Frank Freshwaters, who was imprisoned in Ohio jail used to film the Shawshank Redemption, escaped in 1959 after earning the trust of guards

A convict who was once imprisoned at the Ohio prison used to film The Shawshank Redemptionhas been recaptured after 56 years on the run.

In a case bearing remarkable similarities to the critically acclaimed 1994 film, Frank Freshwaters, 79, had "quickly earned the trust of prison officials" before escaping jail in 1959, according to Peter Elliott, the US Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio.

But unlike the fictional Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins in the film, who was last seen enjoying freedom on a beach in Mexico, Freshwaters has been caught by the authorities and returned to jail, after a ruse to get his fingerprints led to his arrest in Florida this week.

Freshwaters was convicted of manslaughter for killing a pedestrian with a vehicle in July 1957, and his initially suspended sentence of one to 20 years in prison was imposed in 1959 after he violated his probation by driving and getting a driver's licence, according to the marshals and old court documents they provided.

He was imprisoned at the old Ohio State Reformatory before being moved to a lower-security camp, from where he escaped in September 1959, the statement said.

The details of his escape have not been divulged, though it is not thought that he tunneled out using a rock hammer, as his fictional counterpart did.

His time on the run was interrupted in 1975, when he was arrested on the Ohio warrant by the sheriff's office in West Virginia.

When the governor there refused to send him back to Ohio, he was freed and disappeared again, the marshals said.

An investigation by a deputy marshal assigned this year to target cold cases led authorities to Florida, where Freshwaters was living as William Harold Cox, the statement said.

Freshwaters admitted his true identity when authorities confronted him on Monday, according to the US Marshals Service and deputies in Brevard County, Florida.

Marshals in Ohio had sought help from deputies there, and they created a ruse to get him to sign papers so they could check his fingerprints, which matched the decades-old arrest, said Major Tod Goodyear.

"We couldn't go with a picture and see if it's that guy," Goodyear said. "You look different than you do 50 years ago."

The man sent to the Ohio State Reformatory in 1959 had short, dark hair in his black-and-white mugshot. Now he has a white beard, a ponytail and glasses and lived in a weathered trailer in a remote area surrounded by palmettos and very few neighbours.

He had retired from a job as a truck driver and was living off Social Security benefits, Goodyear said.

He had left clues about his identity over the past 56 years, and investigators traced those to his Florida doorstep, said US Marshal Pete Elliott in Cleveland. He wouldn't discuss specifics.

The Brevard County Sheriff's Office said he was jailed under the name Harold F. Freshwater and was ordered held without bond because of his status as an out-of-state fugitive. Court records listed no attorney for him.

He declined to talk to reporters and remained jailed on Tuesday night, said Cpl. Dave Jacobs.

The Shawshank Redemption film, based on a 1982 Stephen King novella, is set in a prison in Maine, but was filmed at the Ohio State Reformatory.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The case of the vanishing inmate at the Los Angeles County jail nearly went all the way to the top.

The former second-in-command of the nation's largest sheriff's department and a high-ranking official who was supposed to investigate crimes by deputies surrendered Thursday on charges they hid an FBI jailhouse informant to hinder a federal investigation into abuse by guards.

"The scheme to obstruct justice rose to the executive level of the Sheriff's Department," Acting U.S. Attorney Stephanie Yonekura said. "Both men were aware that there was rampant abuse at the jail, and both men were aware that the internal investigations of that abuse were insufficient."

Former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka and former Capt. William Thomas Carey, both 56, pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

The two are the highest-ranking officials charged in the investigation of jailhouse corruption and abuse that tarnished the career of Sheriff Lee Baca, who resigned last year.

Federal prosecutors wouldn't comment on whether Baca played a role in the cover-up or whether he would face charges.

The indictment stems from an investigation of civil rights abuses that blossomed into an obstruction-of-justice case when deputies and higher-ups discovered in the summer of 2011 that an inmate with a smuggled cellphone was providing information to the FBI about beatings by deputies. The inmate got the phone from a deputy who took a bribe.

Tanaka and Carey were involved from the get-go, taking extraordinary steps to thwart the investigation, Yonekura said.

The FBI wanted the informant to testify to a grand jury, but agents couldn't find him.

Two lieutenants, two sergeants and three deputies were convicted of participating in the cover-up that involved shuttling the informant, Anthony Brown, between different jails under different names. The two sergeants tried to intimidate the lead FBI agent by threatening her with arrest.

The defense argued that the employees were following orders from higher-ups.

Tanaka testified for the defense that he was barely involved but following Baca's orders that he thought were lawful. He said Brown was moved for his protection because he was a snitch and so the department could investigate how he got the smuggled phone.

Tanaka's testimony will probably be used against him, Yonekura said.

Tanaka will be exonerated after all the facts are revealed, defense lawyer H. Dean Steward said.

Carey was charged with two counts of perjury for lying at the trial about why Brown was moved, the indictment said. Carey's lawyer declined comment.

If convicted, both men could face up to 15 years in prison for the obstruction charges and Carey could face 10 more for perjury.

Twenty-three members of the department have now been charged with crimes ranging from civil rights violations to gun charges and obstruction of justice. Three deputies, all brothers, were acquitted of a mortgage fraud scheme.

The indictment alleged Tanaka fostered a culture of abuse by minimizing misconduct investigations and encouraging supervisors to let deputies operate in a "gray area" between justifiable conduct and abuse.

"When it comes to the law, there's black and there's white," said David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office. "There's no area for gray where he was looking for it."

Despite being aware of concerns from outside the department about a lack of investigations into abuse, Tanaka advocated chopping the Internal Affairs Bureau from 45 investigators to one, authorities said.

Tanaka retired from the sheriff's department in 2013 and serves as mayor of the nearby city of Gardena. He ran to replace Baca but lost by a wide margin to Jim McDonnell, who has vowed to reform the troubled agency.

Shortly after McDonnell took office last year, the department agreed to federal court oversight and new use-of-force policies to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by inmates who said they were beaten by guards.

Tanaka and Carey were released on bonds after making their court appearance. Tanaka said he'll take a leave of absence from his part-time job as mayor.

Nine deputies still face charges of violating civil rights of inmates and jail visitors, including an Austrian consulate official who was handcuffed and detained with her husband.

Yonekura said she'll never know what they might have uncovered if their investigation wasn't impeded.

