This month?s cover story examines the environmental woes, and history, of one old prison in Colorado. In many respects this is a microcosm of many prisons in the United States. The negative aspects of prisons on the environment itself, and on the prisoners housed in them, has rarely been explored ...
Long time readers of PLN may recall that from 1996 through 2004 John Midgley wrote our very popular Pro Se Tips and Tactics column with information on how prisoners could master civil procedure to vindicate their civil rights in court. John stopped writing the column when he was promoted to ...
This month's cover story is on what goes in and comes out of prisons in the way of water and sewage. While a lot of attention is paid to the more dramatic effects of prison overcrowding, such as violence, inadequate medical care, prisoners sleeping in gyms and store rooms, etc.; ...
In the course of attending events in different parts of the country I am often asked "which prison system is the worst?" That's a tough question to answer because it depends on how you define "bad". Medical neglect in prisons and jails is pretty awful around the country, regardless of ...
About the only bad thing about publishing a magazine for 17 years is that invariably we lose friends and supporters. Noting the passing of friends is the sole thing I dislike about editing PLN. Moreso when we are talking about some of the unsung heroes and heroines of the prisoners? ...
This month?s cover story reports on the public health implications which the willful neglect of prisoner health care issues in this country has on the overall population. This has been an ongoing topic of coverage in PLN over the past 17 years. Sadly, nothing has changed for the better. As ...
We recently relaunched the Prison Legal News website. Like our previous website, this one contains all articles that have ever appeared in PLN, all copies of PLN in a searchable database format, in PDF format, thousands of court cases, briefs, pleadings, settlements, reports, publications, links to hundreds of other websites ...
As this issue goes to press we are finishing the revamped PLN website which will have all the great content our previous site did as well as still more briefs, publications, reports and cases than our previous website did. The feedback we received from users about our old site was ...
If this issue of PLN has a theme, it is one of the ongoing struggle against government secrecy and the suppression of free speech rights of both the media and prisoners alike. Whether it involves secret court proceedings, closed to media and the public alike, or silencing prisoner writers who ...
This issue marks PLN?s 17th anniversary and our 205th issue since we first started publishing in May, 1990. This makes PLN the longest published, by far, independent prisoner publication in US history. About 95% of PLN?s articles remain written by current or former prisoners around the country. In this time ...
