Pop culture is about acculturation more than it is about culture. It is about defining the norms and parameters of society. Over one hundred years ago Karl Marx wrote about capitalism's ability to turn everything into a commodity. Commodities are items, whether goods or ideas, which can be bought and ...
Review by Paul Wright
The passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) in 1996 has significantly changed many aspects of prison and jail litigation. The PLRA makes it increasingly difficult for prisoner plaintiffs to achieve meaningful or significant relief in the courts, either in the way of damages or ...
A PLN supporter recently commented that I must find editing PLN incredibly depressing given the content of the July, 1999, issue: medical neglect, rape, extrajudicial murders, brutality, sensory deprivation control units, random shootings, etc.
As an optimist, I see the prison struggle glass as being half full rather than half ...
Verso. 216 pages. $17
Reviewed by Paul Wright
The United States is unique among modern nations in that its government has never experienced a serious revolutionary challenge. Opposition movements in the U.S. can be typified as embodying the politics of protest over the politics of seizing state power. Communist philosopher ...
"Victims' Rights" As A Stalkinghorse for State Repression
By Paul Wight
How the ruling class defines and punishes "crime" goes a long way towards demonstrating whose class interests are being served by the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system in the United States is used as a tool of ...
Starting with last month's issue of PLN we have expanded the number of books we offer for direct sale. This month we have added some more titles. As funds become available we hope to expand our list of titles further. For years PLN has received inquiries from readers asking us ...
RCW 72.09:480 was enacted in 1995 as part of House Bill (FIB) 2410, a massive prisoner bashing bill that unanimously passed the legislature that year. RCW 72.09.480 was slipped into HB 2010 with no public hearings, debate or notice. The law mandates the seizure of 35% of all funds sent ...
By Paul Wight
The court of appeals for the Eighth circuit held that an Iowa prison's ban on cassette tapes with parental advisory notices due to "explicit lyrics" was permissible. Michael Herlein, a former Iowa state prisoner, filed suit challenging a prison policy that banned all music tapes bearing the ...
Civic Research Institute, 578 pp.
Reviewed by Paul Wright
With the steady criminalization of mental illness over the past thirty years, prisons and jails now hold hundreds of thousands of mentally ill prisoners. Conservative estimates place the number of mentally ill prisoners at 8 to 10% of the nation's prison ...
Since the November, 1996, issue of PLN we have had a Prison Litigation Reform Act News section. Starting with next month's issue we will no longer run a separate PLRA News section in PLN .
When the PLRA was enacted in April, 1996, it was clear it would have an ...
