Oscar Pistorius's new roommate

From a Redditor:

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71 year old German woman put in cooler for priest stalking

By Mona Goldwater, Social Mores Ed.

the stalker in court

An 71 year old woman was jailed for 14 months this week for stalking a Catholic priest for over a decade. She stripped naked and danced in front of him on more than one occasion, the court heard, and had harassed him since 2000 with letters, emails, and phone calls, telling him she loved him. On Thursday, she confessed through her lawyer.  The confession left the court with the decision on whether she should go to prison or to the laughing academy.

The woman often left flowers, love notes and condoms in the priest's front garden in Sauerland, North-Rhine Westphalia, according to the Essen, Germany newspaper Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.  She told the court that when she first met him, "It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I didn't know that he was the priest."

After testimony, in the Meschede,  court, she was sentenced to one year and two months in prison.

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Hard times in prison in Norway

By Jack Brummet, Penology Ed.

Norway’s prison system is the most inmate-friendly in the world, but mass murderer Anders Breivik, serving 21 years (really?) for the 2011 bomb-and-gun attacks that killed 77 people,  sent wardens 12 demands in November, including upgrading his manual typewriter and bumping his PlayStation 2 to a PS3, so he can play more games.

Breivik also demanded that his weekly “allowance” of $50 be doubled, and said if the “torture” continues, he would launch a hunger strike. He had earlier threatened a hunger strike in 2012, over inhumane conditions including  cold coffee, lack of skin moisturizer, and not enough butter for his bread.) [information from an article in the Los Angeles Times, 2-18-2014]

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Prison sign language, circa 1941

By Jack Brummet, Corrections Ed.

In the 1940's, there was no talking allowed in the mess hall at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison. 

The prisoners came up with a workaround:  they developed a sign language that allowed them to get through their meals in silence. So the convicts developed a primitive sign language to communicate what food they wanted:

• Upheld hand: more bread
• Upraised fist: more potatoes
• Upheld knife, fork and spoon: more stew
• Washing motion with the hand: water
• Thumb up and index finger straight out: coffee or tea
• Open and close the hand as if milking a cow: milk
• Hand flat and passed back and forth across the plate: gravy
• Fork held up: meat
• Thumb thrust through the fingers: vinegar
• Two fingers thrust out: salt and pepper
• If the person at the end of the table taps the table with his spoon: dessert is on the way

From the Milwaukee Sentinel — Nov 16, 1941: 

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Two members of Pussy Riot sent to brutal Russian prisons

By Mona Goldwater, Human Rights Editor

Jack sent this article from this morning's Moscow Times (he shot it with his camera from the actual paper).  One member of PR has been freed, and the other two sent off to the Gulag.  

Maria Alyokhina, 24, will serve the rest of her two-year term at a women's prison camp in Perm, Siberia--as you know, a region notorious for hosting some of the Soviet Union's most brutal prison camps. 

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, has been sent to Mordovia, a region that also hosts a high number of prisons, not as notorious, but it sounds just as horrific.

click to enlarge

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Help spring Jack Brummet from jail!!

I have just been arrested and will be going to jail (I know, some of you are thinking "what took so long?") for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Executive Lock-up.

Don’t bother asking what crime I have committed – it’s not really that important. And most of you probably have a good guess.  If I raise bail of $2,400 before the Lock-Up, they will go easy on me, but I need your HELP to post my bond. Your donation will help MDA continue research into the cause and the possible cure of the 43 neuromuscular diseases they cover. Your support of the MDA Lock-Up will also help MDA provide medical equipment, clinic visits, support groups and a much-needed week of MDA Summer Camp for the families served by the Association. If my FB pals, blog readers, friends and family each kick in a few bucks, we'll make my bail. Please donate $5, $20, $100, or even $1.000. It's 100% tax deductible. If we all pull together, I can avoid bunking with my cellmates Tiny, Psycho, or El Cuchillo.

Jump to the link

https://www.joinmda.org/MyLockup/MyHomepage/tabid/154711/Participant/jack/Default.aspx

and donate heavily and often!

If you donate $500, I'll come to your house and make a four-course dinner with wine and beer pairings for you and seven of your friends--Paella, North Carolina barbecue, Mexican Nayarit/Jalisco, Italian, Vietnamese, or NW cuisine--you name it--carnivore, gluten-free, vegan...whatever works for you.

Thank you ever so much. And, hey, Jerry Lewis thanks you too.
 
/jack

1 out of 99 Americans are now in prison: we've cracked the 1 in 100 barrier

click to enlarge

We've finally cracked that elusive barrier: more than 1 out of 100 Americans are now in the hoosegow, calaboose [1], jail, prison, penitentiary, and medical lockup.

According to an Associated Press/CBS story, for the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison. I was going to do the math to figure out when 10%, and even when all of us, will be in jail. But I didn't; it's too depressing.

[1] A word I learned of reading Herman Melville, my favorite American novelist. [cal·a·boose /ˈkæləˌbus, ˌkæləˈbus/ noun Slang. jail; prison; lockup. Origin: 1785–95, Americanism; (<>
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Paris Hilton's Prison Self-portrait

Click Paris's drawing to enlarge

Paris Hilton drew this self-portait while she was in the hoosegow in Lynwood. These days, however, she's enjoying her freedom, while pledging to work for prison reform (because, she said, so many prisoners told her they were innocent).
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Crackdown on toilet paper in Kansas prison: warden apparently gi-normous Sheryl Crow fan

According to the Associated Press, toilet paper is now a hotter trading commodity at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility than cigarettes. Prison officials in Kansas have recently begun enforcement of a longstanding limit on prisoner toulet paper rations.

Inmates are now limited to four rolls of toilet paper each. "The increased enforcement has angered many of the more than 1,600 inmates housed at the facility."

"Some take this for granted," inmate Carl Kennedy said in a letter to The Hutchinson News. "But in here it's part of a safeguard for widespread infections. We use it to blow our noses, clean sinks, toilets and tables."


If each inmate uses one less roll per month, according to prison officials, they would save the prison $600 a month. "There are a lot of things that individually don't cost much," said Kansas Department of Corrections spokeswoman Frances Breyne. "But when you multiply that by hundreds, it makes a drastic impact."
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