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The mission of the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (WIMM) is to undertake internationally competitive research into the processes underlying normal cell and molecular biology and to determine the mechanisms by which these processes are perturbed in inherited and acquired human diseases. It is also our mission to translate this research to improve human health. The WIMM is uniquely placed among biomedical institutes throughout the world in its pioneering vision of combining outstanding clinical research with excellent basic science. The WIMM Faculty currently includes an equal mixture of scientists and clinicians working together and in collaboration with the National Institute of Health Research, the NHS and commercial companies with the aim of improving the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. The major topics of current research include haematology, immunology, stem cell biology, oncology and inherited human genetic diseases. The Institute benefits from strategic support from the MRC.

The Institute values communication with members of the broader scientific community and the general public and with the support of the Medical Research Council (MRC) we have commissioned three short videos to explain our mission.

Researchers from RDM kick off a week-long science extravaganza today at The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. The team will be exhibiting a unique blend of genetics and virtual reality on their stand, DNA Origami: How do you fold a genome? The team are one of 22 exhibits at the festival a celebration of science and innovation. They will be taking visitors through the intricate world of DNA folding, using virtual reality and ...

We are delighted to announce that Prof Sir David Weatherall has been awarded a GBE, making him a Knight of the Grand Cross. This is the highest rank in the Order of the British Empire and the honour has only been bestowed 16 times since 2000. Prof Sir Weatherall was recognised for his services for medicine and it is wonderful that his pioneering work and commitment to molecular medicine have been recognised in this way. David Weatherall is a ...

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Applications are invited for a highly motivated professional seeking to develop a career in Health and Safety in a medical research setting. The Deputy Safety Officer will join a small team of core staff who look after the day-to-day management of the Institute. Working closely with the Institutes Safety Officer you will have the personal drive and initiative to advise, manage and report on all aspects of health and safety for the Institute. ...

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Viruses are basically packets of nucleic acid, DNA or its sister molecule RNA. Our cells have therefore evolved to recognise these molecules as a sign of virus infection. A recent study from Jan Rehwinkels lab in the MRC Human Immunology Unit has revealed a new way in which cells sense and respond to invading viruses. Layal Liverpool, a DPhil student in the Rehwinkel lab, who was involved in the work, explains more.

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Home - Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine

Molecular Medicine | University of Maryland School of Medicine

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The Graduate Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Maryland Baltimore offers research and training opportunities with internationally-renowned scientists. Our Molecular Medicine Program is an interdisciplinary program of study leading to a Ph.D. degree. There are four different research tracks: Cancer Biology, Genome Biology, Molecular and Cell Physiology, and Toxicology and Pharmacology. Each provides for a unique interdisciplinary research and graduate training experience that is ideally suited for developing scientists of the post-genomic era.

Faculty mentors in this graduate program are leaders in their respective research areas and reside in various departments and Organized Research Centers in the School of Medicine and Dental School, the Institute for Genomic Sciences (IGS), the Institute of Human Virology (IHV), the Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center, and the Center for Vascular and Inflammatory Diseases (CVID). The over 150 faculty in the Graduate Program in Molecular Medicine are internationally recognized for their research in biotechnology, cancer, cardiovascular and renal biology, functional genomics and genetics, membrane biology, muscle biology, neuroscience and neurotoxicology, reproduction and vascular biology.

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Molecular Medicine | University of Maryland School of Medicine

‘Shapeshifter’ that regulates blood clotting is visually captured for the first time – Bioscience Technology

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We are normally born with a highly sophisticated array of molecules that act as "sentries," constantly scanning our bodies for injuries such as cuts and bruises. One such molecular sentry, known as von Willebrand factor (VWF), plays a critical role in our body's ability to stop bleeding.

To prevent hemorrhage or life-threatening blood clots, VWF must strike a delicate balance between clotting too little or too much. Researchers have long suspected that the mechanical forces and shear stress of blood flow could be closely-related to VWF's function.

"In some ways, like in the movie Star Wars, VWF may be considered a Jedi knight in our body that can use 'the force' to guard the bloodstream," says Timothy Springer, PhD, of Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (HMS).

It has not been possible to witness exactly how VWF senses and harnesses these mechanical forcesuntil now.

A team in the Boston Children's Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and the HMS Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, co-led by Springer and Wesley P. Wong, PhD, has revealed exactly how VWF does its job.

Cutting-edge fluorescence imaging and microfluidic tools, developed by the team, allowed them to capture images of individual VWF molecules on camera while manipulating the molecules with life-like mechanical forces emulating natural blood flow.

The team's findings, published in Nature Communications, reveal that VWF undergoes a two-step, shapeshifting transformation to activate blood clotting. This transformation is triggered when VWF senses certain changes in blood flow that are indicative of injury.

The closest-ever look at blood clotting

"Under normal circumstances, VWF molecules are compact and globular in shape," says Hongxia Fu, PhD, a researcher in Springer's lab and co-first author on the paper. "But we found that whenblood flowrate increases, VWF rapidly elongates, stretching out more and more in response to higher shear stress."

However, elongating is not sufficient on its own to activateblood clotting. To safeguard against unnecessaryand potentially life threateningblood clots, it's only when the tensile forces generated in the elongated VWF hit critical levels that the shapeshifter's transformation becomes complete.

The tensile forces activate"sticky" sites along VWF, allowing it to adhere to circulating platelets, the cells that work in conjunction with VWF to clump up and stop blood loss.

Normally, the rush of blood needed to reach these critically-high tensile forces can only occur at sites of injury inside blood vessels. This specificity enables VWF to sense blood loss and activate rapidly and locally, without activating elsewhere in the body.

"If you can imagine stretching out your arms, and then opening your hands to capture platelets, that's basically what we are seeing VWF do in response to bleeding," says Wong. "It's so important that this process occurs only when and where it is needed - this two-step activation process makes that possible."

A new view on blood disease diagnostics and drugs

Yan Jiang, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Wong's lab, also a co-first author on the paper, says the new findings could inspire smart drugs that are designed to treat the obstructive clotting, like deep vein thrombosis, at only diseased areas of the body.

"When you're putting a generic drug into the circulatory system, it's taking effect everywhere, even in places that can cause detriment," says Jiang. "For example, anticoagulants are medically necessary in many cases to prevent blood clots from forming, but they also carry the risk of excessive bleeding. But, what if we could design a smart drug that can mimic the two-step shapeshifting of VWF and only takes effect in areas where clotting is likely to occur?"

Revealing how VWF responds to changes in flow in the highly dynamic bloodstream is a critical step to understanding the interplay between mechanical force and biology in clotting-related diseases and developing novel therapeutics.

"This experiment really represents a new platform for seeing and measuring what's happening in thebloodon a molecular level," says Wong. "Through the use of novel microfluidic technologies that allow us to mimic the body's vasculature in combination with single-molecule imaging techniques, we are finally able to capture striking images that uncover the mystery of nature's forces at work in our bodies."

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'Shapeshifter' that regulates blood clotting is visually captured for the first time - Bioscience Technology

Donated bodies benefit UA medical students – Green Valley News

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As we near the end of life, we start thinking about where wed like our treasures to go: a favorite quilt, jewelry, maybe some art work. Some people take it a step further: Last year, 400 people left their bodies to the University of Arizona.

The UA's College of Medicine, Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine created the Willed Body Program 50 years ago so future doctors could learn anatomy from someplace other than textbooks.

Every year, more than 120 first-year medical students from the UA visit the anatomy lab to learn lessons about the thorax, digestive system, neuroscience or the reproductive or life cycle system, said Dr. Jean Wilson, professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and director of the Willed Body Program. Residents and fourth-year medical students also have access to the lab so they can focus on their specialized fields.

The students also learn about biochemistry and the impact pharmacology can have on the body, Wilson said.

For students to be able to do a dissection on a whole body is unparalleled for two reasons, she said. First, it allows them to understand the common themes of the human body, but more importantly, it allows them to see all of the variations, and there are many, many variables in the human body. Being able to see the variations allows them to become better doctors.

For example, Wilson said blood vessels can split many different ways besides the textbook way, even within the same body. Theres a particular back muscle that is only present in 25 percent of people and the duct system of peoples gall bladders vary widely, too.

Typically, four to six students will work at one table, but they are encouraged to look at what the other students in their class are doing as well, Wilson said.

On Friday, medical students from the Class of 2020 held a Memorial Service to honor those who donated their bodies through the Willed Body Program. Students and staff spoke about the anonymous donors and how they wonder what they were like in life, especially as they notice their ailments or touch their hearts and hold their hands. They marveled at their willingness to provide such an invaluable gift, describing them as selfless.

They also talked about how the lessons they learned from their donors will be applied in the future and how theyll never forget them.

Medical school is much different than it used to be, Wilson said.

It used to be 30, 40, 50 years ago, med students came in, did their gross-anatomy class and, unless they were going to become a surgeon, it would be the last time theyd see inside a body, Wilson said.

Nowadays, thanks to the various imaging systems, all doctors can see whats going on in the human body and so their gross anatomy lessons are more relevant than ever, Wilson said.

Wilson stressed the program is more than anatomy. It provides life lessons.

It also helps the students confront death, sometimes for the first time, Wilson said.

There are a few restrictions to participating in the program, but for the most part, donors must be 18 or older, live in Arizona at least part-time and be enrolled in the program. The program only accepts donors if they die in-state and transportation costs are covered by the Willed Body Program. If a funeral home must be used, all costs associated with services, storage and transportation by the funeral home are the responsibility of the family.

The UA also shares donations with Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University, Wilson said.

The success of our program depends on people who are willing to donate, Wilson said. Weve been really lucky with the number of donors, but we can never predict the future, so we never discourage anyone from donating.

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Donated bodies benefit UA medical students - Green Valley News

Molecular Medicine SpA (MLM) Plunges -0.73% on Aug 24 – Key Gazette

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August 24, 2017 - By Henry Gaston

Shares of Molecular Medicine SpA (BIT:MLM) last traded at 0.41, representing a move of -0.73%, or -0.003 per share, on volume of 1.19M shares. After opening the trading day at 0.42, shares of Molecular Medicine SpA traded in a close range. Molecular Medicine SpA currently has a total float of 431.45 million shares and on average sees 1.28M shares exchange hands each day. The stock now has a 52-week low of 0.31 and high of 0.64.

Italy is known worldwide not just for being a country with a rich culture and heritage but most importantly, for being a nation with a competent trade and commerce conduct. It lures Molecular Medicine SpA to its market. That being said, it is surely one of the biggest assets of the European economy.

Having been tested through the toughest of times, there is so much to learn from the economy of Italy. Through the years, Italy and its equity market in particular, has helped shape Europe as a successfully thriving region.

The Italian equity market dates back as early as the 1800s. The Borsa Italiana or Piazza Affari, the main Italian stock exchange, had been founded as one of the earliest European stock exchanges in February 1808 by Viceroy of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy Eugne de Beauharnais.

The Borsa Italiana boasts as one of the few stock exchanges with the longest trading hours. The pre-market session begins at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 9:00 a.m. The regular session immediately follows at 9:00 a.m. and ends at 5:30 p.m. There is also a post market session that begins at 6:00 p.m. and ends at 8:30 p.m. These long trading hours provide flexible opportunities for international investors to buy and sell stocks on and from the Borsa Italiana. This is one of the reasons that Italy has one of the most successful trade and commerce environments in the world. Many investors are looking for reliable companies like Molecular Medicine SpA there.

