The Pelican Bay Information Project (PBIP) is an independent citizens' group that has formed in response to the complaints of prisoners. The group is composed of prison visitors, writers, ex-prisoners, lawyers and human rights advocates. Since Pelican Bay's 1250 cell Security Housing Unit (SHU) opened in 1989, prisoner rights advocates ...

By Ed Mead

Preliminary figures from the FBI's recently released Uniform Crime Reports show violent crimes reported to police last year increased by 5 percent, continuing a seven-year trend of increases. The rate of violent crime per capita rose to the highest level in three decades, and the overall crime ...

Trafficking In Children Condemned

From: World Perspectives

The UN Commission on Human Rights, located in Geneva, has released a report on child slavery, child trafficking and child prostitution. It says 10 years ago the number of children aged 10-14 who were victimized in one or more of these ways was ...

Cold Iron , an anthology of writing and art by and about lesbian, gay and queer prisoners, is seeking submissions. Any work that reflects the experiences and concerns of lesbian, gay and queer prisoners, their lovers, families or friends will be considered.

"I am especially interested in articles that are ...

By Dan Pens

I was only five.

My mind didn't belong entirely to me yet. So much of it belonged to the world, especially to whomever I was with, and double-especially to adults, and triple especially to Grandpa 'cause he knew everything. He was so large and wise and funny ...

By Ed Mead

When the PLN first started out we experienced a lot of banning at various prisons, both in Washington State and elsewhere. One such event took place when the second issue of the paper was banned from both the Penitentiary and the Reformatory here in Washington. Paul and ...

By N.J. Community Relations Program American Friends Service Committee

In 1975, after the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the prisoner's rights movement, Trenton State Prison in New Jersey established an administrative isolation unit for politically dissident prisoners. The Management Control Unit, which now has ...

By Adrian Lomax

Steven Asherman was doing a fourteen-year bit for manslaughter in the Connecticut prison system. After he had served three years, the keep [guards] approved Asherman's application for Supervised Home Release. SHR is not parole, but an intensive supervision program similar to those involving electronic monitoring. Asherman lived ...

From: World Perspectives

Amnesty International (AI) has launched an appeal to governments around the world to stop the rape and sexual abuse of women during detention.

In a recently published report AI said women all over the world are subjected to sexual abuse by police and prison officers. This type ...

Pleas For Medical Attention Ignored

By Adrian Lomax

[Editorial Note :While medical neglect by our captors is nothing new, we are printing this piece because of the commonness of the events described, not because it is "news " to those of us on the inside .]

On the evening of ...

Publications To Read

By Ed Mead

You can't expect to understand the world and its political processes unless you have accurate information on these subjects. The Middle East, for example, is an important area of concern to the people of this nation - we've just fought a war there. But ...

By Adrian Lomax

Ayear ago bills were introduced in both houses of the Wisconsin legislature that would have changed the state's public records law so that prisoners would no longer have any right to inspect government records, including those maintained by the Department of Corrections. The bills were introduced, at ...

By Robert Pierce

In the field of law, books that deal with an overall view of a topic, those that are used in teaching law, or that are encyclopedic in nature, are known as secondary resource materials. These secondary resources are essential to the jailhouse lawyer when developing strategies on ...

By Paul Wright

Welcome to another issue of the PLN. We encourage our readers to submit articles and information about happenings in their areas so we can publish them in the paper. However, what some folks have done recently is send us bundles of documents with no background information. For ...

By John Midgley, Attorney At Law

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly has ruled in the Powell case that SHB 1457 is ex post facto as applied to Mr. Powell's first-degree murder sentence. The state has been directed to determine Mr. Powell's parole eligibility under the terms of the "old ...

Washington's Prisons To Reach 10,000

Washington State's jammed prisons soon will hold a record 10,000 inmates, and the state is stepping up construction of more cells to head off the unrest that often comes with overcrowding.

"We've been pretty lucky that we haven't had problems," such as violence caused by ...

Alfred Flowers is a Louisiana state prisoner who was handcuffed and shackled after a disciplinary hearing, then beaten and kicked by three prison guards without provocation. Flowers suffered a sprained ankle, small abrasions and limited movement range of his limbs as a result of the attack. He then filed suit ...

On March 27, 1992, the South African government announced a temporary moratorium on executions in Pretoria. The Minister of Justice said that executions have been suspended until an interim bill of rights has been agreed upon in negotiations between the government and the African National Congress (ANC), who are currently ...

South Carolina prisoners have filed a class action suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and 47 U.S.C.201(b) and 202(a) of the Federal Communications Act. The defendants are officials in the South Carolina DOC and the U.S. Sprint telephone company.

The prisoners allege that the telephone company practice of announcing to would ...