We the people and the families of incarcerated in the state of Arkansas demand the removal of Wendy Kelley as director of Arkansas Department of Corrections and associated Deputy Directors Dale Reed and Dexter Payne. In the collaboration of these individuals, incarcerated men and women in the state prison system are deprived of humane living conditions, adequate medical care, and safety and protection from harm. Grievances filed by inmates are always deemed without merit even in severe situations. These employees of Arkansas Department of Corrections take it upon themselves to punish families of incarcerated individuals by withholding mail, falsifying information in files, accusing family members of violating ADC policy without allowing "Due Process", restricting visitation, phone calls, and video visits, therefore depriving family dynamics with significant others, parents, siblings, and children. This in return affects the inmates psychologically, causing undue stress and mental anguish, which violates prison rights along with citizens rights. In numerous situations when a family member contacts these individuals, they are treated rudely and lied to. These deaths occurring in the system are not by family, they're by staff, for which administration does not want to be held accountable. Assaults in units by staff and other inmates show lack of interventions to prevent these occurrences. Numerous falsified disciplinaries are overlooked and pushed aside in order to condemn inmates to solitary confinement, which in return causes PTSD and other disorders. We the families demand accountability and transparency of the Arkansas Department of Corrections Administrations and staff. Ms. Kelley herself being a lawyer holding a license in this state violates civil rights to prisoners and families. It is time our legislators take action and demand removal and replacement of these individuals, no more covering up their infraction on human beings incarcerated and their families. Numerous time inhumane conditions, assaults, PREA violations go unrecognized or undocumented in order to keep their ACA accreditation, on which Ms. Kelley is on the board of ACA, which is a conflict of interest. We the families of the incarcerated demand to be heard and changes to be made accordingly by the replacement of these directors. We demand better conditions for all inmates, humane treatment, adequate medical care, improved mental health care with a licensed trained therapist, the safety of all inmates, and respect to families of the incarcerated.

My older brother went to jail for some months and when he came home, he told us of his experience in there. He talked the most about how crowded it was. It was so crowded that there would be three, even four people to a cell when there were only two beds. He also told me about how he had gotten into a fight/ jumped because he was in a cell with people who disliked him. I want to prevent people from turning to violence due to overcrowding.

Acts of violence are terrorizing communities throughout Illinois. Children are being murdered and traumatized, without any support or constructive outlet. The hurt, pain, and tears of victims, families, and the community have been ignored for far too long. Protecting human lives should be the number one priority of this administration, and this is why Illinois desperately needs a Violence Prevention Commission immediately.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation states “Research shows that placement into a secure detention facility can have an outsized impact on the ultimate case outcomes for court-involved youth – with potentially profound and negative consequences….Youth who spend time in custody are less likely to complete high school, less likely to find employment, and more likely to suffer mental health problems than comparable youth who are not detained. In addition detained youth are more likely to be re-arrested, adjudicated or convicted for new offenses and incarcerated than youth who remain at home awaiting court or pending placement”. · The Governor has recently been quoted as saying that the “Raise the Age” Bill is a progressive piece of legislation. He is sadly mistaken. New York State is the 49th out of 50 States to start treating 16 and 17-year-olds as juveniles and furthermore, the implementation of the Bill is outdated and regressive. There is a disconnect between the actual legislation and the implementation. · The State adopted a reform bill called “Close to Home” in 2012. This means that children should be kept in their communities and close to their families and not shipped away. The bill appears to apply only to New York City and not the surrounding counties. Therefore the State is encouraging Westchester County Department of Probation to build an 80 bed detention facility for a 14 county region. Most of these youth have not been adjudicated. The counties are: Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam, Delaware, Broome, Duchess, Ulster, Sullivan, Columbia, Greene, Schoharie, Nassau and Suffolk. Some of the counties are over two (2) hours away. Shouldn’t the “Close to Home” policy be applied to all children in New York State? · As part of the Raise the Age agreement, New York State is willing to pay $1,200 a bed for County children and $2,400 for out of County, thus creating an incentive to ship children away from their communities. (In contrast, the 40 year old Youth Shelter Program of Westchester located in Mount Vernon has a per diem rate of $200 and provides many more services and a much lower recidivism rate than the County detention center.) Why these discrepancies in per diem rates? · The Raise the Age funding is limited to incarceration. It does not include any money for community prevention/diversion. We recommend that for every dollar spent on incarceration there be a dollar for dollar match for prevention/diversion. · Community Prevention/Diversion starts with the Police. When police officers are poised to arrest a youth they have many alternatives to arrest and incarceration at their disposal: community service; church sponsored youth groups; community centers with tutoring programs, youth courts; alternatives to incarceration centers; and wrap around mental health services all imbedded in the community. Arrest should be the last resort. · As compensation for a strain on the Juvenile Justice System New York State is providing money for construction and staffing of a jail for children. Is there data to justify this thinking? Is there an agency looking at the Juvenile Justice System as a whole? Will the incipient legalization or decriminalization of Marijuana affect the numbers? Will we continue to have a disproportionate number of Children of Color incarcerated in our County? Do we know who is being diverted and who is being incarcerated? Have we consulted with the other 48 States as to what is the most effective and appropriate system? This incarceration plan is a travesty for our young people and needs to be stopped, and re-evaluated. We need to redirect funding and reach deep into our communities to raise up the services that would welcome our youth as a diversion from incarceration. We need to do it NOW!

