Special US prison units fill with Muslims

Source: Yahoo News

US federal prisons for the past three years have housed special units filled disproportionately with Muslim inmates whose every communication with the outside world is strictly monitored.

Known as "Guantanamo North," the so-called Communication Management Units (CMU) were secretly opened in 2007 in maximum security prisons in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois and currently have 71 prisoners

"In the last several years, subsequent to media scrutiny of defendants' targeting of Muslims, more non-Muslims have been moved to the CMU. Guards on the units have referred to these non-Muslims prisoners as balancers," it said

Read more: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/special-us-prison-units-fill-muslims-20110306-145334-878.html

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I can't believe this
This is just so wrong and so-Nazi like
Secret prisons is just so wrong

Especially when the whites are for balancing and the rest is profiling

I don't know what to say :(

Seems unjust but they are inmates ...crime does not pay.

please tell me.

it would be a Federal crime...found guilty in a Court of Law....

WHAT is their crime?

Additionally....the question is irrational ....

FAIL.

no charge
no trial
no escape from a life-long sentence

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/07/AR2011030704871.html?hpid=topnews

yay obama!

:shrug:

The court informs the U.S. Attorney, who tells the Bureau of Prisons the inmates status. All inmate communications are then filtered through a U.S. Attorney. This is reserved for inmates deemed to be capable of causing harm. We do have some very dangerous people incarcerated, who should not be able to communicate with their allies.

...with the information required to make that determination, why could it be the US Attorney?

The U.S. Attorney handles all prosecutions at the federal level.

If they can be "moved to the CMU" after the fact, then the court is not the one initiating the transfer. The court may or may not be rubber-stamping it, but it sounds like the status is an arbitrary designation imposed outside the court.

Also, who would trust the prosecuting attorney to correctly inform the BoP of the sentence or status? "Yeah, I screwed up and the judge gave him 1-3, but you can put him away for 25 to life on a chain gang!" Hardly an impartial party relaying the sentence. Couple this with at least a few of the attorneys being Karl Rove's good-old-boys and you can add it up to a healthy distrust for the system.

Did the court also arrange for transfer of "balancers" to CMU after public critism began?

Unless you are one of the elite, in which case, it pays extremely well and without penalties!

O8)

Thanks for posting this

:(

But then, we're used to groups being singled out in this country.

exaggerations?

Apparently, there were earlier stories about possible religious profiling, with suspicions of possible religious profiling arising precisely bc of the very lopsided ratio of Muslims prisoners in the units (versus all kinds of other prisoners in the units).

But as I read the article, it seemed no one was trying to anything but CYA.

Yep. The profiling/racism/ratio issues are bothering me.

:(

who have been convicted of something. People who have been convicted of the same crime should, ideally, all be treated equally.

If some people get far worse treatment, losing rights and privileges, because of bigotry, there is No Justification for supporting this!

Most people who are in Prison are there for non-violent crimes. Many are there because we have doubled and tripled our conviction rate in the past decade in order to make the modern prison industry as huge and as profitable as it is. And we have been criminalizing and incarcerating our citizens in vast numbers to do it, usually for petty crimes, often for things that used to result in warnings or rehab or probation.

Please keep all of that in mind when you act as if everyone in prison must be some hardened career criminal who deserved any and every possible form of abuse. By allowing and accepting that kind of abuse all you are doing is letting them CREATE hardened career criminals. Will you accept that We created them when that happens? Or will you blame them even more despite all the vicious treatment and abuse we allowed them to be subjected to that dragged them down that path?

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Fearful people do awful things. I grew up with duck and cover, so I've never bought into the whole Homeland Security thing...

Including "fair" representation of their demographic group within a particular subset of the prison population.

After reading the article, I find myself quite unmoved.

Which it isn't (you've cited nothing), it would not make it morally correct.

On a side note, whenever I take in new information I find myself to be moved or unmoved by the information itself. I never consult a legal library to determine whether it's legal or not first. Who does that?

I see violent criminals being dealt with be prison officials who are responsible for keeping those prisoners safe, and for keeping others safe from them.

In contrast to your support for this segregation, I find the whole arrangement suspect. When any country sets up separate incarceration facilities for radicals, criminals, and political activists from a particular religion, I admit, I get a bit jumpy.

I find it particularly worrisome when the country engaged in this segregation is known to jail people in huge numbers without proper due process, to put prisoners in harsh jails, to abuse and torture them with impunity, to deny them their basic human rights, and to systematically and lie and mislead the public about how they are treating prisoners.

Maybe it's just me.

You should read it.

What part of the phrase "special units filled disproportionately with Muslim inmates" suggests to you this isn't segregation?

(And please don't tell me that segregation only exists if its 100 per cent segregated. That would be just too lame an argument.)

(And please don't tell me that segregation only exists if its 100 per cent segregated. That would be just too lame an argument.)

Nice job of poisoning the well, but it is not true that the isolated units contain only Muslims or that all Muslims are being isolated.

Maybe a higher percentage of the Muslim inmates are perceived to pose threats that merit that kind of isolation.

As much as I'd find it fascinating to learn what exact percentage you think is needed to justify use of the word "segregation", truth is, I'm not actually all that interested in this.

Have you any thoughts on any of the points in my posting above, to which you ostensibly replied?

:argh:

For the reference of any remaining readers, here is the posting Slackmaster feels is "utter nonsense" and not worth replying to:

When any country sets up separate incarceration facilities for radicals, criminals, and political activists from a particular religion, I admit, I get a bit jumpy.

I find it particularly worrisome when the country engaged in this segregation is known to jail people in huge numbers without proper due process, to put prisoners in harsh jails, to abuse and torture them with impunity, to deny them their basic human rights, and to systematically and lie and mislead the public about how they are treating prisoners.

- B

HTH

Seriously.

Seriously. Ditto straw person posts.

And there's no evidence on the table here that anyone has NOT actually been denied Equal Protection, either. The SCOTUS has found violations when a law or poliy, neutral on its face, impacts a minorioty adversely and disproportionately.

However, as stated, I never said anyone had been denied Equal Pro. I was merely pointing out an omission in your prior post, so don't be unkind to straw persons. They deserve to rest.

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