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secret prisons in the U.S. and prison industry

alanford

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do you know about secret prisons and what do you think about it?
what do you think about harder law and harder punishments and making industry from imprisoning people?

One of 5 secret prisons is located in Chicago, so-called Homan Square, they investigate criminals with military methods used in Guantanamo. While US military and intelligence interrogation impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles and even a cage – focuses on American citizens, most often poor, black and brown. The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site. The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:
Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
Shackling for prolonged periods.
Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.


homen-square.jpg

Beside it, prisoners in the U.S. have called for a series of strikes against forced labor, demanding reforms of parole systems and prison policies, as well as more humane living conditions, a reduced use of solitary confinement, and better health care. Inmates at up to five Texas prisons pledged to refuse to leave their cells on April 5th. “Texas’s prisoners are the slaves of today, and that slavery affects our society economically, morally and politically,” reads the five-page letter announcing the strike. “Beginning on April 4, 2016, all inmates around Texas will stop all labor in order to get the attention from politicians and Texas’s community alike.”
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution bans “involuntary servitude” in addition to slavery, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” thus establishing the legal basis for what is today a $2 billion a year industry, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research institute.
Most able-bodied prisoners at federal facilities are required to work, and at least 37 states permit contracting prisoners out to private companies, though those contracts account for only a small percentage of prison labor. “Ironically, those are the only prison labor programs where prisoners make more than a few cents an hour,” Judith Greene, a criminal justice policy analyst, told The Intercept.
Instead, a majority of prisoners work for the prisons themselves, making well below the minimum wage in some states, and as little as 17 cents per hour in privately run facilities. In Texas and a few other states, mostly in the South, prisoners are not paid at all, said Erica Gammill, director of the Prison Justice League, an organization that works with inmates in 109 Texas prisons. “They get paid nothing, zero; it’s essentially forced labor".
Although they comprise nearly half the incarcerated population nationwide — about 870,000 as of 2014 — prison workers are not counted in official labor statistics; they get no disability compensation in case of injury, no social security benefits, and no overtime.
“They keep a high conviction rate at any cost,” reads the letter circulated by prisoners ahead of today’s strike, “all for the well-being of the multimillion-dollar Prison Industrial Complex.”
On April 1, a group of prisoners from Ohio, Alabama, Virginia, and Mississippi called for a nationally coordinated prisoner work stoppage against prison slavery to take place on September 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riot. “We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves,” that announcement reads. “They cannot run these facilities without us.”
Last year in Texas, nearly 3,000 detainees demanding better conditions seized and partially destroyed an immigration detention center.
In March, protests erupted at Holman Correctional Facility, a maximum security state prison in Alabama, where two riots broke out over four days. At least 100 prisoners gained control of part of the prison and stabbed a guard and the warden.
“We have to strain the economics of the criminal justice system, because if we don’t, we can’t force them to downsize,” an activist serving a life sentence at Holman told The Intercept. “Slavery has always been a legal institution,” he added. “And it never ended. It still exists today through the criminal justice system.”
 
If these prisons are secret, how do you know about them?
 
there is something called investigative journalism, but not all people read the intercept and similar, so, I am sure many people never heard that the government creates more and more secret prisons. so:
do you know about secret prisons and what do you think about it?
what do you think about harder law and harder punishments and making industry from imprisoning people?
 
You don't cite a source for the comments, so until I know otherwise I will assume that this is your unsupported opinion.

So to answer your question, I don't think much about it at all.
 
do you know about secret prisons and what do you think about it?
what do you think about harder law and harder punishments and making industry from imprisoning people?

One of 5 secret prisons is located in Chicago, so-called Homan Square, they investigate criminals with military methods used in Guantanamo. While US military and intelligence interrogation impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles and even a cage – focuses on American citizens, most often poor, black and brown. The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site. The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.
Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:
Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
Shackling for prolonged periods.
Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.


......
“We have to strain the economics of the criminal justice system, because if we don’t, we can’t force them to downsize,” an activist serving a life sentence at Holman told The Intercept. “Slavery has always been a legal institution,” he added. “And it never ended. It still exists today through the criminal justice system.”

My suspicion is that the only secret is why you think they are secret. The prison is might not be nice and possibly even bad stuff is done there. But, if it is discussed here, secrecy is no longer.
 
Dont buy it
 
Since the OP did not provide anything.

A source from CNN 12/15

Chicago's Homan Square police complex under fire - CNN.com

"According to an investigation by The Guardian newspaper, the Chicago Police Department runs a secretive detention site at Homan Square, a sprawling compound that includes various police operations."