The FTSE Milano Italia Borsa (MIB) is the free-float market-capitalization-weighted index that monitors the 40 most actively traded stocks on the Borsa Italiana. Until June 2009 when the FTSE had started operating the FTSE MIB, the S&P had operated it as the S&P/MIB.

Roughly 80% of the overall market valuation on the Borsa Italiana is included in the FTSE MIB, making it a significant economic indicator not just in Italy but in the entire European region. The FTSE MIB is rebalanced four times a year in order to maintain clear representation of the national economy. Molecular Medicine SpA stocks are carefully checked by professionals.

The Borsa Italiana had always been operated as a public entity until it was privatized in 1998. The London Stock Exchange Group had then bought it in an all-stock transaction in 2007, consolidating the Borsa Italiana and the London Stock Exchange.

Hundreds of years after its foundation, the Borsa Italiana now has an overall market valuation of about $650 billion with over 340 stocks listed on it.

Meanwhile, the FTSE MIB had posted its all-time high of 50,108.56 points in March 2000; and its all-time low of 12,362.50 points in July 2012. The meltdown in 2012 is widely attributed to the financial crisis in Spain, which had affected other European nations; and to the heightened borrowing costs in Europe.

Investing on Borsa Italiana stocks is ideal today not just for domestic investors but also for international investors. Evidently, many investors are flocking the Italian equity market to take advantage of a compelling borrowing environment.

More notable recent Molecular Medicine SpA (BIT:MLM) news were published by: Bloomberg.com which released: Berlusconi Campaigns for No as His Top Managers Back Renzi on November 23, 2016, also Prnewswire.com with their article: DiaSorin SpA Completes Acquisition of the Focus Diagnostics Molecular and published on May 13, 2016, Sacbee.com published: Discoveries: In western Sonoma County, ferment in the finest cedar chips on February 13, 2016. More interesting news about Molecular Medicine SpA (BIT:MLM) were released by: Globenewswire.com and their article: Progenics Pharmaceuticals Announces Positive Topline Results from published on March 30, 2017 as well as Indystar.coms news article titled: The man behind the Guyer Institute with publication date: December 29, 2015.

Molecular Medicine SpA is an Italy firm engaged in the medical biotechnology sector. The company has market cap of 176.89 million EUR. The Firm is active in the research, development and clinical validation of therapies for the treatment of cancer. It currently has negative earnings. The Companys activities include identification and development of bio-pharmaceuticals reducing the tumor mass and slowing down its growth, as well as the development of selective therapies to eliminate residual tumor tissue.

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Molecular Medicine SpA (MLM) Plunges -0.73% on Aug 24 - Key Gazette

Jupiter-based Scripps researchers awarded grant to study, treat genetic disease – South Florida Business Journal

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South Florida Business Journal
Jupiter-based Scripps researchers awarded grant to study, treat genetic disease
South Florida Business Journal
A division of the National Institutes of Health has awarded almost $1 million to South Florida-based researchers to develop a drug aimed at treating a genetic condition that causes tumors, severe hearing loss and impaired balance. The Scripps Research ...

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Jupiter-based Scripps researchers awarded grant to study, treat genetic disease - South Florida Business Journal

How Mushrooms Became Magic – The Atlantic

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If you were an American scientist interested in hallucinogens, the 1950s and 1960s were a great time to be working. Drugs like LSD and psilocybinthe active ingredient in magic mushroomswere legal and researchers could acquire them easily. With federal funding, they ran more than a hundred studies to see if these chemicals could treat psychiatric disorders.

That heyday ended in 1970, when Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act. It completely banned the use, sale, and transport of psychedelicsand stifled research into them. There was an expectation that you could potentially derail your career if you were found to be a psychedelics researcher, says Jason Slot from Ohio State University.

For Slot, that was a shame. He tried magic mushrooms as a young adult, and credits them with pushing him into science. It helped me to think more fluidly, with fewer assumptions or acquired constraints, he says. And I developed a greater sensitivity to natural patterns. That ability inspired him to return to graduate school and study evolution, after drifting through several post-college jobs. (They are not for everyone, they entail risks, theyre prohibited by law in many countries, and only supervised use by informed adults would be advisable, he adds.)

Ironically, he became a mycologistan aficionado of fungi. And he eventually came to study the very mushrooms that he had once experienced, precisely because so few others had. I realized how pitifully little we still knew about the genetics and ecology of such a historically significant substance, he says.

Why, for example, do mushrooms make a hallucinogen at all? Its certainly not for our benefit: These mushrooms have been around since long before people existed. So why did they evolve the ability to make psilocybin in the first place?

And why do such distantly related fungi make psilocybin? Around 200 species do so, but they arent nestled within the same part of the fungal family tree. Instead, theyre scattered around it, and each one has close relatives that arent hallucinogenic. You have some little brown mushrooms, little white mushrooms ... you even have a lichen, Slot says. And youre talking tens of millions of years of divergence between those groups.

Its possible that these mushrooms evolved the ability to make psilocybin independently. It could be that all mushrooms once did so, and most of them have lost that skill. But Slot thought that neither explanation was likely. Instead, he suspected that the genes for making psilocybin had jumped between different species.

These kinds of horizontal gene transfers, where genes shortcut the usual passage from parent to offspring and instead move directly between individuals, are rare in animals, but common among bacteria. They happen in fungi, too. In the last decade, Slot has found a couple of cases where different fungi have exchanged clusters of genes that allow the recipients to produce toxins and assimilate nutrients. Could a similar mobile cluster bestow the ability to make psilocybin?

To find out, Slots team first had to discover the genes responsible for making the drug. His postdoc Hannah Reynolds searched for genes that were present in various hallucinogenic mushrooms, but not in their closest non-trippy relatives. A cluster of five genes fit the bill, and they seem to produce all the enzymes necessary to make psilocybin from its chemical predecessors.

After mapping the presence of these five genes in the fungal family tree, Slots team confirmed that they most likely spread by jumping around as a unit. Thats why theyre in the same order relative to each other across the various hallucinogenic mushrooms.

These genes seem to have originated in fungi that specialize in breaking down decaying wood or animal dung. Both materials are rich in hungry insects that compete with fungi, either by eating them directly or by going after the same nutrients. So perhaps, Slot suggests, fungi first evolved psilocybin to drug these competitors.

His idea makes sense. Psilocybin affects us humans because it fits into receptor molecules that typically respond to serotonina brain-signaling chemical. Those receptors are ancient ones that insects also share, so its likely that psilocybin interferes with their nervous system, too. We dont have a way to know the subjective experience of an insect, says Slot, and its hard to say if they trip. But one thing is clear from past experiments: Psilocybin reduces insect appetites.

By evolving the ability to make this chemical, which prevents the munchies in insects, perhaps some fungi triumphed over their competitors, and dominated the delicious worlds of dung and rotting wood. And perhaps other species gained the same powers by taking up the genes for those hallucinogens. Its not clear how they did so. Some scientists think that fungi can occasionally fuse together, giving them a chance to share their DNA, while Slot prefers the idea that in times of stress, fungi can soak up DNA from their environment. Either way, the genes for psilocybin have spread.

Much of this is speculation, based on circumstantial evidence. Since psilocybin is still a controlled substance, Slot cant legally make it in his lab, which means he cant prove that the gene cluster he identified actually produces psilocybin in mushrooms. Still, his team have done as much as they can, says Jennifer Wisecaver, an evolutionary biologist from Purdue University who studies fungal genes. Given the other evidence they provide, I'd say the hypothesis is very compelling, she says.

This work is part of a resurgence of psilobycin research. Just last week, a German team led by Dirk Hoffmeister identified four enzymes that can produce the drug, paving the way to manufacture it without growing shrooms. Other scientists have shown that psilocybin could have potential for treating depression, helping smokers to quit, and relieving the anxiety felt by cancer patients. The science thats being done on [magic mushrooms] has taken on more of an air of respectability, says Slot.

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How Mushrooms Became Magic - The Atlantic

On the Plantations: The Abolition of Slavery Project

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When enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas, they were often alone, separated from their family and community, unable to communicate with those around them. The following descriptionis from'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano':

"When we arrived in Barbados (in the West Indies) many merchants and planters came on board and examined us. We were then taken to the merchant's yard, where we were all pent up together like sheep in a fold. On a signal the buyers rushed forward and chose those slaves they liked best."

On arrival, the Africans were prepared for sale like animals. They were washed and shaved: sometimes their skins were oiled to make them appear healthy and increase their sale price.

Depending on where they had arrived, the enslaved Africans were sold through agents by public auction or by a scramble', in which buyers simply grabbed whomever they wanted. Sales often involved measuring, grading and intrusive physical examination.

Sold, branded and issued with a new name, the enslaved Africans were separated and stripped of their identity. In a deliberate process, meant to break their will power and make them totally passive and subservient, the enslaved Africans were seasoned.' This means that, for a period of two to three years, they were trained to endure their work and conditions - obey or receive the lash. It was mental and physical torture.

Life expectancywas short, on many plantations only 7-9 years. The high slave replacement figures were one piece of evidence used by the abolitionist, Anthony Benezet, to counter arguments that enslaved peoplebenefitted from removal from Africa.

Other descriptions of the arrival and sale of enslaved people: Captain Stedman describes the condition of enslaved people leaving a slave ship Dr Cullen describes the arrival of the enslaved people in the West Indies Dr Alexander Falconbridge describes a sale, 1778Henry Lauren describes a sale, 1786

What was life like for the enslaved person?

Itwas a life of endless labour.They worked up to 18 hours a day, sometimes longer at busy periods such as harvest. There were no weekends or rest days.

The dominant experience for most Africans was work on the sugar plantations. In Jamaica, for example, 60% worked on the sugarplantations and, by the early 19th century, 90% of enslaved Africans in Nevis, Montserrat and Tobago toiled on sugar slave estates.

The major secondary crop was coffee, which employed sizable numbers on Jamaica, Dominica, St Vincent, Grenada, St Lucia, Trinidad and Demerara. Coffee plantations tended to be smaller than sugar estates and, because of their highland locations, were more isolated.

A few colonies grew no sugar. On Belize most enslaved Africans were woodcutters; on the Cayman Islands, Anguilla and Barbuda, a majority of slaves lived on small mixed agricultural holdings; on the Bahamas, cotton cultivation was important for some decades.Even on a sugar-dominated island like Barbados, about one in ten slaves produced cotton, ginger and aloe. Livestock ranching was important on Jamaica, where specialised pens emerged.

By the 1760s, on mainland North American plantations, half of enslaved African people were occupied in cultivating tobacco, rice and indigo.

Children under the age of six, a few elderly people and some people with physical disabilities were the only people exempt from labour.

Individuals were allocated jobs according to gender, age, colour, strength and birthplace. Men dominated skilled trades and women generally came to dominate field gangs. Age determined when enslaved people entered the work force, when they progressed from one gang to another, when field hands became drivers and when field hands were retired as watchmen. The offspring of planters and enslaved African women were often allocated domestic work or, in the case of men, to skilled trades.

Children were sent to work doing whatever tasks they were physically able. This could include cleaning, water carrying, stone picking and collecting livestock feed.In addition to their work in the fields, women were used to carry outthe duties of servants,child minders and seamstresses. Women could be separated from their children and sold to different 'owners' at any time.

