Category Archives: Prison Reform

New Jersey Outlaws Death Penalty

By Frank Paynter | Published: December 17, 2007

Bicycle Mark reports. …and this from the NYT. So, thanks to Citizen Reporter for the heads up, and to the NYT for some details.

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No easy answers, no simple truths…

By Frank Paynter | Published: December 14, 2007

Thanks to Charles Follymacher for this link to Prometheus 6. I’ve spent some time over the last several months reading and thinking about disparities of treatment in the criminal justice system in the US. One of the gross inequities involves differential sentencing guidelines for crack versus powder cocaine. Judge Greg Mathis writes, Ten years after [...]

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Hip-hop Chess Federation

By Frank Paynter | Published: November 20, 2007

The blog… right now featuring a story on Chesspark.org foundation. The HHCF website… NYT article on Hip-hop chess and the recent HHCF Kings Invitational in San Francisco. The Kings Invitational will be followed by the “All Queens Invitational” there in February. The Queens Invitational features a keynote panel around the subject, “Life Strategies: The Female [...]

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Where have all the flowers gone?

By Frank Paynter | Published: October 11, 2007

Shot in the head… anti-war soldiers who wrote op-ed against the war. Shot in the head… Pat Tillman. American held hostage by US forces… Donald Vance, mercenary whistle blower. How many more detentions, executions, and senseless deaths before Bush is behind bars? Today Congress moved to recognize the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915. This [...]

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Wisconsin Dells

By Frank Paynter | Published: September 27, 2007

I’m looking hard at NDN stuff… Leonard Peltier, the Hochunk Nation here in wisconsin… the “good old days” when the Hochunk (or the Winnebagos as they were then known) would line up for their cash payments after the nightly ceremonial dances for the tourists at Wisconsin Dells… and how did all this inform my understanding [...]

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Incarceration

By Frank Paynter | Published: September 27, 2007

New data released today from the U.S. Census Bureau provide the first social and economic characteristic profiles of the people living in group quarters — such as adult correctional facilities, college dorms and nursing homes — in nearly three decades. – US Census Bureau Press Release “… living in group quarters.” Beware the Euphemism, my [...]

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Death Penalty Concerns

By Frank Paynter | Published: August 23, 2007

“On August 30, 2007, Texas, the state that executes more people than any in the country, plans to deliver a lethal injection to Kenneth Foster, Jr. While this may seem like nothing out of the ordinary for a state that will perform its 400th execution this summer, Kenneth’s case is unique. He killed no one. [...]

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Small World

By Frank Paynter | Published: July 10, 2007

Many of us who worked in high tech jobs in the early eighties read Tracy Kidder’s “The Soul of a New Machine,” a book Wired called “the original nerd epic.” I couldn’t put it down until I had finished. It told the story of a dedicated team that put together a new computer for Data [...]

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