News station doing an "investigation"
New details revealed about controversial Chicago police facility Homan Square | WGN-TV

Fact sheet provided by the police department
https://tribwgntv.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/homan-square-fact-sheet-1.pdf

As far as being secret. Funny how there is many articles on the internet.
 
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So more "investigative journalism" is needed here to know what is going on. Okay...
 
Dont buy it

Seems plausible, but it would be nice to have more on this. Given how much trouble Chicago has been in recently.
 
Seems plausible, but it would be nice to have more on this. Given how much trouble Chicago has been in recently.

Im not sure what you mean to have more on this. Im assuming and I can be wrong that you want more of my opinion.

This is 2016 not 1920 NOTHING IS A SECRET, not your phone calls, not your texts, theres suveillance cameras damn hear recording your entire waking life. There may be a drone outside your house recording your conversations or watching you pee. How the hell can they keep prisons a secret and In CHICAGO ?, please you have to totally mentally incapacitated to believe that. Could there be a secret military prison or two, sure thats a much safer bet than there being secret prisons incarcerating americans in chicago.
 
do you know about secret prisons and what do you think about it?
what do you think about harder law and harder punishments and making industry from imprisoning people?

I believe they do exist, but they are secret and we don't know about them. So long.as they remain secret, America will be happy to feign ignorance.
 
Im not sure what you mean to have more on this. Im assuming and I can be wrong that you want more of my opinion.

This is 2016 not 1920 NOTHING IS A SECRET, not your phone calls, not your texts, theres suveillance cameras damn hear recording your entire waking life. There may be a drone outside your house recording your conversations or watching you pee. How the hell can they keep prisons a secret and In CHICAGO ?, please you have to totally mentally incapacitated to believe that. Could there be a secret military prison or two, sure thats a much safer bet than there being secret prisons incarcerating americans in chicago.

I feel sorry for the guy who has to keep an eye on my life. Is it one spy per person or is there a rota?
 
I believe they do exist, but they are secret and we don't know about them. So long.as they remain secret, America will be happy to feign ignorance.

The Chicago, Homan Square, investigative journalism broke the ice. You can be certain there are lots more. You can not be so certain that the Controlled Narrative presented to the USA public by the "Presstiture Media" will publish it. This has been ongoing for months, ergo that find Homan Square to be a surprise should change their Media sources. mos scratchee.
 
I feel sorry for the guy who has to keep an eye on my life. Is it one spy per person or is there a rota?

You will have to decide that for yourself. The only thing I said that is facetious is the drone and it may not be facetious for long.
 
You will have to decide that for yourself. The only thing I said that is facetious is the drone and it may not be facetious for long.

One drone per person?
 
Since the OP did not provide anything.

A source from CNN 12/15

Chicago's Homan Square police complex under fire - CNN.com

"According to an investigation by The Guardian newspaper, the Chicago Police Department runs a secretive detention site at Homan Square, a sprawling compound that includes various police operations."

News station doing an "investigation"
New details revealed about controversial Chicago police facility Homan Square | WGN-TV

Fact sheet provided by the police department
https://tribwgntv.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/homan-square-fact-sheet-1.pdf

As far as being secret. Funny how there is many articles on the internet.

But the OP states 5 of these secret prisons. Holman Square is well known. The other 4? Obviously so secret that there are not even rumors on the internet.
 
But the OP states 5 of these secret prisons. Holman Square is well known. The other 4? Obviously so secret that there are not even rumors on the internet.

Yet, the OP seems to know.:lamo

much about nothing.
 
If these prisons are secret, how do you know about them?

Because he does not restrict his reading or viewing to the mainstream media?

I read a lot, and can't remember exactly where, but I've read about the site in Chicago.
 
Only the deep southern outback has secret prisons. They are called basements.

Ok. Ok. Joking aside, here is something to help out the OP:
Wikipedia: Black Site
The link doesn't like me. Must be a secret prison conspiracy. ;)
But you can Wiki Black Site if you like.
Like most secretive things my Government does, it can be a double edged sword. There is a fine line between the power to protect your people at all costs and the costs of people to protect your power.
 
Because he does not restrict his reading or viewing to the mainstream media?

I read a lot, and can't remember exactly where, but I've read about the site in Chicago.

Again, if you're reading about it, it's not a secret. Lol.
 
Because he does not restrict his reading or viewing to the mainstream media?

I read a lot, and can't remember exactly where, but I've read about the site in Chicago.

Homan Square is real enough. It's a police station. But it's not exactly a secret torture/enhanced interrogation station. The Guardian I believe made the original accusations in an article, which, like the OP, was based on heresay from disgruntled former guests and their lawyers. The story was picked up by the usual LW sites. I don't remember anything coming of the accusations.

I'm still wondering about the other 4 secret locations.
 
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