DEDICATED TO PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS

OCTOBER 17, 2018

Dear HRDC Supporter,
Every year we conduct an annual fundraiser in the
fall because our income from magazine
subscriptions and book sales does not cover the
expenses for all the advocacy work we do on
behalf of prisoners, their families and the victims
of police state violence and exploitation. We
receive very little in the way of foundation
funding and rely on individual donors—people
like you—who can and do make a difference by donating to the
Human Rights Defense Center.

Still shot from American Jail, a 2018 CNN film by Academy
Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams exploring the
forces that fuel America's sprawling prison system.

We have had a very busy year. Last December we launched a new magazine, Criminal Legal News, to expand
our news coverage of the criminal justice system from beginning to end; less than a year later, CLN already
has close to 1,500 subscribers! Our social media presence on Twitter, Facebook and our daily e-newsletter
continues to grow as we expand our advocacy reach. We also launched a new public records and government
transparency project.
But publishing is not enough. We want to make sure that all our readers, especially those in prisons and jails,
can receive and read the magazines we publish and the books we distribute. Since the very first issue of PLN
was published in May 1990, we have faced censorship by government officials who are not pleased with our
coverage of the criminal justice system. To date, none have been as fanatical in their censorship as the Florida
Department of Corrections (FDOC). Since 2009, the FDOC has censored Prison Legal News—and now
Criminal Legal News—statewide, claiming that our advertisements for pen pals, postage stamps and discount
phone services somehow pose a threat to prison security. We filed suit in 2010 and went to trial before U.S.
District Court Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee in 2015, who ruled the censorship of PLN was justified by
those unsupported claims, though the FDOC had violated our due process rights. We appealed, and in May
2018 the Eleventh Circuit upheld Judge Walker’s order.
With your help and support we have taken this fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. On September 19, 2018, our
petition for certiorari was docketed. On October 19, at least 10 briefs on behalf of more than 100 amicus
curiae, or friends of the court, will be filed urging the Supreme Court to hear our appeal and reverse the
Eleventh Circuit. HRDC’s legal team has spent pretty much the entire summer working on the cert petition
and rounding up amicus partners and attorneys to help ensure we have the best possible chance of getting our

P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460
(561) 360-2523
Email: pwright@prisonlegalnews.org

case heard and winning on the merits. The amount of time, energy and resources that has gone into fighting
this case for the past nine years is incredible, and we have only been able to do it with your ongoing support.
Why don’t we just get rid of the ads in PLN and CLN? As with most media publications, our subscription rates
alone do not cover the cost of publishing the magazines. Like every other publication, we rely on advertisers to
help fund and subsidize our editorial content; the ads also allow us to keep our subscription rates low for
prisoners as well as inform them about products and services they may find useful. But this attack by Florida
prison officials is directed specifically at PLN and CLN. Other publications with liquor, car or credit card ads,
or even ads for guns, are not censored by the FDOC—though prisoners can’t have any of those advertised
items, either. The FDOC is using our ads as a pretext for censorship.
Our coverage of the FDOC reflects the brutal reality that Florida prisoners experience on a daily basis. Are we
really surprised that a prison system whose guards scald, starve and beat prisoners to death with impunity are
also hostile to the independent media that reports on such abuses? We have assembled an all-star team to
represent us as we seek review in the Supreme Court. Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement and former
White House Associate Counsel and our current partner at Dechert, Mike McGinley represent HRDC in our
petition for writ of certiorari. Paul has argued and won more cases before the Supreme Court than any other
living attorney. Some of the largest and best law firms, including Covington Burling, Perkins Coie, Gunster,
Goldstein & Russell, Wilmer Hale, Kirkland & Ellis, Davis Wright Tremaine, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher &
Flom, Clinton Brook & Peed, and Dechert are representing HRDC or our amicus partners in briefs in support
of our petition for review.
Please make a donation to help support us in this ongoing fight; we have not given up, and neither have our
Florida readers. This nine-year battle has been made possible thanks to the support we received from people
like you—people who value the First Amendment and believe a free press has a role to play in a democracy
which is also the world’s largest jailer.
We can win with your support! Please donate whatever you can afford to help us fight for a free press, and let
your friends know about our efforts to oppose censorship by Florida prison officials. If you can’t make a
contribution at this time, please consider getting or extending a PLN or CLN subscription or purchasing books
from HRDC and encouraging your friends and family to do so, too.
We are doing much more than just fighting for freedom of the press and opposing censorship by prison
officials. In June 2018, HRDC attorneys filed a lawsuit against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and
the School Board for holding children charged as adults in solitary confinement cells for up to 23 hours a day
at the county jail and depriving them of an education to boot. Many of the children subjected to these horrific
conditions of confinement have some degree of intellectual or developmental disability.
We also filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of Vincent Gaines, a mentally ill African American prisoner who
starved to death at a Florida prison. Private health care company Corizon is a defendant in that case, for their
role in allowing Mr. Gaines to starve while in his isolation cell.
HRDC litigators are known for cutting-edge lawsuits filed around the country. When approached about
stopping the abuse to children held in solitary at the Palm Beach County jail, we decided to take action.
Florida, where HRDC is located, is a frontline state in the war against mass incarceration. It has one of the
highest rates of imprisonment in the world, a truly horrific, unaccountable and opaque prison and jail system, a
plethora of private prison companies (the headquarters of JPay and private prison operator GEO Group are
both within 70 miles of HRDC’s office), and a long history of racial discrimination and abuse toward its
minority citizens.

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We are able to take action to challenge these abuses due to the donations we receive from people like you. We
do not get much in the way of grant or foundation funding. Virtually all the financial support we receive
comes from individual donations from our readers and supporters. HRDC is a lean, efficient operation. Every
dollar you donate to HRDC will go further and get far more bang for the buck than it will with any other
criminal justice reform organization or group. With your support, we have been able to build a formidable
litigation and advocacy team that can take on large, complex litigation against prisons and jails, large or small,
anywhere in the country. The next time the impoverished mother of a developmentally disabled child calls us
and asks for help because her child is in solitary confinement, we want to be able to do something about it and
not say ”sorry, we lack the resources to help you.” Your donations allow us to take those calls and swing into
action, as we did in Palm Beach County.
But wait—we are doing a lot more! Our annual report for 2017 is enclosed, which provides a detailed
overview of the depth and breadth of HRDC’s activities. We don’t have room to include every media
appearance or mention we receive, and we only list the conferences where HRDC staff are speakers or
presenters. When conferences or events anywhere in the country need knowledgeable speakers, we are there.
What else do your donations help support? Anytime a reporter or a media outlet contacts HRDC for
background information, a quote or an on-camera or on-air interview concerning a criminal justice-related
topic, someone knowledgeable about the brutal and exploitive U.S. justice system will be available to
promptly speak with them. We never turn down a media request. The media highlights in our 2017 annual
report will give you an idea of how the national news media views us, from Newsweek to the New York Times.
Our publishing activities are self-explanatory. You received this mailing because you subscribe to PLN and/or
CLN. We don’t need to tell you about the quality of our coverage and reporting, which brings you news that no
one else does or can. Last year we asked for donations to help us hire a staff investigative reporter. You came
through and we hired Steve Horn, who has done a fantastic job of bringing our readers bigger and better
stories on issues ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media. You don’t need to ask where your
donations are going; you’re reading them in every issue of PLN and CLN.
Additionally, a summary of our litigation docket is included in our 2017 annual report. From our First
Amendment censorship cases around the country to our public records lawsuits and more, we are fighting for
freedom of the press and transparent government everywhere. From Florida to California, Arizona to Illinois.
Additionally, our lawsuits against JPay and debit card companies like Rapid Financial and NUMI seek to end
the financial exploitation of prisoners and their families.
Please give whatever you can afford, and consider becoming an HRDC sustaining donor. We are in this fight
for the long haul and need your support to continue fighting! HRDC is an efficient operation. We leverage our
limited resources by working with other non-profits and law firms to be able to successfully take on these
important issues. Your support makes it possible; no one else does so much with so little.
Please donate to help us keep fighting for justice on every level. If you don’t, who will?
In Struggle,

Paul Wright
Executive Director, HRDC

3

HRDC 2018 ANNUAL FUNDRAISER
Please Help Support
the
Human Rights Defense Center!
The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which publishes Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, cannot
fund its operations through subscriptions and book sales alone. We rely on donations from our supporters!
HRDC conducts only one annual fundraiser; we don’t bombard our readers with donation requests, we only
ask that if you are able to contribute something to our vital work, then please do so. Every dollar counts and
is greatly appreciated and will be put to good use. No donation is too small, or too big!

Where does your donation go? Here’s some of what we’ve done in the past year:


We filed a lawsuit against the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office in Florida for holding juvenile
offenders in solitary confinement for extended periods of time, and denying them educational
programs. The class-action complaint was filed in June 2018.



HRDC filed suit in federal court in August 2018 over the death of Florida state prisoner Vincent
Gaines, who died of starvation after his mental health condition was ignored by prison officials.
The suit names the Florida Dept. of Corrections and Corizon Health.



We filed suit against the Illinois DOC in February 2018, for censoring PLN and books distributed
by HRDC to Illinois prisoners, including at the Big Muddy and Decatur Correctional Centers. We
also filed public records lawsuits against GEO Group and Correct Care Solutions this year.

With your help we can do much more! Please send your donation to:
Human Rights Defense Center, P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460
Or call HRDC’s office at 561-360-2523 and use your credit card to donate.
Or visit our websites at prisonlegalnews.org or criminallegalnews.org, and click on the “Donate” link.

You can mail a check or money order to:
Human Rights Defense Center, P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460
Or call HRDC’s office at 561-360-2523 and use your credit card,
Or visit HRDC online at www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org and click on the donation link.
Remember — the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) is a
Section 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible!

Yes! I want to help support HRDC — here is my special donation of:
_____$25 _____$50 _____$100 _____$250 ____$500 _____$1,000 _____ Other
Note: If you don’t want a book premium for your donation of $100 or more, we’ll donate a copy of
The Habeas Citebook or Prison Education Guide to a prison library on your behalf.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

Credit card donors please fill out the following form
 I want to make a one-time contribution of $____________ to HRDC, charged to my credit card!
 I want to contribute a fixed amount to HRDC each month! I authorize the Human Rights Defense
Center to charge $______________ on my credit card every month until I give notice to stop, or until my
total donation amount of $______________ has been charged to my card, whichever comes first.
Print Name on Card: ______________________________________________________
Card Number: ___ ___ ___ ___ - ___ ___ ___ ___ - ___ ___ ___ ___ - ___ ___ ___ ___
Expiration Date: ____/____/____

Billing Zip Code for Card: _________

Security Code: ______

I authorize the Human Rights Defense Center to charge a total of $______________to my credit card,
which matches the instructions indicated above.
Cardholder Signature: _________________________________________ Date: ___________________
HRDC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and your donation is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
HRDC protects the privacy of its donors, and their names are not reported in our publication or on
our website.
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Please complete all applicable information to ensure delivery of any donation gifts. Thank you!
Name _____________________________________________________ Title _____________________
Organization __________________________________________________________________________
Address ____________________________________________________ Suite ____________________
Address ______________________________________________________________________________
City _______________________________ State _____________ Zip __________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________
Human Rights Defense Center, P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460 • (561) 360-2523 • fax (866) 735-7136
www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org • www.prisonlegalnews.org

Order Form

PLN Subscription Rates

Note: All purchases must be pre-paid.
Books (3 & 4 yr subscription specials: CIRCLE
one book or bonus issues, and DO NOT add S/H)

$ Amt.

Protecting Your Health and Safety
or 4 Bonus Issues (3-yr subscription offer)

Free

Prison Profiteers
or 6 Bonus Issues (4-yr subscription offer)

Free

Book Total (inc. all books bought separately)

________

Add 6% sales tax for Florida residents only

________

ADD $6.00 S/H to book-only orders UNDER $50

________

---------------------------------------------

PLN Subscriptions
6-month Subscription (Prisoners only)
1 yr Subscription (12 issues)
2 yr Subscription (24 plus 2 Bonus issues)

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3 yr Sub (Circle bonus book above or 4 Bonus issues)
4 yr Sub (Circle bonus book above or 6 Bonus issues)
Back Issue (after publication date) - $5.00 each

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Sample Issue (random date) - $5.00 each

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TOTAL Amount Enclosed:

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Address: ____________________________________
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MAIL PAYMENT AND THIS FORM TO:
Prison Legal News
P.O. Box 1151
Lake Worth, FL 33460
To purchase with Visa, MasterCard, Discover or
American Express, call: 561-360-2523
Or buy books and subscriptions online at:
www.prisonlegalnews.org

Subscription Rates
Prisoners
Individuals
Professionals/Entities

1 yr
$30
$35
$90

2 yrs
$60
$70
$180

3 yrs
$90
$105
$270

(Attorneys, govt. & professional agencies, prison libraries, etc.)

4 yrs
$120
$140
$360

Sample issue (random date) - $5.00 each
Back issue (after publication date) - $5.00 each
Six-month prisoner subscription for $18.00

Subscription Bonuses!
2 years - 2 bonus issues, for 26 monthly issues total.
3 years - 4 bonus issues (40 total) OR Protecting Your Health and
Safety (see book description on the other side of this brochure).
4 years - 6 bonus issues (54 total) OR Prison Profiteers (see descriptions on the other side of this brochure).

Dedicated to Protecting Human Rights
PLN is a project of the
Human Rights Defense Center

3 or 4-Year Subscription Book Offers!
Subscribe or renew for three years at the regular price
($90 for prisoners & $105 for individuals), and receive
as a FREE bonus, Protecting Your Health and Safety
or four bonus issues of PLN! (40 monthly issues total).
Indicate your choice on the Order Form.
Subscribe or renew for four years at the regular price
($120 for prisoners & $140 for individuals), and receive
as a FREE bonus, Prison Profiteers or 6 bonus issues
of PLN! (54 monthly issues total). Indicate your
choice on the Order Form.

Eastern State Penitentiary 1829-1971

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NO shipping charge for subscription bonus books!
NOTE: If you want the bonus issues of PLN instead of the
free book offer, please indicate that on the Order Form.

Contact Us for PLN’s Book List!
You can buy dozens of legal, social commentary, selfhelp books, and legal and regular dictionaries directly
from PLN’s book store! Ask us for a book list, or view
our selection online at:
www.prisonlegalnews.org/store
All subscription rates & bonus offers are effective as of 2-1-18.
No refunds after orders have been placed. Not responsible
for address changes after orders have been placed.

Charles Dickens visited Philadelphia’s Eastern
State Penitentiary in 1842 and he later wrote:
“The System is rigid, strict and hopeless ... and I
believe it to be cruel and wrong....I hold this slow
and daily tampering with the mysteries of the
brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.” The prison remained open for
129 years after Dickens condemned it as being
barbaric, and some of its inhumane practices still
continue to be used in prisons nationwide.
Tel: 555 555 5555

P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460
561-360-2523 • www.prisonlegalnews.org

“I truly appreciate all the efforts you put forth to safeguard
our Constitutional Rights.
From the heart I say ‘Thank
You’ on Behalf of us All!”
~ BL, Washington prisoner

P

rison Legal News is an independent, non-profit
72-page monthly publication that reports, reviews and analyzes court rulings and news related to
prisoners’ rights and criminal justice issues. PLN has a
national (U.S.) focus on state, federal and private
prison issues, with some international coverage.
PLN’s many thousands of subscribers and readers
include civil and criminal trial and appellate attorneys,
judges, public defenders, journalists, academics, paralegals, prisoners’ rights activists, students, family
members of prisoners, concerned individuals, politicians, other government officials and numerous local,
state and federal prisoners nationwide.
PLN is a vital link for prisoners who otherwise don’t
have access to current legal and prison-related news
and information.
“Invaluable resource for anyone wanting ‘user friendly’
information about current legal developments affecting
prisoners in the United States.”
~ Human Rights Watch, a long-time PLN subscriber

P

LN’s coverage of prison issues includes medical
neglect, disciplinary hearings, nutrition, living
conditions, excessive force, court access, censorship,
jail litigation, visiting, telephones, religious freedoms,
free speech, prison rape and sexual abuse, mental
health, attorney/client access, retaliation, the PLRA,
HIV and hepatitis C, control units, staff misconduct,
the death penalty, attorney fees and much more.
PLN Subscription Rates
Prisoners: $18 for 6 months or $30 per year
Non-incarcerated individuals: $35 per year
Professionals, attorneys, gov’t. agencies, libraries: $90 per year
Sample issue (random date): $5.00 each
Back issue (after publication date): $5.00 each

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ach monthly issue of PLN includes three different
types of reporting:
A cover story on a criminal justice-related issue.

Articles about individual and class-action prison and

jail-related lawsuits when they are filed, when a judgment is entered or the case settles, or when an appellate
court decision is issued. We also have news articles about
prison and criminal justice topics nationwide.

A “News In Brief” section that summarizes interesting
news stories across the U.S. and internationally.

Each issue of PLN also contains numerous advertisements
from businesses that provide prison-related personal and
legal services and books. PLN further sells dozens of selfhelp, social commentary and legal books.

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onations: PLN is a project of the non-profit Human
Rights Defense Center. Your tax-deductible donations support our advocacy, free speech and First Amendment litigation efforts on behalf of prisoners and publishers. PLN not only provides uncensored prison-related news,
but actively contests prison censorship that interferes with
the delivery of our publication or any other PLN materials
sent to prisoners. All donations further our goal of advocating for people imprisoned in U.S. detention facilities.
“Great source of information, especially in states such as
Arizona where the law libraries have been taken from
the inmates and replaced with paralegals.”
~ SB, Arizona prisoner

Special 4-year Subscription Offer!
Special 3-year Subscription Offer!
Free with a 3-year PLN subscription! Four bonus issues of
PLN (40 issues total) or a free book, Protecting Your
Health and Safety! Circle your bonus choice on the form
on the other side of this brochure (3-year subscription
rates: prisoners $90, individuals $105, professionals $270).
Protecting Your Health and Safety, by
Robert E. Toone. Published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 325 pages (2009).
$10.00 (free with a 3-year sub!). This book
explains some basic rights that prisoners
have in a jail or prison in the U.S. It deals
mainly with rights related to health and
safety, such as communicable diseases and abuse by
prison officials; it also explains how you can enforce your
rights to health and safety within the facility and, if necessary, in court through litigation. Buy separately $10.00

Free with a 4-year PLN subscription! Six bonus issues
of PLN (54 issues total) or Prison Profiteers! Circle
your choice on the form on the other side of this
brochure (4-year subscription rates: prisoners $120,
individuals $140, professionals $360). Note: Free
book option is for one book.
Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money
from Mass Incarceration, edited by Paul
Wright & Tara Herivel, New Press, 323
pages (2007). $24.95 (free with a 4-year
subscription!). This is the third in a series
of PLN anthologies that examines the reality of mass imprisonment in the U.S.
Prison Profiteers is unique from other books on the market because it exposes and discusses who profits and
benefits from mass imprisonment, rather than who is
harmed by the prison industrial complex and our nation’s
reliance on over-incarceration. Buy separately $24.95

You Can Buy These Books Separately!

Check out PLN’s website!

If you don’t want to purchase a 3 or 4-year subscription
to PLN, you can still purchase any of the bonus books
at the regular price. Just indicate which books you want
to buy on this page, then enter the total cost on the other
side of this brochure on the “Book Total” line of the
Order Form. Shipping is $6 per order (not per book), and
we offer FREE shipping on book orders of $50 or more!
To place a phone order, please call 561-360-2523. We also
accept book orders online, at www.prisonlegalnews.org.

PLN’s website, www.prisonlegalnews.org, includes
every issue of PLN published since 1990, as well as
thousands of other news articles, court rulings, a
brief bank with pleadings in prison and jail cases, a
collection of criminal justice reports and other publications, and much more! Most of our online content is free, and you can purchase access to all our
legal content, including verdicts and settlements.

Order Form

CLN Subscription Rates
Subscription Rates

Note: All purchases must be pre-paid.
Books (3 & 4 yr subscription specials: CIRCLE
one book or bonus issues, and DO NOT add S/H)

$ Amt.

Arrested: What to Do When Your Loved One’s in Jail

or 4 Bonus Issues (3-yr subscription offer)

Free

The Habeas Citebook (2nd ed.)
or 6 Bonus Issues (4-yr subscription offer)

Free

Book total (inc. all books bought separately)

________

Add 6% sales tax for Florida residents only

________

ADD $6.00 S/H to book-only orders UNDER $50

________

---------------------------------------------

CLN Subscriptions
6-month Subscription (Prisoners only) $28
1 yr Subscription (12 issues)
2 yr Subscription (24 plus 2 Bonus issues)

_________

3 yr Sub (Circle bonus book above or 4 Bonus issues)
4 yr Sub (Circle bonus book above or 6 Bonus issues)
Back Issue (after publication date) - $5.00 each

_________

Sample Issue (random date) - $5.00 each

_________

TOTAL Amount Enclosed:

_______

_________
_________

_________
_________

Send to:
Name: ____________________________________
DOC #: ____________________________________

Agency/Inst: ____________________________________
Address: ____________________________________
City/State/Zip: ____________________________________

MAIL PAYMENT AND THIS FORM TO:
Criminal Legal News
P.O. Box 1151
Lake Worth, FL 33460

1 yr

2 yrs

3 yrs

4 yrs

Prisoners/Individuals $48
Professionals/Entities $96

$96
$192

$144
$288

$192
$384

(Attorneys, govt. & professional agencies, prison libraries, etc.)

Sample issue (random date) - $5.00 each
Back issue (after publication date) - $5.00 each
Six-month prisoner subscription for $28.00

Criminal Legal News
Dedicated to Policing
the Police State

Subscription Bonuses!
2 years - 2 bonus issues, for 26 monthly issues total.
3 years - 4 bonus issues (40 total) OR Arrested: What to Do...
(see book description on the other side of this brochure).
4 years - 6 bonus issues (54 total) OR The Habeas Citebook (2nd ed.)
(see book description on the other side of this brochure).

3 or 4-Year Subscription Book Offers!
Subscribe or renew for three years at the regular price
($144 for prisoners & $288 for professionals), and receive as a FREE bonus, Arrested: What to Do..., or
four bonus issues of CLN! (40 monthly issues total).
Please indicate your choice on the Order Form.
Subscribe or renew for four years at the regular price
($192 for prisoners & $384 for professionals), and receive as a FREE bonus, The Habeas Citebook (2nd ed.)
or 6 bonus issues of CLN! (54 monthly issues total).
Please indicate your choice on the Order Form.

— Criminal

Legal News —

The people who bring you Prison Legal
News proudly announce the
introduction of its
companion publication,
Criminal Legal News

NO shipping charge for subscription bonus books!

Same timely, relevant, and practical legal
news and features as PLN

NOTE: If you want the bonus issues of CLN instead of the
free book offer, please indicate that on the Order Form.

BUT

Contact Us for CLN’s Book List!

