1.
Prison literature
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Prison literature is a literary genre characterized by literature that is written while the author is confined in a location against his will, such as a prison, jail or house arrest. The literature can be about prison, informed by it, or simply coincidentally written while in prison and it could be a memoir, nonfiction, or fiction. ”Hugo Grotius wrote his Commentaries while in prison. Marco Polo found time and inspiration to write his travels to China only after his return, miguel de Cervantes was held captive as a galley slave between 1575–80 and from this he drew inspiration for his novel Don Quixote. Sir Walter Raleigh compiled his History of the World, Volume 1 in a chamber in the Tower of London. Raimondo Montecuccoli wrote his aphorisms on the art of war in a Stettin prison, john Bunyan wrote The Pilgrims Progress while in jail. Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German while held at Wartburg Castle, marquis de Sade wrote prolifically during an 11-year period in the Bastille, churning out 11 novels,16 novellas,2 volumes of essays, a diary and 20 plays. Napoleon Bonaparte dictated his memoir while imprisoned on St. Helena island, oscar Wilde wrote the philosophical essay De Profundis while in Reading Gaol on charges of unnatural acts and gross indecency with other men. E. E. Cummings 1922 autobiographical novel The Enormous Room was written while imprisoned by the French during World War I on the charges of expressing anti-war sentiments in private letters home. Adolf Hitler wrote his autobiographical and political ideology book Mein Kampf while he was imprisoned after the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, in 1942 Jean Genet wrote his first novel Our Lady of the Flowers while in prison near Paris, scrawled on scraps of paper. O. Henry wrote 14 stories while in prison for embezzlement, nigerian author Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed while in prison, and wrote Sozaboy, about a young naïve imprisoned soldier. Iranian author Mahmoud Dowlatabadi wrote the 500-page Missing Soluch while imprisoned without pen or paper, entirely in his head, a number of postcolonial texts are based on the authors experiences in prison. Nigerian author Chris Abani’s book of poetry Kalakuta Republic is based on his experiences in prison, pramoedya Ananta Toer wrote the Buru Quartet while in prison in Indonesia. Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiongos prison diary titled Detained, A Prisoners Diary was published in 1981, 20th-century America brought about many pieces of prison literature. Some other 20th-century prison writers include Jim Tully, Ernest Booth, Chester Himes, Nelson Algren, Robert Lowell, George Jackson, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and Kathy Boudin. At the start of the 21st century, the United States had a rate of two million people, taking the lead with the highest imprisonment rate worldwide. While sitting in the courtroom he thought to himself, Behind me were the many generations of my American ancestry, one of the kinds of liberty those ancestors of mine fought and died for was the right of trial by jury. This was my heritage, stained sacred by their blood… London’s sacred heritage made no difference and it is stories such as London’s that make American prison literature a common and popular subtopic of the broader genre of literature. For readers of American prison memoirs, it means getting a glimpse into a world they would never otherwise experience. ”He also notes that “what happens inside the walls inevitably reflects the society outside
2.
Jack London
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John Griffith Jack London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories To Build a Fire, An Odyssey of the North, and Love of Life. He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as The Pearls of Parlay and The Heathen, London was part of the radical literary group The Crowd in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. He wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss. Jack Londons mother, Flora Wellman, was the fifth and youngest child of Pennsylvania Canal builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Marshall Wellman was descended from Thomas Wellman, an early Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Flora left Ohio and moved to the Pacific coast when her father remarried after her mother died, in San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and spiritualist, claiming to channel the spirit of a Sauk chief, Black Hawk. Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe Londons father was astrologer William Chaney, Flora Wellman was living with Chaney in San Francisco when she became pregnant. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown, most San Francisco civil records were destroyed by the extensive fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, nobody knows what name appeared on her sons birth certificate. Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to Londons mother Flora Wellman as having been his wife, according to Flora Wellmans account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4,1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child and she was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After giving birth, Flora turned the baby over for care to Virginia Prentiss and she was a major maternal figure throughout Londons life. Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, the family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where London completed public grade school. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago, Chaney concluded by saying that he was more to be pitied than London. London was devastated by his fathers letter, in the following, he quit school at Berkeley. London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco, the house burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the California Historical Society placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Although the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as Londons later accounts claimed, in 1885, London found and read Ouidas long Victorian novel Signa. He credited this as the seed of his literary success, in 1886, he went to the Oakland Public Library and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith, who encouraged his learning. In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmotts Cannery, seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate
3.
Kate Richards O'Hare
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Carrie Katherine Kate Richards OHare was an American Socialist Party activist, editor, and orator best known for her controversial imprisonment during World War I. Carrie Katherine Richards was born March 26,1876, in Ottawa County, OHare briefly worked as a teacher in Nebraska before becoming an apprentice machinist in her native Kansas. There she was drawn into socialist politics and married fellow socialist Frank P. OHare and she unsuccessfully ran as a candidate for the United States Congress in Kansas on the Socialist ticket in 1910. In the pages of the National Rip-Saw, a St. Louis-based socialist journal in the 1910s, OHare championed reforms in favor of the working class and toured the country as an orator. In 1916 the Socialist Party of Missouri named OHare its candidate for U. S. Senate, after Americas entry into World War I in 1917, OHare led the Socialist Partys Committee on War and Militarism. In prison, OHare met the anarchists Emma Goldman and Gabriella Segata Antolini, after her release and the war’s end, support for the Amnesty movement waned. OHare, unlike Socialist Party leader Eugene V, Debs and other prominent socialists at the time, was a supporter of racial segregation, and penned a 1912 pamphlet titled Nigger Equality, which attempted to appeal to Southern voters. Kate OHare divorced Frank OHare in June 1928 and married the engineer, despite her continued involvement in politics, much of OHares prominence gradually faded. Esteemed as a penal reform advocate, she served as an assistant director of the California Department of Penology in 1939–40, OHare died in Benicia, California, on January 10,1948. How I Became a Socialist Agitator, Socialist Woman, October 1908, St. Louis, MO, National Rip-Saw,1912. St. Louis, MO, National Rip-Saw,1912, St. Louis, MO, F. P. O’Hare,1919. St. Louis, MO, F. P. O’Hare,1919, neil K. Basen, Kate Richards OHare, The First Lady of American Socialism, 1901–1917, Labor History, vol. Peter J. Buckingham, Rebel Against Injustice, The Life of Frank P. OHare, columbia, MO, University of Missouri Press,1996. J. Louis Engdahl, Debs and O’Hare in Prison, philip S. Foner and Sally M. Miller, Kate Richards OHare, Selected Writings and Speeches. Baton Rouge, LA, Louisiana State University Press,1982, kathleen Kennedy, Casting An Evil Eye on the Youth of the Nation, Motherhood and Political Subversion in the Wartime Prosecution of Kate Richards OHare, 1917-1924, American Studies, vol. In JSTOR Stanley Mallach, Red Kate OHare Comes to Madison, The Politics of Free Speech, Wisconsin Magazine of History, in JSTOR Sally M. Miller, From Prairie to Prison, The Life of Social Activist Kate Richards OHare. Columbia, MO, University of Missouri Press,1993, Sally M. Miller, A Path Approaching Full Circle, Kate Richards OHare, in Jacob H. Dorn, Socialism and Christianity in Early 20th Century America. William Edward Zeuch, The Truth About the O’Hare Case, and Kate Richards O’Hare’s Address to the Court
4.
Emma Goldman
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Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist and writer. She played a role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America. Born in Kovno, Russian Empire to a Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885, attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, womens rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist, Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892 and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years followed, for inciting to riot. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth, in 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to induce persons not to register for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia, in 1923, she published a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14,1940, aged 70, during her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking rebel woman by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward womens suffrage, after decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status by a revival of interest in her life in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest. Emma Goldmans Orthodox Jewish family lived in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, Goldmans mother Taube Bienowitch had been married before, to a man with whom she had two daughters—Helena in 1860 and Lena in 1862. When her first husband died of tuberculosis, Taube was devastated, Goldman later wrote, Whatever love she had had died with the young man to whom she had been married at the age of fifteen. Taubes second marriage was arranged by her family and, as Goldman puts it and her second husband, Abraham Goldman, invested Taubes inheritance in a business that quickly failed. The ensuing hardship combined with the distance of husband and wife to make the household a tense place for the children. When Taube became pregnant, Abraham hoped desperately for a son and they eventually had three sons, but their first child was Emma. Emma Goldman was born on June 27,1869 and her father used violence to punish his children, beating them when they disobeyed him. He used a whip on Emma, the most rebellious of them and her mother provided scarce comfort, rarely calling on Abraham to tone down his beatings
5.
Alexander Berkman
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Alexander Berkman was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing. Berkman was born in Vilna in the Russian Empire and emigrated to the United States in 1888 and he lived in New York City, where he became involved in the anarchist movement. He was the lover and lifelong friend of anarchist Emma Goldman. In 1892, undertaking an act of propaganda of the deed, Berkman made an attempt to assassinate businessman Henry Clay Frick. His experience in prison was the basis for his first book, after his release from prison, Berkman served as editor of Goldmans anarchist journal, Mother Earth, and later established his own journal, The Blast. In 1917, Berkman and Goldman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiracy against the newly instated draft, after their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. In 1925, he published a book about his experiences, The Bolshevik Myth, while living in France, Berkman continued his work in support of the anarchist movement, producing the classic exposition of anarchist principles, Now and After, The ABC of Communist Anarchism. Suffering from ill health, Berkman committed suicide in 1936, Berkman was born Ovsei Osipovich Berkman in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius. He was the youngest of four children born into a well-off Jewish family, Berkmans father, Osip Berkman, was a successful leather merchant, and his mother, Yetta Berkman, came from a prosperous family. In 1877, Osip Berkman was granted the right, as a successful businessman, the family moved to Saint Petersburg, a city previously off-limits to Jews. There, Ovsei adopted the more Russian name Alexander, he was known among family and friends as Sasha, the Berkmans lived comfortably, with servants and a summer house. Berkman attended the gymnasium, where he received an education with the youth of Saint Petersburgs elite. As a youth, Berkman was influenced by the growing radicalism that was spreading among workers in the Russian capital, a wave of political assassinations culminated in a bomb blast that killed Tsar Alexander II in 1881. He became very upset when his uncle, his mothers brother Mark Natanson, was sentenced to death for revolutionary activities. Soon after Berkman turned 12, his father died, the business had to be sold, and the family lost the right to live in Saint Petersburg. Yetta moved the family to Kovno, where her brother Nathan lived, Berkman had shown great promise as a student at the gymnasium, but his studies began to falter as he spent his time reading novels. One of the books that interested him was Ivan Turgenevs novel Fathers and Sons, soon, Berkman joined a group at school that was reading and discussing revolutionary literature, which was prohibited under the new tsar, Alexander III. He distributed banned material to students and wrote some radical tracts of his own
6.
