On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers nationwide overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to new federal data. Nearly half are isolated for 15 days or more, the point at which psychiatric experts say they are at risk for severe mental harm, with about 35 detainees kept for more than 75 days. Continue reading...
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In Guatemala next month, the former dictator Efraín Rios Montt will become the first head of state ever tried on genocide charges in a domestic court. Not all such efforts to prosecute crimes against humanity have proceeded peacefully. Still, the quest to bring war criminals and vicious leaders to justice in international or domestic courts is part of a global trend toward greater accountability for human rights violations. But do trials help secure peace after war, civil conflict and repression? Does the threat of prosecution make dictators more reluctant to step down? Would it be better for democracy if survivors could forgive perpetrators and move on? Continue reading...
Shannon Golden and Hollie Nyseth Brehm asked four leading experts to weigh in on some of the most controversial issues facing international criminal justice, including its potential interference with state sovereignty and its capacity to really curb human rights abuses. Continue reading...
Rain pelted the side of the empty school building, drowning out all other sounds. In the distance I could see lightning strike across the rolling green hills. The weather couldn't have fit the situation better. For even though the classrooms were vacant, they were far from empty--they held the corpses of over 800 people killed in the 1994 genocide perpetrated against Tutsis in Rwanda. Continue reading...
Director Frey joined Eric Schwartz, Dean of the Humphrey School, and Hick Hayes, Professor of History at Saint John's University, to discuss the controversy over Susan Rice, the ethics of drones and other foreign policy challenges facing President Barack Obama as he prepares for his second term. Listen here.
Quito, Ecuador - Some people in the US were not keen at all on the Geronimo codename given to the final military operation against Osama bin Laden. Native Americans were understandably upset. Continue reading...
On Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state Department of Corrections (DOC) can no longer use labels such as "administrative segregation" as an end-run around legal protections designed to prevent prisoners from being held in solitary confinement without end and without due process. Continue reading...
On December 25, 2003, Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani teenager held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, repeatedly banged his head against the metal structures of his cell in an effort to kill himself. Continue reading...
Ending "trafficking" is perhaps the most well-known, well-resourced, well-loved social cause of the 21st century that doesn't require its proponents' agreement on what it even is they wish to end. Continue reading...
The handwritten letters arrived by the dozens, from men who described in flawed but poignant language what it was like to lose their minds. "I feel like I am developing some kind of skitsophrinia behaviors," one man wrote. "I hear voices echoing as I try to fall asleep."Continue reading...
