From the Editor
by Paul Wright
This is the last issue of Prison Legal News (PLN) for 2025. It has been an eventful year all the way around. Two years ago, no one thought a convicted felon would be elected president of the United States, much less take office. Or that former TV hosts and podcasters would direct the FBI and that a drug informant who had been a prisoner himself would be the deputy director of the federal Bureau of Prisons. While presidents have historically issued pardons and commutations on their way out, it is rare for incoming presidents to not just pardon people and commute sentences but to do so en masse as the outgoing president does the same.
And that is just at the federal level. The private prison industry is seeing a bumper bonanza of immigration detention contracts they have not seen since Bill Clinton and Congress bailed them out back in 1999 and 2000.
Every month, we bring our readers the latest news and developments involving prisons and jails around the country. In addition, we advocate for prisoners and their families against financial exploitation, for better conditions and treatment. We also sue prisons and jails on a regular basis to ensure prisoners can receive books and magazines in the mail. Subscriptions do not cover this on its own.
Right now, we are doing our annual fundraiser. If you can donate to support our work, please do so. If you know others who can or might donate, please ask them to do so. In the past year, HRDC has successfully sued jails in Wisconsin, Texas, Colorado, Washington and California and ended the censorship of books and magazines in those facilities. We continue litigating censorship lawsuits against state prison systems in Missouri, Illinois, Washington, New Mexico and Hawaii to ensure delivery of books and magazines.
We also won a number of public records lawsuits against private prison companies like Centurion in Florida and the GEO Group in Arizona. And we filed a number of federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits against various federal agencies to get information to report to our readers.
HRDC staff were quoted in dozens of articles, newscasts, and podcasts around the world on various subjects all related to how prisoners are treated in the United States.
HRDC does not have any big foundation funders. Pretty much all of our support comes from individual donors like you. You can make a difference by donating to HRDC and no amount is too big or too small. One thing that makes HRDC unique among other organizations is that the only thing we do is criminal justice reform. We have no other mission and no other agenda or priorities. It is prisoner rights all the time. We have been doing it consistently for over 35 years now.
No organization will do more with your donation than HRDC. Every month, we produce concrete results: two magazines are printed and mailed (Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News), hundreds of books are shipped to prisoners around the country, lawsuits are filed, litigated and won. We speak to the public via other media organizations, investigate prisons and jails, advocate across agencies and forums on behalf of prisoners and their families and much more.
Please look at your mailing label to see how many issues you have remaining. We are currently having trouble sending renewal notices by mail, as we have done for decades, due to frequent address changes in mailing addresses as prisons and jails digitize their mail—which our cover story reports on this month. Please renew within three issues of when your subscription expires to avoid missing any issues.
Enjoy this issue of PLN and best wishes for the new year from everyone at HRDC.
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