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Article • February 1, 2026 • from PLN February, 2026
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright As long as there have been prisons, the people who run them have endeavored to keep prisoners as ignorant, ill informed and cut off from the outside world as possible. At the same time, those in charge aim to ensure that …
Article • January 1, 2026 • from PLN January, 2026
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright The month before Prison Legal News published its first issue in May 1990, the Washington legislature became the first to enact civil commitment and sex offender registration in response to a series of horrific sex crimes by repeat offenders. We have …
Article • December 1, 2025 • from PLN December, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright This is the last issue of Prison Legal News (PLN) for 2025. It has been an eventful year all the way around. Two years ago, no one thought a convicted felon would be elected president of the United States, much less …
Article • November 1, 2025 • from PLN November, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright This month’s cover story is part of our ongoing coverage of barbaric conditions of confinement in American jails around the country. While American prisons tend to have a lot of problems keeping prisoners safe and healthy, jails tend to be much …
Article • October 1, 2025 • from PLN October, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright In the course of publishing PLN we file a lot of public records requests with local jails, state prisons and federal law enforcement agencies—hundreds every year. These requests result in the news coverage you are reading now as well as reports, …
Article • August 1, 2025 • from PLN August, 2025
Review: “Reforming the Shadow Carceral State” by In an academic paper published in the November 2024 issue of Theoretical Criminology, researchers Brittany Friedman, Gabriela Kirk-Werner, and April D. Fernandes examined efforts to reform what they termed the “shadow carceral state.” While the carceral state encompasses the criminal legal system—jails, prison, …
Article • June 1, 2025 • from PLN June, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright While prisons cage the majority of American prisoners, jails around the country still hold around 600,000 on any given day and anywhere between five and ten million people cycle through them annually. The vast majority of people who enter and leave American jails are …
Article • May 1, 2025 • from PLN May, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright This issue of PLN marks our 35th anniversary of publishing. Our first 8 issues were hand typed in two different maximum-security prison cells in Washington and sent to an outside volunteer to put together, photocopy and mail to 75 potential subscribers. …
Article • April 1, 2025 • from PLN April, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright After reporting on prisons and jails for 35 years now, I have learned that these are the least transparent of American institutions. It is not much exaggeration to say that among American news consumers, they know more about what is happening …
Article • March 1, 2025 • from PLN March, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright This month’s cover story explores the increasing use of tablets in prisons and jails around the country by the same prison telecom monopolies that have controlled the prison phone “market” for the past 35 years. PLN has been reporting on tablets …
Article • February 15, 2025 • from PLN February, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright The December 2024 issue of PLN reported on litigation payouts by New Mexico medical contractor Centurion and detailed the 13 prisoners who died at their hands as well as the dozens more who were seriously injured from denials of medical care. …
Article • January 15, 2025 • from PLN January, 2025
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright Since our inception in 1990 the Human Rights Defense Center has focused on the financial exploitation of prisoners and their families in particular and poor people in general by the American criminal justice system. A sad commentary on the state of …
Article • December 15, 2024 • from PLN December, 2024
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by One of the biggest changes in the American Prison Industrial Complex in the past 40 years has been the privatization of assorted functions related to the capture and caging of people. This has ranged from building and running prisons to performing discrete functions like providing medical …
Article • December 15, 2024 • from PLN December, 2024
Book Review: Public Records Act Manual for the State of Washington by Sam Rutherford by Derek Gronquist reviewed by Sam Rutherford The Public Records Act Manual for the State of Washington (2nd Ed. 2020), by Derek Gronquist, is a must have compendium for anyone, from the novice record requestor to …
Article • November 15, 2024 • from PLN November, 2024
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by by Paul Wright Since our inception PLN has reported on the myriad means used to torture American prisoners. Torture and the wanton infliction pain have been an integral part of imprisonment since people first decided to start caging each other. In American history it has been …
Article • October 15, 2024 • from PLN October, 2024
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by For over 32 years the Human Rights Defense Center has advocated against the financial exploitation of prisoners and their families. Since 1992 HRDC has advocated, litigated, investigated and exposed the abuses, corruption and exploitation of the prison phone industry. This has included extensive interactions with the …
Article • September 15, 2024 • from PLN September, 2024
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright America is going on its fourth decade of experimenting with private, for profit health services for prisoners. Regardless of the company and the location the outcomes are all the same: a lot of misery, pain and death imposed by a business …
Article • September 15, 2024 • from PLN September, 2024
Bruce Johnson 1950–2024 by Paul Wright by Paul Wright On August 20, 2024, the free speech rights of all Americans suffered a devastating loss. Bruce Johnson, 74, was a long-time partner at the Seattle law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine. He spent his entire, nearly half century career as a …
Article • August 15, 2024 • from PLN August, 2024
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright by Paul Wright   This month’s cover story on death and abuse at the Riverside County jails in California is an all-too-common account from American jails. With around 3,700 jails around the country, in every community, it is fair to say that this is …
Article • July 1, 2024 • from PLN July, 2024
Filed under: Editorials
From the Editor by Paul Wright From the Editor By Paul Wright One of the realities of covering and reporting on prison systems is that, not surprisingly, the bigger systems with more prisoners tend to generate more news, especially the bad news. Generally speaking, the dearth of news by and …
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