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Articles by Eric Markowitz

Chain Gang 2.0: If You Can’t Afford This GPS Ankle Bracelet, You Get Thrown In Jail

by Eric Markowitz, International Business Times

On a recent broiling August day, Antonio Green, an out-of-work construction worker, sat in his living room, a folder full of receipts open across his legs. He explained how an electronic monitor, strapped to his left ankle for a period of 275 days beginning last ...

Electronic Monitoring Has Become the New Debtors Prison

It all started with a traffic violation. Antonio Green didn’t have a license and admits he shouldn’t have been driving. But when his mother’s 1994 Chrysler Sebring broke down at a Taco Bell near their home in October last year, he decided to drive over to fix it.

When he ...

Inside the Shadowy Business of Prison Phone Calls

Inside the Shadowy Business of Prison Phone Calls

An IBTimes investigation into the secretive world of selling phone calls to prisoners and their families.

by Eric Markowitz

Joanne Jones, an occupational therapist from Warwick, Rhode Island, has made an unlikely foe in the past year: Securus Technologies, a billion-dollar prison ...

Poison Prison: Is Toxic Dust Sickening Inmates Locked up in Coal Country?

Poison Prison

Is toxic dust sickening inmates locked up in coal country?

By Eric Markowitz

As the sun set over western Pennsylvania, Marcus Santos, inmate #JL7126, sat alone in a drab prison hospital, his eyes closed, wondering if he was about to die. It was Aug. 26, 2012.

At 5 p.m. ...