By Courtney Subramanian About two hours miles north of Manhattan, a group of young men meets weekly to debate philosophy and discuss composition. The curriculum is like any other liberal arts course, but the classroom is quite different from what most people experience. These classes take place behind the confines of the Otisville Correctional Facility, a medium-security
By ACLU Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison Law Office can move forward with a lawsuit against the state of Arizona on behalf of all 33,000 prisoners in the state’s 10 prisons and all future prisoners. The ruling is critical
By Prison Legal News Prisoners at the Delaware County Jail are adjusting to frosted windows in their cells, which let sunlight in but prevent unauthorized communication with the outside world. The windows have been a source of concern in the decades since the jail was built because prisoners sometimes expose themselves or make obscene gestures
When Cook County Jail guards told prisoner Jeremiah Harris to pack up to go home on September 16, 2013, he told them to “quit playin’.” Harris, 25, who had been serving a 12-year sentence as a habitual criminal and was being held at the Cook County Jail for a court appearance, became the third inmate
Passed in 1994, California’s “three strikes” law is the nation’s harshest sentencing law. Designed to imprison for life anyone who commits three violent crimes, the law has inadvertently resulted in the incarceration of a lot relatively harmless people, for a long time and at great public expense.
Two Oahu Community Correctional Center guards, Kevin Ignacio and Ismael Castro, face trial over allegations that they beat prisoner Jeffrey Diaz bloody in October 2012. Ignacio is accused of repeatedly punching Diaz in the head and face, while Castro was caught on surveillance video kicking him in the head. On September 17, 2013, Judge Patrick
By Martin Maximino Image courtesy weslyan.edu
The United States has the largest prison population in the world, with more than 2.2 million inmates in federal, state and local facilities. Although the number of life sentences has quadrupled since 1984, every year approximately 700,000 citizens leave federal and state prisons in the United States to begin a new life. Moreover, the number of releases from U.S. prisons in 2012 exceeded that of admissions for the fourth consecutive year, contributing to a slight decline in the total U.S. prison population.
The professional and personal lives of these individuals after they leave prison show great variety, across different states and income levels. Many ex-offenders struggle to reintegrate into their communities and face significant challenges in re-entering the job market. In this context, recidivism often ensues: The Pew Center on the States suggests that perhaps half of all inmates released will return within three years. But the story of their life challenges typically begins even before conviction and prison time.
A 2014 U.S. National Research Council report authored by some of the nation’s reading criminal justice scholars notes: Many people enter prison with educational deficits and could benefit from education while incarcerated. Literacy rates among prisoners generally are low, and substantially lower than in the general population. Over the past 40 years, the percentage of prisoners having completed high school at the time of their incarceration fluctuated between