institution’s challenges to repatriation is a lack of funding and staff. “That being said,” added Robbins, “we recognize that much of this work has taken too long.”

From the 1890s through the 1930s, archaeologists carried out large-scale excavations of burial mounds throughout the Midwest and Southeast, regions where federal policy had forcibly pushed tribes from their land. Of the 10 institutions that hold the most human remains in the country, seven are in regions that were inhabited by Indigenous people with mound building cultures, ProPublica found.

Among them are the Ohio History Connection, the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the Illinois State Museum.

Archaeological research suggests that the oldest burial mounds were built roughly 11,000 years ago and that the practice lasted through the 1400s. The oral histories of many present-day tribes link their ancestors to earthen mounds. Their structures and purposes vary, but many include spaces for communal gatherings and platforms for homes and for burying the dead. But some institutions have argued these histories aren’t adequate proof that today’s tribes are the rightful stewards of the human remains and funerary objects removed from the mounds, which therefore should stay in museums.

Like national institutions, local museums likewise make liberal use of the “culturally unidentifiable” designation to resist returning remains. For example, in 1998 the Ohio Historical Society (now Ohio History Connection) categorized its entire collection, which today includes more than 7,100 human remains, as “culturally unidentifiable.” It has made available for return the remains of 17 Native Americans, representing 0.2% of the human remains in its collections.

“It’s tough for folks who worked in the field their entire career and who are coming at it more from a colonial perspective — that what you would find in the ground is yours,” said Wesaw of previous generations’ practices. “That’s not the case anymore. That’s not how we operate.”

For decades, Indigenous people in Ohio have protested the museum’s decisions, claiming in public meetings of the federal committee that oversees how the law is implemented that their oral histories trace back to mound-building cultures. As one commenter, Jean McCoard of the Native American Alliance of Ohio, pointed out in 1997, there are no federally recognized tribes in Ohio because they were forcibly removed. As a result, McCoard argued, archaeologists in the state have been allowed to disassociate ancestral human remains from living people without much opposition. Since the early 1990s, the Native American Alliance of Ohio has advocated for the reburial of all human remains held by Ohio History Connection. It has yet to happen.

Wesaw said that the museum is starting to engage more with tribes to return their ancestors and belongings. Every other month, the museum’s NAGPRA specialist— a newly created position that is fully dedicated to its repatriation work — convenes virtual meetings with leaders from many of the roughly 45 tribes with ancestral ties to Ohio.

But, Wesaw said, the challenges run deep.

“It’s an old museum,” said Wesaw. “Since 1885, there have been a number of archaeologists that have made their careers on the backs of our ancestors pulled out of the ground or mounds. It’s really, truly heartbreaking when you think about that.”

Moreover, ProPublica’s investigation found that some collections were amassed with the help of federal funding. The vast majority of NAGPRA collections held by the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology are from excavations funded by the federal government under the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration from the late 1930s into the 1940s. Kentucky’s rural and impoverished counties held burial mounds, and Washington funded excavations of 48 sites in at least 12 counties to create jobs for the unemployed.

More than 80% of the Webb Museum’s holdings that are subject to return under federal law originated from WPA excavations. The museum, which in 1996 designated every one of its collections as “culturally unidentifiable,” has yet to repatriate any of the roughly 4,500 human remains it has reported to the federal government. However, the museum has recently hired its first NAGPRA coordinator and renewed consultations with tribal nations after decades of avoiding repatriation. A spokesperson told ProPublica that one ongoing repatriation project at the museum will lead to the return of about 15% of the human remains in its collections.

In a statement, a museum spokesperson said that “we recognize the pain caused by past practices” and that the institution plans to commit more resources toward repatriation.

The University of Kentucky recently told ProPublica that it plans to spend more than $800,000 between 2023 and 2025 on repatriation, including the hiring of three more museum staff positions.

In 2010, the Interior Department implemented a new rule that provided a way for institutions to return remains and items without establishing a cultural affiliation between present-day tribes and their ancestors. But, ProPublica found, some institutions have resisted doing so.

