PrisonWatchTM vs. Timesizing®
[Commentary] ©2003 Philip Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080 - HOMEPAGE
Prison stories - May-August/2003
8/30/2003   1 prison story - 8/29/2003   1 prison story - 8/27/2003   1 prison story - 8/25/2003   1 prison story - 8/16-18/2003   2 prison stories -
  1. 8/17   Boox, full-page 10-frame cartoon by Mark Alan Stamaty, NYT, Bk Review 23.
    1. [View of corner of 2-storey prison, razor-wire fence surrounding - narrator -] The days pass slowly for white-collar inmates at the Slapryst Correctional Spa. But some find it valuable time for reflection.
    2. For Sam Wantsitall [cf. Waksal], former C.E.O. or ImClimbing Systems [cf. Imclone], it is a time to write a prison diary to explain to the world the good intention behind his "illegal behavior." [Picture shows balding bespectacled man in striped prison garb writing in book with big fountain pen.]
    3. [Wantitall enters in diary -] "5:15 P.M. - If believing too much in the miracle drug Erndebux and all the good it could do for people suffering from serious illness is wrong, I suppose I am "guilty"
      [Prominent pill bottle labeled 'ERNDEBUX - Take as directed. CASINO PHARMACEUTICALS. DEVELOPED BY: IMCLIMBING SYSTEMS.' with angry face stands on table beside diary, spreads his arms and says -] "Oh, come on! Get OFF it!
    4. "If you believed so much in me, why did you tell family members to sell their shares in ImClimbing when you got advance word that the F.D.A. wasn't going to approve me?
      [Wantitall -] "Um..."
    5. [Erndebux -] "And why did you try to sell your OWN shares knowing the majority of your investors would take heavy losses?
      [Wantitall, trying to remember 'party line' -] "Well, um, see...
    6. "As my lawyer explained, all of that was done ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT, so it wasn't part of any sophisticated, highly planned course of conduct that extends over time.
      [Erndebux, folding his arms -] "What difference does THAT make? It was a spontaneous action revealing your true "beliefs" and motives.
    7. "When you prsion diary is published, the only thing it will clarify is a willingness to strain logic beyond all credibility in order to get what you want.
    8. [Angry Erndebux, arms folded, confronts 'takin’ it in' Wantitall.]
    9. [Wantitall -] "You're right."
    10. "So much for that." [Wantitall, tossing diary in trashcan -] "Which way to the squash court?"
    [Check out the little list of fraudsters from the NYT on 7/28-29/2002 #3.]

  2. [and with such 'leadership,' here's what many Americans are doing -]
    8/18   One in 37 in US said to have done time - Record 2.1 million in prison in 2002, by Curt Anderson, Boston Globe, A2.
    [That rounds to 2.2m now.]
    WASHINGTON - About one in every 37 US adults was either imprisoned at the end of 2001 or had been incarcerated at one time, the government reported yesterday. The 5.6m people [5,618,000; comparable 1974 figure: 1,819,000] with "prison experience" represented about 2.7% [1/37] of the 210m adults in the U.S. as of Dec. 31, 2001, the report found.
    [Increased an average of 140,704 people per year since 1974. If this keeps up, prison experience on your resume will soon open more doors than a degree!]

8/15/2003   1 prison story - 8/13/2003   1 prison story - 8/09-11/2003   4 prison stories -
  1. 8/10 Justice criticizes lengthy sentences, AP via NYT, A12.
    Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court said [yester]day that prison terms were too long and that he favored ending mandatory minimum sentences for some federal crimes.... Justice Kennedy's criticism puts him at odds with Atty Gen John Ashcan oops Ashcroft, who wants prosecutors to monitor which judges impose more lenient sentences than federal guidelines recommend..\..
    [See "Blacklisting judges," one of our 'headlines from hell' this weekend, 8/09-11/2003 #5.]
    "Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long," Justice Kennedy said in remarks prepared for delivery to the annual meeting of the American Bar Assoc. "I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences," he said. "In too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unwise or unjust."...
    [That's good, considering Justice Kennedy was a tough-on-crime Reagan appointee, according to this followup -]
    Justice Kennedy speaks out, editorial, 8/12/2003 NYT, A20.
    We hope that both the members of Congress and the Bush administation were paying attention last weekend when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a tough-on-crime Reagan appointee, decried harsh and inflexible sentencing policies....