Donald Lowrie
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Donald Lowrie was an American newspaper writer and author. Accounts on Lowries life prior to imprisonment are scarce, recently unearthed information shows that his birth name was Charles Donald Lowrie and he was born on March 26,1875, probably in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eventually, Lowrie was out of money and without shelter, after three days, Lowrie had exhausted his resources in looking for work and determined that either suicide or crime was the only way out. Having a nickel in his pocket, he decided to flip a coin, if tails, Lowrie, living in San Francisco at the time, would throw himself into the San Francisco Bay, if heads, Lowrie would commit a crime. The coin turned heads and two hours later Lowrie found himself entering the house of a family, stealing a sleeping mans watch. Within a short time, Lowrie was arrested for burglary and sent to jail, convicted of burglary, Lowrie was sentenced to fifteen years in San Quentin State Prison, where he remained for ten years until his early release on good behavior in 1911. Another five years of parole ahead, Lowrie started to write down his prison story under the auspices of the San Francisco Bulletin, Lowries best known literary work, My Life in Prison, was published in 1912. Stories in the book were not self-glorifying but rather plain and descriptive accounts of life in prison, Lowries simple writing style helped in obtaining confidence and understanding among his audience. The portrayal of the desolate and humiliating conditions prisoners had to face at the time was a theme of My Life in Prison. My Life Out of Prison was Lowries sequel published in 1915, with his writings, Lowrie is said to have inspired Thomas Mott Osborne, an industrialist from New York, in prison reform work. During Osbornes wardenship at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Lowrie even visited and helped institute new methods and his writings are also said to have been one of the causes of capital punishment laws of the time being repealed. In addition, a bureau for the relief and guidance of ex-convicts was opened at his suggestion, Lowrie persistently voiced his dissatisfaction with the existing system of punishment. According to him, punishment was a cure for human weakness. On December 4,1917, Lowrie married twenty-five-year-old Mildred Irene Dean in Brooklyn, Mildred Lowrie, a native of Danbury, Connecticut bore him one son, Charles Donald Lowrie, Jr. After serving a few months for another burglary conviction, Lowrie was released on parole from Arizona Penitentiary, two weeks later, on June 24,1925, he died at the Phoenix, AZ home of a local architect, R. B. Dick Redington, who housed him at the time, california Legacy Project | Radio | Scripts | Lowrie
7.
Thomas Mott Osborne
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Thomas Mott Osborne was an American prison administrator, prison reformer, industrialist and New York State political reformer. He was also known as Tom Brown, a name he gave himself when he spent a week in the Auburn State Prison in New York state in 1913. He was made of the stuff of martyrs, to many people perhaps ridiculous. He was born on September 23,1859, in Auburn, New York, Auburn was a center of progressive political activity, particularly anti-slavery activism before and during the American Civil War. Marthas home in Auburn was part of the Underground Railroad where she harbored fugitive slaves, both women frequented the Osborne household during Thomas Mott Osbornes upbringing. The third of the Coffin sisters, Ellen, or as she is known to her descendants, Nella, Thomas Mott Osbornes mother, Eliza Wright Osborne, wife of David Munson Osborne, was also a feminist leader, though of lesser note. Thomas Osborne attended Adams Academy in Quincy, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard University with honors in 1884, upon David Munson Osbornes death in 1886, Thomas Osborne became president of his familys manufacturing company, DM Osborne & Co. He married Agnes Devens in 1886 and his wife died of cancer just a few months after giving birth to their fourth son on March 26,1896. Thomas Mott Osborne served on the Auburn School Board from 1885 to 1896, at the New York state election,1898, he ran on the Independent Citizens ticket for Lieutenant Governor of New York. Osborne was elected mayor of Auburn in 1902, serving two terms and he was known to disguise himself and visit local taverns to eavesdrop on conversations to get a sense of public opinion. By 1903 DM Osborne & Co. grew to become North Americas third largest producer of agricultural implements, in 1903, the family sold the company to the International Harvester Trust, leaving Osborne to pursue social reform and public service. International Harvester took over management in 1905, in 1905 he launched a daily newspaper, the Auburn Daily Citizen, as a progressive voice to counter the citys dominant daily, the Auburn Daily Advertiser. In 1907, Governor Charles Evans Hughes selected Osborne to serve as commissioner on the states first New York Public Service Commission. His report to the commission, however, was instrumental in persuading the panel to order railroad staff maintained. Between 1910 and 1912, Osborne teamed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a New York State senator, FDR, Howe, and Osborne were upstate New Yorks best-known foes of Tammany Hall and William Randolph Hearst. In 1912, sick in bed, Osborne was inspired to read My Life In Prison by Donald Lowrie, the following year, he persuaded New York Governor William Sulzer to appoint him chairman of a new State Commission on Prison Reform. On behalf of the commission that year he entered the Auburn Prison, now Auburn Correctional Facility, on September 29, Osborne began six days of imprisonment as Tom Brown, Inmate 33, 333X. He recorded his experiences in Within Prison Walls and its publication in 1914 made him the most prominent prison reform crusader of his day
8.
Sing Sing
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It is located about 30 miles north of New York City on the east bank of the Hudson River. In 1970, the name of the facility was changed to Ossining Correctional Facility but, in 1985, Sing Sing was derived from the name of a Native American Nation, Sinck Sinck, from whom the land was purchased in 1685. Sing Sing prison confines about 1,700 prisoners, there are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block into a time specific museum. The prison property is bisected by the Metro-North Railroads four-track Hudson Line, Sing Sing was the fifth prison built by New York State. The first prison, Newgate Prison, was built in 1797 in Greenwich Village, in 1824, the New York Legislature gave Elam Lynds, warden of Auburn Prison and a former Army captain, the task of constructing a new, more modern prison. The legislature appropriated $20,100 to purchase the 130-acre site, Lynds hand-selected 100 inmates from the Auburn prison for transfer and had them transported by barge via the Erie Canal and down the Hudson River to freighters. On their arrival on May 14, the site was without a place to them or a wall to enclose them, temporary barracks. When it was opened in 1826, Sing Sing was considered a model prison, because it turned a profit for the state, Lynds employed the Auburn system, which imposed absolute silence on the prisoners, the system was enforced by whipping and other brutal punishments. Thomas Mott Osbornes tenure as warden of Sing Sing prison was brief, Osborne arrived in 1914 with a reputation as a radical prison reformer. His report of a week-long incognito stay inside New Yorks Auburn Prison indicted traditional prison administration in merciless detail, Prisoners who had bribed officers and intimidated other inmates lost their privileges under Osbornes regime. One of them conspired with powerful allies to destroy Osbornes reputation, even succeeding in getting him indicted for a variety of crimes. After Osborne triumphed in court, his return to Sing Sing was a cause for celebration by the inmates. Another notable warden was Lewis Lawes and he was offered the position of warden in 1919, accepted in January 1920, and remained for 20 years as Sing Sings warden. While warden, Lawes brought about reforms and turned what was described as an old hellhole into a prison with sports teams, educational programs, new methods of discipline. Several new buildings were constructed during the years Lawes was warden. Lawes retired in 1941 after 21 years as warden and died six years later, in 1943, the old cellblock was finally closed and the metal bars and doors were donated to the war effort. In 1989, the institution was accredited for the first time by the American Correctional Association, today, Sing Sing houses more than 2,000 inmates, with about 1,000 people working there and 5,000 visitors per month. The original 1825 cellblock is no longer used and in 2002 plans were announced to turn this into a museum, in April 2011 there were talks of closing the prison in favor of real estate
9.
H. L. Mencken
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Henry Louis Mencken was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the Sage of Baltimore, he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and he commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the Monkey Trial, as a scholar, Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. Mencken was a supporter of scientific progress, skeptical of economic theories, Mencken opposed American entry into World War I and World War II. His diary indicates that he was a racist and privately used coarse language and slurs to describe various ethnic, Mencken also at times seemed to show a genuine enthusiasm for militarism, though never in its American form. War is a thing, he once wrote, because it is honest. A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid, Menckens longtime home in the Union Square neighborhood of West Baltimore was turned into a city museum, the H. L. Mencken House. His papers were distributed among various city and university libraries, with the largest collection held in the Mencken Room at the branch of Baltimores Enoch Pratt Free Library. Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 12,1880 and he was the son of Anna Margaret and August Mencken, Sr. a cigar factory owner. When Henry was three, his family moved into a new home at 1524 Hollins Street facing Union Square park in the Union Square neighborhood of old West Baltimore, apart from five years of married life, Mencken was to live in that house for the rest of his life. In his best-selling memoir Happy Days, he described his childhood in Baltimore as placid, secure, uneventful, when he was nine years old, he read Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn, which he later described as the most stupendous event in my life. He became determined to become a writer and read voraciously, in one winter while in high school he read Thackeray and then proceeded backward to Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Johnson and the other magnificos of the Eighteenth century. He read the entire canon of Shakespeare and became an ardent fan of Kipling, the site today is the War Memorial and City Hall Plaza laid out in 1926 in memory of World War I dead. At fifteen, in June 1896, he graduated as valedictorian from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, BPI was a mathematics, technical and science-oriented public high school, founded in 1883, which was then located on old Courtland Street just north of East Saratoga Street. This location is today the east side of St. Paul Street in St. Paul Place and he worked for three years in his fathers cigar factory. He disliked the work, especially the sales aspect of it, in early 1898 he took a class in writing at one of the countrys first correspondence schools, the Cosmopolitan University. This was to be the entirety of Menckens formal education in journalism, upon his fathers death a few days after Christmas in the same year, the business reverted to his uncle, and Mencken was free to pursue his career in journalism. He had applied in February 1899 to the Morning Herald newspaper and had hired as a part-timer there
10.
