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Life + 185 Years: Three Stories of Incarceration

ReasonTV
Their stories begin differently but end in the same place. Antoinette Frink, who holds a masters degree in school psychology, was the owner of an auto dealership in Ohio; she sold a dozen vehicles to customers who were in the business of distributing cocaine. Luis Rivera, a former pilot and Army officer, began smuggling drugs from Colombia into the United States in his twenties. Barbra Scrivner was a young mother whose husband sold crystal meth.

All three are nonviolent offenders who were sentenced to federal prison in the 1980s, when our national anxieties about violence became public policy with a punitive intent. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 stripped judges of their own discretion and introduced mandatory minimum sentencing for drug criminals. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 ratcheted up the length of those sentences and funded a spree of prison construction to contain an unprecedented rise in the prison population.
Top U.S. & World Headlines — April 26, 2016
Family of Samuel Harrell, Killed by "Beat Up Squad" in NY Prison, Holds Hunger Strike for Justice
Democracy Now!
http://democracynow.org - We speak with family members who have just concluded a five-day hunger strike marking the first anniversary of the death of Samuel Harrell, who died after as many as 20 corrections officers kicked, punched and threw him down a flight of stairs while he was incarcerated at the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York. An autopsy report determined the African-American man’s death was a homicide caused by a "physical altercation with corrections officers." Some of the officers were known around the prison as the Beat Up Squad. The superintendent at Fishkill, William J. Connolly, abruptly resigned in the weeks after the incident, and both the Dutchess County District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. District Attorney’s Office have launched investigations into the case. But more than a year later, no one has been charged in Samuel Harrell’s death, and the correctional officers involved in the assault are still working at the prison.
30 Years After Chernobyl, World's Worst Nuclear Disaster, U.S. Activists Warn of Ongoing Risks
Democracy Now!
http://democracynow.org - We are on the road in New Mexico, home to Los Alamos and the birthplace of the nuclear age. The atomic bombs used in World War II were designed and developed here, and it remains one of two places that design every nuclear weapon in the United States arsenal. This comes as today marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in the former Soviet state of Ukraine, which is still considered the worst nuclear disaster in history. It sent a cloud of radioactive fallout into Russia, Belarus and over a large portion of Europe. Fifty thousand people living in Chernobyl’s immediate surroundings had to be evacuated, and a vast rural region became uninhabitable. The legacy of Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power accident, which occurred five years ago last month in Japan, particularly resonates with residents here in the Southwest and in the Western United States. 
Not Justice & Not Enough: Tamir Rice Family Gets $6M Settlement for Police Killing of 12-Year-Old
Democracy Now!
http://democracynow.org - As Cleveland officials agree to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of Tamir Rice, the youngest victim in a spate of well-known police killings of unarmed African Americans, we speak with Zoe Salzman, one of his family’s attorneys, and with Rian Brown, an organizer from Black Lives Matter in Cleveland. Under the terms of the settlement, Cleveland will reportedly admit to no wrongdoing, and the Rice family will drop its complaint against the two officers, including the one who shot the 12-year-old child in 2014 while he was playing with a toy pellet gun in a Cleveland park. A 911 caller reported seeing Rice with a weapon but noted it was "probably fake." That information was not relayed to the responding officers, who shot him within two seconds of arriving at the scene. A grand jury has failed to bring charges against either of the officers.

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