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If you can't feed em, set em free. An Alabama was forced to release some prisoners in its care after running out of food. The released were guilty of committing only minor crimes.

Fairfield City Jail in Alabama was forced to release “three or four” non-violent prisoners after the facility ran out of food. Unable to ensure the basic well-being of the prisoners in his charge, police chief Leon Davis decided to let the prisoners walk free.

The Fairfield city Mayor, Kenneth Coachman, supported the move, noting that the criminals were all guilty of minor misdemeanors, and that the jail facilities were in bad repair.

Those guilty of more serious crimes were sent to the nearby Jefferson County Jail, and will not be receiving any sort of reprieve.

The funding shortage came about when local council President Darnell Garner failed to sign a prepared check.

Chief Davis quickly warned would-be criminals that his jail would be back in business as soon as funds are received to provide meals. Indeed, with the local City Council struggling to put together the necessary funds, an anonymous donor stepped in. Fairfield City Jail is now back in operation.

The costs of incarcerating people, which can cost as much as $60,000 per year (and in some cases, a lot more), is becoming a major strain on America's government, both local and national.

America's prison population has been steadily rising since the 1970's. In 1973, the federal and state prisons held 200,000 people. By 2009 that number hand to 1.5 million people.

In 1973, the United States population weighed in at 212 million people, and had risen to just over 320 million by 2015. Thus, the growth of America's prison population has far outstripped the growth of America's population

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A clinical psychologist will be appointed head of Chicago's Cook County Jail, the nation's second-largest jail where a third of the inmates are mentally ill, officials announced on Tuesday.

Nneka Jones Tapia will become executive director of the jail on May 26, county officials said. Tapia, who has been with the sheriff's office since 2013 and oversees mental health strategy, replaces Cara Smith, who will become chief strategy officer for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Cook County houses an average of 9,000 inmates daily, of which 25 percent to 35 percent suffer from mental illness, according to a spokesman. That number has grown in recent years as the number of mental health facilities fell, jail officials said.

Officials said Tapia is the first mental health professional to be appointed to head a large jail. Cook County is the nation's largest single-site jail - Los Angeles County has more inmates but multiple sites, said Dart.

"I think I can bring a wealth of knowledge to the staff in understanding the inmates," Tapia said in an interview.

Most of the mentally ill inmates in the jail are charged with low-level, non-violent offenses, such as trespassing and drug possession, and some get into jail just to receive treatment, Tapia said.

Dart said that since the 1960s, the number of beds in Illinois' state-run psychiatric hospitals has fallen to fewer than 1,500 from 35,000, which is why there are so many mentally ill people incarcerated.

"When a third of your population is mentally ill, you sure as heck better have someone who understands that at the top," said Dart.

A prison monitoring and criminal justice reform organization praised the move.

"Having someone in a leadership position with those kinds of credentials makes a lot of sense because so many of the issues in the jail have to do with mental illness," said Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director of the John Howard Association.

In 44 states, the largest institution housing people with severe psychiatric diseases is a prison or jail, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center, a Virginia-based non-profit that focuses on eliminating barriers to treatment for the severely mentally ill.

"We should be keeping people with mental illnesses out of jails and prisons in the first place," said Center spokeswoman Jamie Mondics. She said having a focus on the problem is "a great step."

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“Someone stole my freaking identity,” I said aloud to the empty cell. Someone free stole my identity – a prisoner’s. According to the piece of mail in my hands, Rahsaan Thomas owed the IRS $5,000, a tax refund that the IRS now wanted back.

I am Rahsaan Thomas*, but I’m not the person who filed the tax return or received the five grand. The last time I filed taxes was in 1996, when I was employed as an assistant graphic designer for a theater advertising agency. I lost that job in 1997, and my life spiraled out of control. I didn’t work another legitimate job afterward, and I ended up in prison.

The IRS realized the refund was a mistake after noticing that I hadn’t paid into social security (or whatever FICA is) in over a decade. They maybe should have checked that out before sending out $5,000 to a Riverside, Calif. address where I had never lived.

Then I saw the final line of the letter: It said I also hadn’t worked long enough to receive Social Security benefits. I instantly thought of the horror stories of the men who were freed after enduring decades in prison, only to violate their parole on purpose because they couldn’t make it out in society. Would I become one of those men?

As a lifer, I will not see a parole board until I am 60 years old. How would I be able to survive at that age on the streets? Paroling with only the $200 that the state gives you at the front gate would be a precarious thing. If there was no hope of surviving on the outside, why should I even bother?

The sound of knocking snapped me out of my thoughts and back into the metal world around me. I looked up and saw Askari smiling through the door’s small window. “Hey, it’s me, buddy,” he said. “Aren’t you going to chow?”

Standing up, I grabbed my brass key off the desk, put on my state blue jean jacket and walked the two steps to my door.

California Men’s Colony (CMC) was the only state prison I knew of where they gave level-three inmates our own keys. The guards had the power to override our keys, but they allowed us to let ourselves in and out of the cell, except during “count time” between 4 and 5 p.m., after 9 p.m., and during lockdowns.

Askari stood there in his purple shirt and blue pants stamped CDCR. He was bald and had a neatly outlined gray beard. He had a copy of The Wall Street Journal’s business section, one of many subscriptions to business newspapers that he received in the mail. He was always checking stock prices and looking for new investment opportunities. To him, the latest information was critical.

The walkways to the dining hall cut past the rec fields and a basketball court, though those areas were closed during chow time; now, seagulls had taken over the vacant yard.

“Buddy, what’s up?” Askari asked me suddenly.

“Man, somebody jacked my identification, beat the IRS for $5,000, and now they want me to pay it back. And on top of that, I haven’t worked long enough on the outside to get Social Security. That’s what’s up. I’ll be paroling an old man in debt with no income…”

“I keep telling you to invest in stocks.”

“Yeah, with what?” Askari knew that I only made $28 a month as a teacher’s assistant, and that the state took 55 percent of that for the $10,000 in victim’s restitution they assessed me.

“It’s not what you start with; it’s just about getting started,” he said patiently. “The thing about doing time is that it’s an opportunity to grow wealth slowly.”

But how was investing from prison possible without outside help, which I didn’t have? I had tried it once, after hearing Curtis “Wall Street” Carroll talk about how he was becoming rich while in prison. The Oakland native had come to prison illiterate, and learned to read and trade stocks from his cell. At CMC, he held classes on the benches by the baseball field. He spoke of the need to sacrifice those new sneakers to become wealthy.

Listening to Curtis had motivated me to call my family and tell them to purchase $200 worth of stock in an internet radio company, instead of sending me a package.

But my family wouldn’t do it – they would rather spend that money sending me food. And they were right that receiving special items – Hershey’s Skor’s toffee, chocolate candy bars, Coco Roos cereal, Nike sneakers – made the prison experience easier to deal with, though only in the short run.

“Even if I sacrifice shopping at the canteen and getting packages,” I told Askari, “I don’t have anyone to set up an online account and make the trades.”

Askari looked at me. “You can buy stocks snail mail,” he said. “Through DRIP programs.”

DRIP, he told me, stood for Dividend Reinvestment Program. You enroll by investing the minimum and paying a small fee. After that, you can buy additional shares in $25- or $50-minimum increments, depending on the company’s plan.

Chow that night demonstrated how hard the sacrifice would be. Fellow inmates dressed in drab aprons dumped beef stew over mashed potatoes. The meat tasted like wet rubber. The potatoes tasted like nothing. The small portions were unsatisfying. Every day, I had to supplement what the state provided me to eat with items from the canteen. If it were not for the fact that Top Ramen cost only 25 cents, I couldn’t afford to invest at all.

But, still, I started to save, eating soup now to keep from eating cat food as a senior citizen. I worked five days a week, eight hours a day, tutoring students with mental health issues. Many had head injuries and brain abnormalities that affected their memory. A few would have learning breakthroughs, only to forget what they had been taught when the next lesson came around.

I sat there week after week, helping grown men sound out words for $28 a month, only $12.60 of which I received.

There were temptations everywhere. On hot summer days, after a game of basketball, fellow prisoners would pop open cans of soda that they had purchased from the mini-canteen right there on the yard. Some would even stand on the sidelines eating a pint of ice cream. Many inmates made burritos on the weekends from beef summer sausages, cheddar cheese from a squeeze bottle, jalapenos, refried beans, rice and tortillas.

I had the money to buy all of it, but I wasn’t spending it. I even came up with a motto: “I’m not financing my own incarceration.” I threw my inmate account statements away without looking at them.

Finally, after seven months, I had enough to pay the $15 fee and become a $100 shareholder of Trust Co. Bank in New York. I filled out the trust withdrawal slip along with a DRIP application, and took it to my counselor. (A “counselor,” in prison, is not what it sounds like. They are really just overseers of paperwork.)

The lady verified that I’m me, signed my form, and said she’d process my request. I had purchased about 16 shares at $6.00 each. A few weeks later, the accounting department would send the money from my inmate account to a registered transfer agent, who would process my enrollment into the DRIP for the company I had chosen.

About a month later, I received a receipt, but 90 days after that, I hadn’t made any progress. The value of my stock had dropped to $5.00 a share, and my dividend payment was only 96 cents.

This time, I was knocking on Askari’s door.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, after sliding his door open.

“The stock is down,” I said.

“So buy more,” he said. “Stock prices go up and down all the time. We don’t care as long as they still pay a dividend... Say you bought 100 shares at $7.00, then the stock price goes down and you buy another 100 at $5.00. That means your stake of 200 shares cost you $6.00 each. Now all the company has to do is go above $6.00 and you’re in the profit zone instead of needing it to rise back to $7.00.”

I was listening to Askari, but I couldn’t hear him. I didn’t sacrifice for months to lose money. It felt like I had run a marathon for a pat on the back. Instead of buying more stock, I bought some groceries. I would’ve sold the stock altogether if it weren’t for the fees. Thanks a lot, Askari, I thought.

Two years later, just as I was about to transfer to San Quentin State Prison, the stock price rose to $7.00 a share. My original $100 investment was now worth $130. As for Askari, who had not stopped investing in the stock, he had dividend checks coming in that paid for $100 worth of canteen – every single month.

From that day on, I started sending the minimum $25 whenever I could. When the stock reached the level at which the dividend could pay for another share, I looked for more companies to invest in: American Apparel, Vanguard Energy Fund. And I gave myself rewards along the way. I bought a $3.00 ice cream – lately it’s the red velvet flavor – every time I reached a pre-set goal.

One day, I ran into a grumpy old man named Todd who lives on the third tier in San Quentin’s North Block. He has a life sentence with a slim chance of parole. I told him that he might want to start taking classes and programs, so that the board would let him out.

“Let me out?” he said, staring at me now with a hopelessness even I had never felt. “The best thing they could do is leave me in prison. I’m 70 years old. My family is dead. I have no way to survive.”

I tried to think of a hopeful thing to tell him. But I could think of nothing to say.

I walked away with mixed feelings. I felt sorry and wrong for reminding Todd of his sad position by mentioning elderly parole. And I felt guilty for not telling Todd about investment. I don’t know if he had enough time left to build a portfolio, but I know I failed to give him that option. I wondered if I had failed Todd as miserably as the system that had incarcerated him for so long that staying in prison was now what he preferred.

But then again, I was relieved that my own investments were coming along so nicely. I no longer feared being released old and broke, because I am getting a head start from the inside.

The irony of Todd’s plight, then, is that it encourages me. It reminds me to keep sacrificing to invest, because poverty is another form of imprisonment. Now, unlike so many of my peers, I may truly be free whenever they let me out.

*Rahsaan Thomas is a 44-year-old inmate at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. He has served 15 years of a 15-to-life sentence for 2nd-degree murder, with a 35-year enhancement for using a firearm. He shot and killed two armed men who he says were stealing property from him.

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The Justice Department is investigating the death of a Florida inmate who allegedly burned and suffocated to death in a scalding hot shower chamber from which he could not escape, reported the Miami Herald.

Darren Rainey, 50, suffered from severe schizophrenia and was serving two years in a Miami Dade correctional facility for cocaine possession when, four months into his sentence, he was locked in a shower chamber and hosed down with 180-degree water as punishment for defecating in his cell and refusing to clean it up, reports the Herald.

While inmates can generally avoid the stream of scalding water, the steam that fills the chamber is enough to make them suffocate. Prisoners told the Herald that Rainey's cries for help from inside the chamber were met with ridicule from officers outside, who reportedly left him there for one and a half hours as they called out, "How do you like your shower?"

