stories Archives - Just Future Project

Archive by category "stories"

VCBR Coronavirus Outbreak Prompts Virginia’s National Guard to Take Action

The Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation (VCBR), a shadow prison in Burkeville, Virginia operating under the guise of a treatment facility, is currently in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak; and many people locked within the facility are fearful for their health. As of October 14th, twenty-two “residents” and six staff members at the Virginia Center for Behavioral Rehabilitation have tested positive for the coronavirus. The National Guard was called in by the governor to provide tests after an outbreak of fifteen cases occurred in one of the facility’s living units. There are numerous firsthand accounts suggesting that…

Lawsuit, Ballot Initiative Seek to Reform Felon Disenfranchisement in Florida | Prison Legal News

In 1868, in response to the abolition of slavery following the Civil War (except for prisoners), Florida enshrined in its constitution the permanent disenfranchisement of people convicted of a felony. The deprivation of felons’ voting rights was combined with Black Codes that criminalized offenses state lawmakers believed were mostly committed by blacks, as a means of sending freed slaves to prison and ensuring they could not vote. While the civil rights movement helped to change racial attitudes, Florida has held strong to its disenfranchisement policy. It is one of only four states, the others being Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia, to…

Texas Uses Failed Private Prison to Hold Civilly Committed Sex Offenders | Prison Legal News

In 2015, Texas converted its outpatient program for civilly committed sex offenders into a “tiered” treatment program, in which participants start out in a “total confinement facility” at twice the cost of the original program. The state awarded Correct Care Solutions a $24 million contract to provide housing and treatment at the Texas Civil Commitment Center (TCCC) in Littlefield, formerly a failed private prison known as the Bill Clayton Detention Facility. Correct Care had just acquired GEO Care, a subsidiary of the GEO Group – a for-profit prison firm whose 2009 abandonment of the Littlefield facility had almost forced the…

Let’s Stamp Out Perversion | Cato Institute

Amanda Pustilnik draws a sharp contrast between civil commitment as it is practiced for the severely mentally ill — and the utterly different system that has been imposed on sex offenders. The latter system she terms “a perversion,” one that both destroys civil liberties and stigmatizes the treatment of genuinely mentally ill individuals. Genuine civil commitment for the mentally ill does exist, but it is used only in emergencies, it is of very limited duration, and its judicial process puts the patient’s best interests first. Meanwhile, sexual violence remains a genuine and pressing social problem, but it does not take…

Bad Deals: Look What Happens When an Innocent Man is Labeled a “Sexually Violent Predator” | Reveal News

On a stifling afternoon in the summer of 1996, Rodney Roberts pleaded guilty to a kidnapping. He had never met the victim, let alone held her against her will. Yet this is what he told the judge in the cramped Essex County courtroom. His court-appointed defender had convinced him his other choice was life in prison. The state of New Jersey, Roberts was told, had overwhelming evidence that he had raped an East Orange teenager. Plead guilty to the lesser charge of kidnapping, he remembers public defender Charles Martone saying through the bars of the court’s packed holding cell, and…

New Rules Spark Uprising at California Pre-Crime Facility | Prison Legal News

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that persons held in involuntary psychiatric commitment facilities are not prisoners and cannot be subjected to punitive treatment. Matt Clarke at Prison Legal News paints a vivid portrait of how prison-like these not-a-prison prisons really are. Protests met California officials when they began to make Coalinga State Hospital look even more like a prison. On January 14, 2018, about 400 to 500 civilly committed sex offender “patients” met in the common area of California’s Coalinga State Hospital to protest a stringent new rule that went into effect that day. The rule banned the possession of…

When Junk Science About People Labeled “Sex Offenders” Infects the Supreme Court | NYT Op-Doc

American criminal justice policy for sex-related crimes is built on a myth. The U.S. Supreme Court green lighted draconian restrictions that relegate persons with former sex-related convictions to a permanent pariah status based on the erroneous findings that they commit new crimes at an astronomical rate. Watch filmmaker, lawyer, activist David Feige unravel this “frightening and high” myth in a compelling NYT OP-doc. “A ‘Frightening’ Myth About Sex Offenders” by David Feige. This month the Supreme Court will have a rare opportunity to correct a flawed doctrine that for the past two decades has relied on junk social science to justify…

Speak Up Minnesota

Appeal for Those You Know To Form an Advocacy Group Opposing Our MSOP Confinement The spark is catching. Read this powerful organizing appeal from a person living behind the walls in Minnesota “civil commitment” and learn what Just future is doing to help. At Just Future Project we believe that the people closest to the problem are closest to the solution, but furthest from power and opportunity. We are trying to balance the scales by connecting advocates living on the registry or working from the inside with tools to create change. Our hats off to Cyrus Gladden for writing this…

Category: stories