You Got To Be Kidding Me

Have people truly lost their minds? It seems that people find more and more pleasure in the suffering of others. If it was not for mean spirited jokes, there might not be any comedy at all. I am no different than anyone else, I have certainly laughed at a friend that took a spill (after I helped them up of course), but I wouldn’t try to record it and profit off of a low point in someone else’s life. Unfortunately for people who get locked up in Franklin County, everyone does not feel the same.

There is a weekly publication in my city called Slammer which displays anyone who has been jailed in the county in the previous seven days. For only $1, anyone who has the whim can pick up a copy of Slammer and know who is in jail and for what. There are even stories in it that highlight popular cases and they are often written in a humorous tone.  So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to walk in any corner store in the ghetto and see some young brothers laughing about one of their boys having his face on the front page; each of them knowing that it could be either of them in next weeks.

I guess the problem is not the paper but the trend that makes the paper possible. The question is how to get those young brothers to start getting angry about their friend being arrested for whatever reason. What they do not realize is that they are the ones that can turn this entire thing around, my only question is how to get them to realize it.

Posted by:

Kwesi Low

Its Hell to be poor and need a lawyer in Harris County

Harris County in Houston, Texas is in the process of establishing a Public Defenders office. This is a great step for the county seeing that it is the only large major county left in America without some type of Public Defender System.  This new system would replace the county’s current system of dealing with indigent cases where defendants who are unable to afford a lawyer must have the judges appoint the council.

So, the county has agreed to establish a Public Defender’s office through a pilot initiative that is considered to be very weak. Their proposal establishes the office but allows the judges and county commissioners to select the head Public Defender. Hummmm – hum. If the judges and county are able to select the public defender then the office will lack independence which is needed to ensure that individuals are given legal representation that focuses on the indigent person who needs counsel.

… Continue Reading

Posted by:

Christina Sanders

Note to the Hood: Don’t Count on Prisoners

Prisons in Texas are said to be “big business”.  We have many rural towns that have large prisons that serve as the major economic drivers for the schools, hospitals and jobs in this little know places. But as we engage in our decennial census count we must examine how these prison populations are being counted for the purpose of delivering services to Texas communities.

The Census Bureau requires that individuals are counted at the address where they reside as of April 1^st . The Houston Chronicle reported that Harris, Bexar and three other large urban communities will lose about 67,000 residents to rural Texas because prison inmates are counted where they are in prison.

The problem then becomes that the prisoners who were convicted will not lend needed resources back to their home counties. Thus, urban areas that need more schools, jobs and programs will lose out due to how the count is taken at the national level.

What’s more, rural legislators are open to possibly gain seats that belong to inner city folks during reapportionment – 99 problems and it looks like the hood gets one more…

Posted by:

Christina Sanders

Will Pennsylvania Resident Jordan Brown Be The Youngest Person In The World To Serve A Life Sentence?

Not much goes on in Wampum, Pennsylvania. Located about 50 miles outside of Pittsburgh, the Lawrence County borough is home to less than 1,000 people, over 17% of which live below poverty level. In 2009, 11 year old resident Jordan Brown (pictured here, in a photo provided by Lawrence County Prison) was described as a normal “all-American boy”. He enjoyed local leisure activities such as football, riding bikes, reading Harry Potter books and hunting. A year later, Jordan, now 12, faces grown up charges with a possibility of life in prison without parole.

On February 20, 2009, 26-year-old Kenzie Houk was found lifeless in bed with a bullet from a 20-gauge shotgun through her head. She was eight months pregnant with a baby boy and a mother to two girls. Her boyfriend’s son, 11-year-old Jordan, was identified as the murder suspect and faces two counts of homicide, one including the unborn child.

Because the state of Pennsylvania offers no reprieve in convictions due to age, it’s no surprise that it has the highest total number of juvenile lifers. This means that Jordan could very well spend the rest of his life behind bars for a crime committed when he was a child. According to the University of Pittsburgh, if kept in criminal court and convicted, Jordan will be the youngest person in the world serving a life sentence.

