The U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held its 22nd session in late April 2013. A significant item on the Commission’s agenda was the development of revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs). Originally adopted in 1955, SMRs are rules that regulate the bare minimum standards for the treatment of
By Aviva Teva and Ray Tebout – Huffington Post
We know from data and personal experience that expanding college access and supports is a cost-effective recidivism reduction and public safety strategy that will foster the transformation of entire communities. In August, the RAND Corporation published a meta-analysis of 30 years of research on correctional education in the U.S., showing that inmates who participate in education programs are 43% less likely to recidivate than inmates who do not and post-release employment was 13% higher for those who had participated in education while incarcerated. Education opportunities and supports in criminal justice and reentry settings, often known as “reentry education,” and postsecondary reentry education in particular is a powerful poverty reduction and justice reinvestment approach that addresses historic injustices within both the criminal justice and education systems. The New York Reentry Education Network (NYREN) is a network of community-based reentry service providers that partner with government agencies and academic institutions in New York City to center education in reentry and mobilize for systems change, including expanding college access to individuals involved in the criminal justice system.
By Erik Eckholm – The New York Times ANGOLA, La. — Like most of his fellow inmates, Daryl Walters, 45, can expect to spend the rest of his days in the infamous prison on a former slave plantation here. He was sentenced to life without parole for a murder more than 20 years ago in a
In 2011, the State of Illinois signed a 10-year, $1.36 billion contract with Wexford Health Sources, a for-profit company, to provide medical services to Illinois prisoners. Since the contract went into effect there have been numerous complaints concerning the level of medical care that prisoners are receiving – or rather not receiving. In fact, more
By Olivia Niland As California Gov. Jerry Brown continues to emphasize a commitment to shrinking state prison populations and reinvesting in California’s flagging K-12 public school system, advocates on both sides of the issue are calling for a reevaluation of the state’s funding priorities. Despite its dwindling prison population, the state’s correctional system budget has
By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News BOSTON, Mass. – At Charlestown High School, where many students come from high-crime neighborhoods, an innovative program employs a surprising method to help keep teens in school and out of trouble with the law: Encouraging them to talk to each other. On one recent Friday, nine students gathered
An overwhelming majority of prisoners serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed as juveniles were exposed to domestic violence and lived in poverty, while significant numbers failed in school, were influenced by friends in trouble with the law, and grew up in a home missing at least one parent who was incarcerated, according to
By Randy Radic
Christopher Zoukis, a 27-year-old federal prisoner, is the
author of Education Behind Bars: A Win-Win
Strategy for Maximum Security (Sunbury Press, 2012), a contributing writer
for Prison Legal News, and a regular
commentator on prison matters in the penal press. He has navigated the troublesome waters of
incarceration for the past 8 years, in both federal and state prisons and at
the medium and low security levels.
Today I sit down with Mr. Zoukis to discuss the complex issue of
determining how much money family members and friends of the incarcerated
should send to those in prison.
Randy Radic: In
my duties as the senior editor at Middle Street Publishing and the chief editor
of the Prison Law Blog, I often receive inquiries from family members and
friends of the incarcerated concerning how much money is appropriate to send to
those in prison. I find this question
hard to answer since it is so subjective.
What are your thoughts on how much money is appropriate to send
incarcerated friends and family members?
Christopher Zoukis:
Subjective is most certainly the word here.
The first two questions those outside of prison should ask are: What
prison system is their loved one or friend incarcerated within and what is the
allowable monthly or weekly spending limit at the prison (if any)? This should be the starting point of any
determination on how much money is appropriate to send to an incarcerated loved
one or friend.
My experience is with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the
North Carolina Department of Corrections.
As such, I can provide specific information for these two prison
systems. In the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, federal prisoners can spend $320 per month ($370 in November and
December) on commissary items. This
doesn’t include over-the-counter medications, copy cards, or postage
stamps. In the North Carolina Department
of Corrections, prisoners can spend up to $40 per week in the institutional
commissary.
With these numbers in mind, anything up to $320 per month
for federal prisoners and $160 per month for prisoners in the North Carolina
Department of Corrections would allow them to live very comfortably. This would easily place them in the top one
percent of those incarcerated within the respective prison systems.
PHILADELPHIA, PA (USA) – 6 OCTOBER 2013 He is a Thought Leader on Social Justice and Reintegration issues, a dynamic voice in the National Dialogue on Mass Incarceration, and the Founder and Executive Director of The Center For Returning Citizens (www.tcrcphilly.org). He is Mr. J. Jondhi Harrell. Mr. Harrell will be a featured guest on a
On August 4, 2011, a prison guard at Fort Dodge Correctional Facility in Des Moines, Iowa, a medium-security state prison that houses more than 1,300 prisoners, found sensitive employee records in a file drawer in the prison’s Barber Shop, a location converted from an administration office several months prior. The records, forms related to the