Alabama Sheriff In Court For Starving Inmates, Paying Critic's Grandson To Install Keylogger On Her Computer

from the just-make-it-out-to-'cash'-and-save-everyone-the-hassle dept

A number of statutes and practices have created perverse incentives for law enforcement, but none are nearly so blatant as this Alabama state law governing the feeding of inmates. The law, passed over 100 years ago, says law enforcement personnel -- mainly sheriffs -- can keep whatever's left over from state and federal inmate food stipends. This doesn't mean the leftover money is routed to a general fund or used to defray law enforcement/jail-related expenses. No, this means the money flows from taxpayers, (mostly) bypasses prisoners, and ends up in sheriffs' personal checking accounts. (via Radley Balko)

This legalized skimming has resulted in the obvious: underfed inmates and sheriffs with overfed bank accounts. The law first received national attention in 2008, when Morgan County sheriff Greg Bartlett found himself in federal court, defending himself against a lawsuit brought by his prisoners. Inmates were dropping weight and going hungry while Bartlett increased his personal income by $212,000 over three years, taking home a great deal of the $1.75 per prisoner per day state funds. (Federal prisoners housed in state jails are allowed $3 per day, which can also be rerouted to sheriffs' checking accounts.)

This resulted in Bartlett spending one night in his own jail. Even then, Sheriff Bartlett was violating an earlier consent decree with the federal government, which ordered his office to use *all* food funds for feeding inmates. The agreement Bartlett reached with the court (after a night in jail) promised his office would do the same thing: spend all the funds on food, rather than diverting them for personal use.

Even with two consent decrees in place and a previous sheriff being hauled into court for personally profiting from inmates' hunger, another Morgan County sheriff (Ana Franklin) has repeated her predecessor's misdeeds.

At that hearing, the sheriff's attorneys are expected to argue that a years-old consent decree in a lawsuit against the county does not apply to Franklin and she shouldn't be held in contempt. The decree says the Morgan County Sheriff must spend all food funds on inmate meals. The decree was issued in 2009 after Franklin's predecessor was jailed for contempt. Former Sheriff Greg Bartlett was dubbed "Sheriff Corndog" because he profited more than $200,000 while inmates ate corndogs twice a day for weeks. The consent decree stemmed from a 2001 lawsuit against the county and then-Sheriff Steve Crabbe by inmates decrying conditions inside the jail.

A court hearing was scheduled last month when the Center filed a motion saying Franklin should show cause for why she shouldn't be held in contempt of the decree. The center argued that Franklin should have been held in contempt after removing $160,000 from the inmate food account. The sheriff loaned $150,000 of the money to a now-bankrupt, corrupt used car dealership, Priceville Partners, LLC, that was co-owned by Greg Steenson, a convicted felon.

Franklin is trying to convince the court she should be allowed to continue starving inmates and financing criminal business ventures. While Sheriff Franklin was helping prop up localbusiness corruption, inmates were dealing with this reality:

The [Southern Center for Human Rights] is arguing Franklin should not be allowed to keep any of the food funds and has included in court documents statements from inmates who describe inadequate food portions and unappetizing or hazardous servings. Inmates reported finding rocks, a nail and mold in food served at the jail.

"Many grievances note that entire cell blocks were fed reduced or watered-down portions -- a tiny amount of soup, a spoonful of grits, five or six green beans or carrot slices as a vegetable serving, a sandwich with half of a slice of cheese on it, and the like -- because the kitchen lacked enough food to serve everyone the portions listed on the menu," according to court records filed by the Center.

Starving prisoners to fund personal business ventures isn't the only thing Sheriff Franklin's accused of doing, though. A longtime critic of Franklin -- blogger/business owner Glenda Lockhart -- has also filed a lawsuit against the sheriff, alleging a number of constitutional violations.

The lawsuit accuses Franklin of illegally obtaining information to convince a judge to issue a search warrant for Lockhart's home and business. Franklin has said her office seized computers and various other devices during an investigation into fired jail warden Leon Bradley, who has been accused of leaking documents to Lockhart for publication on the blog.

Lockhart's blog was where Sheriff Franklin's payments to the corrupt car dealership first appeared. In apparent retaliation, the sheriff allegedly engaged in some incredibly underhanded -- and illegal -- tactics in her attempt to obtain the blogger's personal communications.

Lockhart claims Franklin illegally gathered information for a search warrant by paying an informant to break-in, hack and steal data from her home and business offices. Lockhart owns Straightline Drywall and Acoustical, LLC in Falkville.

