When I describe my interest in medicine/public health, I make a point to emphasize how this goes beyond my scientific curiosity and into my passion for people, particularly marginalized communities. Intersectionalities such as the crib to prison pipeline/ books v. bars have been supported with substantial evidence.

Take your pick: prison or war.

That's what some army recruiters are telling high school students in Houston, Texas to scare teenagers into joining the army.

On July 29th, 2008, a local CBS affiliate in Houston broke this story about illegal army recruitment tactics and a shady new strategy called the "Delayed Entry Program." As part of a $5 billion recruitment budget for 2008--that's right, $5 billion—Army recruiters ask high school students to sign a non-binding contract that says they intend to enlist in the army upon graduation.

The story does not get old. Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. More than 75 percent of the 216 people exonerated by DNA testing so far in the U.S. were convicted partly because of a series of failures in the eyewitness identification process.

Earlier today, the Innocence Project helped free another innocent man from prison, after more than a decade-long investigation into his case. "He was convicted based on a deeply flawed and completely unreliable eyewitness identification," said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project.

Jeremy Bearer-Friend, a YP4 Leadership Academy fellow currently with Justice Now, just posted to Feministing:

Prisons are bad for everyone--not just for the people in cages within them, not just for the children who have lost their parents to them, or the social programs who have their budgets cut because of them.

Prisons distract us from the root causes of violence and ultimately exacerbate the deeply entrenched challenges of racism, sexism and transphobia facing our communities.

Cradle to Prison Pipeline:
Children's Defense Fund

By
kYmberly Keeton

The
University of Houston Law School recently hosted the Children's Defense Fund
Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Texas Summit.
Marian Bright Edelman, President of the CDF, was the guest speaker.
Numerous workshops and panels were available to the community, academia, and
organizations.

Reprint
By Glen Ford--Black Agenda Report.com
Mar 6, 2008, 21:17

You'd think the anti-prison activists would be cheering. Never in the history of California's prison expansion has there been such undivided media attention on the corruption of California courts, cops and jails. For 24-hours-a-day, for over 23 days, every local TV station, online news source or print paper was reporting on the inconsistent, illegal and incompetent practices of the LA County jail system. All thanks to one Paris Hilton.

The story they told was a simple one: rich, white people are treated differently by California law enforcement than the rest of us. And at a time when California is spending more money on prisons and jails than ever before, when more women and people of color are locked up than ever before in US history, this story couldn't be more timely.

Most readers of Wiretap are familiar with this gruesome state of affairs. The prison industrial complex is present in our everyday lives, at the root of so many of the problems we spend our lives fighting against. But it's not a story we expect to find running 24-7 on CNN.

So why wasn't this a media justice victory? Where were the voices of anti-prison activists?