Ed Mead
The Legislative Budge Committee (LBC) has issued its preliminary report on the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board (ISRB). The December 14, 1990, report was an audit that examined the operations of the Board in the context of the dual sentencing system that now exsists in the state of Washington. ...
By Paul Wright
As we go to press with this issue of PLN the United States is preparing to attack Iraq in the Persian Gulf. There's a large number of veterans from past imperialist adventures still in prison throughout the United States today. PLN does not support the Iraqi invasion ...
Response To "Tread Carefully"
By Paul Wright
In Issue #1, Vol. 2, of PLN we had an article by Mark LaRue titled "Tread Carefully With Sex Offenders." In it Mark discusses, among other things, SSB-6259. This bill in the state senate, which passed and has since become law, among other ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 4
Mothers In Prison
[The following article about Mothers in Prison was excepted from the "Pacific" section of the December 2, 1990, issue of the Seattle Times/P-1, and then edited further to meet the informational needs of Prisoners' Legal News readers.]
Lori and Raynette are both inmates at the Washington Prison ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 4
Spending On Corrections Rises Sharply
Federal, state and local governments in the United States spent $61 billion in fiscal year 1988 for civil and criminal justice, an increase of 34 percent since 1985, according to a report recently issued by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. The ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 4
A woman won a $125,000 settlement from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles that may set a precedent for more civil suits involving parole decisions. The woman was raped by a man who had been sentenced in 1977 to 123 years in prison for attacking 21 women. He was ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 4
Station Files Suit To Televise Execution
A San Francisco public television station, KQED, has filed a suit against the governor for permission to broadcast executions. Currently, cameras are barred and witnesses are not permitted to take notes. A DOC representative said the rules exist because executions are not intended to ...
Nutraloaf And The Law In The Northwest
By Wasseneh Taddesse
Nutraloaf is a dog-food type substance fed to prisoners on segregation status, generally to those who have committed some additional infraction while on that status. As with all repressive measures, the practice has been abused by those who hold power ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 5
A recent investigation by Florida DOC investigator Clayton Lambert of complaints of sexual harassment made by several female employees against Martin Correctional Institution (MCI) warden David Farcas and Southeast Florida DOC director William Rouse.
The six women claimed that Rouse and Farcas made sexual comments to female employees, French kissed ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 5
A study released in October of 1990 found that nearly one out of every four young black men in New York state is under the control of the criminal justice system on any given day. The results of the joint study by the Correctional Association of New York and the ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 5
Prisons in Peru are so overcrowded and under financed that two prisoners a day are dying at Lurigancho prison (where 5,900 are housed). As a result of these conditions, prisoners went on a hunger strike for better conditions. The result of this strike was a "depenalization" decree by which some ...
Women Prisoner's Hunger Strike In Texas
By Ana Lucia Gelabert
Gatesville, Texas, November 28, 1990. At 12 midnight tonight at least eight women prisoners at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Mountain View unit will begin an indefinite hunger strike in protest of the scheduled December 6, 1990, execution of ...
By Paul Wright
Welcome to the tenth issue of PLN . As our readers may recall issues 6, 7 and 8 of Vol. 1 of PLN had been censored by prisoncrats at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, WA. The excuse they had given for this censorship was that the ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 7
Prisoner Assaulted By Guard
A prison employee was held liable for $1,000 after sticking the barrel of his revolver in the inmate's mouth and cocking the trigger. The prisoner had sought damages for assault in a federal civil rights suit against the prison employee. He claimed that the employee, in ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 7
X-Ray Searches Of Prisoners Found Unlawful
A claim that a x-ray search was ordered by prison security officials without medical authorization was not frivolous. The failure to inquire into the plaintiff's medical history to consider the possible cumulative effect of x-rays, to get a doctor's order, to have medical personnel ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 7
A federal prisoner brought a Bivens action against the warden and administrative systems manager for failing to investigate his claim that his sentence was miscalculated. The prisoner repeatedly asked prison officials to correctly compute his sentence to show time he had served in a German prison. They refused to do ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 7
Insufficient Facts To Support Exceptional Terms
Division One of the Washington State Court of Appeals has vacated an exceptional term imposed by the parole board due to insufficient facts in the record to support the sentence imposed by the board.
Luis Vega, while incarcerated at the Reformatory, participated in an ...
By Paul Wright
On December 17, 1990, at about 6:35 in the evening several prisoners got into a fight in the F-Unit (Close Custody) rotunda area. Eventually guards carted the participants of that fight off to the "hole." At about 7:10 that evening Aaron Fast, a black prisoner, was called ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 8
Proof of prison administrators' "consistent pattern of reckless or negligent conduct" in providing prisoners with medical care is enough to establish the deliberate indifference to prisoners' serious medical needs necessary to make out an Eighth Amendment violation and hence to subject the officials to civil liability. The December 4, 1990, ...
Loaded on
Feb. 15, 1991
published in Prison Legal News
February, 1991, page 8
You may recall that last year the Legislature passed SHE 1457 (now in RCW 9.95.013) which directed the Board to review all habitual criminal minimum terms and to apply SRA guideline ranges to them. You may also know that - as usual - the Board essentially ignored the law and ...
By Ray L. Levasseur
Prisoners at the U.S. Penitentiary, Marion, Illinois, have said for years that the government is poisoning us with contaminated water. The government has categorically denied these accusations. On September 28, 1990, a report issued by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) (U.S. Dept. ...
Exception To Slave Labor
I would like to commend the staff of PLN (issue #8) because, in my opinion, it is the best issue yet. I was impressed with the listing of competent authorities for the facts and figures presented in the articles. One thing though that I would like ...
