by Chad Marks
Guadalupe Robles Plascencia became a naturalized U.S. citizen in May 1998, and San Bernardino, California has been her home for nearly 40 years. It’s where she raised her five children. It also is the place where she and one of her daughters opened their own business – ...
by Chad Marks
On November 16, 2018, a federal judge in the Northern District of Ohio granted a motion for class certification in a case where jail staff were accused of issuing unsolicited fee-laden debit cards to prisoners upon their release.
Amber Humphrey was arrested in September 2017. At the ...
by Chad Marks
A federal judge in Indiana ruled on June 12, 2018 that prison doctor Paul Talbot must answer a complaint filed by state prisoner Billy J. Lemond.
Lemond was incarcerated at the Pendleton Correctional Facility when he required back surgery. On August 24, 2015, he underwent decompressive laminectomy ...
by Chad Marks
The United States is home to five percent of the world’s population and around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Our incarceration rate is 19 percent higher than Turkmenistan’s, 36 percent higher than Cuba’s and 57 percent higher than Russia’s. There is no other democracy that has ...
by Chad Marks
Through December 31, 2018, there have been 1,490 executions in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Almost 90 percent have been carried out by lethal injection, which is considered more humane than hanging, electrocution or the gas chamber. But executions have not gone ...
by Chad Marks
Since the 1940s, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has maintained a firefighting corps composed of prisoner volunteers. In late 2018, when the Camp and Woolsey fires destroyed the town of Paradise and hundreds of homes in upscale Malibu, over 1,400 prisoners contributed 15 percent ...