Update: We forgot to include the link before, sorry. It's in now.

Unfortunately, we are not making this up. We'll call it Ohio's dumb practice of the week.

Students in Akron will be fingerprinted beginning this fall to identify them in school lunch lines. The technology, instituted for security reasons and for bookkeeping purposes, is being used in Ohio's Garfield Heights district and in a sprinkling of colleges, universities, and businesses across the country.

Students' fingerprints will be put into a scanner that will make a template of binary numbers corresponding with the swirls and arches of each print. When students go through the lunch line, they will place their finger on a scanner identifying them based on the stored template.

The school board has received numerous complaints, and not only from parents. The ACLU, for example, has expressed concern that "the scans will be used to track students' eating habits."

Raymond Vasvari, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said systems such as the one adopted by Akron raise serious privacy issues. He said school leaders must take steps to ensure that the fingerprint images do not end up in the wrong hands. ''The question remains: Is there information that would be useful to someone and how can you be sure this information is not shared?'' he said.

The system will cost $700,000. It was voted on by the school board and approved. Did they even consider whether the money might not have been better spent on providing higher quality food, more free lunches, teacher salaries or after-school programs?

A criminal justice professor in Chicago has hit on a key factor to reduce the murder rate: provide affordable housing:

A study of the city's murder rate shows an unlikely factor at the heart of the violence. Chicago's rate is three times that of New York not because of policing, but because of a lack of good, affordable housing.

Here's some of what John M. Hagedorn, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a senior research fellow at the Great Cities Institute, has to say:

I'm in the midst of a two-year study, funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, to investigate why Chicago's homicide rate hasn't fallen like New York City's. While we are still collecting data, Mayor Richard Daley's recent call for ideas to stop the violence has convinced me to join the discussion now.

Hagerdorn doesn't buy that policing styles make the difference since murder rates have also dropped in Boston, Houston, San Francisco and San Diego, without a Rudy Giuliani or Bill Bratton. He notes that violence "is generally high in cities and areas that have undergone severe disruption of daily life."

In Eastern Europe. Albania, for example, according to the World Bank, has very high rates of violence, and a quarter of all of its young men are working in the drug trade. Wherever there are cities with desperate conditions and high rates of violence, as in Kingston, Jamaica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or Bombay, we also find groups of armed young men. Whether they are paramilitaries, drug cartels, death squads, militant fundamentalists or gangs, these groups are a major obstacle to stopping the cycle of violence.

It is also apparent that where class differences within dominant groups is the main source of conflict, violence is usually sporadic and muted. High rates of persisting violence are almost always related to ethnic, racial or religious conflict.

The wide variation in rates of violence within ethnic groups debunks any notion that African-Americans, or Irish, or Hispanics are violence prone. Violence is a property of social structure, not people. (emphasis supplied)

Turning to Chicago, Hagerdorn says,

"Former Charles Manson disciple and convicted murderer Susan Atkins is suing Gov. Gray Davis, contending his policy opposing for nearly all murderers has made her a political prisoner." Atkins is right about Gov. Davis's policy.

"Soon after he took office, Gov. Gray Davis told a newspaper reporter that any inmate serving time for murder in California was not going to get out during his watch. " He's kept his word. "What the governor is doing is fundamentally unlawful -- but politically astute," said Franklin Zimring, a criminal law professor at Berkeley's Boalt School of Law. Prisoners -- especially those convicted of murder -- don't have a large voter constituency, he said. "

"The governor's policy, his critics say, has turned every murderer's sentence into life without possibility of, regardless of any mitigating factors. "

Both the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle have criticized Davis for his anti-parole stance for murderers.

Last year the Board, hardly a liberal group, granted parole to 140 inmates. Davis vetoed all but two. "When a judge issues a sentence that includes the words "with possibility of," it reflects our society's belief that a small number of criminals can be rehabilitated, as well as our constitutional right to a fair and impartial hearing. One of the important reasons for a system is to give inmates a strong incentive to follow the rules and to turn their lives around."

Nonetheless, we doubt Ms. Atkins will have any more luck than fellow former Manson devotee Leslie Van Houten, even though both of them have been model prisoners.

The Judge ordered the Board to give her [Van Houten] a new hearing and to consider her model prison behavior and not just the severity of the offense. If only the severity of the crime were considered, her sentence effectively would be a life sentence without instead of the-eligible life sentence she received. The board has been ordered to tell Van Houten what it is she must do to get if they deny her again.