The American Mercury
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The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken, the magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s. After a change in ownership in the 1940s, the magazine attracted conservative writers, a second change in ownership a decade later turned the magazine into a virulently anti-Semitic publication. It was published monthly in New York City, the magazine went out of business in 1981, having spent the last 25 years of its existence in decline and controversy. H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan had previously edited The Smart Set literary magazine, with their mutual book publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. The American Mercury is almost perfect for that purpose, what will go on inside the tent is another story. You will recall that the late P. T. Barnum got away with burlesque shows by calling them moral lectures. Simeon Strunsky in The New York Times observed that, The dead hand of the yokelry on the instinct for beauty cannot be so if the handsome green. The quote was used on the form for the magazine during its heyday. The January 1924 issue sold more than 15,000 copies and by the end of the first year, in early 1928 the circulation reached a height of over 84,000, but declined steadily after the stock market crash of 1929. The magazine published writing by Conrad Aiken, Sherwood Anderson, James Branch Cabell, W. J. Cash, Thomas Craven, Clarence Darrow, W. E. B. Nathan provided theater criticism, and Mencken wrote the Editorial Notes and The Library, the magazine published other writers, from newspapermen and academics to convicts and taxi drivers, but its primary emphasis soon became non-fiction and usually satirical essays. Its Americana section—containing items clipped from newspapers and other magazines nationwide—became a much-imitated feature, Mencken spiced the package with aphorisms printed in the magazines margins whenever space allowed. H. L. Mencken rarely flinched from controversy and he was in the thick of it after the Mercurys April 1926 issue published Hatrack, a chapter from Herbert Asburys Up From Methodism. Shunned by the good people, she returned to her sinful life. That provoked Mencken to visit Boston and personally sell Chase a copy of the magazine, tried and acquitted, Mencken was praised for his courageous stance for freedom of the press, it cost him more than $20,000 in legal fees, lost revenue, and lost advertising. Mencken sued Chase and won, a judge ruling the ministers organization committed an illegal restraint of trade. He held that prosecutors, not private activists, should censor literature, but following the trial, the Solicitor of the U. S
11.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
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I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is an American Pre-Code crime-drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Paul Muni as a wrongfully convicted convict on a chain gang who escapes to Chicago. It was released in November 10,1932, the film received positive reviews and three Academy Award Nominations. The true life story was recreated in the television movie. In 1991, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, sergeant James Allen returns to civilian life after World War I but his war experience makes him restless. His family feels he should be grateful for a job as an office clerk. He leaves home to work on any sort of project. Wandering and sinking into poverty, he becomes caught up in a robbery and is sentenced to ten years on a brutal Southern chain gang. He escapes and makes his way to Chicago, where he becomes a success in the construction business and he becomes involved with the proprietor of his boardinghouse, Marie Woods, who discovers his secret and blackmails him into an unhappy marriage. He then meets and falls in love with Helen, when he asks his wife for a divorce, she betrays him to the authorities. He is offered a pardon if he turn himself in, Allen accepts. In the end, Allen visits Helen in the shadows on the street and she asks, Cant you tell me where youre going. James repeatedly shakes his head in answer as he backs away, finally Helen says, But you must, Jim. James face is seen in the surrounding darkness, and he replies, I steal
12.
Chester Himes
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Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works include If He Hollers Let Him Go and the Harlem Detective series, in 1958 he won Frances Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. When he was about 12 years old, his father took a job in the Arkansas Delta at Branch Normal College. He had misbehaved and his mother made him sit out a demonstration that he and his brother. Working alone, Joseph mixed the chemicals, they exploded in his face, rushed to the nearest hospital, the blinded boy was refused treatment because of Jim Crow laws. That one moment in my life hurt me as much as all the put together. I had never separated from him and that moment was shocking, shattering. White clad doctors and attendants appeared, I remember sitting in the back seat with Joe watching the pantomime being enacted in the cars bright lights. A white man was refusing, my father was pleading, dejectedly my father turned away, he was crying like a baby. My mother was fumbling in her handbag for a handkerchief, I hoped it was for a pistol, the family later settled in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents marriage was unhappy and eventually ended in divorce, Himess family left Pine Bluff and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended East High School. He attended Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where he became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, in late 1928 he was arrested and sentenced to jail and hard labor for 20 to 25 years for armed robbery and sent to Ohio Penitentiary. In prison, he wrote stories and had them published in national magazines. He stated that writing in prison and being published was a way to respect from guards and fellow inmates. His first stories appeared in 1931 in The Bronzeman and, starting in 1934, in 1934 Himes was transferred to London Prison Farm and in April 1936 was released on parole into his mothers custody. Following his release he worked at part-time jobs while continuing to write, during this period he came into contact with Langston Hughes, who facilitated Himess contacts with the world of literature and publishing. In 1936 Himes married Jean Johnson and he also provided an analysis of the Zoot Suit Riots for The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP. Warner heard about him and said, I dont want no niggers on this lot, Himes later wrote in his autobiography, Up to the age of thirty-one I had been hurt emotionally, spiritually and physically as much as thirty-one years can bear
13.
Nelson Algren
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Nelson Algren was an American writer. He may be best known for The Man with the Golden Arm, according to Harold Augenbraum, in the late 1940s and early 1950s he was one of the best known literary writers in America. The lover of French writer Simone de Beauvoir, he was featured in her novel The Mandarins, set in Paris and he is considered a bard of the down-and-outer, based on this book and his novel A Walk on the Wild Side. The latter was adapted as a play of the same name, Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three, he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois, where lived in a working-class. His father was the son of a Swedish convert to Judaism, when he was young, Algrens family lived at 7139 S. South Park Avenue in the Greater Grand Crossing section of the South Side, when he was eight, his family moved from the far South Side to an apartment at 4834 N. Troy Street, in the North Side neighborhood of Albany Park. His father worked as an auto mechanic nearby on North Kedzie Avenue and they were fans of the North Side Chicago Cubs. This teasing increased when White Sox players were implicated in the 1920 Black Sox Scandal, despite living most of his life on the North Side, Algren never changed his affiliation and remained a White Sox fan. During his time at the University of Illinois, he wrote for the Daily Illini student newspaper, Algren wrote his first story, So Help Me, in 1933, while he was in Texas working at a gas station. Before returning to Chicago, he was stealing a typewriter from an empty classroom at Sul Ross State University in Alpine. He boarded a train for his getaway but was apprehended and returned to Alpine and he was held in jail for nearly five months and faced a possible additional three years in prison. He was released, but the incident made an impression on him. It deepened his identification with outsiders, has-beens, and the failures who later populated his fictional world. In 1935 Algren won the first of his three O. Henry Awards for his story, The Brothers House. The story was first published in Story Magazine and was reprinted in an anthology of O. Henry Award winners and his first novel, Somebody in Boots, was published in 1935. Algren later dismissed the book as primitive and politically naive, claiming he infused it with Marxist ideas he little understood, the book was not a success and went out of print. Algren later said that was for the best, after he reworked the material into his 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side and his second novel, Never Come Morning, portrayed the dead-end life of a doomed young Polish-American criminal
14.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between human rights activist Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. Haley coauthored the autobiography based on a series of interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm Xs 1965 assassination. The Autobiography is a conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm Xs philosophy of black pride, black nationalism. After the leader was killed, Haley wrote the books epilogue and he described their collaborative process and the events at the end of Malcolm Xs life. While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the books publication regarded Haley as the books ghostwriter and they say he intentionally muted his authorial voice to create the effect of Malcolm X speaking directly to readers. Haley influenced some of Malcolm Xs literary choices, for example, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam during the period when he was working on the book with Haley. Rather than rewriting earlier chapters as a polemic against the Nation which Malcolm X had rejected, Haley persuaded him to favor a style of suspense, according to Manning Marable, Haley was particularly worried about what he viewed as Malcolm Xs anti-Semitism and he rewrote material to eliminate it. When the Autobiography was published, the New York Times reviewer described it as a brilliant, painful, in 1967, historian John William Ward wrote that it would become a classic American autobiography. In 1998, Time named The Autobiography of Malcolm X as one of ten required reading nonfiction books, james Baldwin and Arnold Perl adapted the book as a film, their screenplay provided the source material for Spike Lees 1992 film Malcolm X. Published posthumously, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an account of the life of Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, littles young adulthood in Boston and New York City is covered, as well as his involvement in organized crime. This led to his arrest and subsequent eight- to ten-year prison sentence, the book addresses his ministry with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam and his emergence as the organizations national spokesman. It documents his disillusionment with and departure from the Nation of Islam in March 1964, his pilgrimage to Mecca, which catalyzed his conversion to orthodox Sunni Islam, Malcolm X was assassinated in New Yorks Audubon Ballroom in February 1965, before they finished the book. The Autobiography is a conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm Xs philosophy of black pride, black nationalism. Literary critic Arnold Rampersad and Malcolm X biographer Michael Eric Dyson agree that the narrative of the Autobiography resembles the Augustinian approach to confessional narrative. The two first met in 1959, when Haley wrote an article about the Nation of Islam for Readers Digest, in 1963 the Doubleday publishing company asked Haley to write a book about the life of Malcolm X. American writer and literary critic Harold Bloom writes, When Haley approached Malcolm with the idea, Haley recalls, It was one of the few times I have ever seen him uncertain. Bloom writes, Malcolm was critical of Haleys middle-class status, as well as his Christian beliefs, when work on the Autobiography began in early 1963, Haley grew frustrated with Malcolm Xs tendency to speak only about Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. And I will never, ever forget how he stopped almost as if he was suspended like a marionette, and he said, I remember the kind of dresses she used to wear
15.
