January 10, 2017 USA : president Obama’s parting reminders on criminal justice reform News Asia United States Last week, President Obama surprised criminal justice reformers with an article in the Harvard Law Review on The President’s Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform. While the President spends more of the article summarizing his efforts to reform the criminal justice system than sharing an analys…
January 10, 2017 USA : prisons run by C.E.O.s? Privatization under Trump could carry a heavy price News United States Last summer, the Justice Department decided to start winding down its use of private prisons. Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates noted in a memo that while private prisons were useful when public prisons were overflowing, they made little sense now that the prison population was falling. They d…
January 10, 2017 USA : America's private prisons are back in business News United States In the hardscrabble desert hamlet of Milan, New Mexico, incarceration is the biggest game in town.
January 10, 2017 ¿Qué pasará con la prisión de Guantánamo cuando Barack Obama deje el poder y Donald Trump asuma la presidencia de EE.UU.? News United States This article is not available in English. If you wish, you can consult the Spanish version.
January 7, 2017 Etats-Unis : Mumia Abu-Jamal sera enfin soigné News United States Sorry, this article is not available in English. You can consult the French version.
January 4, 2017 Trump’s Guantanamo tweet was uninformed and ill-advised News United States US president-elect Donald Trump’s tweet yesterday that everyone held at Guantanamo Bay is “extremely dangerous” is ill-informed. What’s worse, his proposed course of action – stopping all releases – shows a lack of understanding about the danger keeping Guantanamo open poses to US National Security…
January 3, 2017 USA: Trump says no more detainees should be released from Guantanamo Bay prison News United States President-elect Donald Trump called Tuesday for the end of all detainee releases from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying in a tweet that those who remain are “extremely dangerous people” who “should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”
December 31, 2016 USA: Massachussets unlawfully isolates mentally ill inmates News Mental health United States One inmate, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, became so distraught after months in the prison’s isolation unit that he began talking to himself and counting compulsively. Another, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, declined so much in isolation that he smeared himself with feces.
December 29, 2016 USA : prison population shrinks to smallest in a decade News United States Efforts to cut number of nonviolent offenders contributed to roughly 2% drop in 2015. The U.S. prison population in 2015 fell to the lowest level since 2005, fueled in part by the federal push to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders behind bars and state policies aimed at shorter sentence…
December 28, 2016 USA : prisons basically ignore the Americans with Disabilities Act News United States Prisons across the U.S. routinely flout the Americans With Disabilities Act, subjecting thousands of inmates with physical and mental health problems to painful and sometimes humiliating conditions, according to watchdog groups, inmates, corrections officials, and a former Justice Department offici…
December 28, 2016 USA : 6 inmates in a Tennessee prison escaped through a broken toilet News United States Six inmates escaped from a Tennessee jail through a broken toilet early Christmas morning, the Cocke County Sheriff’s Office told KOMO News. The police are still searching for one of the inmates. The other five were captured shortly after they escaped.
December 23, 2016 USA : Wilson County man who spent 31 years in prison not recommended for exoneration News United States A Wilson County man who served 31 years in prison on a rape and burglary conviction before DNA evidence cleared him of the crime was not recommended for exoneration by the Tennessee Board of Parole on Tuesday.
December 16, 2016 USA : a prison class in African religion attracts students beyond its walls News Religion United States In many ways, the class that met here Tuesday night could be in any university in the United States. There were desks arranged in a circle to facilitate discussion. There were student presentations based on dense readings. And there was the faint buzzing from the fluorescent lights overhead.
December 15, 2016 USA : This is what field trips to prison are like News United States When an execution is scheduled at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C., a select group of witnesses is invited to attend.
December 15, 2016 USA : Quarter of inmates could have been spared prison without risk News United States Study of 1.5 million prisoners finds that drug treatment, community service, probation or fines would have served as more effective sentences for many.
December 15, 2016 USA : How to cut the prison population, save $18 billion a year and keep America safe News United States A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice concludes that “unnecessary incarceration” — imprisoning people for low-level offenses and keeping them there for years — is ruining hundreds of thousands of lives, wasting billions of dollars and having little effect on public safety.
December 15, 2016 USA : more prisoners die of old age behind bars News Health United States As the number of older prisoners soars, more inmates are dying in prison of diseases that afflict the elderly, new data from the Department of Justice show. A total of 3,483 inmates died in state prisons and 444 in federal prisons in 2014, the highest numbers on record since the bureau started coun…
December 12, 2016 USA : Welcome to Stewart Detention Center, the Black Hole of America's Immigration System News United States Stewart, one of the most remote immigration detention centers in the country. Stewart has become an essential moneymaker for the area. In 2012, it provided 20 percent of the county’s revenue, money generated from the roughly 1,700 beds that are filled with men waiting to find out whether they’ll be…
December 6, 2016 USA : the stain of racism in New York’s prisons News United States New Yorkers are grimly familiar with state prison horror stories featuring guards who beat and torture inmates, knowing that their union will shield them from punishment and that district attorneys in towns dominated by prisons will look the other way.
December 6, 2016 USA : The world's growing debt problem is just like the US prison system News United States Bill Gross, the legendary investor, thinks that America has two imprisonment problems.The first, is the literal incarceration rate in the US. The second is the trap of ever-growing debt that has ensnared the US and global economies
December 5, 2016 USA : the link between race and solitary confinement News Discipline United States Men of color are overrepresented in isolation, while whites are typically underrepresented. Stark disparities in prisoners’ treatment are embedded into criminal-justice systems at the city, county, state, and federal levels, and have disproportionate, negative effects on men of color.
December 4, 2016 USA : for Blacks facing parole in New York State, signs of a broken system News United States Jaimie Davenport and Billy Cassell had their first hearings before the New York State Board of Parole earlier this year. Both were serving a maximum of six years on a burglary conviction, Mr. Cassell for breaking into storage units, Mr. Davenport for stealing cellphones. The men are in their 30s an…
December 3, 2016 USA : Trump’s win gives stocks in private prison companies a reprieve News United States As terrific as Donald J. Trump has been for the stock market, he has been absolutely spectacular for a troubled niche: companies that run for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers for states and the federal government.
December 3, 2016 USA : the scourge of racial bias in New York State’s prisons News United States A New York Times investigation draws on nearly 60,000 disciplinary cases from state prisons and interviews with inmates to explore the system’s inequities and the ripple effect they can have. The racism can be felt from the moment black inmates enter New York’s upstate prisons. They describe being…
