We've been to Alcatraz and done the tour - now here's a new one: The Crime and Punishment Museum in Auburn, Georgia.

Visitors to the Crime and Punishment Museum in Turner County will see the old trap door used for hangings, the steel cages that housed prisoners and the inmates' rough black-and-white striped uniforms.

It's not the cozy Southern slammer depicted in reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show." For 90 years, Turner County's prisoners lived in bleak steel cages and slept on bolted-down steel cots.

The museum highlights harsh Southern jail conditions from about 1900 through the 1990s, when many counties, under pressure from the U.S. Justice Department to provide more humane treatment, either refurbished their old jails or built new ones.

Opening day is August 27 and 20,000 to 30,000 visitors are expected yearly. Isn't it too morbid? Will anyone besides wierdos want to tour the inside--or make a special trip to see it? The local historian and spokeswoman for the local Chamber of Commerce think so--they say it will be a learning experience.

Who knew? Dell Computers has been using prison labor in its recycling program. Now, follwoing complaints by environmental advocates, the company has promised to stop.

Dell, the world's largest seller of PC's, said it had canceled its contract with Unicor, a branch of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that employs prisoners for electronics recycling and other industries.

Last week, an environmental group in California released a report criticizing Dell's reliance on prison labor. The group, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, said in its report that inmates who work at the prison recycling operation were not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act and were paid from 20 cents to $1.26 an hour.

The organization's report, entitled "Corporate Strategies for Electronics Recycling: A Tale of Two Systems," commended Hewlett-Packard for using "state of the art" practices in cooperation with the commercial recycling industry.

While promising to halt the use of prison labor, Dell still defends it:

The company said that prisoners involved in the work program, which is entirely voluntary, have a far lower rate of recidivism.

That's the best they can offer as an excuse for paying $.20 an hour?

Update: The Rocky Mountain News carries an editorial Saturday, Don't Scrimp on Prison Labor. It has nothing to do with Dell, but with the Colorado legislature's budget-cutting move of reducing prisoner wages from $.85 a day to $.60 a day for jobs such as cooking, sewing uniforms, and building furniture. As a result, the inmate-cooks at the Sterling Correctional Center staged a walkout. They were punished with solitary confinement, where they remain.

This gets our vote for injustice of the day, but it's just noon. Keep in mind the man is in jail only for violating probation in a drug possession case:

A judge has denied a request from a drug offender dying of AIDS to be released early from jail to spend his last months with his family.
Jean Felix, 41, was sent to jail until Sept. 5 for violating probation in a drug possession case. But doctors say he will die in anywhere from a few days to two months.

The defendant's lawyer made the request at the suggestion of the jail. The prosecutor didn't oppose it.

If you live in Florida, remember this Broward Circuit Judge's name: Cheryl Aleman. This decision apparently is typical of her rulings:

Since joining the bench in January 2002, Aleman has been criticized twice by the Fourth District Court of Appeal for decisions in dependency cases in which the appellate court found she was too strict with her rulings.

Maybe a law student or other person with Lexis access will post some details of those prior rulings. If we get the time, we might as well. We're curious --are Florida judges elected? Do they face retention by election?

After a nine week trial and ten days of deliberations, three former federal prison guards at Colorado's maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colorado have been convicted of inmate beatings. Four were acquitted.

The guards were known as "The Cowboys."

The seven guards were charged with organizing attacks on inmates...Some were accused of kicking shackled prisoners, smashing their heads into walls and mixing human waste into their food. Three other guards previously pleaded guilty in the case....Prosecutors said the defendants fabricated records and other evidence in a cover-up and pressured fellow officers to keep quiet.

52 acts of abuse against 20 or more inmates were included in the Indictment. The convicted guards face up to ten years in prison on each count.

Update: The convicted guards have been sentenced to three plus years in federal prison.

DNA testing exonerates yet another man after twelve years of imprisonment, this time in Michigan. Congrats to the Innocence Project at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing for their hard work in freeing Kenneth Wyniemko.

Don't miss South Knox Bubba on a case involving alleged outrageous abuse of juveniles by the Forest Hill Baptist Church and its representatives in Blount County, Tennessee. Read the whole thing.

A 19 year old college student serving a four weekend sentence for pot was raped by his cellmate last weekend. The cellmate was being held in the jail on prior sexual battery charges.

His cell mate held a ballpoint pen to the teenager's neck at about 9 p.m. Friday and then forced himself on him, [Sheriff] Troiano said. A member of the victim's family reported the incident to authorities on Saturday. Jail detention officers, who check the cells at least once an hour, heard nothing and nothing was reported to them Friday, Troiano said.

"If there was space available, absolutely we would rather keep our weekenders in a pre-designated area," Troiano said. "But because we don't have much space available we have to do with circumstances on hand."

We've been covering the growing state budget crisis as it affects the criminal justice system for several months. Fox Butterfield's article on Portland, Oregon's police department in Saturday's New York Times illuminates the issue:

Station houses now close at night, and the 960-member force is down 64 officers. With no money for overtime, undercover drug officers sometimes simply stop what they are doing — for instance, tailing suspects or executing search warrants — when their shifts end.

Because the city also has little money for public defenders, Mark Kroeker, the Portland police chief, said officers were now giving a new version of the Miranda warning when they arrested a suspect in a nonviolent crime.