Mary Prince, in her autobiography,described her experience ofbeing enslaved andseparated from her mother. To hear an extract from the autobiography.

A description of the life of an enslaved plantation workerwas described by Renny in 1807. To here the description.

How did the plantation owners control the enslaved people?

The plantation owners may have controlled the work and physical well being of enslaved people, but they could never control their minds. The enslaved people resisted at every opportunity and in many different ways - see the resistance section.

There was always the constant threat of uprising and keeping thoseenslaved under controlwas a priority of all plantation owners. The laws created to control enslaved populations were severe andillustrated the tensions that existed. The laws passed by the Islands' governing Assemblies are often referred to as the Black Codes.'

Any enslaved personfound guilty of committing or plotting serious offences, such as violence against the plantation owner or destruction of property, was put to death. Beatings and whippings were a common punishment, as well as the use of neck collars or leg irons for less serious offences, such as failure to work hard enough or insubordination, which covered many things.

Thomas Clarkson described the life of an enslaved person in a speech to a gathering at Ipswich. To hear an extract of this speech.

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On the Plantations: The Abolition of Slavery Project

How to End Mass Incarceration – Jacobin magazine

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The United States has not always been the worlds leading jailer, the only affluent democracy to make incapacitation its criminal justice systems goal. Once upon a time, it fashioned itself as the very model of what Michel Foucault called the disciplinary society. That is, it took an enlightened approach to punishment, progressively tethering it to rehabilitative ideals. Today, it is a carceral state, plain and simple. It posts the highest incarceration rate in the world as well as the highest violent crime rate among high-income countries.

Politicians, reporters, and activists from across the political spectrum have analyzed the ongoing crisis of mass incarceration. Their accounts sometimes depict our current plight as an expression of puritanism, as an extension of slavery or Jim Crow, or as an exigency of capitalism. But these approaches fail to address the question that ought to be foremost in front of us: what was the nature of the punitive turn that pushed the US off the path of reform and turned its correctional system into a rogue institution?

While the state-sanctioned brutality that now marks the American criminal justice system has motivated many activists to call for the complete abolition of prisons, we must begin with a clearer understanding of the complex institutional shifts that created and reproduce the phenomenon of mass incarceration. Only then will we be able to see a clear path out of the current impasse.

The core features of Foucaults account of crime, punishment, and social control are well known, although they have not always been well understood. In the disciplinary society he describes, authorities progressively withdraw punishment from public view. And as discipline becomes increasingly private, it shifts its focus from criminals bodies to their minds. Increasingly, punishment is calculated to rehabilitate it is not meant to damage or destroy.

Foucault highlighted how these disciplinary reforms created new and more effective tactics for consolidating power, especially as they spread to non-judicial institutions, like schools, hospitals, factories, and offices. Unlike its predecessor, sovereign power, which subtracts giving kings the right to seize property, to damage or take lives disciplinary power corrects. The Enlightenments gentle punishments would convince the miscreant to mend his crooked ways, not beat the bad behavior out of him.

An American preference for rehabilitative discipline over harsh punishment has deep roots. Resonant with the image of the country as a nation of laws, American justice promised to punish lawbreakers only as much as was necessary to straighten them out. The Bill of Rights prohibited torture, and the Quaker reformers who founded early American penitentiaries treated them as utopian experiments in discipline, purgatories where penitents would suffer and introspect until they found salvation.

No doubt time and circumstance created different opinions about how much suffering genuine personal reformation required, but American practices generally aligned with rising standards of decency. As James Q. Whitman notes, Europeans once viewed the US prison system as a model of enlightened practices. Foreign governments sent delegations on tours of American penitentiaries, and Alexis de Tocqueville extolled the mildness of American punishment.

Of course, we can find exceptions. Southern penal systems, racialized after the Civil War under the convict-lease system, didnt even pretend to have rehabilitative aims. They existed to control the black population and supply cheap labor for agriculture and industry. No doubt, too, the spectacles of punishment associated with popular colonial justice the pillory, the stockade, the scarlet letter cast long shadows across American history.

But, even in the face of these contradictions, the US criminal justice system seemed to support a grand narrative of progressive history: the arc of history bends toward justice, and the slave drivers lash and the lynch mobs noose disappeared as the nation extended more rights and more freedoms to more people. Reasoned law inexorably overcomes communal violence and brute domination.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr thus distinguishes the true essence of the United States from its various manifestations of racism and intolerance, glossing history as the perpetual struggle of Americans to fulfill their deepest values in an enigmatic world.

As recently as fifty-odd years ago, Americans could still believe this story. Here, as in other North Atlantic countries, modern penal models that stress rehabilitation, reform, and welfare had become the prevailing approaches. At the peak of this trend, Great Society programs attempted to address crimes socioeconomic causes: poverty, institutional racism, alienation.

Indeed, as a result of the legal reforms of the 1960s, the American prison population was shrinking, and the state was developing alternatives to incarceration: kinder, gentler institutions that focused on supervision, reeducation, and rehabilitation. To many observers, the prison system actually seemed to be reforming itself out of existence. Leo Bersanis review of Foucaults Discipline and Punish began with the (now astonishing) sentence The era of prisons may be nearly over.

Nothing in Foucaults analysis or anyone elses, as David Garland has remarked could have predicted what followed: a sudden punitive turn designed to incapacitate prisoners rather than rehabilitate them. The practice of locking people up for long periods of time became the criminal justice systems organizing principle, and prisons turned into a reservation system, a quarantine zone where purportedly dangerous individuals are segregated in the name of public safety. The resulting system of mass incarceration, Garland writes, resembles

nothing so much as the Soviet gulag a string of work camps and prisons strung across a vast country, housing [more than] two million people most of whom are drawn from classes and racial groups that have become politically and economically problematic. Like the pre-modern sanctions of transportation or banishment, the prison now functions as a form of exile.

At the peak of this mania, one in every ninety-nine adults was behind bars. Since 2008, these numbers have leveled off and even posted modest declines, but the basic contours remain intact. The United States ranks first in imprisonment among significant nations, whether measured in terms of incarceration rates which remains five to ten times higher than those of other developed democracies or in terms of the absolute number of people in prison.

Hyper-policing helped make hyper-punishment possible. By the mid-2000s, police were arresting a staggering fourteen million Americans each year, excluding traffic violations up from a little more than three million in 1960. That is, the annual arrest rate as a percentage of the population nearly tripled, from 1.6 percent in 1960 to 4.5 percent in 2009. Today, almost one-third of the adult population has an arrest record.

At prevailing rates of incarceration, one in every fifteen Americans will serve time in a prison. For men the rate is more than one in nine. For African American men, the expected lifetime rate runs even higher: roughly one in three.

These figures have no precedent in the United States: not under Puritanism, not even under Jim Crow. While some observers point to significant declines in crime statistics after 1994 as evidence of these policies success, informed estimates show that locking up millions of people for long periods contributed to only as much as 27 percent and as little as 10 percent of the overall reduction in crime.

Eighth Amendment prohibitions notwithstanding, conditions in Americas crowded prisons have sunk to the level of torture. Indeed, the Supreme Courts Brown v. Plata decision affirmed that overpopulation itself constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, creating unsafe and unsanitary conditions, depriving prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care. The court found that mass incarceration is incompatible with the concept of human dignity.

In this context, structural abuses invariably flourish. Reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch catalog various forms of sanctioned and unsanctioned human rights abuses. These include beatings and chokings, extended solitary confinement in maximum security and so-called supermax prisons, the mistreatment of juvenile and mentally ill detainees, and the inhumane use of restraints, electrical devices, and attack dogs.

Modern prisons have become places of irredeemable harm and trauma. J. C. Oleson surveys these dehumanizing warehouse prisons, where guards have overseen systems of sexual slavery or orchestrated gladiator-style fights between inmates.

Sally Mann Romano describes shocking brutality in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) of Californias Pelican Bay State Prison, once touted as a model supermax prison:

It was in this unit that Vaughn Dortch, a prisoner with a life-long history of mental problems, was confined after a conviction for grand theft. There, the stark conditions of isolation caused his mental condition to dramatically deteriorate, to the point that he smeared himself repeatedly with feces and urine. Prison officials took Vaughn to the infirmary to bathe him and asked a medical technician, Irven McMillan, if he wanted a part of this bath. McMillan responded that he would take some of the brush end, referring to a hard bristle brush which is wrapped in a towel and used to clean an inmate. McMillan asked a supervisor for help, but she refused. Ultimately, six guards wearing rubber gloves held Vaughn, with his hands cuffed behind his back, in a tub of scalding water. His attorney later estimated the temperature to be about 125 degrees. McMillan proceeded with the bath while one officer pushed down on Vaughns shoulder and held his arms in place. After about fifteen minutes, when Vaughn was finally allowed to stand, his skin peeled off in sheets, hanging in large clumps around his legs. Nurse Barbara Kuroda later testified without rebuttal that she heard a guard say about the black inmate that it looks like were going to have a white boy before this is through his skin is so dirty and so rotten, its all fallen off. Vaughn received no anesthetic for more than forty-five minutes, eventually collapsed from weakness, and was taken to the emergency room. There he went into shock and almost died.

This scene recalls the opening moments of Discipline and Punish, in which Foucault graphically recounts the slow destruction of Robert-Franois Damienss living body in 1757. Of course, todays torture doesnt appear as a spectacle, staged for public edification. Nor does it resemble the touch of pain strategically administered as bitter medicine to cure the lawbreaker of his sickness a concept of corporeal punishment that goes back to Plato. In those cases, pain served a greater social purpose.

In contrast, a set of invisible and unsanctioned but nonetheless systematic practices, hidden away in the most secret parts of the penal system, has allowed brutality to flourish. Away from public scrutiny, it thrives on retributions personalized and sadistic logic, all that remains of the criminal justice systems moral purpose after rehabilitation disappeared.

Oleson summarizes the logic of the present system: [t]he prison no longer attempts to make angels of men. In modern prisons, a transformation of an entirely different kind is taking place: men are becoming animals. We should not be surprised that the modern penal system a pressure cooker of idle men packed into cramped space devolves into overt torture, for this prison was already an institution in which awful things regularly happen. Nor should we be surprised that these zealous punishments dehumanize the punishers no less than the punished.

The transition from a disciplinary to a punitive penal system happened very quickly, although its implications would go unnoticed for a long time. Arguably, we still dont fully understand the nature of this cultural shift, which exceeds the penal system and appears in a number of the institutions of everyday life. But I get ahead of myself.

The punitive turn began in the turmoil of the 1960s, a time of rapidly rising crime rates and urban disorder. In 1968, with US cities in flames and white backlash gaining momentum, congress overwhelmingly passed and Lyndon Johnson reluctantly signed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. As Jonathan Simon has suggested, the act became something like a blueprint for subsequent crime-control lawmaking.

Shaped by a conservative coalition of Western Republicans and Southern Democrats, the legislation invested heavily in local law enforcement, asserted rules for police interrogations designed to countermand the liberal Warren courts decisions, including Miranda, allowed wiretapping without court approval, and, in a successful bid to secure liberal support, included modest gun control provisions.

Although the legislation did little to increase criminal penalties, it reversed the logic of earlier Great Society programs; instead of providing direct investment, the acts block grants ceded control to local agencies, often controlled by conservative governors. Most importantly, the act established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), an independent branch of the Justice Department. Blaming low conviction rates on a lack of cooperation from victims and witnesses, the LEAA launched demonstration projects aimed at recruiting citizens into the war on crime.

