America’s Dystopian Incarceration System, The Elimination of Due Process for College Students, Society Becoming More Compassionate
Revealing News Articles
May 7, 2024

There are almost 2 million people locked away in one of the more than 5,000 prisons or jails that dot the American landscape. While they are behind bars, these incarcerated people can be found standing in line at their prison’s commissary waiting to buy some extra food or cleaning supplies that are often marked up to prices higher than what one would pay outside of those prison walls. If they want to call a friend or family member, they need to pay for that as well. And almost everyone who works at a job while incarcerated, often for less than a dollar an hour, will find that the prison has taken a portion of their salary to pay for their cost of incarceration. States and local governments spent $82 billion on corrections in 2019. To offset these costs, policymakers have justified legislation authorizing an ever-growing body of fees to be charged to the people (and, as a result, often their families) in prison and jail. Fees for room and board—yes, literally for a thin mattress or even a plastic “boat” bed in a hallway, a toilet that may not flush, and scant, awful tasting food—are typically charged at a “per diem rate for the length of incarceration.” It is not uncommon for these fees to reach $20 to $80 a day for the entire period of incarceration. Those who work regular jobs in prisons such as maintaining the grounds, working in the kitchen, and painting the walls of the facilities earn on average between $0.14 and $0.63 an hour.

On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled final Title IX regulations, nearly two years after the administration proposed dramatic changes to how colleges handle sexual assault allegations. According to the final regulations, accused students will lose their right to a guaranteed live hearing with the opportunity to have a representative cross-examine their accuser. This is accompanied by a return to the "single-investigator model," which allows a single administrator to investigate and decide the outcome of a case. Further, under the new rules, most schools will be required to use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which directs administrators to find a student responsible if just 51 percent of the evidence points to their guilt. Schools are also no longer required to provide accused students with the full content of the evidence against them. Instead, universities are only bound to provide students with a description of the "relevant evidence," which may be provided "orally" rather than in writing. This is a stunning rollback of due process rights for accused students. Under the new regulations, a student can be found responsible for sexually assaulting a classmate because a single administrator believed there was a 51 percent chance he had committed the assault, and this conclusion can be reached without ever allowing the accused student to know the full evidence against him or providing a hearing during which he could defend himself.

Physician and author Gabor Maté is known for his insights into the imprints that trauma leaves on the mind and body—and for his compassionate guidance on healing. In Maté’s most recent work, The Myth of Normal, written with his son, Daniel Maté, he postulates that trauma—by which he means “wound,” as in the original Greek—is woven into the fabric of Western society. It is so pervasive that it is the norm. "Take the politics of neoliberalism, [bestowed by] its patron saints of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and continued under different governments of all sorts: under neoliberalism, you’ve had more social isolation, elimination of social programs, insecurity and loneliness," [said Maté]. "And each of these factors contributes to illness. In the U.S. last year [nearly] twice as many people died of drug overdoses than Americans who died in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars put together—in one year. This is strictly a result of social and economic factors. Politics has a lot to do with traumatizing people. And the other way [politics spreads trauma], which is a bit more subtle, is that very often we elect traumatized people to be our leaders, who then implement traumatizing policies." Once people realize that they were traumatized, they see there’s nothing wrong with them fundamentally. They’re not flawed, they’re not damaged goods, but something happened that made them behave in ways that were self-harming or harmful to others.

Experts in illness and healing say the only way to come to grips with pain is to look at the root of things and understand the context. Dr. Gabor Maté and V (formerly Eve Ensler) have experienced personal trauma and turned it into effective fuel for making social change. "Loneliness is as much of a risk factor for illness as smoking 15 cigarettes a day," [said Maté]. "In the Western world, there’s been an epidemic of loneliness. Twice as many Americans 10 years ago described themselves as lonely as 20 years earlier. Physiologically, loneliness works to undermine your immune system and disturb your hormones. It’s a basis for illness. Loneliness is not an accident. It’s an outcome and a factor in the way this society’s organized, run, and managed day to day. It’s an outcome of economic and political decisions made at the top over the last several decades." "Every time I have that “too much,” I know this is what I must face," [said V]. "That’s on a personal level. We have to do that on a historical level. If you don’t want to look at the history of what happened to the Indigenous people in this country, it is where you must look. If you are afraid to look at what happened to African Americans in the 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow, that is where you must look. That does not mean it’s going to feel good all the time. You’re going to go through a process of humanization. You get to be deeply compassionate and deeply human and deeply open, more than you’ve ever been before."

