by Paul Wright
Recent years have seen efforts by a lot of well-meaning people referring to prisoners as “people in prison” or “incarcerated people,” former prisoners as “returning citizens,” “formerly incarcerated people” and more. Pretty much since we started publishing PLN in 1990 we have used the terms prisoners, ...
by Paul Wright
For long time readers of PLN, this month’s issue may seem like déjà vu all over again with its national coverage of prisoners being raped, especially by guards and prison staff. For many years I wrote the “News in Brief” column and would print out the ...
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story on prison’s using doctors with revoked or suspended medical licenses is an ongoing story for PLN readers. Given the six figure salaries prison doctors are paid it seems odd that the government can’t find any medical staff to hire that don’t kill, rape ...
by Paul Wright
This year marks the 25th anniversaries of both the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and the Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) which were both signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. We have been reporting extensively on the impact and effects ...
by Paul Wright
The good news seems to be that COVID-19 rates in prisons and jails, like the rest of the country, appear to be decreasing as vaccination rates increase. Visiting is being restored in many states and there seems to be some return to pre-pandemic normalcy. At the Human ...
by Paul Wright
The past year and a half has consumed news coverage with the coronavirus pandemic. Since March of last year Prison Legal News has shifted its news coverage to COVID-19 and its impact on prisoners and the criminal justice system. With the vaccine roll outs we may be ...
by Paul Wright
This issue of Prison Legal News marks our 31st anniversary since we first began publishing in May, 1990. During that time period we have witnessed many changes in the criminal justice system, pretty much all of them negative for prisoners and criminal defendants alike. (We belatedly ...
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story is on jail suicides, with a particular focus on Massachusetts. Sadly, this is a topic we have covered extensively over the past 30 years. Despite extensive study and research on the causes of suicide, rates generally increased with the explosion of the prison ...
by Paul Wright
Since our inception, the Human Rights Defense Center, the publisher of Prison Legal News, has opposed the death penalty. The saying that capital punishment means that those without the capital get the punishment well illustrates the inherent unfairness of how the death penalty is applied in ...
For decades, prisoncrats have claimed that if they were given an opportunity to rectify complaints by prisoners there would be no need for litigation. Everyone involved knows that is a lie. Since the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) in 1996, prisoners must exhaust internal administrative grievance systems ...