Alex Haley
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Alexander Murray Palmer Alex Haley was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book Roots, The Saga of an American Family. ABC adapted the book as a miniseries of the same name. In the United States the book and miniseries raised the awareness of African American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy. Haleys first book was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, a collaboration through numerous interviews with the subject. He was working on a family history novel at his death. Haley had requested that David Stevens, a screenwriter, complete it and it was adapted as a film of the same name released in 1992. Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, on August 11,1921, Haley lived with his family in Henning, Tennessee, before returning to Ithaca with his family when he was five years old. Haleys father was Simon Haley, a professor of agriculture at Alabama A&M University, and his mother was Bertha George Haley, the family had African American, Mandinka, Cherokee, Scottish, and Scots-Irish roots. The younger Haley always spoke proudly of his father and the obstacles of racism he had overcome, the following year he returned to his father and stepmother to tell them he had withdrawn from college. His father felt that Alex needed discipline and growth, and convinced him to enlist in the military when he turned 18, on May 24,1939, Alex Haley began what became a 20-year career in the United States Coast Guard. Haley traced back his maternal ancestry, through research, to Jufureh. Haley enlisted as a mess attendant, later he was promoted to the rate of petty officer third-class in the rating of steward, one of the few ratings open to African Americans at that time. It was during his service in the Pacific theater of operations that Haley taught himself the craft of writing stories, during his enlistment other sailors often paid him to write love letters to their girlfriends. He said that the greatest enemy he and his crew faced during their long voyages was not the Japanese forces, after World War II, Haley petitioned the U. S. Coast Guard to allow him to transfer into the field of journalism. By 1949 he had become a petty officer first-class in the rating of journalist and he later advanced to chief petty officer and held this grade until his retirement from the Coast Guard in 1959. He was the first chief journalist in the Coast Guard, the rating having been created for him in recognition of his literary ability. Further, the Republic of Korea awarded him the War Service Medal 10 years after he died, after retiring from the U. S. Coast Guard, Haley began another phase of his journalism career. He eventually became an editor for Readers Digest magazine
16.
Eldridge Cleaver
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Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party. His 1968 book, Soul On Ice, is a collection of essays that, at the time of its publication, was praised by The New York Times Book Review as brilliant and revealing. As editor of the official Panthers newspaper, The Black Panther, Cleavers influence on the direction of the Party was rivaled only by founders Huey P. Newton, Cleaver and Newton eventually fell out with each other, resulting in a split that weakened the party. Cleaver wrote in Soul on Ice, If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America. Born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, as a child, Cleaver moved with his family to Phoenix and he was the son of Leroy Cleaver and Thelma Hattie Robinson. He had four siblings, Wilhelima Marie, Helen Grace, James Weldon, as a teenager, he was involved in petty crime and spent time in youth detention centers. At the age of 18, he was convicted of a drug charge. In 1958, he was convicted of rape and assault with intent to murder and eventually served time in Folsom, while in prison, he was given a copy of the Communist Manifesto. Cleaver petitioned for habeas corpus to the Solano County Court and was granted it along with a release of a $50,000 bail, Eldridge Cleaver was released from prison on December 12,1966. He was writing for Ramparts magazine and organizing efforts to revitalize the Organization of Afro-American Unity, at this time, President John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X were dead. The Black Panther Party was only two months old and he then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson. What initially attracted Cleaver to the Panthers, as opposed to other prominent groups, was their commitment to armed struggle, in 1967, Eldridge Cleaver, along with Marvin X, Ed Bullins, and Ethna Wyatt, formed the Black House political/cultural center in San Francisco. The same year, he married Kathleen Neal Cleaver with whom he would have son Ahmad Maceo Eldridge, Cleaver was a presidential candidate in 1968 on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party. Having been born on August 31,1935, Cleaver would not have been the requisite 35 years of age more than a year after Inauguration Day 1969. Courts in both Hawaii and New York held that he could be excluded from the ballot because he could not possibly meet the Constitutional criteria, Cleaver and his running mate Judith Mage received 36,571 votes. Also in 1968, Cleaver led an ambush of Oakland police officers, in the aftermath of the ambush, Cleaver was wounded and 17-year-old Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed. The eight Panthers who ambushed the police department had two objectives, to break Newton out of jail and to police officers. In 1980, he claimed that he had led the Panther group on an ambush of the police officers
17.
George Jackson (activist)
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George Lester Jackson was an African-American activist, Marxist, author, a member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family while incarcerated. Jackson achieved fame as one of the Soledad Brothers and was shot dead by guards in San Quentin Prison following an unsuccessful escape attempt. Born in Chicago, Jackson was the son of Lester. He spent time in the California Youth Authority Corrections facility in Paso Robles due to several juvenile convictions including armed robbery, assault, in 1961, he was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to serve one year to life in prison. During his first years at San Quentin State Prison, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity, such behavior, in turn, was used to justify his continued incarceration on an indeterminate sentence. He was described by prison officials as egocentric and anti-social, in 1966, Jackson met and befriended W. L. Nolen who introduced him to Marxist and Maoist ideology, the two founded the Black Guerrilla Family in 1966 based on Marxist and Maoist political thought. In speaking of his transformation, Jackson remarked I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels. As Jacksons disciplinary infractions grew he spent more time in solitary confinement and he amassed a following of inmates, including some whites and Hispanics, but most enthusiastically with other black inmates. According to David Horowitz, Jackson joined the Black Panther Party after meeting Huey P. Newton in jail, in January 1969, Jackson and Nolen were transferred from San Quentin to Soledad prison. On January 13,1970, Nolen and two black inmates were shot to death by corrections officer Opie G. Miller during a yard riot with members of the Aryan Brotherhood. ”Mills was purportedly killed in retaliation for the shooting deaths of three inmates by Miller, the previous year. Miller was not convicted of any crime, a grand jury ruling his actions to be justifiable homicide, on August 7,1970, George Jacksons 17-year-old brother Jonathan Jackson burst into a Marin County courtroom with an automatic weapon, freed prisoners James McClain, William A. Christmas and Ruchell Magee, and took Judge Harold Haley, Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas, Haley, Jackson, Christmas and McClain were killed as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse. Eyewitness testimony suggests Haley was hit by fire discharged from a shotgun that had been fastened to his neck with adhesive tape by the abductors. Thomas, Magee and one of the jurors were wounded, angela Davis, accused of buying the weapons, was later acquitted of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. A possible explanation for the gun connection is that Jonathan Jackson was her bodyguard, Magee, the sole survivor among the attackers, eventually pleaded guilty to aggravated kidnapping and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975. Magee is currently imprisoned in Corcoran State Prison and has lost numerous bids for parole, on August 21,1971, Jackson met with attorney Stephen Bingham on a civil lawsuit Jackson had filed against the California Department of Corrections. After the meeting, Jackson was escorted by officer Urbano Rubico back to his cell when Rubico noticed an object in Jackson’s hair, later revealed to be a wig
18.
Angela Davis
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Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, academic, and author. Davis was prosecuted for conspiracy involving the 1970 armed take-over of a Marin County, California, courtroom and she was acquitted in a federal trial. She was a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness Department and her research interests are feminism, African-American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. She co-founded Critical Resistance, a working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. Daviss membership in the CPUSA led California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1969 to attempt to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California, during the 1980s, she was twice a candidate for Vice President on the CPUSA ticket. She supported the governments of the Soviet Bloc for several decades, Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Davis occasionally spent time on her uncles farm and with friends in New York City and her family included brothers Ben and Reginald and sister Fania. Ben played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s, Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a segregated black elementary school, later she attended Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School in Birmingham. During this time Davis mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was an officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. It was trying to build alliances among African Americans in the South, consequently, Davis grew up surrounded by communist organizers and thinkers who significantly influenced her intellectual development. Davis was involved in her church as a child, she was a member in her church youth group. Davis attributes much of her involvement to her involvement as a young girl in Birmingham with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America. She earned many badges and certificates, she participated in Girl Scouts 1959 national roundup in Colorado. As a Girl Scout she marched and picketed to protest racial segregation in Birmingham, by her junior year in high school, Davis had applied to and was accepted at an American Friends Service Committee program that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. She chose Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village, there she was introduced to socialism and communism, and recruited by a Communist youth group, Advance. Davis was awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts and she initially felt alienated by the isolation of the campus, but she soon made friends with foreign students. She encountered the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in a 2007 television interview, she said, Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary. She worked part-time to earn money to travel to France and Switzerland before she attended the eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki
19.
