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	We need to find a way to live together, says UN chief in plea for tolerance by Ban Ki-moon   8 January 2015   Making an impassioned appeal for tolerance, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for understanding among all communities to heal the tensions within societies – a particularly poignant plea following yesterday''s horrific attack on the staff at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and in the face of ongoing sectarian violence across Africa''s Sahel region being fuelled by Boko Haram.   “In far too many places, we have seen acts of extremism, unspeakable brutality and a deeply worrying escalation of tensions between communities and within societies. Addressing this discord in a manner that solves, rather than multiplies, the problem may be the greatest test our human family faces in the 21st century,” Mr. Ban told reporters at UN Headquarters.   The Secretary-General''s appeal came after his informal briefing to the 193-Member UN General Assembly, where he launched the Organization-wide campaign for broad based action in 2015 to wrap up the unfinished business of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and outline a new global agenda centred on people and the planet, and underpinned by human rights.   “All of us were deeply moved by the many images from yesterday''s despicable attack in Paris. Perhaps none was as horrifying as that of a French policeman ruthlessly executed on a sidewalk,” said the Secretary-General, adding: “We now know that policeman''s name. He was Ahmed Merabet. He himself was a Muslim.”   The attack, continued Mr. Ban, in which 10 media workers and two police officers were killed by masked gunmen who ransacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, “is yet another reminder of what we are facing together.”   “It should never be seen as a war of religion … for religion … or on religion. It is an assault on our common humanity, designed to terrify and incite. Giving in to hatred and sowing division only guarantees a spiral of violence – precisely what terrorists seek. We must not fall into that trap," he declared.   “I want to make a special appeal for tolerance and understanding,” he said, stressing: “We need to find a way to live together, in peace, in harmony, in full respect of universal human rights and fundamental freedoms.”   As Nigeria readies for its election next month, the Secretary-General said the world faces another grave test. Boko Haram has continued its violence, killing Christians and Muslims, kidnapping even more women and children, and destroying churches and mosques. Mayhem has spread across the region, and is now having a direct impact on Cameroon and other countries.   “I urge Boko Haram''s leaders to end the destruction of so many lives and communities, and immediately and unconditionally release the kidnapped school girls and all others. The international community cannot let human rights abuses continue with impunity”. Visit the related web page
	For-Profit Justice means Taxing the Poor by Chris Albin-Lackey Human Rights Watch, agencies USA   When for-profit companies make money off the criminal justice system through privatization of prisons, it often triggers serious public debate. But there has been precious little scrutiny of local governments that use courts to make money for themselves. We should all be paying closer attention, because that kind of for-profit justice often means shifting public costs onto a community’s poorest members and creating perverse incentives for courts to ratchet up the pain.   From Ferguson to the suburbs of Atlanta, some municipalities and counties have turned their courts into veritable cash cows. They deploy a crushing array of fines, court costs, and other fees to harvest revenues from minor offenders that these communities cannot or do not want to raise through taxation. This is as dangerous and abusive as it is politically tempting.   Many public officials have embraced the idea that minor offenders should pay at least part of whatever it costs to bring them to book. But many courts now levy fees that are enormous in comparison to the punishments actually imposed for an offense. A resident of Montgomery, Alabama who commits a simple noise violation faces only a $20 fine—but also a whopping $257 in court costs and user fees should they seek to have their day in court. It’s a very short slide downhill from asking the courts to recover some of their costs to asking them to turn a profit and help fill up the municipal treasury.   Unfortunately, these practices are widespread. In the wake of Michael Brown’s shooting, investigations have thrown up evidence that municipal courts across the St. Louis metro area seem to prey on poor, mostly black people charged with relatively trivial offenses. Many are guilty only of so-called “crimes of poverty”—like a person who fails to renew their auto insurance or fix a broken taillight because they simply can’t afford it.   People leave court with steep new debts that make it even harder to meet the original obligations. Often, the money courts collect from minor offenders far exceeds operating costs and spills over to fund other services.   While there are signs that long-overdue reforms may be coming to Ferguson, there are courts across the U.S. that seem bent on harvesting profits from the poor. The problem of revenue-driven courts has been not so much hidden as widely ignored.   At Human Rights Watch, our research has shown how courts can wind up mired in abusive practices when they are being pushed to earn more money. Local courts across several states, such as Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, have turned to for-profit companies that provide probation supervision in misdemeanor cases. Many of the courts that hire these companies are not looking for a probation service so much as a debt collector—offenders are frequently put on probation purely because they need time to pay all of what they owe to the court.   Probation companies operate on what they call an “offender-funded” model, charging fees directly to the offenders they supervise. Those fees can add up into vast sums over time, and offenders who fail to pay their probation company its due can be arrested. Sometimes, these companies behave more like abusive debt collectors than probation officers. And perversely, the way fees are structured, poorer people actually wind up paying more because they need more time on probation to pay what they owe.   The Alabama town of Harpersville provides a useful cautionary tale. The town hired a for-profit company called Judicial Correction Services (JCS) to act as a probation service for its municipal court. The town relied on the court to generate some $300,000 of the town’s annual budget through fines and court costs. Some offenders paid more in fees to JCS than they owed the court to begin with, and many wound up behind bars for falling behind.   This story ended badly for everyone involved. Offenders straining under the yoke of these costs sued the town, and a state judge condemned the whole operation as a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket." Harpersville wound up shutting down its municipal court entirely and was left scrambling to plug a gaping hole in its budget. In the end, the town did what it probably should have done in the first place—it passed a 1 percentage point increase in local property taxes to fund basic services the old-fashioned way. But many other towns in Alabama and other states are still doing exactly the same thing.   Our courts should be in the business of doing justice, not making money off the backs of the poor. That statement may have the ring of an uncontroversial platitude, but in fact it’s a principle too many U.S. local governments have turned their backs on.   * Chris Albin-Lackey is a senior business and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.   http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/01/07/profit-justice-means-taxing-poor http://www.aclu.org/smart-justice-fair-justice http://www.ips-dc.org/the-poor-get-prison-the-alarming-spread-of-the-criminalization-of-poverty/ http://ourfuture.org/20140512/9-stories-of-injustice-from-matt-taibbis-new-book-the-divide Visit the related web page
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