  2. 8/10 'Terminator 4: The rise of Colin Powell', by Andy Borowitz, NYT, 4:11.
    ...Andy Borowitz is author of Who Moved My Soap? The CEO's Guide to Surviving in Prison.

  3. 8/09 Professors with a past - Ex-convict criminologists say time they spent as prison inmates adds special insight to their research and their teaching - A new academic debate: Does a felony record help criminologists? by Warren St. John, NYT, A13.
    [This whole angle is kinda twisted, and sweeping over us is a sudden hypersensitivity about "even negative reinforcement is reinforcement" - so we're going to just leave this story with only the headline.]

  4. [and a sort of opposite -]
    8/09 Pennsylvania: Ex-warden sentenced to prison, AP via NYT, A9.
    [And if we withheld names of those who went from bad to good in the story above, so people don't get the idea they have to commit crimes to study and write about crime, we can't very well go ahead and name the principal in this story and enhance the PR of someone who went from good to bad in the crime field.]
    A judge sentenced a former administrator at 2 Philadelphia jails to 15 months in federal prison for covering up a [1999] attack on an inmate [Donti Hunter] by guards. ...The former...warden of the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Facility ordered a lieutenant to lie about the beating.
    [So if doing time helps you be a better criminologist, does being a warden help you be a better prisoner?]

8/8/2003   1 prison story - 8/07/2003   1 prison story - 8/03/2003   1 prison story - 8/01/2003   3 prison stories in WSJ and NYT -
  1. The growing inmate population, editorial, NYT, A22.
    The nation's prison and jail population rose again last year, to 2,166,260, a record. The increase comes at a time when crime is falling and state and local governments are struggling to close budget deficits.
    [Need more money? Tax the rich - "day's the only ones that's got any" - Will Rogers.]
    The price of imprisoning so many Americans is too high, in scarce tax dollars and in wasted lives. Congress and state legislatures should find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars....
    [And the best way is to remove the root reason = we've responded to the blessings of technology by turning them into the curse of downsizing. We've created so great a labor surplus and injected so much insecurity and anxiety, that we've made it easier to earn a dishonest living than an honest one. We've maintained an obsoletely high pre-technology workweek from the 1940s and denied training in marketable skills. We've pushed people off welfare and out of halfway houses into disability, the streets, the prisons, and suicide. The alternative is a flexible, market-driven program to share and spread the vanishing market-demanded human employment and proliferate overtime-targeted on-the-job training programs throughout the economy on a World War II scale. As Bucky Fuller put it, " Utopia or Oblivion."]

  2. Plan to transfer more inmates draws criticism in Connecticut, by Alison Cowan, NYT, A20.
    Since Connecticut began moving some of its convicts to out-of-state prisons 4 years ago to ease overcrowding and save money, it has paid a steep price in lawsuit settlements and stinging criticism over 2 prisoners who came home in body bags.
    ...Tucked into the fine print of the budget..\..lawmakers approved this week...which cleared the State Senate last night, is a plan to quintuple the number of prisoners Conn. ships to other states. The Dems who control the legislature had been hostile to the transfers, which have moved nearly 500 inmates to Virginia prisons. But Dem leaders have agreed to let Gov. John Rowland, a Republican, transfer another 2,000 of the state's 20,832 inmates in exchange for money...$18m/yr in savings..\..for pilot projects [probably gov't makework] that might reduce the prison population.
    ...Many [constituencies] that are just now hearing about it...include -
    1. the unions that represent the state's corrections officers, who worry about lost jobs;
    2. defense lawyers, who say the distance will make it hard for them to interact with clients;
    3. community advocates, who say the millions of dollars spent out of state would be better applied to the local economy;
    4. and families of inmates, who say the transfers cause them great hardship....
    [This stupid practice, instigated by the increasingly wealthy, increasingly miserly - who don't want to pay their fair, graduated, share of income taxes for the protection of their much greater-than-average wealth - should be simply and totally banned.]

  3. Acquittal in Puerto Rico, pointer blurb (to A12), NYT, front page.
    Two men in a death penalty case...were acquitted, elating those who saw the trial as an affront to the island's [anti-death-penalty] values.
    [For original story, see 7/17/2003 #3b.]

