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Articles by Willie Wisely

From the Editor

by Paul Wright

Over the years, PLN has conducted a number of sample mailings to potential subscribers. This has always been a good way to expand our circulation, but such mailings are expensive to do. We have long recognized that our best outreach resource is our readership. To that end, ...

California Guards Bust Budget

by W. Wisely

A report released November 27, 2001, by the Bureau of State Audits showed the California Department of Corrections (CDC) spent $87 million more than their annual budget allotted, according to the Sacramento Bee. That money was used to cover excessive overtime and sick leave for prison guards, ...

California Pays for Guard's Sexual Misconduct

by W. Wisely

California taxpayers must pay $154,212 in damages to a former female prison guard sexually harassed on the job, according to the Sacramento Bee . Ray Collie, the lieutenant who couldn't seem to control his urges, owes just $75,000 in punitive damages out of his own pocket to ...

Prison Guard Sentenced in Escape Plot

Erik Jacobs, 31, a former guard at Ely State Prison in Nevada was sentenced to one year in jail and fined $2,000 for helping a prisoner plan an escape. Jacobs was sentenced in March, 2001, by White Pine District Judge Dan Papez in Ely, a small, rural town some 320 ...

California Dials Wrong Number

by W. Wisely

In reaction to bad publicity, lawsuits, and legislative hearings following a record number of fatal shootings of unarmed male prisoners, staged fights, and the sexual abuse and medical neglect of women prisoners, California established the allegedly independent Office of Inspector General within the state's Youth and Adult ...

Plug Pulled in California Prison

California is short on energy. The state has suffered repeated Stage Three power alerts and rolling power outages. Without authorization by the Legislature, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) may be trying to alleviate the crisis. And it seems at least one warden is locking his prisons down and shutting ...

Cowboys and Prisoners

Trumpeted as the pinnacle of high-tech prison architecture when it opened in 1993, the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado, contains two lower security facilities, one maximum security prison, and, since 1994, the Clockwork Orange inspired U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum. The steel and concrete citadels are rimmed by verdant hills ...

Racist Knot of Florida Guards

The fake hunting regulations prominently posted in a Calhoun Correctional Institution colonel's office read, "OPEN SEASON ON PORCH MONKEYS." The daily kill limit was ten according to the sign, Roy Hughes, a black guard, told the St. Petersburg Times December 19, 1999. Fifty-five percent of prisoners in Florida are black, ...

Brutality Behind the Orange Curtain

by W. Wisely

The FBI began its second civil rights investigation of the Orange County, California, sheriff's department following the beating of a diabetic prisoner asking for food to lower his blood sugar. Michael Gennaco, head of the civil rights division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, told ...

Pelican Bay Guard's Conviction Upheld

by W. Wisely

Jose Garcia was a guard at California's Pelican Bay prison. With his supervisor, Mike Powers, Garcia plotted with prisoner shotcallers to have convicted child molesters, sex offenders, and informants stabbed or beaten. The conspiracy ran from January 1994 to September 29, 1995, when Garcia was relieved of ...