| Prison Legal News, a monthly print publication that covers criminal justice issues, is a project of the Human Rights Defense Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. |
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There's a Pretty Good Chance Your American Flag Was Made by a Prisoner Every generation or so, the American flag becomes a flashpoint in civic discourse. In recent memory, it's been held aloft by civil rights marchers and burned by critics of the Vietnam War. It became a show of unity after 9/11 and, some would argue, a symbol of militarism as US intervention ramped up in the years after 2001. Today, it represents a country deeply divided along partisan lines, led by a man who disguises bigoted populism as patriotism. It's also a symbol for a resurgent movement of white nationalists who cloak their hate in the stars and stripes, even as they defend Confederate monuments. And for countless others, it's a symbol of a country that's still a work in progress-work that they're proud and humbled to do. But the American flag is more than a symbol. It's a product. And for nearly a century, it's been among the dozens of things made by incarcerated men and women inside America's prisons.
On Sunday, California Sen. Kamala Harris (D) paid a visit to Atlanta, where she helped celebrate the 150th anniversary of First Congregational Church, a famed African American institution that is one of the few surviving places of worship that once catered to newly freed blacks after the Civil War. She touched on the national anthem protests that have recently swept across the NFL, calling them-and the "fight for the equality of each and every one of us"-patriotic. And then she said this: When we sing the Star Spangled Banner, we rightly think about brave men and women from all backgrounds who proudly defend the freedom of those they may never meet and people who will never know their names. When we sing the Star Spangled Banner, we also think about those marching in the streets who demand that the ideals of that flag represent them too...And we think about women like the women I recently visited at a California state prison. They were making American flags. The kind you see waving over the United States Capitol or down the street at the Georgia state Capitol.
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Now Available! HRDC 2016 Annual Report The Human Rights Defense Center, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1990, is the parent organization of Prison Legal News (PLN), our award-winning monthly publication that covers criminal justice-related news and court decisions. During the past year, HRDC continued to lead the national Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, which seeks to reduce the high cost of telephone calls made by prisoners. Rate caps on intrastate prison and jail phone calls were scheduled to go into effect in March and June 2016, respectively, but were stayed after telecom companies and corrections officials challenged the reforms in federal court. Limits on ancillary fees did go into effect, though. HRDC also continued to direct the Stop Prison Profiteering campaign and Prison Ecology Project throughout 2016, filing comments with regulatory agencies. We had several notable litigation successes, including settling censorship lawsuits against four county jails and the Nevada Department of Corrections. HRDC also released the Prison Education Guide and 2nd edition of The Habeas Citebook through our book publishing project, PLN Publishing, and began collecting donations to launch the William A. Trine Fellowship, in honor of one of our longstanding board members. Read the Complete Report Here |
Attorney hopes to import the best practices of European prisons to the United States Attorney Donald Specter spent more than three decades working to protect the rights of incarcerated people before he finally saw a prison he believed in. He was in Europe, having just won perhaps the biggest ruling of his career-a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata that required California to reduce its inmate population by more than 40,000. But Specter, executive director of the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office, wasn't there to celebrate. He was a co-instructor on a study-abroad trip about correctional practices with University of Maryland students. This trip included visits to prisons in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Specter says he was blown away. The prisons were nothing like those he had spent his career trying to change in the United States. For starters, they were physically different-built to resemble life on the outside. Inmates had their own rooms and, in some cases, were allowed to cook in communal kitchens. But what struck Specter most was that the prisoners were treated differently, too. "They still regarded the people in prison as members of the community who were going to return to the community," he says. "That has a whole bunch of implications." Read More |
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Arizona Prisons Grapple with Upsurge in Inmate 'Self-Harm' Hundreds of people in Arizona prisons are hurting themselves and trying to take their own lives. New data from the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) show inmates are harming themselves at an alarmingly increasing rate. Numbers collected by ADC show a dramatic uptick in self-harm among inmates in the past year. Total incidents increased by almost 70 percent. In fiscal year 2017, more than 80 inmates tried to hang themselves, and 138 tried to overdose on illegal drugs. The number of inmates using blunt-force trauma - which can include inserting objects in the body and banging the head against a wall - has almost tripled in a single year. The surge in self-harm reports comes as ADC is attempting to settle a lawsuit over poor health-care conditions in state prisons. Read More |
