Even if an inmate's sentence is not oppressively long, their treatment while incarcerated can still constitute subhuman treatment. Prisons are not medical facilities, but they regularly are forced to deal with mental health problems and care for elderly and terminally ill inmates. Food, if it's even edible, usually lacks enough nutrition for inmates' health to not deteriorate. Plus, with a lack of opportunities to see family, read, or gain skill sets, inmates are placed in buildings which lack any resemblance of the civilized world.
“Prisons often occupy the “geography of nowhere.” They are found in unpopulated areas, far away from cities, so that both the facilities and the people they hold are invisible to most of the general public. We often hear talk of “removing” criminals from society; the location of prisons makes that rhetoric a reality.“
Washington Post
February 6, 2019
Read More“As the UK government plans to open four new prisons by 2020-21, it’s worth remembering how great an impact the architecture of such institutions can have on the mental health of inmates. Building design can offer therapeutic benefits for both psychiatric in-patients and prisoners. Or, it can result in vulnerable people – including those with severe mental illness – being held in custody, rather than receiving high quality, community-based care. “
The Conversation
February 6, 2019
Read More“Print media kept prisoners connected to the social justice movements of the day and enabled them to be active participants. Allies created opportunities and platforms for prisoners to be heard. Prisoners’ voices were given spaces to articulate their issues and solutions. Allies knew that “those closest to the problem are the ones closest to the solution.” These arrangements kept prisoners and their allies informed about what was happening inside and outside the prison walls. These connections, enabled by print media, were critical to successfully opposing the Prison Industrial Complex.“
Prison Legal News
February 5, 2019
Read More“Global Tel-Link Corp. is one of two corrections phone companies that dominate the national $1.2 billion per year industry. It paid the Hampden County department $725,000 for phone calls to and from all its facilities between July 2016 and June 2017, according to records supplied by the department. Phone calls to and from the women's jail during that same period netted the department $110,000. “
San Francisco Chronicle
February 4, 2019
Read More“At a time when the cost of a typical phone call is approaching zero, people behind bars in the U.S. are often forced to pay astronomical rates to call their loved ones or lawyers. Why? Because phone companies bait prisons and jails into charging high phone rates in exchange for a share of the revenue.“
Prison Policy Initiative
February 1, 2019
Read More“More than a thousand inmates have been stuck in freezing cells at a federal jail on the Brooklyn waterfront that has had limited power and heat for at least this week, according to federal public defenders and leaders of the union representing the jail’s corrections officers.“
New York Times
February 1, 2019
Read More“‘It is extremely unusual for prison officials to even acknowledge the legitimacy of prisoner grievances, much less negotiate with them,’ Wright said. ‘The response is almost invariably one of repression and silencing and terrorization to dissuade others from standing up for themselves’.“
The Appeal
January 25, 2019
Read More“More than a thousand inmates have been stuck in freezing cells at a federal jail on the Brooklyn waterfront that has had limited power and heat for at least this week, according to federal public defenders and leaders of the union representing the jail’s corrections officers.“
New York Times
February 1, 2019
Read More“In New York and other states across the country, authorities are acquiring technology to extract and digitize the voices of incarcerated people into unique biometric signatures, known as voice prints. Prison authorities have quietly enrolled hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people’s voice prints into large-scale biometric databases. Computer algorithms then draw on these databases to identify the voices taking part in a call, and to search for other calls where the voices of interest are detected. Some programs, like New York’s, even analyze the voices of call recipients outside prisons to track which outsiders speak to multiple prisoners regularly.“
The Appeal
January 30, 2019
Read More“So why do Cook County inmates appear to be clearing snow without jackets on? Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cara Smith told HuffPost that the photo mischaracterizes the situation and that the Chicago Community Bond Fund should not have shared it without contacting her. Smith said the men in Monday’s photo are part of Renew, the county’s vocational program in which inmates are paid to learn skills that could help them get a job. The program selects work projects in distressed communities, and some of the program’s inmates were happy to help clear the snow Monday during a staff shortage, she said.“
