Welcome to the first issue of PLN for 2009. For the new year we are introducing a new quarterly column in PLN called Prison Health and Self Care by Dr. Michael Cohen. Dr. Cohen is a doctor who has extensive experience working with prisoners in state prisons and jails and ...
With the election past there has been a change in the faces of government and the election of Barak Obama is a historic occasion in US history with the election of a black man to the presidency for the first time. Whether there is any positive change on the criminal ...
Each day the news brings more headlines about the turmoil in financial markets and the collapse of speculative financial devices that were apparently too complex for their buyers to understand (we can all recall the junk bonds of the 1980s), the financial bail out of Wall Street bankers and the ...
This issue’s cover story on the rights and treatment of gay and lesbian prisoners stems from the dearth of such coverage everywhere else. In February of this year I was a speaker on a panel in Manhattan on the rights of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender prisoners. A few months ...
The link between solitary confinement and mental illness is well known, well documented and largely ignored by the prison officials and policy makers who decide to imprison tens of thousands of American prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day for months, years and decades on end. PLN has frequently ...
One of the little noted facts and realities of the massive explosion of mass imprisonment, and the corresponding increase in money spent on prisons and jails, is the inherent corruption that accompanies it. This month’s cover story on the Oregon DOC’s corrupt food manager, Fred Monem, is unusual only in ...
Every issue of PLN is filled with news, court rulings and investigative reporting on prisons and jails around the country. Periodically we like to bring readers political analysis of how and why the current phenomenon of mass imprisonment came about. The United States stands alone in the world today with ...
The past several months have been even busier than usual for PLN. In addition to getting the magazine published each month we have seen an upsurge in censorship activities in prisons and jails around the country.
As noted in this issue of PLN, after 5 years of banning books ordered ...
This issues marks PLN?s 19th anniversary of continuous publishing and we have now published 219 consecutive issues of PLN. Few magazines even publish ten issues, much less a hundred. Moreso considering the obstacles PLN has faced since it?s inception of being published behind bars, with a $50 budget, etc.
When ...
Over the years, PLN has frequently reported on the efforts of legislators and prisoncrats to seize money from prisoners, the vast majority of whom are poor. This trend has sharply accelerated in recent years. The cover story of this issue of PLN is excerpted from the recent PLN anthology, Prison ...
