PLN’s December 2013 cover story provided an updated look at the prison phone industry and examined a recent order by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that imposed rate caps on interstate (long-distance) prison and jail phone calls. There have since been several new developments on the prison phone front. As previously reported, the nation’s two
By James Kilgore / Prison Legal News
In recent months a battle has erupted at Mangaung prison in South Africa. Mangaung, located near the city of Bloemfontein, is one of the country’s two privately-operated correctional facilities. Managed by British-based G4S, which bills itself as the “world’s largest security” company, Mangaung reflects a troubled criminal justice system littered with overcrowded, poorly resourced prisons. A September 2013 strike by guards from the Police and Prison Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) sparked the latest round of drama; the guards were protesting the dismissal of several shop stewards as well as poor working conditions. G4S responded by firing 300 prison staff.
In early October 2013, with the facility still reeling from the mass terminations, a female guard was held hostage for twelve hours. The next day another guard was stabbed. Speaking for G4S, company spokesman Andy Baker alleged that prisoners were being paid to destabilize Mangaung. “We assume it is linked to ongoing staffing strife,” he told the media, implying the union was behind the attacks.
At that point, Minister of Correctional Services Sbu Ndebele stepped in and placed Mangaung under the direct supervision of the state, essentially terminating G4S’s 25-year contract with the South African government signed in 2000. Ndebele claimed G4S management had lost “effective control over the prison.” The move reflected a broader rejection of private prisons by the South African government: Ndebele’s predecessor, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, had blocked the implementation of a bidding process for four more private prisons in 2011. As it presently stands, the country’s only privately-operated facility is Kutama Sinthumule in Limpopo province, co-owned by Kensani Corrections (Pty) Ltd. and the Florida-based GEO Group.
Incarcerated parents in Nepal’s Birgunj prison are celebrating as plans have been made to create a school inside the prison facility for their children to attend. The school will be located inside the Birgunj prison, which is located roughly 300 kilometers south of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. In a move inspired by the Mumbai
By David Ganim In April 2013, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) issued an invitation for companies to bid on the department’s coveted prison phone contract. The FDOC evaluated responses to the bid invitation and conducted negotiations with three companies: Global Tel*Link (GTL), Securus Technologies, Inc., which currently holds the department’s phone contract, and CenturyLink
By David M. Reutter
As the United States was becoming an independent nation with its own values and form of government, it discarded an archaic English system that drove the poor into greater poverty. When the U.S. ended the practice of debtors’ prisons in 1833, it ensured that people would not be jailed merely for the crime of being too poor to pay one’s debts.
More recently, the Supreme Court held two decades ago that government officials cannot revoke a defendant’s probation and send them to prison if they are unable to pay fines or restitution in criminal cases. See: Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983).
Over the years, however, the prohibition against the criminalization of poverty steadily waned. The law may not allow one’s arrest and incarceration for nonpayment of bills, but the failure to attend court hearings or pay fines or fees, or displaying “contempt of court” when a creditor files suit, has been a backdoor pathway to jail for some debtors. [See: PLN, July 2011, p.40; May 2011, p.22, 26; May 2010, p.40; April 2010, p.8].
Breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay of Herrin, Illinois found herself in jail over a medical bill she was informed she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” reported the Associated Press. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”
Tacking legal fees onto the original debt resulted in Lindsay, a teacher’s assistant, paying more than $600 to resolve the matter. “I paid it in full so they couldn’t do it to me again,” she said.
An inmate-funded scholarship will be jointly announced by the Milwaukee House of Correction, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, and Creative Corrections Education Foundation at an event Thursday, Dec. 5, 3-4 p.m. at the Milwaukee County House of Correction, 8885 S. 68th St., Franklin. Image courtesy creativecorrections.org
Current inmates at the House of Correction have already pledged $400 per month to the scholarship, joining inmates in New Mexico and Texas. (That pledge amount will likely grow.) Their contributions will provide educational scholarships for children of inmates in Milwaukee County and surrounding areas.
The hope is obvious: for inmates’ children not to follow a life of crime. “We’re trying to break the cycle by supporting the education of prisoners’ children,” says Stan Stojkovic, dean of the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. According to the American Correctional Association, up to 50 percent of incarcerated juveniles have an incarcerated parent.
The scholarship fund is the brainchild of Boscobel, Wis., native Percy Pitzer, retired warden of Oxford Federal Prison and founder of the non-profit Creative Corrections Education Foundation. The foundation’s mission is to support equal opportunities for students whose parent or guardian is incarcerated or paroled and to stop second-generation crime.
A total of 31 $1,000-scholarships have been awarded thus far in 2013, and Pitzer anticipates awarding nine more by year’s end.
On December 12, 2013, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released its latest BOP Population Report. This report details the number of federal prison inmates, the name of each federal prison and its population number, the name of each privately-managed secure facility and its population number, and the populations at the various types of CCM offices.
On May 24, 2013, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed into law a comprehensive post-conviction DNA review process for defendants in cases involving violent felonies or resulting in sentences of 25 years or more. Oklahoma thus became the final state to pass a post-conviction DNA testing statute. Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, which has
Life in prison has always been far different than life in the free world. An investigation by the Pittsburgh-Gazette into the wages of Pennsylvania prison employees revealed one of those differences – an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to the Department of Corrections (DOC) pay scale. Typically, an employee’s higher rank merits greater pay. Yet Pennsylvania prison guards,
You’ve got to give them credit for trying. Florida inmates Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker “almost got away with it.” Instead of digging the traditional tunnel under the prison or impersonating a correctional officer and walking out of prison as free men, these felons came up with a strategy more ingenious than story lines for prison outbreak movies.
Jenkins and Walker came close to pulling off forging documents that granted them an early release. The escapees both 34 were serving life sentences for murder at the Franklin Correctional Facility in the Florida Panhandle. The duo must have decided a life sentence was too long, so they somehow produced official looking documents that go them an early release, 15 years early. The fraudulent certificates passed as plausible with an authentic looking forged judge’s signature along with case numbers.
Mr. Jenkins was released on Sept. 27 and registered as a felon on Sept. 30. Mr. Walker was released on Oct. 8 and registered with the authorities three days later.
The ploy came to an abrupt end Saturday evening at Cocoanut Grove Motor Inn located in the touristy town of Panama City Beach, Florida just hours after family members of the men publicly pleaded for their surrender.
The capture occurred just in time because Jenkins and Walker were waiting for a ride from Atlanta to pick them up and take them across the state line. The two men were arrested peacefully and are now in custody. They were unarmed and had a small amount of cash on them.
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