Tuesday, February 2, 2021
February 2, 2021, Washington, D.C. – Today, more than a hundred non-governmental organizations joined a letter led by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Victims of Torture, urging President Joe Biden to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and end indefinite military detention. The letter is signed by organizations ranging from those working to end anti-Muslim discrimination and torture to immigrant rights organizations and organizations working broadly on civil rights, civil liberties, and racial justice at the national and local level. It emphasizes the devastating and ongoing consequences of the prison, including the effect of a post-9/11 national security framework on domestic racial justice struggles and efforts to end police violence. The letter reads, in part:
(Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, NC is a private contract prison housing federal inmates, Photo: The GEO Group, Inc.)
President Biden has directed the Department of Justice to end private federal prison contracts in an executive order, a promise he made during his campaign.
“To decrease incarceration levels, we must reduce profit-based incentives to incarcerate by phasing out the Federal Government’s reliance on privately operated criminal detention facilities,” the executive order noted systemic racism in the mass incarceration and stated that decarcerating the prison population is a priority.
There are 14,122 inmates less than 10% of the federal prison population in 12 contracted federal private prisons nationwide. The one in North Carolina, the 1,450-bed Rivers Correctional Institution, is a low-security, all-male facility in the Hertford County town of Winton, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Coalition Urges Congress Not to Expand Domestic Terrorism Charges
151 Organizations Call on Congress to Oppose the Expansion of Terrorism-related Legal Authority
January 19, 2021
Dear Members of Congress:
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (The Leadership Conference), a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 220 national organizations to promote and protect civil and human rights in the United States, and the undersigned
151 organizations, we write to express our deep concern regarding proposed expansion of terrorism-related legal authority. We must meet the challenge of addressing white nationalist and far-right militia violence without causing further harm to communities already disproportionately impacted by the criminal-legal system. The Justice Department (DOJ), including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has over 50 terrorism-related statutes it can use to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct, including white