The Hawkins Center for Women, part of the Arkansas State prison system, was pleased to recently graduate 12 women from a six-week pilot course earlier this year. The graduates learned to shop for and prepare nutritious meals on a budget. Mark Warner, deputy warden, taught the first class and is excited about seeing cooking classes
Feb. 1st, a federal judge reviewing how Florida handles restoration of felons’ voting rights ruled it unconstitutional because the process gives the Florida Executive Clemency Board sweeping, unregulated power to decide whether to re-enfranchise former felons. Tallahassee-based district judge Mark E. Walker decided that violates applicants’ First Amendment rights of free speech and association and
Curtis Dawkins published a collection of short stories in 2016 to great critical acclaim. The Graybar Hotel was picked up by Scribner, one of the most well-known and respected publishing houses in the country, and sales have been brisk. Dawkins, who earned his MFA from Western Michigan University, seemed to be off to a great
Women have had a long, hard fight toward equality. From the power suits of the `80s to the glass ceilings of the `90s, demand for pay equality and making inroads in typically male-dominated fields, and now breaking down more barriers with this era’s powerful #metoo movement, slowly but surely the women are catching up to
A report from KilledByPolice.net, a website that tracks police killings, indicates that the number of such killings is up as compared to last year. According to the site, police have killed 884 people as of September 26, 2017. Over the same period in 2016, police had killed 867 people. The slight rise in police related
A rogue police officer from the Edison, New Jersey’s police department has been sentenced to 20 years in prison following his guilty plea to a string of violent offenses, including the firebombing of his boss’s house. Michael Dotro was an Edison cop for 10 years before his arrest and conviction. During that time, according to
Raul Olmeda, a three-and-a-half-year veteran of the NYPD, has been arrested and charged with paying an underage girl for sex and recording the incidents. According to the New York Daily News, the 40-year-old Bronx cop engaged in illegal sex acts five times between January and April 2017. Two of the trysts occurred after Olmeda’s apartment
All across the nation, a major pushback against hardline, tough-on-crime prosecutors is taking place. In the same election cycle which saw the elevation of “law and order” candidate Donald Trump to the presidency, several high-profile prosecutors have been voted out of office. In Chicago, incumbent Cook County prosecutor Anita Alvarez lost the Democratic primary to
A police officer with the Broward County, Florida sheriff’s office has been arrested and charged with illegal sexual activity involving a teenage girl. Leon Campbell, a 37-year-old deputy sheriff, was jailed on October 19, 2017, but was released the next day on a $15,000 bond. According to TheFreeThoughtProject.com (TFTP), he was charged with second-degree felony
A federal judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit challenging private prison company GEO Group’s “Voluntary Work Program,” which pays detained immigrants $1 per day for cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and otherwise running the facility in which they are held. The December 6, 2017 order rejected GEO’s arguments that federal law preempts any attempt to force