Experts say a lack of funding from Congress to the National NAGPRA Program has hampered enforcement of the law. The National Park Service was only recently able to fund one full-time staff position dedicated to investigating claims that institutions are not complying with the law; allegations can range from withholding information from tribes about collections, to not responding to consultation requests, to refusing to repatriate. Previously, the program relied on a part-time investigator.

Moreover, institutions that have violated the law have faced only minuscule fines, and some are not fined at all even after the Interior Department has found wrongdoing. Since 1990, the Interior Department has collected only $59,111.34 from 20 institutions for which it had substantiated allegations. That leaves tribal nations to shoulder the financial and emotional burden of the repatriation work.

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, a tribe in California, pressured UC Berkeley for years to repatriate more than a thousand ancestral remains, according to the tribe’s attorney. It finally happened in 2018 following a decade-long campaign that involved costly legal wrangling and travel back and forth to Berkeley by the tribes’ leaders.

“​​To me, there’s no money, there’s no dollar amount, on the work to be done. But the fact is, not every tribe has the same infrastructure and funding that others have,” said Nakia Zavalla, the cultural director for the tribe. “I really feel for those tribes that don’t have the funding, and they’re relying just on federal funds.”

A UC Berkeley spokesperson declined to comment on its interactions with the Santa Ynez Chumash, saying the school wants to prioritize communication with the tribe.

The University of Alabama Museums is among the institutions that have forced tribes into lengthy disputes over repatriation.

In June 2021, seven tribal nations indigenous to what is now the southeastern United States collectively asked the university to return the remains of nearly 6,000 of their ancestors. Their ancestors had been among more than 10,000 whose remains were unearthed by anthropologists and archaeologists between the 1930s and the 1980s from the second-largest mound site in the country. The site, colonially known as Moundville, was an important cultural and trade hub for Muskogean-speaking people between about 1050 and 1650.

Tribes had tried for more than a decade to repatriate Moundville ancestors, but the university had claimed they were all “culturally unidentifiable.” Emails between university and tribal leaders in 2018 show that when the university finally agreed to begin repatriation, it insisted that before it could return the human remains it needed to re-inventory its entire Moundville collection — a process it said would take five years. The “re-inventory” would entail photographing and CT scanning human remains to collect data for future studies, which the tribes opposed.

In October 2021, leaders from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Chickasaw Nation, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, and Seminole Tribe of Florida brought the issue to the federal NAGPRA Review Committee, which can recommend a finding of cultural affiliation that is not legally binding. (Disputes over these findings are relatively rare.) The tribal leaders submitted a 117-page document detailing how Muskogean-speaking tribes are related and how their shared history can be traced back to the Moundville area long before the arrival of Europeans.

“Our elders tell us that the Muskogean-speaking tribes are related to each other. We have a shared history of colonization and a shared history of rebuilding from it,” Ian Thompson, a tribal historic preservation officer with the Choctaw Nation, told the NAGPRA review committee in 2021.

The tribes eventually forced the largest repatriation in NAGPRA’s history. Last year, the university agreed to return the remains of 10,245 ancestors.

In a statement, a University of Alabama Museums spokesperson said, “To honor and preserve historical and cultural heritage, the proper care of artifacts and ancestral remains of Muskogean-speaking peoples has been and will continue to be imperative to UA.” The university declined to comment further “out of respect for the tribes,” but added that “we look forward to continuing our productive work” with them.

The University of Alabama Museums still holds the remains of more than 2,900 Native Americans.

Many tribal and museum leaders say they are optimistic that a new generation of archaeologists, as well as museum and institutional leaders, want to better comply with the law.

At the University of Oklahoma, for instance, new archaeology department hires were shocked to learn about their predecessors’ failures. Marc Levine, associate curator of archaeology at the university’s Sam Noble Museum, said that when he arrived in 2013, there was more than enough evidence to begin repatriation, but his predecessors hadn’t prioritized the work. Through collaboration with tribal nations, Levine has compiled evidence that would allow thousands of human remains to be repatriated — and NAGPRA work isn’t technically part of his job description. The university has no full-time NAGPRA coordinator. Still, Levine estimates that at the current pace, repatriating the university’s holdings could take another decade.