Hunger strike
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Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not solid food. In cases where an entity has or is able to obtain custody of the hunger striker, fasting was used as a method of protesting injustice in pre-Christian Ireland, where it was known as Troscadh or Cealachan. It was detailed in the contemporary civic codes, and had rules by which it could be used. The fast was often carried out on the doorstep of the home of the offender, scholars speculate this was due to the high importance the culture placed on hospitality. Allowing a person to die at ones doorstep, for a wrong of which one was accused, was considered a great dishonor, others say that the practice was to fast for one whole night, as there is no evidence of people fasting to death in pre-Christian Ireland. The fasts were primarily undertaken to recover debts or get justice for a perceived wrong, there are legends of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, using the hunger strike as well. This Indian practice is ancient, going back to around 400 to 750 BC and this can be known since it appears in the Ramayana, which was composed around that time. The actual mention appears in the Ayodhya kanda, in Sarga 103, bharata has gone to ask the exiled Rama to come back and rule the kingdom. Bharata tries many arguments, none of which work, at which point he decides to do a hunger strike and he announces his intention to fast, calls for his charioteer Sumantra to bring him some sacred Kusha grass, and lies down upon the grass in front of Rama. Rama, however, is able to persuade him to abandon the attempt. Rama mentions it as a practice of the brahmanas, in the first three days, the body is still using energy from glucose. After that, the liver starts processing body fat, in a process called ketosis, after depleting fat, the body enters a starvation mode. At this point the body mines the muscles and vital organs for energy, there are examples of hunger strikers dying after 46 to 73 days of strike. In the early 20th century suffragettes frequently endured hunger strikes in British prisons, marion Dunlop was the first in 1909. She was released, as the authorities did not want her to become a martyr, other suffragettes in prison also undertook hunger strikes. The prison authorities subjected them to force-feeding, which the suffragettes categorized as a form of torture, in 1913 the Prisoners Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act changed policy. Hunger strikes were tolerated but prisoners were released when they became sick, when they had recovered, the suffragettes were taken back to prison to finish their sentences. Like their British counterparts, American suffragettes also used this method of political protest, Hunger strikes have deep roots in Irish society and in the Irish psyche
20.
Attica Correctional Facility
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The Attica Correctional Facility is a maximum security/supermax New York State prison in the town of Attica, New York, operated by the New York State Department of Correctional Services. After it was constructed in the 1930s, it held many of the most dangerous criminals of the time, a tear gas system installed in the mess hall and industry areas has been used to quell conflicts in these areas. The prison now holds many inmates who are serving various types of sentences, Attica was the site of a prison riot in 1971 which resulted in 43 deaths, of which 33 were convicts and ten were correctional officers and civilian employees. One officer died at the hands of the convicts in the riots early stages. The rest died by gunfire from state troopers and other retired officers, David Berkowitz, better known as Son of Sam, serial killer who confessed to killing six people and wounding several others in New York City during the late 1970s. Since becoming a Christian, Berkowitz has stated he not want to be paroled. Berkowitz is now housed at Sullivan Correctional Facility, rap Brown, Black Panther Party leader, served a sentence in Attica from 1971 to 1976. Mark David Chapman, who pleaded guilty for murdering John Lennon in 1980, Chapman was sentenced to 20 years-to-life and has been denied parole nine times amidst campaigns against his release. Chapman is now housed at the Wende Correctional Facility, edward Cummiskey, Westies hitman during the 1970s. Dean Faiello, unlicensed physician who was charged in the manslaughter of Filipina-American banker Maria Cruz in 2003, jimmy Caci, a captain in the Los Angeles crime family spent eight years in Attica during the 1970s. Colin Ferguson, who murdered six people on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993, Ferguson is serving multiple life sentences. Kendall Francois, who murdered eight women, some of whom were prostitutes, Francois was serving a life sentence without parole but died in September 2014. Sam Melville, notorious as mad bomber in 1960s, a Weather Underground member killed by New York State Police troopers during the Attica Prison riot of September 13,1971, joseph Mad Dog Sullivan, the only man who has ever escaped the prison. Willie Sutton, who robbed 100 banks from the late 1920s to 1952, pavle Stanimirovic YACS Crime group high ranking member. Frank P. Giffune, the Italian mob fall guy was sent to Attica in 1940, el Sayyid Nosair,1993 World Trade Center bombing terrorist was housed in Attica for a short duration related to a different assassination
21.
Norman Mailer
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Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and political activist. His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and his best-known work was widely considered to be The Executioners Song, which was published in 1979, and for which he won one of his two Pulitzer Prizes. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his book Armies of the Night was awarded the National Book Award, along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Mailer was also known for his essays, the most renowned of which was The White Negro. He was a commentator and critic, expressing his views through his novels, journalism, essays. In 1955, Mailer and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village, Mailer was born to a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey. His father, Isaac Barnett Mailer, was an accountant born in South Africa, Mailers sister, Barbara, was born in 1927. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Mailer graduated from Boys High School and entered Harvard University in 1939, as an undergraduate, he was a member of the Signet Society. At Harvard, he studied engineering, and became interested in writing. He published his first story at the age of 18, winning Story magazines college contest in 1941, after graduating in 1943, he was drafted into the U. S. Army. Hoping to gain a deferment from service, Mailer argued that he was writing an important literary work which pertained to the war and this deferral was denied, and Mailer was forced to enter the Army. After training at Fort Bragg, Mailer was stationed in the Philippines with the 112th Cavalry, during his time in the Philippines, Mailer worked as a cook and saw little combat. He participated in a patrol on the island of Leyte and this lesson inspired Mailer to write his first novel, The Naked and the Dead. Mailer wrote 12 novels over a 59-year span, in 1948, while continuing his studies at the University of Paris, Mailer published his first, The Naked and the Dead, based on his military service in World War II. A New York Times best seller for 62 weeks, it was hailed by many as one of the best American wartime novels and this book that made his reputation is rarely read today. The same newspaper described the book as, a hard read today, barbary Shore was mauled by the critics. It was a parable of Cold War leftist politics set in a Brooklyn rooming-house. His 1955 novel The Deer Park drew on his experiences working as a screenwriter in Hollywood in 1949–50 and it was initially rejected by seven publishers due to its purportedly sexual content before being published by Putnams. It was not a success, at one point Mailer took out an advertisement that defiantly quoted his many bad reviews
22.
In the Belly of the Beast
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In the Belly of the Beast is a book written by Jack Abbott and published in 1981. Jack Abbott was an American prisoner and the book consists of his letters to Norman Mailer about his experiences in what Abbott saw as a brutal, Mailer supported Abbotts successful bid for parole in 1981, the year that In the Belly of the Beast was published. The book was successful, and on July 19,1981. However, the day before, Abbott had killed a waiter during a row at a restaurant called Binibon on 2nd Avenue in the East Village, Abbott was eventually arrested, convicted of manslaughter, and returned to prison for the rest of his life until his suicide in 2002. In 2004, a New York City theatre company ran a play based on the book, the book has no organizing principle of chronology, nor is it constructed along conventional tale-telling lines. Instead, it has an Introduction by Mailer, a Foreword, each chapter bears a title that labels the chapters content, the text consists of excerpts on the subject, extracted from Abbotts letters to Mailer. The chapters do not cleave cleanly into discrete matter, there is a lot of overlap in subject matter, erroll McDonald, a Random House editor, was the organizer. Portions of Belly of the Beast were used in the film Shambondama Elegy by Ian Kerkhof, the Australian movie Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, directed by John Hillcoat, was largely influenced by In Belly of the Beast. Hillcoat had corresponded with Abbott after his return to incarceration, one of the movies co-authors, Nick Cave, was also inspired when writing the song Jacks Shadow
23.
PEN American Center
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PEN America Center, founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, defend free expression, and foster international literary fellowship. As of 2016, the name was shortened to PEN America, PEN America has a membership of over 4,400 writers, editors, and translators. PEN America is one of two PEN centers located in the USA, the other is PEN Center USA in Los Angeles which covers writers west of the Mississippi. “MEMBERS OF PEN pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel race, class, there is also a Reader tier of membership open to the general public, as well as a Student membership. In March 2015, Andrew Solomon was elected president of PEN America, in collaboration with its partners, PEN America confers over 20 distinct awards, fellowships, grants and prizes each year, awarding nearly $315,000 to writers and translators. These awards seek to honor everyone from emerging writers to leaders in the field, PEN America awards have been characterized as being among the major literary awards in America. PEN America is a literary journal that publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, conversation, criticism, graphic narrative. As a mission it seeks to champion international authors and provide insight into the minds of contemporary writers through provocative symposia. It was founded in 2000, and named one of that years Ten Best New Magazines by Library Journal, work from recent issues has been selected for Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize. Contributors include Paul Auster, Michael Cunningham, Nikki Giovanni, Marilynne Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Susan Sontag, John Edgar Widem, and many others. The program seeks to provide a place for inmates to express themselves freely with paper and pen, consisting of more than seventy mentors working with close to one hundred inmates, the Mentor Program continues to be the most interactive and engaging projects in the Prison Writing Program. The program is organized so that each mentor corresponds with the prisoner a minimum of three times, the PEN Writers’ Emergency Fund is an emergency fund for professional—published or produced—writers in acute, emergency financial crisis. Depending on the situation, the Fund gives grants of up to $2,000, PEN’s bedrock work is long-term advocacy on behalf of individual writers who are being persecuted because of their work. With help from its members and supporters, PEN carries out campaigns to win their release and ensure they are safe and can write and publish freely. They send letters to the concerned and lobby their own governments to campaign for the release of detained writers and for investigations in cases of torture. The program is designed in response to a study conducted by PEN America in 2015 to explore possible ways to enhance support for individual artists at risk. This survey revealed a number of challenges in the current landscape of support, the committee is currently cochaired by Allison Martin Powell and Mary Ann Newmann. There are PEN members working as translators in more than 25 different languages, the series launched September 21,2016 with comedians in conversation at Joes Pub, the beloved dinner club at the Public Theater
24.