CLN provides legal news you can use
about the criminal justice system prior to
confinement and post-conviction relief

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You can buy dozens of legal, social commentary, selfhelp books, and legal and regular dictionaries directly
from CLN’s book store! Ask us for a book list or view
our selection online at:
www.criminallegalnews.org/store

To purchase with Visa, MasterCard, Discover or
American Express, call: 561-360-2523

All subscription rates & bonus offers effective as of 2-1-18.

Or buy books and subscriptions online at:
www.criminallegalnews.org

No refunds after orders have been placed. Not responsible
for address changes after orders have been placed.

Tel: 555 555 5555

“STOP RESISTING”
and subscribe today!
P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460
561-360-2523 • www.criminallegalnews.org

E

ach monthly issue of CLN includes three different
types of reporting:
A cover story on a criminal justice-related issue.

News and legal articles and appellate court decisions about
criminal justice topics nationwide.

A “News In Brief” section that summarizes interesting
criminal justice related news stories across the U.S.

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riminal Legal News is a 48-page monthly print
publication published by the Human Rights
Defense Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit human rights
organization that zealously advocates, educates, and
litigates on issues pertaining to prisoners’ rights as well
as individuals going through the criminal justice system.
CLN and its well-known companion publication
Prison Legal News serve as vital links for prisoners
who otherwise don’t have access to current legal and
prison-related news and information.

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LN’s coverage of criminal justice issues includes, but is not limited to, criminal law and
procedure, police brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, habeas corpus relief, ineffective counsel, sentencing errors, militarization of police, surveillance
state, junk science, wrongful convictions, false confessions, witness misidentification, paid/incentivized
informants, search and seizure, right to remain silent, right to counsel, right to speedy trial, due process rights, and much more.

CLN Subscription Rates
Prisoners/Individuals: $48 per year *
Professionals, attorneys, govt. agencies, libraries: $96 per year
Sample issue (random date): $5.00 each
Back issue (after publication date): $5.00 each
* Prisoners can purchase a six-month subscription for $28.

Each issue of CLN also contains numerous advertisements
from businesses that provide prison-related personal and
legal services and books. CLN further sells dozens of selfhelp, social commentary and legal books.

Special 3-year Subscription Offer!
Free with a 3-year CLN subscription! Four
bonus issues of CLN (40 issues total) or a
free book, Arrested: What to Do When
Your Loved One’s in Jail! Circle your
bonus choice on the form on the other side
of this brochure (3-year subscription rates:
prisoners $146 / professionals $288).
Arrested: What to Do When Your Loved One’s in Jail, by
Wes Denham, 240 pages. $16.95 (free with a 3-year subscription!). Whether a defendant is charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct or first-degree murder, this is
an indispensable guide for those who want to support
their family members or friends who have been arrested
and are facing criminal charges. Buy separately: $16.95

You Can Buy These Books Separately!
If you don’t want to purchase a 3 or 4-year subscription
to CLN, you can still purchase either of the bonus books
at the regular price. Just indicate which books you want
to buy on this page, then enter the total cost on the other
side of this brochure on the “Book Total” line of the
Order Form. Shipping is $6 per order (not per book), and
we offer FREE shipping on book orders of $50 or more!
To place a phone order, please call 561-360-2523. We also
accept book orders online, at www.criminallegalnews.org.

D

onations: CLN is a project of the non-profit Human
Rights Defense Center. Your tax-deductible donations support our advocacy, free speech and First Amendment litigation efforts on behalf of prisoners and publishers. All donations further our goal of informing and educating our readers about relevant developments regarding the
ever-expanding police state and recent appellate court decisions on issues of criminal and constitutional law affecting
our readership as well as the general public.

Our mission at CLN is to educate and inform readers about their constitutional rights and relevant
developments in criminal law in an effort to provide practical knowledge that can be used at all
stages within the criminal justice system prior to
imprisonment and for post-conviction relief.

Special 4-year Subscription Offer!
Free with a 4-year CLN subscription! Six
bonus issues of CLN (54 issues total) or a free
book, The Habeas Citebook (2nd. ed)!
Circle your bonus choice on the form on the
other side of this brochure (4-year subscription rates: prisoners $192 / professionals
$384).
The Habeas Citebook: Ineffective Assistance of
Counsel-2nd Edition, by Brandon Sample & Alissa
Hull. Published by Prison Legal News Publishing, 275
pages (2016). $49.95 (free with a 4-year subscription!).
The Habeas Citebook is an invaluable and concise self-help
guide for prisoners seeking habeas relief based on claims
of ineffective assistance of counsel. Navigating the complex terrain of habeas law is never easy, and claiming
your lawyer screwed up is even more difficult. The Habeas Citebook is an essential resource for all jailhouse lawyers. Buy separately: $49.95
NOTE: No refunds on CLN subscription or book orders after
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addresses or address changes after orders have been placed.
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More Great Books for Sale!
The Habeas Citebook: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, 2nd ed. (2016)
by Brandon Sample, PLN Publishing, 275 pages, $49.95. This is an updated
version of PLN’s second book, by former federal prisoner Brandon Sample,
which extensively covers ineffective assistance of counsel
issues in federal habeas petitions.
2021
Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual, updated 4th ed. (2010), by John
Boston and Daniel Manville, Oxford Univ. Press, 928 pages. $39.95. The
premier, must-have “Bible” of prison litigation for current and aspiring jailhouse lawyers. If you plan to litigate a civil lawsuit involving
a prison or jail, this book is a must-have!
1077
Prison Education Guide, by Christopher Zoukis, PLN Publishing (2016),
269 pages. $49.95. Authored by PLN contributing writer Christopher Zoukis,
who is a strong advocate for prison education, this book includes up-to-date
information on pursuing educational courses by correspondence, including
high school, college, paralegal and religious studies. This title replaces the
Prisoners’ Guerrilla Handbook to Correspondence Programs, and includes an index of
accreditation organizations, job search resources and details
about obtaining financial aid.
2019

Purchase by phone with a Visa or Mastercard,
Amex or Discover Card: 561-360-2523
Or buy books and subscriptions online at
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PLN is a project of the
Human Rights Defense Center

Protecting Your Health and Safety, by Robert E. Toone, Southern Poverty
Law Center, 325 pages. $10.00. This book explains basic rights that prisoners
have in a jail or prison in the U.S. It deals mainly with rights related to health
and safety, such as communicable diseases and abuse by prison officials; it also
explains how you can enforce your rights within the facility
and, if necessary, in court through litigation.
1060
Disciplinary Self-Help Litigation Manual, by Daniel Manville, 355 pages.
$49.95. By the co-author of the Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual, this book
provides detailed information about prisoners’ rights in disciplinary hearings
and how to enforce those rights in court. Includes state-by-state case law on
prison disciplinary issues, as well as information about disciplinary proceedings
in the federal prison system. This is the third book published by PLN Publishing.
2017
How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim, by Atty. Joseph Matthews, 7th
edition, NOLO Press, 285 pages. $34.99. While not specifically intended for
prison-related personal injury cases, this book provides comprehensive information on how to handle personal injury and property damage claims arising
from accidents — including dealing with doctors, attorneys
and insurance companies
1075

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Check the box of the books you want to buy and use the Order
Form on the other side of this brochure to add up the cost of your
order. FREE SHIPPING for book orders OVER $50. There is a
$6.00 shipping charge for all other book orders.
Prison Profiteers, edited by Paul Wright and Tara Herivel, 323 pages. $24.95. This is the

third and latest book in a series of Prison Legal News anthologies that examines the reality of
mass imprisonment in America. (The other titles are The Celling of America & Prison Nation,
see below). Prison Profiteers is unique from other books because it exposes and discusses
who profits and benefits from mass imprisonment, rather than who is
harmed by it and how.
1063
Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor, edited by Tara Herivel and Paul
Wright, 332 pages. $35.95. PLN’s 2nd anthology exposes the dark side of
the ‘lock-em-up’ political agenda and legal climate in the U.S.
1041
The Celling of America, edited by Daniel Burton Rose, Dan Pens and Paul Wright, 264
pages. $22.95. PLN’s first anthology presents a detailed “inside” look at
the workings of the American criminal justice system.
1001
Everyday Letters for Busy People, by Debra Hart May, 288 pages. $21.99.
Hundreds of sample letters that can be adapted for most any purpose, including
letters to government agencies and officials. Has numerous tips
for writing effective letters.
1048
The Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive the System, by
Attorneys Paul Bergman & Sara J. Berman-Barrett, Nolo Press, 642 pages. $39.99.
Explains what happens in a criminal case from being arrested to sentencing, and what
your rights are at each stage of the process. Uses an easy to understand question-and-answer format.
1038
Represent Yourself in Court: How to Prepare & Try a Winning Case, by
Attorneys Paul Bergman & Sara J. Berman-Barrett, Nolo Press, 536 pages. $39.99.
Breaks down the civil trial process in easy-to-understand steps so you can effectively
represent yourself in court. The authors explain what to say in
court, how to say it, etc.
1037

Writing to Win: The Legal Writer, by Steven D. Stark, Broadway Books/Random
House, 303 pages. $19.95. Explains the writing of effective complaints,
responses, briefs, motions and other legal pleadings.
1035
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Practitioner’s Desk Reference
2017, by A. Benjamin Spender, 439 pages. $54.95. This concise compilation of
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and portions of Title 28 of the U.S. Code
most pertinent to federal civil litigation provides attorneys and pro se litigants
with a handy resource that facilitates quick reference to the
Rules for federal civil cases.
1095

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, 634 pages. $19.95. Includes definitions for more than 10,000 legal words and phrases, plus pronunciations,
supplementary notes and special sections on the judicial system, historic laws
and selected important cases. Great reference for jailhouse
lawyers who need to learn legal terminology.
2018

Sue the Doctor and Win! Victim’s Guide to Secrets of Malpractice Lawsuits, by Lewis Laska, 336 pages. $39.95. Written for victims of medical malpractice and neglect, to prepare for litigation. Note that this book addresses
medical malpractice claims and issues in general, not specifically for prisoners.
1079

Beyond Bars: Rejoining Society After Prison, by Jeffery Ian Ross and
Stephen C. Richards, 224 pages. $14.95. Complete guidebook on how to
prepare for release from prison while still incarcerated. This is the most
current, practical and comprehensive guide for prisoners, ex-prisoners and
their families related to managing successful reentry into the
community.
1080

Federal Prison Handbook, by Christopher Zoukis, 493 pages. $29.95. This
leading survival guide to the federal Bureau of Prisons teaches current and
soon-to-be federal prisoners everything they need to know
about BOP life, policies and operations.
2022
Advanced Criminal Procedure in a Nutshell, by Mark E. Cammack and
Norman M. Garland, 2nd edition, 505 pages. $49.95. This text is designed for
supplemental reading in an advanced criminal procedure course on the postinvestigation processing of a criminal case, including prosecution and adjudication.
1090
Win Your Case, by Gerry Spence, 287 pages. $21.95. Relying on the successful
methods he has developed over more than 50 years, Spence, an attorney who
has never lost a criminal case, shows both lawyers and laypersons how to win through a step-by-step process
1092
Criminal Law in a Nutshell, by Arnold H. Loewy, 5th edition, 387 pages.
$49.95. Provides an overview of criminal law, including punishment, specific crimes, defenses & burden of proof. 1086

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation, by Jane Straus, 201 pages.
$19.99. A guide to grammar and punctuation by an educator
with experience teaching English to prisoners.
1046

Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary, by Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T.
Hill, 477 pages. $29.99. Find terms you can use to understand and access the
law. Contains 3,800 easy-to-read definitions for common (and
not so common) legal terms.
3001

Deposition Handbook, by Paul Bergman and Albert Moore, Nolo Press, 426
pages. $34.99. How-to handbook for anyone who conducts a
deposition or is going to be deposed.
1054
Spanish-English/English-Spanish Dictionary, Random House, Second Edition. $15.95. Two sections, Spanish-English and English-Spanish. 145,000+ entries
from A to Z; includes Western Hemisphere usage, with notes on
pronunciation.
1034a

Please Note: All book orders are mailed via the U.S. Postal Service with
delivery confirmation. PLN does not assume any responsibility to
replace book orders once their delivery to the destination address
(facility) is confirmed by the U.S. Postal Service. If you are incarcerated and placed a book order but did not receive it, please check with
your facility’s mailroom before checking with us. Thank you!

The Best 500+ Non Profit Organizations for Prisoners and Their
Families, 4th edition (2017), 160 pages. $19.99. The only comprehensive,
up-to-date book of non-profit organizations specifically for prisoners and
their families. Cross referenced by state, organization name
and subject area. Find what you want fast!
2020

Roget’s Thesaurus, 709 pages. $9.95. Helps you find the right word for what
you want to say. 11,000 words listed alphabetically with over 200,000 synonyms
and antonyms. Sample sentences and parts of speech shown for every main
word. Covers all levels of vocabulary and identifies informal
and slang words.
1045

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2016 Edition, 939 pages. $9.95. This
paperback dictionary is a handy reference for the most common English words, with more than 75,000 entries.
2015

Legal Research: How to Find and Understand the Law, 17th Ed., by Stephen
Elias and Susan Levinkind, 363 pages. $49.99. Comprehensive and easy to understand guide on researching the law. Explains case law, statutes and
digests, and much more. Includes practice exercises.
1059

Hepatitis and Liver Disease: What You Need to Know, by Melissa Palmer MD,
471 pages. $19.99. Describes symptoms & treatments of Hepatitis B & C and other
liver diseases. Includes medications to avoid, what diet to follow,
exercises to perform and a bibliography.
1031

Federal Rules of Evidence in a Nutshell, 6th ed., by Paul F. Rothstein,
Myrna S. Raeder and David Crump, 816 pages. $49.95. This succinct overview
presents accurate law, policy, analysis and insights into the
evidentiary process in federal courts.
1093

More new books coming soon!
HAVE YOUR BOOKS BEEN CENSORED?
If you are incarcerated and order books from Prison Legal News
that are censored or rejected by corrections staff, please first file a
grievance or appeal the mail rejection according to institutional
policy, then send us a copy of the grievance and any response you
received, plus a description of the facility’s mail/book policy.

Civil Procedure in a Nutshell, 7th edition, by Mary Kay Kane, 334 pages.
$49.95. This comprehensive guide provides a succinct overview of procedural rules in civil cases.
1094
Criminal Procedure: Constitutional Limitations, 8th ed., by Jerold H.
Israel and Wayne R. LaFave, 557 pages. $49.95. This book is intended for
use by law students of constitutional criminal procedure, and
examines constitutional standards in criminal cases.
1085
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Practitioner’s Desk Reference
2017, by A. Benjamin Spender, 439 pages. $54.95. This concise compilation
of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and portions of Title 28 of the U.S.
Code most pertinent to federal civil litigation provides attorneys and pro se
litigants with a handy resource that facilitates quick reference
to the Rules.
1095
Arrested: What to Do When Your Loved One’s in Jail, by Wes Denham, 240
pages. $16.95. Whether a defendant is charged with misdemeanor disorderly
conduct or first-degree murder, this is an indispensable guide for those who
want to support family members, partners or friends facing
criminal charges.
1084
Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A., by
Mumia Abu Jamal, City Lights Publishers, 280 pages. $16.95. In Jailhouse
Lawyers, Prison Legal News columnist, award-winning journalist and former
death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal presents the stories and reflections of
fellow prisoners-turned-advocates who have learned to use the court system
to represent other prisoners, and in some cases have won
their freedom.
1073

Note: All books sold by Prison Legal
News are soft cover/paperback
You can also shop online on the bookstore
on our website, at:
www.prisonlegalnews.org/store

HUMAN
RIGHTS
DEFENSE
CENTER

2017 Annual Report
__________________________________________________________

CONTENTS
NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS

1

THE MAGAZINES
PRISON LEGAL NEWS
CRIMINAL LEGAL NEWS

1
1
3

BOOK DISTRIBUTION

3

BOOK SALES
BOOK PUBLISHING

3
3

HRDC WEBSITES

4

HRDC STAFF

4

HRDC BOARD OF DIRECTORS

5

FUNDING IN 2017

7

ACTIVISM & ADVOCACY

7

MEDIA OUTREACH

10

LITIGATION PROJECT

15

FIRST AMENDMENT CENSORSHIP CASES
PUBLIC RECORDS AND FOIA CASES
CONSUMER CLASS-ACTIONS
AMICUS BRIEFS
OTHER ACTIVITIES & ACHIEVEMENTS
CAMPAIGN FOR PRISON PHONE JUSTICE
STOP PRISON PROFITEERING CAMPAIGN
PRISON ECOLOGY PROJECT
CORECIVIC / GEO GROUP RESOLUTIONS
FOIA PROJECT
HRDC SOCIAL MEDIA
COLLABORATIONS & AFFILIATIONS
LOOKING FORWARD: GOALS FOR 2018

15
20
22
24
24
24
25
26
26
27
27
28
29

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[1]

NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS
The Human Rights Defense Center, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1990, is the
parent organization of Prison Legal News (PLN) – our award-winning monthly publication that
covers criminal justice-related news and court rulings – and Criminal Legal News (CLN), our
monthly publication focused on policing and criminal law, which launched in December 2017
with the hire of CLN managing editor Richard Resch.
During the past year, HRDC continued to lead the Stop Prison Profiteering campaign and
Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, two national projects that seek to stop the financial
exploitation of prisoners and their families, as well as the Prison Ecology Project. Among other
successes, after years of building a grassroots campaign in Letcher County, Kentucky, the Prison
Ecology Project stalled approval for a new federal prison to be built in the county.
We had several notable litigation successes during 2017, including the final resolution of
a 14-year Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Prisons. We
also settled censorship suits against jails in Michigan and Oklahoma, and obtained a landmark
nationwide settlement against private prison firm Management & Training Corp. (MTC).
HRDC executive director Paul Wright received the Julio Medina Freedom Fighter Award
from Citizens Against Recidivism, and, in conjunction with the National Police Accountability
Project, we hosted a Continuing Legal Education seminar on police and prison litigation in West
Palm Beach, Florida. We are also proud to announce the launch of our William A. Trine
Fellowship in 2017 and to introduce its inaugural fellow, HRDC staff attorney Masimba
Mutamba. HRDC’s legal team grew further in 2017 with the additional of two more staff
attorneys, Daniel Marshall and Deborah Golden.
Lastly, due to a sudden eviction in Oct. 2017 by the City of Lake Worth, which bought
the building where HRDC rented office space, we had to find a new office. We fortunately did
so, with generous help from our supporters, and finalized our move at the end of the year.

THE MAGAZINES

PRISON LEGAL NEWS
HRDC’s 72-page flagship monthly publication, Prison Legal News, reports on
criminal justice- and corrections-related news and court rulings. PLN celebrated
its 27th anniversary on May 1, 2017, continuing its distinction of being the
longest-running independent magazine produced by and for prisoners. All of
PLN’s contributing writers are current or former prisoners, including Matthew
Clarke, Derek Gilna, Gary Hunter, David Reutter, Joe Watson, Mark Wilson
and Christopher Zoukis.
PLN published the following cover stories in 2017:


January: “Culture of Abuse and Corruption Plagues Jail in Denver, Colorado,” by
Lonnie Burton, Matt Clarke, David Reutter and Christopher Zoukis, outlined a system
of massive abuses and negligence by Denver law enforcement agencies.



February: In “Trapped,” by Sam Levin with the East Bay Express, the road to
obtaining parole in California was shown to be an emotionally and financially draining
process.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[2]



March: In “The Financial Firm that Cornered the Market on Jails,” Arun Gupta with
The Nation looked at the exploitation wrought by Numi Financial and other companies
that control fee-laden debit cards given to prisoners upon their release.



April: “PLN Interviews CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou” was an in-depth interview
between HRDC executive director Paul Wright and John Kiriakou, a former CIA
officer, senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and whistleblower who confirmed the CIA’s use of waterboarding as a form of torture.



May: Rick Anderson covered the effects of sex offender registries on increased
incarceration and the expense of the prison system in “Registration, Tracking of Sex
Offenders Drives Mass Incarceration Numbers and Costs.”



June: “Affluenza Epidemic Rampant in Our Nation’s Criminal Justice System”
examined income-based disparities in sentencing; author Gary Hunter reported on
cases where wealthy defendants received preferential treatment in comparison to less
wealthy defendants, indicating the U.S. has a two-track justice system.



July: Alan Prendergast, writing for Westword, reported in his article, “Hep C: The
Deadliest Killer in Colorado’s Prisons is a Curable Virus,” that 20 percent of prisoners
with hepatitis C are at risk of cirrhosis and organ failure – yet Colorado prison officials
refuse to provide appropriate medical treatment.



August: In “Policing for Profit: Law Enforcement Agencies Abuse Civil Asset
Forfeiture,” Matthew Clarke provided a national overview of civil asset forfeiture and
the many law enforcement abuses that occur in such cases.



September: “Opening the Door,” by Jean Casella and Aviva Stahl with Solitary Watch,
covered the ongoing damages caused by long-term solitary confinement – and the road
to reform – in Colorado’s prison system.



October: Spencer Woodman, writing for the Chicago Reader, reported on the
disproportionately long pretrial detention of people held in the Cook County Jail, in
“No-show Cops and Dysfunctional Courts Keep Cook County Jail Prisoners Waiting
Years for a Trial.”



November: Derek Gilna addressed the continued shortcomings of the Prison Rape
Elimination Act in his article, “Five Years after Implementation, PREA Standards
Remain Inadequate.”



December: In “California Prisons Struggle with Environmental Threats from Sewage
Spills, Contaminated Water, Airborne Disease,” Rick Anderson covered environmental
hazards caused by, and present in, California prisons; this article was part of HRDC’s
ongoing Prison Ecology Project.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[3]

PLN works hard to maintain first-rate advertisers that offer quality products and services of
interest to prisoners and their families. We have a target of around 25% advertising content to
75% news, legal and editorial content.
Prison Legal News has thousands of subscribers in all 50 states and approximately 70%
of our subscribers are incarcerated. PLN’s readership is much higher than the number of
subscribers, as our most recent reader survey, conducted in August 2016, indicated that over 90
percent of subscribers share their issues of PLN – most often with more than 10 other people.
PLN continued to receive an enormous volume of mail throughout 2017. The majority of
this correspondence was from prisoners, with many requesting legal assistance or sending news
clippings, court documents and other items of interest. Regretfully, due to this large amount of
mail, PLN is unable to respond to the majority of people who contact us.

CRIMINAL LEGAL NEWS
HRDC is proud to announce our new monthly publication launched in December 2017, Criminal Legal News. CLN focuses on criminal law and the persistent
expansion of the police state in America; it covers issues that include police
brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, habeas corpus relief, ineffective assistance
of counsel, sentencing, the militarization of police, the surveillance state, junk
science, wrongful convictions, false confessions, eyewitness misidentification,
paid/incentivized informants, Fourth Amendment search and seizure violations,
Miranda warnings and due process rights, among many other issues, as well as
criminal case law and court rulings.
The cover story for CLN’s inaugural December 2017 issue was “Absurd, Abusive, and
Outrageous: The Creation of Crime and Criminals in America,” by Christopher Zoukis, which
detailed national practices in over-criminalization and extreme sentencing that have contributed
to the current state of mass incarceration and the police state in the U.S.

