After 35 years of publishing Prison Legal News, one thing that has become clear is that when it comes to the American criminal justice system, not all stories have an ending; some are fairly characterized as never-ending stories. We have reported on Rikers Island for our entire ...
Over the years Prison Legal News has reported extensively on the rape of prisoners around the country. In 35 years of publishing, about every 4- or 5-years prison systems have a major scandal at their local women’s prison where it comes to light that dozens of guards have raped or are raping scores or hundreds of women prisoners. For the past several years we have been reporting on the ongoing rapes, criminal prosecutions and civil litigation surrounding the massive rape of prisoners at the federal women’s prison in Dublin, California. This issue of PLN is a few days late because just as we were wrapping it up a few more guards were indicted and we updated the story with the details.
The Dublin rapes are unique in some respects. It has led to the biggest damages payout in the history of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). PLN has filed a FOIA request for a breakdown on the individual settlements and we will report it at a later date. Dozens of guards and staff, including the warden and chaplain have been charged and convicted of the rapes and dozens more investigations are still underway with more indictments coming. The biggest and ...
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 never convicted of a crime. Jails ...
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. Our start up budget was $300 ...
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 in North Korea or the Middle ...
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 for a number of years now, ...
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. It took PLN almost 3 years ...
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 political affairs in the USA today ...
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 lawyer there. Over the course of his career Bruce became one of the preeminent specialists and defenders of the First Amendment and the free speech rights of publishers and media around the country. He was widely recognized as the nation’s most knowledgeable lawyer when it came to commercial speech and anti SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws. More on that later.
Bruce represented media clients across the country and they included the biggest print and broadcasting companies, including 60 Minutes, the Seattle Times, Boston Globe, New York Times and many, many others. Those were the big ones and with his passing the cases he litigated on behalf of those clients will likely be the ones that he is remembered by.
One of Bruce’s smaller pro bono media clients, for almost 30 years, was Prison Legal News which later became the Human Rights Defense Center. Prisoners and the publishers who seek to communicate with them and ...
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 model of ruthless capitalism where success is defined as getting as much money out of the government and then providing as little actual care as possible.
PLN has been reporting on the private prison medical industry since we started publishing in 1990 and the industry has slowly grown over the decades with the attendant tales of corruption, death and misery. With the exception of the Virginia Department of Corrections, no prison system has retaken its medical health care system once they privatize it. Instead, we see a revolving door of murderous, corporate health care providers driven by greed and avarice, replacing the prior corporate provider until they too are replaced. The staff often do not change, it is only their employer that changes.
It is hard to believe that Prison Legal News has been publishing for almost 35 years now. One of the bad things about being around as long as we have is that many ...
