I shot this little clip during a tour of the Missouri State Penitentiary a couple of years ago, and forgot about it. One of my favorite prison factoids: The prison was opened in 1836… the same month the Alamo fell.
Tag Archives: prison
Tweeting from the slammer
I didn’t follow the story of the arrest and conviction of Jeff Smith last year. Here’s a couple of grafs from Wikipedia:
“Jeff Smith was a Democratic member of the Missouri Senate, representing the 4th district, covering the western portion of the City of St. Louis. On August 25, 2009 he pled guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and resigned his seat. He admitted his involvement, and attempted cover-up, in two federal election law violations committed during his 2004 campaign for Congress.
Each conspiracy count is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He resigned effective August 25, 2009 and was sentenced to 1 year and a day of prison. He also was fined $50,000. His lawyer requested Smith be sent to a prison camp in Marion, Illinois.”
This morning I learned from @chadlivengood that Mr. Smith (@jeffmsith7027) is on Twitter. Seems Mr. Smith emails his tweets to a friend who posts for him.
I’m a curious why he has access to email but not Twitter? Anybody help me out with that? Would love to interview someone with the federal prison system who could illucidate.
Are there lots of federal prisoners on Twitter? Is there a list somewhere? What –if anything– does this say about social networking? Do prisoners within the same facility follow each other? Would it be tacky to do @fakejeffsmith feed with humorus tweets. Yes, I’m pretty sure it would.
Anderson Cooper weighs in on race, justice and Kennett, MO
My friend John just called report the Dunklin County courthouse in Kennett, Missouri (where I grew up), is surrounded by TV satellite trucks covering the trial of Heather Ellis. I posted on this a couple of weeks ago and have no idea what what really happened at the local Wal-Mart. I guess that’s what the trial is deciding. It sounds like CNN’s Anderson Cooper might have already have a verdict:
“… Kennett, Missouri has created both a pattern and practice of disparate treatment toward people of color. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the police of Kennett, Missouri search African Americans more than twice as often as whites (14% vs. 6%) even though they possess contraband at roughly the same rate (25% vs. 20%). Across the state of Missouri, African-Americans are searched almost twice as often as whites (12% vs. 7%), even though they are LESS likely to possess contraband (17% vs. 20%). Attorney General Eric Holder should get involved by conducting a thorough investigation of the entire Southeast Missouri judicial system.”
“My simple contention is this: Had Heather Ellis been a Duke Lacrosse player getting a little rowdy on spring break, I doubt very seriously that she would be facing this kind of prison time. America has a two-tiered justice system, where people of color are being given the bottom rung of the justice ladder. Our inability to let go of our racially horrific past is causing us to destroy our future. The Heather Ellis case is merely a symbol of a much larger problem.”
Story from yesterday on the Daily Dunklin Democrat website. I’ll update this with a verdict if and when there is one.
Do you have anything in stripes?
“President Obama’s demands for transparency and accountability are echoing in the halls of state and local governments, where elected officials and bureaucrats are scrambling to provide spending data to the federal website Recovery.gov.
A few states are already rising to the challenge. Both Texas and Missouri implemented online models and found the fiscal tracking to be a boon. The Missouri Accountability Portal features data stretching back to 2000, including the salary of each state employee, as well as business tax credits.
In all of these scenarios, decision makers did more than simply crunch data. They put the data in context. Such was the case with an investigation into $15,482.57 of purchases at a Missouri bra shop. Far from being the scandal it may have seemed, the purchase outfitted the state’s female prison inmates.” — UTNE Reader [thanks, trish]
Twitter coverage of prison release
Joshua Charles Kezer walked out of prison a free man. In jail since he was 18, Kezer has been in prison for 16 years for the 1992 killing of Angela Mischelle Lawless, a 19-year-old college student found shot to death in her car just off Interstate 55 near Benton, Mo. A Cole County judge overturned his murder sentence and a Scott County prosecutor has declined to file new charges against him. You can read the full story –by Tony Messenger– at StlToday.com. Tony also “twittered” the release:
I continue to be fascinated by Twitter as tool for reporting. This story probably wasn’t big enough for TV or radio to break format (what a quaint term). But Tony’s “tweets” give me the sense of being there, watching. Not sure how else he might have accomplished this. Remember when radio was the most immediate medium?