I am initiating this petition because of a person called Jawar Mohammed, Hate preacher, instigating genocide among Ethiopian Society. Because of Mr. Jawar’s hate messages, in less than seven months thousands of people were massacred and millions have been displaced from their original inhabitation. Many citizens have been exposed to a dire life and death situation. His vicious and controversial messages have filled the society with animosity. Therefore, before the country engulfs to never-ending civil war, we should stop Jawar.

Gypsy has had a rough life and putting her in prison because she wanted to escape her mother doesn't seem right. Putting her in jail isn't right and she should be out. Personally, I feel bad that this amazing human being had to go through so much; it's just not fair.

California police unions are leading a fight to stop a landmark police transparency law from fully taking effect. If they win, the public will lose the right to know whether police officers have been accused of excessive force, sexual assault, and other official wrongdoing that took place before this year. Until January 1, 2019, California police officers' disciplinary records were kept under lock and key. Journalists couldn't find out whether a police officer had a record of excessive force complaints. The public wasn't permitted to learn if the cops in their neighborhood had been accused of sexual assault on the job. Even attorneys defending their clients in court couldn't directly find out whether an officer had a record of lying on the stand or falsifying reports. That all changed when Senate Bill 1421 took effect. California's police unions are fighting to prevent SB 1421 from applying retroactively. In Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere, police unions have filed lawsuits to prevent disciplinary records from being released. Citing the police unions' efforts, the California Department of Justice has not honored public records requests from news organizations. Some police departments have even destroyed old records, preventing the public from ever accessing them. And some activists have reported exorbitant fees for disciplinary records requests meant to discourage requests. Making disciplinary records publicly available helps us hold police officers accountable for bad behavior, hold police departments accountable for appropriate training and discipline, and hold city governments accountable for exercising appropriate oversight over police forces. Police unions want to help their members avoid accountability when they act out of accordance with community standards, even at the cost of public safety and good relationships between police departments and the communities they serve. This has to end. We call on California's police unions, police departments, and public officials to immediately begin fully complying with SB 1421. They must drop any legal opposition to retroactively releasing police disciplinary records, and quickly honor public records requests at a reasonable cost to the public.