Tough talk about law and order articulated the strange new angers, anxieties, and resentments racking the nation in the 1960s, as Rick Perlstein has shown, and, by 1972, Richard Nixon had consolidated a new governing coalition that still dominates American politics. Nixons anti-crime narrative appealed to the traditional Republican bases rural and small-town values and incorporated conservative Southern Democrats, who viewed the civil rights movement as lawless and disorderly. It also attracted Northern hardhat conservatives and white ethnic voters alarmed at escalating crime, urban riots, and campus unrest. In short, the nascent war on crime firmed up white backlash and gave durable political form to a conservative counter-counterculture.

But race reactionaries were not the only group spreading tough law-and-order rhetoric. Vanessa Barker has described how African American activists, representing the communities hardest hit by surging crime rates, also agitated for harsher penalties for muggers, drug dealers, and first-degree murderers.

In 1973, incarceration rates began an unprecedented thirty-five-year climb, and political tides began to turn even in liberal states. That year, New York passed the most draconian drug legislation in the country. Under the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the minimum penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, or heroin was fifteen years to life. (It took until 2009 for New York to retire much of what remained of these laws.)

Ironically, the Left was helping to prepare the way for a decisive turn to the Right. Leftist activists from the civil rights, black power, and antiwar movements were leveling heavy criticism against the criminal justice system, and rightly so. Patterns of police brutality had been readily discernible triggers of urban unrest and race riots in the late 1960s, and minorities were overrepresented in the prison population (although not as much as today). Summing up New Left critiques, the American Friends Service Committees 1971 report, Struggle for Justice, blasted the US prison system not only for repressing youth, the poor, and minorities but also for paternalistically emphasizing individual rehabilitation. Rehabilitate the system, not the individual, the report urged but the point got lost in the rancorous debates that followed. As David Garland carefully shows, the ensuing nothing works consensus among progressive scholars and experts discouraged prison reform and ultimately lent weight to the arguments of conservatives, whose approach to crime has always been a simple one: Punish the bad man. Put lawbreakers behind bars and keep them there.

In 1974, Robert Martinsons influential article What Works? marked a definitive turning point. Examining rehabilitative penal systems efficacy, Martinson articulated the emerging consensus nothing works, and rehabilitation was a hopelessly misconceived goal.

Tapping into the zeitgeist, Hollywood released Death Wish that same year, followed by a host of other vigilante revenge films. Exploitation movies enlisted a familiar Victorian spectacle sexual outrages against girls and women in the service of right-wing populism. Their plotlines invariably connected liberals, civil libertarians, and high-minded elites with the criminals who tormented the ordinary citizen. Notably, however, such films carefully muted the racial backlash that had inaugurated the punitive turn: they depicted the vicious criminal as white, allowing audiences to enjoy the visceral thrill of vengeance without troubling their racial consciences.

Comprehensive crime-control bills came and went during the Reagan-Bush years, each more punitive than the last, and new social movements emerged around the politicization of crime.

The victims rights movement played an important role in this story. The movement had started inside the liberal welfare state, and proponents originally saw aid for victims of violent crime as the other half of their attempts to rehabilitate convicts. But, as conservatives recruited victims advocacy and self-help groups into the war on crime, the movement began to pit victims rights against the rights of the accused, aligning with claims that hordes of criminals were escaping justice on legal technicalities.

By 1982, the Reagan administration was drawing this movement securely within the compass of the right, as Bruce Shapiro explained. That year, the Presidents Task Force on Victims of Crime published a report based largely on anecdotal horror stories of double victimization and official unresponsiveness. Based in part on this report, congress passed the Victims of Crime Act in 1984.

This movement focused national attention on victims at a time when violent crime rates remained stubbornly high, providing the moral underpinnings for a punitive approach to crime. It persuaded voters to identify with victims, to diminish the rights of the accused, and to accept excessive policing. It aggressively lobbied for the harsher laws, enhanced penalties, and court procedures that put the prison system on steroids.

But liberal rationales also helped the punitive turn put down institutional roots. The victims rights movement had adopted feminist rhetoric around rape and domestic violence. For example, it claimed that survivors are victimized a second time by their unsatisfying experiences with the police and court system. During the same period, mainstream white feminists came to view rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence through a law-and-order lens and many started demanding harsh criminal penalties. This collusion between conservative victims rights advocates and white feminists undermined the historic liberal commitment to enlightened humanitarianism and progressive reform, especially as these related to crime and punishment.

Although no one could have known it at the time, the early 1990s represented a high-water mark in the crime wave that had begun in the early 1960s. In 1991, homicide rates crested at 9.8 per 100,000, matching the rate recorded in 1974 and almost matching the record rate of 10.2 per 100,000 set in 1980. After 1993, the thirty-year crime wave began to recede, but the punitive turn persisted.

In 1994, Democrats aggressively moved to take back the crime issue from Republicans, and a Democratically controlled congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Like the 1968 act, this 1994 legislation pumped a great deal of federal funding into local law enforcement, funding 100,000 new police officers, new prison construction, and new prevention programs in poor neighborhoods. The new legislation also included an assault weapon ban.

Unlike the 1968 act, however, the 1994 version increased penalties for hate crimes, sex crimes, violence against women, and gang-related crimes. It required states to create sex-offender registries and prodded them to adopt truth in sentencing laws that would entail longer prison sentences. It also dramatically expanded the federal death penalty and eliminated support for inmate education programs.

The 1994 act completely reversed Great Society penal welfarism, consolidating the punitive approach, which Democrats, liberals, and some progressive advocacy groups now embraced. Indeed, lawmakers drafted many of the acts sweeping provisions with liberal interest groups in mind.

We have now lived through more than fifty years of this punitive turn. Its resilience resists simple explanations. Originally a conservative phenomenon, it condensed fears over rising crime rates with the political reaction to the upheavals of the 1960s. In its middle period, liberal aims and rhetoric helped spread the logic of incapacitation, enshrining the victim as the subject of governance and treating the offender like toxic waste to be disposed of or contained. Sensational journalism contributed to this shift, honing the publics focus on the victim, stoking panic and outrage.

Successive waves of draconian legislation targeted outsized monsters: drug dealers, repeat offenders, gang members, sexual predators, terrorists and their sympathizers. Americas zeal for punishment has been bolstered not by one or two causes but by a variety of changing factors. Today, perhaps, it persists as much out of institutional inertia as anything else.

If my thumbnail history is accurate, then we must recognize many of the prevailing critiques of American punishment today as either erroneous or partial and inadequate.

For example, we sometimes see scholarly work that treats mass incarceration as an instance of Foucaults theorized disciplinary system. It would be difficult to imagine a more confused approach. No doubt, todays system has retained many of the disciplinary regimes features: the existence of an institution called the prison; forms of power that penetrate even the smallest details of everyday life; the production of a carceral archipelago that exports surveillance from the penal institution to the entire social body. But all this tells us is that institutions communicate with each other: such examples of connectivity do not belong to the disciplinary mode of power alone.

In fact, the current regime of power represents a radical break with the disciplinary regimes logic and aims: by the early 1970s, the United States was renouncing the corrective focus of penal welfarism, and it now deploys supplementary surveillance beyond the walls of the prison not to rehabilitate offenders or regulate conduct but to catch lawbreakers and feed more and more people into the prison system.

Scholars who study the penal system have developed a large body of work connecting mass incarceration to neoliberal economic policies of deregulation and privatization. Some posit a neoliberal cause and a punitive effect, while others argue that deregulation and privatization exacerbated social inequalities and therefore fostered a fear of crime, ultimately producing more surveillance, policing, and incarceration.

Bernard Harcourt provides a broader view, meticulously examining how classical liberal and neoliberal theories approach policing and punishment as market functions and regulators. In my view, however, he never quite demonstrates a strong connection between such models and present-day lawmaking, penalties, and practices.

No doubt, these analyses express an elemental truth about capitalism and coercion. The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist, as an apologist for both once put it. But the language that describes societys humdrum workings cannot explain systemic changes or historic shifts. Nor should we assume that whatever intensifies capitalism will also intensify coercive tactics. After all, neoliberalism is a global phenomenon, but the punitive state remains distinctly American, at least among developed democracies.

In any case, arguments that link neoliberalism and mass incarceration do not match the actual historical trajectory or the varied political currents in play. The punitive turn, as I have sketched it, began in the mid-to-late 1960s, but neoliberal policies did not begin gaining ascendency until the late 1970s.

Certainly, mass incarceration has had large economic effects. Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett estimated that, during the 1990s, Americas zeal for incarceration shaved two percentage points off unemployment figures. Roughly 4 percent of the civilian labor force either works for the penal system or works to put people in prison. If one includes private security positions and workers who monitor or guard other laborers, the results are striking: in an increasingly garrisonized economy, one out of every four or five American laborers is employed in what Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jayadev call guard labor.

No doubt, the American variant of neoliberalism used these facts to help establish itself. Indeed, one might conclude that the punitive turn, with its disdain for rule-breakers, losers, and outcasts, paved the way for the neoliberal turn, with its love of the market.

Another common line of criticism begins by recognizing the role liberals have played in constructing the punitive state. This scholarship conveys essential truths, but it too often overcorrects the prevailing storyline and erases valuable points of reference.

Naomi Murakawas book, The First Civil Right, is a case in point. The author scrutinizes New Deal timidity in the face of racial violence and calls attention to prominent Democrats and liberals who helped build the prison state by pursuing color-blind laws and modern police forces. In telling this important story, however, Murakawa blurs the important distinction between the Great Society approach to law enforcement and the punitive turn that followed.

Had the Democratic Party stayed its fundamentally social-democratic course, had it kept with the penal systems reformist program, had the policies of Johnsons Attorney General Ramsey Clark remained in place, and this is no small matter had the criminal justice system continued to develop alternatives to incarceration, the United States would not have evolved into a carceral state.

It is of course possible that prison rates would still have risen with the crime rates between the 1970s and the 1990s, but they would not have exploded, and mass incarceration would have remained the stuff of dystopian fiction.

Many activists, journalists, and scholars have highlighted draconian drug penalties as a primary cause of mass incarceration. To be sure, the war on drugs played a significant role in the prison systems growth, especially during the 1980s. But it represents just one element of the larger war on crime and has been slowly winding down since the early 2000s.

Today, drug offenders represent only about 15 percent of sentenced prisoners. While this is by no means a negligible number, we need a wider perspective. Enhanced penalties for a variety of offenses drug possession and distribution, surely, but also violent crimes, repeat offenses, crimes committed with a firearm, and sex crimes have all fueled the growth of the penal system. One often-overlooked population is parole violators, who represented 26 percent of prison admissions in 2013. The fact that the parole system, devised to reduce the prison population, now enlarges it gives us important clues about the self-perpetuating nature of the system today.

Finally, sociologists, criminologists, and critical race scholars have closely scrutinized the racial disparities in arrest, prosecution, and incarceration rates. Many conclude that mass incarceration constitutes a modern regime of racial domination or a new Jim Crow.

This perspective highlights important facts. While African Americans make up only 13 percent of drug users, they account for more than a third of drug arrestees, more than half of those convicted on drug charges, and 58 percent of those ultimately sent to prison on drug charges. When convicted, a black person can expect to serve almost as much time for a drug offense as a white person would serve for a violent offense.

