Sex Offender "Treatment" in Washington State, In Whose Best Interest?

By Dan Pens

The Washington State Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) currently ensconced in TRCC receives national acclaim. They publish statistics which portray them as an unqualified success story. Taken at face value the statistics are impressive. The overall recidivism ...

A SAGA OF SHAME is a 20-page tabloid dealing with racial discrimination and the death penalty in the U.S. in its current and historical concerts. A lot of the information has been presented before in other publications and PLN has reported some of the statistics in previous issues. Saga of ...

Loss Of Legal Materials States Claim For Denial Of Access To The Courts
A prisoner's allegation that prison officials had accepted and lost materials essential to his pursuit of post-conviction relief stated a claim for denial of access to the court, even if the materials were not "irreplaceable." The Court ...

Disclosure Of AIDS Condition Violates Right To Privacy
The federal district court in New Jersey ruled that disclosure of a person's medical condition, especially exposure to or infection with HIV (the virus suspected of causing AIDS), is disclosure of a "personal matter" in violation of the constitutionally protected right to ...

As the debate wages over the best way to rid the country of drugs, a government report said research shows drug treatment has proven effective against repeated use and drug-related crime.

The government's triennial report to Congress, Drug Abuse and Drug Abuse Research, released January 16, called drug abuse a ...

Avenue To Attack Habitual Criminal Conviction
On January 8th the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision that a court can be ordered to review the constitutionality of a prior conviction before a person found guilty of a new crime is sentenced as a repeat offender. The case stemmed from ...

Getting Tough Approach To Crime Fails To Produce Results
By Ed Mead

Anthony P. Travisono is the Director of the American Correctional Association (ACA), a national organization consisting of prison wardens and other high-level correction officials. He also edits On The Line, the ACA's official newsletter. When writing his Editorial ...

Toward Creating A More Equal Sentencing System
In 1981 the Washington state legislature enacted the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) in order to change from a rehabilitation based system of corrections to a punishment oriented sentencing policy. Two additional reasons for the change, as set out in RCW 9.94A.010 (2) and ...

Editorial Comments
By Ed Mead

Here is another edition of our newsletter. We hope that you find it is a good one. The Prison/Community Alliance is going to be working toward getting rid of this state's parole board and will need all of the help that can be generated. If ...

The Prisoner Rights Union (PRU) in California in 1989 started a survey to determine the prevalence of extreme forms of discipline in the American prison system. To do so they mailed out questionnaires to prisoners in 41 states across the U.S. Based on useable returns from 650 respondents and a ...

The U.S. now has the highest recorded rate of imprisonment of any nation in the world, according to a new report by The Sentencing Project. With over one million inmates in prison and jail, the U.S. surpasses both South Africa and the Soviet Union.

The study also found that black ...

By Paul Wright

As we were preparing this issue of PLN we received several articles describing the horrible conditions of control units in Florida, New Jersey and Marion, Illinois. Most Washington prisoners are familiar with the local version of this phenomenon: the Intensive Management Units (IMU). What these types of ...

Hey - I got issue #2 of PLN tonight. I read the article on sex offenders and thought it was excellent. Not only was I not offended, I agree with you 100%.

Look - we all have our prejudices as to what is an "okay" crime and what isn't. I ...

By Paul Wright

The 101st Congress has passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA). What the RJA does is prohibit racism in the application of the death penalty. As currently applied a disproportionate number of the men and women on death row across the U.S. are Black, Hispanic or Na¬tive Americans. ...