AMERICA’S DEPLORABLE PRISON CONDITIONS
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
21 November 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
INTRODUCTION
False confinements are common in America, because 97% to 98% of criminal cases are plea-bargained, and only 2% go to trial; so, all of the Constitutionally protected rights for defendants are only on paper in at least 98% of cases, and the state over-charges defendants and then ‘settles’ for the plea-bargain unless the defendant opts to go to trial — in which latter cases the government punishes the defendant by overcharging, “throwing the book” at, him/her, and the judge will usually then choose closer to the maximum sentence, in order to dissuade other defendants from going to trial. The way that the U.S. Government excuses its refusal to carry out and behave in accord with its Constitution is that adhering to the Constitution would be too expensive to do — the Government says it can’t afford more than this kind of assembly-line ‘justice’ that it is providing to its subjects — and so avoiding adherence to the Constitution is the expedient thing for the Government to do. (But, if that is true, then is a Second American Revolution the expedient thing for the American public to do, in order to restore the Constitution to being America’s supreme law?)
Furthermore, in civil cases in the U.S., under 4% of the cases in state courts go to trial, and only around 2% in federal courts do; so, there, too, the U.S. Constitution is virtually irrelevant. Of course, super-rich individuals are able to buy all the ‘justice’ they want, regardless of what the case happens to be. But, for everybody else, the right to a jury trial is so discouraged by the Government, as to be nominal, not real; and even the right to have the case adjudicated at all (i.e., by a judge) is more of a ‘right’ than a “right.”
Before U.S. President Harry Truman started the Cold War on 25 July 1945, plea-bargaining was very rare in the U.S. (and viewed with contempt), but then the military-industrial complex was instituted, and Government expenses went more to building up the empire’s new “standing army” (peacetime army) and hundreds of foreign military bases; so, in both criminal and civil cases, the percentages of both private settlements and plea-bargains soared, and the Constitution became just a piece of parchment with ink on it. Yet, still, to this day, the nation’s propaganda alleges that this is a Constitutional Government, and this allegation is giving a bad reputation to ‘democracy’, simply because the term is now actually referring to a certain type of hypocritical dictatorship, which actually isn’t even Constitutional any longer.
America’s prisons are internationally notorious, and contain almost only poor people. Wikipedia says: “The United States has the largest known prison population in the world. It has 5% of the world’s population while having 20% of the world’s incarcerated persons. China, with more than four times more inhabitants, has fewer persons in prison.[4][5]”
To be a police-state is common for an imperial country. It controls the population by the police, and controls the colonies by the military.
A CASE-EXAMPLE
The Russian Maria Butina has been, ever since the age of ten, a passionate supporter of (supposedly) everyone’s right to own guns, and she strongly opposed Russia’s gun-licensure laws; so, in 2011, she relocated to America. But she became imprisoned in the U.S. because she was politically active here supporting the NRA and Republican politicians, and at that time the U.S. Government was controlled by Democratic Party billionaires instead of by Republican Party ones (and so her being a Russian, which American billionaires are against, and her working with Republicans, which Democratic Party billionaires are against, she was under federal suspicion and surveillance).
She was in U.S. federal prisons from 15 July 2018 to 25 October 2019, having received an 18-month prison sentence on 26 April 2019, with the time she spent in pretrial detention (almost nine months) counted toward her prison term.
She describes her experiences in these prisons in the 12 September 2024 video,
https://www.brighteon.com/e1597c21-35b7-4649-aedd-55ff4eaaa80a
On November 19th of 2025, an article was issued about her, “Patrick Byrne on Maria Butina’s role in the Russian collusion hoax”, and Byrne is the libertarian and Overstock.com founder and CEO who became romantically involved with Butina, which relationship lasted from 2015 to 2018, after his having been recruited by the Obama FBI to find information against her, and who then published in 2024 his book about his involvement with Butina, Danger Close: Domestic Extremist #1 Comes Clean, which book — favorable to Butina — is summarized in that article.
