by Paul Wright
Welcome to the last issue of PLN for the year. This month’s cover story reports the landmark court ruling in Parsons v. Ryan — now known as Jensen v. Shinn — the class-action lawsuit over inadequate medical care and conditions of confinement in the Arizona Department of ...
by Paul Wright
Most of PLN’s prisoner readers are housed in state or federal prisons and serving a sentence after being convicted of a crime. On any given day at least 500,000 people are being held in jails around the country, operated by cities, counties or Indian Tribes. The vast ...
by Paul Wright
The United States bills itself as a country that values free speech. For over 30 years I have watched as prison and jail officials around the country censor Prison Legal News (PLN), Criminal Legal News (CLN),and some or all of the books which ...
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story reports on developments in the Georgia prison system, which continues from bad to worse in terms of its rising body count of dead prisoners. This fits into the pattern of massive, systemic neglect, brutality and violence that currently seems to be especially concentrated ...
by Paul Wright
If this month’s cover story appears to be another case of déjà vu all over again, it is because we have been reporting on murder, mayhem and misery in the Philadelphia jail system for decades. As we have for many other large jail systems around the country. ...
by Paul Wright
Over the course of its 233-year history, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has reversed its prior decisions on occasion. Until now those reversals have generally been to expand constitutional rights for the populace, not to take them away. On June 24, 2022, when the SCOTUS issued ...
by Paul Wright
PLN has been reporting on the prison phone industry for at least the past 30 years, from its inception to its current stranglehold on most means of human contact between prisoners and the outside world. This month’s cover story by Alan Prendergast reports on the public relations ...
By Paul Wright
Over the course of its 233-year history, the United States Supreme Court (USSC) has reversed its prior decisions on occasion. Until now those reversals have generally been to expand constitutional rights for the populace, not to take them away. On June 24, 2022, when the USSC issued ...
by Paul Wright
For all the talk of criminal justice reform. the reality of daily life for millions of caged American prisoners is amply summed up this month’s cover story reprinted from the Texas Observer which reports on the death toll of jail prisoners in Texas. Of course, it is ...
This issue of PLN marks our 32nd anniversary. Having published 384 issues since May 1990, we have been reporting on the growth of the American police state for 32 years as its prison and jail population has more than doubled from one million to almost 2.3 million reported in 2020. ...