After Rainey collapsed and was taken away, officers ordered one prisoner to wipe the shower clean of the pieces of Rainey's skin that had literally melted off of his body, inmate Mark Joiner told the Herald. Rainey suffered burns on over 90% of his body, according to a lawsuit filed by his family in November 2014, though officers reported his official cause of death as a heart attack. 

The episode prompted an outcry from inmates who wrote letters of protest to Florida's governor, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Miami Dade police, none of which were answered, according to the Herald.

Convicted burglar Harold Hempstead continued to keep journals of the prisoner abuse at Dade Correctional, however, which the Miami Herald collected and verified. Among the abuses Hemstead documented were sexual abuse, officers starving inmates — two of whom later died — and a consistent use of the "torture chamber" showers to punish prisoners.

40-year-old Dade Correctional inmate Richard Mair hanged himself in 2013, leaving a suicide note that detailed the enduring sexual and psychological abuse he had suffered at the hands of corrections officers. Mair's claims were never investigated, even though he had sent a letter to Florida Governor Rick Scott and his chief inspector general, Melinda Miguel, five days before he died imploring them to investigate the abuse. 

A former counselor at Dade Correctional, Harriet Krzykowski, said that corrections officers regularly threatened to lock her in a room with violent inmates and no protection if she ever told anyone about the abuse, according to the Herald. 

The warden and deputy warden of Dade Correctional were asked to leave following the Herald's investigation, and the Department of Corrections has appointed a mental health professional to investigate claims of officer-on-inmate abuse, according to the Herald.

We have reached out to Florida's chief inspector general, Melinda Miguel, for comment and will update if we hear back. 

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American taxpayers are paying more than they realize to support their local jails because many jail costs are paid for out of county and municipal general funds, not correctional budgets, according to new research by the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice.

In a new report titled The Price of Jails: Measuring the Taxpayer Cost of Local Incarceration, Vera explains that jails now hold some 730,000 people in custody on any given day, more than triple their population in 1983. This has resulted in bloated budgets, requiring jails to rely more on funding from county and municipal sources.

(It is important to note that by jails Vera is referring to short-term confinement facilities run by county governments or elected sheriffs, which are used to hold people who have not yet been convicted of a crime while their case works its way through the criminal justice system. Prisons, on the other hand, refer to facilties to which a person is sent after they have been convicted and sentenced.)

"The fiscal costs of jail are high and, as this report details, actually higher than most realize," writes Vera Institute President and Director Nicholas Turner in the report. "The jail is one of a community’s largest investments and its funding is drawn from the same sources that support public hospitals, schools, social services, roads, and many other essential functions of local government,"

Vera compiled expenditure information from 35 different jails of various sizes across 18 different states representing roughly 9 percent of the national jail population to determine how much taxpayers are spending to jail citizens.

23 of those 35 jails surveyed reported that 85 percent of their expenses are paid for by the county general fund and all reported that some of their costs are paid for from other government agencies. 

In 2011,  the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that local communities spent $22.2 billion annually on jails. However, Vera argues that that number underestimates what taxpayers are actaully spending, "because other government agencies bear a large share of jail costs that are not reflected in jail budgets."

Vera cites the $1.1 billion the New York Department of Corrections alleges it spent on jail costs in 2011. Vera says this does not paint the full picture of what taxpayers spent because another $1.3 billion was spent by other city agencies for jail employee benefits, health care and education programs for incarcerated people, and administration costs, bringing the total to $2.4 billion. 

Why have jail costs become such a burden to municipalities that they draw funding from outside sources? 

Vera says the jails surveyed reported that their expenses fit into three categories: employee costs (salaries, fringe benefits, and pension contributions), capital costs (building and facility maintenance), and all other costs, including contracts, supplies, and utilities.

What Vera found is that the largest cost for jails by a wide margin was employee-related. Vera calculated that jails spend 74% of their budget on employee costs. Historically, jails have tried to maintain a ratio of one guard for every three inmates, and that ratio has remained largely unchanged since 1983. However, in 1983 there were 223,551 inmates in jail whereas now there are some 730,000, vastly increasing the cost.

To illustrate how inmate population affects taxpayer cost, Vera compared two counties of comparable size. Johnson County in Kansas has 574,272 residents and Bernalillo County in New Mexico has 675,551 residents. Every inmate admitted to Johnson County jail costs taxpayers $191.95, whereas Bernalillo County residents pay $85.63 for every inmate in jail. This is because Johnson County jail employees are paid a significantly larger amount of money than their counterparts in Bernalillo County and enjoy a ratio of nearly one guard for every one inmate. 

However, because there are just 693 inmates in Johnson County jail, each resident only has to pay $82 dollars annually for jail, compared to $113 per resident for jail in Bernalillo County, where there are 2,496 inmates. 

Vera concludes that "the only way localities can safely reduce the costs incurred by jail incarceration is to limit the number of people who enter and stay in jails." However, they also acknowledge that this is "no small task." 

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OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Two stepbrothers suspected of trying to steal beer from a grocery store were not armed with guns when they were shot Thursday by a police officer who confronted them in Washington state's capital city, authorities said.

The officer reported he was being assaulted with a skateboard early Thursday before the shooting in Olympia that left a 21-year-old man critically injured and a 24-year-old man in stable condition. Both were expected to survive.

The shooting, which is being investigated by a team of detectives from several agencies, prompted some protests.

"We are committed to helping our community work through this difficult circumstance and help us understand this tragic event," Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said at news conference.

Brad Watkins, chief deputy of the Thurston County Sheriff's Department, said two skateboards were recovered from the shooting scene and an investigation will likely take three to six weeks.

Officer Ryan Donald was among those who responded around 1 a.m. to a call from a Safeway store, Roberts said. Employees said two men tried to steal beer and then threw the alcohol at workers who confronted the pair.

Officers split up to search for the men. Donald encountered two men with skateboards who fit witnesses' descriptions, and moments later, he radioed in that shots had been fired, the police chief said.

In radio calls released by police, Donald calls dispatchers once he spots the men, and again to report that he fired shots.

"I believe one of them is hit, both of them are running," Donald said.

He tells dispatchers that one of the men "assaulted me with his skateboard."

"I tried to grab his friend," Donald said. "They're very aggressive, just so you know."