"They effectively have to say, `If you can't afford a lawyer, you will be set free. Enjoy,' " Chief Kroeker said.

Other states are releasing inmates early to save money.

Maybe if we stopped putting non-violent offenders in jail in the first place, there would be money to house the remaining, dangerous ones.

We find this reprehensible. California is expanding the use of 24 hour lockdowns in prisons--as a cost-cutting measure.

The state's financially strapped corrections department is prohibiting inmates from leaving their cells at three prisons in an attempt to reduce overtime pay for guards and is considering further cost-saving restrictions at most of the system's 32 institutions, according to the chairwoman of the state Senate committee that oversees prisons.

The ACLU says the policy is unconstitutional but has no plans to sue. Too bad.

"Former Charles Manson disciple and convicted murderer Susan Atkins is suing Gov. Gray Davis, contending his policy opposing for nearly all murderers has made her a political prisoner." Atkins is right about Gov. Davis's policy.

"Soon after he took office, Gov. Gray Davis told a newspaper reporter that any inmate serving time for murder in California was not going to get out during his watch. " He's kept his word. "What the governor is doing is fundamentally unlawful -- but politically astute," said Franklin Zimring, a criminal law professor at Berkeley's Boalt School of Law. Prisoners -- especially those convicted of murder -- don't have a large voter constituency, he said. "

"The governor's policy, his critics say, has turned every murderer's sentence into life without possibility of, regardless of any mitigating factors. "

Both the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle have criticized Davis for his anti-parole stance for murderers.

Last year the Board, hardly a liberal group, granted parole to 140 inmates. Davis vetoed all but two. "When a judge issues a sentence that includes the words "with possibility of," it reflects our society's belief that a small number of criminals can be rehabilitated, as well as our constitutional right to a fair and impartial hearing. One of the important reasons for a system is to give inmates a strong incentive to follow the rules and to turn their lives around."

Nonetheless, we doubt Ms. Atkins will have any more luck than fellow former Manson devotee Leslie Van Houten, even though both of them have been model prisoners.

The Judge ordered the Board to give her [Van Houten] a new hearing and to consider her model prison behavior and not just the severity of the offense. If only the severity of the crime were considered, her sentence effectively would be a life sentence without instead of the-eligible life sentence she received. The board has been ordered to tell Van Houten what it is she must do to get if they deny her again.

[Note: The board gave Van Houten another hearing in June, 2002, and denied her for the 14th time. And last year, the California Supreme Court upheld the governor's authority to block the of convicted murderers.]

Atkins is taking a different legal approach. She has filed a federal civil rights action seeking $1.1 million in punitive and other damages, as well as her freedom. The state claims it has immunity and has filed a motion to dismiss. A hearing has been set for June 30, but the Judge has said he will rule based on the pleadings without holding oral argument. Atkins has served 33 years of her parolable life sentence. Her lawyer says if she wins any money in the lawsuit, she will donate it to crime victims.

Are any prison reformers out there? If so, we just received this email asking for information on how to address the following problem:

Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Skin or Soft Tissue Infections in Lewis Facility in Arizona DOC is a highly contageous bacteria infection that is running rampant through Lewis Facility and being denied by the health care staff as being "spider bites". One inmate has had this stapf infection for over a year.

It is to epidemic propotions and they either deny it exists or try to treat it inadequately with non effective antibiotics to avoid the treatment needed - 4 days of IV antibiotic drip with the costly appropriate antibiotic, the cultures and blood tests required. In Sept, 2002, 928 inmates had MRSA in the LA County Jail system which were originally diagnosed as spider bites and subsequently found to be MRSA by the CDC.

Lewis Facility denies epidemic and has isolated or quarantined ZERO prisoners even from outside visitation. Please advise me of who to inform of this contagion that can break through this wall of prison health indifference to the needs of the inmates and surrounding community. Thank you.

Last month we wrote about a lawsuit brought in Mississippi by the ACLU alleging that death row conditions were so bad, inmates were being driven insane.

A Judge in Mississippi did the right thing today, granting relief and ordering ten reforms, including:

annual mental health checkups, better lighting, improved toilets, insect control and ways to keep inmates cool during the summer heat.

...Davis also ordered the Corrections Department to draw up plans to upgrade the plumbing and lighting, provide cleaning materials and make sure all windows are repaired and screened to protect the inmates from insects.

...Davis said officials should also provide sneakers and a shaded area with access to water for exercise. Currently, inmates wear prison-issued flip-flops in individual pens for exercise.

Margaret Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, said the decision sets new standards for death row:

Judge Davis really did the right thing here in recognizing the basic principle in our society that we treat everybody humanely, that we don't subject anybody to torture," she said. "Even prisoners sentenced to death cannot be subjected to subhuman conditions of confinement."

Florida's Civil Commitment Center, a facility that holds prisoners convicted of sex offenses after they have served their time is entering its fifth year. But there is no evidence that it serves its intended purpose--curing the pedophile or sex offender who has already served his time.

Those who agree to treatment -- and many don't -- take lie-detector tests to squelch their biggest obstacle, denial. They smell noxious fumes, hoping to reprogram their criminal urges with mental tricks. One therapy involves fitting their genitals with a plethysmograph -- a device that monitors desire by measuring blood flow.

While such centers are growing as part of a national trend, many say they are nothing more than high priced prisons. Consider these statistics from the Florida facility: