by Paul Wright
The good news seems to be that COVID-19 rates in prisons and jails, like the rest of the country, appear to be decreasing as vaccination rates increase. Visiting is being restored in many states and there seems to be some return to pre-pandemic normalcy. At the Human ...
by Paul Wright
The past year and a half has consumed news coverage with the coronavirus pandemic. Since March of last year Prison Legal News has shifted its news coverage to COVID-19 and its impact on prisoners and the criminal justice system. With the vaccine roll outs we may be ...
by Paul Wright
This issue of Prison Legal News marks our 31st anniversary since we first began publishing in May, 1990. During that time period we have witnessed many changes in the criminal justice system, pretty much all of them negative for prisoners and criminal defendants alike. (We belatedly ...
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story is on jail suicides, with a particular focus on Massachusetts. Sadly, this is a topic we have covered extensively over the past 30 years. Despite extensive study and research on the causes of suicide, rates generally increased with the explosion of the prison ...
by Paul Wright
Since our inception, the Human Rights Defense Center, the publisher of Prison Legal News, has opposed the death penalty. The saying that capital punishment means that those without the capital get the punishment well illustrates the inherent unfairness of how the death penalty is applied in ...
For decades, prisoncrats have claimed that if they were given an opportunity to rectify complaints by prisoners there would be no need for litigation. Everyone involved knows that is a lie. Since the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) in 1996, prisoners must exhaust internal administrative grievance systems ...
by Paul Wright
Welcome to the first issue of PLN for 2021. This month’s cover story dissects the myth of the “Texas Criminal Justice Reform Miracle.” One of the oddities of the American police state is that only in the U.S., which cages more of its citizens than any other ...
Dear Human Rights Supporter,
As we end 2020, the Covid pandemic is ravaging our nation’s prisons and jails with no end in sight. Even as vaccines are being approved to inoculate people against Covid, government agencies are announcing that the staff but not the prisoners, will be the priority in receiving these vaccines in detention facilities. For the past 9 months we have prioritized Covid coverage in our publications and made litigation to get prisoners access to our publications a top priority as it gains life or death importance. Since February, our hard working legal team working with law firms around the country has filed 10 censorship lawsuits against prisons and jails from Maryland to California to protect the free speech rights of publishers and prisoners alike.
HRDC has faced enormous organizational challenges to meet an increased demand for our services while dealing with the realities of remote work and limited office time to get everything done. Right now, we have letters from over 1,000 indigent prisoners requesting 6 issue subscriptions to Prison Legal News so they will have accurate timely information about Covid and how it impacts prisoners. It costs us a little more than $15 to provide a ...
Welcome to the last issue of PLN for 2020. It has been an eventful year that no one expected or planned for in January. Two companies, Pfizer and Moderna, have announced vaccines for COVID-19 claiming effectiveness rates of over 90%. So far, we have seen nothing about plans to ensure ...
by Paul Wright
Originally we were planning to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Prison Legal News (PLN) in the May 2020 issue. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting prisoners and the criminal justice system we decided to postpone it until later in the year given the urgency of reporting on ...