BOOK DISTRIBUTION
BOOK SALES
HRDC offers a wide variety of books of interest to prisoners, including hard-to-find works on
criminal justice topics as well as self-help legal resources designed to help prisoners who are
litigating their own appeals and lawsuits. HRDC shipped over 2,600 books in 2017.
BOOK PUBLISHING
PLN Publishing seeks to produce quality, nonfiction reference books that provide prisoners and
their advocates with reliable, timely and accurate information they can use to help themselves
and improve their lives. We offer the highest author royalties in the publishing industry. Thus
far, PLN Publishing has published five titles, including the Prisoners’ Guerrilla Handbook to
Correspondence Programs in the U.S. and Canada, 3rd Ed.; The Habeas Citebook, 1st and 2nd
Eds.; the Prison Education Guide; and the Disciplinary Self-Help Litigation Manual.
PLN Publishing began work on two new book projects in 2017, which were still pending
at the end of the year.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[4]

HRDC WEBSITES
We continued to expand HRDC’s online presence in 2017 by increasing our content, including
articles, court pleadings and publications. PLN’s website (www.prisonlegalnews.org) receives
over 150,000 visitors each month and has become a significant resource for media and
community outreach and public education on criminal justice-related issues.
At the end of 2017, PLN’s site had over 21,000 articles and 15,000 cases in its searchable
database. The publications section had more than 7,000 reports, audits and other documents,
while our brief bank contained over 9,500 legal pleadings – including complaints, motions,
briefs, verdicts, judgments and settlements. Additionally, we created a website for our new
monthly publication, Criminal Legal News: www.criminallegalnews.org.
HRDC’s main website, www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org, was also improved in 2017.
The site includes updated staff and board profiles and a library of HRDC comments filed with
governmental agencies and legislative bodies.
We continued to add content to our Campaign for Prison Phone Justice data website,
www.prisonphonejustice.org, as well as our Stop Prison Profiteering and Prison Ecology Project
sites, www.stopprisonprofiteering.org and www.prisonecology.org. Plus we launched a new site
devoted to the private prison industry, www.privateprisonnews.org.

HRDC STAFF
HRDC’s executive team during 2017 included Paul Wright, executive director and editor of PLN
and CLN; Alex Friedmann, associate director and PLN’s managing editor; chief financial officer
and advertising director Susan Schwartzkopf; and HRDC’s general counsel and litigation
director Sabarish Neelakanta.
Additional staff included Frances Sauceda, office manager; Judith Cohen, advertising
coordinator; Panagioti Tsolkas, special projects coordinator; Monte McCoin, social media
director; Robert Pew, legal assistant; paralegals Kathy Moses and Rachel Stevens; and Campaign
for Prison Phone Justice director Carrie Wilkinson.
Several new employees joined HRDC in 2017, including staff attorneys Deb Golden,
Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall; CLN managing editor Richard Resch; editorial
assistant Suzanne Bring; office assistants Shauna Coolican and Latoria Bowers; and public
records manager/development assistant Michelle Dillon. We also want to recognize our valued
and dedicated volunteers, Janet Callis and Melanie Campbell, as well as student worker Heidi
Sadri, research interns Maja von Beckerath, Mira Tornquist and Hai Zhou, and work study
students Eugene Choi, Alicia McDonnell, Sara Molaie, Liem Nguyen and Iris Wagner.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[5]

HRDC BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Michael Avery – Professor Michael Avery has practiced as a civil rights and criminal defense
attorney, representing clients in jury trials and arguing cases in federal and state appellate courts,
including the U.S. Supreme Court. He joined the Suffolk Law faculty in 1998, where he was a
tenured professor teaching Constitutional Law, Evidence and related courses. He retired from
Suffolk in 2014 and is now a professor emeritus. He graduated from Yale College in 1966 and
Yale Law School in 1970. He received an M.F.A. from Bennington College in January 2017.
Prof. Avery was President of the National Lawyers Guild from 2003 to 2006. He was the editor
and a contributing author to We Dissent, a critical review of civil liberties and civil rights cases
from the Rehnquist Court, and co-author of The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the
Law Back from Liberals. He is co-author of Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation, a leading
treatise on civil rights law, co-author of the Handbook of Massachusetts Evidence, the leading
treatise on that subject, and the author of the Glannon Guide to Evidence, as well as several law
review articles.
Dan Axtell (Vice President) – Mr. Axtell is a computer professional and human rights activist.
Rick Best (Treasurer) – Rick Best is a not-for-profit consultant working primarily in financial
management. He also practices law and was part of the legal team that litigated civil rights
violations arising out of mass arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New
York City. He served two years in federal prison for draft resistance during the Vietnam War and
was executive director of the National Lawyers Guild from 1992 to 1995.
Bell Chevigny – Bell Chevigny is professor emerita of literature at Purchase College, SUNY.
She has served on the PEN Prison Writing Program for around twenty years, three of them as
chair. The Prison Writing Program offers an annual literary competition to incarcerated men and
women nationwide. With the support of a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship, she compiled Doing
Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing, a PEN American Center Prize anthology. She has written
extensively about incarcerated authors and their literary works.
Howard Friedman (Board Chairman) – Howard Friedman is the principal in the Law Offices of
Howard Friedman P.C., a civil litigation firm in Boston, Massachusetts. Howard’s practice
emphasizes representing plaintiffs in civil rights cases, particularly those involving law
enforcement, including police misconduct and prisoners’ rights litigation. Howard began his
career in 1977 as a staff attorney at the Prisoners Rights Project in Boston. He is the past
President of the National Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers Guild and
served as chair of the Civil Rights Section of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (now
the American Association for Justice). He is a graduate of Northeastern University School of
Law and Goddard College.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[6]

Judy Greene – Judy Greene is a criminal justice policy analyst and the founding director of
Justice Strategies. Previously she was the recipient of a Soros Senior Justice Fellowship. She has
served as a research associate for the RAND Corporation, as a senior research fellow at the
University of Minnesota Law School and as director of the State-Centered Program for the Edna
McConnell Clark Foundation. From 1985 to 1993 she was Director of Court Programs at the
Vera Institute of Justice.
Sheila Rule – Sheila Rule is co-founder of the Think Outside the Cell Foundation
(www.thinkoutsidethecell.org), which works to end the stigma of incarceration and offers
programs for those who live in the long shadow of prison. She began working with this
population in 2001 when she joined the Riverside Church Prison Ministry in New York City and
was asked to correspond with incarcerated men and women. Inspired by their rich potential, she
started the publishing company Resilience Multimedia to publish books that present a fairer
image of those who have spent time behind bars. She is also on the board of Good Shepherd
Services, a leading New York social services agency serving vulnerable children and families.
She was a journalist at The New York Times for more than 30 years, including seven as a foreign
correspondent in Africa and Europe, before retiring so she could embrace her current work.
Peter Sussman – Peter Sussman is an author and freelance journalist, and was a longtime editor
at the San Francisco Chronicle. He has received numerous awards for his advocacy of media
access to prisoners. He is the co-author, with prison writer Dannie M. Martin, of Committing
Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog, and wrote a chapter on the media and prisons in
Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, edited by Marc
Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind.
Bill Trine – Bill Trine has been a trial lawyer for the people for 50 years, and a past president
and founder of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ), past president of the Colorado Trial
Lawyers Association and on the board of other trial lawyer groups. Bill was the senior partner in
his own law firm for many years until his retirement. He started a national prison project through
TLPJ in 2005 and has been plaintiffs’ counsel in prison-related cases for several years, including
numerous lawsuits arising out of a riot at a privately-operated prison in Crowley County,
Colorado. Bill helped start the Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College in 1994 and has been on the
faculty and a member of the College’s board since its beginning.
Paul Wright (President) – Paul Wright is the editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal
News, and founder of the Human Rights Defense Center. He is responsible for editorial content
and HRDC’s advocacy, outreach and fundraising efforts. Paul was incarcerated for 17 years in
Washington State and released in 2003.
Ethan Zuckerman – Ethan Zuckerman directs the MIT Center for Civic Media, and is an
Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. He is the author of
Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[7]

FUNDING IN 2017
In 2017, HRDC was funded primarily through earned revenue from its publishing and litigation
projects, as well as book sales and individual donations. We also received grant funding from the
Legal Foundation of Washington, New World Foundation and Sonya Staff Foundation.

ACTIVISM & ADVOCACY
HRDC staff engaged in a number of activism and advocacy efforts in 2017, to effect reform in
our nation’s dysfunctional justice system and to educate the public, policymakers and the mainstream media about criminal justice and prison-related issues. Those efforts included:


On January 16, 2017, HRDC associate director Alex Friedmann spoke at a Vanderbilt
University teach-in session for MLK Day, titled “Justice for All,” on the topic of private
prisons. He was invited by Prof. Lisa Guenther, with co-presenter Jeannie Alexander,
director of the No Exceptions Prison Collective.



Last year, Alex Friedmann filed a complaint against
Campbell County, Tennessee Judge Amanda
Sammons, based on the following issues: Requiring
defendants to pay fees for court-appointed counsel
when they were represented by retained counsel;
ordering children to be removed from their home or
parents without legal grounds to do so; and delaying
or refusing to issue orders of expungement when
charges were dismissed in criminal cases. The Board
of Judicial Conduct consolidated his complaint with others and imposed sanctions against
Judge Sammons in the form of a deferred disciplinary agreement on January 23.



Alex Friedmann assisted with a Prison Policy Initiative report, “Following the Money of
Mass Incarceration,” that was released on January 25. He was thanked in the credits.



HRDC was contacted in February 2017 by staff with the office of U.S. Senator Bernie
Sanders to provide input on the Justice is Not for Sale Act, which was reintroduced on
July 13. HRDC provided the name for the bill when it was first introduced in 2015.



On February 2, Alex Friedmann gave a presentation on the private prison industry to a
class of Vanderbilt law and divinity students, by invitation of Prof. Graham Reside.



Alex Friedmann spoke on a February 10 panel at an event organized by the Rockefeller
Foundation Fund and Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, in New York City,
about private prison contract procurement. Fellow panelists were Donald Cohen and
Ryan Bowers.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[8]



On February 22, Alex Friedmann spoke to a group of Vanderbilt University students
about private prisons, by invitation of Prof. Lisa Guenther. The event was livestreamed
on Facebook.



On Mar. 2-3, HRDC and the National Police Accountability Project hosted a Continuing
Legal Education (CLE) seminar in West Palm Beach, Florida on the topic of civil rights
litigation related to misconduct by police and prison officials. HRDC litigation director
and general counsel Sabarish Neelakanta presented on strategies for seeking injunctive
relief in federal prisoners’ rights litigation.



HRDC sent a letter in support of U.S. Reps Emanuel Cleaver II and Luis V. Gutierrez on
March 7, regarding their comments in which they expressed concerns about “companies
that profit from imprisonment and the detention of immigrants.”


On March 7, HRDC signed on to a joint letter sent to
the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in opposition to
HR 985, the Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act,
which would impact prison and jail class-action suits.



Alex Friedmann spoke at the NAACP Tennessee State
Conference, Race Relation and Advocacy Summit in
Jackson, Tennessee on March 11; he addressed
prisoners’ rights and what advocates can do to help
with criminal justice reform.



Alex Friedmann wrote the foreword to Bodies in Beds: Why Business Should Stay Out of
Prisons, by Sue Binder; the book was released on March 16.



HRDC submitted a letter to California state Senator Ricardo Lara on March 21 in support
of the Dignity Not Detention Act (SB 29), which would require private immigration
detention centers in California to adhere to national standards, require annual audits of
such facilities and restrict local governments from contracting with for-profit companies
to detain immigrants. SB 29 passed and was signed into law on October 5.



HRDC submitted a letter to U.S. Senator Cory Booker in support of the Dignity for
Incarcerated Women Act on March 29; the legislation was subsequently introduced as S.
1524 on July 11.



On April 6, HRDC signed on to a joint letter coordinated by the Drug Policy Alliance,
calling on Congress to repeal 23 U.S.C. 159 – a law that incentivizes states to revoke
drivers’ licenses for people who have been convicted of drug offenses.



Alex Friedmann spoke at a Tennessee legislative press conference on April 10; other
speakers included two state representatives and a state senator. The topic was a major
incident at the Turney Center prison that involved 16 prisoners, in which one guard was
held hostage and several were injured.

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[9]



On April 11, Alex Friedmann gave a two-hour Skype presentation to students at Duke
Law School in North Carolina, for a class on “Taboo Trades and Forbidden Markets.” He
spoke about the private prison industry.



Alex Friedmann participated on a panel at the Private Prisons: The Corporatization of
Criminal Justice symposium in Phoenix, Arizona on April 14. Other panelists included
Prof. Donald Tibbs and Prof. Yolanda Vazquez; the event was organized by Abolish
Private Prisons.



HRDC staff attorney Masimba Mutama spoke to community leaders and advocates at a
screening of the film “13th” in Lake Park, Florida on April 26, as part of a community
event addressing criminal justice advocacy and civil rights litigation issues.



On May 11, Alex Friedmann and HRDC social media director Monte McCoin attended
the annual shareholder meeting for private prison company CoreCivic. Alex questioned
the board members about a prisoner who committed suicide at a CoreCivic-run facility in
Louisiana; the prisoner weighed just 71 lbs. when he died. Monte asked about the Private
Prison Information Act and the company’s lack of transparency.



Alex Friedmann spoke on a panel at Vanderbilt University’s Divinity School on May 11,
on the privatization of government services. Fellow panelists included Dr. Diana Moyer,
Tennessee state Rep. John Ray Clemmons and No Exceptions Prison Collective director
Jeannie Alexander.



HRDC executive director Paul Wright was the keynote speaker at the Southeast Regional
Books to Prisoners program held in New Orleans on May 19-21. He spoke about the
history of Prison Legal News, and provided advice and information on how to deal with
censorship by prison and jail officials.



On May 21, Monte McCoin presented on a panel at
Moogfest (an art and technology festival) in Durham,
North Carolina, on the use of social media for criminal
justice organizing.



Alex Friedmann contributed to a Prison Policy Initiative
report, “Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials
Should Fight Jail Growth.” The report was released on
May 31; he was thanked in the credits.



Paul Wright spoke at an anti-police brutality protest in Lake Worth, Florida on June 25.
The event was sponsored by Black Lives Matter and South Florida Activism.



HRDC coordinated a joint letter in support of the Private Prison Information Act (HR
1980), addressed to the bill’s sponsor, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, on July 11. Fortyseven supporters signed on to the letter. HRDC staff helped draft the language of the bill,
which has been repeatedly reintroduced in Congress without success.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

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

On July 14, Paul Wright gave a presentation on criminal justice contracting at the Young
Elected Officials Conference in San Francisco.



Paul Wright spoke on July 22 at an anti-private prison demonstration held at the GEO
Group-run Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Florida, which holds
immigration detainees. HRDC general counsel Sabarish Neelakanta also attended the
event.



On Aug. 5, Paul Wright spoke at the National Lawyers Guild convention in Washington,
D.C., on a panel titled “Dismantling the Private Prison Industry: Standing Up Against the
Corporatization of Mass Incarceration.”



HRDC Prison Phone Justice Campaign director Carrie Wilkinson
attended an August 14 meeting of the King County Council in
Seattle, WA and testified in support of an ordinance to prohibit the
county from contracting with private prison firms. The ordinance
passed 8 to 1.



On September 28, Paul Wright received the Julio Medina Freedom
Fighter Award from Citizens Against Recidivism. The award was
presented on October 21 at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz
Memorial and Educational Center in New York City.



Alex Friedmann spoke on a panel at a Criminal Justice Roundtable at the Nashville Peace
and Justice Center on November 2, concerning prison privatization. Other panelists were
from the No Exceptions Prison Collective, Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death
Penalty, Nashville Public Defenders and TN Alliance for Progress.



Based on a complaint filed by Alex Friedmann, the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct
issued a public reprimand to White County General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield on
November 15, related to his offer to reduce the sentences of prisoners held at the local jail
if they agreed to have vasectomies (for men) or to get long-term birth control implants
(for women)



On Dec. 1, Masimba Mutamba was a panelist at the 15th Judicial Circuit of Florida
Diversity and Sensitivity Training, on increasing judicial sensitivity towards religious,
racial, gender and sexual orientation diversity of the Florida Bar, the jury pool and the
community. The panel also discussed HRDC’s litigation and advocacy efforts in terms of
working with prisoners, who constitute a marginalized community.



On Dec. 12, Alex Friedmann spoke at a Tennessee legislative Government Operations
Joint Subcommittee hearing, during a public comment period, on issues related to prison
privatization following a scathing audit of a CoreCivic facility by the TN Comptroller’s
office.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

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MEDIA OUTREACH
HRDC, PLN and CLN reached national and international audiences in 2017, including quotes in
news articles, interviews and citations of our award-winning publications. This media coverage
included newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio and online news sources. HRDC also issued
ten press releases this year. The following is a “Top 50” list of the media coverage that HRDC,
PLN and CLN received in 2017, which excludes articles about our litigation. Links to these
articles and hundreds more are available on our website under “In the News.”


The Times-Picayune published a story on Jan. 11, 2017 titled “Families spend millions
on phone calls from Louisiana inmates,” which used research from HRDC and quoted
Prison Phone Justice campaign director Carrie Wilkinson.



HRDC executive director Paul Wright was quoted in a January 13 article by the Pew
Charitable Trusts on the use of social media in prisons. He noted that “Social media
provides a level of transparency” to hold prisons accountable as never before possible.



HRDC associate director Alex Friedmann appeared on the Roach Brown radio show,
WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 17, and discussed presidential clemency
under the Obama administration. He noted that while President Obama had granted 1,176
commutations, he also denied more than 14,480.


On Jan. 28, the Knoxville News Sentinel published an opinion piece
by Alex Friedmann in response to an editorial by CoreCivic executive (and former federal prisons director) Harley Lappin, countering
his comments lauding the company’s for-profit prison operations.



Paul Wright was quoted in a February 8 article on Rewire.com about
false confessions and wrongful convictions. Said Wright, “Lack of
adequate defense is the real problem ... If you’re innocent it doesn’t
mean much; the cornerstones of the problems that afflict our justice
system [are] at the trial level.”



Vice published an article about an assault at a private prison in Idaho
on February 13, in which Alex Friedmann was quoted about chronic
understaffing and the crucial role of litigation to expose conditions at private prisons.


On February 16, the Associated Press covered CoreCivic’s rejection of a shareholder
resolution filed by Alex Friedmann that called for independent audits of the company’s
detention facilities.



Portuguese newspaper Expresso quoted Alex Friedmann on February 18 for an article
about a privately-operated juvenile facility.



On February 20, Inverse.com quoted Alex Friedmann for an article on the rise of private
immigrant detention.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[12]



Alex Friedmann appeared on Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive” radio show on
February 26, and spoke about privatization of both schools and prisons. Other speakers
included NOW president Terry O’Neill and Pennsylvania state Senator Vincent Hughes.



On March 6, Paul Wright was interviewed by RT (Russian Television) on Ohio prisoners
being denied media access and punished for trying to speak out.



Paul Wright was quoted in a March 9 article in the Washington City Paper about a search
for public records that could exonerate a prisoner.



On March 10, Paul Wright was interviewed by RT concerning racial disparities in
wrongful convictions and exonerations.



RT published an interview with Paul Wright on March 11 about issues of racism and
classism in the legal system. “I think the reality in America is you get as much justice as
you can afford,” he stated.



On March 21, Al Jazeera quoted Alex Friedmann in an article about the death of Florida
state prisoner Darren Rainey, who died after guards scalded him in a shower. “Florida
specifically has a long and sordid history of prisoners being killed by guards,” Friedmann
said. “There are systemic failures at every step, from preventing abuse, investigating, and
holding [prison staff members] accountable.”



The Colorado Independent published an article about unpaid labor at ICE detention
facilities on March 21, quoting Alex Friedmann about ramifications for taxpayers.



City Limits quoted Alex Friedmann in a March 24 article about upcoming restrictions on
prison visits and video calling in New York.



On April 11, Paul Wright appeared on RT to discuss executions in Arkansas.



FOIAFighter.com quoted Alex Friedmann in its April 12 coverage of campaign
contributions from for-profit prison company CoreCivic.



On April 20, the Orange County Register published a letter by Alex Friedmann rebutting
an opinion piece in favor of private prisons.



Paul Wright was quoted by the Palm Beach
Post in an April 28 article about increased
stock prices of private prison companies.
When asked about the impetus for the
increase, Wright responded, “The president
has come to office promising to deport a lot of
people and lock a lot of people up, so of
course their stocks are up.”

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

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

The Tennessean quoted Alex Friedmann in a May 19 article about the stock price of
private prison contractor CoreCivic.



The Pew Charitable Trusts quoted Alex Friedmann in a May 30 article on increased
restrictions on prison visitation. Speaking on the presumption that visitors are the primary
suppliers of contraband, Friedmann stated, “You ultimately have employees coming into
facilities, and a lot of them are not adequately searched when they enter.... The vast
majority of correctional officers don’t smuggle in drugs, but the vast majority of visitors
don’t either. It doesn’t make sense to only go after one group.”



On May 31, Alex Friedmann spoke on a KIQI 1010 AM San Francisco and KATD 990
AM Sacramento radio show about a lawsuit filed by the ACLU over hunger strikes in
ICE detention facilities. His comments were translated into Spanish.



Carrie Wilkinson was quoted by The Intercept in a June 16 article about the prohibitively
high costs of prison phone calls.



The Crime Report quoted Carrie Wilkinson in a June 19 article concerning the practice of
giving fee-based debit cards to prisoners upon their release.



On July 6, Paul Wright was quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for an article
about the aftermath of a federal court ruling that struck down FCC rate caps on intrastate
prison phone calls. “The felons aren’t the ones paying the bills. It’s the families,” Wright
said. “It’s just exploitation. It’s just gouging people.”



Truthout quoted Paul Wright in an August 3 article about the militarization of the prison
system.



The Atlanta Black Star quoted Alex Friedmann on August 6 in an article concerning
felon disenfranchisement.



On August 9, Alex Friedmann was quoted by Courthouse News in an article about
extreme heat in Texas prisons. “For those people who think prisoners don’t ‘deserve’ air
conditioning, they need to consider the at least 23 Texas prisoners who have died due to
extreme heat conditions, none of whom were sentenced to death,” he said.



Carrie Wilkinson was quoted in the Huffington Post on
August 9 about the impact of the FCC’s decision not to
defend its rate caps for intrastate prison phone calls.



On August 10, The New York Post covered HRDC’s
allegation of a conflict of interest in regard to FCC Chairman
Ajit Pai’s decision not to defend the agency’s rate caps for
intrastate prison phone calls.



In its September issue, the ABA Journal quoted Alex Friedmann for an article on the
increase in private prisons under the Trump administration.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

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

On September 14, Alex Friedmann participated in a panel discussion on Loud & Clear
105.5 FM, a radio show co-hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, with former
political prisoner Eddie Conway. The show addressed criminal justice reform efforts and
focused on the anniversary of the Attica rebellion.



Alex Friedmann was interviewed on Sept. 14 by Sean Burke for the Sean Burke Show on
WSMN 1590 AM in Nashua, New Hampshire, on the topic of private prisons.



On September 18, The Morning Call quoted Alex Friedmann in an article about increased
opioid overdoses in jails.



The Charlotte Observer quoted Alex Friedmann on September 21, for an article on the
repeated sexual assault of a prisoner by a staff member. In a rare victory, the prisoner
succeeded in his lawsuit against his abuser, prompting Friedmann to note that asking a
prisoner to litigate and win his own case is, frustratingly, like “asking a non-doctor to
perform brain surgery on himself.”



Alex Friedmann was quoted by The Crime Report in an October 3 article about the lack
of protections for prisoners during natural disasters.



On October 3, Alex Friedmann was on the Roach Brown radio show in Washington,
D.C., and spoke about prison and jail video calling services.


Paul Wright was interviewed by Colombian TV station
NTN24 on October 6, about the Nobel Peace Prize.



On Oct. 11, Paul Wright was interviewed by RT on the
U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to hear an appeal by
GEO Group and CoreCivic on whether they have
standing to object to FOIA public record disclosures.

 Alex Friedmann was quoted by The Washington Post in
an Oct. 25 article about private prison company GEO Group’s decision to host its annual
conference at a resort owned by President Donald Trump.


On October 27, Alex Friedmann appeared on the Loud & Clear 105.5 FM radio show in
Washington, D.C., with John Kiriakou, and spoke about the closure of federal halfway
houses.



Alex Friedmann was interviewed by Cannabis Radio on October 30 about Prison Legal
News and our criminal justice advocacy work.



In a widely-distributed Associated Press article published on October 31, Alex Friedmann
was quoted about CoreCivic’s announcement to lobby public officials for rehabilitative
and reentry programs. The article appeared on ABC News, the Seattle Times and the New
York Times, among other media outlets.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

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

On November 2, Gothamist.com quoted Alex Friedmann in an article titled “How NY
Prison ‘Slave Labor’ Powers a $50 Million Manufacturing Enterprise.” He stated, “Prison
labor is prison slave labor.... Know anyone else who would work for 65 cents an hour?”



Alex Friedmann was a guest speaker on Baltimore radio show WOLB’s “Lunch with
Labor” on November 7, on the topic of prison labor and industry programs.



Italian newspaper Il Caffè quoted Alex Friedmann in a Dec. 3 article on private prisons.



On December 11, Paul Wright was interviewed by German public radio on the use of
prisoners to fight forest fires in California.



Alex Friedmann was quoted in a December 21 article in the Tennessee Tribune about
conditions at privately-operated prisons in Tennessee.

Litigation Project
HRDC’s legal team, including our attorneys and paralegals, litigate
cases nationally against prisons and jails, including First Amendment
censorship violations, public records cases, wrongful deaths, and other
civil rights and consumer matters. Cooperating with some of the largest
law firms in the country as well as skilled sole practitioners, HRDC
remains at the forefront of litigation involving prisoners’ rights. Further,
all of HRDC’s cases have a public education and media component that
complements our criminal justice reform advocacy work.
Our litigation efforts continued to generate media coverage in
2017, including articles in Courthouse News, Los Angeles Daily News,
the Courier-Journal and the Livingston Daily.
Our 2017 litigation team included general counsel and litigation
director Sabarish Neelakanta, staff attorneys Masimba Mutamba, Daniel
HRDC General Counsel
Marshall and Deb Golden, and paralegals Kathy Moses and Rachel
Sabarish Neelakanta
Stevens. Deb has established an HRDC office in Washington, D.C.
HRDC’s litigation docket included the following cases; those that were both filed and
resolved during the year are listed in the “Cases Resolved” sections. HRDC captions some of its
censorship cases under the name of its monthly publication, Prison Legal News.
I. First Amendment Censorship Cases
For nearly three decades, HRDC has been on the front lines of litigation concerning the First
Amendment rights of prisoners and their correspondents, primarily due to the systemic censorship of HRDC’s publications. The first issue of Prison Legal News was banned by corrections
officials on the pretext that it posed a security risk. In truth, HRDC’s publications have been
targeted for censorship because they highlight constitutional abuses, misconduct and corruption
within prisons and jails. Corrections officials have continued to be hostile to HRDC’s written
speech and have censored our magazines and the books we publish or distribute. However, these
unconstitutional attempts to thwart HRDC’s mission to inform and educate prisoners about their
legal rights have largely been unsuccessful when challenged in court.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

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The determined effort by HRDC’s legal team to challenge such censorship and ensure
that First Amendment rights are not violated within the correctional context has been one of the
hallmarks of our litigation project. Even though corrections officials have adopted new and
creative ways to hinder access to constitutionally-protected publications in prisons and jails,
HRDC continues to fight such censorship and expand the jurisprudence on the First Amendment
rights of prisoners and those who correspond with them.
A. New Cases Filed in 2017
1. Human Rights Defense Center v. Sheriff Jim McDonnell (Los Angeles County,
CA) – On July 3, 2017, HRDC filed suit against Los Angeles County’s jail system,
which holds the largest number of pre-trial detainees in the United States, for
censorship of Prison Legal News and letters without due process. The Court denied
HRDC’s motion for a preliminary injunction, and also dismissed claims against
individual defendants and a claim that the censorship violated California’s Bane
Act. HRDC appealed to the Ninth Circuit over the denial of the preliminary injunction, and that appeal remained pending at the close of 2017. HRDC is
represented by general counsel Sabarish Neelakanta and staff attorneys Masimba
Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by local counsel Sanford Rosen, Jeffrey
Bornstein and Christopher Hu with the law firm of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld,
LLP as well as Brian Vogel with the law office of Brian A. Vogel, P.C.
2. Human Rights Defense Center v. Commissioner Rodney Ballard (Kentucky
DOC) – On July 17, 2017, HRDC filed suit against the Kentucky Department of
Corrections for censoring books mailed to prisoners. The defendants answered the
complaint by denying any constitutional violations, and the parties remained engaged in discovery at the end of 2017. HRDC is represented by in-house counsel
Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by Gregory A.
Belzley with the law firm of Belzley Bathurst in Prospect, Kentucky.
3. Human Rights Defense Center v. Sheriff Lewis Hatcher (Columbus County,
NC) – On August 15, 2017, HRDC filed a lawsuit challenging the mail policies at
the Columbus County Jail in North Carolina over the censorship of HRDC books,
magazines and lettered mail. The defendants immediately changed their mail policy
and revised their practices to allow prisoners to receive publications and other
correspondence, and to provide proper due process notice of censorship decisions.
The parties were engaged in settlement negotiations at the end of 2017. HRDC is
represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and
Daniel Marshall, and by local counsel Paul Cox and Jonathan D. Sasser with the
law firm of Ellis & Winters, LLP in Raleigh, NC and Bruce E.H. Johnson with
Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle, WA.
4. Human Rights Defense Center v. Sheriff Brad Lewis (Baxter County, AR) –
On August 21, 2017, HRDC filed suit challenging a postcard-only policy at the
Baxter County Jail in Arkansas. The policy limits all incoming mail to postcards,
with the exception of legal mail; it also prohibits prisoners from receiving books
and magazines. HRDC challenged the policy on First Amendment grounds and for
violations of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. After briefing on both

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

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sides concerning HRDC’s motion for a preliminary injunction and the defendants’
motion to dismiss, the court denied the preliminary injunction, denied dismissal on
grounds of standing and granted the dismissal of certain individual defendants.
Discovery remains ongoing in the case. HRDC is represented by in-house counsel
Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by local counsel
Paul J. James with the law firm of James, Carter & Priebe, LLP in Little Rock, AR
and Bruce E.H. Johnson with Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle, WA.
5. Human Rights Defense Center v. Sheriff Ricky Roberts (Union County, AR) –
On October 30, 2017, HRDC filed suit challenging a postcard-only policy at the jail
in Union County, Arkansas. The policy limits all incoming correspondence to postcards except for legal mail, and prohibits prisoners from receiving magazines and
books. The suit alleges First and Fourteenth Amendment violations. At the end of
2017, the parties had fully briefed HRDC’s motion for a preliminary injunction and
were engaged in discovery. HRDC is represented by in-house counsel Sabarish
Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by local counsel Paul J.
James with the law firm of James, Carter & Priebe, LLP in Little Rock, AR and
Bruce E.H. Johnson with Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle, WA.
6. Human Rights Defense Center v. Sheriff Gene Fisher (Greene County, OH) –
HRDC filed suit on October 31, 2017, challenging censorship policies at the Greene
County Jail in Ohio for censorship of books, magazines and letters, and denial of
due process. After extensive negotiation, a settlement agreement enjoining the
defendants from further censorship of HRDC publications was filed with the court
in late November 2017. The case remained pending at the end of the year, on outstanding claims for declaratory relief, damages, attorneys’ fees and costs. HRDC is
represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and
Daniel Marshall, and by local counsel Robert Newman with Newman & Meeks
Co., LPA in Cincinnati, OH and Bruce E.H. Johnson with Davis Wright Tremaine
in Seattle, WA.
B. Cases Still Pending in 2017
1. Prison Legal News v. Sheriff Thomas Dart (Cook County, IL) – Since June
2016, the parties have remained in litigation over the censorship of books and
magazines sent to prisoners at the Cook County jail and the jail’s failure to provide
due process notice of such censorship. Discovery continued through 2017, and a
tentative mediation date was set in early 2018. HRDC is represented by in-house
counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by local
counsel Matthew Topic with the law firm of Loevy and Loevy in Chicago, IL.
2. Prison Legal News v. Director Charles Ryan (Arizona DOC) – HRDC’s lawsuit
against the Arizona DOC, which began in 2015, continues over the censorship of
certain issues of Prison Legal News on the spurious basis that they contain sexually
explicit content, and the DOC’s failure to provide due process notice. The bulk of
the litigation in 2017 was focused on discovery issues, including multiple motions
to compel production of documents and other information in preparation for filing

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summary judgment motions in 2018. HRDC is represented by in-house counsel
Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, as well as attorneys
Lisa Ells, Jenny Yelin, Krista Stone-Manista and Andrew Pope with Rosen Bien
Galvan & Grunfeld, LLP in San Francisco, CA, and David Bodney and Michael A.
DiGiacomo with Ballard Spahr, LLP in Phoenix, AZ.
3. Prison Legal News v. Federal Bureau of Prisons (ADX) – HRDC’s lawsuit against
the federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) highest-security facility, the Administrative
Maximum Facility (ADX) in Colorado, due to censorship of Prison Legal News and
lack of constitutionally adequate due process notice, continued in 2017. The BOP
moved to dismiss the case, asserting the claims were moot because it had amended
its policies to allow the delivery of PLN to prisoners at the ADX. The court denied
the motion in August 2017, after first granting it but later vacating its order. The
parties then engaged in discovery for much of the remainder of 2017. HRDC is
represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and
Daniel Marshall, as well as attorneys Peter Swanson, Matthew Shapanka and
Stephen Kiehl with Covington & Burling, LLP in Washington, D.C.; Steven
Zansberg with Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, LLP in Denver, CO; Professor
David Shapiro with the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in
Chicago, IL; and Elliot Mincberg with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for
Civil Rights & Urban Affairs in Washington, D.C.
4. Prison Legal News v. Sheriff James Jones (Knox County, TN) – At the start of
2017, the defendants had already conceded liability for their censorship of HRDC’s
publications and other mail at the Knox County jail, as well as their lack of due
process notice in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Accordingly,
in June 2017 they agreed to pay $25,000 in damages. The parties continued to
litigate the issue of injunctive relief, attorneys’ fees and costs, but no resolution had
been reached as of the end of the year. HRDC is represented by in-house counsel
Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by attorney
Tricia Herzfeld with Branstetter, Stranch and Jennings, PLLC in Nashville, TN.
5. Prison Legal News v. Northwestern Virginia Regional Detention Center – HRDC
continued litigating its challenge to this Virginia regional jail’s policy of banning
incoming books and magazines. After securing a consent decree in 2016 that
allowed for the delivery of publications to prisoners, HRDC and the defendants
both moved for summary judgment in early 2017. The district court granted in part
and denied in part the motions, allowing the case to proceed to trial as to liability on
HRDC’s First Amendment claim and compensatory damages on both its First and
Fourteenth Amendment claims. The case has been set for trial in June 2018. HRDC
is represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and
Daniel Marshall, and by Jeff Fogel and Steve Rosenfield in Charlottesville, VA.
6. Prison Legal News v. Julie Jones (Florida DOC) – On November 17, 2011,
HRDC filed suit challenging a ban on Prison Legal News by the Florida Dept. of
Corrections (FDOC); the statewide ban was purportedly based on PLN’s advertising
content, including pen pal and phone service ads. A bench trial was held in January

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2015, and in August 2015 the district court held that FDOC’s censorship of PLN
was permissible but that the FDOC had violated HRDC’s due process rights; the
court issued an injunction against the FDOC on the latter grounds. HRDC filed an
appeal with the Eleventh Circuit, and oral argument was held on June 10, 2016. As
of the end of 2017, the appellate court had not issued its opinion in the case. HRDC
is represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, and by Randall Berg and
Dante Trevisani with the Florida Justice Institute; Benjamin Stevenson and Nancy
Abudu with the ACLU of Florida; and on appeal by Paul Clement and Michael
McGinley with Bancroft PLLC.
C. Cases Resolved in 2017
1. Prison Legal News v. Sheriff Bob Bezotte (Livingston County, MI) – HRDC filed
suit against Livingston County, Michigan and Sheriff Bob Bezotte on August 9,
2011 over unconstitutional restrictions on correspondence sent to prisoners due to a
postcard-only policy, raising claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. In
2016, the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. While both summary
judgment motions were pending, the case settled in June 2017 with an injunctive
agreement that requires Livingston County to 1) accept up to 30 subscriptions per
month of Prison Legal News addressed to specific prisoners, regardless of whether
the subscriptions are paid or gifts; 2) deliver Prison Legal News subscriptions to
prisoners provided they are still housed at the Livingston County Jail; 3) accept up
to 30 HRDC books per month; and 4) provide notice of any censorship in writing to
the prisoner to whom the material was addressed, as well as to HRDC. Livingston
County further agreed to pay $295,000 in damages, attorney fees and costs. HRDC
was represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, and by attorneys Thomas
M. Loeb, Brian J. Prain and Dan E. Manville.
2. Prison Legal News v. Sheriff Ken Stolle (Virginia Beach, VA) – After argument
before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2016 concerning attorneys’
fees, the appellate court issued a per curiam opinion affirming the district court’s
order on fees. The case, which challenged the censorship of HRDC publications
and books at the Virginia Beach Correctional Center, subsequently settled for
$94,423.35 in attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses. HRDC was represented by inhouse counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and
by local counsel Jeff Fogel and Steve D. Rosenfield in Charlottesville, VA.
3. Prison Legal News v. Management & Training Corporation (Otero County
Prison Facility, NM) – In October 2016, PLN filed suit against private prison
operator Management & Training Corporation (MTC), challenging a pre-approval
policy prior to receipt of books sent to prisoners at the company’s Otero County
Prison Facility in New Mexico, as well as failure to provide adequate notice of the
censorship. In July 2017, following mediation, the parties entered into a settlement
agreement that also resolved a companion case filed by HRDC in Ohio. MTC
agreed to pay $150,000 in damages, attorneys’ fees and costs; it also agreed to
modify its mail policy to allow the delivery of unsolicited publications, including

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books, magazines and newspapers, without using an approved vendor list. The
policy changes apply to all MTC facilities nationwide. HRDC was represented by
in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall,
and by Bruce E.H. Johnson with Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle, WA and Laura
Shauer Ives with Kennedy, Kennedy & Ives in Albuquerque, NM.
4. Human Rights Defense Center v. Management & Training Corporation (North
Central Correctional Complex, OH) – In May 2017, HRDC filed a companion
case to its suit filed against MTC in New Mexico, concerning censorship policies at
the company’s North Central Correctional Complex in Ohio. The case settled in
July 2017 as part of a combined injunctive and monetary settlement for $150,000 in
damages, attorneys’ fees and costs, as well as changes to MTC’s mail policies at
the company’s detention facilities nationwide. HRDC was represented by in-house
counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by
Bruce E.H. Johnson with Davis Wright Tremaine, in Seattle, WA and Adam G.
Gerhardstein with the law firm of Gerhardstein & Branch in Cincinnati, OH.
5. Prison Legal News v. Pottawatomie County Public Safety Center Trust – In
October 2015, HRDC filed a lawsuit against the Pottawatomie County Public
Safety Center, a regional jail in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, over a policy
that banned all incoming publications. By the close of 2015, the jail had abandoned
most of its unconstitutional mail practices. In early 2017, the defendants agreed to a
consent decree ensuring that the unconstitutional policy banning publications would
not be reinstated, and agreed to pay $125,000 in damages, attorney’s fees and
costs. HRDC was represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba
Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and by Robert Nelon and Ashley Roche with the
law firm of Hall Estill in Oklahoma City, OK and Bruce E.H. Johnson with Davis
Wright Tremaine in Seattle, WA.
6. Prison Legal News v. Sheriff Wickersham (Macomb County, MI) – HRDC’s suit
against a jail in Macomb County, Michigan concerned the facility’s postcard-only
policy and lack of due process notice. By June 2016, the defendants agreed to be
bound by a stipulated injunction that prohibited them from enforcing the postcardonly policy and required due process notice when mail was censored. Accordingly,
the only issues remaining for the district court were PLN’s claims for declaratory
relief, damages, attorneys’ fees and costs. In August 2017, the court denied the
claim for declaratory relief. Soon thereafter the parties negotiated a settlement as to
damages, fees and costs in the amount of $150,000. HRDC was represented by inhouse counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba and Daniel Marshall, and
by James Stewart with Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, LLP; Bruce E.H.
Johnson with Davis Wright Tremaine; and Dan E. Manville, director of the Civil
Rights Clinic at the Michigan State University College of Law.
II. Public Records and FOIA Cases
HRDC also litigates public records and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases across the
country related to prisons, jails and other detention facilities, seeking information on such issues

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as government contracts with private companies engaged in correctional services, and payouts,
settlements and verdicts in lawsuits involving corrections and law enforcement agencies. HRDC
uses this information to ensure government transparency and accountability, while engaging in
investigative research and reporting on issues related to the criminal justice system.
A. Cases Resolved in 2017
1. Prison Legal News v. Bureau of Prisons (Samuels I) – After 14 years of litigation
in a FOIA suit seeking records related to all cases over a multi-year period in which
the federal Bureau of Prisons paid $1,000 or more to resolve claims or lawsuits, the
BOP provided the last set of documents responsive to the request and settled the
case in April 2017. Accordingly, the parties entered into a settlement agreement for
$420,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs. The case, initially filed in 2003, included an
appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. HRDC was represented by in-house
counsel Sabarish Neelakanta and Masimba Mutamba, and by Washington, D.C.
attorney Ed Elder and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund at the district court
level. On appeal and in subsequent proceedings, HRDC was represented by Ronald
London and Lisa Zycherman with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Davis Wright
Tremaine and by HRDC general counsel Sabarish Neelakanta.
2. Prison Legal News v. Bureau of Prisons (UNICOR records) – In July 2012,
HRDC requested, via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), copies of records
from the Bureau of Prisons or Federal Prison Industries (also known as UNICOR).
The records related to UNICOR’s electronics recycling program, with a focus on
hazardous or toxic materials and dangerous working conditions, deaths or injuries
that have resulted from same, and related litigation involving UNICOR resulting in
settlements or verdicts. At the close of 2016, the court issued an order outlining a
briefing schedule for any summary judgment motions. However, after subsequent
releases of documents, a final set of records was produced in late 2017 and the
parties entered into a settlement agreement in the amount of $171,000 for attorneys’
fees and costs. HRDC was represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta
and Masimba Mutamba, and by attorneys Carl Messineo and Mara VerheydenHilliard with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in Washington, D.C.
B. Cases Still Pending in 2017
1. Prison Legal News v. Corizon Health – In March 2016, HRDC filed a public
records complaint against private prison medical contractor Corizon Health in New
Mexico, over its failure to disclose documents related to litigation, settlements and
verdicts in connection with the company’s contract with the New Mexico Dept. of
Corrections. Corizon Health argued that it was not subject to the state’s public
disclosure law because it is not a public entity, despite the fact that it performs a
core governmental function of providing healthcare to prisoners. The defendants
filed a motion to dismiss, and HRDC has filed a response. Due to an earlier case
currently on appeal concerning whether Corizon is subject to New Mexico’s public
records law, this case has been stayed and remains pending until a ruling has been
issued in the appeal. HRDC is represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta
and by Laura Shauer Ives with Kennedy, Kennedy & Ives in Albuquerque, NM.

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2. Prison Legal News v. Bureau of Prisons (Samuels II) – On June 3, 2015, HRDC
filed suit against the Bureau of Prisons in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia seeking declaratory, injunctive and other relief, over the BOP’s failure to
produce records concerning settlements and verdicts in lawsuits for any amount
greater than $1,000, from January 2008 through November 2013, pursuant to the
Freedom of Information Act. The BOP subsequently began releasing documents
responsive to those requests, including multi-region document productions, totaling
over 18,700 pages in the initial productions in 2016, more than 2,700 pages in a
supplemental production in the spring and summer of 2017, and over 2,200 pages in
another supplemental production in late summer and fall 2017. At the end of the
year, the parties were still negotiating the scope of the documents responsive to the
FOIA request. HRDC is represented by in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta and
Masimba Mutamba, and by Ronald London and Ashley Vulin with Davis Wright
Tremaine in Washington, D.C. and Portland, OR, respectively.
III. CONSUMER CLASS ACTIONS
As part of its Stop Prison Profiteering project, HRDC has focused attention on challenging the
exploitive business practices of private companies awarded lucrative monopoly contracts with
prisons and jails to provide services to prisoners, often at exorbitant costs and with hidden fees
and charges. Accordingly, HRDC has spearheaded consumer class-action litigation against these
companies. Specifically, we have been tackling the practice of issuing debit cards to prisoners
upon their release in lieu of a check or cash. These debit release cards have hidden and costly
charges and handling fees, often leaving prisoners – who have no choice but to accept the cards –
with nothing or a small fraction of the balance they had when they were released.
A. Cases Filed in 2017
1. Reichert v. Keefe Commissary Network, LLC – Jeffrey Reichert was arrested and
booked into the Kitsap County Jail in Washington State in October 2016. When he
entered the jail he had approximately $177.66 in cash. When he was released a
short time later, he received a debit card instead of the cash he had surrendered. The
prepaid debit card required Mr. Reichert to pay unreasonable and excessive fees in
order to access his own money. He never consented to receiving the card instead of
his cash, and never assented to any contract with the defendants, including Keefe
Commissary Network, a company that also operates prison and jail commissaries.
Kitsap County Jail did not give Mr. Reichert an opportunity to reject the debit
release card or take immediate possession of his money in any other form, such as
cash or a check. HRDC filed a class-action lawsuit in October 2017, arguing that
those practices violated the Takings Clause, the Electronic Funds Transfer Act, the
Washington Consumer Protection Act and common law claims of conversion and
unjust enrichment. The case remained pending at the close of 2017. Mr. Reichert is
represented by HRDC in-house counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, Masimba Mutamba
and Daniel Marshall, and by Mark Griffin and Laura Gerber with the law firm of
Keller Rohrback in Seattle, WA.

