by Kevin Bliss and Keith Sanders
Six months after the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a highly critical report accusing the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MADOC) of violating the constitutional rights of mentally ill prisoners by holding them in isolation too long, the agency has not made conditions any less ...
by Keith Sanders
America’s criminal justice system is designed by and for men. It characterizes offenders as violent and victims docile, where offenders kill and victims die. Within this framework, women are often marginalized and unjustly prosecuted, especially victims of domestic violence who fend off their attackers with deadly force. ...
by Keith Sanders
According to the protestors, conditions at the local lockup have become intolerable. On April 4, 2021, at approximately 8:30 p.m. detainees at the St. Louis City Justice Center (CJC) covered security cameras, smashed windows, threw furniture out onto the street below, and set fires, chanting “we want ...
by Keith Sanders
Compared to other experiences inside American prisons, spending time in solitary confinement is the harshest and most dehumanizing. Between 50,000 and 60,000 individuals languish in concrete boxes no larger than a closet for 22-plus hours a day. They are deprived of books, magazines, radios, television and visitation ...
by Keith Sanders
Imagine a future in America that is radically different than it is today—an America where police do not brutalize and kill people, a society without institutionalized racism and classism, a country where jails and prisons do not exist. Envisioning such a bold future is what Barring Freedom ...
by Keith Sanders
The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC) is experiencing chronic staff shortages at its facilities across the state that have led to an alarming increase in riots, gang violence, homicides, and suicides.
According to the Southern Center for Human Rights, in 2020 alone, there were an estimated 25 ...
by Keith Sanders
Once behind bars, American prisoners often feel forgotten, thanks to an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude that turns the country’s prisons and jails into human warehouses. Disregarding its impact on communities is dangerous — especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Assessing the relationship ...
by Keith Sanders
Mississippi joined 28 other states by removing a tobacco ban at the state’s prisons. As of February 1, 2021, both prisoners and staff are allowed to smoke outdoors in designated areas determined by each facility’s warden.
Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) enacted a smoking and tobacco product ...
by Keith Sanders
Back in August 2020, “things at Waseca were calm,” recalled Channing Lacy. Like many other women incarcerated in the low-security Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Waseca, Minnesota, the 33-year-old considered herself lucky that the prison had reported just five cases of COVID-19 through early August 2020 out ...
by Keith Sanders
After being placed in solitary confinement at New York State’s Fishkill Correctional Center in 2014, 21-year-old Ben Van Zandt, a former honors student who struggled with an undiagnosed mental health condition, begged his family to get him out of isolation. He told his mother, Alicia Barraza, that ...