Right now, Nowata County prisoners are being held in Washington County after a carbon monoxide leak at the jail in February. On Monday, Gibson ordered Sheriff Terry Sue Barnett to bring the prisoners back to Nowata. She refused and resigned, along with the entire sheriff's office. At first, Gibson seemed concerned about the cost of housing prisoners elsewhere. He stated that the prisoners being housed elsewhere could be “putting the financial integrity of Nowata County, perhaps, at risk.” However, he did not list any reasons or provide inspection results that showed the jail was now safe and fixed. He did call some witnesses in law enforcement to testify. However, some of the questions veered away from the jail and focused more about what the former sheriff did or said. “That was one of the most bizarre proceedings; I’m not sure what the judge thinks he was doing," said Paul DeMuro, the attorney representing Barnett. "No orders were issued. It was just his personal vendetta, attack, with no notice of what he was doing.” Throughout the hearing, DeMuro questioned the legitimacy of what was happening, at times appearing both visually and verbally frustrated. DeMuro said he was not told what this hearing would entail and that it seemed more like an “evidentiary hearing.” At one point, he told the judge, “I don’t know what’s going on here.” After the judge finished calling his witnesses, he asked DeMuro if he’d like to call any witnesses. DeMuro declined, saying that the hearing was an “ambush.” He even questioned the judge’s motives during the hearing, saying he was entitled to “cross examine [the judge],” and that he was “concerned about [the judge's] communications” with the witnesses the judge called to testify. DeMuro questioned the judge’s authority to control the budget and the jail, saying it’s the County Commissioner's job to do so. Judge Gibson argued that what he was doing was for the safety of the community. He said, “Anybody who tries to say I don’t have the authority to do it your move sir.” After about an hour and a half, the judge decided to end the hearing. The judge did not make any decision or come to any conclusions. Even Nowata County Commissioner Burke LaRue said he didn’t know what the future of the NCSO may be. “I don’t think we gained anything,” said LaRue. “I just know we destroyed this county.”

To get rid of Capital Punishment in the United States

There have been a number of cases where innocent people have been executed by the state. There have been cases where the mental and psychological capacity of the accused was severely limited. As a Catholic, we believe capital punishment is “inadmissible” and an attack on the “dignity of the person.” The state of Georgia needs to join with the other 20 states and the District of Columbia in ending this immoral practice.

Change the licensing fees structure so that they are more affordable to those communities that were hurt most by the draconian drug sentencing of the 1980s and 90s. The program in Oakland is a good start but it is not working per this article: https://reason.com/archives/2018/07/19/oaklands-weed-equity-program-not-helping In the 1920s & 30s my grandfather, along with many black sharecroppers in the Dallas, TX area, were forced to risk their lives by growing marijuana to supplement his meager sharecropping income, due to Jim Crow laws, and were prosecuted for such offenses. Fast forward to the 1980s and 90s, this country passed a number of laws that increased drug sentencing in black and brown communities that resulted in disparate jail times for non-violent drug offenders based amount and form of the drugs possessed by offenders. Today many are affected negatively by such laws and are being barred from participating in the new legal marijuana industry because they have drug convictions under the aforementioned unfair laws that were levied against them. In effect, they are being penalized twice by the very laws that we know were unfair at inception. Black and brown communities were decimated by the incarceration under laws we know now to be both racist and immoral. Therefore, California should continue to be a leader in such reforms by changing the laws in light of past atrocities, and thus allowing these communities, to be able to operate on an equal and level playing field and use the funds from marijuana sales to rebuild their lives and their communities. Additional articles that support my position: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-african-americans-marijuana-industry-20170605-story.html http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/boehner-marijuana-blacks-prison.html

I have been volunterring for over 10 years doing legal research analysis for those WRONGFULLY CONVICTED , counties in New York state ( and across the country) that have CONVICTION INTEGRITY UNITS assist in getting the innocent exonerated. We need to make it MANDATORY for ALL NEW YORK STATE COUNTIES to have this UNIT as many counties have District Attorney's for decades that can compromise Wrongful Conviction Cases. PLEASE SUPPORT