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B. Cases Still Pending in 2017
1. Brown v. Stored Value Cards – Danica Brown was charged with interfering with
an officer during a peaceful protest of the police shooting death of Michael Brown,
and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center in Portland, Oregon. At
the time of her arrest she had approximately $30 in cash on her person, which the
jail confiscated. After releasing her the next day, Ms. Brown did not receive her
cash but instead was given a preloaded debit card that assessed various exorbitant
fees. No one asked her whether she wanted to receive her money on a debit card,
nor did she consent to receiving the card instead of cash. Ms. Brown also did not
receive any cardholder agreement or terms and conditions, and never agreed to
arbitrate claims associated with the card. She filed a class-action lawsuit alleging
the return of her money in the form of a fee-laden debit card violated the Electronic
Funds Transfer Act and the Oregon Unfair Trade Practices Act, along with claims
of conversion and unjust enrichment. The defendants moved to compel arbitration,
which the court denied in February 2016. Subsequent motions to dismiss filed by
the defendants in 2016 and 2017 also were denied, and the parties engaged in
discovery throughout most of 2017. Ms. Brown is represented by HRDC general
counsel Sabarish Neelakanta, and by attorneys Mark Griffin and Laura Gerber with
Keller Rohrback in Seattle, WA, and Benjamin Haile in Portland, OR.
C. Cases Resolved in 2017
1. Pope v. EZ Card and Kiosk, LLC – John Pope was arrested by the Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida police during a sit-in protest over the police shooting of Michael Brown; he
was charged with a first-degree misdemeanor and booked into the Broward County
Jail. The $178 in cash he had on his person was confiscated when he entered the
jail, and upon his release the next morning he received a preloaded debit card
instead of cash. No one asked him whether he wanted to receive his funds in the
form of a prepaid debit card that assessed numerous fees. He never assented to
receiving the debit card instead of cash, nor was he given any opportunity to reject
the card. Further, Mr. Pope did not recall receiving a cardholder agreement or terms
and conditions with the debit card, and he did not agree to arbitrate any claims. He
filed a class-action suit that alleged violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act
and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, as well as conversion
and unjust enrichment. The defendants moved to compel arbitration to which Mr.
Pope filed an opposition, arguing that the arbitration clause was unenforceable. The
district court subsequently granted the defendants’ motion and submitted the case
for arbitration. In 2016, by stipulation, Mr. Pope agreed to dismiss claims against
Central National Bank of Kansas City. The claims against EZ Card and Kiosk were
settled in a confidential agreement in 2017. Mr. Pope was represented by attorneys
Raymond Audain, Oren Giskan and HRDC general counsel Sabarish Neelakanta.

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IV. AMICUS BRIEFS
The Human Rights Defense Center joined in the following amicus briefs in 2017:
Flores v. Sessions – In March 2017, HRDC joined other amici in support of an appeal before the
U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a long-running case concerning detention of immigrant
children. The appeal involved two issues related to well-settled principles of public policy: 1)
detention in institutional facilities is inherently harmful to the growth, development and physical
and mental health of children and adolescents, and should only be permissible as a last resort;
and 2) children are entitled to basic due process protections regarding secure confinement. On
July 5, 2017, the Ninth Circuit issued a landmark ruling that confirmed all detained immigrant
children have a right to a bond hearing before an immigration judge. The appellate court held
that intervening federal legislation did not modify the Flores Settlement Agreement – a 1997
settlement between the federal government and the plaintiff class of detained immigrant children
that established a “nationwide policy for the detention, release, and treatment of minors in the
custody of the INS [former Immigration and Naturalization Service].”
In Re Bar Application: Tarra Simmons – On August 7, 2017, HRDC joined an amicus brief in
support of Tarra Dennelle Simmons’ application to the Washington Supreme Court to be allowed
to sit for the bar exam. Simmons was a nurse who excelled in law school after serving a prison
term for serious drug and weapons offenses. HRDC asked the Court to allow Simmons to sit for
the exam and to affirm the principle that for purposes of bar admission, a moral character inquiry
must be determined on an individualized basis and there should be no categorical exclusion of
applicants with criminal records or histories of substance abuse. Simmons’ application remained
pending at the close of 2017.
Snodgrass, Jr. v. Messer – In December 2017, HRDC joined an amicus brief on behalf of Kevin
Snodgrass, Jr. in support of his Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court. The
petition raised two issues of significant importance: 1) Whether the First Amendment protects
the speech of a prisoner who tells an officer that she intends to file a grievance concerning the
officers’ misconduct; and 2) whether labeling a prisoner a “snitch” in a prison setting constitutes
an adverse action for purposes of a First Amendment retaliation claim. HRDC and other amici
urged the Supreme Court to grant the petition and rule in the affirmative on both issues.

OTHER ACTIVITIES & ACHIEVEMENTS
CAMPAIGN FOR PRISON PHONE JUSTICE
HRDC co-founded the national Campaign
for Prison Phone Justice (PPJ) in 2011,
with the goal of reducing the cost of phone
calls between prisoners and their family members. As part of our strategy to achieve this goal,
HRDC worked diligently with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), speaking at
FCC workshops and filing comments on the docket for the Wright Petition – an FCC proceeding
to address the high cost of prison and jail phone calls.

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In response to the hard work of the PPJ campaign and its allies, the FCC initially capped
the cost of interstate (long distance) calls in 2013, then in 2015 the agency announced rate caps
for intrastate (in-state) calls at $0.11 per minute for state and federal prisons, and $0.14 to $0.22
per minute for local jails depending on the size of the facility.
This was a great victory for PPJ and for prisoners and their loved ones; with the rate caps
imposed by the FCC, prison and jail telecom companies such as Global Tel*Link (GTL) and
Securus could no longer charge excessive and unjustified fees. However, new appointments were
made under the Trump administration in 2017; one of those appointments was the new chair of
the FCC, Ajit Pai, who announced that the agency would not defend its intrastate rate caps in a
court challenge filed by prison telecom companies and corrections agencies. HRDC and other
advocates intervened in the case, and independently defended the rate caps.
On June 13, 2017, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that vacated the rate
caps on intrastate prison and jail phone calls; additionally, it vacated reporting requirements for
video calling, struck down the exclusion of “commission” kickbacks from call cost calculations
and held the “FCC had no authority to impose ancillary fee caps with respect to intrastate calls,”
among other provisions. The decision was reported in the July issue of Prison Legal News.
Prior to the appellate court’s ruling, HRDC had submitted two comments on the Wright
Petition docket in February, related to a bribery scandal involving GTL and former Mississippi
DOC Commissioner Christopher Epps, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to almost 20 years
in federal prison. HRDC also filed a comment in August after GTL agreed to pay a $2.5 million
settlement to the State of Mississippi in a civil action related to the scandal.
Additionally, HRDC submitted two comments regarding the FCC’s rulemaking related to
contraband cell phones in prisons and jails. In August, we filed another two comments accusing
Chairman Pai of having a conflict of interest and calling for his recusal, as he had represented
prison telecom Securus as an attorney before his appointment to the FCC.
Although 2017 dealt a serious setback to the PPJ campaign, HRDC continues to advocate
for prison and jail phone reforms on the state and federal levels.
STOP PRISON PROFITEERING CAMPAIGN
HRDC’s Stop Prison Profiteering Campaign
focuses on the ongoing financial exploitation
of prisoners and their families by both government agencies and private companies. Such
exploitation includes the egregious cost of video calling, commissary items, money transfers,
secure email and tablet services, and the growing practice of releasing prisoners with fee-laden
debit cards. Compounding these practices are monopoly contracts between corrections officials
and private companies, often awarded in exchange for “commission” kickbacks.
Our SPP efforts in 2017 focused on obtaining the data and contracts behind these
exploitive practices through public records requests, as well as litigating to put a stop to them.
HRDC obtained contracts for fee-based correctional services at county jails in Washington State,
as well as state- and county-level contracts across the country.
Last year, HRDC resolved a lawsuit that challenged debit release cards given to prisoners
upon their release from a Florida jail (Pope v. EZ Card and Kiosk, LLC), and in 2017 we
continued to litigate a similar case in Oregon (Brown v. Stored Value Cards). HRDC also filed a
lawsuit in October 2017 challenging release debit cards at a Washington county jail (Reichert v.
Keefe Commissary Network, LLC). For details on these cases, see the litigation section above.

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PRISON ECOLOGY PROJECT
HRDC’s Prison Ecology Project (PEP) began in the spring of 2015 to
address the intersection of environmental justice and criminal justice,
including the impact of correctional facilities on the environment and the
environment’s impact on prisoners and prison staff.
Panagioti Tsolkas, HRDC’s special projects coordinator, continued
to expand PEP efforts in 2017. On June 2-5, activists with the PEP
campaign and Fight Toxic Prisons came together in Fort Worth, Texas, for
the Second Convergence on Toxic Prisons. The event brought together
environmental activists, prisoners’ rights advocates and current and former prisoners to strategize
around prison ecological issues.
One of the PEP’s most significant victories this year was the U.S. Department of Justice’s
decision to rescind $444 million allocated to construct a new federal prison in Letcher County,
Kentucky on the site of a former coal mine. That decision, announced in July 2017, was the
culmination of an intense years-long campaign by PEP that mobilized activists to oppose the
prison building project through protest actions and comments filed with the Bureau of Prisons.
When the Bureau of Prisons reopened a public comment period on the Letcher County project in
October 2017, PEP again mobilized its network to submit 455 letters in response.
Also, in August 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency introduced a new data tool,
EJSCREEN, that allows the public to map environmental indicators around the United States. As
a result of PEP’s advocacy efforts, EJSCREEN debuted with a screening tool for the locations of
correctional facilities, so users can see for themselves the correlation between environmental
hazards and prison sites.
PEP reached new audiences with a collaborative series of articles between Truthout and
Earth Island Institute during the summer of 2017. This coverage included the number of prisons
located near Superfund sites and other contaminated land, the raw sewage and other pollutants
expelled by overcrowded prison systems and the peculiarly cruel circumstances of climate
refugees held in immigration detention centers. In the words of Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief
of Truthout, who authored the introduction to the series of articles, “It’s time for all of us to
recognize that prisons are toxic – and that health, life and freedom from toxicity should be
human rights for all.”
Also as part of the PEP campaign, Prison Legal News ran a cover story in December
2017 titled, “California Prisons Struggle with Environmental Threats from Sewage Spills,
Contaminated Water, Airborne Disease,” by Rick Anderson.
CORECIVIC / GEO GROUP RESOLUTIONS
Last year, citing the findings of a report by the U.S. Department of
Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), HRDC associate
director Alex Friedmann, who owns a small amount of stock in
CoreCivic and GEO Group as an activist investor, submitted shareholder resolutions to both companies that would require them to
conduct independent operational audits of all their facilities every two
years. According to the resolutions, “Such audits shall examine operational benchmarks at the
Company’s correctional and detention facilities that include, but are not limited to, those examin-

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ed in the August 2016 OIG report – including rates of violence and use of force incidents,
disciplinary and grievance systems, contraband, lockdowns and positive drug tests.”
Both CoreCivic and GEO Group objected to the shareholder resolutions by seeking a noaction letter from the SEC, which was granted in February 2017. Thus, the resolutions were not
presented to stockholders for a vote. HRDC issued two press releases condemning GEO and
CoreCivic for having the resolutions excluded.
In November 2017, Alex filed a shareholder resolution with CoreCivic that would require
the company to calculate the amount it spends on political campaign donations and lobbying
each year, and to spend at least that amount on “rehabilitative and reentry programs or services at
is facilities.” However, CoreCivic officials claimed that due to a change in their email system
they didn’t receive the resolution electronically, and the mailed copy arrived one day after the
deadline; thus, the resolution did not proceed.
Alex filed a different shareholder resolution with GEO Group in November 2017 on a
technical issue involving proxy access – the ability of certain large shareholders to make their
own nominations to the company’s board of directors. GEO did not oppose the resolution, which
will go before shareholders for a vote in the summer of 2018.
Alex is represented in his shareholder resolutions pro bono by attorney Jeffrey Lowenthal
with the New York law firm of Stroock Stroock Lavan, LLP.
FOIA PROJECT
HRDC launched an ambitious national public records project in October 2017 with the help of a
generous anonymous donor. This initiative aims to expose the scope of abuses and misconduct in
police departments, corrections agencies and prosecutor’s offices nationwide – and the money
paid by the government to settle lawsuits over such issues. HRDC’s Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) project will uncover, document and report wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies and
officials to an extent previously unachieved, providing the public with a comprehensive look at
the true costs of our nation’s justice system. Through this campaign we also hope to expand our
long-standing goal of challenging and improving accessibility to public records.
Since the start of this project, Michelle Dillon, HRDC’s new public records manager, has
submitted dozens of FOIA requests to agencies across Washington, Oregon, California, Texas,
Vermont and Connecticut. Deb Golden, HRDC’s newest staff attorney who is overseeing our
FOIA project, has been busy drafting appeals when agencies refuse to produce the requested
documents. We achieved early success in Washington State, obtaining an illuminating set of
public records, and will build on this success in 2018 as our FOIA project progresses.
HRDC SOCIAL MEDIA
HRDC maintains a social media presence, including Facebook and Twitter
accounts as well as a free email newsletter published five days a week. As
of the end of 2017, social media director Monte McCoin reported that
HRDC had 2,884 e-newsletter members, 6,123 Facebook likes, 13,044
Twitter followers and 152 followers on LinkedIn.

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COLLABORATIONS & AFFILIATIONS
HRDC collaborated with other organizations in 2017 on a variety of advocacy efforts, reports,
campaigns and other projects – including Working Narratives, the Prison Policy Initiative,
Nation Inside, the Private Corrections Institute and Grassroots Leadership. Additionally, HRDC
staff maintained the following affiliations with other organizations:


HRDC executive director Paul Wright is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and
serves on the board of the NLG’s National Police Accountability Project. He is also a
member of the American Bar Association, American Correctional Association and
American Jail Association.



HRDC associate director Alex Friedmann serves in a volunteer, non-compensated
capacity as president of the Private Corrections Institute, a non-profit watchdog group
that opposes prison privatization. He also volunteers as a consultant to the Presbyterian
Criminal Justice Network, serves on the advisory board of the Prison Policy Initiative and
is a member of National CURE, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Investigative
Reporters and Editors.



HRDC general counsel and litigation project director Sabarish Neelakanta is a
member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association, the National Lawyers Guild’s
National Police Accountability Project, the American Constitution Society, the American
Civil Liberties Union, the Trial and Public Interest sections of the Florida Bar, and the
Palm Beach County Bar Association.



HRDC staff attorney Deb Golden is a member of the National Police Accountability
Project, Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington D.C., American Bar
Association, Kentucky Bar Association, D.C. Bar Association and the Criminal Law and
Individual Rights Community of the D.C. Bar, and Washington Council of Lawyers.



HRDC staff attorney Dan Marshall is a member of the National Lawyers Guild’s
National Police Accountability Project, Florida Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers, and Palm Beach County Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.



HRDC staff attorney and William A. Trine Fellow Masimba Mutamba is a Florida
Bar Delegate with the American Bar Association House of Delegates; Treasurer and
Secretary of the F. Malcolm Cunningham, Sr. Bar Association; Young Lawyer Session
Co-chair, Palm Beach County Bar Association Bench-Bar Conference; Committee
Member, Palm Beach County Judicial Diversity Initiative; member of the National
Lawyers Guild’s National Police Accountability Project; Sub-committee Co-chair of the
PBCBA Committee for Diversity and Inclusion; Adopt-a-School Committee Co-chair,
PBCBA Young Lawyer’s Section; and member of the American Immigration Lawyers
Association, South Florida Chapter.

Human Rights Defense Center Annual Report 2017

[29]

LOOKING FORWARD: GOALS FOR 2018
HRDC continued to increase our criminal justice reform work in 2017 with respect to our media
outreach, litigation project, advocacy efforts and other activities. Our websites continue to be
important sources of news and research for prisoners’ rights advocates, policy makers, attorneys,
academics, journalists and other people involved in criminal justice-related issues.
HRDC’s litigation project expanded in 2017 due to ongoing censorship by prison and jail
officials of Prison Legal News, Criminal Legal News and the books we distribute. We anticipate
having to file additional legal challenges next year related to censorship as well as public records
requests through our new FOIA Project – plus continuing litigation against companies that
exploit prisoners and their families via fee-based services as part of our Stop Prison Profiteering
campaign. We now have four staff attorneys and two paralegals on staff.
While HRDC will continue to coordinate the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice and
advocate for lower prison and jail phone rates, due to setbacks on the federal level under the
Trump administration we plan to focus on state-level reforms and advocacy.
Our Prison Ecology Project will continue to collect data and report on environmental
issues affecting prisoners, to network with environmental justice groups, and to advocate for
prisoners’ environmental health rights and against prisons and jails located in or near areas with
significant ecological hazards – such as coal mines, landfills, Superfund sites, etc.
Our future book publishing plans include publishing an updated edition of With Liberty
for Some, by Scott Christianson, and a new version of The Habeas Citebook that focuses on
prosecutorial misconduct. We continue to seek self-help books to distribute that are of interest to
prisoners, and encourage book ideas and submissions from qualified authors.
Additional ongoing goals include building HRDC’s organizational capacity, expanding
our funding sources and fundraising, increasing the number of PLN and CLN subscribers, and –
as always – continuing to advocate for criminal justice reform and prisoners’ rights.

P.O. Box 1151
Lake Worth, FL 33460
(561) 360-2523
www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org
www.prisonlegalnews.org
www.criminallegalnews.org
www.prisonphonejustice.org
www.stopprisonprofiteering.org
www.prisonecologyproject.org
www.privateprisonnews.org

Articles about the Human Rights Defense Center and Prison Legal News
PRISONS ARE CENSORING PUBLICATIONS
THAT CHALLENGE STATE POWER
by Camille Fassett, Reporter
Freedom of the Press Foundation
August 28, 2018

M

any civil liberties violations and instances of state abuse that
incarcerated people experience are rendered invisible from
the rest of the country. Prisons are cracking down on incarcerated
people’s rights to access information, learn, and read the news—a
huge threat to the First and Fourth Amendments.
The concept of banned books and magazines—reading materials
deemed too dangerous or subversive—may seem anachronistic
and even Orwellian. But prisons across the United States have long
attempted to restrict what prisoners can read, and some are currently
attempting to limit inmates’ access to a particular magazine.
Prison Legal News is a monthly magazine published by the
Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC). It primarily reports
on criminal justice issues, and features both investigative pieces
as well as educational resources for inmates to fight abuse or
government misconduct in prisons. It’s also banned in prisons in
the State of Florida.
This May, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld
Florida’s 2009 decision to ban the publication in the state’s public
prisons on the grounds that the magazine contains advertisements
for services that aren’t allowed in the prisons, like the sale of postage
stamps and pen pal services.
Judge Ed Carnes speculated that the ads may provide
“temptation” for inmates to commit fraud and other criminal
acts. It’s a legal framework that could, according to Sabarish
Neelakanta, General Counsel & Litigation Director at HRDC,
allow for a broad range of censorship of reading materials.
Advertisements for kitchen knives or alcohol, for example, could
justify banning a cooking magazine entirely.
“That was one of the arguments we raised in our briefing to
the Eleventh Circuit,” Neelakanta said. “If there’s an article that
talks about ‘escape to Bermuda,’ that’s illegal within a jail, and
presumably could be encompassed under a technical reading. A
whole slew of other publishing entities could be affected.”
Human Rights Defense Center is fighting back and
challenging the decision, and is preparing to the petition the
United States Supreme Court for review. But Florida isn’t the only
legal battleground for HRDC, which has brought lawsuits against
over 50 prisons in 40 states. And unlike in Florida, censorship is in
many cases based on content.
HRDC is suing the Illinois Department of Corrections,
alleging that the institution has implemented policies that deny
inmates access to HRDC materials. In the complaint, HRDC
details incidents of incarcerated subscribers to Prison Legal News
not receiving complete copies of the magazine, and argued that this
censorship violates both the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
“Defendants have adopted and implemented mail policies
and practices prohibiting delivery of written speech from HRDC
while failing to provide due process notice of and an opportunity
to challenge that censorship,” the complaint reads.

