After being incarcerated for over four years now, I have arrived at the undeniable conclusion that obtaining an education while in prison is nothing short of difficult. Despite the perception of the public that inmates are being rehabilitated while in the system, the reality of the situation is that opportunities for rehabilitation – specifically in
By Prison Legal News
The loss of a $45 million contract to produce military clothing has caused Tennessee-based Tennier Industries to lay off around 100 workers. The contract was awarded to Federal Prison Industries (FPI), also known as UNICOR, which will use prisoner slave labor to manufacture the clothing that otherwise would have been made by freeworld employees. [See: PLN, May 2012, p.1].
Tennier is located in a depressed area of Tennessee; its main line of business is military clothing manufacturing. The federal prisoners who will perform the work under the FPI contract will be paid from $.23 to $1.15 per hour. “Our government screams, howls and yells how the rest of the world is using prisoners or slave labor to manufacture items, and here we take the items right out of the mouths of people who need it,” stated Tennier CEO Steven W. Eisen.
Some federal lawmakers see a problem with FPI. “If China did this – having their prisoners work at subpar wages in prisons – we would be screaming bloody murder,” said U.S. Representative Bill Huizenga, the lead sponsor of legislation to overhaul FPI. “This is a threat not to just established industries; it’s a threat to emerging industries.”
Huizenga was part of a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers behind a bill introduced in Congress in December 2011, the Prison Industries Competition in Contracting Act (H.R. 3634), designed to change the way FPI operates. Under current policy, FPI has preferential status that requires federal agencies to purchase prisoner-made goods if FPI offers them with comparable price, quality and time of delivery to that of private sector businesses (with certain exceptions). While FPI does not always quote the lowest price, it is often able to underbid private companies.
By Derek Gilna
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, has extended Strickland guarantees of effective legal representation to defendants entering into plea bargains. According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who delivered the majority opinion of the Court, “The reality is that plea bargains have become so central to the administration of the criminal justice system that defense counsel have responsibilities … that must be met to render the adequate assistance of counsel that the Sixth Amendment requires.”
According to Justice Kennedy, “criminal justice today is for the most part of pleas, not a system of trials…. Ninety-seven percent of federal convictions and ninety-four percent of state convictions are the result of guilty pleas.” [See: PLN, Jan. 2013, p.20]. The two cases considered by the Supreme Court, Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, both involved claims in which all parties agreed that defense counsel had failed to properly represent their clients.
In the case of Galin Frye, his attorney never advised him of a plea offer by Missouri prosecutors that would have resulted in ten days in jail for driving with a revoked license. Instead, he later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison. The case of Anthony Cooper involved a charge of assault with intent to murder. Cooper was offered a deal of 51 to 85 months in prison in return for a guilty plea, but turned it down when his counsel allegedly told him he could not be found guilty of the intent to murder charge because he had shot his victim below the waist. At trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 15 to 30 years.
Today, as I returned to my housing unit from the noon meal, I witnessed something that bothered me greatly. I observed a number of FCI Petersburg inmates removing an old, (presumably less-secure) fence and installing a new (presumably more-secure) fence at the entrance to the recreation yard. They were there working hard, jackhammers, forklifts, and
By David M. Reutter Several of the defendants in a “widespread scheme and subversion of the Luzerne County juvenile justice system” in Pennsylvania have agreed to a $17.75 million settlement to resolve a class-action federal lawsuit. The scheme involved the building of two private juvenile detention centers and payments to two judges to ensure the
Phillips State Prison has fostered various academic programs that lead to a general education diploma. Historically, this prison’s programs have included remedial literacy, special education, and basic adult education. It has recently moved beyond the high school education arena, however, to provide college-level courses. Located in Buford, Georgia, Phillips State Prison is the site of
I spent this morning consulting with a fellow prisoner — a recent GED graduate — at FCI Petersburg, a medium security federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia. The consultation concerned the man enrolling in a college correspondence program. The problem was that he had gone to the FCI Petersburg Education Department’s leisure library looking for some
I can’t say I’m nuts about Texas. Guns. Trucks. Giant Highways. Death Row. But there’s a fascinating program in the Mountain View Women’s Prison outside Temple,Texas, where more than 90 inmates take almost two years of training to work in the Braille translation facility and produce about 5,000 to 10,000 Braille pages per month. The Houston Chronicle reported this story in December. Braille was developed in the early 19th century by Louis Braille, who lost his eyesight to a childhood accident., and it begins with six-dot coded letters, words and punctuation. Photo courtesy corrections.com
In the picture to the right, a woman works with what is called, “digital tactile graphics,” one of the skills that add to women becoming certified in Braille. Most of what they produce is for elementary and secondary students who are blind. In this 610 person prison, a woman could work in Braille– if she is accepted into the program — or she could train dogs for the handicapped in the kind of program I wrote about in an earlier post. But yep,she could also be sentenced to death.
Random you say, a program in braille in a prison? I agree that much of what is offered behind bars seems chosen because someone got an idea and ran with it. At Framingham, when I worked behind bars, the women had a bonsai tree program and they also made flags a la Betsy Ross.
By Dianne Frazee-Walker
Keith Humphreys, writer, researcher, and Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University nominates himself for reporting the most unreported public policy issue; the declining rate of Americans incarcerated or on probation.
Humphreys’ research theorizes that lead is a key factor associated with a decline in prison population over the past five years. His speculation is supported by a rise in lead emissions throughout the 60s and 70s resulting in a high crime rate during the 70s and 80s. Humphreys claims that even though crime rates went down in the early 90’s, incarceration rates were impacted by the remaining inmates serving long terms from the 60s and 70s while new inmates were being incarcerated. Image courtesy hayesvillelibrary.wordpress.org
Rick Nevin is a researcher who dug deeper into the lead theory. Nevin’s investigative studies reveal that young offender incarceration rates have decreased since the dawning of 2000. In the mean time older offenders were increasing and the incarceration rate remained high. The reasoning behind Nevin’s hypothesis is that the older offenders grew up during the time period when lead emissions were high and young offenders were not exposed to lead being raised in a more environmentally conscious era.
It is with great pride that we announce our entry into the realm of book publishing. Middle Street Publishing is now entering the publishing industry with a focus on providing much-needed texts. Middle Street Publishing, a South Carolina non-profit dedicated to social justice, is interested in publishing books that are needed, but might not be