Huffington Post
January 29, 2019
Read More“CNN's Alisyn Camerota talks with Eric Young, a federal corrections officer who is working without pay during the partial government shutdown.“
CNN
January 17, 2019
Read More“Prisoners like Derrick, who has served 20 years of a 22-year sentence at Holman and wishes to withhold his last name for safety reasons, claim that corrections officers knowingly ‘put certain people close to each other that have a history of violence toward one another, which leads to more blood spilled. If they wanted the violence to stop, they wouldn’t keep doing this.’ The reason, according to Derrick and prison justice groups, is that the state, pointing to overcrowding and minimal staffing, wants to justify building more maximum security prisons, a move that would only exacerbate the current crisis.“
Think Progress
January 15, 2019
Read More“Despite the redactions, the report makes clear the corrections department has far understated just how dire the staffing shortage is behind the prison walls. While the department has said that 1 in 4 correctional officer jobs are vacant, the report shows the state would have to double the current staff to more than 4,000 to meet industry standards.“
Charleston Post and Courier
January 12, 2019
Read More“The DOJ claims in a series of petitions filed in federal court, that Alabama’s Department of Corrections (ADOC) has engaged in a pattern of delay and obstruction during the agency’s two-year investigation, refusing to turn over records and ignoring subpoena requests. ADOC insists it has cooperated with the investigation and simply lacks the staff needed to meet the DOJ’s demands.“
WBRC Birmingham
January 11, 2019
Read More“There is no relationship between these two things. The dinners for prisoners were planned months in advance and the spending happened before the shutdown. While the holiday meals sound nice, the food prisoners receive every other day of the year is generally awful and frequently doesn't contain enough nutrients to meet inmates' dietary needs. But in order to make themselves look like the victims in this government shutdown, union officials shopped around a story to multiple media outlets about criminals being treated like kings while prison guards have to freelance as Uber drivers.“
Reason
January 7, 2019
Read More“In Salem, the commissary warehouse is staffed by state employees and inmates from Oregon’s women’s prison, Coffee Creek Correctional Institution in Wilsonville. It’s a coveted assignment that goes to women who have clear disciplinary records for six months. They can’t have any major misconduct within the past year. The state requires that commissary workers have a high school diploma or general education diploma. “
The Oregonian
January 7, 2019
Read More“One prisoner was not seen by a doctor after collapsing and complaining of shortness of breath; she died that day of heart failure. A second woman’s rapid weight gain and severe chest pain were ignored until her heart also failed. For a third, it was sudden weight loss, wheezing and back pain; she was found dead during her dialysis, after a nurse left her unattended. A fourth died at a hospital; her neurological disorder went undiagnosed until she had a stroke.“
Washington Post
January 4, 2019
Read More“Gay entered the Illinois Department of Corrections in 1994 as a young man, convicted of robbery after brawling with another teen who told police that Gay took his hat and stole a single dollar bill. He expected to serve as little as three and a half years. Instead, a fight with a fellow inmate led to Gay’s first stint in segregation, pushing him into a downward spiral that resulted in 22 years in solitary confinement. Shortly after the segregation started, the cutting and suicide attempts began.“
Chicago Tribune
January 2, 2019
Read More“In a lunchroom at the Bristol County House of Correction, inmate Gordon Davis scoffs at the menu on the wall. For the day’s lunch, it reads, “Chef’s Special (Chicken).” The “special” is three steamed chicken hot dogs, without buns, served over rice. It comes with two slices of untoasted wheat bread, unfrosted brownish-yellow cake, a scoop of flavorless mixed vegetables and a packet of mustard.“
South Coast Today
December 21, 2018
Read More“Alabama legislators today put a temporary hold on the Alabama Department of Corrections' plans to pay a company $10 million to design new prisons and analyze the system’s needs in preparation for the possible construction of three prisons. The Legislature’s contract review committee can hold contracts for up to 45 days but cannot stop them.“
Birmingham News
December 13, 2018
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