In the 1979 murder trial of Dan White, his legal team seemed to attempt to blame his heinous actions on junk-food consumption. The press dubbed the tactic, the "Twinkie defense." Various studies have demonstrated that consuming nutritious, whole foods rather than processed, high-fat, high-sugar foods improves mental health, mood, and academic outcomes. All heavily factor into one's likelihood of committing crime. In the 1980s. Under the direction of a nutritionist, food staff secretly altered the diet at a juvenile detention facility in Virginia to reduce the amount of refined sugar fed to inmates. Social scientist and criminologist Dr. Stephen J. Schoenthaler oversaw the trial. He found that prisoners on the better diet had a 45% lower incidence of documented disciplinary actions. This preliminary success led to a dozen trials at other correctional facilities. “In the twelve correctional institutions that we studied, through 1985, we found that there was a 47% reduction in documented offenses, infractions, and other indicators of antisocial behavior,” Schoenthaler said. Is it possible that investing in better prison nutrition would save money overall? Schoenthaler thinks so. “A single preventable infraction that leads to four months of additional jail or prison time might cost us $10,000 or more. If you look at this through the larger lens of prevention and treatment along the entire criminal justice continuum, then the financial savings would be incalculable,” he said.

Widespread sexual abuse of children in the entertainment industry must be urgently stamped out, an independent UN expert told the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, presenting hard-hitting findings and recommendations on how to end the scourge. “The sexual abuse and the exploitation of children within the entertainment industry resulting from unethical systems, structures, practices or abuse of power and authority is widespread,” said Mama Fatima Singhateh, the UN Special Rapporteur on sale and sexual exploitation of children. Child performers in the entertainment industry are exposed to sexualized, violent and aggressive environments that are unsafe for their integral development and in which they can be exposed to the consumption of addictive substances, she said the report. The Special Rapporteur found that predatory sexual behaviour, including grooming, was accepted as the norm in the entertainment industry. Moreover, perpetrators often faced no repercussions for unlawfully exercising power and authority over young and aspiring child performers. “Abusive work conditions and portrayal of sexual abuse and exploitation of children in various entertainment platforms ... objectify and instrumentalise children,” Ms. Singhateh said. “Victims and survivors have been met with silence, non-acknowledgement, lack of investigation, duress, intimidation or non-availability of reparation measures.”

In the 1960s, 15-year-old Olivia Hussey and 16-year-old Leonard Whiting secured career-making roles in a film that retells the iconic love story of "Romeo and Juliet," the first film to use actors that were similar in age to the characters in the play. They were legally children when they were filmed in the nude together; the performance can now be found on sites meant for pornography. Fifty-five years later, Hussey, now 71, and Whiting, now 72, are suing Paramount Pictures for child abuse. They claim that "Romeo and Juliet" director Franco Zefirelli assured the actors that they would be wearing flesh colored garments and would not be physically nude in the scene. This allegedly changed in the last days of filming when Zefirelli asked the actors to do the scene fully nude with makeup, according to the lawsuit. [Judy] Garland was forced to take barbiturates and other drugs and live on a death-defying diet while working with the studio. Garland wrote in an unpublished autobiography that she was constantly molested behind the scenes by older men, including Louis B. Mayer, the producer and cofounder of MGM. Alyson Stoner was made to act out a rape scene when she was only 6 years old. "At 6 years old, I enter a sterile white room where a stranger stands apathetically behind a camcorder on a tripod. On cue, I perform the scene. This morning, I'm being kidnapped and raped," Stoner wrote. She developed eating disorders — among other health problems — due to stress.

