North America
America
North America
Discipline
United States
Arizona death row inmate Scott Nordstrom lives alone in a room smaller than a parking space. He’s allowed to leave his cell a few times each week to shower or exercise alone in a similarly-sized mesh cage and is forbidden from making physical contact with visitors from the outside.
America
North America
United States
At least $22 million have been devoted to a US international prison program focused mainly on Central American prisons. This program operates out of a web of government offices and programs, most prominently the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) of the US State Dep…
America
North America
Mental health
United States
Reports to the Advocacy Center said that disabled people who are incarcerated at David Wade Correctional Center have been beaten, slapped, kicked, stripped of their clothing in the winter and sprayed with mace and bleach. One report to the center said that disabled inmates were made to bark like do…
America
North America
United States
Even though my boss and I didn’t quite get off to the right start, over the years I grew to respect him and see him more as a person and less as a badge. For one, he did not laugh at me when he caught me crying over the loss of my father, because he, too, had recently been in mourning.
In prison, t…
America
North America
United States
“Reform” is one of those ambiguous words that mean different things to different people. I think of reform as something that aims to reduce the numbers of Americans who are removed from society and deprived of their freedom, and to do it without making us less safe. In 1972, when I was starting my…
America
North America
United States
Now, a new study by the Urban Institute is trying something different. The nonprofit counted how long people currently in prison — many of whom still have long sentences to serve — have been there. Examining data from 43 states and Washington, D.C., the organization’s Justice Policy Center found th…
America
North America
United States
We called him Tyson. He was a short kid. Very good looking. And he was kind of like a child. He was very soft-spoken. We knew he suffered from a mental illness. You can just tell when a person’s not normal. He was like our nephew—like a child that needed to be fostered. Sometimes he would stray aro…
America
North America
Suicide
Canada
At a time when Ontario prison officials have vowed to take a more humane approach to inmate care, the province has recorded a significant rise in the number of suicide attempts in its correctional facilities.
Over the past decade, provincial institutions have averaged 106 suicide attempts a calenda…
America
North America
United States
Raising the age for criminal responsibility of juveniles is an issue on the front lines of criminal justice reform. Raise the age bills have been passed at some point in almost all 50 states and allow for juveniles to be treated as juveniles unless they have committed certain violent offenses, such…
America
North America
United States
A U.S. judge accepted on Thursday major revisions to Arizona’s death penalty procedures, such as eliminating paralytic drugs in lethal injections and giving witnesses more access to watch prisoners inside the death chamber, a lawyer for the death row inmates said.
The changes were part of a settlem…
America
North America
Drugs
United States
Jeff Sessions wants a new war on drugs. It won’t work.
America
North America
Protest
United States
A gang revolt at a Florida state prison injured seven corrections officers and one inmate Wednesday morning, authorities said.
America
North America
United States
Attorneys for an inmate accused of strangling his cellmate have asked a judge to declare Nebraska’s death penalty unconstitutional.
Concerns over the recently reinstated capital punishment that was repealed in 2015 are among the 11 arguments in a motion filed Monday by Todd Lancaster and Sarah Newe…
America
North America
Discipline
United States
“Segregation is known to be psychologically detrimental to those who are in there for any length of time,” Bruce Busby, the state department’s director of institutions said.
America
North America
Discipline
Canada
This article is not available in English. If you wish, you can consult the French version.
America
North America
Discipline
Canada
Nearly a decade after teenager Ashley Smith died by self-strangulation in a solitary confinement cell, the Liberal government has introduced a bill that would place new restrictions on indefinite solitary confinement in federal prisons but falls short of the expectations of some prison-rights advoc…
America
North America
Justice
Drugs
United States
Local authorities revived Smith, arrested him, and then gave him two options: he could go to jail or he could go into treatment. Smith chose treatment—or at least that’s what he thought. What Smith chose, more specifically, was to go through the alternative sentencing program known as drug court, w…
America
North America
United States
The state is hammering out its budget. And lawmakers are having a sharp disagreement with the governor’s office over one of Michigan’s biggest price tags – the corrections budget. Both sides agree rehabilitation and lowering recidivism is the way to go. But they can’t agree on how much money to spe…
America
North America
Health
Suicide
Canada
The number of inmates in federal prisons who intentionally harm themselves has more than tripled over the past decade, spiking again last year, prompting Canada’s correctional investigator to call for changes to ensure such prisoners are treated as patients who require medical care.