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+15 +1
Fyre Festival Founder Working On Prison Memoir, Planning Sequel To Doomed Event
Billy McFarland, the concert promoter whose botched music festival spawned documentaries by Netflix and Hulu, is now working on a memoir that will talk about what happened. McFarland is currently in federal prison in Otisville, NY, serving six years in prison for fraud and selling fake tickets to events. The saga was memorialized in the films “Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened” and “Fyre Fraud.” New York Magazine reported that McFarland is planning to self-publish a memoir. It is tentatively titled “Promythus: The God of Fyre.”’
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+16 +1
“Smart” Technology Is Coming for Prisons, Too
Makers claims that with A.I. monitors in every cell, “prison breaks will be history.”
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+2 +1
Lori Loughlin Faces at Least Two Years in Jail for the College Admissions Cheating Case
Yesterday, Felicity Huffman released a statement confirming she is set to plead guilty in the college admissions cheating case. Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, the two other celebrities named, have not indicated they are pleading guilty yet. But according to TMZ, whether the two enter a plea or let their case go to a federal grand jury, they are set to face years of prison time because of the amount of money they used in their bribes.
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+15 +1
The Everyday Brutality of America’s Prisons
Earlier this week, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released a summary of its findings on the state of Alabama’s prisons. The accounts are stomach-churning: The New York Times noted that one prisoner had been lying dead for so long that “his face was flattened,” while another “was tied up and tortured for two days.” A dive into the 53-page report reveals yet more horror. One prisoner was doused with bleach and beaten with a broken mop handle. Another was attacked with shaving cream so hot that it caused chemical burns, requiring treatment from an outside hospital.
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+18 +1
Yoga does not make inmates gay, says Russian prison chief as classes are reinstated
Russian prison authorities have reinstated yoga for inmates after dismissing a claim by a religious scholar that the practice could make them gay. Both a Moscow pre-trial detention center for women and the renowned Butyrka prison in the Russian capital introduced yoga classes last year, according to The Moscow Times.
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+11 +1
Officials seize drone, drugs, cellphones from maximum security BC prison
Over $86,000 of contraband --including a drone, cell phones, and multiple drugs --were seized from a maximum security prison in Agassiz, BC.
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+3 +1
Inside America’s Black Box: A Rare Look at the Violence of Incarceration
The contraband is scary enough: Homemade knives with grips whittled to fit particular hands. Homemade machetes. And homemade armor, with books and magazines for padding. Then there is the blood: In puddles. In toilets. Scrawled on the wall in desperate messages. Bloody scalps, bloody footprints, blood streaming down a cheek like tears. And the dead: a man kneeling like a supplicant, hands bound behind his back with white fabric strips and black laces. Another, hanging from a twisted sheet in the dark, virtually naked, illuminated by a flashlight beam.
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+22 +1
Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor
“Prison labor” is usually associated with physical work, but inmates at two prisons in Finland are doing a new type of labor: classifying data to train artificial intelligence algorithms for a startup. Though the startup in question, Vainu, sees the partnership as a kind of prison reform that teaches valuable skills, other experts say the claim of job training is more evidence of hype around the promises of AI.
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+12 +1
Chris Watts talked to investigators about his newfound relationship with God after killing his family, saying he's read the Bible cover to cover
Chris Watts said he's found God since strangling his pregnant wife and smothering his two daughters in a rage this past August. In a new interview with investigators at the federal prison where he is serving his three consecutive life sentences, the 33-year-old Colorado man delved into his newfound Christian faith.
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+17 +1
Shkreli directing notorious pharma co. from prison. It’s still losing millions
Armed with a contraband phone, an incarcerated Martin Shkreli is plotting a comeback with his notorious pharmaceutical company, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. So far, however, the company is still losing millions of dollars. Shkreli is just 16 months into a seven-year prison sentence over securities-fraud charges. He landed in jail last year for running what federal prosecutors described as a Ponzi-like scheme that duped investors of his hedge funds.
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+13 +1
Florida prisons sued after inmates spent $11 million buying songs they can’t play
Switching music providers made inmates’ old music useless
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+9 +1
California man who spent 39 years in prison gets $21 million for...
A California man who was wrongfully convicted for killing an ex-girlfriend and her son four decades ago has reached a $21 million settlement with the city of Simi Valley, officials said.
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+21 +1
Sweden investigates its Beijing ambassador over 'strange' meetings
Daughter of Swedish bookseller jailed in China says Anna Lindstedt set up meetings in Stockholm
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+21 +1
Ex-Cons Create ‘Instagram for Prisons,’ and Wardens Are Fine With That
Pigeonly, InmateAid and Flikshop are offering a cheaper way for families to connect with incarcerated loved ones.
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+38 +1
Why some Japanese pensioners want to go to jail
Japan is in the grip of an elderly crime wave. Poverty and loneliness are two of the possible causes.
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+12 +1
Are women punished more harshly for killing an intimate partner?
Cyntoia Brown was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for a man she killed when she was 16 years old. This week though, Brown was granted clemency by the Tennessee governor after appeals by her lawyers claiming that she was a victim of sex trafficking who feared for her life. Brown, now aged 30, will remain on parole supervision for 10 years so long as she retains a job and participates in regular counseling sessions.
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+18 +1
Inmate found knitting prison warders' uniforms during surprise raid
Correctional Services has discovered, during a raid at Leeuwkop Prison in Johannesburg, that an inmate was making prison warders' uniforms in his cell.
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+23 +1
Swatter behind deadly 'Call of Duty' hoax pleads guilty to 51 charges
Tyler Barriss is poised to face a stiff punishment for the game-related swatting call that ultimately killed Wichita resident Andrew Finch, not to mention a host of other crimes. Barriss has pleaded guilty to 51 charges as part of a deal, including making a false report resulting in death as well as bomb threats to numerous US states and Canada. The agreement will see him face at least 20 years in prison if the judge approves the terms.
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+9 +1
The Sharashka Phenomenon
As many older Russians undoubtedly remember, by the early 1970s, the culture of underground or samizdat literature in the Soviet Union had evolved into a highly risky but established system for disseminating information among the dissident community… By Asif Siddiqi. (Mar. 10, 2011)
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+8 +1
Ben Stiller Goes Darker for a Real-Life Prison Break
So a screenwriter, a photographer, the district attorney of Clinton County, N.Y., and Ben Stiller drop by a small-town street corner together to see a manhole. It sounds like the setup of a joke — and that was a problem. “I got that,” Stiller said recently. “‘Ben Stiller is going to come up and make a comedy about this and make fun of us.’”
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