He says he has one man, then both, at gunpoint and asks for help.

Seconds later, he shouts, "Shots fired! One down," and asks for more backup units. He then says the second man has been shot.

The police chief said Donald wasn't injured but an officer "has the right to defend himself" if a suspect wields an object that could be used as a deadly weapon.

The two men were identified as Andre Thompson, 24, and Bryson Chaplin, 21, both of Olympia.

They are black, and Donald is white, but Roberts said, "There's no indication to me that race was a factor in this case at all."

The shooting follows a string of high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, which set off weeks of protests and a national "Black Lives Matter" movement that has gained momentum across the country.

Donald, 35, who is on administrative leave pending the investigation, has been with the department for just over three years. No residents have filed complaints against him, and he was recently recognized by the agency for being proactive on investigations, Roberts said. He worked previously as an Army police officer, the chief said.

Olympia Mayor Stephen H. Buxbaum called for calm in the community.

"It deeply saddens me that we have two young people in the hospital as a result of an altercation with an officer of the law," he said. "Let's come together to support their needs, the officer's needs, the needs of the families and our community's needs. Let's not be reactive."

Merritt Long, a retired chairman of the state's liquor control board, was one of several residents to attend the news conference Thursday.

"Does the punishment fit the crime?" he asked afterward. "Given the seeming epidemic of this happening not only here but in our country, it makes you pause and wonder what's going on."

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The trial in Iran of jailed Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian will be closed to the public when it starts on Tuesday, his brother said on Monday.

Rezaian, who is Iranian-American and faces unspecified charges, will be in Revolutionary Court with only his attorney and family members are excluded, his brother Ali Rezaian told Reuters Television.

Jason Rezaian, the Post's Tehran bureau chief, has been in Tehran's Evin prison since his arrest in July. Iran has not elaborated on the charges, but the Post has said he was charged with espionage.

"I think the only reason you could possibly imagine that the trial would be closed would be to prevent people from seeing the lack of evidence," Ali Rezaian said.

"It's unlike the Iranian court system, Iranian government, to keep things private when they can go out and use propaganda up against people."

Ali Rezaian said the family had hoped that Rezaian's wife, journalist Yeganeh Salehi, and his mother would be allowed to attend the trial. He said his brother had lost 40 pounds (18 kg) in prison.

Rezaian, who is from Marin County, California, was arrested at his home in Tehran alongside his wife and two Iranian-U.S. friends who have not been named.

Salehi was freed on bail while the couple were released. The three have not been publicly charged.

Citing his lawyer, the Post said in April that Rezaian faces espionage charges for allegedly collecting confidential information about domestic and foreign policy and handing it to "hostile governments."

Douglas Jehl, the Post's foreign editor, called the charges baseless. "What Jason did was act as a journalist, which involves gathering information, verifying information, and ultimately publishing it," he told Reuters Television.

A spokesman for the Iranian special interests section in Washington, which acts as Tehran's embassy, could not be reached for comment.

U.S. President Barack Obama has called the charges against Rezaian "vague" and pressed Iran to release all American detainees.

Tehran and six major world powers, including the United States, are trying to meet a June 30 deadline for a final nuclear deal to end a decade-old standoff with the West.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in April that an intelligence operative, possibly linked to the U.S. government, may have "taken advantage" of Rezaian.

(Editing by Richard Chang)

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Law enforcement officials are still attempting to hunt down two murderers who escaped from a New York maximum-security prison over the weekend.

Much has been said about Richard Matt and David Sweat's daring and apparently elaborate breakout.

Investigators say the plan required extensive preparation and access to equipment that inmates would not have access to — such as hacksaws, extension cords, and hot-wired electrical junction boxes, reportedly used to power the tools.

A note left on pipes on the inmates' alleged escape route appears to be a reference to an episode of the animated television series "Family Guy."

In the scene, Peter Griffin the sketch artist draws a picture of an Asian American assaulter as described by a victim who is unable to give any information besides the perpetrator's ethnicity.

The sketch appears to be identical to the one Matt and Sweat allegedly left on their way out of prison.

SEE ALSO: Texas cop in pool party video says he was stressed from responding to suicide calls

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former supervising guard at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City was sentenced to five years in federal prison on Thursday for refusing to help a mentally ill inmate who died in 2012 after swallowing powdered detergent.

Terrence Pendergrass, 51, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in New York, six months after a jury found him guilty of one federal civil rights count.

"A man died here, a 25-year-old man, because of your indifference and callousness," Abrams said.

Widespread problems at Rikers, including accusations of brutality against inmates, have prompted calls for reform from politicians and civil rights advocates.

Pendergrass was supervising a jail unit on Aug. 18, 2012, when two officers informed him that an inmate, Jason Echevarria, was ill and said he had ingested a "soap ball," a toxic disinfectant detergent used to clean cells, prosecutors said.

According to trial testimony, Pendergrass told one of the officers not to bother him unless they needed help getting an inmate out of his cell or had a "dead body" on their hands.

Later that day, after a pharmacy technician saw Echevarria and expressed concern he might die, Pendergrass again refused to summon assistance and ordered an officer who had picked up a phone in order to call for help to hang up, prosecutors said.

Echevarria was discovered dead the following morning.

At his sentencing, Pendergrass apologized for the "tragedy" but claimed he did not know that Echevarria was sick at the time.

Following the hearing, Pendergrass walked over to Echevarria's father, Ramon, and said he was sorry.

Echevarria told reporters he did not believe Pendergrass was sincere.

"He's not a human being, this man," he said. "He let my son die."

Jason Echevarria's family has filed a civil lawsuit against the city over his death.

Last week, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced criminal charges against three other Rikers guards in connection with the 2012 fatal beating of inmate Ronald Spear.

Bharara's office has also joined a lawsuit against the city claiming systemic civil rights violations against teenage inmates at Rikers.

At a public event on Thursday, Bharara said he expects to have a settlement in principle in that case by Monday.

"I can tell you that I'm very, very confident because we've been pushing very, very hard."

Lawyers for the city have also said they anticipate a deal by next week.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Matthew Lewis)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City has agreed to carry out a series of reforms at its Rikers Island jail complex to resolve U.S. Justice Department claims that guards regularly used unnecessary force against inmates, U.S. officials said on Monday.

In a letter filed in federal court in New York, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office said the deal included appointing a federal monitor to oversee the reforms at Rikers, one of the largest jail complexes in the country.

