United States
United States: addressing the structural inequalities underlying a failing prison health system
Analysis
Opinion
North America
Mental health
Drugs
Material conditions
Suicide
United States
ICPR and Prison Insider asked several experts worldwide to share their insights in the framework of the project ‘Understanding and reducing the use of imprisonment in 10 countries’. Homer Venters is a physician and epidemiologist working at the intersection of incarceration, health and human rights.…
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United States: there’s an aging crisis in New York’s prisons and we need to solve it
Analysis
Opinion
North America
Elderly prisoners
Long-term prisoners
Access to legal rights
Health
United States
ICPR and Prison Insider asked several experts worldwide to share their insights in the framework of the project ‘Understanding and reducing the use of imprisonment in 10 countries’. Rodney Holcombe, New York State Director for Criminal Justice Reform, addresses the New York prison system and the its…
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United States: surge in life sentences
Analysis
Opinion
North America
Long-term prisoners
Justice
Death penalty
United States
Ashley Nellis, Ph.D. is a Senior Research Analyst at the Washington DC-based NGO, The Sentencing Project, which has been active in the struggle to reform American law and practice on life sentences. Here, Ashley discusses America’s now commonplace use of life sentences and calls for bolder approaches…
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North America
Access to legal rights
Justice
United States
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a 66-year-old former journalist incarcerated in a Pennsylvania state prison for the 1981 shooting death of Officer Daniel Faulkner.
“We’re not asking for no apologies. We’re not asking for no investigation, because neither one will mean anything,” said Janine Africa during an April…
Source — Billy Penn
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Coronavirus
North America
Access to legal rights
Health
United States
Despite a record number of new COVID-19 cases in prisons this month, some state departments of correction are already starting to roll back necessary suspensions of medical co-pays. Prior to the pandemic, most prison systems charged incarcerated people between $2 and $5 for each medical appointment —…
Source — Prison Policy Initiative
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North America
Women
Access to legal rights
Justice
Health
Torture
Violence
United States
The “freedom-loving” U.S. has been practicing the forced sterilization of its least desirable citizens since the early twentieth century.
It is conservatively estimated that over 60,000 American citizens suffered this procedure until it was supposedly abolished little by little, state by state, in the…
Source — Prison Legal News
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North America
Women
LGBTI
Access to legal rights
Justice
United States
Nicole Rose Campbell was diagnosed with gender dysphoria prior to going to Racine Correctional Institute, a medium-security men’s state prison in Wisconsin. She was “permitted to receive hormone treatments, counseling, and even allowed to wear some women’s clothing” since starting her sentence, but was…
Source — LGBTQ Nation
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Coronavirus
North America
Health
Overcrowding
United States
They live in crowded conditions, sharing bathrooms and eating facilities where social distancing is impossible. They have high rates of asthma, diabetes and heart disease. Many struggle with mental illness. A disproportionate number are Black and Hispanic, members of minority communities that have been…
Source — The New York Times
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North America
Women
Access to legal rights
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Violence
Social ties
United States
The United States imprisons the most women in the world. Across the United States, approximately 200,000 women are incarcerated—nearly an 800 percent increase since 1980. Women of color are disproportionately affected by the criminal justice system. In 2017, twice as many Black women and 1.3 times as…
Source — New Security Beat
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United States: think private prison companies are going away under Biden? They have other plans
News
North America
Rehabilitation
United States
For the second time in four years, fears that a Democrat would be elected president sent private prison stocks plummeting earlier this month. To the casual observer, the prospect of President-elect Joe Biden—who promised to “stop corporations from profiteering from incarceration”—presented an existential…
Source — The Marshall project
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North America
Mental health
Violence
Rehabilitation
United States
Early this year — before COVID-19 began to tear through U.S. prisons — five people were killed in Mississippi state prisons over the course of one week. A civil rights lawyer reported in February that he was receiving 30 to 60 letters each week describing pervasive “beatings, stabbings, denial of medical…
Source — Prison policy
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Coronavirus
North America
Mental health
Suicide
United States
Rather than improve under a class action lawsuit dating back to 1990 (now Plata v. Newsom) and seeking constitutionally acceptable mental health care for prisoners, conditions continue to slide, exacerbated by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
Mental health problems are especially egregious at CDCR’s California…
Source — Prison legal news
Read more Etats-Unis: peine de mort, l’administration Trump poursuit les exécutions malgré sa défaite
News
North America
Access to legal rights
Justice
Death penalty
United States
This article is not available in English. This article is available in the following versions: French
United States: can correctional facilities negotiate phone contracts that prohibit deposit fees ?
