For over a year a prison in Virginia segregated women they perceived as masculine or butch (those with short hair or ‘baggy clothes’), in order to separate them from their ‘girlfriends’. The Associated Press and civil rights advocates questioned the practice, with the warden stating that no such move was made, as that would be unconstitutional.

Trina O’Neal, left, and Casey Lynn Toney were two of the inmates placed in the so-called “Butch Wing” at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Va. “I have been gay all my life and never have I once felt as degraded, humiliated or questioned my own sexuality, the way I look, etc., until all of this happened,” stated O’Neal, 33. “Women sent to wing 5D — also called the “little boys wing,” “locker room wing,” and “studs wing” — told the AP they were verbally harassed by staff there, and taken to the cafeteria first or last to keep them separated from other inmates. Three guards confirmed the charges.”

Read more HERE & HERE

From the UK Times Online & BoingBoing

Of the 248 inmates inside the detention facility, 44 are refusing food — but 33 of those are receiving nutrition with tubes that are forced up their noses and into their stomachs. On election night, according to one official, news of Mr Obama’s win spread across the prison facility even though no inmates had access to television that evening, and chants of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” erupted throughout the complex.

Human rights groups claim the total number of hunger strikers is higher than officials say. Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer for the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, says that more than 70 men held at the US base in Cuba are refusing to eat. She cited reports from visiting lawyers.

According to one official, most inmates are now well informed about what is happening in the outside world through a combination of watching Arabic news programmes and meetings with civilian lawyers and the International Red Cross, who are allowed to visit the facility. Most are aware of Mr Obama’s pledge to close the prison, which received its first inmates seven years ago this week. Asked why so many were on hunger strike and why the number was increasing, an official said: “This is the seventh anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees, and a week today is the inauguration of a new president. Hunger striking is an acknowledged form of protest.”

Last September I posted a story about an appeals process in motion in Missouri, fighting for the freedom to have access to abortions in prisons. As the Feministing article pointed out last year, somewhere between 30 to 50 women inmates in Missouri are pregnant any given time, so it isnt as if this is a service that doesnt need some attention pointed to it. So, this last Tuesday the appeals court voted unanmously to allow Missouri inmates access to abortions. The Dept of Corrections had previously stated that the cost and travel issues were the reason that abortions were not allowed for inmates, but it turns out that the overall cost per woman was @ $350 for fuel and to pay two guards.. Read the story at the Kansas City Star

A volunteer at a small jail library in Wisconsin has an incredible Flickr set of things he finds in the pages of library books when returned.

Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing

From Feministing

In the ongoing legal battle over whether Missouri inmates have a right to access abortion services, an appeals court panel heard arguments this week as to whether the state is required to transport incarcerated women off-site to have an abortion.

As we’ve noted before Missouri usually has from 35 to 50 pregnant inmates in any given month and surveys of incarcerated women have shown that more than 83 percent have had a history of unplanned pregnancy.

RH Reality Check sums up nicely what’s at stake here:

For more than twenty years, courts have ruled that incarcerated women retain their abortion rights, and yet for all those twenty years, jails and prisons have continued to violate those rights. (more…)

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
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Visit http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/ to learn more.

More than a dozen Muslim detainees have launched a new, long-term hunger strike at the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to protest against harsh conditions at a new maximum-security complex, known as Camp 6. The military has responded by subjecting to daily force-feeding the largest group since early 2006, when a long-running strike was broken by strapping prisoners into restraint chairs and forcing plastic tubes through their nostrils. “We don’t have any rights here, even after your Supreme Court said we had rights,” hunger striker Majid al-Joudi told a military physician. Before the use of restraint chairs, some detainees suffered sharp weight losses of more than 28 lbs. within weeks. Al-Joudi had lost 15% of his body weight in 31 days of fasting before he was transferred to a “feeding block” where hardcore hunger strikers are segregated from other prisoners.

About 160 Camp 6 inmates are generally locked in their less than 8ftx10ft cells for at least 22 hours a day, emerging only to exercise in small wire cages and shower. Besides those exercise periods, they can talk with other prisoners only by shouting through food slots in the steel doors of their cells. After a riot last May and three suicides in June, the unit was retrofitted to limit the detainees’ movement, officials said. “My wish is to die,” 27-year-old Yemeni hunger striker Adnan Farhan Abdullatif told his lawyer.

read more from Agence France-Presse

The National Lawyers Guild has posted step-by-step information about what communities and families can do when a loved one is detained by immigration authorities, especially within the first 24 hours. Also included is how you can protect yourself from future raids, facts about the ICE detention and deportation system as well as flyers and other resources.

read more at the National Immigration Project

More than 200,000 people died or vanished in Guatemala’s civil war and thousands are still executed by police and vigilantes every year. Now officials are to make public secret state files detailing the atrocities—despite death threats from government security forces.

read more at the London Guardian

The number of Guantánamo Bay prisoners participating in a hunger strike has more than doubled in recent weeks to 11, including five who are being force-fed, [presumably in restraint chairs] the U.S. military said Monday. Military officials describe the hunger strike as an attempt to build public sympathy and opposition to the detention center, which on Thursday marks its fifth anniversary amid protests calling for its closure. Among the hunger strikers are two prisoners who began refusing food in August 2005, near the start of a hunger strike that reached a peak participation of 131 that year, a Navy spokesperson said.

read more