Take a life, and spend your life in prison. It’s the “fair” second-degree murder sentence in Louisiana. Lately, however, there has been some push back against this sentence in the state, and since Louisiana is one of just two states left in the U.S. that has a mandatory life sentence without parole for second-degree murder,
PROVIDING A HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION COMBINED WITH MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION TREATMENT HAS PROVEN TO BE A SUCCESSFUL FORMULA TO REDUCE RECIDIVISM. In Florida, one in four released prisoners is re-incarcerated—and it’s a lack of education that’s largely to blame. With the average Florida inmate having just a sixth-grade education, the chances of finding steady
As the 31 states that practice capital punishment struggle to find the chemicals necessary to execute condemned prisoners, in at least one state the prisoners themselves are successfully bringing in large quantities of drugs, which they sometimes use to commit suicide – to cheat the metaphorical hangman’s noose. This is both ironic and troubling. California’s
Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds charged with crimes in New York courts will continue to be tried as adults, as Governor Andrew Cuomo and the legislature ended the 2015 lawmaking session without a law to “Raise the Age” for adult prosecutions, as many justice activists had hoped. New York remains one of two states, along with North
This year to date, nationwide executions are on a pace to reach their lowest level in 25 years. Capital punishments have been carried out only 15 times in 2016 and only twice since the start of May. If that rate persists through the remainder of this year, the nationwide total of 19 executions will be the
A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated the way Florida imposes the death penalty, finding that it violates the Sixth Amendment. The action could spark new appeals by many of the nearly 400 prisoners in the state facing death sentences. In its 8-1 decision in Hurst v. Florida, issued earlier this month,
This week the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was awarded one of nine “Improved Reentry Education (IRE)” awards of $1 million each from the US Department of Education, Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education. The program itself is mandated to support “demonstration projects in prisoner re-entry education that develop evidence of reentry education’s effectiveness” and
As of August 1, 2013, Utah state prisoners are able to talk to their visitors in languages other than English, reversing a longstanding policy. The change puts an end to the nation’s only state prison system rule that forbids foreign languages during visits, according to Chesa Boudin, a federal public defender in San Francisco and
Dietrick Mitchell is just one of four dozen men in the Colorado Department of Corrections serving life without parole as adults in prison —sentenced when they were juveniles. Mitchell is now forty-years-old, but can easily be spotted in the prison yard with his awkward boyish looks. Tragically, men sentenced to adult prisons to serve endless
On October 21, 2014, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed into law the Revictimization Relief Act (HB 2533/SB 508), which enabled victims of crime to petition a judge to censor Pennsylvania state prisoners, if the prisoner’s words cause or will theoretically cause “mental anguish” to a crime victim, regardless of who committed the crime against the
We have profiled every prison within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Learn about each prison’s location, security level, educational and recreational offerings, and much more.
Criminal Center
1501 Belle Isle Avenue, Suite 110
Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
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