"This comprehensive framework requires the city to implement sweeping operational changes to fix a broken system and dismantle a decades-long culture of violence," Bharara said in a statement.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in a statement said the settlement "represents another strong step toward our goal of reversing the decades of abuse on Rikers and building a culture of safety for officers and inmates alike."

Rikers, which houses around 9,800 prisoners daily, has come under recent scrutiny for a culture of violence that included officer attacks on prisoners and several inmate deaths.

The proposed agreement requires approval from the Justice Department's civil rights division and from de Blasio, who has vowed to improve inmate safety at Rikers. The settlement will also require court approval.

The city has agreed to install 7,800 surveillance cameras throughout Rikers and develop an early warning system to identify guards who may "warrant corrective actions," the letter said.

The deal also calls for some guards to wear body cameras as part of a pilot program.

Steve Martin, a corrections expert who has served as a consultant for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, has been tapped to serve as monitor. 

(Reporting by Nate Raymond; Additional reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Richard Chang and Chris Reese)

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U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara this week agreed to sweeping reforms at New York City’s Rikers Island, the country’s second-largest jail.

The overhaul follows a lawsuit against the city and a two-and-a-half-year investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that highlighted extensive problems at Rikers, from officers’ routinely hitting prisoners in the head to teenage inmates frequently locked up in solitary confinement for weeks.

The new reforms should help protect the rights and safety of inmates, but what will they mean for the guards? 

The changes include strict rules on the use of force, including no choke-holds or blows to the kidneys, head, groin, neck and spinal column; and 8,000 new surveillance cameras, some of which will be placed on guards. 

We interviewed a Rikers Island correctional officer (who asked to remain anonymous) who told us the reforms will make it much harder for the guards to protect themselves in what can often be a violent environment. The interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity. The New York City Department of Corrections has responded to the officer’s concerns. That comment is posted below the interview.

Vocativ: The plan is to install thousands of new cameras throughout Rikers. Will that change how you operate?

Correctional officer: They can install cameras, but when an inmate throws s**t or piss at you—in that moment you’re going to do one of two things: fight or flight. On the average day nothing goes on; we’re just babysitters. But when s**t goes down, we should be able to do what we have to do.

V: The new policy will prevent officers from making blows to the head, face, groin, neck, kidneys and spinal column. Is that kind of force used often?

CO: If you’re an inmate and you’re going to assault me and I feel that my life’s in imminent danger from you, I’m going to defend myself. What am I left to do? So (under the new rules) if I’m getting punched in the face, I’ve got to step back and punch him in the leg or something? That’s not going to work.

V: Do you need to be able to retaliate to protect yourself?

CO: Yes. Every day an officer is getting punched in the face or getting a broken jaw. You don’t hear about that. If a cop gets shot at, if a cop gets stabbed, you hear about that. But talking about what goes on inside the walls—there’s none of that.

They’re trying to lessen uses of force. Now you have to wait for every little thing. If I’m guiding an inmate into the cell or something, that’s considered use of force now.

V: Have you been assaulted by prisoners?

CO: I’m a big guy, so they don’t approach me. I really haven’t had too many incidents like that, but I know other officers who have had s**t thrown at them and stuff like that—actual feces, piss, blood. They put it in a milk carton, stir it up, throw it at you. You don’t hear about that stuff. That happens on a daily basis.

V: Won’t the new video cameras pick that up?

CO: Yeah, but they can’t tell what (kind of substance) it is from the camera. To them, it could be anything.

V: Teenager Kalief Browder recently killed himself, two years after being released from Rikers. Many are blaming his mental state on the conditions of the prison.

CO: He landed in the system for stealing a backpack. That’s not our fault. That’s the court’s fault. We don’t hold him there. We’re just there to take care of him and make sure he doesn’t die. It’s not our fault that the courts are holding him there for three years. 

V: Are officers worried about lawsuits?

CO: Yes. They’ll scrutinize you because you didn’t step back three feet—you stepped back two-and-a-half feet–and they’ll write you up for that. The problem that’s going on is that the management is not looking out for their officers. Doing what we have to do creates a safe environment. Now everybody is walking on eggshells.

Response from the New York City Department of Corrections:

“All the reforms Commissioner Ponte has enacted, and will enact, are meant to protect staff and inmates alike. The reforms anticipated under the Nunez agreement will increase Officers’ options, training and tools for keeping our jails safe, and DOC will continue to ensure officers can defend themselves.”

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As attention shifts to systemic problems with mass incarceration in America -- problems with bail, solitary confinement, drug sentencing, private prisons, the racial inequity of those who are incarcerated -- a new report was just released about incarceration in New Orleans.

A decade ago, "New Orleans’ local incarceration rate was more than five times the national average," states the report from the Data Center, a Louisiana-based research organization. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city began to focus on criminal justice reform as it was clear that mass incarceration was unsustainable. This stark reality was apparent when many prisoners were abandoned during the storm.

Over the last ten years, though, New Orleans has reduced its incarceration rates in local jails by 67 percent.

Why was the rate of incarceration so high in New Orleans?

The state of Louisiana as a whole has been named the incarceration capitol of the world. A 2012 article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that one in 86 adults was behind bars, and one in 14 Black men from New Orleans was behind bars. (And the report goes into detail about the ways profit is made off of incarceration.)

For those pointing to New Orleans' previous designation as the "murder capitol of the U.S.A." as a reason for high rates of incarceration, it's important to note that this report dealt with local jails -- not prison.

As ATTN: has discussed before, there is a difference between jails and prisons . Jails often house those who have been arrested and are awaiting trial. Some of those held in jail have been deemed too dangerous to the public or too likely flee the jurisdiction to be granted bail. Increasingly, however, those in jail are poor people who could not afford to pay bail.

From the chart above, you can see that in 2005, New Orleans outpaced many cities in the number of inmates in local jails. In 1981, the local jail held 2,300 inmates. Before Katrina in 2005, the jail housed 6,300. The Data Center lists several, major reasons for high incarceration rates in the local jail. ​

Inability to pay bail was one of the reasons for New Orleans' outrageously large inmate population at its local jail, Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) (OPP is mislabeled as a prison -- it's actually a jail), the Data Center reports. From the report:

"There was no mechanism to assess defendants’ risk; judges set a bail amount based on the arrest charges and what was known of the criminal history and defendants either paid their way out or remained detained.In the regular court process, magistrates released virtually no defendants on their own recognizance or on an unsecured personal surety bond, that is, without an upfront, nonrefundable payment. In many other U.S. jurisdictions, it is common for nonfinancial release to be used for half or more defendants, especially those charged with nonviolent offenses."