7/30/2003   2 prison mentions -
  1. In quest for steady work, a man traces state's decline, by Jim Carlton, WSJ, front page.
    ...The loss of factory jobs in Oregon's linchpin industries has hit related services and, thanks to an unusual tax system, state revenue. ...Revenue goes up or down pretty much in tandem with the number of jobs..\.. The state has the country's highest unemployment rate, 8.5% as of June, compared with the national rate of 6.4%....
    In Lane County...local officials say they have had to eliminate 119 of their jail's 450 beds, forcing the early release of less-violent offenders....

  2. [and speaking of releasing 'offenders' -]
    Illinois: Freed inmate to get $1.5 million, by Jo Napolitano, NYT, A15.
    Chicago has agreed to pay a $1.5m settlement to a man who spent 15 years in prison for a rape and killing he did not commit. The man, Calvin Ollins, who was a 14-year-old special ed student when he was charged in 1986, was exonerated in 2001 based on DNA evidence.
    [Huh, what are they doin' nailing 14-year-olds to the wall in the first place, let alone special ed students?]
    He and 3 others convicted in the killing were pardoned in 2002 by Gov. George Ryan.
    [Compare neighboring story -]
    Washington State: Man gets 30 years in fraud, by Matthew Preusch, NYT, A15.
    ...ringleader of one of the state's largest investment frauds...John Zidar...of Nevada....
    [Esurientes implevit bonis, sed divites dimissit.... "The poor He hath filled with good things, but the rich He hath cast down...."]

7/28/2003   1 prison story - 7/19/2003   1 prison story - 7/15/2003   1 prison story - 7/10/2003   1 prison story - 7/04/2003   1 prison story - 6/20/2003   1 prison story - 6/05/2003   1 prison story - 5/22/2003   1 prison story -
  1. Mississippi was ordered, What's News blurb, WSJ, front page.
    ...by a federal judge to improve "filthy conditions" on death row, which he ruled cruel, unusual and insanity-inducing.
    [more -]
    Mississippi - Death row conditions are ordered improved, AP via Boston Globe, A2.
    JACKSON - ...US Magistrate Jerry Davis ruled in a lawsuit filed on behalf of inmates who alleged deathrow conditions are so harsh they contribute to a high rate of mental illneses among the prisoners. Davis ordered the state Corrections Dept. to undertake 10 actions to improve conditions at the prison at Parchman, in the Mississippi Delta...includ[ing] annual mental health checkups, better lighting [and] toilets, insect control, and..\..fans...to keep inmates cool during the summer heat.
5/20/2003   2 prison stories -
  1. [re prison crowding in USA -]
    Reaffirming Miranda, editorial, NYT, A30.
    The Miranda warning, that staple of late-night cop shows, has been under attack from rightwing lawyers who say that informing suspects of their rights makes it too hard to get convictions.
    [Like we need more prison crowding, and easier convictions when there are hundreds just from deathrow who have been exonerated by DNA evidence. America slides further toward the sordid.]
    Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to take a Missouri case that could scale back the effectiveness of Miranda warnings. At issue is a two-step form of questioning, which Missouri's highest court called an "end run" around Miranda. The Supreme Court should hold that such interrogation violates the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination....

