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 “he would completely lose his mind in there.” Barraza feared that her son would eventually give “up all hope of surviving.”
Ten days later, Ben committed suicide.
Suicide rates inside New York’s state prison system have grown at an alarming pace since Ben took his life. According to a May 2020 report by the #HALTsolitary Campaign, which analyzed data obtained from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) through public records requests, 75 people died by suicide in New York prisons from January 2015 to April 2020. There were 18 suicides in 2019 alone, which the report cites as 88% higher than the national average for all U.S. prisons.
#HALTsolitary Campaign’s findings also reveal distressing increases in suicide rates at New York’s solitary confinement units, or Special Housing Units (SHUs) in the state prison system’s jargon.
From January 2015 to April 2019, suicide attempts in SHUs ...
by Keith Sanders
Big business is king in America, and the business of operating correctional and detention facilities is no exception. Within the private prison industry, two firms stand out for their sheer size: Florida-based GEO Group, with 2019 revenues of $2.477 billion, and Tennessee-based CoreCivic, with $1.981 billion in 2019 revenues.
But they also stand out for another reason: Like other corporations accused of prioritizing profits over people, both firms have been plagued by allegations of controversial business practices. Critics claim that the public-private partnerships through which the companies take over prison operations actually serve to line the pockets of politicians in exchange for regulatory concessions that curb oversight and protect the industry’s financial bottom line – all at the expense of the prisoners they are charged to oversee.
That, however, may soon be coming to an end.
Criminal justice activists have long sought, without success, to dismantle the private prison industry. Their efforts have been thwarted, in large measure, by an apathetic public with little appetite for addressing issues related to mass incarceration in America. But with the 2018 immigration crisis, that began to change. Images of children being separated from their families and the abysmal conditions inside ...