These statistics demonstrate how race-neutral laws can produce race-biased effects, especially when police, prosecutors, juries, and judges make racialized judgments all along the way. Needless to say, had the mania for incarceration devastated white middle- or even working-class communities as much as it has black lower- and working-class communities, it would have proved politically intolerable very quickly.

But the racial critique consistently downplays the effects of mass incarceration on non-black communities. The incarceration rate for Latinos has also risen, and the confinement and processing of undocumented immigrants has become especially harsh. And although white men are imprisoned at a substantially lower rate than either black or brown men, there are still more white men in prison, in both raw and per capita numbers, than at any time in US history.

In mid-2007, 773 of every 100,000 white males were imprisoned, roughly one-sixth the rate for black males (4,618 per 100,000) but more than three times the average rate of male confinement from the 1920s through 1972. As James Forman Jr argues, the racial critiques focus on African American imprisonment rates expressly discourages the cross-racial coalitions that will be required to dismantle mass incarceration.

In his important contribution to this debate, Forman has outlined the racial critiques main limitations. First, he argues that this analysis minimizes the historical effect of spiking crime rates on public opinion and lawmaking. By blaming only white backlash for harsher penalties, the racial critique obscures substantial levels of black support for these policies.

Second, Forman shows that the often-invoked Jim Crow system makes for a poor analogy with mass incarceration. Jim Crow was a legal caste system that took no notice of class distinctions among black people. By contrast, todays punitive system does not affect all African Americans the same way; rather, it predisposes the poorest and least educated to incarceration, and the impact of mass incarceration is concentrated in black inner-city neighborhoods. (As Bruce Western has shown, the risk of going to prison for college-educated black men actually decreased slightly between 1979 and 1999.)

Third, because of its emphasis on drug laws, the racial critique skirts the important question of violent crime. Roughly half the prisoners now in custody were convicted of violent crimes, and racial disparities among this population are even wider. [An] effective response to mass incarceration, Forman concludes, will require directly confronting the issue of violent crime and developing policy responses that can compete with the punitive approach that currently dominates American criminal policy.

We might make a similar argument about the racial critique of abusive policing, which highlights important injustices but fails to provide a comprehensive picture of the whole system. Police do kill more black than white men per capita, a disparity that only increases in the smaller subset of unarmed men killed in encounters with police. But in raw numbers cops kill almost twice as many white men, and non-blacks make up about 74 percent of the people killed by police. We cannot dismiss these numbers as collateral damage from a racialized system that targets black bodies.

Examining the profile of these unarmed men is revelatory. Statistically, an unarmed white man has a slightly smaller chance of being killed by law enforcement than he does of being killed by lightning; an unarmed black mans is a few times more. In either case, these rates are many times higher than in other affluent democracies, where violent crime rates are lower, the citizenry is less armed, and police if armed at all are less trigger-happy.

Whether black or white, the victims of police shootings have a lot in common: many were experiencing psychotic episodes either due to chronic mental illness or drug use when the police were called. Many had prior arrest records or were otherwise previously known to the police. Whether black, white, or brown, the victims of police shootings are disproportionately sub-proletarian or lower working-class.

Exceptions occur the white middle-class teen shot in the back while fleeing from the police; the black child spotted in the park and hastily shot with what turned out to be a toy gun but most victims appear to have lived lives of extreme precarity, variously marked by racial discrimination, poverty, mental illness, and social abandonment.

Thus far I have described the rise of the carceral state in largely negative terms: what happened in the late 1960s was not only a war on drugs nor a new system of racial domination but something wider. A succession of changing motives and rationales supported the punitive turn, and the urge to punish came from an array of sectors and institutions. The time has come to sum up my analysis in more positive terms.

First, beginning in the 1970s, all social institutions turned toward detection, capture, and sanction. A broad-spectrum cultural shift away from values of forbearance, forgiveness, and redemption animated this transformation. The punitive turn was, first and foremost, a cultural turn.

Many observers today look skeptically at cultural explanations of this sort, which claim that people do x because they believe y. From structuralism to poststructuralism and beyond, a cavalcade of theoretical currents promoted an abstract idea of culture, severing it from history and political economy. In highlighting the cultural element in these developments, however, I do not mean to suggest that culture always sets the course of historical events, only that it sometimes does a point that Friedrich Engels was also keen to make.

Further, I do not assert that once the desire to punish got into peoples heads, it spread uniformly throughout society, nor would I argue that this cultural shift sprang into being ex nihilo.

At its inception, the punitive turn found fertile ground in preexisting institutions of race and class. As it developed, political actors and moral entrepreneurs reworked received ideas, some of them older than the republic, some of them torn from the headlines. The United States long history of capitalism and various forms of power all participated in the carceral states development.

Second, federal legislation played a key role in institutionalizing and hardening this cultural change. This was not merely a question of mechanizing the law with mandatory minimum sentences or three strikes provisions but of automating a system of interconnecting institutions.

The nucleus of this development was already present in the 1968 Safe Streets Act, aimed at expanding and modernizing policing, and in the LEAA, designed to increase prosecution and conviction rates. From this start, police forces grew, became more proactive, and made more arrests.

Securing greater cooperation from more victims, prosecutors brought more cases to court often with higher charges. Responding to the shifting mood, judges sentenced more defendants. Across four decades, legislators passed laws that criminalized more activities, increased sentences, and expressly barred compromise, early release, consideration of mitigating circumstances, and so on. Put simply, the law became more punitive. Such mechanisms could persist under changing conditions because a vast institutional network spanning the state and civil society actively produced fresh rationales for them.

The punitive turn was consolidated into a punitive avalanche.

The result was a transformed system, in which prison, parole, and so on were stripped of their disciplinary aims (reeducation, rehabilitation, reintegration) and reoriented toward strictly punitive goals (detection, apprehension, incapacitation). Horkheimer and Adorno would have called this instrumental rationality: a nightmare version of bureaucracy that suspends critical reasoning and tries to establish the most efficient means to achieve an irrational end.

The present moment seems propitious for change. Violent crime rates have fallen to levels not seen since the early 1960s, reducing public pressure for harsh laws and tough sentences. Upbeat journalists periodically write stories covering more rational approaches to crime and punishment in even conservative states. The criminal justice systems racial disparities have become a point of national embarrassment, and, as early as 2007, the United States Sentencing Commission began retroactively intervening to reduce the sentences of some federal inmates convicted on crack-cocaine charges. Polls suggest that Americans across the political spectrum largely support reducing the number of people in prison.

Improvements have moved slowly, however. The prison population fell from a peak of 2.3 million in 2008 to 2.1 million today, but more substantial declines do not appear to be forthcoming. Thanks to our federal system, substantially reforming the carceral regime will prove difficult: it will demand revising thousands of laws and practices at mostly local levels.

Meanwhile, the Left is divided over how to imagine and advocate for our goals. Prison abolitionism has gathered steam among some activists, although it shows little sign of winning over the wider public. With evangelical zeal, abolitionists insist that we must choose between abolition and reform, while discounting reform as a viable option. The history of the prison system, they say, is a history of reform and look where that has gotten us.

I have tried to show here whats wrong with this argument. It is remarkably innocent of history. In fact, the history of reform was interrupted some time around 1973 and what we have had instead for the past five decades is a history of counter-reform. The unconscionable conditions we see today are not inevitable byproducts of the prison; they are the results of the punitive turn.

Abolitionists base their approach on an analogy between the prison system and chattel slavery. This is a strained analogy at best, and it only appears convincing in light of the oversized and unusually cruel American penal system. Slavery was an institution for the extraction of unfree labor over a persons (and his or her childrens) lifetime; the prison is an institution that imposes unfreedom for a set period of time as punishment for serious infractions historically with the express bargain that at least theoretically the lawbreaker was to be improved and reintegrated into society. The better analogy might be with other disciplinary institutions, which also to varying degrees curb freedoms in the name of personal and social good: the school, the hospital, the psychiatric institution.

Abolitionists usually respond to the obvious criticism but every country has prisons by citing Angela Daviss polemical work, Are Prisons Obsolete? Slavery, too, was once universal, they point out; it required the abolitionists utopian vision to put an end to that unjust institution.

But this, too, misstates history. By the time American abolitionism got fully underway in the 1830s, much of Europe and parts of Latin American had already partially or wholly abolished slavery. The Haitian Revolution had dealt the institution a major blow, and slavery was imploding in parts of the Caribbean. A world without slavery was scarcely unthinkable. The same cannot be said of prisons: all signs suggest that the public and not only in the United States believes that prisons are legitimate.

Abolitionist arguments usually gesture at restorative justice, imagining that some sorts of community institutions will oversee non-penal forms of restitution. But here, we are very far out on a limb. Such models might more or less work in small-scale, face-to-face indigenous or religious communities. But, in modern cities, it is implausible to think that families, kinship networks, neighborhood organizations, and the like can adjudicate reconciliation in a fair, consistent manner.

In short, abolitionism promises a heaven-on-earth that will never come to pass. What we really need to do is fight for measures that have already proven humane, effective, and consistent with social and criminal justice.

Consider Finland. In the 1950s, it had high crime rates and a punitive penal system with high incarceration rates and terrible prison conditions. In these regards Finland then was much like the United States today. After decades of humanitarian and social-democratic reforms, the country now has less than one-tenth the rate of incarceration as the United States. Its prisons resemble dormitories with high-quality health care, counseling services, and educational opportunities. Not coincidentally, its prison system does not breed anger, resentment, and recidivism.

Finlands system aligns with that of other Nordic and Northern European nations, all of whom remained continuously on the path of reform. There, small-scale penal institutions are insulated from public opinion, with its periodic rages against lawbreakers, and prioritize genuine criminological expertise. They have expressly rehabilitative aims, working not only to punish but also to repair the person and restore him to society. Penalties top out at around twenty years, consistent with the finding that longer sentences have neither a rehabilitative nor a deterring effect. Many Scandinavian prisons have no walls and allow prisoners to leave during the day for jobs or shopping. Bedrooms have windows, not bars. Kitchens and common areas resemble Ikea displays.

Rather than call for the complete abolition of prisons a policy unlikely to win broad public support the American left should fight to introduce these conditions into our penal system. We should strive not for pie-in-the-sky imaginings but for working models already achieved in Scandinavian and other social democracies. We should demand dramatically better prison conditions, the release of nonviolent first offenders under other forms of supervision, discretionary parole for violent offenders who provide evidence of rehabilitation, decriminalization of simple drug possession, and a broad revision of sentencing laws. Such demands would attract support from a number of prominent social movements, creating a strong base from which we can begin to build a stronger, universal safety net.

Institutions become obsolete only when more effective and more progressive alternatives become available. The poorhouse disappeared when its functions were replaced by social security, public assistance, health care clinics, and mental and psychiatric hospitals. We see no such emergent institutions on the horizon today that might render prisons a thing of the past. What we see instead are examples of criminal justice systems that have continued reforming, modulating, humanizing, shrinking, and decentralizing the functions of the prison. Creating just such a correctional system, based on genuinely rehabilitative goals consistent with our view of social justice, should be a main task of socialists today.