Missouri prison life in 1800’s
The Twin Hells, by John N. Reynolds, claims to be “A Thrilling Narrative of Life in the Kansas and Missouri Penitentiaries.” I haven’t read the entire account yet but will share this excerpt about the Missouri penitentiary:
“The inmates of the Missouri penitentiary are well clothed. In this respect, this prison has no rival. All the prisoners presented the appearance of being cleanly, so far as their clothing is concerned. All are dressed in stripes. None are exempt. Here are nearly two thousand men on an equality. None of them can look down upon others, and say, I am more nicely dressed than you. I never saw a convict dude in the entire lot. The prisoners are well fed. For breakfast, the bill of fare consists of bread, coffee, without milk or sugar, and hash. There is no change to this bill of fare. If the prisoner has been there for ten years, if not in the hospital, he has feasted upon hash every morning. Boiled meat, corn bread, potatoes and water makes up the dinner, and for supper the convict has bread, molasses and coffee. The principal objection to this diet is its monotony. Whenever a change of diet becomes a strict necessity, the prisoner is permitted to take a few meals in the hospital dining-room. Here he receives a first-class meal. This is a capital idea. A great deal of sickness is prevented by thus permitting the convict to have an occasional change of diet. On holidays, such as Thanksgiving day, Christmas, etc., an extra dinner is given, which is keenly relished by all. I have before me a statement of the expenses for a Sunday breakfast and dinner. There are only two meals given on Sunday. The hash was made up of 612 pounds of beef, 90 pounds of bacon, and 30 bushels of potatoes. Fifty-one pounds of coffee were used, and four and a half barrels of flour. The entire meal cost $68.38.”
It appears the account above is from the late 1800’s. I have not idea of the time period represented by the postcard below (from Bob Priddy’s extensive collection of Missouri postcards)
Updating MissouriDeathRow.com
MissouriDeathRow.com was one of the first websites I did. And it looks like it. This was before flickr and Typepad and such. So I’m doing a little make-over. Hope to have it complete by the end of the year.
I’m starting with images and documents related to those executed in Missouri’s gas chamber. First time out, I just posted photos of the condemned. This time I’m posting the… not sure what to call it… the record or card for each inmate [flickr slideshow].
I scanned these from the state archives. For some reason, I find them fascinating.
The state archive has a file on each of the inmates executed in the gas chamber. I spent a week going through these, scanning as much as time allowed. Letters, notes, telegrams…
On June 24, 1962, Odom and another Death Row inmate attempted an escape. Odom’s file contained a report by the guard on duty at the time. I’ve also included (from his appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court) a description of the crime for which Odom was executed.
Tour of the old Missouri State Penitentiary
I spent a chilly two hours this morning touring the old Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. The prison was decommissioned in 2004, replaced by a new facility east of the city. I took a similar tour several years ago when the prison was still being used. Not sure which was more interesting. I was lucky to get in on this one, since they don’t do tours. Thanks to Jeff City Mayor John Landwehr for making it happen.
The old facility is rich in history and our guides –Charlie Brzuchalski and Mark Schreiber– shared one fascinating fact and story after another. It was the oldest prison west of the Mississippi (opened the same year the Battle of the Alamo was fought?) and, at one time, was the largest prison in the world, with 5,200 inmates. Former inmates include James Earl Ray, Pretty Boy Floyd, Sonny Liston and Stagger Lee. Plans for the old prison and grounds include redevelopment and restoration.
I’ll be posting some photos here in coming days but you can check out the flickr set and slideshow now. Titles and captions to come.
UPDATE: Mark Schreiber is the author of “Somewhere in time : 170 year history of Missouri Corrections.”
KETC tour of Missouri State Penitentiary
I took a tour of the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, before the inmates were moved to a new facility in 2004. KETC (St. Louis) producer Patrick Murphy took a tour and produced this excellent video.
By 1935, the penitentiary it was the largest prison in the United States with 5,000 inmates. I can’t explain my fascination with prisons, but as a result of my tour of the prison here in JC, I created MissouriDeathRow.com.
America’s prison for terrorists often held the wrong men
An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.
“The McClatchy investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren’t “the worst of the worst.” From the moment that Guantanamo opened in early 2002, former Secretary of the Army Thomas White said, it was obvious that at least a third of the population didn’t belong there.”
Stories like this one — and the way those accused respond to them — raise a troubling (to me) question about American journalism. Why can’t we have one news organization that everyone can agree is factual and fair. Just one. “Truthiness” is no longer a joke.
Somewhere in the White House and the Pentagon, men and women are figuring out ways to discredit this story and the people who reported it. I won’t try to list the tactics they employee because we are all too familiar with them.
And those who chose not to believe stories like this one need only the flimsiest excuse (“There goes the Liberal Media again.” or “Fox News says it’s not true.”).
Remember how skeptical the world was of the claims by German citizens that they didn’t know what was going on in the concentration camps?
“Whoa! Hold on there smays.com! You aren’t comparing Guantanamo to Auschwitz are you?”
No. I’m talking about what we, the American people, allow our government to do on our behalf. If we’ve been holding hundreds of innocent men for five or six years and –in some cases– torturing (I know, I know… water boarding is not torture) them, will our best explanation be, “We were at war.”
Ich bin beschämt