Another major issue in New Orleans? Locking up those arrested for nonviolent crimes. Between 2003 and 2004, (just a few years before the storm) 86 percent of arrests came on nonviolent charges. The local New Orleans jail was also being used not just for pretrial detention, but also for locking up people serving several year sentences.

Another important takeaway from these jail numbers was that there was no correlation found between the high rates of incarceration and an improvement of public safety, the report found.

The report also mentioned a skewed incentive system: the OPP jail had morphed into a profit center for local government. The Data Center explains:

"The city’s incarceration practices also impacted the broader community financially, as taxpayers paid for jail operations through the city’s general fund. Indeed, the city paid the Sheriff a per diem for each inmate. By foregoing its budgeting authority for the jail, the city had relinquished all responsibility to the Sheriff and incentivized the Sheriff to house as many people as possible. The cost to the city of operating the jail more than doubled between 1990 and 2004, from $15 to $35 million annually. The increased number of inmates and ineffective management led to OPP becoming dangerous and unhealthy for inmates and staff alike."

The Times-Picayune piece shows that in much of rural Louisiana, sheriff budgets are tightly wound with incarceration levels.

"[M] ost prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles , East Carroll and Concordia," the paper reported in 2012. "A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations."

The report also found that the New Orleans court system was collecting fees in a similar manner as the government in Ferguson, Missouri, a manner that the U.S. Department of Justice stated “violate[s] the 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection requirements [,] … impose[s] unnecessary harm, overwhelmingly on African-American individuals, and run[s] counter to public safety.”

How did New Orleans reduce its local jail population?

Following the devastating hurricane, New Orleans was faced with not only terrifying images of how the prison population was treated post-storm, but it was also faced with two realities, according to the report. " First, the system was failing at addressing violent crime," the Data Center states. " And second , the system’s focus on incarceration had devastating effects on communities."

In 2010, a new jail complex was proposed, initially planned to have 5,832 beds. Through community activism, the 2011 plans reduced the facility to 1,438 beds. The New Orleans government had no choice but to reduce the jail population.

With the help of the Vera Institute, the local government made two major changes: it stopped arresting those with nonviolent municipal charges like marijuana possession; instead they issued a summons and trusted that the defendant would appear in court.

"Prior to this initiative, officers were arresting 70 percent of people charged with nonviolent municipal offenses," the report found. "After the initiative, and consistently since then, the rates have reversed, with officers issuing summonses in 70 percent of those cases."

There was also reform in the bail system -- including setting better guides for judges to determine if a person should be in jail prior to their trial based on risk of re-offending and flight risk. In 2012, the report states, the New Orleans Pretrial Services opened.

Overall, the daily jail population went from 6,000 prior to Katrina to 1,900 in April of 2015. There is still more work to do, however. New Orleans is just one city in Louisiana, a state that faces huge problems with mass incarceration.

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NEW YORK CITY — Nonviolent criminals who are being held behind bars because they can't afford to post bail would be placed into a supervised release program through a $17.8 million plan announced Wednesday by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The program would free up to 3,000 people accused of non-violent felony crimes who would otherwise languish in the city's jails because they are too poor to post relatively low cash bail amounts before their case goes to trial, the city said.

“Money bail is a problem because — as the system currently operates in New York — some people are being detained based on the size of their bank account, not the risk they pose," de Blasio said in a statement.

"This is unacceptable. If people can be safely supervised in the community, they should be allowed to remain there regardless of their ability to pay," the mayor added.

De Blasio's effort, which will be funded with $4 million in taxpayer money and $13.8 million in asset forfeiture funds from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., will coincide with the recently announced citywide bail fund proposed by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Under the $1.4 million bail fund, people accused of misdemeanors will be eligible to have bail posted for them. De Blasio's effort would expand the city's initiative to address those accused of more serious, but non-violent felonies.

The city is now looking for a nonprofit group to supervise defendants while they await their criminal cases. The program will use a risk assesment tool to select eligible candidates and determine their level of supervision, officials said. That tool is still being developed.

The city would be looking for people who are deemed not to be a risk to public safety as well as defendants who would typically be given a low cash bail. Depending on the determined level of supervision, defendants may have to check in physically or by phone. Participants will also have access to social services, officials said.

Similar initiatives have already shown success during pilots in Queens and Manhattan, officials said. In the Queens pilot program, 87 percent of those under supervised release returned to court and met the requirements of the program.

The function of bail is to insure that the defendant returns to court. But according to the Pretrial Justice Institute, many people charged with low-level crimes in New York City are held simply because they can't afford to post bail as low as $500.

And criminal justice advocates add that there is little, if any, difference in the rate of return for defendants who are released without bail pending their next court date versus those who are released on a low bail.

Only 12 percent of defendants in the city's courts are able to post bail and leave court after they are arraigned. Fifty percent of defendants with a cash bail were unable to pay and remained behind bars until the time of their trial. The median cash bail is $1,000.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said 40 percent of the population on Rikers Island is there because they don't have the money to post cash bail.

“This is a huge step forward for justice in New York City,” said Cherise Fanno Burdeen, executive director of the Pretrial Justice Institute. “We applaud Mayor de Blasio for leading the charge to make risk, and not money, the deciding factor in who stays in jail before trial."

Many people held on low bails for minor offenses also face the loss of a job or housing while they are behind bars, leaving them unable to make a living or forcing them into homelessness when they are released.

The changes come in the wake of 22-year-old Kalief Browder's suicide last month.Browder spent three years at Rikers, from age 16 to 19, because his family could not afford to post $3,000 cash bail after he was accused of stealing a backpack. Browder never went to trial and was not found guilty of any charges before he was released.

Relatives said Browder never recovered from the beatings he endured from guards and fellow inmates and the mental trauma he suffered during the two years he spent in solitary confinement.

"Justice shouldn’t be a luxury for the rich. Yet every day, New Yorkers who have not been found guilty of a crime are subjected to the horrors of Rikers Island simply because they are too poor to afford bail," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement.