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How to End Mass Incarceration - Jacobin magazine

‘Why we shouldn’t mourn the loss of controlled assessment this GCSE results day’ – TES News

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There are many and varied examples of the assessment jargon that litters education. The system assesses so oftenthat conjuring new names for the manner and form of it is an art, requiring not only teachers but also parents and students to use them ad nauseum.

One such is controlled assessment: that contribution to the final qualification outcome made not by an examination, but by some form of project work, completed under the supervision of the class teacher, who also then marks it.

Controlled assessment is so named because it is not coursework, which could be taken home. Instead, it must be done in class time.

The latitude given to teachers in controlled assessment issubstantialand the opportunities to nudge the results of some, most or indeed all of the children in the desired direction is ever-present. Perhaps through sharing the specific question too early, or inappropriately editing a students work.

Even if an individual teacher has the moral fibre to resist that temptation, senior management might take a different viewand subtly or perhaps bluntly highlight ways in which the constraints of the rubric can be pushed against and, in some cases, pushed through.

It is a hard truth to acknowledge that cheating or the hardly better euphemism gaming is a problem in teaching. In 2016there were 388 penalties for all forms of cheating, including controlled assessment infractions, issued to school and college staff, an increase from 262 in 2015 and 119 in 2014.

The Tesforums are filled with people who suspect itand several who are open that they have seen it happening in their own school and do not know what to do about it. Innocent teachers and students were the victims of this behaviour.

In 2010, the coalition government more-or-less resolved this problem for teachers by announcing the almost totalabolition of controlled assessment from the reformed GCSEs. This week, the results of the first of those GCSEs English language, English literature and mathematics will be published.

Given that both the content and the construction of the exams is deliberately designed to make them harder, it is likely schools will see some decline in the quality of their results.

Students should be spared problems arising from this by the decision to align the new Grade 4 with the bottom of the old C-grade, so much the same number as got passing grades last year will get them this year, too. Schools, who are to be judged on the number of Grade 5 students receive, may feel more aggrieved.

Almost certainly, some will seek to blame the abolition of controlled assessment in English as one of the reasons for the changes in outcomes. They will probably be right, because controlled assessment is habitually marked more positively than terminal examinations, but no teacher should mourn the loss of controlled assessment.

As well as being enormous amounts of work to teach, invigilate and mark, it presented an unpleasant ethical challenge to all teachers and left a whiff of immorality around our profession that we are well rid of.

John Blake is head of education and social reform at the think-tank Policy Exchange, before which he was a state-school history teacher for 10 years.

Keep up to date with all the latest GCSE news, views and analysis on ourGCSE hub.

Find outwhat colleagues are chatting about in your discipline by visiting the subject based forums in the Tes Community or you can join in the conversation about GCSE results day.

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'Why we shouldn't mourn the loss of controlled assessment this GCSE results day' - TES News

Lena Dunham Shares Her Fiery Red Hair Transformation in 8 … – Vogue.com

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The more I write about beauty , the more I realize where all of my latent ideas of femininity come from: my mother between the years of 1990 and 1996. It was during that time, apparently, that my ideal look crystallized, and now I am simply crawling toward it on fresh adult terms. One of my mothers primary pursuits of that era? Turning herself into a redhead.

Once a month or so, using a health foodstore paste resembling quicksand, she would cover her muddy head in Saran wrap and examine a copy of this very magazine until she shampooed to reveal a shade of copper natural to nobody but Jessica Rabbit. I felt a redheaded mother was distinctly specialprofoundly specific, a little witchy. The only other one I knew of was a real estate agent with a perm, a very different vibe than my mothers glossy head, which glowed fuchsia in the right light.

As an avid reader of Betty and Veronica comics, I understood the vicissitudes of hair color and reputation. Blondes were innocent and desirable in their innocence. Brunettes were shrewd, and what they lacked in shine they made up for in polish. But redheads were something else, a little dangerouseternal interlopers. Theyve been eroticized by Botticelli and vilified by Dickens and Shakespeare since long before Jean Harlow played a home-wrecking seductress in the 1932 film Red Headed Woman . Judas Iscariots frequent cameos in medieval artwith an auburn mane and beardcertainly helped sow these centuries-old seeds. According to my mother, redheads were once considered so scandalous that they were actually burned at the stake.

Shirley Manson, redheaded grunge icon and Garbage front woman, recalls the pain of being ridiculed for her hair as a child. Redheads make up less than 2 percent of the world population. Its no surprise that we tend to be viewed with more than a little suspicion, says Manson, who was told she was ugly so often because of her ginger strands that she started to believe it. But, like some of our greatest beauty icons (Barbra Streisand , Lauren Hutton , Dolly Parton ), Manson took the feature that had been used to negate her and allowed it to radically define her. It wasnt until I reached my 30s that I started to appreciate being so visually unusualand discovered the following passage in Sylvia Plaths poem Lady Lazarus.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.

Supermodel Karen Elson had a similar adolescent experience. It was hard growing up and constantly being teased about the way I looked, says Elson, who dyed her red hair an even more saturated shade of cherry in an act of defiance. Fortunately it was the very thing that made me beguiling to the fashion world.

Beguiling . I could use a little of that these days, if only to reintroduce myself to my own allure after an exhausting year of health issues. I was also wrapping up nearly seven years of work on my own television show, the kind of thing that defines your identity and occupies your days. I looked in the mirror and saw a tired, fearful person; I was not the self-starting, sparks-flying dynamo I had expected to be at 31. While hair color cant solve the problems we need to solve ourselves, it can be a catalyst. I became obsessed with the need to go red.

Its an early-summer afternoon when I arrive at hair colorist Lena Otts Suite Caroline studio in SoHo, practically guarding my oily, mousy-brown head. In a few hours my hair will be red, and there will be no turning back. (Other Lena, as I take to calling her, assures me its a punishing color to remove, as challenging to banish as it is to get right.) I worry about how Ill feelbewitched, beguiled, or bewigged?

Photo: Courtesy of Lena Dunham

The process begins with a coppery base color. I love the spice of my bangs as theyre blown dry. Never one to sacrifice depth, Other Lena pulls a few highlights forward, orangey in just the right soda-pop way, then adds a gloss. Im left with a multidimensional color that tells a story of process and progress. This is no sad bottle job. This is red hair with purpose, the kind Ive been searching for. For the first time in months, I feel deeply in my body, in myself.

Im meant to wash with a Christophe Robin cleansing maska thick, lemony cream unlike anything Ive ever usedto prevent fade-out, and come back in four to five weeks for a touch-up, as red hair is, unsurprisingly, not easy to preserve. Its definitely up there with platinum blondes in terms of high maintenance, Other Lena admits, which becomes immediately clear when I wake up following my first shampoo to find what can best be described as a Rorschach test on my pillow.

Like this indiscernible pattern, red hairs fiery reputation is difficult to analyze, one even Anne of Green Gables could not escape. (Youd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair, she tells Marilla in L. M. Montgomerys 1908 classic). I enjoy this very much, actor Emma Stone says of the redheads reputation for causing trouble. A born blonde whose decision to go red helped launch her career, shes now back to flaxen but says the saucy stereotypes still follow her, no matter her hair color.

But can going red actually create an impetuous firebrand? I sure felt that way when, ten days after my coloring session, I awoke positive that I needed to shave my head. Not completelyI needed enough hair to remain a redhead. But close to the scalp, with a spiked peak, Annie Lennoxstyle.

Hours later, Im at a mens barbershop in Brooklyn as a group of what were once doubters are helping me get the red hairs off my white Cynthia Rowley minidress. They all seem pleased, impressed even. That was brave, the owner tells me. And I did feel brave. I felt an ownership over my body that had been given a jump start. Its just like Manson says: Red hair trickles into each crevice of your existence, coloring everything. My (fake) red: stronger than extinction, wittier than lowlights. I have come to light you up and turn you on, to eat you like airdyed pillow and all.

Watch Lena Dunham on Donald Trump, Her Greatest Fear, and Meeting Her Boyfriend on a Blind Date:

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Red or Dead creator Wayne Hemingway heads to Macclesfield – Macclesfield Express

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British fashion designer Wayne Hemingway is coming to Macclesfield to give the towns creatives a boost.

Wayne is the co-founder of the Red or Dead fashion brand and a trustee for the Design Council.

He is coming to Macclesfield Town Hall as part of the Weave Town Talks programme, run by the council, which brings industry experts to the region to bolster our own creative and digital sector.

The talks are organised as part of Cheshire East Councils Shift programme, which is partly funded by the Arts Council. It brings high-profile sector leaders to the region, to stimulate debate and discussion on the creative and digital sector and raise the profile of these industries in the borough.

The talks are hosted by Weave, the newly-launched taskforce, which champions the sector and is co-ordinated by the councils wholly-owned arms-length Skills and Growth Company.

Wayne, who runs a design agency which has led on numerous inspiring and high-profile regeneration projects, including the ongoing development of the Anfield district in Liverpool, will be joined by Katie Popperwell, who progresses cultural and creative industries partnerships for Allied London; developers of Manchesters Spinningfields, the old Granada studios and London Road fire station.

Following the speakers, a panel question and answer discussion will focus on local regeneration schemes, enabling technologies, community co-creation and the resources required to further develop the towns of Cheshire East.

Councillor David Brown, Cheshire East Council deputy leader and cabinet member for cultural services, said: The Shift programme continues to be a tremendous success for the council and this is yet another show of our commitment to the creative and digital sector. Opportunities to meet and speak with industry leaders such as Wayne are few and far between so this is a real feather in our cap.

The event is at Macclesfield Town Hall on Thursday, September 7, from 6.30pm until 9pm.

Previous talks have included digital skills and video games design.

To book free places at this talk, and forthcoming talks, visit: http://www.weave.org.uk and click on the Town Talks link.

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Western Colorado Red Cross heads to Texas – KJCT – KJCT8.com

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GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KJCT/KKCO) -- As Texans across the coast are evacuating to avoid Hurricane Harvey, some Western Slope locals are heading into the storm.

The Western Colorado Red Cross chapter packed up their disaster relief van and hit the road Thursday morning.

Volunteers will be gathering and creating somewhat of a campground; where they'll sleep, make food and then put together meals for people affected by the hurricane.

"We take these vehicles out into the affected neighborhoods, where you've got lots of people who have had some type of disaster to their home, and we're going to feed them, said Andy Aerenson, a Red Cross volunteer.

Most volunteers are working on a two week time frame, but it can always be longer depending on the hurricane and the severity of the destruction.

This will be Aerensons third time heading out to a disaster scene. He said the most rewarding part is seeing the community come together.

You see young college aged kids helping out the older folks who cant clean out their house, said Aerenson. But at the same time, you see the older folks who are cleaning out their house, taking a level of activity they probably havent done in a long time.

The best thing you can do to help is to donate money. That way the Red Cross can buy supplies as needed.

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Red Matters: National project aims to prevent bullying against … – Timaru Herald

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RACHAEL COMER

Last updated16:53, August 22 2017

JOHN BISSET/STUFF

Danni Mitchell-Saunders, 4, has been included in a project celebrating redheads.

A Timaru girl's fiery locks have earned her a place in a national project.

Danni Mitchell-Saunders, 4, recently travelled to Auckland to be part of the Red Matters Project, a photographic project by Bianca Duimel, which aims to break the stigma attached to being a redhead and stop the bullying often associated with having red hair.

Duimel has already released one book from the project, with another,Little Red Matters, whichDanniwill appearin, due out at Christmas.