As part of an interim experiment, Neelakanta said the parties
have agreed to track the delivery of Prison Legal News to around
15 facilities in Illinois to determine whether issues were being
delivered and censored. According to Neelakanta, although the
experiment has only been in place for less than a month, they’ve
continued to observe delivery problems.
Prison Legal News is also suing the Arizona Department of
Corrections for banning specific issues of the magazine because
of alleged “sexually explicit content” in its pages. The content in
question includes an excerpt from a court opinion describing an
incident of sexual assault against an inmate.
Paul Wright, founder and executive director of the Human
Rights Defense Center and editor of Prison Legal News, thinks that
the publication is targeted because it focuses on jail conditions,
corruption, and brutality in prisons. “It makes them look bad,” he
said. “It gives readers the tools to stop these things.”
While Prison Legal News could be the publication most frequently
banned in the United States, it’s far from the only instance of censorship
in prisons. Many of the reading materials that are banned in prisons
are those that challenge the criminal justice system. Prisons in states
including New Jersey and North Carolina had banned The New Jim
Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. And The New
Jim Crow was also labeled a security threat in Florida—as was Douglas
Blackmon’s Slavery By Another Name.
Incarcerated people do not lose their rights to stay informed
when they are detained by the state, but correctional facilities using
“security concerns” to deny inmates’ access to reading materials
is not uncommon. Some have only allowed incarcerated people
to receive postcards, claiming that magazines and letters allow
inmates to more easily receive contraband. Others, Neelakanta
said, have argued that staples used to bind magazines could be used
for weapons or tattoo guns. Jails have other ways to manage those
“security risks”, and Neelakanta thinks it’s problematic that they
often resort to censorship of political content.
HRDC has won most of its First Amendment lawsuits—
Neelakanta estimates over a 95% success rate. But that prisons

are denying inmates access to reading materials—whether by
labeling them a “security threat” or invoking archaic statutes—
comprises a huge threat to press freedom, and publications’ right
to reach their audiences.
https://freedom.press/news/prisons-are-censoring-publicationschallenge-state-power/

________________________________

THE SILENCING OF PRISON LEGAL NEWS
by Victoria Mckenzie
The Crime Report
June 12, 2018

A

resource that civil rights attorneys say is critical for prisoners
across the country who are fighting abuse and neglect behind
bars has just become off-limits to Florida inmates.
Last month, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which
covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida, upheld the state’s decision to
ban Prison Legal News (PLN), on the grounds that it carries ads for
services that are prohibited in Florida correctional facilities.
Those services include three-way calling, pen pal services, and
selling postage stamps for cash. Prefacing his 48-page opinion by
invoking the 19th century writer Oscar Wilde, Judge Ed Carnes
speculated that the ads may provide “temptation” for inmates to
commit fraud and other criminal acts.
“From time to time we have all followed the advice of Oscar
Wilde and gotten rid of temptation by yielding to it,” wrote Carnes.
[Editor’s note: Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde was
imprisoned in 1895 on a charge of “gross indecency” with men.]
“Inmates have the time, talent, and tendency to use their
phone, pen pal, and correspondence privileges to conduct criminal
activity, thwarting efforts to protect inmates and the public.”
At one point, Carnes even argued that cash-for-stamps
schemes facilitate “the corruption of prison guards.”
The decision contained many pages of anecdotes about fraud
schemes perpetrated by inmates, but did not cite testimony or evidence
suggesting that viewing advertisements incites criminal activity.
While Florida is currently the only state to ban the monthly
publication, the decision highlights similar disputes over prison
censorship now in play across the country. In practice, the burden of
accommodating prisoners’ rights to access legal and other reading
material across the United States—as well as the First Amendment
rights of a publisher to access its audience—has largely fallen on
the shoulders of one man.
At the center of these battles is Paul Wright, founder and
director of the Human Rights Defense Center (HDRC), who has
devoted the past 28 years to getting legal news and resources to
inmates. To do that, he’s had to file lawsuits against prisons and jails
in 40 states over their censorship practices.
“I’d say that we consistently win our litigation,” Wright told
The Crime Report. ”We have successfully sued over 50 jails over
publication bans and sadly, our work is not yet done.”
“That said, in the states of the former confederacy, which I
think is no surprise, the judges are a lot more hostile to civil rights
plaintiffs than they are elsewhere.”
Each month, the Center sends out some 22,500 issues of PLN
and Criminal Legal News, (a new criminal law and procedure
magazine) to prison libraries and individual subscribers across

the country, over 70 percent of whom are incarcerated. The total
readership is much larger, since it’s usually passed from hand to
hand; according to the Center’s estimate, each individual issue gets
passed around to at least ten different readers.
“[When] we publish a cover story in Prison Legal News, within
30 days it’s been read by a quarter of a million people,” Wright told
The Crime Report.
Paul Wright started the magazine from inside a maximum
security prison in Washington state with another inmate, Ed Mead.
Together, they had $300, which was enough to pay for six issues. If
enough subscriptions and donations came in, they thought, they
could afford to keep publishing.
Since then, it’s grown into a 72-page authoritative and
unmatchable resource for inmates seeking legal advice for their
complaints, ranging from medical neglect, beatings and excessive
use of force, to abuse of solitary confinement and sexual assault
behind bars.
Public defenders and other attorneys who work with inmates
talk about PLN with admiration.
“I’ve been working with prisoners trying to get access to
the courts since 1980,” said Alan Mills, executive director of the
Chicago-based Uptown People’s Law Center, an organization that
provides legal services to prisoners, as well as indigent residents.
In the course of litigating an 18-year class action lawsuit on
behalf of prisoners in solitary confinement, Mills said he got a good
picture of what the magazine means to inmates after talking to pro
se litigants and so-called “jailhouse lawyers” (Inmates who are selftaught in the law and advise others on their cases).
“There were two sources that they always cited as to what they
looked to for help in the absence of access to a law library– and one
of those was Prison Legal News,” Mills said.
The second must-have publication, also issued by the Human
Rights Defense Center, was the Disciplinary Self-Help Litigation
Manual, he said.
Mills added that “Illinois has stopped updating all of its
casebooks for monetary reasons, so really Prison Legal News is the
only up-to-date source of information prisoners have as to what
the case law is doing, what new statutes are put in.”
Whenever Uptown People’s Law Center (UPLC) is mentioned
in a PLN article, “we get a flood of letters wanting us to take the
exact same case,” said Mills. And when inmates don’t receive an
issue of PLN, they also hear about it.
Recently, UPLC began receiving so many complaints about
missing issues that the organization filed a lawsuit against the
Illinois Department of Corrections.
It’s “very similar to what they’re doing in Florida, but here it’s
not a total ban,” Mills told The Crime Report.
Instead, he said, “individual prisons are censoring individual
issues in what appears to be a random sort of way— that is, some
issues will get into one maximum security prison but not into
another maximum security prison; some will get into a maximum
security prison, but for some reason won’t get into a minimum
security prison.”

A Dangerous Precedent?

Observers and legal experts are concerned that Florida’s ban will
set a dangerous precedent, possibly setting off similar actions elsewhere.
“It gives unbelievable latitude to the prison to make decisions
about the legal rights of prisoners, disclaiming that the courts have
responsibility for such decisions, and proceeds to place the burden

of accommodating the rights of prisoners and publishers on the
publication itself,” said Moira Meltzer-Cohen, a New York-based
civil rights attorney.
While “strictly speaking, this is litigation about a publisher’s
right of access to a particular audience,” she continued, “this case
can’t be decided or read in the absence of concerns regarding the
access of incarcerated persons to legal information that directly
impacts them.
“So this decision functions to leave power over what is
essentially access to the courts in the hands of administrators who
neither know nor care about the nuances of prisoners’ legal rights.”
Meanwhile, for such an ostensible blow to press freedom, the
decision went largely unreported in the media.
Tom Julin, a First Amendment attorney based in Miami, tried
to submit an amicus brief in 2016 on behalf of the Florida Press
Association and several other media organizations. But the state
vehemently opposed the brief and, in a rare move, barred the press
from weighing in on a case about the First Amendment rights of
a news publication. Julin called Carnes’ opinion “very troubling.”
The Florida Department of Corrections’ policy, which Walker
upheld, is to ban materials when ads for prohibited services are
“prominent or prevalent” throughout the publication.
“Well, how do you evaluate that?” said Julin. “That is not the
kind of clear and specific standard that would limit the discretion
of a prison official to impound the particular publication… where
the headline on the front page is, ‘Here’s your legal rights and how
you can challenge how you’re being treated in prison.’
“That’s what prison officials are concerned about; it’s not the ad
on page 22 for telephone services.”
Elsewhere, PLN has been banned on a number of other pretexts.
In a case still pending before a federal court, PLN sued the
Arizona Department of Corrections for banning issues of PLN
over “sexually explicit” content. According to the complaint, the
objectionable items carried headlines such as “Ninth Circuit Holds
Staff Sexual Abuse Presumed Coercive; State Bears Burden of
Rebutting Presumption,” and “Tenth Circuit Holds ‘Consensual’
Sex Defeats Prisoner’s Eighth Amendment Claim.”
In another instance, PLN sued the Sheriff of Berkeley County,
S.C. over its policy of banning non-religious reading materials.
Officials tried to argue in court that PLN contained staples which
could be used as weapons, or to clog toilets; although other
materials containing staples were available to inmates, and none
of the mailroom records showed “staples” as a reason for rejection.
The argument was “mainly a litigation strategy,” wrote law
professor and ACLU attorney David Shapiro, who represented
PLN in the lawsuit.
PLN won the case in 2012, resulting a total restructuring of the
jail’s policies. Ultimately, in a case that settled within a year, Berkley
officials spent around $600,000 fighting to uphold their censorship
practices, according to Shapiro.
While PLN has been successful in forcing change through the
courts, the standard for defending censorship practices (established
under Turner v. Safley) is low. Courts grant a high degree of
deference to prison officials, who only need to show that censorship
is “reasonably related” to public safety or prison security. In the 14
years since PLN first filed suit against the Florida DOC, officials
have never shown that advertisements incite criminal activity or
security breaches. For the 11th circuit, speculation was enough.
Wright, who is highly critical of the private prison industry,
nonetheless says that private facilities are generally good about not

censoring PLN and other Center publications.
“They realize it doesn’t really affect prison security,” he said,
“and they’re not willing to spend their money litigating, frankly,
bullshit—whereas the government is willing to fight for the last
penny of taxpayer money for whatever whim catches their fancy.”
“I can understand why [PLN] might rankle prison officials,
because you’re really arming prisoners with legal means of getting
relief from what they regard as unfair practices and unconstitutional
acts,” Julin told The Crime Report.
By magazine industry standards, the space devoted to
advertising in PLN is small, consisting of 25 percent or less of the
publication—certainly less “prominent” than a magazine such as
Vanity Fair, or Cosmopolitan.
Prison Legal News “really borders on being a scholarly journal,”
said Julin, noting the “grey” format, dense coverage of the courts,
and “long-form articles that are talking about prisoners’ rights and
how they can advocate for themselves.”
PLN’s dependence on advertising as its base of financial
support didn’t come about for lack of other fundraising efforts, says
Wright, but because “no one but us and our advertisers see any
value in reaching out to or engaging this population of 2.5 million
people that are caged.”
Foundations that support other nonprofit media simply aren’t
interested, he said. “Over the past 28 years, we’ve spent a huge amount
of time and energy and organizational resources trying to raise money
for our operations,” he told TCR. “We’ve hit everyone up.”
“One of the ironies is that it was a $50,000 grant from the
Public Welfare Foundation (a Washington DC-based nonprofit
that funds criminal justice programs) in 2007 that allowed us to
hire our first advertising director. They cut us off two years later,
but by that time we’d made the position self-sufficient.”
That advertising director expanded PLN’s ad revenue from
$23,000 to $200,000, according to Wright.
“No one else is going to give us $200,000 a year, but we’ve
got 80 advertisers that are willing to do that, because it matters
to them as well.”
Wright added that individual donations to HRDC, a large
portion of them from prisoners themselves, have enabled the
organization to hire PLN’s first investigative reporter.

Where’s the Media?

Not only are funders nowhere to be seen, says Wright, but
media organizations that keep a trained eye on freedom of the
press have remained largely silent when it comes to censorship
in prison.
“They’re totally AWOL,” he said bitterly. “None of those socalled media organizations really care about first amendment stuff
involving the police state.”
Julin, who represented organizations that tried to file a friendof-the-court document supporting PLN, said that the state’s decision
to bar them wasn’t covered in the news, even locally.
“Nobody paid any attention to it at all,” he said.
“I think what’s going on is that the issues with respect to
prison regulations don’t matter to a lot of people, just frankly
speaking. They have other concerns… it doesn’t directly affect the
institutional press.”
Al Tompkins, senior broadcast faculty at the Poynter Institute,
concedes that issues of press freedom and free speech behind bars
get little media attention.
“It’s hard to get the public, let alone journalists, to get interested

in anything having to do with prisons and inmates and jails,” he
told TCR.
“It’s difficult to get newsrooms to cover seriously what’s going
on in our jails and prisons because it’s just one more population
that needs our attention– let alone all of the people who are walking
around outside.”
Asked why prison censorship isn’t an issue that interests
organizations such as Poynter, Tompkins cited the restrictions on
civil rights behind bars.
“There are parts of the First Amendment that simply do not
apply in prison,” Tompkins said. “In a prison environment, it’s
different than in the free society.
“You’re in a controlled environment, and you don’t have the
same rights of consumption and expression that you do in the
outside world.”
Comments like that seem to exasperate Wright. “That doesn’t
explain us then, does it?” he says.
In practice, Wright has been forging these rights and
protections in the courts over the past three decades. PLN will be
filing a petition for Supreme Court review of the Florida decision.
Victoria Mckenzie is Deputy Editor of The Crime Report.
https://thecrimereport.org/2018/06/12/the-silencing-of-prisonlegal-news/

________________________________

PUBLISHER FILES CENSORSHIP SUIT
AGAINST ILLINOIS DOC
from CBS Chicago
February 13, 2018

T

he Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) filed a lawsuit
against the Illinois Department of Corrections that alleges
constitutional violations related to censorship of HRDC’s
publications mailed to Illinois state prisoners.
The non-profit organization says its publications are being
censored and, in some cases, not being delivered.
Attorney Alan Mills, of the Uptown People’s Law Center,
is representing the publisher and says this has been going on in
dozens of prisons for years.
“They check off the little box sometimes, which says ‘security,’
but that’s all they say. So there’s no way for us to know which
articles they think are a problem, let alone why they think they’re a
problem,” he said. “These are reported legal decisions — so we can’t
understand at all why there would be an objection.”
The publications include Prison Legal News, a 72-page monthly
publication that covers news and court rulings related to the
criminal justice system. HRDC says, as of January 2018, over 200
Illinois state prisoners subscribe to PLN, which has been published
for over 27 years.
The organization also distributes around 50 self-help and legal
books of interest to prisoners. The suit asks for an end to the
alleged censorship and punitive damages.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/02/13/publisher-filescensorship-suit-against-illinois-dept-of-corrections/

JAIL KEEPS TEENS IN SOLITARY FOR
MONTHS WITHOUT CARE, EDUCATION
by John Pacenti
Palm Beach Post
June 21, 2018

O

ne young inmate in solitary confinement at the Palm Beach
County jail hallucinated, staring at the blank wall of his cell,
thinking he was watching a television show, a federal lawsuit filed
Thursday alleges.
A 16-year-old got his teeth knocked out by deputies after
flooding his cell with toilet water when his telephone privileges were
cut short — a brief moment he could have contact with anyone.
Other juveniles begged deputies for water but were forced to
drink the putrid discolored water from the sink attached to their
toilet. “I’m not your water boy,” the deputies barked back.
If these teens — in isolation for sometimes up to 16 consecutive
months — complained, deputies threatened to send them to the
mental health ward where they would be stripped naked and left in a
freezing cell with only a paper gown that failed to cover their backside.
These are just some of the claims made in the class-action
lawsuit against Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, the Palm Beach County
School Board and others in the sheriff ’s department that calls for
an end to solitary confinement for inmates under age 18.

Sophie’s Choice

Teenage males charged by the state attorney’s office as adults
are put in solitary for months at a time, spending 23 or 24 hours
a day alone in the 6-by 12-foot cell dubbed “the box,” receiving
no mental health care and little or no education, according to
the lawsuit spearheaded by the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach
County and the Human Rights Defense Center in Lake Worth.
Solitary confinement means no music, no television, no human
contact. Child inmates get their food on a tray passed through a
metal slot of their cell, which is adorned with only a metal cot, a
sink, a stainless steel desk and a commode bolted to the wall. A
single overhead fluorescent light hangs over each solitary cell.
They are permitted, at most, one hour three times a week
of solitary recreation inside a caged basketball court. They are
handcuffed every time they leave their cell.
Some of the young jail inmates in the lawsuit, often identified
only by initials or first names, were in solitary after fighting. But
others were subject to a cruel Sophie’s Choice by Bradshaw’s
administration, ending up in solitary only because they had codefendants — “keep-aways” — in the general jail population of
juveniles on the 12th floor of the 2,166-bed Main Detention Center
on Gun Club Road, the lawsuit states. [Ed. Note: Sophie’s Choice
is 1979 novel and 1982 film where a mother sent to Auschwitz is
forced to choose which one of her two children would be gassed
and which would proceed to the labor camp.]
The sheriff ’s department and the school district violated the
constitutional rights of these teenagers — often minorities and
developmentally or mentally disabled — by subjecting them to
cruel and unusual punishment and a lack of due process, the
litigation alleges. The teenage boys received no mental health
care and little or no regular education and were denied help
guaranteed by the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to
the 75—page complaint.

Going crazy

Sheriff ’s spokesman Teri Barbara said the office had yet o
be properly served with the lawsuit and that the sheriff doesn’t
comment on potential or pending litigation as a matter of policy.
Efforts to reach a spokesperson for the school district for comment
on the litigation was unsuccessful.

‘Throwaways of society’

“The sheriff sees these kids as not worthy of constitutional
protections,” said Sabarish P. Neelakanta, general counsel and
litigation director for the Human Rights Defense Center. “They see
these kids as bad kids; they see them as throwaways of society. So
they locked them up in these little rooms and forget about them.”
The nexus of the lawsuit started with Melissa Duncan of Legal
Aid Society when the Palm Beach County Public Defender’s Office
contacted her about concerns that the teenagers in solitary weren’t
getting an education. “When I started talking to the kids, they
weren’t just getting any education; they weren’t getting anything,”
she said.
Duncan, the supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s
Educational Advocacy Project, then started researching other
lawsuits] around the country.
“So far I found the Palm Beach County practice is the most
egregious in terms of the length of the time the kids are left in
solitary confinement,” she said. “They feel like they are going crazy.”
None of the incarcerated teens in the lawsuit had been convicted
of crimes when they were subject to the box but had been charged as
adults for crimes such as armed robbery, burglary, or grand theft auto.
Similar lawsuits have led to calls for reform in several states.
Wisconsin reached a settlement this month to end the practice
after a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. A judge
prohibited the practice temporarily in one Tennessee county to allow
another ACLU suit to move forward. In New York, federal court orders
recently stopped solitary confinement policies in two different jails.
In the Palm Beach County litigation, the powerhouse classaction law firm of Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll has also been
brought on board. The lawsuit focuses on males in solitary as
females under age 18 charged as adults are kept on the floor of the
jail’s medical unit.

Nehomie Perceval of West Palm Beach said her son, Jeremy,
had been diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety before he ended up
in solitary. He received none of his medication while in solitary,
which was lifted only when attorneys pleaded with the judge to
recommend he be taken out of the box, the suit contends.
“I don’t want any other kid to go through that again, being in
solitary confinement,” Perceval said. “A child is a child regardless
of what the child did or did not do. Mentally, it will drive the kid
crazy. I don’t think anybody should be locked up in a room with
just four walls to look at for that long.”
Before his arrest, the plaintiff identified as J.E. was a 10thgrader of Haitian descent at Lake Worth High School, struggling
with his reading. He is quoted in the lawsuit, saying that the
isolation “does something to you. It’s crazy.”
He lost 20 pounds and started experiencing visual and auditory
hallucinations, hearing screaming at night and staring at a blank
wall in his cell watching a full television show. He served more than
five months in solitary.
As with other juveniles charged as adults, juveniles, he filed
grievances to get out of solitary but were told they were frivolous.
He told lawyers that deputies torment them by turning on the
emergency lights so they can’t sleep or, in his case, leaving him
undressed for hours when deputies decided he did not have the
correct pants to wear.
When he complained, a deputy told him, “You don’t like it?
Don’t get yourself arrested.”
Another inmate, identified as Jeff in the lawsuit, also reported
hallucinations, seeing a third arm coming from his body and
hearing voices at night. He spent nearly five months in solitary.
“Jeff reports that his father would drive to the parking lot of
the jail each night and flash his headlights so Jeff could see them,
which would be the only reprieve he had from the constant sense
of loneliness,” the lawsuit states. Jeff is now 18.

The psych cell

The threat of being sent to the mental health unit — the “psych
cell” — looms large, the lawsuit states. One plaintiff, identified as
W.B., said deputies threaten to send the teens to the ward if they are
too noisy under the ruse they threatened to commit suicide.
Another plaintiff, identified as Jeziah, said deputies would take
what little items he had: socks, sheets, drawings as punishment for
talking to other teens in solitary. Jeziah spent a total of 21 months
in solitary, including a 16-month stretch.
“One of the problems is that these kids can’t fight back or
navigate these policies and how to deal with them,” Neelakanta
said. “They are scared. They are frightened.”
The lawsuit alleges retaliation by deputies against Jeziah, now 18,
who flooded his cell after a deputy unplugged his allowed telephone
call before it was required to end. During the cell extraction, the
teenager resisted and had two of his front teeth shattered.
When he returned to solitary, deputies destroyed his dentures
and laughed at him, the lawsuit states.
“Another Palm Beach Sheriff ’s Office staff member told
Jeziah that she would have other inmates assault him if he got
out of confinement,” the lawsuit states. “Jeziah called the PREA
(Prison Rape Elimination Act) hotline, but received no follow
up in response.”
A fellow teen in solitary said a deputy would warn him he
could end up like Jeziah if he misbehaved.

Duncan said the lack of education for these kids is an
important part of the lawsuit. Packets of work are shoved under
the cell door and they may receive brief moments to speak with a
teacher standing outside.
“These children cannot view educational instruction because
the windows on their cell doors are scratched up to the point that
it is nearly impossible to discern what is being written on the
chalkboard, nor are they able to hear the teachers’ lessons through
the solid metal doors,” the lawsuit states.
“Additionally, for children with disabilities, highly specialized
instruction, accommodations, and related services are not offered
or meaningfully available in solitary confinement.”

