by Kevin Bliss and Jo Ellen Nott
On February 5, 2022, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a nine-year sentence had been handed down to the last of four Alabama prison guards convicted of beating state prisoners they suspected of smuggling contraband at Elmore Correctional Facility (ECF).
Three days ...
A lesson in why privatized prison health care is the wrong answer
by David M. Reutter
On Friday, January 18, 2022, three days before sentencing in a pay-to-play bribery and corruption scandal involving health care at the city jail in Norfolk, Virginia, attorneys for disgraced former sheriff Bob McCabe filed ...
by Kevin Bliss
When 55-year-old William Brown, a pretrial detainee from Brooklyn, suffered a medical emergency and died on December 15, 2021, it was the 16th death recorded for the year of someone incarcerated at Rikers Island, the sprawling and troubled New York City jail complex. Former Mayor Bill ...
How Unchecked Power and No Oversight Gives Rise to Abuses
by Anthony W. Accurso
On December 15, 2000, Derwin Brown was returning from a party when he was gunned down. He was holding flowers he had purchased for his wife, Phyllis, when assailants opened fire, striking him at least 10 ...
How exposure to radon in prisons may be functioning as a form of mass capital punishment
by Anthony Moffa
I can’t breathe.
–Eric Garner, George Floyd, and atleast seventy others
The thought of radioactive gas in the night air in the place you lay your head is the stuff ...
by Mark Wilson
"The State can no longer afford to manufacture a case built on lies and half-truths,” wrote Patrick and Kevin Francke in their letter to a federal judge in support of the man wrongfully convicted of killing their brother.
After serving 28 years in prison, Frank E. Gable, ...
by David M. Reutter
Movies and television often dramatize prison for entertainment purposes, and just as often the dramatizations are unrealistic. One aspect of prison life that cannot be overly dramatized—and is a reality for many of the imprisoned—is the prospect of being raped. For decades now, PLN has chronicled ...
