John Valverde spent 16 years in prison, now focuses on helping improve the lives of prisoners, ex-prisoners, and at-risk youth. John Valverde is living proof that second chances are possible, and that the criminal justice system needs to be about more than just punishment — it should focus on rehabilitation and facilitating successful re-entry for
Well, that didn’t last long. You’ll remember the fanfare with which the Obama administration last August 18, announced its plan to phase out all use of private-run prisons by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The campaign was kicked off a week earlier with the unveiling of a study from the DOJ Inspector General, which
A trend has emerged in recent years concerning the treatment and management of incarcerated sex offenders: prison administrators are conjuring up new and more restrictive means of managing the sex offenders housed in their prison systems. Over the years, a plethora of restrictive tools have been employed in this context. These have included banning all
Aaron Kinzel faced obstacles after being released from a 10-year prison stint, and now teaches criminology and is an active prison reform advocate. It’s easy to think only of the crimes committed when words like “offender,” “incarceration,” or “prisoner” come up. But we should remember that many offenders in our system of incarceration will be
It began last year during an investigation of contraband smuggling into the Leavenworth Detention Center, a privately run federal prison in Kansas operated by CoreCivic, formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America. During that investigation, a federal prosecutor in Kansas City told a private defense lawyer she could not lawfully represent a Leavenworth inmate,
The number of inmate suicides in state prisons climbed by more than 30 percent during a one-year period, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in the Department of Justice. The statistical study, Mortality in State Prisons, 2001-2014, released on Dec. 15, noted that in 2013, 192 state prison inmates
Educational and vocational training initiatives in the Pennsylvania prison system have improved conditions for both inmates and staff. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spent 2016 making laudable strides toward helping improve the state of mass incarceration in this country. Corrections Secretary John Wetzel made a statement in December outlining improvements the Department of Corrections (DOC)
On August 3, 2015, Bannum, Inc., a provider and operator of halfway houses for federal prisoners following their release, filed an amended complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the federal Bureau of Prisons and various BOP officials, alleging they had “engaged in a pattern of conduct over the past
By Christopher Zoukis Since 2013, former New Mexico prison doctor Mark E. Walden, nicknamed “Dr. Fingers,” has faced allegations that he sexually abused a number of state prisoners. As a result of the alleged sexual assaults, he has been sued at least 15 times by 77 prisoners who were housed at facilities where Walden was
By Christopher Zoukis A recent study by the research firm Child Trends revealed a stunning consequence of our nation’s policy and practice of mass incarceration: one out of every 14 children in the U.S. has a parent who is currently or has previously been incarcerated. In other words, a staggering seven percent of America’s youth –