Her mother,NickiMitchell, said she had been following the project on social media for a while.

"My mum put a pictureup on the Red Matters Project Facebook page and it all followed on from there," Nicki said.

"Bianca contacted me and asked if we wanted to come up for Dannito be photographed."

Nicki said the overnight trip had been a great experience for her daughter.

Dannihad also enjoyed the opportunity.

"I had fun and I like my hair colour," Danni said.

She said all her friends were "blonies [blondies]" and she didn't know any other people with her hair colour.

Nicki said the project was important to her family as she knew redheads could often be bullied.

She also saw it as a chance for her daughter to have something to look back onwith pride.

She had been surprised when she gavebirth to a redhead.

"We were so surprised when this wee baby popped out and her hair was red as red could be."

Duimel said she enjoyed working on the project and seeing the positive outcomes it was achieving.

"For some people it's been life-changing and people are gaining confidence."

Timaru District councillor and "proud redhead" Steve Willssaid he was pleased to hear about the project.

"Redheads have always been the butt of a few jokes, particularly when you're younger."

He said his teenage daughter was also a redhead and people often commented on how they admired her hair colour.

-The Timaru Herald

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In honor of Ed Sheeran’s Tampa show, 5 more underrated redheads – Tampabay.com (blog)

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Is Ed Sheeran sexy?"

Jay Cridlin, our pop music/culture critic, was on the phone with singer James Blunt, who is opening for Sheeran at Amalie Arena on Tuesday. But Jay could have been talking to anyone.

It's the quest he's taken this week, trying to unlock the appeal of a divisive figure in pop culture. Somewhere between the guitar, sweet warble, cargo shorts and tats, some think Sheeran has a certain something. Some people, uh, do not.

Then there's his boldest physical feature that mop of bright red hair. The British superstar embraces his ginger status, and has even claimed to have improved the love lives of redheaded men. "There are a lot of ginger dudes in England who are using me," he said in one interview.

When it comes to redhead supporters, we have a noted office adherent. Our features copy editor, Alexa Volland (brown hair), routinely talks about her admiration of redheads.

"I think it all started after seeing my first Harry Potter movie in theaters," she said. "I was 11, and Rupert Grint was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen. I had his picture framed next to my bed. When I was 13, I was convinced I could find and befriend him on MySpace."

It never worked out between Alexa and Rupert, sadly. But in light of Sheeran's visit, I asked for her list of under-appreciated redheads in pop culture.

Eddie Redmayne: "Despite critically-acclaimed performances in The Danish Girl, The Theory of Everything and Les Misrables, Eddie Redmayne (literally pronounced red mane) is one of the most underrated actors, period. Those freckles. That hair. It doesn't hurt that Redmayne also has a reputation for being one of the nicest actors."

Domhnall Gleeson: "While Grint is the most notable redhead from the Harry Potter series, the Irish actor who played Ron Weasley's brother, Bill, has some glorious ginger tresses. Gleeson, son of Brendan Gleeson, has been in The Revenant, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ex Machina."

Simon Woods: "He hasn't been in much, but his role as Mr. Bingley in 2005's Pride & Prejudice was enough to make this list. Google 'hot redhead actor,' and there he is in the top row."

Kristofer Hivju: "While he might play crazy-eyed, haggard wildling Tormund Giantsbane on Game of Thrones, he cleans up nicely on the red carpet. The Norwegian actor has the reddest hair of anyone on this list, and a jawline so strong it could claim the Iron Throne."

Rose Leslie: "When you think of redhead female actors, Emma Stone, Isla Fisher, Amy Adams and Julianne Moore come to mind. I'm calling it now: Rose Leslie will have that same name recognition. The Scottish beauty played Ygritte in Game of Thrones and Gwen Harding in Downton Abbey. Kit Harrington, who plays Jon Snow on GoT, also has a thing for redheads. He and Leslie have been dating since 2012."

In honor of Ed Sheeran's Tampa show, 5 more underrated redheads 08/23/17 [Last modified: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 12:22pm] Photo reprints | Article reprints

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Expanding In Alabama: UTC Aerospace Systems Adding 260 Jobs And Advanced Capabilities At Nacelle Facility In … – Markets Insider

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CHARLOTTE, N.C., Aug. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --In response to rising customer demand for its nacelle systems, UTC Aerospace Systems, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX), today unveiled a new 80,000-square foot manufacturing and nacelle assembly facility at its award-winning Foley, Alabama campus. The company expects to add up to 260 new jobs at the site, ultimately increasing its Foley workforce to more than 1,000 employees. The campus is part of UTC Aerospace Systems' Aerostructures business unit, which maintains a global footprint of nacelle design, original equipment manufacturing and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) sites.

Expected to be fully operational by year's end, the new building will feature a range of innovative manufacturing technology, including automated material movement to index large nacelle component platforms down the assembly line, an overhead rail system with vacuum lifts and an automated painting system. These new advanced manufacturing systems, which have been piloted at other UTC Aerospace Systems' Aerostructures sites around the world, will greatly increase the efficiency of operations required to assemble and paint nacelle systems, as well as provide ergonomic benefits for employees.

The new building is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, and features a sanitation system that incorporates rainwater collection. As the third manufacturing building on the Foley campus, it will serve as a complement to the site's existing 230,000-square foot original equipment plant and 210,000-square foot MRO facility.

The Foley site assembles nacelles for integration with the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbofan engine for a number of aircraft platforms, including the Airbus A320neo, Bombardier C Series, Mitsubishi Regional Jet and Embraer E-Jet E2. In February, it was named one of IndustryWeek magazine's 2016 Best Plants in North America.

"Our expansion in Foley would not be possible without the strong support we've received from the state, the county and the city, and we're proud to continue to work together to create jobs in Alabama," said Marc Duvall, President, Aerostructures, UTC Aerospace Systems. "Foley has always been a standout location due to our employees' dedication to meeting customer needs through the diligent application of our ACE operating system's tools of continuous improvement, and we look forward to better serving our customers through the addition of these new advanced manufacturing features."

About UTC Aerospace Systems UTC Aerospace Systems is one of the world's largest suppliers of technologically advanced aerospace and defense products. UTC Aerospace Systems designs, manufactures and services integrated systems and components for the aerospace and defense industries, supporting a global customer base with significant worldwide manufacturing and customer service facilities. For more information about the company, visit our website at http://www.utcaerospacesystems.com or follow us on Twitter: @utcaerosystems

About United Technologies Corporation United Technologies Corp., based in Farmington, Connecticut, provides high-technology systems and services to the building and aerospace industries. By combining a passion for science with precision engineering, the company is creating smart, sustainable solutions the world needs. For more information about the company, visit our website at http://www.utc.com or follow us on Twitter: @UTC

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SOURCE UTC Aerospace Systems

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NC ranks 4th in aerospace manufacturing attractiveness – TWC News

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GUILFORD COUNTY -North Carolina is the fourth most attractive state in the country for aerospace manufacturing, according to a new report from PriceWaterHouse Cooper.

The recent report measures a host of factors including labor force, roads, economy and more.

The report shows the state had the fifth-best economy metrics, the sixth best industry metrics and an above-average tax policy.

It also has the lowest corporate income tax rate in the U.S.

The state's ranking was particularly significant for the Triad area, which is home to hundreds of aviation workers and a number of aerospace companies like HondaJet and HAECO.

Guilford County Schools Aviation Director, David Mayers,said it's important to have a trained workforce ready to enter the growing industry.

"We are starting them within the eighth grade to give them an idea of what they are going to have in high school, so when they do come into the high school, we've got four years, and it's not just a couple of classes that we offer for aviation. What we have is a cohort program, said Mayers.

GCS has five aviation middle schools.

Here is the full report.

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2017 Analysis of Favorable States for Aerospace Manufacturing – Aviation Week

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By Scott Thompson

The long-term forecast for the aerospace and defense industry looks bright, with the industry having reported a notable increase in both revenues and profits for 2016. Air passenger travel is exceeding expectations and there is demand for increases in aircraft, engine and parts manufacturing. As aerospace companies continue to expand, they will be looking to invest in certain regions.

PwC recently released its fourth annual Aerospace Manufacturing Attractiveness Rankings, a guide to attractive geographic locations for aerospace development. This year, the ranking methodology has been further improved and refined to offer comparisons within the United States and globally as well, providing organizations with data they can leverage to help plan for the future.

The Top 10 States for Aerospace Manufacturing

Georgia moved up two ranks to claim the number one spot for 2017. It scored highly in both the industry and economy categories, coming in at 4th and 7th, respectively. Currently, it boasts over 500 aerospace companies in the state and also remains close to several space launch facilities. Due to these factors, Georgia should continue to attract investments in commercial aviation and space technology.

Michigan took second place, with strong performance in several categories including economy, infrastructure, and cost, while Arizona came in third, thanks to a business friendly tax policy, strong transportation infrastructure, and a climate conducive to aircraft testing.

Newcomers to this years top 10 include North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, and New York. North Carolina leaped 14 spots from last year to number four, due to its strong scores in economy and industry, as well as boasting the lowest corporate income tax rate in the U.S. Virginia ranked high in labor due to its supply of skilled workers and higher education institutions. New York was helped by its position as a global economic center.

The Top 10 Countries for Aerospace Manufacturing

With the size and maturity of aerospace within the United States, it should come as no surprise that that the U.S. remained first once again in terms of global rankings. A few factors contributed to its place on top: a strong economy, a high priority on defense spending, and an emphasis on education and research, among others. Education will remain key not only to meet current demands, but to help prep the next generation of talent as they enter the workforce.

Many criteria and factors were considered in the creation of this index, and these rankings are only meant to serve as a guide. But it appears the future of aerospace is bright and can be a driving force in the growth of the manufacturing industry.

For the full report and a deeper analysis of the rankings and our methodology, please see the 2017 Aerospace Manufacturing Attractiveness Rankings.

For more information and deeper insights, please visit pwc.com/us/aerospaceanddefense

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EDAP TMS Reports Record Second Quarter and First Half 2017 Results – GlobeNewswire (press release)

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August 23, 2017 16:01 ET | Source: EDAP TMS SA

EDAP-TMS Reports Record Second Quarter and First Half 2017 Results

LYON, France, August 23, 2017 -- EDAP TMS SA (Nasdaq: EDAP), the global leader in therapeutic ultrasound, announced today financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017, and provided an update on strategic and operational accomplishments.

"We are incredibly pleased to announce record second quarter revenue of 9.3 million", said Marc Oczachowski, EDAP's Chief Executive Officer. "Additionally, the 25% growth in HIFU revenues compared to the first quarter of 2017 shows a significant return from our increased sales and marketing efforts. We also submitted our 510(k) filing to the FDA for our novel Ablatherm Fusion device recently, and are working to file a new 510(k) application with the FDA for the Focal One device in the U.S. The addition of these HIFU devices to our U.S. marketing efforts, coupled with the active C-Code, should serve to help our customers service the widest possible range of patients."

Second Quarter 2017 Results

Total revenue for the second quarter 2017 was EUR 9.3 million (USD 10.4 million), compared to EUR 8.2 million (USD 9.2 million) for the second quarter of 2016, a 13.7% increase and the highest second quarter revenue in EDAP's history.

