Published on Sep 18, 2012 by lawlessamerica
Lawless America Movie Interview: Tonya Frances Brown for Nolan Klein in Carson City, Nevada.
Nolan Klein is dead. He died in the Nevada State Prison. He was wrongfully convicted. He spent 20 years in prison and died there, an innocent man.
Nolan Klein wrote a letter expressing his feelings about the corruption that he experienced. Nolan Klein speaks to us from Heaven through his sister, Tonja Frances Brown.
Lawless America...The Movie is all about exposing the fact that we now live in Lawless America. We no longer have laws that are enforced because judges do whatever they want to do. America has also become lawless because government officials are dishonest and/or corrupt.
The movie will expose corruption in every state. The Movie will focus on victims. Corrupt judges and corrupt government officials will be exposed, and we will confront a number of the crooks.
If anyone has ever questioned the story of a person who has expressed the view that they were a victim of the government or of judges, this movie will prove that the odds are that the corruption report was true. In fact, there are probably tens of millions of victims in the United States who never realized what happened to them.
One feature length documentary movie is being produced. It will be shown in theaters, on Netflix, Blockbuster, and other such video places, and the movie will be presented at the Sundance Film Festival and other film festivals.
In addition, videos will be produced for each state and for each type of corruption. Everyone who is interviewed for the film will record a three-minute segment that will be done as testimony before Congress as well as a 30-60 minute on-camera interview with Bill Windsor, founder of LawlessAmerica.com and GRIP, and candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislators in each state will receive the testimony from those in their state, and the members of the U.S. House and Senate will receive all of the testimony nationwide. Over 750 people are already scheduled to be interviewed for the movie.
For more information, see www.LawlessAmerica.com and www.Facebook.com/lawlessamerica
"Mass incarceration on a
scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country
today -- perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of
1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice
system -- in prison, on probation, or on parole -- than were in slavery then.
Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America
-- more than six million -- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at
its height." -- Adam Gopnik, "The
Caging of America"
In an age
when freedom is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule, imprisoning
Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash
cow for big business. At one time, the American penal system operated under the
idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order to
protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons
to private corporations, the flawed yet retributive American "system of
justice" is being replaced by an even more flawed and insidious form of
mass punishment based upon profit and expediency.
As author
Adam Gopnik reports for the New
Yorker:
[A] growing number of American
prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit
companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on
spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It's hard to
imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit: the
interest of private prisons lies not in the obvious social good of having the
minimum necessary number of inmates but in having as many as possible, housed
as cheaply as possible.
Consider
this: despite the fact that violent crime in America has
been on the decline, the nation's incarceration rate has tripled since 1980. Approximately 13
million people are introduced to American jails in any given year. Incredibly,
more than six
million people are under "correctional supervision" in America, meaning that
one in fifty Americans are working their way through the prison system, either
as inmates, or while on parole or probation. According to the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, the majority of those being held in federal prisons are convicted of drug
offenses -- namely,
marijuana. Presently, one
out of every 100 Americans is serving time behind bars.
Little
wonder, then, that public prisons are overcrowded. Yet while providing security,
housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for
cash-strapped states, to profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of
America (CCA) and GEO Group, the leaders in the partnership corrections
industry, it's a $70
billion gold mine. Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a
proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public
prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, and here's
the kicker, the prisons would have to contain at
least 1,000 beds and states would have agree to maintain a 90
percent occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. The problem with
this scenario, as Roger Werholtz, former Kansas secretary of corrections, recognizes is that while states may be
tempted by the quick infusion of cash, they "would be obligated to
maintain these (occupancy) rates and subtle pressure would be applied to make
sentencing laws more severe with a clear intent to drive up the population."
Unfortunately, that's exactly what has happened. Among the laws aimed at
increasing the prison population and growing the profit margins of special
interest corporations like CCA are three-strike laws (mandating sentences of 25
years to life for multiple felony convictions) and "truth-in-sentencing"
legislation (mandating that those sentenced to prison serve most or all of their
time). And yes, in case you were wondering, part of the investment pitch for
CCA and its cohort GEO Group include the profits to be made in building
"kindler, gentler" minimum-security facilities designed for detaining
illegal immigrants, especially low-risk detainees like women and children. With
immigration a persistent problem in the southwestern states, especially, and more
than 250 such detention centers going up across the country, there is indeed money
to be made. For example, GEO's new facility in Karnes County, Texas, boasts a "608-bed facility still
smelling of fresh paint and new carpet stretch[ing] across a 29-acre swath of
farmland in rural South Texas. Rather than prison cells, jumpsuits, and barbed
wire fencing, detainees here will sleep in eight-bed dormitory-style quarters,
wearing more cozy attire like jeans and T-shirts. The facility's high walls
enclose lush green courtyards with volleyball courts, an AstroTurfed soccer
field, and basketball hoops, where detainees are free to roam throughout the
day." All of this, of course, comes at taxpayer expense. "And this is
where it gets creepy," observes reporter Joe Weisenthal for Business
Insider, "because as an investor you're pulling for scenarios where
more people are put in jail." In making its pitch to potential investors,
CCA points out that private prisons comprise a unique, recession-resistant
investment opportunity, with more than 90 percent of the market up for grabs,
little competition, high recidivism among prisoners, and the potential for
"accelerated growth in inmate populations following the recession."
In other words, caging humans for profit is a sure bet, because the U.S.
population is growing dramatically and the prison population will grow
proportionally as well, and more prisoners equal more profits. In this way,
under the pretext of being tough on crime, state governments can fatten their
coffers and fill the jail cells of their corporate benefactors. However, while
a flourishing privatized prison system is a financial windfall for corporate
investors, it bodes ill for any measures aimed at reforming prisoners and
reducing crime. CCA understands this. As it has warned investors, efforts to
decriminalize certain activities, such as drug use (principally possession of
marijuana), could cut into their profits. So too would measures aimed at
reducing the prison system's disproportionately racist impact on minorities,
given that the incarceration rate for blacks is seven
times that of
whites. Immigrants are also heavily impacted, with roughly 2.5 million people having been through the
immigration detention system since 2003. As private prisons begin to dominate,
the many troubling characteristics of our so-called criminal justice system
today -- racism, economic inequality, inadequate access to legal
representation, lack of due process, etc. -- will only become more acute.
Doubtless, a system already riddled by corruption will inevitably become more
corrupt, as well. For example, consider the "kids for cash" scandal
which rocked Luzerne County, Penn., in 2009. For ten years, the Mid Atlantic
Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile
offenders, paid two judges to jail youths and send them to private prison
facilities. The judges, who made
over $2.6 million in the scam, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and
sent many of them to prison for petty
crimes such as
stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings. When the
scheme finally came to light, one judge was sentenced
to 17.5 years in prison and the other received
28 years, but not
before thousands of young lives had been ruined. In this way, minor criminals,
from drug users to petty thieves, are being handed over to corporations for
lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent
recidivism. This is the culmination of an inverted justice system which has
come to characterize the United States, a justice system based upon increasing
the power and wealth of the corporate-state. No matter what the politicians or
corporate heads might say, prison privatization is neither fiscally responsible
nor in keeping with principles of justice. It simply encourages incarceration
for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them
minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy
prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism.
This perverse notion of how prisons should be run, that they should be full at
all times, and full of minor criminals, is evil.
