Prince of Pot Marc Emery urges defiant London dispensary to hang tough in showdown with police Be ready to do jail time. That's the message the formerly imprisoned Marc Emery, Canada's most famous marijuana crusader, delivered to a London pot shop that's become the local flashpoint in the shifting ground on Canada's pot laws. The Prince of Pot paid an unexpected visit to Tasty Budd's Friday, throwing his support behind the Wharncliffe Road marijuana dispensary i n what's become its high-profile showdown with city police. [continues 578 words]
LONDON - While Amazon and the British government are looking into how to use drones to deliver parcels to customers, criminals are already exploiting the technology to send drugs to accomplices in prison. Police on Monday said they recovered two drones carrying mobile phones and drugs near London's Pentonville prison and have set up a special task force - Operation Airborne - to catch offenders trying to get contraband into the jail. In the early hours of Aug. 17, police saw a man acting suspiciously near the prison. He ran away, dropping two bags containing drugs and mobile phones and managed to evade arrest, according to a police statement. [continues 186 words]
FACILITIES FOUND LESS SAFE AND EFFECTIVE Justice order affects 13 sites, about 22,000 inmates The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded that the facilities are less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or "substantially reduce" the contracts' scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is "reducing - and ultimately ending - our use of privately operated prisons." [continues 1295 words]
STORIES about shenanigans at the Cebu City Jail have been doing the rounds for years. Because the jail is being run by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), tackling the complaints related to these "stories" has been dependent not on the local government officials but on a national government agency. For years, BJMP 7 officials tended to look the other way allowing those "stories" to persist. The raid conducted early Saturday, done in full force by various law enforcement units, was thus a welcome development. It was called, like in previous raids, "Operation Greyhound" but it was an operation like no other before it in intensity and scope. No wonder it also netted the biggest catch in years. [continues 262 words]
The parents of an Edmonton Institution inmate who died of a fentanyl overdose have launched a $295,000 lawsuit against the Correctional Service of Canada. In a statement of claim filed July 14, John and Debilyn Witvoet allege the federal agency responsible for Canadian prisons was negligent in the Aug. 20, 2015, death of Ryan William Witvoet, 31. The Witvoets allege the correctional service failed to protect their son, who had drug-addiction issues, from access to illegal drugs within the maximum-security prison in north Edmonton. [continues 308 words]
Flawed logic by letter-writer Tom Duncan, 'Use of illicit drugs a case for arrest and imprisonment?' What are you going to say to the families of those who die rather than seek medical attention for fear of arrest for that or other outstanding issues? Who's going to pay for all these new prisons you advocate for? And since when does an otherwise clean citizen come out of jail better than when they went in? More police on the ground and less lenient judges, yes, but not putting innocent people in jeopardy of death by simple misadventure. Jeff Laurie, Langley [end]
Maryland has recently enacted or proposed two work-arounds for the problem of Suboxone being smuggled into prisons. The first action, taking Suboxone off the Medicaid preferred drug list ("State action limits opioid addiction treatments," June 23), destabilized patients in recovery without reducing demand in prisons. Last week, Maryland correctional officials proposed a ban on prisoners receiving personal letters by mail. This proposal was later withdrawn, presumably as a response to criticism by the ACLU ("Maryland corrections officials withdraw proposal to limit inmate mail to postcards," July 21). [continues 275 words]
Move targets marijuana use amid prison population boom; some drugs may be reclassified for controlled use Marijuana or methamphetamine users in Thailand may get rehabilitation rather than jail under broad changes to the country's narcotics policy. The kingdom is reviewing its zero-tolerance approach, which has caused its prison population to balloon without actually controlling the proliferation of illicit drugs. Draft legal changes, recently approved by the Cabinet and expected to be tabled in Parliament, would emphasise rehabilitation over jail terms for drug users and mandate more proportional sentences. They will be put in place before the term of the current military government expires, Justice Minister Paiboon Kumchaya said this week. [continues 448 words]
Billy Robbins wanted out of jail to deal with his drug addiction. The judge wanted to use his sad case to prove a point. "Your case highlights the struggles . . . in this courthouse with the dissolution of the drug treatment court and the position of the Crown attorney not to participate in the program," Ontario Court Justice Wayne Rabley said before sentencing Robbins to more jail time. Rabley oversaw the drug court for six years until it was put on hiatus last month. Main reason for halting the non-traditional justice program appears to be a lack of federal prosecution resources. [continues 505 words]
Research shows death rate is 12 times higher for people who were jailed in past year A new study into drug overdose deaths in Ontario among recently incarcerated adults points to the need for better services to treat them in the community. One in 10 adults in Ontario who died of a drug overdose between April 2006 and March 2013 had been incarcerated in a provincial facility within one year of death, a study from researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto has found. [continues 484 words]