The informant, Lockhart's grandson Daniel, said in a sworn statement that he was paid to install keylogger software on his grandmother's computer. The software, he said, was provided by the sheriff's office, according to a transcript from a November 2016 deposition.

Daniel Lockhart's statement also said the sheriff told him she was only interested in going after the former warden who was leaking documents and that Daniel's grandmother wouldn't be targeted. His statement also points out he was paid directly by the sheriff and one of her deputies a total of $500 to perform this "investigative" work for them.

There appears to be corruption all over the place in Morgan County, Alabama. But it all starts with a bad law state lawmakers are in no hurry to take off the books. Despite multiple federal lawsuits stemming from sheriffs' starve-and-skim tactics, the incredibly perverse incentive remains intact. There are probably plenty of taxpayers who don't like the idea of their money being used to food and house convicted criminals, but I doubt any of those taxpayers are happier knowing they're padding sheriffs' bank accounts and investing in shady businesses.

Filed Under: alabama, ana franklin, food, glenda lockhart, prisoners, sheriffs

UK Bill Would Force Service Providers To Set Up Fake Cell Towers For Surveillance Of Prisoners' Communications

from the compulsory-attendance dept

The latest arena for deployment of cell tower spoofers is prisons. Along with the diminished rights and lowered expectation of privacy afforded to prisoners, those incarcerated can now expect their cell phone calls to be blocked or intercepted.

The Register reports a new bill being introduced in the UK would give prisons legal authority to install IMSI catchers to monitor prisoners' communications and track/locate contraband devices. The use of Stingray devices in prisons isn't exactly new, although it hasn't really received much attention. Last year, Motherboard reported the Scottish prison system had been deploying cell tower spoofers for one specific reasons: to make prisoners' cell phone communications impossible. The devices blocked 2G and 3G signals, according to FOI'ed documents. (The documents also noted prisoners had already defeated the repurposed cell tower spoofers, so whatever was included in those documents is already outdated.)

In the US, prisons are using similar devices, although no one has copped to deploying a name-brand Stingray within the walls of a prison. ACLU tech head Chris Soghoian's 2014 report on Stingray devices cites a Commerce Department paper on the use of cell tower spoofers to thwart communications and locate contraband devices.

There's a twist in the UK legislation, though, that takes it past previous prison surveillance efforts. This bill would compel the cooperation of telcos, rather than make use of existing cell tower spoofer technology.

Provisions in the new bill will allow the Justice Secretary to order networks to deploy so-called “IMSI catchers” to prevent, detect or investigate the use of mobile phones in prisons.

Currently fake base stations can only be deployed under the legal provisions in the Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2012, which restrict their deployment to within prison walls – and further, only allows prison governors to deploy them.

The new proposals therefore expand the ability of the state to spy on innocent citizens by further co-opting mobile phone companies’ technical abilities.

Rather than leave this to state entities possessing state-owned devices, the bill recruits cell service providers to perform the technical heavy lifting. While prison officials would be able to deploy a device inside a prison's walls to minimize interference with outside cell phone traffic, this bill appears to encourage the deployment of fake cell towers (or the repurposing of existing cell towers) outside prison walls, which would greatly increase the possibility of disrupting legitimate cell phone use and subject a number of non-prisoners to data/communications collections by the prison.

The bill contains no wording pertaining to these two issues. There's no requirement to minimize interference or discard irrelevant data/communications. All it does is expand the UK government's power to compel participation in its prison surveillance efforts. This lack of regulatory specificity is par for the course, as the Register points out.

In effect, use of IMSI catchers is effectively unregulated, albeit legal for the state and bodies authorised by the state under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014. It remains illegal for ordinary citizens to use them.

UK law enforcement are also using IMSI catchers, but have yet to be subjected to the (belated) judicial and legislative scrutiny we see happening here in the US. Stingray use in the UK falls under legal authorities for the interception of communications, all of which were written long before police had the (portable) power to disrupt communications and harvest communications and data.

The debate over this legislation may change that. While law enforcement agencies are generally receptive to new laws that expand their power and reach, there's always the danger legislative discussions may lead to more direct oversight and/or the removal of a few layers of opacity.

Filed Under: imsi catchers, prisoners, stingrays, surveillance, uk

New FCC Boss Decides It's Cool If Phone Monopolies Want To Rip Off Inmate Families

from the man-of-the-people dept

For decades, inmate calling service (ICS) telcos have charged inmates and their families upwards of $14 per minute for phone calls without anybody giving much of a damn. Because these folks are in prison, and as we all know everybody in prison is always guilty, drumming up sympathy to convert into political momentum had proven difficult. But after decades of activism, the FCC intervened in 2013 and again in 2015, voting to cap the amount companies can charge the incarcerated for intrastate phone calls. This resulted in a firestorm of complaints from these companies, which not only get to rip off inmates, but have all too cozy and often not particularly legal relationships with law enforcement.