Prison
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Besides their use for punishing crimes, jails and prisons are frequently used by authoritarian regimes against perceived opponents. Prisons often have facilities that are designed with long term confinement in mind in comparison to jails. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in prisons or prisoner of war camps. The use of prisons can be traced back to the rise of the state as a form of social organization, corresponding with the advent of the state was the development of written language, which enabled the creation of formalized legal codes as official guidelines for society. The best known of early legal codes is the Code of Hammurabi. Some Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato, began to develop ideas of using punishment to reform instead of simply using it as retribution. Imprisonment as a penalty was used initially for those who could not afford to pay their fines, eventually, since impoverished Athenians could not pay their fines, leading to indefinite periods of imprisonment, time limits were set instead. The prison in Ancient Athens was known as the desmoterion, the Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment, rather than simply for detention. A variety of existing structures were used to house prisoners, such as cages, basements of public buildings. One of the most notable Roman prisons was the Mamertine Prison, the Mamertine Prison was located within a sewer system beneath ancient Rome and contained a large network of dungeons where prisoners were held in squalid conditions, contaminated with human waste. Forced labor on public projects was also a common form of punishment. In many cases, citizens were sentenced to slavery, often in ergastula, during the Middle Ages in Europe, castles, fortresses, and the basements of public buildings were often used as makeshift prisons. Another common punishment was sentencing people to slavery, which involved chaining prisoners together in the bottoms of ships. However, the concept of the modern prison largely remained unknown until the early 19th-century, Punishment usually consisted of physical forms of punishment, including capital punishment, mutilation, flagellation, branding, and non-physical punishments, such as public shaming rituals. However, an important innovation at the time was the Bridewell House of Corrections, located at Bridewell Palace in London and these houses held mostly petty offenders, vagrants, and the disorderly local poor. In these facilities, inmates were given jobs, and through prison labor they were taught how to work for a living, by the end of the 17th century, houses of correction were absorbed into local prison facilities under the control of the local justice of the peace. From the late 17th century and during the 18th century, popular resistance to public execution, rulers began looking for means to punish and control their subjects in a way that did not cause people to associate them with spectacles of tyrannical and sadistic violence. They developed systems of mass incarceration, often with hard labor, the prison reform movement that arose at this time was heavily influenced by two somewhat contradictory philosophies
25.
Criminology
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Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, management, causes, control, consequences, and prevention of criminal behavior, both on the individual and social levels. The term criminology was coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as criminologia, later, French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the analogous French term criminologie. In the mid-18th century criminology arose as social philosophers gave thought to crime, over time, several schools of thought have developed. There were three schools of thought in early criminological theory spanning the period from the mid-18th century to the mid-twentieth century, Classical, Positive. The Classical School, which developed in the century, was based on utilitarian philosophy. Cesare Beccaria, author of On Crimes and Punishments, Jeremy Bentham, thus, it ignores the possibility of irrationality and unconscious drives as motivators. Punishment can deter people from crime, as the costs outweigh benefits, the more swift and certain the punishment, the more effective it is in deterring criminal behavior. The Classical school of thought came about at a time when major reform in penology occurred, also, this time period saw many legal reforms, the French Revolution, and the development of the legal system in the United States. The Positivist school presumes that criminal behavior is caused by internal and external factors outside of the individuals control, the scientific method was introduced and applied to study human behavior. Positivism can be broken up into three segments which include biological, psychological and social positivism, Cesare Lombroso, an Italian sociologist working in the late 19th century, is regarded as the father of criminology. He was one of the key contributors to biological positivism and founded the Italian school of criminology, Lombroso took a scientific approach, insisting on empirical evidence for studying crime. This approach, influenced by the theory of phrenology and by Charles Darwin. Criminologists have since rejected Lombrosos biological theories, with groups not used in his studies. Sociological positivism suggests that factors such as poverty, membership of subcultures. Adolphe Quetelet made use of data and statistical analysis to gain insight into the relationship between crime and sociological factors and he found that age, gender, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption were important factors related to crime. Lance Lochner conducted three different research experiments that shared the same conclusion, schooling reduces crime by a significant margin, Rawson W. Rawson utilized crime statistics to suggest a link between population density and crime rates, with crowded cities creating an environment conducive for crime. Joseph Fletcher and John Glyde also presented papers to the Statistical Society of London on their studies of crime, Henry Mayhew used empirical methods and an ethnographic approach to address social questions and poverty, and presented his studies in London Labour and the London Poor. Émile Durkheim viewed crime as an aspect of society, with uneven distribution of wealth
26.
Penology
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines penology as the study of the punishment of crime and prison management, and in this sense it is equivalent with corrections. Penology is concerned with the effectiveness of social processes devised and adopted for the prevention of crime. The study of penology therefore deals with the treatment of prisoners and it also encompasses aspects of probation as well as penitentiary science relating to the secure detention and retraining of offenders committed to secure institutions. Penology concerns many topics and theories, including those concerning prisons, contemporary penology concerns itself mainly with criminal rehabilitation and prison management. The word seldom applies to theories and practices of punishment in less formal environments such as parenting, school, historical theories put based on the notion that fearful consequences would discourage potential offenders. Similarly, certain hudud offenses under Sharia hadith tradition may incur fearful penalties and they center on the concept of proportionality. Subsequent development of the ideas of Beccaria made non-lethal punishment more socially acceptable, consequently, convicted prisoners had to be re-integrated into society when their punishment was complete. Auburn System Zebulon Brockway Jeremy Bentham Elmira System Incapacitation Panopticon Diiulio, John J. Governing Prisons, A Comparative Study of Correctional Management, Simon, ISBN 0-02-907883-0 The Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice CrimLinks UK based site
27.
Punishment
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Punishment may be self-inflicted as with self-flagellation and mortification of the flesh in the religious setting, but is most often a form of social coercion. The unpleasant imposition may include a fine, penalty, or confinement, the individual may be a person, or even an animal. The authority may be either a group or a single person, negative consequences that are not authorized or that are administered without a breach of rules are not considered to be punishment as defined here. Research into punishment often includes similar research into prevention, justifications for punishment include retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. The last could include such measures as isolation, in order to prevent the wrongdoers having contact with potential victims, if only some of the conditions included in the definition of punishment are present, descriptions other than punishment may be considered more accurate. Inflicting something negative, or unpleasant, on a person or animal, in addition, the word punishment is used as a metaphor, as when a boxer experiences punishment during a fight. In other situations, breaking a rule may be rewarded, finally the condition of breaking the rules must be satisfied for consequences to be considered punishment. Corporal punishment refers to punishments in which pain is intended to be inflicted upon the transgressor. Punishments may be judged as fair or unfair in terms of their degree of reciprocity and proportionality to the offense, Punishment can be an integral part of socialization, and punishing unwanted behaviour is often part of a system of pedagogy or behavioral modification which also includes rewards. Various philosophers have presented definitions of punishment, introduced by B. F. Skinner, punishment has a more restrictive and technical definition. Along with reinforcement it belongs under the operant conditioning category, operant conditioning refers to learning with either punishment as a negative rienforcer or a reward that serves as a positive reinforcement of the lesson to be learned. In psychology, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via application of an unpleasant stimulus or removal of a pleasant stimulus, extra chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment, while removing an offending students recess or play privileges are examples of negative punishment. The definition requires that punishment is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior, if the behavior of the subject does not decrease. There is some conflation of punishment and aversives, though an aversion that does not decrease behavior is not considered punishment in psychology, additionally, aversive stimulus is a label behaviorists generally apply to negative reinforcers, rather than punishers. During a period of heavy fishing and tourism that encroached on their territory, they started to live in groups, learning from each other, especially hunting techniques. Small, younger octopuses could be near the fully grown octopuses without being eaten by them, even though they, the authors also note that the octopuses adopted observational learning without any evolutionary history of specialized adaptation for it. There are also arguments against the notion of punishment requiring intelligence, there is proof of honey bee workers with mutations that makes them fertile laying eggs only when other honey bees are not observing them, and that the few that are caught in the act are killed. The authors argue that this falsifies the claim that punishment evolved as a strategy to deal with individuals capable of knowing what they are doing, certain scientists argue that this disproves the notion of humans having a biological feeling of intentional transgressions deserving to be punished
28.
Stanford prison experiment
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The Stanford prison experiment was an attempt to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison guards. It was conducted at Stanford University on August 14–20,1971 and it was funded by the U. S. Office of Naval Research as an investigation into the causes of difficulties between guards and prisoners in the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. The experiment is a topic covered in most introductory psychology textbooks, some participants developed their roles as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, by the guards request, Zimbardo, in his role as the superintendent, allowed abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners left mid-experiment, and the exercise was abandoned after six days following the objections of graduate student Christina Maslach. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed, and excerpts of footage are publicly available, Zimbardo and his team aimed to test the hypothesis that the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards are the chief cause of abusive behavior in prison. Participants were recruited and told they would participate in a two-week prison simulation, the team selected the 24 males whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable and healthy. These participants were white and of the middle class. The group was selected to exclude those with criminal backgrounds, psychological impairments. They all agreed to participate in a 7- to 14-day period, the experiment was conducted in the basement of Jordan Hall. 12 of the 24 participants were assigned the role of prisoner, Zimbardo took on the role of the superintendent, and an undergraduate research assistant the role of the warden. Zimbardo designed the experiment in order to induce disorientation, depersonalization, the researchers held an orientation session for guards the day before the experiment, during which guards were instructed not to physically harm the prisoners or withhold food or drink. Were going to take away their individuality in various ways, in general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this well have all the power. The researchers provided the guards with wooden batons to establish their status, clothing similar to that of a prison guard. Prisoners wore uncomfortable, ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps, as well as a chain around one ankle, guards were instructed to call prisoners by their assigned numbers, sewn on their uniforms, instead of by name. The prisoners were arrested at their homes and charged with armed robbery, the local Palo Alto police department assisted Zimbardo with the arrests and conducted full booking procedures on the prisoners, which included fingerprinting and taking mug shots. The prisoners were transported to the prison from the police station
29.
