In May, 1996, the Fabry Glove & Mitten Company opened a production facility in Wisconsin's Green Bay Correctional Institution. The company hired 70 prisoners as laborers, later adding 30 more. The prisoners, who operate cutting and sewing machines, earn $5.25 per hour. The Department of Corrections keeps 65% of the ...
Recently Governor Thompson signed into law a bill permitting prisoner chain gangs in Wisconsin. In a high-tech twist on the old Southern chain gangs, Thompson's program includes requiring prisoners to wear electrical stun belts in addition to being chained at the ankle.
When activated, the stun belt sends a fifty ...
Wall Street wheeler-dealer Irwin Jacobs, known as "Irv the Liquidator" for his leveraged-buyout exploits in the 1980s, is always looking to turn a profit. One of his current business ventures refurbishes and repackages items that customers have returned to retail stores. When Jacobs looks at the number of prisoners languishing ...
The public pays $25,000 a year to keep each of Wisconsin's 9,500 adult prisoners locked away. Part of what society expects to get for that considerable investment is prisoners who are changed for the better by the time they get out.
One of the changes I've undergone during my stay ...
David Urban, 35 years old, was serving a 30-day sentence in the Winnebago County Jail in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, when, at 1:00 pm on January 13, he began complaining to guards that he felt ill and needed medical attention. The sheriff's deputies who run the jail thought Urban was faking. Twenty ...
I've been serving time in Wisconsin prisons since 1980. A lot of changes in the way these joints are run have come down the pike in that time, almost all of them for the worse: less recreation, less visiting, less educational and counselling opportunities, more overcrowding, more lock down time ...
Gov. Tommy Thompson recently unveiled his startling plan to put inmates to work in Wisconsin prisons. Thompson wants to allow private businesses to construct production facilities inside state prisons and employ inmates as laborers.
The Governor assures us that his plan will accomplish several laudable goals. Instead of sitting idle ...
By Adrian Lomax
Awhile back a friend wrote in her letter to me that, as she was writing, her son walked into the room and asked what she was doing. Upon hearing her answer, the son said, "Those guys in prison are a bunch of scumbags."
That's certainly not an ...
Report From The Hole
By Adrian Lomax
The guard stood in the middle of the seg unit, counting, 26 of the 40 cells had the 3x12 inch Plexiglas windows in the cell doors covered with paper form the inside. The 5:00 PM count approached, and the guard knew that if ...
Since 1976, the Civil Rights Attorney Fees Award Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1988, has ensured that state officials would be forced to pay the attorney fees of the litigants who successfully sue state officials for violations of federal rights. This law has been especially important to prisoners for two reasons. ...