  2. Outside experts find cover-up of killings in Honduras prison, by Tim Weiner, NYT, front page.
    EL PORVENIR, Honduras... - After the shooting and the screaming and the smoke faded away, the guardians of state security scrambled to write the story of how 68 people were killed inside the prison walls here on April 5.... The prison held 550 men, 350 over capacity. ..\..59 of the dead were vicious gang members who [supposedly] shot other prisoners, then barricaded themselves inside two cellblocks and set a suidicidal fire, killing innocent victims in the process, as the police arrived to restore order.
    But that first draft of history is now crumbling into dust. What happened at El Porvenir, according to an independent report commissioned by the president of Honduras [Ricardo Maduro], was in fact among the worst prison massacres of this sort in many years.
    A draft copy of the report...written by three outside experts appointed by the Ministry of State Security..\..says 51 of the dead were executed - shot, stabbed, beaten or burned to death by a force of the state police, soldiers, prison guards and prisoners working with the guards.
    [How in hell did these diverse groups get coordinated for this 'mission'???]
    ...The report says, "They fired on a defined group within the prison population"..\.. All were members of the Mara 18, a feared youth gang. It was, with a handful of exceptions, the Mara who died at El Porvenir. Almost every member of the gang who survived was wounded....
    Church leaders said the Porvenir report...might force the nation to deal in a different way with its most despised citizens - the growing number of teenage gang members. Their emergence reflects the acute social problems of Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, where half the population of 6.5m is under 18.... Roughly 80% of prisoners throughout Honduras are not convicts, but are awaiting trials in overwhelmed courts..\.. Honduras, like other Central American countries, is struggling to create a democracy. It is trying to build a justice system and a civil society out of very little after three decades of military rule....
    [It's all a matter of deconcentration technology. What they have to do first is deconcentrate employment and skills and achieve near-full employment - a nation of self-supporting law-abiding people, where it's easier to earn an honest living than a dishonest one, and that means they need gradual implementation of a market-oriented worksharing system - to handle the root source of the poverty, namely unemployment.]
    The prison was "a time bomb," says its leading inmate, Jose Edgardo Coca, a former police sergeant and head of its prisoners' association....
    [Could a massacre have been done without his help?]
    About 80 members of Mara 18, a group that grew out of the 18th Street Gang in Los Angeles [huh?!], were transferred to the prison in February. Tensions flared immediately between the gang and the established prisoners' association. "The Mara were ungovernable," Mr. Coca said. They were "the straw that broke the camel's back" at El Porvenir, said Armando Calidonio, second in command at the Ministry of State Security. On Saturday, April 5, Mr. Coca said, the head of the Mara 18, Mario Cerrato, shot him with a smuggled pistol, setting off the killing. No pistol was recovered after the killing.... The Mara 18 gang fought prison guards and Mr. Coca's allies from 8:55 until 10:05 am [1hr10min], the report said, until soldiers arrived from an army camp nearby. Shortly after 10:15 am [10 mins later], national police units, including a special operations squad ['special ops'] called the Cobras [trained by the most brutal people in the U.S. or their trainees??], began to to arrive at the prison.
    [So who phoned them?]
    ...Mr. Cerrato was "shot with malice," the report said, [by a member of one of the three sets of armed troops, or by a "good" prisoner with another "smuggled pistol"??] after a prison trusty knocked him down.
    [All prison interactions should be videotaped. Honduras doesn't have the money for that but they're just starting to video police interrogations in the U.S.]
    With their leader dead, most of the gang members retreated to a cellblock [which] followers of Mr. Coca barricaded...and set...aflame, the report said, "in the presence of the police." Then, the report said, the police "opened fire on gang members who came out of their cells barefoot, their hands raised above their heads in surrender." One Cobra shot a prisoner who staggered from the cellblock in flames. Other Mara-18 members, who had surrendered, were beaten or stabbed as they lay face down in the prison yard, the report said. ..."It is important to point out that no firearms were found among the victims."...
    The executions seem to reflect widespread hatred of the youth gangs in Honduras. "There are people who think they all should be exterminated," said Auxiliary Bishop Romulo Emiliani in San Pedro Sula, the nation's 2nd-largest city, one of the few people in the country working to rehabilitate the gangs. Bishop Emiliani...called the deaths..."an assassination" that laid bare the country's social problems....

5/10/2003   2 prison stories -
  1. [a reader brings up a neglected aspect of the exoneration fiasco -]
    They're innocent, but not truly free, letter to editor by Marilyn Schiffmann of NYC, NYT, A28.
    ...Freeing the innocent is just the first step. What about expunging the innocent person's police record?
    [Oh you thought that would be automatic? We did too!]
    It is horrific to learn that not only has our "justice" system [our quotes] failed by incarcerating an innocent person, but, in addition, that person['s] arrest remains a blemish on his or her record. Very often, even if the innocent person is successful in getting a job, once the other employees get wind of the fact that the new employee was arrested for something egregious, the word "exonerated" on the record is meaningless and the person is fired.
    The current system tortures the freed individual. Where is the justice?
    [It all comes back to jobs. And jobs all come back to Timesizing.]

