The success of the Bard Prison Initiative was reinforced this year as the 14th commencement was celebrated last month at the medium-security Woodbourne Correctional Facility in New York. The men’s prison saw 30 students awarded Associate in Arts Degrees – degrees they earned behind bars! BPI graduate Lionel J Johnson recently gave an impassioned speech
A 55-year-old mother of seven died in a Pennsylvania jail cell on June 7, 2014, while serving a 48-hour sentence for failure to pay truancy fines and court costs that totaled about $2,000. Eileen DiNino was jailed by Berks County District Judge Dean Patton for debts that had been accruing since 1999. The truancy violations
Prisoner executions in the U.S. last year fell to the lowest level in almost a quarter-century, with only 28 death sentences carried out. So far this year, the pace has remained just as slow, with 14 executions carried out by five states (one apiece by Alabama, Florida, and Missouri, five in Georgia, and six by
Evidence continues to mount that the school-to-prison pipeline is a huge issue in our education system, contributing to mass incarceration across the United States. Yet the vast majority of our educators lack the knowledge and training necessary to implement changes that currently contribute to juvenile justice and recidivism. If we don’t properly equip our teachers,
Two Maryland state corrections officers were escorting Shaidon Blake as he was being transferred to a new cell in the West Baltimore prison where he is serving time for murder. Known as “Papa Don,” Blake was an enforcer for the California Bloods who had been sent to Baltimore to impose discipline on the gang’s drug
After filing a lawsuit in 2014, four prisoners at Wallace Pack Unit, Navasota, Texas, will hopefully be feeling some relief after US District Judge Keith Ellison recently gave the prison 15 days to replace the water supply. However, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice says it plans to appeal the ruling, with a spokesman saying
Visit the website for Haystack Mountain, a Colorado-based goat cheese manufacturer, and you will find information about fancy chèvre and other tasty products. The “Our People” section includes profiles of cheesemaker Jackie Chang and other staffers at the 25-year-old company. The site also mentions their incarcerated workers – Colorado prisoners at the Skyline Correctional Center
In announcing a Data-Driven Justice (DDJ) initiative on June 30, the Obama White House said it will assemble a coalition of state and local governments, non-profit groups, corporations, universities, and foundations, to use sophisticated data analysis to help reshape criminal justice practices in ways to reduce the numbers of Americans behind bars. Specifically, the DDJ
The United States has no national standard for how juvenile records are dealt with, and no states earned a five-star rating from the Juvenile Law Center, a national public interest law firm that ensures child welfare. The center scored each state on factors such as confidentiality of records, availability of sealing of records, and expungement
By Christopher Zoukis Pfizer, Inc., the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, recently announced new restrictions on the distribution of drugs used to execute prisoners. The May 13, 2016 announcement detailed “distribution restrictions” that the company is placing on certain drugs used in lethal injection protocols, including pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, propofol, midazolam, hydromorphone, rocuronium bromide and