Prominent institutions such as Harvard have issued public apologies in recent years for past collection practices, even as criticism continues over their failure to complete the work of repatriation. (Harvard did not respond to multiple requests for comment).

Other institutions under fire, such as UC Berkeley, have publicly pledged to prioritize repatriation. And the Society for American Archaeology, a professional organization that argued in a 1986 policy statement that “all human remains should receive appropriate scientific study,” now recommends archaeologists obtain consent from descendant communities before conducting studies.

In October, the Biden administration proposed regulations that would eliminate “culturally unidentifiable” as a designation for human remains, among other changes. Perhaps most significantly, the regulations would direct institutions to defer to tribal nations’ knowledge of their customs, traditions and histories when making repatriation decisions.

But for people who have been doing the work since its passage, NAGPRA was never complicated.

“You either want to do the right thing or you don’t,” said Brown University’s Gould.

She added: “It’s an issue of dignity at this point.”

#article #NAGPRA #native american #indigenous #repatriation #museum repatriation #racism #colonialism #eugenics #anti indigenous violence #anti indigenous racism #death #graves #burials #ask to tag #full article under the cut #bolding mostly mine

[beardedmrbean]

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that he will not block Mississippi from carrying out with next week’s scheduled execution of an inmate who is suing the state over its use of three drugs for lethal injections.

Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., 58, faces a Dec. 14 execution date, which was recently set by the Mississippi Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate handed down a ruling late Wednesday, saying Loden’s execution can happen even while the lawsuit is pending. The Associated Press left phone messages for two of Loden’s attorneys Thursday, asking whether Wingate’s ruling would be appealed. Those calls were not immediately returned.

Loden has been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual battery against a 16-year-old girl.

Attorneys for the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center sued the Mississippi prison system on behalf of two death row inmates in 2015, saying the state’s lethal injection protocol is inhumane. Loden and two other Mississippi death row inmates later joined as plaintiffs.

Mississippi carried out its most recent execution in November 2021, and that was the state’s first in nine years.

The Mississippi Department of Corrections revealed in court papers in July 2021 that it had acquired three drugs for the lethal injection protocol: midazolam, which is a sedative; vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said the drugs listed in the court records were the ones used for the execution in 2021. He would not say where the department obtained them. Cain said in a sworn statement Nov. 30 that the state has sufficient quantities of the three drugs for another execution.

Mississippi and several other states have had trouble finding drugs for lethal injections in recent years since pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe began blocking the use of their drugs for executions.

Jim Craig, a MacArthur Center attorney, told Wingate during a Nov. 28 hearing that since 2019, only Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Tennessee have conducted executions using a three-drug protocol. Gerald Kucia, a Mississippi special assistant attorney general, told Wingate during the hearing that the U.S. Supreme Court has never blocked a method of execution.

Wingate wrote in his ruling that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld a three-drug lethal injection protocol as recently as seven years ago in a case from Oklahoma.

“Importantly, the State of Mississippi executed David Neal Cox approximately one year ago, using a three-drug midazolam protocol,” Wingate wrote. “This court has before it no evidence that the State incurred any problems in carrying out Cox’s execution using its lethal injection protocol.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 27 states have the death penalty. Craig said a majority of death-penalty states and the federal government used a three-drug protocol in 2008, but the federal government and most of those states have since started using one drug.

Craig also pointed out that Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey recently sought a pause in executions. Ivey ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of the state’s capital punishment system after an unprecedented third failed lethal injection.

Mississippi court records show Loden kidnapped Leesa Marie Gray, who was stranded on the side of a road in northern Mississippi’s Itawamba County on June 22, 2000. The records said Loden spent four hours repeatedly raping and sexually battering Gray before suffocating and strangling her to death.

Gray disappeared on her way home from working as a waitress at her family’s restaurant in the Dorsey community. Prosecutors said she was last seen driving out of the restaurant parking lot. Relatives found her car hours later with her purse still inside and the hazard lights flashing.