‘Making It Worse’

Palm Beach County Public Defender Carey Haughwout said
solitary confinement of juveniles has been a concern for her office.
“Solitary confinement is a difficult setting, to say the least, for
anyone, but when you put children in solitary confinement it has an
even greater effect on their mental health, their physical wellbeing,”
she said. “It should really never be used.”
The number of cases of juveniles charged as adults dropped
from 2016 to 2017 — falling from 47 to 33. However, since the
massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 20 juveniles
have been charged as adults in Palm Beach County so far this year.
“A lot of these kids have a myriad of problems to begin with,
which is why they are there,” Haughwout said. “And we are worried
solitary confinement only makes it worse.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights
Watch, in a now 6-year-old report, sent up the flare that solitary
was being used against juveniles throughout the country and
having a profound effect. Many suffered post-traumatic stress and
were more prone to suicide.
In New York, in a celebrated case, 16-year-old Kalief Browder
spent two of his three years at the infamous Rikers Island jail
complex in solitary after being charged with stealing a backpack.
When released, Browder committed suicide in 2015 at age 22.
“Because the adolescent brain is still in early stage development,
it is quite susceptible to the harm,” Neelakanta said. “When they are
out of custody and receiving treatment, they don’t trust anybody.
They don’t trust the adults and they don’t trust anyone around them.”
https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/breaking-news/suitjail-keeps-teens-solitary-for-months-without-care-education/
wBO3wIkUQFF7A94gyn8uQI/

________________________________

MENTALLY ILL SOUTH FLORIDA MAN
STARVED TO DEATH IN PRISON,
LAWSUIT ALLEGES
by Jerry Iannelli
Miami New Times
August 3, 2018

W

hen Vincent Gaines was sentenced to five years in prison on
robbery charges in June 2013, state officials recommended
he be placed in a mental-health unit because he had regular visual
and auditory hallucinations. So Gaines was transferred to the Dade
Correctional Institution in South Miami-Dade County, where he

was placed on a “boneless diet” that left the five-foot-nine man 40
pounds lighter — dropping from 190 to 151 — in just 18 months.
After accumulating a series of disciplinary reports, Gaines was
shuffled through multiple prisons before winding up at the Union
Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida, where he soon died. In
his autopsy, he weighed only 115 pounds and showed obvious signs
of malnourishment, advocates say.
Now Gaines’ family says the evidence is clear: He was starved
to death inside the state prison system and then buried on Florida
Department of Corrections (FDOC) property without their
knowledge or consent. His mother, Lorine, sued FDOC head Julie
Jones, former for-profit prison health provider Corizon Health,
and Union CI warden Kevin Jordan in North Florida federal court.
The Palm Beach Post, which published a stinging investigation
into Corizon Health’s deadly failures across Florida in 2014, first
reported on the lawsuit yesterday afternoon. To file the suit, Lorine
Gaines partnered with the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC),
a nonprofit that fights for the rights of ex-prisoners nationwide.
“It is an outrage that in the 21st-century American prisoners
are being starved to death in barbaric conditions by a prison system
whose employees enjoy total impunity for their criminal actions,”
HRDC executive director Paul Wright, himself a former prisoner,
said in a news release. (In addition to founding the HRDC, Wright
also founded Prison Legal News, a monthly news magazine for and
by prisoners, from his jail cell in 1990.) “We hope the civil justice
system will help provide the deterrence that is otherwise sadly
lacking within Florida’s prison system.”
In response, the FDOC told New Times that it had not yet been
served the lawsuit and could not comment on the case’s specifics
but that the department “is committed to ensuring all inmates have
access to appropriate health services.”
A Corizon spokesperson, Martha Harbin, told New Times via
email that the company is confident it handled the case correctly but
that Corizon could not speak further without violating the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, privacy laws.
“Patient privacy laws and the filed complaint prevent us from
disclosing specific information from the patient’s medical records
that would provide a more complete picture of Mr. Gaines’s health
challenges and treatment, but we are confident that appropriate,
evidence-based medical care was provided,” she said.
But the suit echoes an eerily similar case that also involved
the Dade Correctional Institute. In 2012, multiple witnesses said
guards at the facility scalded mentally ill inmate Darren Rainey to
death in a makeshift prison shower as punishment for defecating
in his cell. State officials did not reopen the case until the Miami
Herald’s Julie Brown wrote a blistering series of articles about it.
Even after Brown obtained gruesome images of Rainey’s scalded
body, the county medical examiner’s office and Miami-Dade State
Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle still insisted Rainey did not
suffer deadly burns. No one was fired or charged in the case.
Perhaps more importantly, the Herald also spoke to other
witnesses who claimed inmates at Dade CI were being starved.
The Palm Beach Post series about Corizon also noted that after
prison medical care was privatized and handed over to the company
in 2012, inmate deaths spiked. Corizon walked away from its $1.2
billion, five-year state contract after the award-winning Post series
but claimed the move was a fiscal decision.
According to the latest suit, judges and other justice-system
officials knew in 2013 that Gaines was severely mentally ill. After
he pleaded guilty in 2013 to burglary charges, a judge instructed

officials to house Gaines near his family in Palm Beach County. At a
subsequent mental-health evaluation at the FDOC’s South Florida
Reception Center (SFRC), officials noted Gaines had repeatedly
been “Baker Acted” — committed involuntarily to a mental
institution — because of his constant auditory hallucinations.
Among other diagnoses, officials stated Gaines had bipolar
disorder, mania, had “psychotic features,” as well as “borderline
intellectual functioning,” which the suit says is “historically referred
to as ‘mental retardation.’“ He also struggled to comply with his
medication regimen and often refused his medicine.
He was then transferred from the SFRC to Dade CI in
Homestead — while there, the suit says, he continued to experience
hallucinations and refuse treatment. After a particularly rough
period, he was sent back to a crisis unit at the SFRC, where he slept
only two to three hours per night and weighed 151 pounds. He was
also written up for alleged failure to follow orders and in 2015 was
sent more than 300 miles away from his family to the Florida State
Prison and then to the Union Correctional Institution. On May
15, the suit says, because of Gaines’ “rapidly deteriorating” mental
condition, he was placed in a “close management” unit at the
facility, where health officials noted in reports that he had ”been
observed smearing feces on his floor.”
From here, the suit claims, things grew strange. On December 1,
Corizon Health officials began to write that Gaines’ condition seemed
to be improving. Reports from that day say a company social worker
observed his “clean and organized” cell and “neat” appearance.
But just two days later, Gaines was dead. Just after noon
December 3, officials noted he seemed quiet and had not eaten. They
checked on him around 1:26 p.m. and found him unresponsive.
After emergency medical technicians administered CPR, he was
pronounced dead.
Medical examiners conducted an autopsy the next day. Though
writing that his cause of death was “undetermined,” examiners
wrote that Gaines suffered from “malnutrition” and weighed only
115 pounds. In contrast with the glowing Corizon report three days
earlier, doctors said Gaines also died with a “generalized unwashed
appearance and probable feces on [the] soles of [his] feet.”
“Following Mr. Gaines’ death, Defendants did not timely
inform Plaintiff,” the suit adds. “As a result, Mr. Gaines was not
released to his family; the Decedent was buried by FDOC on FDOC
property against the wishes and without the consent of Plaintiff.”
Gaines’ mother is now suing for alleged violations of the Eight
and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which
prohibit cruel and unusual punishment and guarantee equal
protection for people of all races under the law. The Gaines family
also alleges their loved one’s treatment violated the Americans with
Disabilities Act.
The prison’s “conduct was so deliberately indifferent as to Mr.
Gaines’ nutritional, medical, and/or mental health needs as to violate
his right against cruel and unusual punishment,” the suit reads.
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-prisonervincent-gaines-starved-to-death-in-jail-lawsuit-says-10589920

TRUMP’S FCC CHAIR BACKED OFF OBAMAERA RULE ON INMATE CALLS THAT HURT
AN EX-CLIENT

An inmate advocacy group publicized Ajit Pai’s prior work
this week.
by Dana Liebelson
Huffington Post
August 11, 2017

F

ederal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai
backed off from Obama-era regulations that sought to make
phone calls more affordable for inmates but that also hurt one
of Pai’s former clients: Securus Technologies, an inmate calling
service provider.
The Human Rights Defense Center, an inmate advocacy
group that brought Pai’s disclosure about his work for Securus to
light this week, finds the connection troubling. However, an FCC
spokesperson told HuffPost that his work “was cleared through the
ethics office.”
Pai listed Securus as one of the “few clients” that he did a
“limited amount of work for” between April 25, 2011, and May 6,
2012, as a partner with the law firm Jenner & Block. (He also listed
AOL, HuffPost’s parent company.) Pai disclosed his client list to the
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in
2011 before he was confirmed as an FCC commissioner, and again
in 2017 for his pending confirmation as chairman. Jenner & Block
and Securus did not respond to HuffPost inquiries about the nature
of Pai’s work.
When inmates and family members stay in touch, that can
lower recidivism and assist with rehabilitation. Until the 1990s,
inmates could make calls at about the same rates as other people,
according to The New York Times. But over the next few decades,
companies like Securus made enormous profits by charging
inmates and their families more money.
Securus warned in 2015 that an Obama-era proposal capping
inmate phone rates and fees could be a “business-ending event.”
After the rule passed in a 3-2 vote (Pai dissented), providers,
including Securus, sued to overturn it.
About a week after Pai became chairman, the FCC said it would
no longer defend the key part of that rule. When the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the
Obama-era regulations on in-state calls from jails and prisons in June,
advocates blamed the decision in part on the FCC’s retreat. (The D.C.
Circuit majority said the provisions could not survive legal review.)
The lack of price caps has permitted companies like Securus to
charge more than $11 for a 15-minute intrastate call from more than
60 correctional facilities in Michigan, according to Lee Petro, pro bono
counsel for a group of prisoner advocates known collectively as the
Wright Petitioners. (Petro declined to comment on the filing.)
The Human Rights Defense Center claims Pai’s prior
relationship is a conflict of interest and is asking Pai to recuse
himself from all actions and decisions involving Securus and other
inmate phone service providers. They are also asking Pai to disclose
any financial relationship he may have with these companies.
It’s not so uncommon for FCC officials, both Republican and
Democrat, to have prior ties with companies they oversee. Pai, for
example, previously worked as an attorney for Verizon, HuffPost’s
other parent company. In his disclosure, Pai noted that during his

time working with Securus and other companies, he did not appear
before the FCC, Congress, executive agencies or in any court in
connection with that work.
But while Pai’s work with Verizon is well-documented, the
newly publicized Securus tie raises questions, in part because
inmate calling services are dominated by only a few providers.
“Hopefully the [Senate] committee will ask for more
information about what exactly he did for them before holding
a confirmation vote,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told HuffPost. “For
there to be conflict, there needs to be more than just the previous
relationship. It’s really important to know what that relationship
actually entailed.” Pai will need to be reconfirmed by the Senate
before the end of the year to continue as FCC chairman.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-fcc-chairman-exclient-inmate-calling_us_598e0f99e4b090964297093d

________________________________

ARE CELLPHONES REALLY TO BLAME FOR
SPIKE IN S.C. PRISON VIOLENCE?
by Victoria Mckenzie
CBS News, Bishopville, SC
April 19, 2018

T

he deadly, seven-hour riot that broke out in a South Carolina
prison last weekend occurred amid a rising tide of violence
within the state’s prison system. State corrections officials were quick
Monday to blame contraband cellphones as major contributing
factors in the bloodshed, but observers say there are other reasons
for the alarming spike in assaults and deaths behind bars.
The most recent outbreak of violence at Lee Correctional
Institution in Bishopville left seven prisoners dead and 17 more
wounded, and is now being called the worst U.S. prison riot in
the last 25 years.
In a press conference Monday afternoon, South Carolina
corrections department director Bryan Stirling said officials believe
the riot was “all about territory, all about contraband” and cellphones
at the prison, which houses some of the state’s worst and longestserving offenders. Stirling said gangs were fighting over territory and
said cellphones help them continue criminal activity behind bars.
“These people are fighting about real money and real territory
when they are incarcerated,” Stirling said.
Gov. Henry McMaster told the press that “people in this prison
have very violent records, and we cannot expect them to give up
their violent ways when they go to prison.” Stirling and McMaster
again called on the federal government to change the law and allow
state officials to block the signals so that prisoners can’t use the
cellphones – a debate that’s been at issue in the state for several
years, according to Steve Bailey, contributing columnist for the Post
and Courier.
Justin Bamberg, an attorney and South Carolina state
representative, told Crimesider that instead of “whining about the
FCC not letting us block cellphone signals,” officials should focus
on access to dangerous weapons used in the riot. Bamberg shared
disturbing video from inside the prison with Crimesider, which
he said he obtained from an inmate. The video – captured on a

cellphone – appears to show one inmate carrying a large weapon;
another inmate is seen sitting against a wall and then walking away,
leaving a large smear of blood on the wall. His clothes appear to be
covered in blood.
“No one was stabbed with a cellphone. No one was stabbed
with a bag of marijuana or a box of Newports,” Bamberg said.
“These people were stabbed with six and seven-inch shanks.”
Bamberg accused state officials of “very poor leadership” in
their response to the deadly riot.
“We have in our state the worst prison riot that America has
seen the the last 25 years, and one of the first things out of your
mouth when you address your citizens is – ‘well, this is prison
and these things are going to happen?’“ Bamberg said, referring
to McMaster’s comments. “You do not just ‘end up’ with seven
inmates butchered, and another couple of dozen hauled off to the
hospital. That’s not supposed to just happen.”
Bailey, who has been closely tracking assaults and deaths in
South Carolina’s correction facilities over the past two years, says
the data he’s analyzed indicates there are more complex issues
driving the violence. While the South Carolina Department of
Corrections publishes pages of statistics on its website – from
average daily inmate populations to admissions by type of offense
– it does not publish assaults and homicides, except in cases where
officers are assaulted.
“I had a big fight with the prison system to get these numbers,”
Bailey said.
According to Department of Corrections data obtained by
the Post and Courier, incidents of assault in South Carolina state
prisons have risen by over 68 percent since 2013; from 72 a year, to
121 last year. Inmate homicides in the state rose from one in 2013
to five in 2016 and 12 in 2017, according to the data.
“There are cellphones in every prison in America,” Bailey told
Crimesider. “There’s something else going on here too.”

What’s behind the fight over cellphone blocking?

SCDC has been petitioning the FCC for years to allow prisons
to use cellphone jammers in the interest of “public safety.” Led by
then-governor Nikki Haley, 10 republican governors signed on to
the effort in 2016. Bamberg told Crimesider that officials began
fixating on cellphone jamming after solitary confinement became
politically unfeasible as a deterrent to using them.
Right now, the Communications Act prohibits all non-federal
agencies from using jamming devices. However, after petitions
and testimony from South Carolina officials about the reported
threat posed by illegal cellphones, then-FCC Commissioner Ajit
Pai promised to work with states on the issue. In February, the FCC
hosted a meeting with law enforcement, corrections officials, and
wireless providers to discuss how to address the problem.
In the past, the FCC has opposed waiving these restrictions
on the basis that it could interfere with local 911 calls and critical
radio communications, affecting emergency response teams, and
potentially become useful to terrorist organizations. Wireless
industry groups also oppose the use of jammers; in a letter sent to the
FCC in January, trade group CTIA said that shutting down cellphone
communications should only be done through a court order.
According to Paul Wright, director of the prisoner rights
advocacy group Human Rights Defense Center, prison telecom
giants Securus and Global Tel Link have been active in the
campaign to enable signal jamming in prisons. “The reason they
want to use the blocking devices is to drive up the use of the prison

telephone monopoly,” says Wright. “These companies also own the
cellphone blocking companies that make the devices, so they stand
to profit both ways.”
Securus and Global Tel Link didn’t immediately respond to
requests for comment from Crimesider. Global Tel Link is the service
provider for Lee Correctional Institution. According to the company’s
customer service center, calls to Lee from a New York number cost 21
cents per minute; it costs 20 cents for an inmate to dial out.
Stirling has since announced that his department is already
moving forward with an alternate method of blocking cellphone
communications, according to reports by CBS affiliate WLTX-TV.
Tecore, a Maryland-based telephone company, has entered into a
three-year contract with the state worth around $1.5 million.
According to Tecore spokesperson Markie Britton, the
company uses a technology it calls “managed access,” which unlike
jamming devices, allows the operator to selectively permit or
deny communications from cellphones. It is compliant with FCC
regulations, and does not pose any threat to communications
outside of the targeted facility. According to Britton, the company
is also working with state correctional facilities in Maryland and
Mississippi, but she was unable to disclose contracts with other
states that have not yet made public announcements.
Last year, the Human Rights Defense Center accused FCC
chairman Ajit Pai of having a conflict of interest during his years
as a commissioner. Pai was a commissioner between 2012 and
January 2017, when he was appointed chairman.
HRDC wrote that Pai, who used to provide legal representation
to Securus, “has vigorously and consistently taken action to
undercut all efforts to impose federal regulations, including rate
caps, on the Inmate Calling Services (ICS) industry, which benefits
Securus – his former client – as well as other ICS providers.”
In 2016, Pai organized an FCC hearing in South Carolina,
failing to disclose that the panel included a Securus employee.
After Pai’s appointment as chairman, Bryan Stirling testified
before the FCC on the problem of illegal cellphones. In an emailed
response to Crimesider, FCC press secretary Tina Pelkey said that
“Chairman Pai’s participation in the inmate calling rulemaking
were and are in full compliance with both the letter and spirit of
government ethics rules.”
Wright, of the Human Rights Defense Center, says another
question is why the South Carolina prison system can’t control its
employees. The sheer number of illegal cellphones being smuggled
into the state prisons points to the collusion of prison guards, he
said, who see it as an “easy way to supplement their income.”
In January, Stirling told the Post and Courier that the state
of South Carolina had confiscated around 6,300 contraband
cellphones and cellphone parts in 2017.
The SCDC hasn’t yet responded to detailed questions
submitted by Crimesider.

Other factors driving violence

Bailey noted that the rise in assaults and homicides coincide
with state decarceration efforts.
“While the prison population’s been going down, the violence
has been going up, and the city and state hasn’t been doing very
much to address that. Clearly they have a huge shortage of prison
guards there. About one in four jobs are vacant right now,” he said.
After passing prison reforms in 2010, South Carolina’s prison
population dropped 14 percent by 2016, according to SCDC data
analyzed by Pew Charitable Trusts. Meanwhile, the percentage

of violent offenders in prison rose from 52 percent in 2009, to 66
percent in 2016.
That 14 percent drop is small relative to other states, says
Wright, who doesn’t believe the two trends are related.
Wright suggests that a better explanation for the violence is
lack of funding for “incentive programs”– vocational, academic
and work programs for prisoners.
“They’ve steadily cut back what little programs they had, and
they’re just warehousing people in under-staffed, overcrowded
prisons,” said Wright. “Prison and penal operations have been
studied pretty extensively for the last 15 years. When you take away
all hope and you take away any reason for [inmates] to behave
themselves, then that’s when you start having higher levels of
violence, assaults, and attacks.”
Another reason for the violence is staff corruption, Wright
said, made worse by low wages and a high turnover rate. Speaking
to the press on Monday, Stirling said his department needs some
500 more front-line employees.
“A prison guard in New York starts out and they’re making
$50,000 a year with excellent benefits,” said Wright. According to
information provided to Crimesider by SCDC, starting salaries
range from $31,000 for minimum security to $34,000 a year in
a maximum security facility – including the 24 percent increase
announced this week.
“The New York prison system has its problems too, but high
staff turnover isn’t one of them,” said Wright.
Although a strong critic of private prisons, Wright said that “one
of the things that they’re pretty good about is that they do fire people.
So if you’re a warden of a private prison and there’s a riot or a mass
killing, chances are you’re going to be out of a job the next day.”

Riot response under fire

According to texts and emails sent to the Human Rights
Defense Center from inmates at Lee Correctional Institute, “the
guards were nowhere to be seen for the duration” of the riot. The
first fight started in a dorm about 7:15 p.m. Sunday and appeared
to be contained before suddenly starting in two other dorms.
The prison was finally secured around 2:55 a.m. Monday, the
corrections department told WLTX-TV.
The slain were identified as Corey Scott, Eddie Casey Gaskins,
Raymond Angelo Scott, Damonte Rivera; Michael Milledge,
Cornelius McClary and Joshua Jenkins. Most died of stab or slash
wounds; the remainder appeared to have been beaten, Lee County
Coroner Larry Logan said.
“It’s one thing for a violent incident to happen quickly, but
when it goes on for hour after hour after hour – where are the
guards?” Wright asked.
A prisoner who spoke with the Associated Press on the condition
of anonymity said he said he saw bodies “literally stacked on top of
each other, like some macabre woodpile.” He said it was hours before
guards entered the dorm to help the wounded and dying.
“The COs (corrections officers) never even attempted to render
aid, nor quell the disturbance,” he said. “They just sat in the control
bubble, called the issue in, then sat on their collective asses.”
The prisoner told The Associated Press he saw several
attackers taunt a rival gang member who was badly injured and
later died. He said he believed the inmate would have had “a
fighting chance if someone had simply opened the gate and let
the others carry him up front.”
“At one point, you had these guys who were stabbed, who

were outside kind of in a pile – but they were still alive,” Bamberg
told Crimesider. “But because the guards wouldn’t come in, they
also wouldn’t open any of the gates to let people out. So these guys
who according to some people’s perceptions could have maybe
survived had they gotten medical treatment – didn’t get any, and
therefore they died.”
Corrections officials say guards followed procedure by
backing out of the dorms and awaiting backup response. In the
press conference Monday afternoon, South Carolina corrections
department director Bryan Stirling said the response teams entered
as fast as they could.
“We gathered as many people as we could, as quickly as we could
and went in as soon as we thought it was safe for our staff,” he said.
The deadly incident is being investigated by the South Carolina
Law Enforcement Division. But Bamberg says families of those
slain may have to wait a long time before learning what happened
to their loved ones.
“Unfortunately the state government is not that transparent
sometimes,” Bamberg said. “And there’s a lot of mystery about what
exactly goes on in SCDC.”
Bailey and Bamberg are both calling for a wide-ranging,
independent investigation.
“I think that the state DOC here would benefit from a [U.S.
Department of Justice] review,” Bamberg said. “To have someone
independent, not necessarily tied to the state look at the prison
system and say...where can we improve, and what absolutely has to
change right now. I would welcome that, and I think most people
here would welcome that.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-carolina-prison-riot-arecellphones-really-to-blame-for-spike-in-s-c-prison-violence/

________________________________

not indicate why specific publications are deemed inappropriate.
The magazine hasn’t been allowed in the prison since May 2016, a
defense center spokesperson said.
Other banned materials on the list include publications that
promote violence or racial hatred, and erotic material such as Fifty
Shades of Grey.
“We see no justifiable reason in why our publication should
be censored at this county jail, other than the fact they just don’t
like what we say,” said Alex Friedmann, associate director of the
defense center and managing editor of the magazine.
The defense center has won several cases against state
correctional facilities and county jails across the country on
censorship issues, Friedmann said. The organization currently has
litigation against correctional facilities in states including Florida
and Illinois, he said.
“We take our First Amendment rights and the First
Amendment rights of our readers very seriously,” he said.
In addition to a First Amendment violation, the defense
center also argues the jail didn’t provide meaningful notice of
the ban, depriving the organization of the opportunity to appeal
or challenge it. The action violated the organization’s right to due
process, the lawsuit states.
The organization is seeking a federal injunction to allow
prisoners to read “Prison Legal News” and its other publications
throughout the duration of the case.
In addition to Carmichael, the lawsuit names other officials,
including Telisa White and David Hill, who are both majors with
the sheriff ’s office. Captains Jeff Eason and Aujiena Hicks are also
identified in the lawsuit.
h t t p : / / w w w. c h a r l o t t e o b s e r v e r . c o m / n e w s / l o c a l /
article209798404.html