[Note: The board gave Van Houten another hearing in June, 2002, and denied her for the 14th time. And last year, the California Supreme Court upheld the governor's authority to block the of convicted murderers.]

Atkins is taking a different legal approach. She has filed a federal civil rights action seeking $1.1 million in punitive and other damages, as well as her freedom. The state claims it has immunity and has filed a motion to dismiss. A hearing has been set for June 30, but the Judge has said he will rule based on the pleadings without holding oral argument. Atkins has served 33 years of her parolable life sentence. Her lawyer says if she wins any money in the lawsuit, she will donate it to crime victims.

While Canada is moving to decriminalize marijuana, the U.S. is becoming stricter than ever. Don't miss this insightful and informative article in Sunday's New York Times by Eric Schlosser, author of "Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market."

The number of marijuana arrests now approaches three-quarters of a million annually, largely for simple possession. More people are in prison for marijuana crimes today than ever before. Dozens, if not hundreds, are serving life sentences for nonviolent pot offenses. Attorney General John Ashcroft has called for full enforcement of the pot laws and spearheaded a crackdown on medicinal marijuana providers in California, though their efforts are legal under state law.

Some interesting factoids:

• The first American law about marijuana, passed by the Virginia Assembly in 1619, required every household to grow it. Hemp was considered a valuable commodity.

• Popular fears of marijuana arose in the early 20th century, prompted by the use of the drug by Mexican immigrants. Rumors spread about the "killer weed" that incited violent crimes and drove its users insane. The fears quickly spread to blacks and to jazz music.

• Marijuana was first outlawed in 1937. Not long after, the feds planned to conduct a national raid to round-up black jazz musicians who smoked pot. The plot failed because the agents couldn't infiltrate the "jazz milieu."

In a nutshell,

Marijuana has always been associated with minorities and subcultures that seem to threaten mainstream America. America's marijuana laws usually expressed that fear of outsiders in moralistic terms, while proving ineffective at stopping pot use.

Oregon was the first state to decriminalize pot--in 1973. Jimmy Carter supported decriminalization at the federal level. With Reagan, the pendulum began to swing the other way.

Moral condemnations of pot smokers and long prison sentences were revived by President Ronald Reagan, as a part of that era's culture wars. Mr. Reagan's first drug czar, Carlton E. Turner, felt that marijuana use was linked to anti-authority behavior and insisted pot could turn young men into homosexuals.

Today, it is largely poor people and minority offenders who are imprisoned for marijuana offenses. Pot smokers can now lose their cars, houses, jobs, student loans and food stamps after getting busted.

How high-tech is the equipment and how interested are our officials in this kind of technology?

Please Contact your U.S. Representatives and Senators to Co-Sponsor and/or Support This Legislation:

Congressman Danny K. Davis, 7th District of Illinois, introduced new legislation entitled "Public Safety Ex-offender Self Sufficiency Act of 2002" (H.R. 2166) into the House of Representatives. It provides for transitional housing for ex-offenders, with on-site delivery of employment placement and supportive services to facilitate successful ex-offender re-entry and promote public safety.

H.R. 2166 amends the IRS code of 1986 to reflect an ex-offender low-income housing credit to encourage the provision of housing, job readiness training, and other essential services delivered in structured living environments designed to assist ex-offenders in becoming self-sufficient.

This comprehensive legislative initiative addresses the United
State's lack of a systematic, comprehensive approach to re-
integrating the increasing number of returning ex-offenders. It seeks to decrease recidivism rates and the cost of crime to victims, and increase public safety.

1996 Olympic Bomb Suspect Eric Rudolph, last seen in 1998, has been arrested in the mountains of North Carolina. Rudolph appeared to be a homeless person rummaging through a trash bin at the time he was caught.

Rudolph had eluded a massive manhunt, much of it in the North Carolina mountains, for five years and was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. The FBI had offered a $1 million reward for his capture.

....Authorities spent years searching the rural mountains and caves of western North Carolina for any trace of Rudolph. They ran across some camping sites believed to be his and found cartons of oatmeal and raisins, jars of peanuts and vitamins, and cans of tuna they said were the same brands Rudolph ate.

Rudolph, a Florida native who moved to North Carolina in 1981, is believed to adhere to Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that is anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. Some of the four bombs Rudolph was charged with planting included messages from the shadowy "Army of God."

....Pockets of western North Carolina have had a reputation as a haven for right-wing extremists. Some there mocked the government's inability to find Rudolph with bloodhounds, infrared-equipped helicopters and space-age motion detectors and some said they would hide him if asked.

