by Derek Gilna
In December 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a watchdog agency within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), issued an audit of the federal Bureau of Prisons’ contract with private prisoner company CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, to operate the Adams County ...
by Derek Gilna, Christopher Zoukis
The use of wearable electronic tracking devices for defendants and people on community supervision has risen sharply over the past decade. Cash-strapped municipalities like the reduced cost, which is much lower than a prison or jail bed and is often passed on to the device ...
by Derek Gilna
American University, a private college in Washington, D.C., bowed to pressure from a federal law enforcement group and removed a statue of Native American activist and prisoner Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of the 1975 murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in ...
by Derek Gilna
Shawnnon Hale, 24, wrongful accused of felony rape and jailed for 61 days, was released from custody in Denver, Colorado in early 2015 when the police crime lab acknowledged it had mislabeled a DNA sample that incorrectly identified him as the perpetrator. As a result of his ...
by Derek Gilna
The "Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March," held in Washington, D.C. on August 19, 2017, apparently prompted a statewide lockdown by the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) to prevent any displays of solidarity with the free-world marchers, according to prisoners’ rights advocates. The protest in the nation’s ...
by Derek Gilna
California state prisons are known to be dangerous and violent places, but prisoners employed in industry programs at those facilities are also at serious risk of work-related injuries, as indicated by records maintained by the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA).
According to CALPIA, there have been over ...
Although incarceration levels in the U.S. have receded slightly this decade – to around 2.2 million people in 2016, according to the Prison Policy Initiative – the number of offenders on some form of probation or community supervision has increased. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 4.65 million ...
by Derek Gilna
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has published three new studies based on calendar year 2015 data, with one indicating the total number of prisoners nationwide declined to the lowest level since 2005. The number of people on probation also decreased slightly, but the number of ...
by Derek Gilna
On July 24, 2017, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the parent organization and publisher of Prison Legal News, entered into a settlement with private prison firm Management and Training Corp. (MTC), which has contracts to operate detention centers nationwide. The settlement agreement resolved what HRDC argued were First and Fourteenth Amendment violations with respect to sending publications to prisoners at the company’s facilities.
HRDC filed separate federal lawsuits alleging that MTC, a Utah corporation, had blocked the distribution of PLN books and other publications sent to prisoners at the company’s Otero County Prison Facility in New Mexico and North Central Correctional Complex in Ohio.
HRDC and PLN have published numerous articles critical of private prison companies like MTC, accusing them of engaging in the systematic violation of prisoners’ rights in their quest to generate profit. [See, e.g.: PLN, Feb. 2017, p.60; Dec. 2016, p.20; March 2011, p.24].
According to HRDC executive director Paul Wright, “MTC has a policy and practice of censoring the free speech of publishers and book distributors around the country. As a for-profit, private prison company, it is shameful that they are being paid by taxpayers to violate the First Amendment ...
by Derek Gilna
According to data gathered by the Reuters news agency, which culled records from various Canadian provincial governments, almost 270 prisoners awaiting trial have died over the past five years. Apparently pretrial bail practices in our northern neighbor are in serious need of reform, according to prisoners’ rights ...