Several prominent Hollywood actors wrote letters of support for Brian Peck, the Nickelodeon dialogue coach convicted of child sexual abuse in 2004. In the Investigation Discovery documentary series "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," former "Drake & Josh" star Drake Bell accuses Peck of sexually assaulting him when he was 15, for the first time identifying himself as the victim at the center of the case. Peck was arrested in 2003 and the following year pleaded no contest to two child sexual abuse charges. But the documentary's fourth episode discusses Bell's surprise that Peck still received support in Hollywood after he was convicted. Before Peck was sentenced in 2004, several famous actors wrote letters of support for him, including James Marsden, 50, and Taran Killam, 41. In "Quiet on Set," Bell alleges that Peck, a dialogue coach on "The Amanda Show," subjected him to "extensive" and "brutal" sexual abuse. He also describes being "shocked" when he went to court for Peck's sentencing and found his "entire side of the courtroom was full" with supporters, noting there were "definitely some recognizable faces." During the sentencing, Bell ... made a statement to those supporting him. "I looked at all of them and I just said, 'How dare you?'" Bell recalled. "I said, 'You will forever have the memory of sitting in this courtroom and defending this person, and I will forever have the memory of the person you're defending violating me.'"

Corey Feldman says that the rejection of his self-financed documentary (My) Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys, in which he shared allegations of the abuse that he and his late friend, Corey Haim endured as children, left him with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). [The film] documents the sexual abuse Feldman and Haim allegedly suffered as child actors in the 1980s. Then known as "The Two Coreys," the actors starred in movies including The Goonies, Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream. Feldman publicly named Jon Grissom, Alphy Hoffman and Marty Weiss as his alleged abusers in 2017. In the documentary, Feldman alleged that Haim told him that he was sexually assaulted by Charlie Sheen while they were filming the movie Lucas in 1986 when Haim was 13. Back in 2013, journalist Barbara Walters accused Feldman of "damaging an entire industry" with his abuse allegations. "The people that did this to both me and Corey [Haim] are still working, are still out there. They're some of the richest, most powerful people in this business," Feldman explained. "And they do not want me saying what I'm saying right now." Feldman and Haim had claimed that they were "passed around to pedophiles," adding: "They would throw these parties where you'd walk in and it would be mostly kids and there would be a handful of adult men. They would also be at the film awards and children's charity functions."

Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed during a Wednesday airing of The Five that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency can use information found on the Hunter Biden laptop to blackmail President Joe Biden. Watters’ monologue was preceded by talks of the recent plea deal that the president’s son reached with federal prosecutors earlier this week to avoid jail time on three federal charges. He failed to pay $1 million in taxes and faced a gun felony count. Conservative politicians and pundits in the media have used this to claim the Department of Justice is creating a two-tiered justice system. Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump was formally indicted by the DOJ for 37 charges related to his handling of classified material. “The feds are never going to crack open the laptop as long as Joe Biden’s president. His administration is not going to investigate corruption in the Biden family. It’s just not going to happen,” Watters told the Fox panel. “Plus, the FBI in the CIA has this is blackmail. They can just dangle it in front of Joe and he has to do whatever they say or else ‘boop!'” Watters then called the former president an “outsider” in Washington. “But the bottom line is that insiders protect insiders. You said it the other day, Trump’s an outsider. He goes to prison, his people go to prison. But if you’re a Washington insider, you get to Hunter Biden treatment,” Watters concluded.

Since the late 1970s, psychologists have measured empathy by asking millions of people how much they agreed with statements such as “I feel tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” In 2011, a landmark study led by researcher Sara Konrath examined the trends in those surveys. The analysis revealed that American empathy had plummeted: The average US college student in 2009 reported feeling less empathic than 75 percent of students three decades earlier. A few months ago, [Konrath] and her colleagues published an update to their work: They found that empathy among young Americans is rebounding, reaching levels indistinguishable from the highs of the 1970s. Our biased minds tempt us to see the worst in people. The empathy decline reported 13 years ago fit that narrative and went viral. This decline is almost certainly an illusion. In other surveys, people reported on kindness and morality as they actually experience it — for instance, how they were treated by strangers, coworkers, and friends. Answers to these questions remained steady over the years. As with the decline, we might grasp for explanations for this rise. One possibility is collective suffering. Hard times can bring people together. In her beautiful book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit chronicles disasters including San Francisco’s 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. In the wake of these catastrophes, kindness ticked up, strangers stepping over lines of race and class to help one another.

