Welcome to the 26th anniversary issue of Prison Legal News! I would like to thank all the people around the country who have helped PLN and the Human Rights Defense Center grow and prosper over the past 26 years. This includes all of our subscribers, readers, funders, advertisers, book purchasers, ...
Recent decades have seen the rise of not only private, for-profit prisons but also the privatization of other aspects of corrections systems, most notably the provision of medical care. As with prison privatization, the only people who have benefited are the owners of and investors in the companies. Everyone else ...
One downside of publishing a magazine like Prison Legal News for 26 years is that in some respects we are not covering a one-off or isolated story but rather are reporting an ongoing and developing issue. This month’s cover story about the epic abuse, corruption and brutality in the Los ...
For the past 26 years PLN has reported on conditions within the Florida Department of Corrections that have generally ranged from horrible to abysmal in a system long characterized by medical neglect, brutality, corruption and murder by prison officials, and long-time indifference or outright hostility by the governor and legislature. ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Welcome to the first issue of PLN for 2016 as we enter our 26th year of continuous publishing. This month’s cover story about the rise of mass incarceration is something of a road map to how we got to where we are now. To ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
With the holidays upon us, people outside of prison often think of holiday meals as times of joy and thankfulness for what they have in their lives. Where a shared meal around a dinner table with family and friends is viewed as a time ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
As this issue of PLN goes to press the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that on October 22, 2015, they will be issuing rules regulating all prison and jail telephone calls, including setting rate caps for debit and prepaid calls of $.11 per minute at prisons and $.14 to $.22 per minute at jails, plus banning most ancillary fees, among other reforms. We will report the details in an upcoming issue of PLN.
The critical point is that after the prison phone issue has languished on its docket for 12 years, the FCC has acted. In 2011, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which publishes Prison Legal News, founded the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice with the Center for Media Justice and Working Narratives, with the goal of reducing the cost of prison and jail telephone calls. We are proud that has finally happened, and we would like to thank all of our readers and supporters over the past four years who have donated to and supported our efforts. The FCC also announced it will be revisiting prison phone issues within the next two years.
But more work remains to be ...
October 23, 2015
From HRDC executive director Paul Wright:
Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission took a historic step by capping the cost of prison and jail phone calls. For decades, prisoners and their families have been ruthlessly exploited by telecom companies and their government collaborators who monetize human contact and want people to pay as much as possible to communicate with their loved ones in prison. Since 1992 the Human Rights Defense Center has been in the vanguard challenging these exploitive practices and seeking to end them. In 2011 we co-founded the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, with the express goal of getting the FCC to end abusive phone rates for prisoners and their families. We have poured thousands of staff hours into the Campaign, as well as many trips to DC to meet with FCC staff, and it paid off.
The FCC action significantly reduces the cost of prison phone calls to no more than $.11 per minute and also reduces the cost of calls made from jails. It bans all but three ancillary fees charged by the telecom industry to bolster their profit margins and bottom lines. Most of the reforms will go into effect within 90 days ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Next April will mark the 20th anniversary of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) – the continuing legacy of President Clinton and Congress which has done more to undermine the rule of law and constitutional rights since the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.
When the PLRA was enacted in 1996, prisons and jails in some 42 states were under court injunctions or consent decrees designed to remedy unconstitutional conditions of confinement. In one of the most reactionary pieces of legislation in several generations (today no one remembers that Congress passed and Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act to ensure gays and lesbians could not be married at the same time the PLRA was enacted, and while DOMA has since been found unconstitutional, prisoners remain screwed), the PLRA served to ensure prisoners face extraordinary barriers just to have their constitutional claims heard by a federal court. No one else in America needs to exhaust an administrative remedy system set up by the very same people who are violating the Constitution in order to have their claims heard in federal court.
While the propaganda of the time claimed ...
From the Editor
by Paul Wright
Since PLN first began publishing in 1990 we have reported on parole systems and their inherent arbitrariness and cruelty. Today there is a lot of rhetoric about a “liberal-conservative alliance” on criminal justice issues and the need for reform. This is hardly the first ...