________________________________

MECKLENBURG PRISONERS CAN’T READ
THIS MAGAZINE. A FEDERAL LAWSUIT VIDEO IS ERASING PEOPLE, FROM PRISON
TO PORN, AS WALL STREET PROFITS
AIMS TO CHANGE THAT.
by Lavendrick Smith
Charlotte Observer
April 26, 2018

by Janet Burns
Forbes
February 26, 2018

P

A

risoners at the Mecklenburg County jail are banned from
reading a national magazine that covers prison news. Now the
organization behind the magazine is fighting to get the publication
in the hands of inmates.
The Human Rights Defense Center filed a federal lawsuit
Tuesday against Sheriff Irwin Carmichael and other Mecklenburg
County Sheriff ’s officials. The nonprofit argues the jail’s censorship
of its magazine, “Prison Legal News,” violates the First Amendment.
Carmichael couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday,
and a spokeswoman with the sheriff ’s office said the office can’t
comment on existing or pending litigation matters.
“Prison Legal News,” and other publications from the Human
Rights Defense Center, features reporting on prisons, jails, and
issues related to criminal justice.
The magazine is on a list of banned publications, which can
be found on the jail’s website. Certain publications are banned
because of inappropriate content, according to the site, which does

s technology grows ever more powerful and entwined in our
lives, it’s good to remember that science fiction aims not only
to let us envision potential disasters down the road, but also to
grasp very real dangers already upon us.
For example, from Philip K. Dick to Star Trek and Black
Mirror, sci-fi has repeatedly imagined the innovation and horror
involved in humans being replaced with high-tech doppelgangers,
including ones sophisticated enough to fool whole families
or nations. And while science has a long way to go before
Replicants and other bio-machines are fleshed out, technology is
already stepping in where humans have traditionally served and
separating us with screens.
In some cases, it can already make people disappear. Increasingly,
artificially intelligent and ‘learning’ tech have been able to create or
re-create digital versions of humans’ appearances, as well as our
voices and our thoughts, that many of us will accept as ‘real.’ AI has
lately shown its prowess at recognizing and generating images of

well-known and unfamiliar faces, too, suggesting that the ability to
fake a dynamic, realistic range of human visuals is not far off.
Recently, one developer made waves with a piece of AI that
rapidly accelerates the process of stitching someone into an
extant piece of video, which has traditionally required exhaustive
frame-by-frame editing. As The Verge reported in December, the
machine-learning tool was used to replace the face of a porn actress
with that of Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot in a successful, if not
spotless, demo of the tech.
For those folk capable of showing up to challenge a faked
sex tape or bogus crime reel, the process of reclaiming our or our
families’ identities would likely still be difficult, and almost certainly
expensive. For those of us whose loved ones are tangibly out of reach,
however — whether through distance, authority, or both — the first
signs of digital abduction may already come too late
Of course, most of us probably feel that any attempt by
government, enemies or whoever to specifically smear or disappear
us with technology (or at all) would be extremely surprising, to say
the least – though stranger things have almost certainly happened. We
might also imagine, pretty reasonably, that doing so would be difficult.
After all, many humans tend to move through a web of
different touch points and interactions each day, between work,
home, relationships, and everything else. Often, we also have
ample means of contacting or reaching other people, engaging
their support, or just effortlessly proving our whereabouts.
Distance alone won’t break these connections, in many cases.
In the military, for example, deployed troops and their families
must often rely on Skype and other chatting tools to stay in touch,
but can typically also ask a neighbor or fellow service member
to do a spot check if something seems amiss. The same goes for
many immigrant families, with groups who have gathered on two
different sides of the border or globe.
Where humans become detached from these webs or communities
familiar with them and are only available by screen or phone, however,
their chance of disappearing unnoticed becomes very real.
When a human is in jail, that chance simply exists. And
according to experts, many states are making it worse.
For years, advocacy groups have demonstrated that families
already struggle to keep in touch with incarcerated loves ones
and to stay informed if they get sick, hurt, killed, or lost in the
system, whether they’d been convicted of a crime or were awaiting
misdemeanor or immigration charges.
When inmates can communicate, the cost of governmentcontracted phone calls has been high to prohibitive for most
inmates’ families, especially when part of their earning team is
behind bars. Frequently, families have reported spending hundreds
or thousands of dollars for weeks’ worth of remote contact with
inmates, whether instate or across the country, and being forced
to go without it entirely. Depending on visiting hours and facility
placement, actually laying eyes on an incarcerated relative can be a
chore, too, or just impossible.
More recently, however, facilities around the country have moved
to promote digital video-visitation services in lieu of in-person visits
with inmates, citing convenience and cost, broadly speaking.
In many cases, agreements that corrections officials have
made to secure remote, pay-per-view chat services from the over
$1 billion prison telecom industry have also required facilities to
completely end in-person visits, and offer on-site video instead.
According to Paul Wright, founder and Executive Director of
the Human Rights Defense Center, and the editor of Prison Legal

News, prison telecommunications companies have spent the past
few years heading in the same direction: marketing video to jails
(rather than prisons, for the most part) as part of bundled phone,
security, or other service contracts to improve profits.
Wright pointed to incarcerated telecom-leader Securus
Technologies, which began requiring its client facilities to replace
in-person visits with video terminals over a year ago, as having led
the charge to boost business by pushing their new products hard.
“Their mainstay remains the telephone,” he explained early last year
by phone. “But phone revenues are crunched, and I think they’ve
concluded that the only way they can foist expensive, low-quality
video on people is by getting rid of in-person visits.”
In Maricopa County, AZ, for example, friends and family can
remotely chat with inmates using Securus’ Mobile App for $7.99
per 20 minute block (not including variable fees). 20-minute and
40-minute onsite video visits from friends and family, which place
inmates and visitors in separate buildings, and all chunks of video
communication with lawyers are free. In other states and counties,
the cost of video chatting can easily rise several dollars per session.
Each facility has its own set of practices and regulations for
using the technology and contacting inmates, as do many states
and counties. Securus also notes in its terms and conditions that
the quality of its services are dependent on several external factors
and that a credit card and account are required for visitors to start
scheduling pre-paid, nonrefundable video calls.
Bernadette Rabuy, Senior Policy Analyst at the Prison Policy
Initiative, commented by phone that Securus was first to stipulate
that client facilities couldn’t offer in-person visits, and that at least
one smaller competitor has followed suit. The technology for
video-chats has been around for a few years, she noted, but has
expanded rapidly as Securus and fellow prison telecom leader GTL
have pushed for adoption.
Users frequently complain about poor visual and audio quality,
Rabuy said, whether they’re connecting via mobile or in a separate
building on jail property. However, the most common complaint is
lack of eye contact, she said.
Because of the gap between screen and camera in most on-site
facilities, it’s even more difficult for users to be facing each other
on screen, or to attempt pseudo-eye contact than it is on mobile.
At the same time, seating is often bolted to the ground, and for
children, having the sound and picture come from different places
can add to their confusion and trauma, Rabuy said.
“Their commercials make it look great, and heartwarming, but
it does not match what I’ve heard from people who use the system,
or with my own experience using the system,” Rabuy said. ”It’s very
inflexible, and when it becomes the only option, and children are
having to use it, those sorts of things can be even more important.”
As long as the free option exists, Rabuy said, companies are
unlikely to make money on video service for jails – making it
somewhat pointless to force families to lose ‘glass’ visits, where
they’re at least face to face. “Families with incarcerated members
tend to be lower-income, and maybe don’t have the best internet,
so they’re going in where the quality is better, and it’s free.”
Both Rabuy and Wright acknowledge that forcing people to
communicate through privately controlled apps and platforms
poses any number of risks, involving anything from high-tech
surveillance and interference to simple suppression of civil rights.
Given the frequently low quality and complexity of video visits
(technologically speaking), they also agreed that editing them – or
even faking whole calls – is a feasible feat down the road.

At present, though, their foremost concerns surround the
immediate impacts for inmates and families when they can no
longer search a loved one’s smile, or take in key physical details and
cues, with their own eyes.
“There’s a lot going on right now in terms of policy choices,
including criminal justice policy choices, and in some ways, the use
of video calls in jails can feel like a small issue,” Rabuy said. “But I
think it has the potential to have really long-lasting consequences
for the criminal justice system. Most states already have it, and the
fear is that in-person visits will disappear entirely; at that point, it’s
very hard to imagine we’ll bring them back.”
She continued, “We would love if video visitation was a
supplement, and definitely see the value in [it], but think it’s been
implemented in a really harmful and misleading way.” For example,
it could be put to good use in federal prisons, when people can be
hundreds of miles away from their families, Rabuy said. “However,
we’re mostly seeing it in jails, where people tend to be close to home.”
“It’s a little odd, if you think about it,” she reflected. “The most
restrictive visitation rules in our country affect those with low-level
charges, or who haven’t been convicted of a crime.”
“On top of that is the fact that when people are in local jails is
when they’re closest to family and friends. That’s when they’re most
likely to get visits from family and friends, and that is when we’re
making it impossible.”
Lucius Couloute, a research associate at the Prison Policy
Initiative, told The Guardian last month that he estimates at least
600 U.S. facilities currently have video visitation programs in place.
And while video visitation continues to spread across the
country, the product itself is unlikely to be swaying consumers,
according to Wright – or investors, for the matter. ”One of the
things we’ve been trying to do with the [Federal Communications
Commission] is keep them from allowing companies to bundle the
contracts,” Wright commented.
“My gut feeling is that they’re losing money on video,” he said
last winter. “I don’t have any evidence, but if they were making
money hand over fist like with their telephone services, I think
they’d be going public about it, and telling people. They’re in
business to make money.”
“If you’re an investor, you have a right to say, ‘Let me look
at your numbers,’ and maybe those numbers tell a different story
about the whole picture,” Wright said. “Basically, the only things
these businesses do is exploit people in prison and their families.
So if you’re okay with that basic premise, I don’t think the fact that
inmates can’t see their families is going to change things.”
Rabuy noted that there are numerous ongoing state-level
campaigns to protect in-person visits, and to stop officials from
building new jails without real-life visiting facilities. Texas law
currently requires in-person visits (and clarifies that video doesn’t
count), she said, and California passed such a law in both houses a
few years ago, but it was vetoed by the governor.
In 2013, an FCC analysis found that companies’ fees ”have
caused inmates and their friends and families to subsidize
everything from inmate welfare to salaries and benefits, states’
general revenue funds, and personnel training,” and that companies
were found to compete “not based on price or service quality, but
on the size of the commission.”
For years, the FCC has discussed regulating the prison phone
industry’s high cost to families from a federal level – at least, for 15
years on record so far – but hasn’t taken many real steps to do so,
according to advocates. Last year, the FCC chose to approve the

sale of Securus to Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity, owned by
Tom Gores of Detroit Pistons fame, while acknowledging some of
the advocates’ key concerns.
At the time, the FCC fined Securus $1.7 million for reportedly
misleading the FCC during the process. In their dissent to the
decision, Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel
wrote, “Is this transfer of control and consent decree just a slap on
the wrist? More like a pat on the back ... [and] precedent-setting.
Until now, the FCC has never granted a transfer of control when a
company has made misrepresentations during the review process.”
Last month, Securus also announced the launch of its own wireless
network for corrections facilities, designed to suppress connection
from unauthorized or contraband phones, as well its new national
video-relay system and the company’s acquisition of GovPayNet, a feebased service that accepts payments to the government.
Securus was reached out to for comment, which will be
included her when and if available.
As one of the most vulnerable groups, inmates have been among
the first to face having video as their only choice for seeing or being
seen by others, but its adoption has been viral everywhere. Over the
past several years, advances in technology have increasingly let video
feeds or prerecorded messages stand in for live appearances, from
law and medicine to relationships and entertainment.
At the same time, AI and almost constant surveillance have
similarly gained bigger roles in our lives, with chatbots and cameras
(some sophisticated, some not) filling in where people have been,
and could never have gone.
Together, these trends raise a number of important questions
without easy answers. And for the foreseeable future, only human
intelligence is equipped to handle the subtlety of these gray areas,
which are shifting daily.
Late last year, for example, a man was wounded and arrested
after allegedly trying to set off a pipe bomb inside a subway tunnel
in Midtown New York City, and was later arraigned on charges
from his hospital bed via courtroom video link. The same month,
worldwide viewers flocked to the latest installment in the Star Wars
franchise, which has taken to digitally reviving deceased actors or
characters for the last few films.
While different in many ways, these instances both represent
choices to use technology with possible pros and cons, whether
regarding the well-being and rights of the public, or that of
individuals under arrest, or after they’ve died. In addition to the
questions they raise, both recent cases also present another quality
that only humans, not computers, are tending to see: a screen.
Which, as an element we’ve invited to take over much of our
lives and economy, is worth looking closely at.
Of course, innovation-wise, we can’t stop technology from
moving forward, or from growing ever more complex. However,
nearly all of us can make meaningful choices about how we want
to use that tech – and what we will allow it to do in our lives’ and
others’ – from now on.
For investors, the choice at hand may seem especially difficult,
given the pressure they’re under to serve revenues as well as clients
who’ve never heard of prison video visits, or AI porn. If Wall Street
doesn’t commit soon to helping draw the line between what is and
is not acceptable human treatment and behavior, however, then all
Americans will be paying the price before they know it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2018/02/06/videois-erasing-people-from-prison-to-porn-as-wall-streetavails/#5920a0b94fb6

LAWSUIT REVEALS HOW TECH
COMPANIES PROFIT OFF THE PRISONINDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

A lawsuit alleges that prisoners are forced into accepting
high-fee JPay debit cards to access their own money.
by Katie Rose Quandt
ThinkProgress.org
February 9, 2018

O

n the day he was released after nearly 30 years in the California
prison system, Joe Rudy Reyes was taken to a bus station. A
corrections officer handed him a debit card preloaded with $442.20
— the balance in his inmate trust account, plus an additional $200
from the state to help him get home. So began a year-long nightmare
as Reyes tried unsuccessfully to access his own money.
In January, Reyes, with representation by the Human Rights
Defense Center, filed a proposed federal class action lawsuit
against JPay, Inc., a prison technology giant and subsidiary of
Securus Technologies, Inc. The Reyes v. JPay complaint, filed on
behalf of every person who has received a JPay card upon release
from prison, alleges the company’s policies are monopolistic
and illegal.
According to the complaint, JPay charged Reyes a series of fees,
including a $3 “monthly maintenance fee” and a $1 ATM decline
fee. The card stopped working after Reyes purchased bus tickets, a
prepaid cell phone, and lunch. When he called the number on the
back of the card, Praxell, a company providing customer service for
prepaid cards, told him his account was frozen due to “suspicious
activity.” For months, Reyes dutifully followed an ever-changing set
of requirements to regain access to the card, including sending a
copy of his driver’s license (which had long since expired after 30
years in prison system), obtaining a notarized letter proving his
place of address, and contacting his former prison. When he called
Praxell one year after his release, an automated system told him the
account was closed.
The lawsuit alleges that JPay “took full advantage of Mr. Reyes’s
complete lack of bargaining power,” and outlines even higher fees
on JPay release cards in other states. It alleges that “defendants
have engaged in a pattern and practice of freezing accounts for
supposed ‘fraudulent activity.” The complaint continues: “Defendants
deliberately place additional conditions on access to frozen accounts
as each condition is met, in a conscious attempt to delay a cardholder’s
access to his or her funds. The longer the delay, the more maintenance
and decline fees Defendants can extract from the account.”
JPay did not respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit
also names Praxell as another defendant, as well as the card issuer,
Sunrise Banks National Association.

Exploiting captive customers

Prepaid release cards are one of many services provided by prison
communication companies, which together make up a $1.2 billion
business. JPay technologies are used in more than 33 state prison
systems. Its parent company, Securus, offers products that affect more
than 1.2 million people incarcerated across 2,200 facilities in 47 states.
In 2014, Securus took in about $405 million in revenue.
At least 17 state prison systems and the Federal Bureau of
Prisons issued release cards in 2014, as well as many county jails.
JPay managed release cards for at least 10 of the states, while other

jurisdictions contracted with companies like JPMorgan Chase,
Keefe Group, Numi Financial, and Rapid Financial Solutions.
Federal law states that consumers cannot be forced to accept
salaries or government benefits through electronic methods; they
must have another option, such as cash or check. Since prison
release cards are not considered government benefits, they fall
through the cracks.
The current class action suit, however, argues that release
funds are a government benefit, and therefore, Reyes should not
have been forced to accept his in debit card form. It also alleges that
the defendants violated the Fifth Amendment protection of private
property, and that JPay violates California anti-monopoly law.
This is not the Human Rights Defense Center’s first battle
with prison release card companies. In 2015, it joined 67 other
organizations in urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB) to add language explicitly closing the release card loophole
and banning all release card fees. “If this business model cannot
exist without forcing or unduly pressuring customers into using it,”
it publicly commented, “then HRDC suggests that an end to release
debit card programs is appropriate.”
In 2016, the CFPB did issue new prepaid debit card rules,
which did not address the loophole, but did specify that correctional
facilities must provide clear fee disclosures and access to account
histories, in what criminal justice think tank Prison Policy Initiative
called a “partial win.”
Correctional departments say release cards limit employee
theft and reduce labor costs. According to the complaint, the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
calculated that switching to cards would save more than $878,500
a year. In the past, JPay argued that cash and checks upon release
are “problematic for correctional agencies and released inmates.”
But Lauren Saunders, an attorney for the National Consumer
Law Center, called it “outrageous” for release cards to charge fees to
access one’s own money, in a 2015 CFPB comment, writing, “Clearly,
these cards are designed to make it impossible to avoid fees.”
In 2014, JPay’s then-CEO Ryan Shapiro told the Center
for Public Integrity that release cards are “not really a revenuegenerating or a money-making business for us,” and that the fees
go to middlemen who process the payments. But the release cards
benefit JPay’s bottom line by helping the company win contracts
with correctional departments that then use JPay’s entire suite of
(profitable) technology services. As Securus prepared to acquire the
company in 2015, it put together an internal presentation (which
was later made public by the Prison Policy Initiative) outlining
JPay’s three main categories of services:
•	 Payment Services (money transfers, release cards)
•	 Communications (email, photos, video-grams, video
visitation, grievances)
•	 Digital Media (music, eBooks, games, videos, commissary
ordering, education platform)
Some of these services do provide genuine value for
incarcerated people and their loved ones. Sending an email
or video-gram from a prison-approved tablet is quicker, more
convenient, and sometimes even more intimate than mailing a
letter. But these services are not always provided with prisoners’
interests in mind. In a 2015 report, Prison Policy Initiative outlined
the ways companies like JPay encourage jails to replace in-person
visitation with video — while passing the cost onto the consumer.
According to Securus’ presentation, “Payment services” was
JPay’s most lucrative category in 2014, bringing in $53.9 million

of the company’s $70.4 million in revenue. That year, JPay’s money
transfer services covered 71 percent of state prisoners. In many
states, JPay transfers are the only way for family members to deposit
money into their incarcerated loved ones’ accounts. Each transfer
incurs fees, which have reached 45 percent on some transfers in
some states.
Incarcerated people and their families often already struggle
to get by financially. Prior to their incarceration, prisoners’ median
annual income was 41 percent lower than non-incarcerated people
of a similar age. And more than half of parents in state prisons were
previously their children’s primary financial supporters, according
to the most recent available data from the Bureau of Justice.
In general, companies earn government contracts by offering
high-value services at a low rate. But in the world of prison
technology, many states award contracts to companies that offer
the greatest kickbacks, known as commissions. Securus paid $1.3
billion in commissions between 2004 and 2014.
In 2013, 15 Democratic senators criticized commissions in
a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for
“incentivizing a regime in which prisons profit from charging
inmates higher rates. What may come as a financial benefit to
institutions comes at a serious social cost.”
The senators were referring to perhaps the best-known effect
of privatized prison services: shockingly expensive phone calls. As
with prepaid release cards, prisoner advocates believe companies
like Securus’ calling fees exploit literally captive customers, who
cannot call home unless their family members set up accounts with
private companies.
In October 2015, the FCC capped the cost of most prison calls at
$0.11 to $0.22 per minute, and forbade companies from passing the
cost of commissions onto their customers. Prior to the ruling, some
calls ran as high as $14 per minute. In its decision, the FCC stated
that prison phone providers “operate as unchecked monopolists.
The record indicates that, absent regulatory intervention…rates
and associated ancillary fees likely will continue to rise.”
Leading up to the vote, hundreds of people filed FCC
complaints, calling Securus and its competitors’ business practices
exploitative and deceptive. One person described adding money
to her Securus account, only to discover it was erroneously added
to another account — and then failing to receive a refund even
after faxing in a phone bill. A Texas resident who said it cost $250
a month to talk to her husband wrote in frustration, “I’ve signed
petitions, I’ve written the FCC, I’ve been involved in campaigns,
I’ve networked on social media, I’ve posted time and again for the
corruption of these companies profiting off of me and my family.”
Studies show that incarcerated people who maintain close
contact with their families have better outcomes and are less likely to
reoffend upon release. Communication can also help reduce strain
on family members, including the 7 percent of American children
who have had a parent incarcerated at some point in their lives.
Major prison phone companies appealed the FCC’s ruling,
claiming caps would leave them unable to afford their commissions.
Securus called the caps a “business-ending event.”
In the middle of that legal battle, newly-appointed FCC
Chairman Ajit Pai instructed FCC lawyers to cease court defense
of the agency’s own caps in February 2017.At the time, the Human
Rights Defense Center questioned Chairman Pai’s objectivity, as
he had previously represented Securus as an attorney. A group of
organizations picked up legal defense of the caps, but the federal
appeals court ruled in favor of the phone companies in June 2017.

Securus was acquired for $1.5 billion in November 2017
by Platinum Equity, a private equity firm owned by billionaire
Tom Gores, who also owns the Detroit Pistons. The seller, private
equity firm Abry Partners, made $960 million on the sale. “All
of that money came from charging inmates and their families
excessive rates,” an attorney representing families of incarcerated
people told Bloomberg.
Objectors called the sale ”a microcosm for everything that
is wrong with the prison-industrial complex” in an FCC filing,
and accused Securus of ignoring rules and caps. The FCC bans
companies from charging a fee for connecting calls, but the groups
claim Securus sidesteps this by charging a high rate for the call’s
first minute. In an FCC filing, Securus defended the practice:
“Nowhere in the rules is there a requirement that all per-minute
charges be equal.”
Securus continues to grow. This January, it acquired
GovPayNet, which processes credit and debit card payments for
court fines, bail, traffic tickets, and real estate and property tax. The
company’s 2015 internal presentation listed its lineup of services. In
addition to standard prison technology — “audio outbound inmate
calling, video visitation, parolee GPS monitoring, inmate tablets”
— it includes a variety of lesser-known services: “voice biometrics,
data analytics, jail management systems, interactive voice response
systems, managed access service (wireless contraband), location
based services, and mobile marketing services.”
According to the presentation, 100 percent of Securus’
business fell under government regulation in 2007 — but by
2015, just 35 percent was government-regulated. “By investing in
businesses that are not regulated by the FCC/ PSC/ PUCs, Securus
has successfully decreased its exposure to potential rate of return
regulations,” the slide reads.
Reyes v. JPay is still in its early stages. JPay’s user agreement
states that users must resolve disputes through individual
arbitration, a less formal process that uses neutral arbitrators
instead of a judge or jury. Due to this stipulation, a federal judge
ruled in July 2017 that JPay did not have to face a class arbitration
in another case brought by users who alleged the company’s money
transfer policies violate Florida law.
But another ongoing case may give Reyes hope. Danica Brown,
also represented by NRDC, is the lead plaintiff in a class action suit
brought against Numi Financial, the leading provider of prepaid
release cards for jails. Brown was arrested in Oregon while protesting
the shooting death of Michael Brown in 2014, and was forced to
accept her money on a prepaid card upon release. Numi Financial
attempted to have Brown’s class action dismissed and replaced with
arbitration, based on her cardholder agreement, but the federal judge
allowed the case to move forward in February 2016.
That judge’s reason for denial echoes complaints release card
recipients have been making for years: “Plaintiff ’s lack of real
alternatives when accepting the card.”
https://thinkprogress.org/prison-technology-companiesinmates-9d4242805363/

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