Ian Manuel / Image courtesy www.askthejudge.info By Dianne Frazee-Walker Debbie Baigrie was a stay-at-home mother of two. Ian Manuel was a lost 13-year-old boy raised in a dysfunctional environment, who had already been arrested 16 times. Baigrie is white, and Manuel is black. Today Bairgie and Manuel share an unlikely close relationship with each other.
Over the past month, Federal Bureau of Prison officials at the Federal Correctional Institution Petersburg have issued incarcerated author Christopher Zoukis a series of incident reports in a seeming attempt to censor his critique of the prison system. All of these disciplinary actions came on the heels of the release of his latest book –
By Petride Mudoola / NewVision One of my favorite things to do when I meet an inmate for the first time is to ask: “What is your story?” Asking that question in a jail setting usually results in a non-trusting glare from the inmate. However, when I further define the question by letting the inmate
By Aimee Rawlins / 12newsnow.com Tablets and text messages. To the general public, they might seem standard, but for a prison system, they could be revolutionary. At least that’s what Philadelphia hopes. The city recently signed contracts with two startups to help educate inmates while in prison and keep them connected once they’re out. Traditionally,
By Corrections One Staff / CorrectionsOne.com Sentenced to some time behind bars, but don’t think you can hack it? Try a prison coach, a consultant who’s survived behind bars and can teach you to do the same. USA Today reports that Bill Doane, a former New York prison inmate who served 26 years for stabbing
By Lila Panagides / Springfield News-Leader There has been much talk about national security lately, focusing mostly on the Middle East. Here at home, we are facing a serious national security crisis that, fortunately, is getting some attention — but perhaps not enough from the public. This crisis developed over the last 20 years due
By Matt Clarke / Prison Legal News
Two studies by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin found that juveniles held in Texas jails while awaiting trial as adults are often isolated with no access to education programs, and that violence remains prevalent in state juvenile facilities in spite of recent reforms.
Texas’ juvenile system, which has been renamed the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), was rocked by months of violence during 2012 in the agency’s six secure facilities – especially the Giddings State School and Corsicana Residential Treatment Center. The spike in violence echoed widespread reports of abuse and misconduct in 2007 that resulted in substantial changes in the state’s juvenile justice system.
For the first study by the LBJ School of Public Affairs (LBJ), 41 jails were asked to complete a survey related to incarcerated juveniles, their access to programs and whether they were separated from adult prisoners. The results indicated there were few prisoners under the age of 17 held in Texas jails – only 34 during the survey months of October and November 2011. The survey also showed that in 30 of the jails – roughly three-fourths – adults and juveniles were incarcerated separately. However, the report noted that juveniles might come into contact with adult prisoners during showers, recreation or meals.
“National research indicates that juveniles in adult facilities are five times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse and rape than youths who are kept in the juvenile system,” according to the report.
On May 7, 2012, two days before the LBJ report was released, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a ruling requiring jails to separate adult and juvenile prisoners.
By Jason Neff
I’m struggling this morning to not fly off the handle. As usual I’m beyond frustrated dealing with the incompetence, and ridiculous bullshit that is the norm in the Bureau of Prisons.
Counselor Bob De la Torre arrives at my cell pushing a cart with a box. He mentions my lawyer was waiting out front to pick up boxes of my legal work.
About a week after returning from the hole, I was given some of my property, but Lt. Montgomery would not permit me to have 2 boxes of discovery, claiming they were books, and I had too many already. When in reality the bag he thought was my property that contained several books belonged to another inmate who had returned from the hole over a month ago. It was his property which was never returned to him. Upon going through the voluminous disarray of my new property contained in trash bags, I realized it wasn’t all mine, and based upon the book selections another inmate helped me locate the correct owner, who was quite happy. Of course with property lists and procedure for securing property, one has to question how this is so commonplace. The guy mentioned when he returned from the hole, they had even given him someone else’s stuff and failed to return his property. The property given to him by SHU (Special Housing Unit, which is what they refer to as the hole, solitary, segregation in the feds) Property Officer B. Jones was random mail, and family photos of an inmate who had just left to prison that had been in the hole.
Anyhow, I went into my cell with this empty box provided from the counselor standing at my cell door, quickly stacked legal papers inside, added a photo album, stacks of pictures that were somehow mostly damaged through my transfer to the hole by staff, and a few stacks of envelopes and letters I’ve received over the last few years.
When you put any human being in a box and put others in charge, you create an environment ripe for abuse without strict oversight. Unfortunately, because prisons are supposed to punish lawbreakers (and those confined therein have left victims in their wake), there is often minimal sympathy for inmates, meaning that millions of inmates are
The Federal Bureau of Prisons provides inmates with a number of avenues of entertainment. These avenues include personal FM radios, community televisions, personal MP3 players, and institutional movies. These forms of entertainment are offered in an effort to reduce inmate idleness and the ills that come along with it. Radios Personal FM/AM radios have been
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