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Posted by:

Krysten Hughes

99Problems.org Presents … Darrell Jones

Check this out folks … this is crazy moving:

This video is based on the writings of Massachusetts inmate Darrell Jones. Since his incarceration, Mr. Jones has maintained his innocence and spent the last 23 years fighting to stop the devastating cycle of violence and incarceration he is witnessing. This video is about hope and responsibility on an individual and government level . If the men and women behind bars think that no one expects more of them, if they believe that this great “change” Obama spoke of meant everyone else but them, the results are disastrous. Without hope, the prisons are currently breeding violence, racism and anger to be released back into our streets (97% of men come back out) fueling this endless cycle of violence and incarceration. If Obama is able to address terrorists and school children alike, then why not this prison system when it is holding so many of our people?

Here’s one excerpt from Darrell’s letter, to show its resonance and unique perspective:

Mr. President, I once read in a news article that listed the top music artists you had on your iPod. Among them, it listed Jay Z. Well, with 24 years in prison, I’ve never seen an iPod, and neither have many of the men around me, but I do know that daily I see many very young males walking around me with “Spiritual iPods” that are playing in their ears, the songs of Notorious B.I.G. singing the words “You’re nobody unless somebody kills you”. Yet two things are clear, sadly, Biggie did become bigger in death, and that many of these kids who have never seen their families together during a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner meet them for the first time in a casket with their eyes closed at a funeral. So, what troubles me is not so much that they’re willing to die, but that they don’t even want to leave here (prison) and get back to living.

For more information and to read the full letter or to contact Darrell directly, please go to www.obamaanswerthis.com.

Posted by:

The Editor

Less Condoms=More Teenage Pregnancy

Being a teen is hard enough. Being a teenage mother is infinitely harder—and according to a study by John Santelli of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, there are more and more teens who are becoming moms. Nearly 4 in 10 American teens will be preggers by age 20, and a whopping 445 000 of them will give birth. At those rates, America is the teenage pregnancy capital of the Western World.

Having a baby is a wonderful, beautiful act—but there is a time and a place for it. When a teenager gives birth, the odds of her or her baby having a fulfilling life are significantly lower than if she had waited until she was in her twenties. Teen moms are more likely to drop out of school, receive welfare, and have more children within a couple of years. In turn, the children of teen moms will statistically have poorer health and inferior results in school than their peers who had parents who gave birth later on. Children from teen pregnancies are also more likely to end up in prison (if they’re sons) or giving birth while still teenagers (if they’re daughters).

Which is why Santelli’s study is so disturbing. It shows that teenagers are having kids at a higher rate, not necessarily because they desire children at that stage in life but because they are not taking simple precautions to prevent it. The use of contraceptives is going down, leaving health educators wondering where the f*%# they went wrong. Because, instead of using a condom, youth are trying the “withdrawal method,” and even the “let’s not use anything” approach—otherwise known as the “I’m playing Russian Roulette with my girlfriend’s future” approach. Hell, the guys should be worried too, because STIs tend to spread a lot faster when there’s no condom to stop them (and by “tend to” I mean DO).
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Posted by:

Yolanda Clatworthy

Lights.. Camera.. GUILTY!

I’m going to tell you all a secret: Reality TV makes me really angry.

Ever since the first season of The Real World in 1992, more and more television has been composed of reality programs because they are cheap to produce, draw in a good audience and.. well, let’s face it.. the old adage goes, real life is stranger than fiction. And it bores me. I don’t care about Jon and Kate or Survivor and frankly, as much as I love P.E., thinking about Flavor Flav getting down with any of the girls on Flavor of Love gives me nightmares.

But while going through some daily blogs, I saw a piece that stopped me in my tracks. Michael Santos, prisoner and author of the book Inside: Life Behind Bars in America presents an interesting question: Can Reality TV Advance Prison Reform?

Let’s get into it after the jump! … Continue Reading

Posted by:

Steve Romain

20 Years Ago: Tiananmen Square – A Testament To Youth Activism

There are a number of images that permeate our collective psyche. Some are tragic, others hopeful. Every now and then, there is an image that embodies a state of mind so well that it can’t be described or explained. You just have to see it.

On June 4th, 1989, a young, unidentified man stood directly in front of a line of tanks in Beijing, China to express a sense of dissatisfaction, attempting to stop the Chinese government’s attacks on young activists.

Despite the defiance of Tank Man, the struggle continues.
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Posted by:

Steve Romain