#nunyas news

[notjustanyannie]

Earlier this year, Weirich trumpeted a criminal conviction and six-year prison sentence for Pamela Moses, who tried to restore her right to vote after a 2015 felony conviction. Tennessee’s rules for restoring voting rights are extremely confusing, and Weirich’s office brought charges against Moses even though a probation officer had signed off on a form saying she was eligible. Prosecutors argued she had deceived the officer into signing off on the form.

But after the trial, the Guardian published a document showing that the Tennessee department of corrections had investigated the error and made no mention of deception. Instead, the department blamed the officer. Weirich’s office failed to turn over the document to Moses’ defense team before trial, leading a judge to take the extremely rare step of overturning her conviction and ordering a new trial. Weirich said her office was not to blame for the mistake because the department of corrections failed to give her office the document.

[bersergner-blog]

Escape from Tombstone - Setting

Tombstone-Island has been many things throughout it's life. Purchased in an exploitative land-deal by Senator Joe Conello's great-grandfather who immediately began the process of getting the land it's own sovereignity, making it beholden only to it's own laws. Since then it's been a castle, nuclear missile silo, military biological testing facility, Conello family crypt, personal pleasure site for the rich and corrupt until Joe turned it into a prison without altering it's architecture too much, mostly just building on top of his family's past.

Below you can see it's basic layout:

As well as the sub-areas it is divided into:

Throughout the game you will visit every point on the map. Making for an extensive set of distinct locations. You will also be revisiting areas, opening shortcuts, etc. The plan is to use these occasions to give the areas a different feel through lighting, mood and encounter design, creating a constant sense of progression.

For the gameplay prototype I will be developing for my final project I will focus on the beginning areas of the game. Arrivals & A-Block.

Research for this wasn't particularly easy as prisons tend to be very stingy regarding the information they put out. However, YouTube ended up being great for getting a general sense of the processes prisoners go through upon arrival, so I just started to design around that (references at end of post). Here you can see a sketch for a rough layout.

Below you will find the greybox I created using Autodesk Maya for the Arrivals & A-Block levels:

Here is a breakdown of the individual areas (Intake, Processing, Visitation):

Here is a further breakdown of the following areas (Archive, Parking, Main-Block)

Now that the 3D space of the map are laid out, I will illustrate the individual areas so we can get a sense of their character.

Research:

Tennessee Department of Correction (2019) Experience Prison Intake. Available at: https://youtu.be/zLq0MQcyQz4?si=qFGRg3J9m9DDWgZa #ClackCo TV (2019) Clackamas County Jail Inmate Oriengtation. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB6q4EqhMyY Lockup, Legends & Lessons (2022) Prison Intake, FIRST Experience in State Prison. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAQzlq9W-qw A&E (2021) 60 Days in: Ryan & Sheri Go Through Intake (S2 Flashback)|A&E. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbRFKxjorWs A&E (2021) 60 Days in: Jaclin’s Horrible Intake Experience (Season 4 Flashback)|A&E. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okoNXE-FnYM Calamari Productions (2021) Behind the Scenes Prison Documentary Footage (Part 2). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Ws2xL-kZ8 travelshorts (2017) Alcatraz FULL TOUR - Island Prison in San Francisco California. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvxS-l1fnkU

#game dev blog #game development #concept art #digital art #digital illustration #digital painting #digital drawing #3d #3d model #autodesk maya

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.27 (after 1970)

