By Leah Binkovitz / Houston Chronicle Ramiro Eric Avalos just celebrated his 32nd birthday – his third awaiting trial in the Fort Bend County jail. “It’s not depressing like it used to be,” he said. That’s partly because he started taking GED classes under a new program the jail launched this year. The second set
By Prison Legal News The Advocate reported in March 2014 that tensions were high between Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) Chairman Eric Skrmetta and PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell during a hearing on issues related to prison and jail phone rates. Previously, in December 2012, the PSC voted to lower the cost of phone calls made
A 2013 study found that the grievance system utilized by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) appears to have become an important tool to defuse prisoner complaints, supporting the belief that the failure of BOP officials to adequately respond to grievances contributes to higher levels of violence in federal prisons. The research study determined that
By LEWIS W. DIUGUID / McClatchyDC John Quinones said things about education that baby boomers of color depended on for the needed lift out of America’s ghettos and barrios. “It was a lifesaver for me,” said Quinones, ABC News anchor for the show “What Would You Do?” He spoke this month in Kansas City during
By Kate Randall / World Socialist Website The prison populations in most US states are at historic highs. Prisons in 36 US states incarcerate three times as many people as they did in 1978. State prison systems account for 87 percent of the total prisoner population, or roughly 1.3 million in 2013 compared to about
By Dianne Frazee-Walker October 8, 2014, was an unusually warm fall day in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The Indian summer day was unique in more than one way. It was rare to see the Chaffee County Court House surrounded by extra security. The reason for the extra precaution was to prevent violence that
When we last met Jail Education Solutions earlier this year, the startup was part of FastFWD, a social enterprise accelerator in Philly focused on public safety. Now, it just launched a pilot of its tablet-based wireless education system for inmates in prison and jail. It’s in the 8,500-bed correctional facility in Philadelphia and, according to co-founder
By David Reutter / Prison Legal News To correct a “grave miscarriage of justice,” Pennsylvania U.S. District Court Judge Anita Brody granted a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner and vacated his conviction and death sentence for a murder that “in all probability, he did not commit.” The court found violations under Brady
By Rebecca Klein / The Huffington Post If state budget trends reflect the country’s policy priorities, then the U.S. currently values prisoners over children, a new report suggests. A report released this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the growth of state spending on prisons in recent years has far
By Erin Baldassari / Bay City News Inmate education at the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department just got a little more sophisticated. Beginning this week, jail inmates will have the opportunity to access computer tablets as part of the institution’s educational programs, representatives said today. The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, along with its associated charter school,