prison

David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, and former congressman/Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr are backing a proposal to send Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison in Illinois, as well as President Obama’s plan to try terrorism suspects in federal courts. The three conservatives have long been members [...]

A U.S. Marine reservist and general has created a detailed report recommending that up to 400 of the 600 prisoners at the U.S.-run prison at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan have done nothing wrong and should be released, NPR reports.
Lawyers have been making that argument for years now, but the United States has insisted [...]

Responding to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Department of Homeland Security today acknowledged 11 deaths of immigrants in U.S. detention facilities that the agency had previously failed to disclose.
In April, DHS responded to the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit with a “comprehensive” list of all deaths in detention, which totaled [...]

Obama administration officials will tour a Michigan state prison today in the hopes of using it to hold suspected terrorists now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, The Associated Press reports.
Representatives of the Departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security are scheduled to visit the prison in Standish, Mich., which is slated to be closed soon, to [...]

The Michigan Messenger reports that Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.) is looking to stimulate the local economy by importing prisoners from out-of-state.
California and Michigan prison officials continue to negotiate a move of California prisoners to two of Michigan’s soon to be closed prisons. Michigan officials have been in California this week as part of the negotiations [...]

President Obama:
As we make these decisions, bear in mind the following fact: nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal “supermax” prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists.
Leann LaRiva is the public information office for the federal penetentiary in Florence, Colo., commonly known as ADX Florence. It’s a supermax facility. Any escapes? “No escape,” [...]

According to a lawyer with the respected British human rights group Reprieve, abuse of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has actually gotten worse since President Obama took office.

President Obama’s Justice Department today, in a two-sentence filing, backed the Bush administration’s position on the 600 or more detainees being held at the U.S. military’s detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The department reaffirmed that the prisoners are not entitled to any constitutional rights and, most importantly, may not challenge their detention [...]

President Obama really opened a big fat can of worms when he issued those executive orders last week.  Not only did he make all sorts of promises on state secrets that he’s now being called on to fulfill, but in promising to review the conditions of detention at Guantanamo Bay, he opened himself up to [...]

TPM has a great roundup today of the escalating Republican argument that closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility could be all but impossible because — surprise! — nobody seems to want those scary terrorists in their neighborhood.
Murderers, rapists, child molesters, and even convicted terrorists like Zacarias Moussaoui who got legitimate federal court trials are okay [...]