One of the more vocal ICS outfits, Securus, quickly sued the FCC, going so far at one point as to claim that inmates would riot if the company wasn't allowed to continue overcharging inmates and their families. Securus, Global Tel*Link and other providers challenged the FCC's intrastate rate caps in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, claiming the agency lacked the adequate authority to set caps and that the rates were too low. And for the last several years, the FCC had been working to defend its actions in court.

That all changed last month, when Donald Trump pegged Ajit Pai to head the FCC. Pai and former Commissioner Mike O'Rielly had consistently voted against defending inmates from monopoly overcharging. And just days after giving a speech in which he professed his selfless dedication to closing the digital divide, Pai effectively decided to pull the rug out from underneath FCC Deputy General Counsel David Gossett, who had been defending the FCC's action in court. In a brief filed by Gossett last week (pdf), he notes that he was ordered to no longer defend the FCC's intrastate calling cap:

"As a result of these changes in membership, the two Commissioners who dissented from the Order under review—on the grounds that, in specific respects, it exceeds the agency’s lawful authority—now comprise a majority of the Commission," Gossett wrote. Gossett is thus no longer authorized to defend the FCC's previous contention that it "has the authority to cap intrastate rates for inmate calling services" and cannot defend the FCC's assertion that it "lawfully considered industry-wide averages in setting the rate caps contained in the Order," he wrote."

Despite Pai suddenly undermining the agency's own lawyers, all is not lost quite yet:

"Gossett said he will continue to defend other parts of the commission's October 2015 order, which also lowered the price of interstate calls, those that cross state lines. Despite the FCC's various losses, a 2013 decision to set interim rate caps of 21¢ to 25¢ per minute for interstate calls has survived court challenges...The FCC's decision to stop defending the full order hurts the case for maintaining rate caps on intrastate calls in which both parties are in the same state, but it doesn't completely kill the case. The FCC is ceding 10 minutes of its allotted argument time to attorney Andrew Schwartzman, who is defending the rate caps on behalf of prisoners' rights groups."

It's worth reiterating that voice services these days cost very little to actually provide. Also keep in mind that Securus and other such companies are part of a dangerously cozy and captive market, where prisons get paid upwards of $460 million annually in "concession fees" (read: kickbacks) to score exclusive, lucrative prison contracts. In this comically absurd environment, the service pricing and quality are just about what you'd expect. Government oversight of these businesses have been virtually non-existent, in part thanks to accusations that these companies have allowed some law enforcement to monitor what should be privileged attorney client communications.

The fact that making it easier to rip off inmates was new boss Pai's first move in office should tell you plenty about just how far his dedication to "closing the digital divide" is going to go. That's before you realize that Pai's other early actions have involved preventing 9 pre-approved ISPs from helping the poor, killing an FCC plan to bring competition and cheaper rates to the cable box, and killing all FCC Net neutrality enforcement moving forward. With friends like these...

Filed Under: ajit pai, fcc, ics, inmate calling service, phone calls, prisoners
Companies: global tel*link, securus

Court Says Free Speech Rights For Prisoners Not 'Clearly Established,' Gives Pass To Retaliatory Actions By Officials

from the 'because-you-asked-wrong,-we-won't-examine-the-unexamined-issue' dept

While it's true that prisoners enjoy fewer rights than Americans who've never been convicted of a crime, their rights are by no means nonexistent. Except in some cases... where bits and pieces of protected speech vanish into the gaps between established prison guidelines and case law directly addressing the matter.

That's an admittedly unclear summation of the appeals court decision finding a federal prisoner's rights weren't violated when he was removed from a halfway house and placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for publishing an article about his prison experience.

Daniel McGowan, an environmental activist whose prosecution for "eco terrorism" was the subject of an award-winning film, was finishing his seven-year term at a Brooklyn halfway house when he wrote a HuffPost blog post that contained details about a secretive prison where he had spent years in isolation.

There was nothing particularly revealing about what he wrote: Much of it had been made public in an ongoing civil rights lawsuit he and other low-risk prisoners filed in federal court in Washington challenging their placement there, for no other reason than their political views or who they are.

