The coronavirus pandemic is being seen as a get-out-of-jail free card for imprisoned creeps. Bill Cosby is trying it. So is Michael Cohen and Lee Baca. If Jeffrey Epstein was still alive you know his swarm of lawyers would be trying to spring him, too.

The latest imprisoned creep who thinks he's too special to be locked up is Paul Manafort, who is serving 7½-years for "tax evasion, failing to report foreign bank accounts, witness tampering, and engaging in unregistered lobbying for foreign interests," as reported by Politico.

“Mr. Manafort is at a high risk of contracting COVID-19 at FCI Loretto due to his age and pre-existing health conditions, and it is imperative that Mr. Manafort be transferred to home confinement immediately in order to minimize the likelihood of Mr. Manafort contracting or spreading the potentially fatal disease,” [Manafort lawyer Kevin] Downing wrote in a letter obtained by Politico.

According to The Washington Post, "Federal prosecutors declined to comment on Manafort’s request."

Image: By Alexandria Sheriff’s Office - Alexandria, Virginia Detention Center, Public Domain, Link Read the rest

The Wild Inside follows Arizona prisoners in a program where they work to break wild horses rounded up from the desert. Read the rest

The vast majority of prisoners like Kenneth Moore held in solitary confinement for extended periods get released with almost no rehabilitation or coping skills. Frontline spent three years inside and outside Maine State Prison documenting the effects on prisoners as they try to return to society after solitary. Be warned, it is as bloody and terrifying as any horror movie. Read the rest

An update on the health status and prisoner status of Wikileaks source and U.S. whistleblower Chelsea Manning, from her supporters at Fight for the Future. Read the rest

Today, President Obama met with Americans who have received commutations on prison sentences during his presidency, and under previous administrations. Today, Obama commuted the sentences of 61 more people who were convicted of federal drug and firearm crimes. More than than a third of them were serving life in prison. Read the rest

An important story out today confirms that SecureDrop, the open source whistleblower leak system originally programmed by Aaron Swartz and maintained by Freedom of the Press Foundation, works. Read the rest

Schuylkill County Prison in Pennsylvania feeds inmates portions that are “not even enough to fill a 5-year-old child,” according to a group of prisoners who have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. It's not the only US prison starving its inmates. Legislators in some states are proposing that prisoners ought to be fed just twice a day, instead of three, and in Morgan County, Alabama, "federal authorities jailed Sheriff Greg Bartlett in 2009 after he admitted to depositing over $200,000 in state money allocated for prison meals into his personal account (in Alabama, sheriffs can keep excess state funds provided to pay for prisoners’ food)." The Marshall Project has recreated photos of meals in various US prisons. Read the rest

While most of the sterilizations were agreed to by the women, those same women also report being heavily pressured into the surgeries. For instance, one woman reports that, in 2010, a doctor tried to convince her to have a tubal ligation while she was sedated and strapped to a surgical table for a C-section. What's more, the doctors pushing for and performing sterilizations didn't have approval from the state to do the procedures at all.

And here's the part that really stood out to me: When prison staff pushed back against the doctors in 2005 and questioned the fact that women were being sterilized, it wasn't because the staff was concerned about proper oversight or whether the women were being pushed into making decisions they wouldn't have made except under duress — it was because the staff was upset the women were getting extra medical services they didn't "deserve".

During one meeting in late 2005, a few correctional officers differed with Long’s medical team over adding tubal ligations to a local hospital’s contract, Kelsey, 57, said. The officers viewed the surgeries as nonessential medical care and questioned whether the state should pay.

“They were just fed up,” Kelsey said. “They didn’t think criminals and inmates had a right to the care we were providing them and they let their personal opinions be heard.”

The service was included, however, and Kelsey said the grumbling subsided.

You can read the rest of journalist Corey Johnson's story at The Center for Investigative Reporting and The Desert Sun. Read the rest

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a basic part of game theory. Two prisoners are given the choice between informing on the other, or staying silent. They can't communicate with each other. The choices they make determine how many years in prison they both get.

This analogy/brain game is often used to demonstrate the ways that different people can work with or against each other in economic and social situations. Now, for the first time, scientists have done a study based on The Prisoner's Dilemma that used real prisoners. Instead of time off their sentences, they were given the choice of competing or cooperating to earn goodies like coffee and cigarettes.

And here's the surprise: Compared to college students, the prisoners actually cooperated with each other much more often. Read the rest