By Paul Wright
In June of 1993 Global Tel-Link won a 3 year contract with the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections to install about 875 phones and handle all collect calls placed from the state's 16 adult and juvenile facilities. The company, which mentioned the "profitability of prisons" ...
From the Editor
By Paul Wright
Welcome to another issue of PLN . First, please accept my apologies for the late arrival of the March issue. In the past we have mailed PLN from Seattle on the last Tuesday of the month. We have now switched our printing and mailing ...
By Paul Wright
In 1978 prisoners at the Washington State Reformatory (WSR) in Monroe, WA filed suit over inhumane prison conditions at the prison. In 1981 prisoners and the DOC entered into a consent decree whereby the prisoners dismissed the suit in exchange for, among other things, an agreement that ...
By Paul Wright
For every prisoner and the relative, friend or loved one of a prisoner, visiting is an issue of paramount importance. While most prison officials pay lip service to the idea that visiting is important and that they want to do everything to enable prisoners to maintain ties ...
By Paul Wright
Since we began publishing PLN we have reported on struggle and conditions affecting political prisoners of diverse movements, groups and parties around the world, to include Palestinian, Irish, Puerto Rican, New Afrikan, Anti-imperialist and Peruvian prisoners to name a few. Generally this reporting has met with interest ...
By Paul Wright
Most prisoner civil rights claims are filed by prisoner litigants who are representing themselves because they either cannot afford or cannot obtain counsel to do so. They can rarely afford to pay the relevant filing fees normally required to begin litigation and thus proceed in forma pauperis ...
By Paul Wright
Jail Suicide Update is a quarterly newsletter published by the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives. While focusing primarily on suicide prevention in jails its information is useful for prison administrators seeking to prevent suicides in prison as well as attorneys litigating custodial suicides. The most recent ...
By Paul Wright
On October 5, 1993, National Lawyers Guild (NLG) president Peter Erlinder and attorney Leonard Weinglass filed petitions with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Abimael Guzman, the imprisoned chairman of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and several hundred PCP prisoners of war. The ...
From the Editor
By Paul Wright
Welcome to another issue of PLN. You will notice that we are still experimenting with different formats. Our goal is to improve our appearance and at the same time make it more readable, just like the "real" magazines. Our last issue had four columns ...
By Paul Wright
This is a case which challenged numerous conditions of confinement at the Oregon State Penitentiary's Disciplinary Segregation Unit (DSU), which is a control unit. The ruling does not bode well for prisoners seeking to question such conditions.
The sole plaintiff is Samuel Lemaire. The district court largely ...
