S&L Looters Do Less Time than Petty Thieves
by Paul Wright
Fraud in the Savings and Loan Industry: White Collar Crime and Government Response was written by University of California, Irvine, criminology professor Henry Pontell and associate professor Kitty Calavita. The three year study was commissioned by the Department of ...
By Paul Wright
From 1981 to 1993 Jack Metcalf held office in the Washington state Senate. In 1994 he was elected on the Republican ticket to represent Washingtons second congressional district. This is a story about prison slave labor, opportunism and hypocrisy by politicians and prisoners and media collusion. Metcalf ...
From the Editor
By Paul Wright
Welcome to another issue of PLN. Recently the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Prison Law Project (PLP) held elections in order to elect five prisoners to its steering committee board. I was nominated for one of the slots and asked if I would run. I ...
By Paul Wright
What you're holding in your hands is referred to as the "Alternative Press." We are called that because we offer an "alternative" view to that provided by the corporate media. In our case we are advocates for the rights and well being of prisoners and seek to ...
By Paul Wright
Someone once said that no citizen's life, limb or property was safe while the legislature was in session. Substitute "Prisoner" for "citizen" and you have an idea of what things are like in Washington. Fortunately, the Washington state legislature is only in session for periods of 60 ...
By Paul Wright
On September 6, 1988, Diane Ballisiotes was killed by Eugene Kane, a prisoner on work release in Seattle, Washington. Kane had been serving time for two assaults on women and was paroled despite DOC psychologists stating he was at high risk to re-offend. When Diane died a ...
Across the country Republicans have seized on prison weigh-lifting as a no risk political "issue" to make big hoopla over. The corporate media has abetted this by running sensationalist stories of prisoners bulking up by pumping iron. So far Mississippi and Wisconsin have banned weights in prison. The California legislature ...
In late September, 1994, while running for Congress Republican congressional candidates signed Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" which included detailed proposals in the form of draft legislation to modify federal criminal law in important respects. It is dubbed the "Taking Back Our Streets Act." While nothing is really new in ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Welcome to another issue of PLN. In the September issue I asked what readers thought of our News in Brief column and whether we should keep it or eliminate it. About 20 readers responded and all want to keep it, no one voiced any ...
By Paul Wright
In the October and November, 1993, issues of PLN, I wrote articles about the "anti-crime" proposals that had been submitted in the US Congress by democrats and republicans, respectively. I predicted then the most repressive aspects of both proposals would likely wind up in the final version ...