Even if McGowan had published something more revealing, it still shouldn't have mattered. The law used to punish him for publishing the piece was no longer on the books at the time a prison official decided to pull McGowan from the halfway house and take him to a detention center in Brooklyn. From the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision [PDF]:

McGowan alleges that, shortly after his article appeared online, defendant Tracy Rivers, the Residential Reentry Manager at the New York Residential Reentry Management Office of the Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”), determined that he should be issued an incident report and remanded to a federal detention center. The incident report stated that McGowan had violated “BOP Program Statement no. 1480.05 dated September 21, 2000; 540.62 page 5, section (d),” which provided that “an inmate currently confined in an institution may not be employed or act as a reporter or publish under a byline” (the “Byline Regulation”).   

The problem with citing this guideline is that the Bureau of Prisons had rescinded it in 2010, (belatedly) following a 2007 Colorado district court decision finding the regulation unconstitutional. Unfortunately for McGowan, despite the regulation being nonexistent when it was used to put him in solitary confinement, the appeals court has found that there's no Second Circuit precedent clearly asserting First Amendment protections for federal prisoners.

Whether or not we would agree with that analysis is beside the point. We conclude only that, in light of the different interests at stake, our case law establishing a prisoner’s right to file a lawsuit or grievance does not clearly establish a prisoner’s right to publish an article under a byline. Indeed, the only authority that McGowan has identified that involved expression similar to that at issue in this case is a district court opinion, which, of course, is not binding.

That erases McGowan's retaliation claim. The official who made the decision to confine McGowan is entitled to qualified immunity as no "clearly established right" was violated -- just the use of federal prisoner guideline that had been removed by the BOP three years earlier.

By reaching these conclusions, the appeals court is able to dodge thornier issues -- like further clarifying the limits of First Amendment protections for federal prisoners.

As one of McGowan's lawyers, Alexander Reinert, put it, the decision was silent about how "prisoners may express themselves to the outside world."

Reinert, a law professor at Cardozo, said he's disappointed in the ruling and is considering asking for a rehearing. Ryan Grim, HuffPost's Washington bureau chief, called the decision "appalling on its face."

Nothing but stasis from the Second Circuit Appeals Court. It notes that no "clearly established right" was violated here, but passes on the opportunity to more clearly define the boundaries of prisoners' First Amendment rights. A rehearing could fix this by pushing the court towards examining the issue it overlooked during its decision, but until it does so, prisons in the Second Circuit will still be able to get away with using nonexistent guidelines to punish prisoners for otherwise protected speech.

Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, prisoners

The Reason Suspected Criminals Are Walking Free In Dallas Isn't Solely A 'New Software' Problem

from the the-all-new,-cuff-free-perp-walk dept

Any major entity switching over to new software is going to deal with some headaches, many of which will adversely affect those downstream from them. In most cases, this is little more than an inconvenience. But when it's a police department upgrading its system, it means potentially violent criminals are walking free. (additional hat tip to That Anonymous Coward, who shot this link to me roughly the same time Mike Masnick did.)

Police in Dallas are scrambling after troubles involving a new records management system caused more than 20 jail inmates, including a number of people charged with violent crimes, to be set free.

Officials have downplayed the release of these suspects, with one of them (Deputy Chief Christina Smith) comparing the freeing of people booked on domestic violence charges to fiddling with dashboard controls.

“We kind of relate it to getting a new car,” Smith said. “You needed a new car, but you’re not familiar with where all the gadgets are on it.”

Others aren't quite as sanguine.

“At this point, it does not appear to be a very user-friendly program,” said Richard Todd, the president of the Dallas Fraternal Order of Police.

In fact, Todd said, the software switch has been “a nightmare” and “a mess.”

While we reflect on the fact that it's generally the police union president's duty to deflect blame away from officers, let's take a look at what's really going on here.

Officials put some of the blame on Dallas County’s policy requiring them to file many cases within three days of an arrest. That includes domestic violence cases. Other violent offenses, such as robbery or murder, have 10-day limits.

That the system hasn't been entirely helpful in meeting the 72-hour deadline is undoubtedly true. According to Deputy Chief Smith, the new software is dealing with a backlog of filings thanks to the switchover. But perps walking free because the proper paperwork wasn't filed on time is nothing new for the Dallas Police Department.

Throughout the month of June, 224 felony defendants have been released from the Dallas County Jail because the filing deadlines were missed.

Since April, the number of felony suspects released totals 613.

Over 600 felony suspects released because cases weren't filed on time, and the police department hands the public a list of 20 suspects (some facing non-felony charges) that didn't make the 3-day filing deadline -- and then blames it on the computer system.

