by Paul Wright
For over 40 years now the private prison industry has peddled the lie that they can cage people for less money than the government does. They no longer really promise that any savings will go to taxpayers or the government and seem content to be …
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story reports on the ongoing issues with pioneering private prison company CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), in its home state of Tennessee. In 1983, CCA was started in Tennessee as the first American for-profit privately-owned prison company in …
by Paul Wright
Welcome to our 36th anniversary issue of Prison Legal News. In May 1990, we published the first issue of PLN. In an industry where publications rarely make it into the double digits, it is amazing we have lasted 36 years and continuously published, reaching …
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story on the ongoing implosion of the Alabama prison system is just the latest installment of a long running saga of death, brutality, corruption and neglect that typifies the Alabama criminal justice system, coupled with the indifference and incompetence of the political …
by Paul Wright
The ongoing effort to censor, control and surveil prisoners’ access to information is the topic of this month’s cover story. It is also providing a convenient means to deprive prisoners of access to most information and publications—especially anything that is related to minorities, whether political, …
by Paul Wright
As long as there have been prisons, the people who run them have endeavored to keep prisoners as ignorant, ill informed and cut off from the outside world as possible. At the same time, those in charge aim to ensure that all the bad news, …
by Paul Wright
The month before Prison Legal News published its first issue in May 1990, the Washington legislature became the first to enact civil commitment and sex offender registration in response to a series of horrific sex crimes by repeat offenders. We have been reporting on the …
by Paul Wright
This is the last issue of Prison Legal News (PLN) for 2025. It has been an eventful year all the way around. Two years ago, no one thought a convicted felon would be elected president of the United States, much less take office. Or that …
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story is part of our ongoing coverage of barbaric conditions of confinement in American jails around the country. While American prisons tend to have a lot of problems keeping prisoners safe and healthy, jails tend to be much worse. With over 3,500 …
by Paul Wright
In the course of publishing PLN we file a lot of public records requests with local jails, state prisons and federal law enforcement agencies—hundreds every year. These requests result in the news coverage you are reading now as well as reports, audits, misconduct reports and …
