Each year, more than 700,000 people are released from state and Federal prison, while another 9 million cycle through local jails. Statistics indicate that more than two-thirds of state prisoners are rearrested within three years of their release and half are re-incarcerated.
Originally posted on Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity:
Please check for ongoing Updates HERE and at @svdebug and @CURYJ on Twitter and Facebook. Families, loved ones and community members, PRISONERS UNITED in Alameda and Santa Clara County Jails are being deprived of their human and constitutional rights of due process and inflicted with cruel and…
Kids held in solitary confinement at Rikers Island, the massive jail complex in the middle of New York City’s East River, are truly pushed to their limits, with many throwing fits, hallucinating and throwing urine around or smearing their own feces on the cinderblock walls in which they are confined. Ismael Nazario was one such…
RIP Comrade Brother Hugo “Yogi Bear” Pinell.
By Stephanie Tyrpak By Randy Livingston Story Created: Mar 23, 2015 at 4:55 PM CDT WSIL — A new class-action lawsuit targets hundreds of corrections officers statewide and claims abuse to inmates at two local prisons. Violent shakedowns allegedly happened at four prisons statewide in April and May of…
Originally posted on Prison Protest:
The AP reports that the NYC Board of Correction (BOC) will vote this coming Tuesday on changes to solitary confinement on Rikers Island, including a new Enhanced Supervision Housing Unit (ESHU) for the prison’s “most dangerous” inmates and policies that seek to limit punitive segregation for other inmates, particularly the mentally ill and…
Originally posted on Touching Your Community.com:
Text by Jeremy Berlin On a windy April day in central Indiana, six men enter a room.Three are white, three are black. Two are over 50, the rest under 40. All of them wear khaki jumpsuits and carry books under their tattooed arms.They are six of the 1,840…
The following piece is yet another well written satire on solitary confinement from The Onion. City Opens New Art Jail NEWS • Crime & Justice • ISSUE 47•29 • Jul 20, 2011 SAN FRANCISCO—City officials announced the opening of a new maximum-security art jail Tuesday, unveiling a modern detention facility designed to imprison a large…
The following satire on solitary confinement from The Onion rings all too true (save for the part about “several days,” as many people are held in solitary for years or decades). NEWS IN BRIEF • Prison • News • ISSUE 51•01 • Jan 5, 2015 OSSINING, NY—Appearing visibly frustrated several hours after being placed into isolation at…
The following guide, published by the Human Rights Coalition, offers guidelines for prisoners on reporting human rights violations. The method described is simple, requiring documentation, intervention, and movement-building: [W]e learn the truth by gathering evidence (documentation); we take action according to the urgency of the situation and our capacity to move people (intervention); and we bring others…
The following, originally posted on Internet Archive Blogs, is a brief list of resources ideal for becoming acquainted with the U.S. prison system, including some history. DOCUMENTARIES • Women in Prison Part 1 and Part 2 • AIDS in Prison Part 1 and Part 2 AUDIO • Life After Prison (KXJZ Radio)
The future is uncertain for Jeffery Havard, who currently sits wrongfully convicted in solitary confinement on Mississippi’s death row, where he has remained for almost 13 years. Time is running out for prisoner L3955. Havard, 36, has been incarcerated at Parchman Penitentiary since December of 2002, when he was charged for sexually abusing and murdering his former girlfriend’s six-month-old daughter, Chloe…
Torture expressed through art: “A teen’s horrifying tale of solitary confinement at NYC’s Rikers Island jail” (reblogged from Fusion):
Eagle & Bull Productions is currently in the production stage of a documentary about art’s positive influence on prisoners. The documentary profilies the artwork of Brandon Hein, a prisoner locked away for life in California for a murder he did not commit. Hein was sentenced to life in prison for murder in 1996 for a murder…
December 15, 2014 | by Lisa Dawson North Carolina corrections chief David Guice wants more than $20 million to improve the treatment of people with mental illness in the state’s prisons. His request comes on the heels of two recent reports showing neglect and abuse of prisoners with psychiatric disabilities in North Carolina, and the…
The growth of U.S. prison and jail populations over the last three decades (as shown in the following graph) raises a variety of questions about the nation’s ethics and the state of American democracy. As marked in the graph, the U.S. prison population has been increasing steadily since the launch of the war on drugs in…
Originally posted on FreeTheElkhart4.com:
In October/November 2012 Jose Quiroz was given 44 days to make the most important decision of his life. He had been offered a plea deal, by Elkhart Prosecutor Curtis Hill, that would see him serve 45 years in prison for the murder of his friend, even though Jose has never…
by Lisa Dawson The Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) has opened a new facility with 500 maximum-security prison beds in the Rast Unit at the Arizona State Prison Complex (ASPC Lewis) in Buckeye, Arizona. (Maximum-security prisons in the state of Arizona are what is usually thought of as supermax prisons.) The opening of the new facility comes on…
The following comes from the A3 Newsletter. which I received today. Read on. . . A3 Newsletter, December 9, 2014: Give Albert a Hug for the Holidays In Homer Louisiana, Albert Woodfox remains in his cell – 42 years in solitary and held under increasingly severe restrictions. From the unnecessary and extensive use of the…
The following comes from the ACLU: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: media@aclu.org GENEVA – The United Nations Committee Against Torture issued a report today castigating the United States’ record on a wide range of issues, including lack of accountability for torture, immigration detention, and abusive criminal justice practices such as solitary confinement and excessive use of…
As the Post’s Pat Beall reported on Monday (Nov. 17), a policy research group at Florida State University is calling on the state to fix the state’s fractured Department of Corrections. The same push for quality, accountability, professionalism and best practices that has been applied to schools, hospitals and other institutions is long overdue in…
NEW YORK—At a Thursday press briefing on the Department of Correction’s planned reforms of jail conditions at Rikers Island, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte expressed that their biggest challenge is how to provide for mentally ill inmates. The mayor said the high proportion of inmates with a mental illness—at 40 percent…
The following essay was originally published on Solitary Watch: This post is the next in a series of pieces Solitary Watch is publishing as part of a project calling for people held in solitary confinement to write on various proposed themes. Our first suggested theme, “A Day in the Life,” calls for writers to describe a day…
Originally posted on Free Alabama Movement:
A Flicker Turns Into A flame: Alabama Prisoners Want Change A Report From F.A.M’S Southern Region By Kinetik Justice Amun Today in America, there’s the resurgence of a People’s Movement sweeping across the Nation — As the flame of inhumane treatment and economical exploitation has billowed into a wildfire…
The following guide, published by the Human Rights Coalition, offers guidelines for prisoners on reporting human rights violations. The method described is simple, requiring documentation, intervention, and movement-building: [W]e learn the truth by gathering evidence (documentation); we take action according to the urgency of the situation and our capacity to move people (intervention); and we bring others…
Originally posted on Free Alabama Movement:
On June 10, 2014, Governor Robert Bentley, surrounded by Sen. Cam Ward, Commissioner Kim Thomas, Chief Justice Roy Moore and others, announced the formation of Alabama’s 25-member Prison Reform Task Force and a partnership with the Council of State Governments (CSG), to address longstanding and nationally publicized issues that…
GENEVA — The Obama administration moved forcefully Thursday to distance itself from Bush administration policies, telling a United Nations panel that the ban on torture enshrined in a 1984 treaty that the U.S. signed applies worldwide and covers all people and places, including detention facilities abroad. “The answer to the question whether the U.S. will…
Prisoner Activist 