For the three months ended June 30, 2017, total revenue for the Lithotripsy division was EUR 6.4 million (USD 7.2 million), a 33.9% increase compared to EUR 4.8 million (USD 5.4 million) during the year-ago period. During the second quarter of 2017, EDAP sold 7 lithotripsy devices compared to 6 lithotripsy devices sold during the second quarter of 2016.

Total revenue in the HIFU business for the second quarter was EUR 2.9 million (USD 3.2 million) compared to EUR 3.4 million (USD 3.8 million) for the second quarter of 2016. During the second quarter of 2017, EDAP sold 1 Focal One and 2 Ablatherm HIFU devices compared to 1 Focal One and 3 Ablatherm devices during the second quarter of 2016.

Gross profit for the second quarter 2017 was EUR 4.0 million (USD 4.5 million), compared to EUR 3.5 million (USD 3.9 million) for the year-ago period. Gross profit margin on net sales expanded to 43.2% in the second quarter of 2017, compared to 42.2% in the prior year period, primarily due to increase in revenues.

Operating expenses for the second quarter of 2017 totaled EUR 4.4 million (USD 5.0 million) for the second quarter of 2017, compared to EUR 3.8 million (USD 4.3 million) for the same period in 2016. The increase reflects increased sales and marketing efforts associated with the expansion of the HIFU and UDS businesses.

Operating loss for the second quarter of 2017 was EUR 0.4 million (USD 0.5 million), compared to an operating loss of EUR 0.3 million (USD 0.4 million) in the second quarter of 2016.

Net loss for the second quarter of 2017 was EUR 1.7 million (USD 2.0 million), or loss of EUR 0.06 per diluted share, as compared to net income of EUR 2.5 million (USD 2.8 million), or earnings of EUR 0.09 per diluted share in the year-ago period. Net loss during the second quarter of 2017 included a non-cash interest expense of EUR 0.6 million (USD $0.6 million) to adjust the accounting fair value of the outstanding warrants.

First Six Months 2017 Results

Total revenue for the first half of 2017 was EUR 18.0 million (USD 19.7 million) - a new record level for the period, up 6.3% compared to EUR 16.9 million (USD 18.8 million) for the first half of 2016. For the six months ended June 30, 2017, total revenue for the Lithotripsy division was EUR 12.8 million (USD 14.0 million), an increase of 24.6% when compared to EUR 10.2 million (USD 11.4 million), during the year ago period. This increase was driven by growth in both the distribution business and lithotripsy device sales.

Total revenue in the HIFU division for the first six months 2017 was EUR 5.2 million (USD 5.7 million) compared to EUR 6.7 million (USD 7.4 million) for the six months ended June 30, 2016. This decrease was primarily due to slow U.S. sales of HIFU devices during the first half of the year, tempered by an increase in HIFU treatment driven revenues.

Gross profit for the first half of 2017 was EUR 7.6 million (USD 8.3 million) and gross profit margin was 42.1%, compared to 45.8% in the year ago period. The contraction in gross profit margin was primarily due to an unfavorable mix of HIFU and UDS segment revenues.

The Company recorded an operating loss for the first half of 2017 of EUR 0.8 million (USD 0.9 million), compared with an operating profit of EUR 0.4 million (USD 0.4 million) in the first six months of 2016.

Net loss for the first half of 2017 was EUR 0.1 million (USD 0.1 million), or EUR 0.00 per diluted share, as compared to a net income of EUR 3.9 million (USD 4.3 million), or EUR 0.14 per diluted share, in the first half of 2016. Net income for the first six months of 2017 included non-cash interest income of EUR 1.4 million (USD 1.5 million) to adjust the accounting fair value of the outstanding warrants

At June 30, 2017, cash and cash equivalents, including short-term treasury investments, were EUR 18.6 million (USD 21.2 million).

Conference Call

An accompanying conference call will be conducted by Philippe Chauveau, Chairman of the Board, Marc Oczachowski, Chief Executive Officer; and Francois Dietsch, Chief Financial Officer, to go over the results. The call will be held at 9:00 AM ET, on Thursday, August 24, 2017. Please refer to the information below for conference call dial-in information and webcast registration.

Conference Date:Thursday, August 24, 2017, 9:00 AM ET Conference dial-in:877-269-7756 International dial-in:201-689-7817 Conference Call Name:EDAP-TMS Second Quarter 2017 Results Conference Call Webcast Registration:Click Here

Following the live call, a replay will be available on the Company's website, http://www.edap-tms.com under "Investors Information."

About EDAP TMS SA

EDAP TMS SA markets today Ablatherm for high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for prostate tissue ablation in the U.S. and for treatment of localized prostate cancer in the rest of the world. HIFU treatment is shown to be a minimally invasive and effective option for prostatic tissue ablation with a low occurrence of side effects. Ablatherm-HIFU is generally recommended for patients with localized prostate cancer (stages T1-T2) who are not candidates for surgery or who prefer an alternative option, or for patients who failed radiotherapy treatment. Ablatherm-HIFU is approved for commercial distribution in Europe and some other countries including Mexico and Canada, and has received 510(k) clearance by the U.S. FDA. Ablatherm Fusion is not FDA cleared yet. The Company also markets an innovative robot-assisted HIFU device, the Focal One, dedicated to focal therapy of prostate cancer. Focal One is CE marked but is not FDA approved. The Company also develops its HIFU technology for the potential treatment of certain other types of tumors. EDAP TMS SA also produces and distributes medical equipment (the Sonolith lithotripters' range) for the treatment of urinary tract stones using extra-corporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) in most countries including Canada and the U.S. For more information on the Company, please visit http://www.edap-tms.com, andhttp://www.hifu-planet.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

In addition to historical information, this press release may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including matters not yet known to us or not currently considered material by us, and there can be no assurance that anticipated events will occur or that the objectives set out will actually be achieved. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements include, among others, the clinical status and market acceptance of our HIFU devices and the continued market potential for our lithotripsy device. Factors that may cause such a difference also may include, but are not limited to, those described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in particular, in the sections "Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information" and "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F.

EDAP TMS S.A. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (UNAUDITED) (Amounts in thousands of Euros and U.S. Dollars, except per share data)

Three Months Ended: Three Months Ended:

Net sales of RPP and Leases

1,304

1,316

1,458

1,474

2,037

1,611

NOTE: Translated for convenience of the reader to U.S. dollars at the 2017 average three months' noon buying rate of 1 Euro = 1.1181USD, and 2016 average three months' noon buying rate of 1 Euro = 1.1203 USD.

EDAP TMS S.A. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (UNAUDITED) (Amounts in thousands of Euros and U.S. Dollars, except per share data)

Six Months Ended: Six Months Ended:

Net sales of RPP and leases

2,599

2,578

2,844

2,865

3,879

3,078

4,244

3,421

NOTE: Translated for convenience of the reader to U.S. dollars at the 2017 average six months' noon buying rate of 1 Euro = 1.0942USD, and 2016 average six months' noon buying rate of 1 Euro = 1. 1116 USD.

EDAP TMS S.A. CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS HIGHLIGHTS (Amounts in thousands of Euros and U.S. Dollars)

NOTE: Translated for convenience of the reader to U.S. dollars at the noon buying rate of 1 Euro = 1.1412 USD, on June 30, 2017 and at the noon buying rate of 1 Euro = 1.0697 USD, on March 31, 2017.

EDAP TMS S.A. CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS BY DIVISION SIX MONTHS ENDED JUNE 30, 2017 (Amounts in thousands of Euros)

HIFU Division

UDS Division

Corporate

Sales of goods

2,626

8,852

11,478

Research & Development

(1,211)

OPERATING PROFIT (LOSS)

(884)

804

(768)

(847)

Contact Blandine Confort Investor Relations / Legal Affairs EDAP TMS SA +33 4 72 15 31 72 bconfort@edap-tms.com

Investors Rich Cockrell CG CAPITAL 877.889.1972 investorrelations@cg.capital

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What is the Schaff Indicator Suggesting For Edap Tms SA (EDAP)? – Morgan Research

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Edap Tms SA (EDAP) shares have seen their Schaff Trend Cycle gradually downtrendthis week over the past fewsessions. While this indicates negativeprice momentum, it also suggests that if the reading moves into oversold territory (STC of 30), thenthe liklihood of a reversal greatly increases. Investors will be watching very closely over the next few days to see if the trend contiunes or reverses.

The Schaff Trend Cycle (STC) indicator combines the common indicators of MACD & Stochastic. The benefit of the Schaff Trend Cycle is that it is meant to be quicker than the standard macd and stochastic signals. The indicator uses similar methods to a MACD i.e uses exponetial moving averages but applies a cycle factor to them. Then the price is smoothed using a mofidied Wilders smoothing algorithm. The Schaff Trend Cycle indicator fluctuates between 0 and 100. Readings below 20 are considered oversold while readings above 80 are considered overbought. The STCindicator fluctuates between 0 and 100. Readings below 20 are considered oversold while readings above 80 are considered overbought.

Active investors are typically interested in the factors that drive stock price movements. Buying an individual stock means that you own a piece of the company. The hope is that the company does very well and becomes highly profitable. A profitable company may decide to do various things with the profits. They may reinvest profits back into the business, or they may choose to pay shareholders dividends from those earnings. Sometimes stocks may eventually become undervalued or overvalued. Spotting these trends may lead to further examination or the underlying fundamentals of the company. A company that continues to disappoint on the earnings front may have some issues that need to be addressed. It is highly important to make sure all the research is done on a stock, especially if the investor is heavily weighted on the name. Sometimes earnings reports may be good, but the stock price does not reflect that. Having a good understanding of the entire picture may help investors better travel the winding stock market road.

Checking on some other popular technical levels, Edap Tms SA (EDAP) has a 14-day Commodity Channel Index (CCI) of -17.91. The CCI technical indicator can be employed to help figure out if a stock is entering overbought or oversold territory. CCI may also be used to help discover divergences that may signal reversal moves. A CCI closer to +100 may provide an overbought signal, and a CCI near -100 may provide an oversold signal.

Tracking other technical indicators, the 14-day RSI is presently standing at 37.05, the 7-day sits at 37.85, and the 3-day is resting at 41.71 for Edap Tms SA (EDAP). The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a highly popular technical indicator. The RSI is computed base on the speed and direction of a stocks price movement. The RSI is considered to be an internal strength indicator, not to be confused with relative strength which is compared to other stocks and indices. The RSI value will always move between 0 and 100. One of the most popular time frames using RSI is the 14-day.

Moving averages have the ability to be used as a powerful indicator for technical stock analysis. Following multiple time frames using moving averages can help investors figure out where the stock has been and help determine where it may be possibly going. The simple moving average is a mathematical calculation that takes the average price (mean) for a given amount of time. Currently, the 7-day moving average is sitting at 2.67.

Lets take a further look at the Average Directional Index or ADX. The ADX measures the strength or weakness of a particular trend. Investors and traders may be looking to figure out if a stock is trending before employing a specific trading strategy. The ADX is typically used along with the Plus Directional Indicator (+DI) and Minus Directional Indicator (-DI) which point to the direction of the trend. The 14-day ADX for Edap Tms SA (EDAP) is currently at 23.41. In general, and ADX value from 0-25 would represent an absent or weak trend. A value of 25-50 would support a strong trend. A value of 50-75 would signify a very strong trend, and a value of 75-100 would point to an extremely strong trend.

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What is the Schaff Indicator Suggesting For Edap Tms SA (EDAP)? - Morgan Research

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