Saturday I was out in the yard and stopped to smell the blooms on our lilac trees. Then I saw the butterflies.
Four Eastern Tiger Swallowtails were stuffing their faces full of lilac nectar. I got a few photos.
Milestone
This marks 100 weekly posts. That’s really quite an accomplishment for me. I have to wonder where I’d be if I’d started this streak years ago.
I’d have a lot more than 652 posts.
I’d probably have more readers, both of the blog and my books.
Grandson and Diana were both on Spring Break from their respective schools. I thought that would mean he’d be spending all day with us, but his mom, Oldest Daughter, moved into a new place with her boyfriend, so she took the whole week off, so we ended up not seeing him as much as we might normally.
And it occurs to me that I need to come up with names for Oldest Daughter’s boyfriend and Youngest Daughter’s boyfriend. Both guys seem like they’re going to be around for a while.
Reading
Exonerations
The National Registry of Exonerations released its annual report for 2023 last week.
They recorded 153 exonerations last year. The wrongfully convicted people represented in those cases served a total of 2,230 years for crimes they didn’t commit.
Official misconduct occurred in 118 cases. 75 of the 86 murder cases cleared in 2023 involved some form of official misconduct.
Mistaken witness identification caused just under one-third of the cases.
Incredibly, 45 cases involved no crime at all.
Read the 19-page PDF here.
Communication
As far back as 1972, social scientists recognized the importance of maintaining communication between incarcerated people and their families. More frequent contact with family during incarceration predicts increases in family connectedness, which in turn predicts better mental health during the first year post-release. In other words, the more contact a family has with their incarcerated family member, the better the chances that person has when they get released of not reoffending.
And that’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? To keep that incarcerated person from reoffending and going back to jail? To break the generational cycle of imprisonment?
When COVID hit, prisons and jails scrambled to find ways to keep families connected without endangering incarcerated people, families, or staff. Many of them started using video calls or expanding their phone banks.
Others digitized their mail system to make it easier for prison staff to review mail. States claimed it would save money and free staff up for other duties.
But the technology involved costs money, and many jurisdictions didn’t have or didn’t want to spend the money necessary to add this technology and keep families connected.
So they turned to the inmates and the families.
To be able to get electronic messages from their families (since many prisons are digitizing mail), inmates have to rent a tablet from the prison or jail. Where are they supposed to get the money to rent electronics?
From their families, of course.
Companies like Securus and Global Tel*Link will provide telephone systems for your prison or jail—for a price. In Genessee County, Michigan, that price is $10 for a 25-minute video call, with the county getting 20% of the monthly fees.
Civil Rights Corps has filed two lawsuits in Michigan, including one in Genesee County.
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