This Mother’s Day, like this past Christmas, I won’t be able to speak with my mom and tell her I love her. (And this isn’t because I’m in prison, but because I’ve spoken out about prison conditions and have had my phone privileges rescinded). I say not this to say “poor me,” but to think
By Andra Ghent America spends a lot of money locking up a lot of people. Understandably, legislators are trying to find ways of cutting prison costs without increasing crime rates. One tactic legislators increasingly rely on to manage costs is private prisons. Research from the Sentencing Project shows that, between 1999 and 2010, the share
I am a huge supporter of the struggles of transgender people in prison, especially after a recent incident with a prisoner in Virginia. That’s why I was so happy to contribute this article in Vice: http://www.vice.com/read/the-uphill-battle-to-make-prison-safer-for-trans-women If you have a chance to read it, we highly recommend it.
We are excited to share news about an upcoming feature-length documentary that delves inside the first-ever high school built inside an adult prison in the United States. Filmmakers Richard O’Connell and Annelise Wunderlich have just completed principal photography on The Corridor, a true-to-life depiction of the world inside Five Keys charter school at San Francisco County Jail. The
By Margaret Wright A flurry of preparations in a cavernous warehouse on N.M. 14 just south of Santa Fe resembles those for any other fine arts and craftsmanship exposition. There’s the scent of fresh paint and sawdust from workers repairing sections of walls where goods will be displayed. Another crew unpacks boxes of painstakingly fashioned
Civil libertarians and prisoner advocacy groups have expressed shock and outrage at the discovery that some Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices, used to monitor the movement and whereabouts of many pre-trial defendants, parolees, sex offenders, and other persons, function like cell phones and are capable of recording conversations without the knowledge or consent of
By Dan Clark Spending money on pre-kindergarten programs now will inevitably save the taxpayers of Pennsylvania money in the long run when they are not paying as much to lock up criminals, according to a report by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids. To drive that point home on Wednesday, District Attorneys Risa Ferman, Montgomery County,
By Prison Legal News The California Court of Appeal has held that documents in the possession of a prisoner who is providing legal assistance to another prisoner cannot be used to validate the first prisoner as an associate of a prison gang. In February 2009, California prisoner Robert Villa was placed in administrative segregation (ad
Once Virginia’s chief executioner, Jerry Givens, put 62 people to death over 17 years from 1982 to 1999. Then he had an epiphany that pushed him to use his experience to advocate against the death penalty. Givens, 60, supported capital punishment at an early age. While attending a house party when he was 14, he