  2. [and here's another key aspect -]
    Exonerated, but on their own - Providing support for those cleared by DNA, by Michael Wilson, WSJ, A15.
    ..The number of prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence nationwide stands at 127. \They\ would have had more help after prison if only [they] had been guilty.... Lacking an official program to help them adjust, the exonerated make up their own..\..
    Thirty-four members of this micro-society came to New York on Thursday for a weekend of meetings and seminars to learn basic ways of re-entering society.... The gathering [was] held at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law and organized by two groups of lawyers, psychologists and law students active in social justice issues...the Life After Exoneration Project and the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law..\..
    While many of the 34 men said they were blessed with supportive, loving families, at the end of the confusing, complicated, frustrating day, only the other exonerated men really understood..\.. They collectively served 436 years in prison, in 19 states.
    Perhaps most remarkable about the little convention, the largest gathering yet, was that there were enough invitees to warrant one. DNA exonerations, practically nonexistent in 1990, have grown steadily, one headline at a time.... At the gathering...one former inmate said he had taken a newspaper clipping proclaiming his innocence on job interviews. Instead of hiring him, though...potential employers told him that they worried about the bad habits he might have picked up in prison.... And no matter how many clippings you carry in your pocket, people still look at you funny..\..
    There are common [clouds] in their stories that begin after the jubilant news conferences the day they leave prison. Many have sleep disorders, and suffer from nightmares, often recalling violence to other inmates they witnessed. They are growing older, and sorer, after years on hard cots, and now have no health coverage. Some have not visited a dentist for most of their adult lives....
    [That's a real cruncher, an instant marker for poverty and risk - dark or missing teeth.]
    Every inmate was given a free AOL account and instructions on how to access a special server just for them.... The men will meet in small groups today to discuss coping tools. Their wives and girlfriends will meet in separate rooms. All the exonerated will undergo psychological evaluations and assessments on their needs for housing, health care or jobs....
    [You know, this is the most difficult NYT story we've ever had to rearrange in a logical order. We don't know if it's the reporter, Michael Wilson, or the clueless and impotent approach that so many do-gooders take to helping other people help themselves, or both. But the above sentence contains multiple examples of the impotent and self-serving cart-before-the-horse of many do-gooders. Why do psychological evaluations come first instead of jobs? We KNOW why these men are crazy! They've been CONDEMNED even though they're INNOCENT! No one will HIRE them! Christ, it makes US crazy and we're damned if we're going to run to a mealy-mouthed psychologist over it. Once again, it all comes down to jobs. And the only thing that can solve that is a seachange in our Puritan long-hours work "ethic" that recognizes the shorter-hours mandate of worksaving technology - in short, the absolute necessity that our species, all over the planet as we move into the Technological Age, learn to SHARE THE VANISHING WORK, and quit arguing that it's not vanishing. The whole point of technology is to MAKE IT VANISH as far as conscious human attention is concerned. We're TURNING IT OVER TO MACHINES and AUTOMATA and COMPUTERS and ROBOTS, O.K.??? Can we possibly ADMIT that for a change and QUIT DENYING it, with crap about, "Oh, technology creates more jobs than it destroys." Only quality-enhancing technology does that, and now that we've gone way way beyond the point of diminishing returns in terms of quality technology in every field except medicine - who NEEDS CDs instead of albums when the print's too small to read the names of the artists and no way are you going to get a libretto! - who NEEDS ultra high fidelity; only canines can hear those wavelengths! - who NEEDS to get to Paris in 3 hours on the Concorde, when they're so goddam noisy and acccident-prone! - who NEEDS robot coporate and 411 receptionists? - who NEEDS ATMs that charge more fees than human tellers used to? - who NEEDS creditcards whose combination of short grace periods and high late fees can cost you the equivalent of a dozen of the old yearly membership fees each year and jack your interest rate up to hundreds of percent on a disputed $5 charge? - who NEEDS cellphones when they invade the owner's privacy and that of everyone within 15 feet of him/her! - you can't even tell who's insane or upset any more because the people who appear to be talking to themselves in the supermarket may, upon closer inspection, have a tiny mike curling down from their hair and be going, "I'm just going by the frozen fruits and vegetables, do you want any Birdseye strawberries?" The reason why these exonerated men feel crazy is that the whole f*ck*ng world's gone crazy and they're the sighted men in the land of the blind! The current dislocation and dysfunction of the supposed leading edge of our species is huger than the trauma of the original change to "civilization" back at the dawn of agriculture when we first had to get used to living in crowded towns and cities, with all the attendant noise, garbage, offal and disease. And the most important aspect of the technological revolution, the worksharing imperative, is talked about by virtually NO ONE! We just have literally thousands of groups and meetings about it's Protean negative impacts and nobody's putting it all together and getting worksharing ROLLING! Will Take Back Your Time Day on Oct. 24 help? Yeah, a little. But it's only one day, and then it's over. Even if it's every year, it's still only one day a year. And look how the spirit of Christmas has been safely compartmentalized and forgotten most of the year! Look how the spirit of religion, for that matter, has been safely contained in one hour per week, usually 11 am to 12 noon on Sunday, and forgotten the rest of the week. Worksharing has to happen constantly and continuously, all week, partially by getting back the weekend but mostly by time accountability, like consultants' "billable time" tracking, across the weekdays. Charities and churches need to re-orient their do-gooding to work themselves out of a job by guaranteeing EVERYONE not just the rhetorical "right" to a job but the practical LIKELIHOOD, the 99% PROBABILITY, of self-support. {Gasp, pant, coff.} Back to this impotent sentence. "All the exonerated will undergo psychological evaluations and assessments on their needs for housing, health care or jobs." If we meant business, we'd see this sentence instead, "All the exonerated will be given a job with healthcare benefits and high enough pay to easily rent an apartment in their region; job counseling will be available to them, plus more general psychological counseling if they feel the need." Period. That kind of statement is possible only in a city, state, or national economy that has implemented worksharing, such as Timesizing.]
    ..\..The organizing groups...say they hope to hold more such meetings. The groups want to provide a counselor and a "coach," a former inmate, for each new person cleared of charges..\..
    [These blind guides will do ANYTHING but get them what they need - a job.]
    The particular challenges the [exonerated] face have attracted attention in Washington. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft this week seeking a grant program to assist exonerated prisoners after their release....
    [Like Ashcan, oops, Ashcroft, is going to do anything. He's too busy invoking that great silent and passive judge and helper in the sky. The power of the early Christian church was, they took responsibility and looked after one another. No one was rich, but no one starved either. Once this pattern changed, the church, with occasional exceptions, became just part of the background noise - except when it was actually contributing to the problems of war and unlimited accumulation - a pattern that gradually became standardized. Back to the Chesterton trap ... and the minority of organizations that have avoided it.]