The plan was widely praised by everyone from law enforcement officials to criminal justice reform advocates.

Police Commissioner William Bratton said the plan "moves the city towards a more fair and equitable criminal justice system," while New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said it gave judges "more accurate and complete information" about defendants.

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On Saturday night, July 11th, 2015 the world's most notorious drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped from Altiplano Prison. El Chapo escaped through a series of elaborate tunnels connected to his cell in the high-security prison.

Produced by Emma Fierberg. Video courtesy of Next Media Animation and Reuters.

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Four inmates escaped from a jail in Mississippi and authorities were searching for two of them on Tuesday after apprehending two others.

The four, who faced charges ranging from murder to robbery, escaped from the Raymond Detention Center near Jackson shortly after midnight on Monday, authorities said.

An initial investigation indicated "this was a prearranged and preplanned escape," the Hinds County Sheriff's Office said in a statement posted on Facebook.

On Monday evening, authorities recaptured 19-year-old Jermaine Wilson, who is charged with capital murder in the 2012 rape and killing of a woman. Kevin Holmes, 18, was captured Tuesday morning, Hinds County Sheriff's Department officials confirmed to WAPT.

Hinds County Sheriff Tyrone Lewis said in a statement that authorities "won't stop nor sleep" until all of the inmates are captured.

The jailbreak follows the escape of two convicted murderers from a maximum security prison in northern New York last month. One of them was shot and killed after three weeks on the run, while his accomplice was captured two days later. The pair led law enforcement authorities on a grueling manhunt through the dense forests and bogs near the state's border with Canada.

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Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquín "El Chapo," or "Shorty," Guzmán Loera, may have escaped from a high security prison several days ago, but details are still coming out about the nature of his escape.

It appears Guzmán Loeramay have been using an actual bird to aid in his escape, according to the New York Times and Gawker.

Guzmán Loera escaped from the Altiplano federal prison through a sophisticated subterranean tunnel that was outfitted with lights, air venting, and a customized motorcycle rigged on a rail line. The mile-long tunnel likely took 18 months to two years to complete, according to Jim Dinkins, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations. 

The mystery of his escape has deepened after Mexican government officials found a small bird in the trashcan of Guzmán Loera’s cell. Officials believe the bird, which they’ve nicknamed ‘Chapito,’ was used by Guzmán Loera to test the air quality of the tunnel.

Because of the length and depth of the tunnel — at one point it was as deep as 30 feet — officials suspect that the tunnel builders may have wanted to Guzmán Loera to test the air before escaping to ensure that he didn’t pass out before reaching the end.

The Guzmán Loera escape has rapidly turned into a massive mess for the Mexican government. As Eric L. Olson with the Mexico Institute of the Wilson Center said in The New York Times, the powerful drug lord's escape was "almost Mexico's worst nightmare."

Interior Minister Migual Angel Osorio Chong has said that Guzmán Loera must have had help from prison officials in his escape. In addition, the AP is reporting that the DEA warned Mexico about potential escape attempts by Guzmán Loera as early as March 2014, which went unheeded.

It’s being estimated that the escape may have cost Guzmán Loera $50 million between the construction of the tunnel and bribes to prison officials, according to  Jhon Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, the former chief hitman of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

On top of everything else, Guzmán Loera escaped in plain sight. A newly released security video shows the exact moment that Guzman escaped, as he approached a shower area in his cell and disappeared into a gap in the floor.

Officials assumed Guzmán Loera was taking a shower. When they thought he was taking longer than usual, they checked on him, but his cell was empty.

All together, it seems as if Guzmán Loera's escape was the perfect storm of corruption, incompetence, and negligence.

SEE ALSO: El Chapo's escape 'cost $50 million'

DON'T MISS: The world's most notorious drug lord began planning his escape from prison immediately after his recapture

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NOW WATCH: Here's the actual security footage of 'El Chapo' escaping from his prison cell

The criminal justice system in America is racially skewed, and as incarceration rates continue to climb, studies have found that African-Americans are disproportionately affected to a significant extent.

This illustration from the Sentencing Project shows exactly how stark the racial disparity is in the U.S. justice system.

For Black men, the likelihood of incarceration over an individual's lifetime is 1 in 3. Compare that to the odds of a white man landing in prison—1 in 17—and you begin to understand the inequity of this institution.

"The rise in the institutionalized population among black men without a high school diploma has been even more dramatic. By 2010, nearly a third of black, male high school dropouts aged 25-29 were imprisoned or otherwise institutionalized. This is higher than the employment rate for the same group, which was less than 25 percent,"the Washington Post reported.

A 2014 paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that Black communities have experienced higher rates of incarceration due to drug war-era policiesand that, in effect, "the position of most black men, relative to white men, is no better than how things stood after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965."

"Since 1980, incarceration rates among both black and white men in most age groups have increased by factors of two to three, but these changes have had a much larger impact on Black communities," the University of Chicago researchers explained. "Because Black male incarceration rates were much higher than corresponding white rates before the prison boom ever began, the impact on Black communities of more than two than two-fold increase in incarcerations rates has been dramatic."

President Obama acknowledged the need for criminal justice reform in a series of speaking events last week—at the annual NAACP convention in Philadelphia and at a federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, among other venues—and noted the racially disproportionate injustices as well as the importance of changing the country's drug sentencing laws, especially for non-violent offenders.

"Sometimes, I get in debates about how to think about progress or the lack of progress when it comes to issues of race and inequality in America," Obama said. "Oh let me tell you something, I see what happens. My heart breaks when I see families who are impacted."

Obama said that he feels like he can relate to many of the men currently behind bars.

"I see those young men on street corners and eventually in prisons, and I think to myself, they could be me—that the main difference between me and them is I had a more forgiving environment so that when I slipped up, when I made a mistake, I had a second chance. And they've got no margin for error."

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Waller County officials have released video of Sandra Bland's three days in jail. This footage shows Sandra Bland's bond hearing and includes a phone call she placed from the booking desk. Earlier, we posted a video of her arriving at the jail and having her mugshot taken. 

The county hopes to provide more information about Bland's arrest after she was found hanged in a jail cell days after her July 10 arrest for a minor traffic offense. Local officials said they were releasing the videos to dispel rumors concerning her death, adding they have been under cyber attack concerning the incident.

Video courtesy of Reuters

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