Despite recent efforts to reduce federal prisoner counts and corrections expenses, private corporations continue to reap a financial windfall from other people's misfortune. Several corporations have fattened their balance sheets as private prison operators and numerous health care providers have received billions of dollars from the federal government, according to ...
When a citizen's civil rights are violated by the police, one of the most-widely legal remedies is a federal Civil Rights suit, also known as 1983 actions, but a recent study by Joanna C. Schwartz, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of California school of Law. Her article, entitled ...
Prisoners in United Kingdom (UK) correctional facilities have yet another newspaper to help pass the time. “Jail Mail” is the third national newspaper in the British prison system, along with “Inside Time,” and “Converse,” and will have a print run of approximately 20,000 copies. The newspaper represents the newest opportunity ...
The total number of individuals incarcerated in the United States increased slightly in 2013, climbing by 4,300 to reach 1,574,700 prisoners, according to the federal Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). This was the first increase recorded since the 2009 total of 1,615,500. The Bureau of Justice ...
Native Hawaiians have a rich religious history, with elaborate rituals and sacred objects, which is a significant part of their culture. Interference with the free exercise of these traditional religious practices at Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona where they were confined resulted in a 2011 lawsuit filed in federal district ...
The most recent compilation of mortality statistics for local jails and state correctional facilities by the Depart of Justice’s (DOJ) Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) showed an effective increase of approximately 2% for 2012, the last year for which statistics are available. Although the total number of local and state ...
Over the years, Prison Legal News and its parent non-profit organization, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), have filed dozens of censorship lawsuits against state prison systems and county jails, as well as numerous public records suits. [See: PLN, May 2015, p.12]. More recently, HRDC has represented the families ...
Although much of the attention concerning the huge increase in America’s prison population has focused on the federal prison system, a new U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) report found that the number of prisoners in state facilities increased by 55%, from 857,000 in 1993 to 1,325,300 in 2013. However, it ...
It took eight years but civil rights attorneys finally prevailed in a federal lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), entering into a settlement that requires prison officials to provide 11,000 mentally ill state prisoners with adequate mental health care. The class-action suit was filed in 2007 as a ...
A recent study by the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) places its emphasis not on the number of people incarcerated in the United States, but rather on an often-ignored figure – how many individuals are on probation and parole. The June 2016 study indicates that even some states that have reduced ...
