Word: folsoms
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...Connecticut and Pennsylvania also went to the Republicans and Maine elected an independent, only Vermont will still have a Democrat in the statehouse come January. And in the Democrat's once solid South, a march to the G.O.P. climaxed with the narrow defeat of Alabama's Democratic Governor James Folsom Jr. by Fob James, a former Democratic Governor who switched parties...
...Folsom, for all its notoriety, is depressingly typical and illustrates the turmoil faced by penitentiaries and local jails across the U.S. In April a Justice Department study reported prison overcrowding was worse than ever, with 463,866 men and women jammed into facilities that are filled to twice their capacity. Prisons in a record 37 states have been found unfit by the federal courts. Meanwhile, the bloodshed born of such stock-pen conditions is spreading beyond the wire-topped walls of prisons, clogging the entire criminal-justice system, forcing the early release of dangerous convicts and cycling their pent...
Designed for a population of 1,782, Folsom today struggles to contain 3,036 maximum-security convicts, the meanest of the mean in violent crime. On the main blocks, two inmates are jammed into each of the 6-ft. by 8 ½ -ft. cells. Less than half work or attend classes. The others mainly watch daytime television and frequently turn their idle nothing-to-lose ferocity against one another. Homosexual rape has long been commonplace, and stabbings are now epidemic, averaging 19 a month, in contrast to about nine a month in 1984. Assailants wield sharpened combs and toothbrushes, melted...
...Folsom's attempts to isolate gang leaders have failed, so when violence flares, authorities have been forced increasingly to use the single blunt tool at their disposal: confinement of all prisoners to their cells. During such "lock-downs," inmates are released only for a ten-minute shower every other day, spending the rest of the time seething in their cells. After each of Folsom's recent lock-downs, inmates have emerged ornery as ever. "All the lock-downs do is buy time," says Prison Chaplain James McGee...
...year to keep it occupied. Despite ambitious construction programs under way in some states ($1.2 billion for 19,000 prison berths in California alone), the crush shows little sign of easing. The inmate nation swells by 73 new members a day. At this rate, a new Folsom is needed every three weeks. Says Gerald Kaufman, an attorney for Philadelphia's National Jail and Prison Overcrowding Project: "You can't build your...