Over almost 23 years of publishing PLN, the saddest duty I have had as editor has been noting the passing of many of our friends and supporters. One person who liked my PLN obituaries, and thought I wrote them well, was my father, Rollin Wright, who was also PLN’s publisher ...
This is the last issue of PLN for 2012. By now, all PLN subscribers should have received our annual fundraising appeal; if you have not yet donated, and can afford to do so, then please do. This year we are asking our readers for donations to help support the Campaign ...
This month’s cover story on the bail bonding industry focuses on one of the lesser discussed but equally important economic players in the U.S. prison industrial complex. One of the main causes of jail overcrowding in many local jurisdictions tends not to be mundane things like crime but rather bail ...
Over the past 22 years Prison Legal News has been represented by dozens of lawyers around the country in a variety of cases, mostly dealing with censorship and public records requests. We have met many if not most of our attorneys because they subscribed to PLN, based on their interest ...
“I never ask for mercy and seek no one’s sympathy. I would never, as was once needlessly feared in this court, be a fugitive from justice in this country, only a seeker of it.” – Conrad Black
Conrad Black, born in Canada, is a member of the British House of ...
This month’s cover story continues our series of interviews with some of the more prominent survivors of the American criminal justice system (for our first interview with former prisoner and famous movie actor Danny Trejo, see the August 2011 issue of PLN).
Prior to his incarceration Conrad Black was, in ...
When Prison Legal News published its first issue in May 1990, it was less than one month after Washington state became the first in the nation to enact a civil commitment law for sex offenders. PLN has reported on this issue ever since as such laws have spread around the ...
The Prison Phone Justice Campaign is gaining momentum nationally. As announced in last month’s issue, a number of organizations, including the Human Rights Defense Center (the parent organization of Prison Legal News) have launched a campaign to end the practice of price gouging prisoners and their families for the cost ...
For the past 22 years, PLN has been at the forefront of reporting on the gouging of prisoners’ families by prisons, jails and the telecommunications industry as prisoncrats and corporations profit by charging families exorbitant phone rates for the ability to communicate with their incarcerated loved ones. PLN’s groundbreaking report ...
This month celebrates PLN’s 22nd year of publication. One constant in our news coverage for the duration of our existence has been the exploitation of prison slave labor. Some things change, others do not. Until fairly recently most farm work in the U.S. was done by ruthlessly exploited American laborers ...