This week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is scheduled to announce an increase in the number of prescriptions doctors can write for Suboxone from 100 to 275 a year. Congress is considering legislation that would make further increases in the availability of the drug, used to treat addictions to heroin and other opioids. While the effectiveness of Suboxone (generically called buprenorphine) as a heroin treatment can be argued, there is no debate about it being a major problem for those of us who run correctional facilities. At the Norfolk County Correctional Center in Dedham, Suboxone is public enemy No. 1 when it comes to inmates trying to smuggle in contraband. [continues 293 words]
BURKEVILLE, Va. - Lenny Singleton is the first to admit that he deserved an extended stay behind bars. To fuel his crack habit back in 1995, he walked into 13 stores over eight days and either distracted a clerk or pretended to have a concealed gun before stealing from the cash register. One time, he was armed with a knife with a six-inch blade that he had brought from his kitchen. Mr. Singleton, 28 at the time, was charged with robbery and accepted a plea deal, fully expecting to receive a long jail sentence. But a confluence of factors worked against him, including the particularly hard-nosed judge who sentenced him and the zero-tolerance ethos of the time against users of crack cocaine. His sentence was very long: two life sentences. And another 100 years. And no possibility for parole. [continues 1146 words]
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Drug use behind bars appears to have increased since California started using drug-sniffing dogs and machinery to try to stop smuggling at state prisons, where overdose deaths are nearly five times the national rate, records show. It's unclear exactly why things haven't gone as officials projected. Some say the testing can yield artificially high results. Others say it's too soon to draw any long-term conclusions. Still more say the program simply is not working. Prison officials won't divulge details on results of the multimillion-dollar program. [continues 488 words]
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Drug use behind bars appears to have increased since California started using drug-sniffing dogs and machinery to try to stop smuggling at state prisons, where overdose deaths are nearly five times the national rate, records show. It's unclear exactly why things haven't gone as officials projected. Some say the testing can yield artificially high results. Others say it's too soon to draw any long-term conclusions. Still more say the program simply is not working. Prison officials won't divulge details on results of the multimillion-dollar program. [continues 338 words]
HALIFAX - Correctional officers at a provincial jail in Cape Breton failed to follow proper procedures earlier this year when they placed a man in a cell, where he died of a drug overdose 13 hours later, Nova Scotia's Justice Department says. The department's review of the case, released Monday, says that when Jason Marcel LeBlanc was admitted to the Cape Breton Correctional Facility on Jan. 30, staff did not follow all steps in the strip search process, and they failed to complete their rounds at standard intervals. [continues 654 words]
WEST BOYLSTON - Antwan Stevenson has been behind bars, time and again, for a total of more than five years since adolescence. The 24-year-old has run with a violent Dorchester gang, several friends have been killed, and his father was shot dead in January. "I have to change," he said, sitting on a bunk in a 9-by-11-foot cell. Finally, this father of three thinks he has found a way: an intense six-month program at the Worcester County House of Correction in which inmates confront the reasons they abused drugs or alcohol and the bitter consequences that followed. [continues 930 words]
In a speech last week to a group of New York lawyers, a federal judge from Brooklyn assailed the criminal justice system in which he has worked for more than 40 years, saying that the country had to "jettison the madness of mass incarceration" and find an alternative to overly punitive sentencing to address the problem of crime. The speech by Judge Raymond J. Dearie of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, at an event sponsored by the New York Criminal Bar Association, may not have struck new ground in its critique of the justice system. But it did put him in the company of other federal judges in Brooklyn who in recent months have come forward with scathing appraisals of things such as mandatory sentencing guidelines and the disregard paid to the socioeconomic roots of crime. [continues 851 words]
The high costs of incarceration have prompted most states and the federal government to reduce their prison populations. Now, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, there is evidence that doing so does not increase crime. Researchers analyzed prison and crime data from all 50 states between 2006, when the reform movement began, through 2014, the most recent year for which data are complete. They found that in 27 states that have decreased their prison populations, crime also has decreased. [continues 293 words]
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama shortened the sentences Friday of 42 people serving time for drug-related offenses, continuing a push for clemency that has ramped up in the final year of his administration. Roughly half of the 42 receiving commutations Friday were serving life sentences. Most are nonviolent offenders, although a few were also charged with firearms violations. The White House said many of them would have already finished their sentences if they had been sentenced under current, less onerous sentencing guidelines. [continues 476 words]
With changes to marijuana laws on the horizon, a former star athlete's lawyers argue that sending him to jail for marijuana trafficking would shock the community and violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Seamus John Neary, 25, was in Saskatoon Court of Queen's Bench Tuesday for sentencing arguments after he was found guilty of trafficking 9.5 kilograms of marijuana. The crime does not carry a mandatory minimum, but federal law changes in 2012 removed the option of a conditional sentence order, or jail sentence served in the community, for trafficking more than three kilograms of pot. [continues 439 words]