[Loretta] Ross has worked at the forefront of the movement for reproductive justice. But recently she has become better known for championing “call-in culture,” a philosophy that approaches someone’s wrongdoing with accountability and, most importantly, love. In the summer of 2020 ... I felt myself crumbling. I called out snide comments by alumni of my college about Black Lives Matter protests, demanded people boycott the college newspaper ... and used Twitter to call out the behavior of fellow students. Each tactic left no room for discussion. Calling in, by contrast, asks us to always be the bigger person, even in the most hateful and painful situations. I ask Ross: Whose well-being are we prioritizing here? And why isn’t it our own? Ross tells me about another Black woman who asked the same question. “I’m confused,” Ross recalls the woman saying. “I don’t want to fall into the stereotype of the angry Black woman. But I feel like if I embrace the calling-in strategies you’re talking about, then I’m ... giving a pass to all this injustice. What should I do?” Ross responds with a question of her own: “Well, who are you inside? Go deep inside and find out who you are. What’s the emotion that you feel is true to you?” “Inside, I feel like I’m filled with love,” the woman replies. “Then, why aren’t you leading with your authentic self?” Ross asks her. Accountability and love are not mutually exclusive, Ross explains.

The Afghanistan Memory Home is a growing online archive of testimonies of endurance by ordinary Afghans during years of conflict and repressive rule under the Taliban. The virtual museum is an example of the kind of community-led initiatives that Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has described as “healing spaces” – local sites of nation-building where the traumas and resentments of war are salved through traditional forms of civic engagement based on cultural values, spirituality, and listening. These projects in reconciliation quietly persist almost everywhere people seek freedom from conflict or repression, from Afghanistan to Yemen. They often supplant the work of national transitional justice initiatives stalled by political disagreements or lack of cooperation. They also underscore that “justice isn’t just punishment or prosecution and presenting evidence against perpetrators,” said Ruben Carranza, an expert on post-conflict community healing. In South Sudan, for instance, a local peace and reconciliation process called Wunlit gave grassroots strength to a 2018 national peace agreement. Led by tribal chiefs and spiritual leaders, the “peace to peace” dialogue defused cattle raids and abductions between the Nuer and Dinka communities. In Iraq, the Ministry of Human Rights has relied on tribal, religious, and civil society leaders to help forge local support for a national dialogue on reconciliation. History has “taught us that relying solely on military force will not bring about lasting peace and stability,” Hodan Ali, a Somali presidential policy adviser, wrote. The more durable work of peace involves empowering individuals and communities to tell their own stories – and listen to each other.

As diplomats and journalists dissect every word spoken by top Israeli, Iranian and American officials for signs of a potential Israeli military strike on Irans nuclear program, an online campaign to prevent just that has gained steam in Israel. The Israel Loves Iran campaign [was launched last week by] Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry and his wife, Michal Tamir. For there to be a war between us, we must first be afraid of one another, we must hate, Edry says. Im not afraid of you. I dont hate you. I dont even know you. No Iranian ever did me harm. The site and its accompanying Facebook page are filled with photos of Israelis from all walks of life and the Iranians, We Love You slogan, with the subheader: We will never bomb you. On Friday evening, the page had almost 28,000 likes, and the campaign has raised more than $16,000 to print posters and keep the movement grow[ing]. Organizers say responses from Iranians around the world have poured in. Unfortunately, the stupid politicians in both countries are trying to separate these two rich cultures! wrote one responder. One of the more popular posts ricocheting around Facebook is of a man and woman kissing, with him holding up his Israeli passport as she flaunts her Iranian passport. Persian girls are sexy and adorable, the boyfriend wrote. Our cultures and backgrounds have never got in the way. We actually share the same ideals. According to a recent poll, [only] 19 percent of Israelis support a unilateral strike on Iran. Participant Talia Gorodess [commented], the more people join this campaign, the more, I hope, my government will think twice before doing anything foolish.

www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment
www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart
www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons
www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups
www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all