On August 7, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a new package of proposals intended to reform the state’s bail system. Together, the collection was named the “Damon Allen Act” to commemorate a state trooper who was killed in the line of duty last Thanksgiving. During a traffic stop, Trooper Allen was ambushed and fatally shot
The Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit advocacy group, recently released a study examining how state prison commissaries operate. One observation made in the report is that commissaries often exploit incarcerated persons by shifting the costs of incarceration from the state to inmates and their families. The central problem, according to the report, isn’t the prices
Famous author J.K. Rowling once quipped, “When in doubt, go to the library.” Ray Bradbury was also a library fan, exclaiming, “Without libraries, what do we have? No past and no future.” Why do we hold libraries in such high regard, especially in this age of digital innovation where reams and reams of paper can be
During a heatwave in the summer of 2017, dozens of protesters gathered outside the Medium Security Institution in St. Louis, Missouri. They chanted “Shut it down,” after a video showing prisoners at the jail begging for relief from soaring temperatures went viral. But in Texas and elsewhere, prisoners have taken their complaints of extreme –
The Sentencing Project, a non-profit advocacy group, recently released a short study on privately-owned prisons in the U.S. One of the most striking facts documented by the study Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration: U.S. Growth in Private Prisons was that in the first sixteen years of this century, the number of inmates held by private prison
Prison education programs work. Numerous studies backed up that fact. For prison education to be effective, it must keep pace with the changing world. Thankfully, in many States, this is the case. For example, the Maryland Department of Corrections (MDC) now uses tablets for its inmate GED program. Not only is the GED no longer
Video visitation services are already available in more than 600 penal institutions, and the upward trend shows few signs of the growing trend slowing down. They’ve also sparked a debate over whether the services are a valuable, lower-cost alternative to in-person visits to distant locations (as the American Correctional Association recommended in 2016) or a
Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California, has a beauty salon. It started as a vocational prison education program in 1996 when the facility was for women only. Although it’s a men’s prison now, the salon, and the esthetician program, remain in place. It’s a unique way of learning job skills in the prison system, and
Prison education programs benefit everyone. The RAND Corporation, a non-profit global policy think tank, notes that offenders who have participated in prison education programs cut their risk of recidivism by 43 percent. Education programs focused on vocational training also raise their employability by 13 percent. “Our findings suggest that we no longer need to debate
The New Hampshire legislature this spring passed S. 593, a bill to abolish the state’s death penalty, and, effective at the start of next year, replace it with mandatory life imprisonment without parole. On June 21, Gov. Christopher Sununu (R) vetoed the measure. Sununu’s veto message defended his state’s restraint with the death penalty: only