Prisoner
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A prisoner, also known as an inmate or detainee, is a person who is deprived of liberty against his or her will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or by forcible restraint, the term applies particularly to those on trial or serving a prison sentence in a prison. Prisoner is a term for a person who is imprisoned. Prisoner was a term for a person prosecuted for felony. It was not applicable to a person prosecuted for misdemeanour, the abolition of the distinction between felony and misdemeanour by section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 has rendered this distinction obsolete. Glanville Williams described as invidious the practice of using the term prisoner in reference to a person who had not been convicted, the earliest evidence of the existence of the prisoner dates back to 8,000 BC from prehistoric graves in Lower Egypt. This evidence suggests that people from Libya enslaved a San-like tribe, among the most extreme adverse effects suffered by prisoners, appear to be caused by solitary confinement for long durations. When held in Special Housing Units, prisoners are subject to sensory deprivation, long durations may lead to depression and changes to brain physiology. Social connection and the support provided from social interaction are prerequisite to long-term social adjustment as a prisoner, Prisoners exhibit the paradoxical effect of social withdrawal after long periods of solitary confinement. A shift takes place from a craving for social contact. They may grow lethargic and apathetic, and no longer be able to control their own conduct when released from solitary confinement and they can come to depend upon the prison structure to control and limit their conduct. Long-term stays in solitary confinement can cause prisoners to develop clinical depression and those with pre-existing mental illnesses are at a higher risk for developing psychiatric symptoms. Some common behaviours are self-mutilation, suicidal tendencies, and psychosis, a psychopathological condition identified as SHU syndrome has been observed among such prisoners. Symptoms are characterized as problems with concentration and memory, distortions of perception, most convicts suffering from SHU syndrome exhibit extreme generalized anxiety and panic disorder, with some suffering amnesia. The psychological syndrome known as Stockholm syndrome, describes a phenomenon where, over time. Competency in following the routines demanded by the code partly determined the identity as a convict. Sykes outlined some of the most salient points of this code as it applied in the period in the United States, Both federal. Prisoners in the United States do not have rights under the Constitution, however, they are protected by Amendment VIII which prohibits cruel
30.
Crime
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In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term crime does not, in criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition. The most popular view is that crime is a created by law, in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence is an act not only to some individual. Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law, the notion that acts such as murder, rape and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is an offence is defined by criminal law of each country. While many have a catalogue of crimes called the criminal code, the state has the power to severely restrict ones liberty for committing a crime. In modern societies, there are procedures to which investigations and trials must adhere, usually, to be classified as a crime, the act of doing something criminal must – with certain exceptions – be accompanied by the intention to do something criminal. While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime, breaches of private law are not automatically punished by the state, but can be enforced through civil procedure. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes, authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate certain behaviors in general. In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, and collectively these constitute a criminal justice system, Legal sanctions vary widely in their severity, they may include incarceration of temporary character aimed at reforming the convict. Some jurisdictions have penal codes written to inflict permanent harsh punishments, legal mutilation, usually a natural person perpetrates a crime, but legal persons may also commit crimes. Conversely, at least under U. S. law, nonpersons such as animals cannot commit crimes, the sociologist Richard Quinney has written about the relationship between society and crime. When Quinney states crime is a phenomenon he envisages both how individuals conceive crime and how populations perceive it, based on societal norms. The word crime is derived from the Latin root cernō, meaning I decide, originally the Latin word crīmen meant charge or cry of distress. The Ancient Greek word krima, from which the Latin cognate derives, typically referred to a mistake or an offense against the community. In 13th century English crime meant sinfulness, according to etymonline. com and it was probably brought to England as Old French crimne, from Latin crimen. In Latin, crimen could have signified any one of the following, charge, indictment, accusation, crime, fault, the word may derive from the Latin cernere – to decide, to sift
31.
Detention (imprisonment)
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Detention is the process when a state or private citizen lawfully holds a person by removing his or her freedom of liberty at that time. This can be due to charges being raised against the individual as part of a prosecution or to protect a person or property. Being detained does not always result in being taken to an area, either for interrogation. The term can also be used in reference to the holding of property, the process of detainment may or may not have been preceded or followed with an arrest. The prisoners in Guantánamo Bay are for example referred to as detainees and it is used to refer to any person captured or otherwise detained by an armed force. More generally, it is held in custody. Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, in wars between nations, detainees are referenced in the Fourth Geneva Convention. Being detained for the purposes of a search is tantamount to a temporary arrest, as it is not yet known whether charges can be brought against an individual. The term detained often refers to the immediacy when someone has their liberty deprived, for example, a shoplifter being pursued and restrained, but not yet informed he/she is under arrest or read his rights would be classed as detained. The detention of suspects is the process of keeping a person who has arrested in a police-cell. The Terrorism Act 2006 in the United Kingdom lengthened the 14-day limit for detention without an arrest warrant or an indictment from the Terrorism Act 2000 to 28 days, a controversial Government proposal for an extension to 90 days was rejected by the House of Commons. English criminal law requires the detainer/arrestor to have grounds to suspect when detaining someone. Indefinite detention of an individual occurs frequently in wartime under the laws of war and this has been applied notably by the United States after the September 11,2001 attacks. The U. S. military regulates treatment of detainees in the manual Military Police, Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees and this had generated considerable debate around the globe. The U. S. government refers to these captured enemy combatants as detainees because they did not qualify as prisoners of war under the definition found in the Geneva Conventions. Under the Obama administration the term enemy combatants was also removed from the lexicon and further defined under the 2010 Defense Omnibus Bill, article 9, part 1a of Wetboek van Strafrecht states that there are 4 kinds of primary punishment. Two of them are two kinds of detentions, which are called gevangenisstraf and hechtenis, where the first is a punishment than the second. The two other kinds of punishment is light community service and fines, prisons are designed in several ways and there are 5 levels of regimes
32.
Hostage
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A hostage is a person or entity which is held by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against war. A person who seizes one or more hostages is known as a hostage-taker, if the hostages are present voluntarily, then the receiver is known as a host. These obligations would be in the form of signing of a peace treaty and this would eventually influence them culturally and open the way for an amicable political line if they ascended to power after release. This caused the element gīsl = hostage in many old Germanic personal names, the practice was also commonplace in the Imperial Chinese tributary system, especially between the Han and Tang dynasties. The practice continued through the early Middle Ages, the Irish High King Niall of the Nine Hostages got his epithet Noígiallach because, by taking nine petty kings hostage, he had subjected nine other principalities to his power. This practice was adopted in the early period of the British occupation of India. The practice of taking hostages as security for the out of a treaty between civilized states is now obsolete. In France, after the revolution of Prairial, the law of hostages was passed. Relatives of émigrés were taken from disturbed districts and imprisoned, and were liable to execution at any attempt to escape. Sequestration of their property and deportation from France followed on the murder of a republican, four to every such murder, the law only resulted in an increase in the insurrection. Napoleon in 1796 had used similar measures to deal with the insurrection in Lombardy, another case where hostages have been taken in modern warfare has been the subject of much discussion. The measure seems to have been effective, in 1900 during the Second Boer War, by a proclamation issued at Pretoria, Lord Roberts adopted the plan for a similar reason, but shortly afterwards it was abandoned. The Germans also, between the surrender of a town and its occupation, took hostages as security against outbreaks of violence by the inhabitants. It may be noticed, however, that the hostages would suffer should the acts aimed at be performed by the authorized belligerent forces of the enemy, the regulations, however do not allude to the practice of taking hostage. In May 1871, at the close of the Paris Commune and it was an act of maniacal despair, on the defeat at Mont Valrien on the 4 April and the entry of the army into Paris on the 21 May. Taking hostages is today considered a crime or an act of terrorism, the criminal activity is known as kidnapping. An acute situation where hostages are kept in a building or a vehicle that has taken over by armed terrorists or common criminals is often called a hostage crisis. Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions states that the taking of hostages during a conflict is a war crime and shall remain prohibited at any time
33.
Political prisoner
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A political prisoner is someone imprisoned because they have opposed or criticized the government responsible for their imprisonment. The term is used by persons or groups challenging the legitimacy of the detention of a prisoner, supporters of the term define a political prisoner as someone who is imprisoned for his or her participation in political activity. If a political offense was not the reason for the prisoners detention. Some understand the political prisoner narrowly, equating it with the term prisoner of conscience. Amnesty International campaigns for the release of prisoners of conscience, which include political prisoners as well as those imprisoned for their religious or philosophical beliefs. To reduce controversy, and as a matter of principle, the organizations policy applies only to prisoners who have not committed or advocated violence, thus, there are political prisoners who do not fit the narrower criteria for POCs. The organisation defines the differences as follows, AI uses the political prisoner broadly. It does not use it, as others do, to imply that all such prisoners have a special status or should be released. It uses the only to define a category of prisoners for whom AI demands a fair. Governments often say they have no political prisoners, only prisoners held under the criminal law. AI however describes cases like the examples given above as political, for instance, French anarchist groups typically call the former members of Action Directe held in France political prisoners. While the French government deemed Action Directe illegal, the group fashioned itself as a guerilla movement. In this sense, political prisoner can be used to describe any politically active prisoner who is held in custody for a violent action which supporters deem ethically justified, some libertarians also include all convicted for treason and some convicted of espionage in the category of political prisoners. Currently, there is much controversy and debate around how to define this term. Political prisoners can also be imprisoned with no legal veneer by extrajudicial processes, some political prisoners need not be imprisoned at all. Supporters of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima in the 11th Panchen Lama controversy have called him a political prisoner and he is held under secluded house arrest. This is common in situations which may otherwise be decried nationally and internationally as a human rights violation or suppression of a political dissident, particularly in this latter situation, whether an individual is regarded as a political prisoner may depend upon subjective political perspective or interpretation of the evidence. In the Soviet Union, dubious psychiatric diagnoses were sometimes used to political prisoners in the so-called psikhushkas
34.
Prisoner of conscience
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Prisoner of conscience is a term coined by Peter Benenson in a 28 May 1961 article for the London Observer newspaper. Most often associated with the human rights organisation Amnesty International, the term can refer to anyone imprisoned because of their race, sexual orientation, religion and it also refers to those who have been imprisoned and/or persecuted for the non-violent expression of their conscientiously held beliefs. The article The Forgotten Prisoners by Peter Benenson, published in The Observer 28 May 1961, launched the campaign Appeal for Amnesty 1961, any person who is physically restrained from expressing any opinion which he honestly holds and which does not advocate or condone personal violence. We also exclude those people who have conspired with a government to overthrow their own. In early 1962, the campaign had received public support to become a permanent organization and was renamed Amnesty International. Under British law, Amnesty International was classed as a political organisation, to work around this, the Fund for the Persecuted was established in 1962 to receive donations to support prisoners and their families. Amnesty International has, since its founding, pressured governments to release those persons it considers to be prisoners of conscience, below is an incomplete list of individuals that Amnesty International considers to be prisoners of conscience, organized by country. Amnesty International resources about prisoners of conscience Prisoners of Conscience Appeal Fund
35.
