Widespread disdain for people held in prisons and jails, public apathy for humane conditions in detention facilities, tough-on-crime political rhetoric and the privatization of correctional services by for-profit companies have taken a collective toll on the quality of our nation’s criminal justice system. Outwardly, organizations like the American Correctional Association ...
Federal immigrant detention has long been a boon to private prison companies Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, the nation’s two largest private prison firms, both of which trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Much of that success is the direct result of lobbyists employed by ...
Washington state legislators face a unique problem with the prison workers it uses to maintain McNeil Island economy. Juveniles from the Oakridge Community group home work in groups of two to six as dockworkers. The youths are paid $7.16 an hour to assist shipwrights and engine mechanics. Their cheap labor ...
California’s Supreme Court has held that prisoners who are denied early release under the state’s compassionate release statute have a right to appeal the denial, reversing an appellate court decision that found prisoners had no such right.
The state’s high court ruled unanimously on March 5, 2015 in favor of ...
Cook County, Illinois has become the first county in the nation to employ a new, double-edged strategy to attack neighborhood blight and train jail prisoners for productive employment following their release, by using prisoner labor to tear down abandoned houses that erode property values and, in many cases, become magnets ...
The father and mother of a mentally ill California prisoner who died at the Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) have filed suit against a host of prison and Amador County, California officials, alleging that their son’s death was the direct result of being pepper sprayed and then deliberately neglected when ...
Prisoners in Texas and their families are still feeling the impact of a botched Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) policy change in 2012 that led to the destruction of documents for some 86,000 parole-eligible prisoners, whose files were incomplete when reviewed by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. ...
Stanley Richards could be called the face of reform at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex. On May 27, 2015, Richards was appointed to the city’s Board of Correction by a unanimous vote. What makes his appointment unique is that he is a former prisoner. Released in 1991, he ...
On April 4, 2014, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) was ordered to pay $7,600 to former prisoner Robin N. Gavinski for holding him too long in prison. Gavinski was serving three sentences that were supposed to run concurrently; due to an administrative error, however, DOC employees calculated one of ...
A study conducted by the Correctional Association (CA) of New York revealed that the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) is drastically deficient when it comes to identifying prisoners infected with HIV and the Hepatitis C virus (HCV). Moreover, even for infected prisoners who have been identified ...
