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Open government is good government March 13-19, 2016
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Source: http://www.sunshineweek.org/

By Michelle ShermanOf GateHouse Media Illinois

Posted Feb. 29, 2016 at 5:24 PM CANTON — The Illinois budget crisis continues to hit home as Canton officials recently learned the state owes $674,000 for various services at Illinois River Correctional Center.

Finance Committee Chairman Jim Nelson said Monday he learned last week the state is that far in arrears to the city for three different services — water and sewer services to Illinois River, bulk sewer bills and two quarters of payments on an annual intergovernmental agreement for maintenance on shared roadways.

He was unsure how long it has been since the city received a payment, but asked that a discussion item be added to the City Council’s agenda for Tuesday’s meeting.“That’s a good portion of our bond payment” for water and sewer, he said. “It’s a very big number.”

LouAnn Armstrong, an accountant with Clifton Larson Allen who serves as comptroller and budget director for the city, says the Illinois Department of Corrections last received a bill on Feb. 23, but was unsure how far behind it is on payments.Because of the state budget impasse, vouchers requesting payment of bills cannot be released by the IDOC to Comptroller Leslie Munger’s office, said Rich Carter, Munger’s press secretary.

“We physically make the payment, but we can’t do that without a voucher,” and vouchers cannot be sent without a state budget, Carter said.

Source: Illinois owes $674,000 for services at Canton correctional center – News – Journal Star – Peoria, IL

BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK –  EAST ST. LOUIS

Inmates know them as “Orange Crush.” They are an elite, mobile Illinois Department of Corrections tactical unit, which civil rights lawyers say regularly humiliated and terrorized more than a thousand Illinois inmates on various occasions using tactics such as forcing them to march naked in single-file, tight formations, causing men’s genitals to press against the buttocks of men in front of them.

The special squad calls the exercise “nuts-to-butts,” according to a civil rights class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in East St. Louis, and state prison officials aren’t commenting on it.

Members of the tactical unit begin the tactic by running onto a prison tier when female guards are sometimes also present, “whooping,” banging on metal tables and shouting to prisoners: “Get butt-naked.”

The guards do this, according to the lawsuit, while dressed in orange fatigues, wearing helmets, carrying clubs and chanting “Punish the inmate. Punish the inmate.”

Hundreds of prisoners at a time were marched in this way in April of 2014 at four Southern Illinois prisons while being threatened by laughing guards who shouted they would be taken immediately to solitary confinement if they allowed any daylight between themselves and the man in front of them, the plaintiffs’ lawyers allege. Prisoners were eventually led to an exercise area and made to stand for hours with their faces pressed against a wall while their hands were cuffed behind them in a “stress” position. During this time, other members of the guard unit searched the prisoners’ cells for contraband.

“This is above and beyond what I’ve seen ever in the 35 years I’ve been doing this kind of work,” said civil rights attorney Alan Mills of the Chicago-based Uptown People’s Law Center, one of two law firms pressing the lawsuit. “This is part of some official policy. Higher-ups in IDOC will have to explain what in the world they were thinking when they gave these people this kind of direction and leeway.”

Alan Mills, attorney for inmates Mills said the practice continued on at least a few occasions after the lawsuit was filed in 2015.

Source: Lawsuit: ‘Orange Crush’ guard unit terrorized, humiliated Southern Illinois inmates | Belleville News-Democrat

Five books you should read, now that you’ve watched Making A Murderer and have no idea what to do.

1. The Innocent Killer: A True Story of a Wrongful Conviction and its Astonishing Aftermath by Michael Griesbach is a true crime book about Steven Avery’s case, which looks ultimately frustrating to read after watching Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi’s documentary series. Written by a Manitowoc county prosecutor, the book tells what was until recently the prevailing story about Steven Avery: that of a man wrongfully convicted for rape, who went on to commit murder. Although the book was controversial for being “overly critical of the authorities” when it came out, Griesbach argues that “the authorities got it right this time.”

2. Essentials Of The Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions by Fred E. Inbau, John E. Reid, Joseph P. Buckley, Brian C. Jayne. This manual describes the interview method widely used by police in the United States—a method that is thought to be particularly effective at “extracting the truth from those who are often unwilling to provide it.” In 2012, the president of John E. Reid and Associates posted a document responding to defense expert Richard Leo’s criticisms of the way the technique was used to elicit a confession from Brendan Dassey. Douglas Starr’s 2013 New Yorker article on police interrogation reports that Saul Kassin, a legal scholar widely regarded as a leading expert on false confessions, “believes that the Reid Technique is inherently coercive.”

3. Worse than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror Paperback by Dean A. Strang. One half of Steven Avery’s defense team wrote his own true crime book about anarchists and a miscarriage of justice that took place in Wisconsin in 1917.

4. False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent by Jim Petro and Nancy Petro is listed as recommended reading by the Innocence Project. It presents in detail the many assumptions at work in the justice system, which can lead to a wrongful conviction.

5. The Innocents by Taryn Simon is a powerful selection of portraits of men who were wrongfully convicted of serious crimes and later exonerated by DNA evidence. The mugshot-style photographs are accompanied by commentary from Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the lawyers who founded the Innocence Project.

Source: Five books you should read, now that you’ve watched Making A Murderer and have no idea what to do. | New Republic