5/09/2003   2 prison stories, reported in the Wall St Journal or NY Times -
  1. [Here in the wonderful, civilized USA -]
    After exoneration, then what? - Freeing the innocent is just the first step, op ed by Emily Bazelon, NYT, A29.
    It's bad enough to be locked up for years for a crime you didn't commit. What's worse is to get out and find that you're on your own.
    Yet when the wrongfully convicted gain their freedom, they're usually not entitled to the social services, like help with housing and jobs, that other released convicts receive. (They're not on probation or eligible for other ex-offender programs.) Just as troubling, they rarely get any money from state governments to make up for the years of lost freedom, livelihood and time with loved ones. ...Only 15 states and D.C. have laws to help the exonerated collect damages..\..
    For what they've suffered, these victims deserve better. Since the state fractured their lives, it should help them put the pieces back together....

  2. [Meanwhile, in the "primitive," "brutal" and "backward" Islamic world -]
    Morocco: King has an heir and frees 9,000 prisoners, Reuters via NYT, A8.
    King Mohammed VI celebrated the birth of a son and heir by ordering the release of more than 9,000 prisoners from Morocco's crowded jails, one of the biggest royal pardons in the country's history.... King Muhammed also reduced the jail sentences of more than 38,000 inmates..\.. The Moroccan baby, named Hassan after his grandfather Hassan II, is the first child of the king and his wife, Princess Salma Bennani.
    [And -]
    In neighboring Algeria, ...Pres. Abdelaziz Boutefika...commemorated the forthcoming birthday of the prophet Muhammad by pardoning 5,000 inmates....
    [Americans' problem is they don't even read Pravda and Izvestia. They just watch TV and believe everything their backward-moving "leader" tells them.]
5/06/2003   1 prison story, reported in the Wall St Journal or NY Times - 5/02/2003   1 prison story, reported in the Wall St Journal or NY Times -
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