Before Butina’s moving to the U.S. as an activist who founded in 2011 at the age of 21 an organization, “Right to Bear Arms” (Putin said in 2011 against it “I am deeply convinced that the free flow of firearms will bring a great harm and represents a great danger for us”), she had been a successful entrepreneur who built and then sold a 7-store Russian furniture-retail chain. Then in 2011, she moved to America, and became an NRA (pro-gun and Republican-Party-supported) activist, for which the Obama Administration charged her with being a foreign agent who had not registered as a foreign agent; and they got her to sign a plea-deal admitting that she had been a Russian agent (which she still denies she was), and she was sentenced to 18 months, of which 4 were in solitary, before she was released and returned to Russia. In that video, she described the time she had spent in those prisons, and the conditions in them. She described conditions like what U.S.-and-allied propaganda-organizations (‘news’-media) describe in the countries that the U.S. Government is trying to “regime-change” (overthroow and replace).
The Obama Administration’s case against Butina alleged that a certain Russian Senator, Alexander Torshin, who ardently supported gun-rights in Russia, encouraged Butina to go to America and work wth the NRA and Republicans, and that she was “conspiring” with him against America’s Democratic Party. However, as a Russian Senator, Torshin was actually trying to import Republican-Party U.S. policies into Russia’s Goverrnment; so, if he was “conspiring” wth Butina, it was in order for her to help Torshin to change Russia’s policies, not to help him to change the U.S. Government’s policies. To allege that Torshin was scheming to change America’s gun-policies — which he favored (and opposed Russia’s far more strict anti-gun policies) — seems to be simply bizarre, but Butina was forced by the U.S. Government to allege that it had been so.
On 19 November 2021, the New York Times headlined “After 15 Months in U.S. Prisons, She Now Sits in Russia’s Parliament: Maria Butina, convicted of serving as an unregistered foreign agent before and after the 2016 election, insists she ‘wasn’t a spy’ and that her Duma seat is ‘not a reward.’ Her critics call her a Kremlin ‘trophy.’” It opened:
When Russia’s lower house of Parliament, or Duma, assembled last month for the first time following elections in September, one of its newest members was a name more familiar in the United States than in her home country.
Maria V. Butina made headlines across America when she was convicted three years ago of operating as an unregistered foreign agent trying to infiltrate influential conservative political circles before and after the 2016 election.
She is now focused on playing a prominent role in Russia’s political system — through legal means this time, and with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin’s United Russia party.
Ms. Butina, 33, who returned to Russia in October 2019 after spending 15 months in several U.S. penitentiaries, including four months in solitary confinement, now represents the impoverished Kirov region in the Duma.
(She had actually spent a few days short of 18 months in U.S. prisons.)
On 24 January 2025, the Boston-based “The World” headlined “What is Maria Butina doing now in Russia after her release from a US prison? After being deported from the United States, Maria Butina is now a member of parliament in Russia’s Duma. She’s become a public persona, often appearing on Russian state TV, and has been active on social media, advertising multiple initiatives, including encouraging foreigners to move to Russia.”
RELATED TO THIS: On November 21st, a video which is posted only on non-mainstream media, for example NOT on youtube, is “Patrick Byrne Exposes — The Secret Factions In Israel Working With The Dem Party”, with Byrne being interviewed by America’s populist right-wing — and formerly Zionist — Alex Jones, alleging that Israel’s Deep State controls America’s Deep State. Trump’s base are starting to turn against him, including against both Parties, and against Israel. The U.S. empire is going through convulsions. Mainstreamers in BOTH Parties could soon become a minority. This movement of break-aways is suppressed in the mainstream media, but it is happening. If the dissatisfied conservatives and dissatisfied progressives could start a new Party (focused on what they agree about) to replace BOTH Parties, then maybe that would be the Second American Revolution, this one against not Britain’s aristocracy, but against America’s own aristocracy. It could run a Presidential ticket with both Douglas Macgregor and Zohran Mamdani, if those two would come to agreement on America’s path forward.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