South Carolina: Facility secured after 'handful' of high-security inmates climb on McCormick County prison roof Authorities were investigating Wednesday how several inmates got to the top of a dorm roof at a maximum-security prison in South Carolina. Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Taillon told The Associated Press that a handful of inmates climbed on top of a dorm at McCormick Correctional Institution, about 85 miles (137 km) west of Columbia. According to Taillon, officials didn't see the ascent as a serious escape attempt, because the inmates would have had to get through at least three fences topped with razor wire to get to freedom. Taillon told AP that the disturbance ended Wednesday night and that one of the 38 inmates in the dorm was treated on-scene for non-life-threatening injuries. Corrections officials said that no officers or other prison staff had been hurt. The news of the disturbance came after social media exploded with what Corrections officials said were false rumors about the prison being overtaken and on fire. McCormick County Sheriff Clarke Starnes told AP that no inmates had escaped and that firefighters had been called but were asked to stay outside the facility until it was safe. Read More |
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From the PLN in Print Archives Prisoner Rights Event Prompts Florida Prison System Lockdown The "Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March," held in Washington, D.C. on August 19, 2017, apparently prompted a statewide lockdown by the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) to prevent any displays of solidarity with the free-world marchers, according to prisoners' rights advocates. The protest in the nation's capital called for the removal of the exception clause in the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibits "slavery and involuntary servitude" except "as a punishment for crime." Organizers of the march argue this exception has encouraged the use of prison slave labor in the U.S. penal system and perpetuates a form of slavery. Indeed, prisoners typically are forced to work for paltry wages or no pay at all in several states. Speakers at the D.C. march, which attracted numerous participants, noted that previous demonstrations had sparked hunger strikes and other peaceful protests within prisons, in solidarity with outside prisoner rights organizations. Florida prison officials apparently were attempting to forestall such incidents. Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News and director of the Human Rights Defense Center, said this was the first time he recalled the FDOC locking down all facilities and canceling visitation for what it termed a "safety threat." He also criticized the lack of transparency in Florida's prison system, stating, "this seems like just another effort from a fairly poorly run, mismanaged, brutal prison system." Read More |
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They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants The worst day of Brad McGahey's life was the day a judge decided to spare him from prison. McGahey was 23 with dreams of making it big in rodeo, maybe starring in his own reality TV show. With a 1.5 GPA, he'd barely graduated from high school. He had two kids and mounting child support debt. Then he got busted for buying a stolen horse trailer, fell behind on court fines and blew off his probation officer. Standing in a tiny wood-paneled courtroom in rural Oklahoma in 2010, he faced one year in state prison. The judge had another plan. "You need to learn a work ethic," the judge told him. "I'm sending you to CAAIR." McGahey had heard of Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery. People called it "the Chicken Farm," a rural retreat where defendants stayed for a year, got addiction treatment and learned to live more productive lives. Most were sent there by courts from across Oklahoma and neighboring states, part of the nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison. Read More |
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Take the profit out of immigration jails, say WA congress members Immigration detention is a booming business in the U.S., mostly run by private, for-profit contractors. A new bill in Congress aims to phase out these private facilities, including the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. "One thing I am 100 percent confident of is that there is a cheaper, more humane way to treat the undocumented population in our country," said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington). On Tuesday, Smith and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) plan to introduce legislation that calls for an overhaul of the immigration detention system. Currently, 90 percent of federal detention is outsourced to private contractors or local jails and the regulations vary from place to place. "There's no accountability," Jayapal said. "There's no transparency. And people are literally making a profit off of people being put into detention. I think it's important for the public to understand that it's costing them a lot of money when there are a lot of alternatives." Read More |
Inmates in Alaska Were Walked Naked on Dog Leashes Twelve male inmates at the Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, Alaska, were told by correctional officers to exit their cells and strip naked in front of female prison guards "for no reason" in August 2013, the report released by the office of the Alaska ombudsman said. The inmates were then walked on a "dog leash" in "a parade" to different, unsanitary cells while correctional officers laughed. The report came after an inmate impacted in the incident filed a complaint. That inmate said, while still naked, he was placed in a cell that was "filled with debris, had blood on the cell wells, and feces in the cells, and hand no running water or working toilets" for several hours. The inmate who filed the complaint said the event "constituted sexual harassment." The complainant had filed a grievance for staff misconduct in August 2013 after the incident, according to the report. A number of other inmates filed similar grievances, the report said, and the same lieutenant investigated all of the grievances. In Oct. 2013, that lieutenant said the inmates were participating in a protest together, and that the inmates were told to remove their clothes and enter unsanitary cells "for a period reasonably necessary to conduct a search, perform an exam by nursing staff and to alleviate the security threat determined by staff posed by misuse of clothing," the report said. Read More |
Please note that the content of our newsletter mainly consists of news reports from third-party sources. We are not responsible for the accuracy or content of third parties, nor do their statements or positions necessarily reflect those of HRDC/PLN. Our newsletter content is for informational purposes only. |
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