Prisoner of war
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A prisoner of war is a person, whether combatant or non-combatant, who is held in custody by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the prisoner of war dates to 1660. The first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite, Thracian, typically, little distinction was made between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although women and children were more likely to be spared. Sometimes, the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture women, a known as raptio. Typically women had no rights, and were legally as chattel. For this he was eventually canonized, during Childerics siege and blockade of Paris in 464, the nun Geneviève pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response. Later, Clovis I liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so, many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In the later Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat, in Christian Europe, the extermination of heretics was considered desirable. Examples include the 13th century Albigensian Crusade and the Northern Crusades, likewise, the inhabitants of conquered cities were frequently massacred during the Crusades against the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed, their families would have to send to their captors large sums of wealth commensurate with the status of the captive. In feudal Japan there was no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, in Termez, on the Oxus, all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, and divided in accordance with their usual custom, then they were all slain. The Aztecs were constantly at war with neighbouring tribes and groups, for the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, between 10,000 and 80,400 persons were sacrificed. During the early Muslim conquests, Muslims routinely captured large number of prisoners, aside from those who converted, most were ransomed or enslaved. Christians who were captured during the Crusades, were either killed or sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom. The freeing of prisoners was highly recommended as a charitable act, there also evolved the right of parole, French for discourse, in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain better accommodations, if he swore to cease hostilities against the nation who held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity. Early historical narratives of captured colonial Europeans, including perspectives of literate women captured by the peoples of North America. The writings of Mary Rowlandson, captured in the fighting of King Philips War, are an example
36.
Slavery
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A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against his or her will. Scholars also use the generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour. However – and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word – slaves may have some rights and/or protections, Slavery began to exist before written history, in many cultures. A person could become a slave from the time of their birth, capture, while slavery was institutionally recognized by most societies, it has now been outlawed in all recognized countries, the last being Mauritania in 2007. Nevertheless, there are still more slaves today than at any point in history. The most common form of the trade is now commonly referred to as human trafficking. Chattel slavery is still practiced by the Islamic State of Iraq. An older interpretation connected it to the Greek verb skyleúo to strip a slain enemy, there is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as unfree labourer or enslaved person, rather than slave, should be used when describing the victims of slavery. Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel of the owner and are bought, although it dominated many societies in the past, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the system of any internationally recognized government. Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage is a form of labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their parents debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today, debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription, Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution. And is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil, in 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts. A forced marriage may be regarded as a form of slavery by one or more of the involved in the marriage
37.
Black site
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In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black project is conducted. It can refer to the facilities that are controlled by the CIA, U. S. President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on September 6,2006. A claim that the black sites existed was made by The Washington Post in November 2005, after denying the fact for years, Poland confirmed in 2014 that it has hosted black sites. In January 2012, Polands Prosecutor Generals office initiated investigative proceedings against Zbigniew Siemiątkowski, Siemiątkowski is charged with facilitating the alleged CIA detention operation in Poland, where foreign suspects may have been tortured in the context of the War on Terror. The possible involvement of Leszek Miller, Polands Prime Minister in 2001–04, is also considered, black sites operated by the U. S. government and its surrogates were first officially acknowledged by U. S. President George W. Bush in the fall of 2006. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported details of black site practices to the U. S. government in early 2007, and the contents of that report became public in March 2009. On September 6,2006, Bush publicly admitted the existence of secret prisons, the report was submitted to Bush administration officials. On March 15,2009, Mark Danner provided a report in the New York Review of Books describing and commenting on the contents of the ICRC report, according to Danner, the report was marked confidential and was not previously made public before being made available to him. Danner provided excerpts of interviews with detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, Walid bin Attash, black sites are embroiled in controversy over the legal status of the detainees held there, the legal authority for the operation of the sites, and full disclosure by the governments involved. An important aspect of black site operation is that the status of black site detainees is not clearly defined. In practice, inmates in black sites have no other than those given by the captors. The revelation of such black sites adds to the controversy surrounding US government policy regarding those whom it describes as unlawful enemy combatants, approximately 30 detainees are considered the most dangerous or important terrorism suspects and are held by the CIA at black sites under the most secretive arrangements. A further 100 ghost detainees kidnapped in Europe and rendered to other countries must be counted and this process is called extraordinary rendition. Marty also underlined that European countries probably had knowledge of covert operations. Furthermore, the CIA apparently financially assists and directs the jails in these countries, while the US and host countries have signed the United Nations Convention Against Torture, CIA officers are allowed to use what the agency calls enhanced interrogation techniques. These have been alleged to constitute severe pain or suffering under the UN convention, there is little or no stated legal authority for the operation of black sites by the United States or the other countries believed to be involved. In fact, the specifics of the network of black sites remains controversial, the United Nations has begun to intervene in this aspect of black sites. Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz characterized the accusation as libel, while Romania similarly said there was no evidence, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the report added absolutely nothing new whatever to the information we have
38.
Debtors' prison
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A debtors prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt. Through the mid 19th century, debtors prisons were a way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe. Increasing access and lenience throughout the history of law have made prison terms for unaggravated indigence illegal over most of the world. In this case the crime is not indigence, but disobeying the order to appear before the court. During Europes Middle Ages, debtors, both men and women, were locked up together in a single, large cell until their families paid their debt, debt prisoners often died of diseases contracted from other debt prisoners. Conditions included starvation and abuse from other prisoners, if the father of a family was imprisoned for debt, the family business often suffered while the mother and children fell into poverty. Unable to pay the debt, the father often remained in prison for many years. Some debt prisoners were released to become serfs or indentured servants until they paid off their debt in labor, article 1 of Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits the imprisonment of people for breach of a contract. Turkey and the United Kingdom have signed but never ratified Protocol 4, greece and Switzerland have neither signed nor ratified this protocol. In the late Middle Ages, and at the beginning of the modern era and this served to standardize the coercive arrest, and got rid of the many arbitrary sanctions that were not universal. In some areas the debtor could sell or redistribute their debt, in most of the cities, the towers and city fortifications functioned as jails. For certain sanctions there were designated prisons, hence some towers being called debtors prison, the term Schuldturm, outside of the Saxon constitution, became the catchword for public law debtor’s prison. In the early era, the debtor’s detainment or citizen’s arrest remained valid in Germany. This practice was particularly disgraceful to an identity, but had different rules than criminal trials. It was more similar to the enforcement of sentences e. g. the debtor would be able to work off their debt for a certain amount of days. The North German Confederation eliminated debtors prisons on May 29,1868, in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,10,000 people were imprisoned for debt each year. A prison term did not alleviate a persons debt, however, in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the later United Kingdom, debtors prisons varied in the amount of freedom they allowed the debtor. Life in these prisons, however, was far from pleasant, some debtor prisoners were even less fortunate, being sent to prisons with a mixture of vicious criminals and petty criminals, and many more were confined to a single cell
39.
Extermination camp
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This genocide of the Jewish people of Europe was the Third Reichs Final Solution to the Jewish question. It is now known as the Holocaust. In 1941, the experience gained in the killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By then, the Jews were already confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, and the Soviet POWs. The Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage, based on the killing of Europes Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard. Responsibility for the logistics were to be executed by the programme administrator, notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but the gassings at Kulmhof north of Łódź using gas vans began already in December, under Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange. The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt, Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gassing bunkers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September, todeslagers were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. The executioners did not expect the prisoners to more than a few hours beyond arrival at Belzec, Sobibór. The Jewish men, women and children were delivered from the ghettos for special treatment in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both, Orpo and Schupo. From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände, who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well. An SS anatomist, Dr. Johann Kremer, after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau, wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942 and they dont call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing. The distinction was evident during the Nuremberg trials, when Dieter Wisliceny was asked to name the extermination camps, then, when asked How do you classify the camps Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald. He replied, They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann, irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners for slave labour in other types of camps, which provided perfect cover for the extermination programme. Prisoners represented about a quarter of the workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions. On top of that, the new death camps outside the borders of the Third Reich proper could be kept secret from the German civil populace. The killing method was based on experience gained by the SS during the secretive Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia, there were two types of death chambers operating during the Holocaust. The three killing centres of Einsatz Reinhard were constructed predominantly for the extermination of Polands Jews trapped in the Nazi ghettos
40.
Internment
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Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The term is used for the confinement of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects. Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement, use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities. Interned persons may be held in prisons or in known as internment camps. In certain contexts, these may also be known either officially or pejoratively, internment also refers to a neutral countrys practice of detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war under the Hague Convention of 1907. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights restricts the use of internment, article 9 states that No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. The United States set up camps for Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s. From 1863 to 1868, the U. S, military persecuted and imprisoned 9,500 Navajo and 500 Mescalero Apache. Living under armed guards, more than 3,500 Navajo and Mescalero Apache men, women, the term concentration camp saw wider use during the Second Boer War, when the British operated such camps in South Africa for interning Boers. They built 45 tented camps for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans, of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, the British sent 25,630 overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the camps were women and children. Some of them managed to go into exile or went off to join the armies of the Allies in order to fight against the Axis powers, while others ended up in Nazi concentration camps. During the 20th century, the internment of civilians by the state reached its most notorious excesses with the establishment of the Nazi concentration camps. The Nazi concentration camp system was notable for its size, with as many as 15,000 camps. Moreover, Nazi Germany established six camps, specifically designed to kill millions