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Category: US prisons

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  • Trump officials tour Alcatraz in bid to reopen prison amid outcry from California leaders

    Doug Burgum, interior secretary, and Pam Bondi, attorney general, visited island jail as Nancy Pelosi calls idea ‘lunacy’

    A delegation of US officials toured Alcatraz on Thursday as part of Donald Trump’s pledge to reopen the shuttered federal prison and tourist attraction in the San Francisco Bay, amid an outcry from California leaders who have called the plan “lunacy”.

    Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, who visited the island prison with attorney general Pam Bondi, said the federal government was beginning “the work to renovate and reopen the site to house the most dangerous criminals and illegals”.

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  • Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ reveals the ongoing cruelty towards migrants in US

    President’s supporters are gleeful but Everglades jail could prove to be a humanitarian and environmental tragedy

    After the cruelty, the mockery. As the first detainees were being hauled into Donald Trump’s controversial migrant jail in the inhospitable, steamy wetlands of the Florida Everglades last week, his supporters were indulging in some parallel retail therapy.

    “Surrounded by swamps & pythons, it’s a one-way ticket to regret,” the Florida Republican party’s official X account crowed, hawking its new range of Alligator Alcatraz-themed shirts and hats. “Grab our merch to support tough-on-crime borders! Limited supply – get yours before the gators do!”

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  • El Salvador’s president denies that Kilmar Ábrego García was abused in notorious prison

    Nayib Bukele disputed claims of Ábrego García’s lawyers that he was tortured and deprived of sleep while in custody

    The president of El Salvador has denied claims that Kilmar Ábrego García was subjected to beatings and deprivation while he was held in the country before being returned to the US to face human-smuggling charges.

    Nayib Bukele said in a social media post that Ábrego García, the Salvadorian national who was wrongly extradited from the US to El Salvador in March before being returned in June, “wasn’t tortured, nor did he lose weight”.

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  • Man convicted in 1994 rape and murder of Michelle McGrath put to death in Florida

    Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, died Tuesday by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in state’s seventh execution this year

    A man convicted of raping and killing a woman near a central Florida bar was executed Tuesday evening.

    Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, was pronounced dead at 6.13pm after receiving a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, said Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for the governor, Ron DeSantis.

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  • Reformed Manson follower eyes freedom after 56 years: ‘She’s not the same person anymore’

    Patricia Krenwinkel, in prison over Tate-LaBianca killings, recommended for parole but faces uphill battle to be freed

    Patricia Krenwinkel, a former Charles Manson follower who has been imprisoned for 56 years over her role in the Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles, could go free after being recommended for parole last week.

    The decision marked a major victory for the aging incarcerated woman after 16 parole hearings. Krenwinkel, now 77, was 21 at the time of the 1969 killings and has been imprisoned longer than any other woman in California.

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  • Manson ‘family’ member Patricia Krenwinkel recommended for parole

    California parole board says 77-year-old – the state’s longest-serving female inmate – poses little risk of reoffending

    A California prisons panel has recommended that Patricia Krenwinkel, serving a life sentence for her role in the 1969 Los Angeles killing spree by followers of cult leader Charles Manson, be released on parole.

    The state Board of Parole Hearings found that Krenwinkel, 77 – the longest-serving female inmate in California prisons – posed little risk of reoffending based on her age and a spotless behaviour record while incarcerated, according to the CBS News affiliate in San Diego, KFMP-TV.

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  • The prison classroom was where she could finally be herself. Now it’s gone

    I volunteered at a Maine detention center for 10 years. Then the Trump administration cut its programs – because we made space for women like Ashley

    Every Monday for over a decade, I left my home on Peaks Island, Maine, boarded a ferry to town then drove inland to the Maine correctional center to lead a creative writing class for incarcerated women.

    After a 30-minute drive, I park my car, walk to the facility, leave my cellphone and keys with the front desk guard, walk through a metal detector and several sets of sliding doors until I reach the women’s unit. My classroom is a tiny space, bare bones, with plastic chairs, cinderblock walls and fluorescent lights.

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  • A hard cell? Alcatraz tourists dismiss Trump’s ‘insane’ plan to revive it as prison

    Visitors to one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist destinations point to cost, feasibility and its legacy of Indigenous incarceration

    In the choppy waters of the San Francisco Bay, on a windswept rock, lies a crumbling former federal prison that’s now at the center of Donald Trump’s latest real estate proposal: “REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ!” he announced on Truth Social over the weekend, to “serve as a symbol of Law, Order and JUSTICE.”

    On Monday, the day after Trump’s declaration, throngs of tourists queued up for the ferry at Fisherman’s Wharf to visit the island.

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  • Trump says he will reopen Alcatraz prison for ‘most ruthless offenders’

    Plan to reopen notorious but long-shuttered penitentiary off San Francisco described as ‘not serious’ by Nancy Pelosi

    Donald Trump has said he is directing his government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison on an island off San Francisco that has been closed for more than 60 years.

    In a post on his Truth Social site on Sunday evening, Trump wrote: “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

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  • Who are the death row executioners? Disgraced doctors, suspended nurses and drunk drivers

    These are just the US executioners we know. But they are a chilling indication of the executioners we don’t know

    Being an executioner is not the sort of job that gets posted in a local wanted ad. Kids don’t dream about being an executioner when they grow up, and people don’t go to school for it. So how does one become a death row executioner in the US, and who are the people doing it?

    This was the question I couldn’t help but ask when I began a book project on lethal injection back in 2018. I’m a death penalty researcher, and I was trying to figure out why states are so breathtakingly bad at a procedure that we use on cats and dogs every day. Part of the riddle was who is performing these executions.

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