From the Editor
After 35 years of publishing Prison Legal News, one thing that has become clear is that when it comes to the American criminal justice system, not all stories have an ending; some are fairly characterized as never-ending stories. We have reported on Rikers Island for our entire 35-year history: The beatings, corruption, medical neglect, the criminal guard union, the decades-long conditions of confinement lawsuits and
much more. Each year, we feature coverage of some or all aspects of a very cruel and brutal detention facility situated on a garbage dump in a river in the biggest and richest city in America. This month’s story notes that a federal court has finally placed the jail into federal receivership, something that should have happened at least 25 years ago. So far, not much has changed at Rikers—whether anything will or not remains to be seen. Rather than being seen as a triumph of the judiciary acting after a half century of litigation, the receivership should rightly be viewed as an abject failure of leadership by the entire New York City municipal power structure and its state leaders. These same leaders have allowed this crumbling human rights debacle to trundle forward, year after year, decade after decade with nothing being done to resolve its problems. Over 30 years ago I remember writing an article for PLN about one of the many court rulings enjoining conditions at the jail. The story covered broken windows that allowed pigeons to enter facilities where they would poop in the dining areas and cause serious sanitary issues. The judge seemed shocked that after decades of litigation jail officials could not keep windows repaired and birds out. This level of incompetence is a common situation across American prisons and jails, with one judge referring to the phenomenon as “learned helplessness.” We will see if the receiver does better to improve conditions at Rikers than everyone else has to date—or better yet, actually shutting it down once and for all.
In recent weeks we have settled censorship lawsuits against jails in Colorado and Texas and we filed a lawsuit against the Hawaii state prison system, which is banning books and magazines. We will report the details in upcoming issues of PLN. As more facilities digitize their mail, they are using it as an excuse to censor all publications. HRDC is currently challenging these bans in New Mexico, Missouri, and Hawaii. If you are in a facility that is banning or censoring publications from the Human Rights Defense Center, please write or email us and let us know as all too often we are not informed of the censorship until our readers tell us.
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