News
North America
Material conditions
Social ties
United States
The high cost of calling home from prisons and jails rightly gets a lot of attention in the press, but the industry’s practice of tacking on hidden fees is getting an increasing amount of attention from regulators and the savviest correctional facilities. These fees can be called by a variety of different…
Source — Prison policy initiative
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Coronavirus
North America
Justice
Rehabilitation
United States
In a sweeping acknowledgment of the risks of the coronavirus in cramped prisons, New Jersey will release more than 2,000 inmates on Wednesday as part of one of the largest-ever single-day reductions of any state’s prison population.
More than 1,000 additional prisoners will be released in the coming…
Source — The New York Times
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North America
Access to legal rights
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
United States
British prisons and jails must provide for vegan inmates by law; as of January this year, veganism is an explicitly protected belief under the Equality Act 2010, the same as religious beliefs.
This protection is not absolute, nor does veganism have legal protection everywhere in the world. In the U.S.,…
Source — Sentient Media
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United States: California law is step forward but fails to guarantee safety for trans prisoners
News
North America
Women
Access to legal rights
Justice
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Violence
United States
Syiaah Skylit has been imprisoned in California since 2015. Despite multiple requests to be placed in a women’s prison, Skylit, a Black trans woman, has always been incarcerated in the state’s men’s prisons. There, she has faced attacks by incarcerated men as well as sexual abuse and retaliation by prison…
Source — Truthout
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North America
Access to legal rights
Mental health
United States
When Drew Harrison was in prison, just sitting in his cell overloaded his senses. To dim the fluorescent lights, he covered the bulbs with toothpaste or paper. To mask overwhelming odors, he wrapped his uniform around his head.
Once, when he asked to stay longer in the prison yard, Harrison, who has…
Source — The Marshall Project
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Coronavirus
North America
Health
United States
As COVID-19 threatened jails and prisons in March, the Connecticut Department of Corrections decided to waive the $3 fee it charged prisoners for a medical visit.
“We didn’t want the lack of funds to be a reason offenders were denied medical treatment, especially during the pandemic,” said Andrius Banevicius,…
Source — The Marshall Project
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North America
Minors
Access to legal rights
Justice
Mental health
Material conditions
Violence
United States
Detainees in Texas’ juvenile prisons suffer from frequent physical and sexual abuse, inadequate mental healthcare and high rates of staff turnover, two youth advocacy groups wrote in a federal complaint Wednesday.
The rights of the hundreds of youths detained in five secure facilities around the state…
Source — San Francisco Chronicle
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North America
Long-term prisoners
Mental health
United States
Kyle H. has been incarcerated since 2001 and is serving a life sentence. He is held at River North Correctional Center in the state of Virginia. He bravely tells how an ordinary day goes by, when voices cannot stop, and when he becomes a stranger to himself.
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Coronavirus
North America
Women
Access to legal rights
Health
Material conditions
United States
“I am forced to make a choice on what’s more important, my freedom or my health,” Ortega said.
Source — The 19th News
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Coronavirus
North America
Access to legal rights
Health
Work
United States
California’s prison system has taken drastic measures to combat the coronavirus, halting rehab programs, religious services and educational classes. But correctional authorities kept one type of operation running through much of the last six months: prison factories.
Source — Los Angeles Times
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