By Eric Markowitz At first glance, APDS looks like your typical tech startup: A bunch of young, bearded guys hanging out and working on MacBooks in a cavernous loft in Manhattan. There are plush vintage furniture and chalkboard walls. There’s even an antique canoe dangling inexplicably from the ceiling. But look a little closer, and
By Jennifer Sheridan U.S. Sen. John Cornyn visited the Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony to see how the prisoners are receiving education and college credits during their sentence. The education is provided by Trinity Valley Community College educators, and prisoners are able to get GEDs, vocational skills, and associate degrees to benefit them after they
The Ninth Circuit has held that a prison guard’s act of reading a prisoner’s legal mail – not merely inspecting or scanning it – constitutes a Sixth Amendment violation.The Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s order dismissing, at the screening stage, a pro se civil rights action filed by Arizona death row prisoner Scott
By David M. Reutter Hundreds of undocumented immigrants are housed at the GEO Group-operated Broward Transitional Center (BTC) in Pompano Beach, Florida, and many are victims of mistreatment and policy violations, according to a report issued by an immigrants’ rights group. The 71-page report, released on April 29, 2013, by Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ),
To the Editor: “Help Us Learn in Prison,” by John J. Lennon, an Attica inmate (Sunday Review, April 5), urging that prisoners be offered college courses, hit me like a ton of bricks. That was me in the early 1990s, in my cell, believing that I was destined to sell drugs on the corner, with
The Globalization of Supermax PrisonsEdited by Jeffrey Ian Ross(Rutgers University Press, 2013)240 pages, $28.95 paperback Book review by Gary Hunter “Zero tolerance” is a phrase that has found its way into many facets of our society. But nowhere is it more prevalent than in the vocabulary used by lawmakers when waging our nation’s relentless, ongoing
Arizona: The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced on May 28, 2014, that it would not seek criminal charges against state prison guard Jesse Dorantes for the death of his K9 service dog, Ike, who was left in an unattended vehicle in the summer heat for seven hours. The DA’s office cited a 2007 case in
By Gabe Joselow At a women’s prison in Nairobi, Kenyan inmates are taking the law into their own hands. Law classes have helped inmates launch their own appeals and defend themselves in court. In a classroom behind bars, three inmates and a prison officer learn the basics of the common law. Inmate Rose Musyoki said
By Matt Clarke The October 2010 Prison Legal News cover story, “Crime Labs in Crisis: Shoddy Forensics Used to Secure Convictions,” provided an extensive examination of problems at crime labs nationwide. Apparently, and unfortunately, little has changed since that time. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a review of thousands of old