A secretive law enforcement convention scheduled in Seattle next week has drawn the ire of civil liberites and minority groups--to the point where demonstrations are planned for 11 area Starbucks. Starbucks is one of the suppliers for the convention.

Top FBI and White House anti-terrorism experts will join law enforcement colleagues in Seattle next week for a police intelligence convention that is drawing fire from a coalition of local social justice and minority organizations.

The Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit -- a private group of local and state police intelligence officials -- is for the first time allowing federal intelligence personnel to participate in the conference. On the table will be initiatives instituted since the Sept. 11 attacks to improve the sharing of federal intelligence with local agencies.

The conference is closed to the public and the media.

And that concerns members of the People of Color Coalition Against the War at Home and Abroad. The ad hoc collection of groups considers the response by police to Sept. 11 to be an attack on civil liberties that especially hurts minority and immigrant communities.

Michael Woo of the Northwest Labor and Employment Law Office slammed the law enforcement group and the Department of Homeland Security as "the KGBs in our modern era" bent on stripping away our rights and civil liberties.

Starbucks response? "I don't think it is appropriate to have an expectation that Starbucks can resolve issues of civil liberties."

[link via Balasubramania]

Some more egg on Ashcroft's face with the outcome of this - Portland, Oregon terror case:

Eight months ago, Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, 41, was arrested at the airport in Portland, Ore. while he and his family were waiting to catch a flight.

Agents said at the time that a check of his luggage revealed traces of explosive residue, and he was linked to a number of allegedly pro-Taliban worshipers at the mosque, which The Oregonian said Friday was attended by the most fundamentalist members of Portland's Muslim community.

Here's the final outcome: 5 years probation and a $1,000. fine for "for fudging an application for state health insurance" by "falsifying his income in order to enroll in a health insurance program for low-income Oregon residents."

Kariye's lawyer had this to say after the sentencing:

"Shame on Washington," Cohen told reporters outside the Portland courthouse. "This is an administration with a lot of flair and no substance."

The lethal cocktail of intravenous drugs given to Tennessee death row inmates to kill them is the subject of a new court challenge. At a court hearing Thursday, Lawyers for Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman argued that the combination of successive injections of sodium pentothal, Pavulon and potassium chloride, is a flawed process that can result in a tortuous execution, amounting to cruel and inhumane treatment.

The drug under attack is Pavulon, which paralyzes the recipient's muscles so that he cannot respond.

University of Tennessee veterinarian, Dr. Dennis Geiser, testified that Pavulon is not fit for use in putting down a household pet.

....[He] described how Pavulon makes it impossible to tell whether an animal is, in fact, conscious or unconscious and therefore is not approved for use by Tennessee veterinarians for euthanizing domesticated animals.

The drugs are administered in this order: sodium pentothal, then Pavulon to stop the breathing and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Another expert testified that Pavulon is unnecessary in the execution process. A woman who received the drug during an operation testified:

...about what it is like to be paralyzed while surgeons — who wrongly assumed she was unconscious — operated on her eye. Carol Wiehrer described the scorching pain and experience of being awake at her own operation as ''worse than death.'' She was not able to tell the doctors that she was awake.

An expert anaesthesiologist testified that:

...he became intrigued by the lethal-injection protocol when convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was put to death. Heath said he thought then it was odd to use Pavulon and was alarmed when witnesses reported that McVeigh's eyes began tearing during the execution, a ''hallmark sign'' that he was either conscious or under light anesthesia — and not unconscious as expected.

Surely there must be a better way--we suggest choosing life.

We hope this story gets legs:

The top U.S. Marine commander in Iraq said Friday that U.S. intelligence was "simply wrong" in its assessment that Saddam Hussein intended to unleash chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces during the war, but he stopped short of saying there was an overall intelligence failure.

If that's true, the Bush Administration's ineptitude is simply astounding.

Hessiod at Counterspin and Daily Kos have more.

Photographs have been found that suggest Iraqi soldiers were tortured by British troops.

A British soldier was arrested today after he left a roll of film at a photo store that appeared to show an Iraqi prisoner being tortured, the Defense Ministry said today.

The film depicted a bound and gagged Iraqi inside a net that was suspended from a forklift, according to The Sun, which first reported the story this morning. The Sun also reported that the roll included pictures of soldiers performing sex acts near Iraqi prisoners.

The story came to light after a lab technician who was developing the film alerted the local police. The police arrested the soldier at his home in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

If the allegations prove true, the soldier, and perhaps others at the scene in Iraq, would be in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which require that prisoners of war must be treated humanely.

This isn't the first such allegation.....