1974 – 109 people are killed in a plane crash near Pulkovo Airport. 1976 – Thirty-seven people are killed when American Airlines Flight 625 crashes at Cyril E. King Airport in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. 1978 – John Ehrlichman, a former aide to U.S. President Richard Nixon, is released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Safford, Arizona, after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes. 1978 – The Saur Revolution begins in Afghanistan, ending the following morning with the murder of Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. 1978 – Willow Island disaster: In the deadliest construction accident in United States history, 51 construction workers are killed when a cooling tower under construction collapses at the Pleasants Power Station in Willow Island, West Virginia. 1986 – The city of Pripyat and surrounding areas are evacuated due to Chernobyl disaster. 1987 – The U.S. Department of Justice bars Austrian President Kurt Waldheim (and his wife, Elisabeth, who had also been a Nazi) from entering the US, charging that he had aided in the deportations and executions of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer during World War II. 1989 – The April 27 demonstrations, student-led protests responding to the April 26 Editorial, during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. 1992 – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, comprising Serbia and Montenegro, is proclaimed. 1992 – Betty Boothroyd becomes the first woman to be elected Speaker of the British House of Commons in its 700-year history. 1992 – The Russian Federation and 12 other former Soviet republics become members of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 1993 – Most of the Zambia national football team lose their lives in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon en route to Dakar, Senegal to play a 1994 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Senegal. 1994 – South African general election: The first democratic general election in South Africa, in which black citizens could vote. The Interim Constitution comes into force. 2005 – Airbus A380 aircraft has its maiden test flight. 2006 – Construction begins on the Freedom Tower (later renamed One World Trade Center) in New York City. 2007 – Estonian authorities remove the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet Red Army war memorial in Tallinn, amid political controversy with Russia. 2007 – Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great south of Jerusalem. 2011 – The 2011 Super Outbreak devastates parts of the Southeastern United States, especially the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Two hundred five tornadoes touched down on April 27 alone, killing more than 300 and injuring hundreds more. 2012 – At least four explosions hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk with at least 27 people injured. 2018 – The Panmunjom Declaration is signed between North and South Korea, officially declaring their intentions to end the Korean conflict.

#Events

[conandaily2022]

Clarksville, Tennessee's Sebron Hollands punished for covering up Nashville's Javian Griffin's crime

Sebron Hollands, 33, of Clarksville, Tennessee, United States and Javian Griffin, 38, of Nashville, Tennessee are former tactical officers for the strike force of the Tennessee Department of Corrections. Founded in 1923, the agency is based in Nashville. Hollands was present when Griffin punched an inmate in the head at Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville, Tennessee on June 13, 2020,…

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#Clarksville #Nashville #Tennessee

[pashterlengkap]

Trans sex worker & ACLU sue Tennessee over HIV criminalization law

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Transgender Law Center have filed a federal lawsuit against a Tennessee law that requires HIV-positive sex workers to register for life as a “violent sex offender.” The aforementioned advocacy organizations filed the lawsuit on behalf of the state LGBTQ+ advocacy groups OUTMemphis and four “Jane Doe” plaintiffs who were convicted under the law. The plaintiffs, which include a transgender woman, allege that they have faced discrimination and life struggles because of their violent sex offender status. These struggles have forced the trans woman to continue doing sex work, since finding a job can be difficult for someone on the registry. Related: New HIV infections dropped since 2021, according to CDC data Despite the progress, racial disparities remain. Another plaintiff said that they were sent back to jail after violating the registry’s requirements. The plaintiffs allege that the law violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by handing harsher punishments to people with HIV, a chronic disease covered by the ADA’s anti-discrimination statutes. Tennessee is the only state with this law, according to the Edge Media Network. Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you: Subscribe to our Newsletter “This statute solely targets people because of their HIV status and keeps them in cycles of poverty while posing absolutely zero benefit to public health and safety,” said Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis. “HIV stigma is becoming a thing of the past, and it’s time for state law to catch up.” The lawsuit lists Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN), Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch, and Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada as defendants. While sex work is a misdemeanor crime in Tennessee, the HIV criminalization law turns the crime into a felony. An estimated 83 Tennesseeans are currently in the registry because of it. Tennessee legislators passed the law in 1991 near the height of the AIDS epidemic when over 100,000 Americans had died from the illness, and scientists were still trying to find effective medical treatments against it. In 2021, Illinois, New Jersey, and Virginia repealed their felony HIV criminalization laws. However, in 2022, Pennsylvania signed a law making it a felony to pass on a communicable disease when they “should have known” that they had it — the law included HIV. As of 2022, 35 states have laws that criminalize HIV exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Many of the laws were passed at a time when little was known about HIV and millions were dying from the virus. Medical professionals have said that HIV criminalization laws do nothing to stop the spread of the virus and may even encourage people not to get tested for fear that the knowledge could subject them to criminal penalties. “Many of these state laws criminalize actions that cannot transmit HIV – such as biting or spitting – and apply regardless of actual transmission, or intent,” the CDC wrote. “After more than 40 years of HIV research and significant biomedical advancements to treat and prevent HIV transmission, many state laws are now outdated and do not reflect our current understanding of HIV.” A 2018 Williams Institute study on HIV criminalization in Georgia found that “Black men and Black women were more likely to be arrested for HIV-related offenses than their white counterparts.” While 26% of HIV-related arrests were of white males, 46% of HIV-related arrests were of Black males. Additionally, 11 % of those arrested were white females, while 16% were Black females. http://dlvr.it/Sxy921