The filing deadlines are there for a reason -- to get police departments to comply with the "speedy trial" provision of the Constitution. Mandatory cutoffs are needed because without them, people would be held without charge until officers finally get around to filing the paperwork. If Dallas' limits seem tight, it's likely because the department has had problems in the past with adhering to reasonable deadlines.

A local judge points out that not once was he (or apparently anyone else) approached for extensions in the cases currently being blamed on the system upgrade. He also points out that he's added breathing room to certain charges in the past, something that should have ensured the police filed reports on time.

That policy is set by the county’s judges. State District Judge Rick Magnis said there is nothing inherently wrong with the longstanding rule, and police and prosecutors can request extensions.

“The law is real simple,” Magnis said. “The Constitution in America says you can’t hold people without charges.”

Magnis said he changed some of the charges with three-day requirements to 10-day limits last August at the request of the DA’s office. He said judges would have likely changed the policy for domestic violence cases — if he had been asked.

“They certainly didn’t say, ‘Hey, we’re having a problem. We need help,’” he said.

But it's not as though Intergraph is completely blameless, either. The company has a long history of failures in the law enforcement market. San Antonio's police chief calls the system Intergraph provided for his officers "disastrous." New York City criticized the company last year for problems with its 911 support (and then inexplicably signed another software deal with it). A civil grand jury in San Jose investigated Intergraph in 2004, finding the response time provided by its computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system "unacceptable."

There are two problems here -- one is the DPD's inability to meet filing deadlines with or without new software, and the other is the new software's inability to perform as needed. Both are now working against each other, creating the sort of friction that dumps suspects right back on the street. Now, law enforcement resources are being expended to round up suspects they already had detained, limiting the amount of proactive policing being performed.

The software is serving at least one useful purpose right now -- a lightning rod for criticism. But it's not solely a software issue. It's also a police issue. If the police are rounding up more people than it can process in a timely fashion (or prefer the thrill of the arrest to the mundanity of filing paperwork), it may look like it's doing something useful, but the end result is nearly indistinguishable from doing nothing. Suspects are back on the street, uncharged and unburdened by the limitations that usually come with making bail.

Filed Under: dallas, police, prisoners, release, software
Companies: intergraph

US Government Says CIA Black Site Prisoners' Memory Of Their Own Torture Is Classified And Cannot Be Revealed

from the are-they-serious? dept

I'd missed this story when it came out a few weeks ago, but thanks to Rob Hyndman for calling it to my attention. There was plenty of press around the fact that one of the guys being held by US forces in Guantanamo, and who faces trial as one of the co-conspirators for 9/11, supposedly sustained head injuries while being held by the CIA. But, that's just the tip of the iceberg of the story. Apparently Ammar al Baluchi, and some of the other prisoners are trying to argue that the US violated the UN Convention Against Torture with how they treated prisoners at the infamous black sites. But here's the crazy part: the US is arguing that the prisoners' own recollections of what was done to them cannot be used in court, because it would reveal classified information. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Yes, the US government is arguing that it can torture people (though, of course, it won't call it that), but if you try to call them on it via various courts, domestic or international, the very people who were tortured are not allowed to present evidence of their own torture, because it would reveal classified information. Classified information like how the CIA tortured people. Now, the people in this case may be very bad people, who really were involved in planning 9/11, and if that's true and proven as such, I have no problem with them being punished for their actions. But that doesn't excuse torturing them, no matter what some misguided authoritarians believe. And, furthermore, if the government is going to torture them, then they should at least have the balls to stand up in court and discuss what they did and why -- not telling the people they tortured that their own recollections of how they were tortured are considered classified material.

In the al Baluchi case, his lawyer has been using unclassified medical records to try to show that he was tortured, but remains barred from using anything beyond that.

Attorney James Connell invoked two of Baluchi’s unclassified Guantánamo medical records in a bid to argue that not everything the captives say about their treatment at the CIA’s overseas prison network from 2002 to 2006 constitutes national security secrets.

At issue is the 9/11 defense attorneys’ challenge of a military commissions protective order that, the defenders say, oblige the attorneys to make sure the prisoners don’t tell foreign courts or human rights groups their memories of what the CIA did to them during the years before they were brought here in 2006.

Another (military) lawyer representing some of the accused notes how ridiculous the situation is:

“You cannot use state secrets to classify the observations and experiences of someone who was exposed to torture,” said Army Maj. Jason Wright, Mohammed’s defense attorney, arguing that the U.S. government was using a classification regime to hide what the CIA did to the men in secret overseas prisons, out of reach of U.S. courts and the International Red Cross, from 2002 until 2006.

And yet that's exactly what the government is trying to do.

Filed Under: black sites, cia, classified, prisoners, terrorists