Information, topic by topic, on prisons across the world

March 14, 2019

USA: the school-to-prison pipeline is getting worse for black and brown girls

News

America North America United States

In the US, black and Latinx girls are disproportionately punished and assaulted by school administrators for simple infractions such as showing emotions.

March 12, 2019

USA: federal prisons official used prisons labor

News

America North America United States

The Bureau of Prison’s South Central regional director utilized incarcerated people from a Texas prison to work on a landscaping project at his church. A high-ranking Federal Bureau of Prisons official used incarcerated people from a Texas prison to provide labor for his church to finish a landscap…

March 12, 2019

USA: Gov. Newsom to order halt to California’s death penalty

News

Death penalty United States

Gov. Gavin Newsom is suspending the death penalty in California, calling it discriminatory and immoral, and is granting reprieves to the 737 condemned inmates on the nation’s largest Death Row.

March 12, 2019

United States of America: hopeless insomnia

Testimonial

America North America United States

Robert Lee Allen is currently serving his fifth year of a 17 years-sentence. He tells Prison Insider how doing time is a daily battle.

March 5, 2019

USA: JPMorgan to stop financing private prisons and detention centers after protests

News

United States

“We will no longer bank the private prison industry,” a company spokesperson said.

March 4, 2019

USA: Inmate who delivered baby in prison cell sues state for denying medical care

News

United States

Baby delivered in toilet after calls for help were ignored , suit alleges

March 1, 2019

USA: sentenced to prison without a crime

News

United States

After 30 years, a New Hampshire man’s case could change practice of transferring non-criminal psychiatric patients to prison.

February 27, 2019

USA: California prison staff accused of setting up 'gladiator fights' by sending rivals to yard together

News

United States

Prison guards in California have been accused of orchestrating ‘gladiator fights’ between inmates by knowingly releasing rival prisoners into the yard at the same time.

February 27, 2019

USA: Terminal Island prison inmates went without heat during the coldest February in decades

News

United States

Hundreds of inmates at the Terminal Island federal prison on the harbor front spent one of the coldest periods in decades in frigid cells with no heat and only blankets for warmth before they were transferred temporarily to another facility.

February 19, 2019

USA: One of America's harshest isolation units was exposed by a desperate, handwritten account from the inside

News

Discipline United States

A Georgia solitary confinement unit was filled with the “cacophony of prisoner screams and cries for help,” a prisons expert said after visiting.

February 19, 2019

USA: Gangs, lack of guards spark teen riot at understaffed Texas juvenile prison

News

United States

Spurred by boredom, gang conflicts and anger over a lack of guards, teens at a North Texas juvenile prison rioted for six days, assaulting officers and each other during a mass disturbance that boiled over during a football game.

February 15, 2019

USA: it costs about 50 times more to make a call from an Illinois jail Than from an Illinois state prison

News

United States

This article is not available in English.

February 15, 2019

USA: Why more prison closures may be coming to New York

News

Facilities United States

Citing a decline in crime, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday proposed closing up to three state prisons by Sept. 1.

February 13, 2019

USA: from life in prison to published author

News

United States

Drug deals and gun violence were everyday realities for Chris Wilson growing up. Straddling homes in D.C.’s Lincoln Heights neighborhood and Prince George’s County’s Temple Hills community, Wilson watched his mother fall victim to both domestic abuse and drug abuse. Many of his friends were locked…

February 12, 2019

USA: Alabama will build 3 prisons for men, Ivey announces

News

Facilities United States

Gov. Kay Ivey announced today that her administration will seek bids for building three regional prisons for men to replace aging, cramped facilities that the Alabama Department of Corrections has said are too costly to maintain and repair. The governor said new prisons are a necessary part of a la…

February 12, 2019

USA: emergency declared at Kansas prison because of staffing shortage - 95 jobs unfilled

News

United States

Kansas prisons have been under-staffed for years. Inmate populations are overcapacity. Uprisings in recent years have caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Now, the state’s corrections agency is declaring an emergency at one of its largest prisons – El Dorado Correctional – because of…

February 12, 2019

USA: women in prison in Florida get some needed attention

News

Women United States

Florida legislators, no matter their party — and no matter their gender — have shown a heartening amount of empathy for incarcerated women on an issue that affects them, uniquely. On Monday, the state Senate Criminal Justice Committee unanimously approve the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act. The…

February 11, 2019

USA: want to shrink the prison population? Look at parole.

News

United States

This article is not available in English.

February 9, 2019

USA: why the justice department can’t be trusted to investigate abysmal conditions in federal prisons

News

United States

The humanitarian crisis at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center will have come as a shock to many. It is horrifying. If there is one institution, however, which has no grounds for shock, nor the performance of it, it is the Justice Department. As a late-January polar vortex hit New York with fr…

February 6, 2019

USA: Mississippi’s prison bribery scandal is in the past, but the state still hasn’t learned its lesson

News

United States

Since 2014, a massive bribery scandal involving some of the most powerful prison industry corporations in America has hung like a cloud over Mississippi’s already-troubled corrections system, which locks people up at a higher rate than almost any other state.

February 6, 2019

USA: Coyote Ridge prison inmates go on strike

News

United States

Prisoners at the Central Washington corrections center are objecting to being served “breakfast boats,” a boxed meal with food such as a muffin and cold cereal, instead of a hot breakfast.

February 6, 2019

USA: Justice Department orders investigation after inmates at Brooklyn prison went days without heat

News

United States

The Justice Department has requested an investigation after inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, spent several days without heat or lighting.

February 5, 2019

United States: inmates at freezing federal jail in brooklyn pounded out a message

News

United States

The Metropolitan Detention Center had been largely without power and heat for more than a week. Inmates have been banging on the windows of their cells to call attention to the conditions, and protesters have been rallying outside the jail calling for improvements.

February 5, 2019

USA: aumenta el uso de gas pimienta contra reclusos en cárceles juveniles de Los Ángeles

News

United States

This article is not available in English. If you wish, you can consult the Spanish version.