[mystlnewsonline]

Richard Nash Jr. Captured by US Marshals

U.S. Marshals Task Force Apprehends Former Coach Richard Nash Jr. on Multiple Sex Crimes Haywood County, TN (STL.News) On July 13, 2023, the U.S. Marshals Two Rivers Violent Fugitive Task Force (TRVFTF) in Jackson captured a man wanted for multiple counts of sex crimes during his time as an assistant athletic coach for a Haywood County school. Richard Nash Jr., 24, of Jackson, TN, was wanted for Statutory Rape by Authority Figure, Sexual Battery by Authority Figure, Solicitation of a Minor, Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, and Exploitation of a Minor by Electronic Means (2 counts). On July 6, Haywood County Circuit Court issued an arrest warrant for Nash for charges related to alleged sexual misconduct by Nash as an assistant coach. The case was adopted by the U.S. Marshals Two Rivers Task Force. On July 13, U.S. Marshals arrested Nash at his residence on Netherwood Drive in Jackson. He was apprehended without incident and transported to the county jail. The U.S. Marshals Two Rivers Violent Fugitive Task Force is a multi-agency task force within Western Tennessee. The TRVFTF has offices in Memphis and Jackson, and its membership is primarily composed of Deputy U.S. Marshals, Shelby County Sheriff’s Deputies, Memphis Police Officers, Fayette County Sheriff’s Deputies, Jackson Police Officers, and the Tennessee Department of Correction Special Agents. The primary mission of the Task Force is to arrest violent offenders and sexual predators. SOURCE: U.S. Marshals Service Read the full article

[cheerfullycatholic]

Three men were killed in Alabama’s prisons within 36 hours this week. EJI received multiple reports that Jamal McCain, 37, was stabbed to death overnight Monday in a cell at St. Clair Correctional Facility near Springville, Alabama. Mr. McCain had been in prison since he was 18 and was scheduled to complete his sentence in two years, in June 2025. On Tuesday, EJI also received multiple reports about a stabbing death at Elmore Correctional Facility. The Alabama Department of Corrections subsequently confirmed that Stephone Marshall, 38, was killed in an assault in a dormitory at the prison that day. EJI also received reports that Colton Hall, 32, was killed at Easterling Prison on Tuesday. Mr. Hall survived a previous stabbing at the same prison in May 2021 that resulted in an emergency hospitalization. These three homicides are the latest of at least 61 people who have been murdered in Alabama prisons since the U.S. Department of Justice informed Alabama officials in April 2019 that the state’s prison system “routinely violates the constitutional rights of prisoners” by failing to protect them from rampant violence and sexual abuse. Mr. Hall’s death is the 90th homicide since the Justice Department initiated its investigation of Alabama’s prisons in October 2016. Many of the reported homicides in Alabama’s prisons involved a stabbing or the use of a contraband knife or knife-like weapon. The inability to provide security within Alabama prisons, along with high homicide and assault rates, has made an already violent situation worse, as many imprisoned people feel the need to secure weapons. ADOC reported it found 2,800 weapons in sweeps at seven prisons conducted in 2019. At approximately 312 weapons per 1,000 people, the prevalence of weapons in Alabama’s prisons is much higher than in other Southern states. That same year, Louisiana reported it recovered 14 knives per 1,000 people in its prisons over the entire year, while Tennessee and Georgia recovered fewer than 80 per 1,000 people. In 2022, ADOC’s quarterly reports listed 6,254 weapons found in 12 facilities housing approximately 15,900 people, for a rate of 394 weapons per 1,000 incarcerated people.

#equal justice initiative #eji #alabama #tw death #prison #injustice #prayer request