United States: seen in the press / 2022

• 20/11/2022
  Landmark TN Supreme Court decision finds mandatory life sentences for juveniles unconstitutional
  After his Knox County conviction to a mandatory life sentence of 60 years when he was 16 years old, Tyshon Booker appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of such a sentence that was made without consideration of his youth or other circumstances. The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that sentencing juveniles to mandatory life in prison is unconstitutional because it is cruel and unusual punishment. — Tennessee Lookout

• 11/11/2022
  Black Liberation Elder to Be Freed From Prison — but Only on His Deathbed.
  Mutulu Shakur should have been released long ago, but the cruelties of carceral system know no bounds.On Thursday, the U.S. Parole Commission confirmed that the Black liberation elder and stepfather of rapper Tupac will be permitted, after more than 36 years behind bars, to spend his final days outside of prison walls.In May, a Bureau of Prisons doctor said Shakur had less than six months to live. It was not until after an October hearing, however, that the federal parole commission admitted the obvious. — The Intercept

• 08/08/2022
  New York will no longer use ‘inmate’ for people in prison.
  New York’s law books will no longer use the word “inmate” to describe people in prison as part of a measure signed Monday by Gov. Kathy Hochul. Use of the word “inmate” has come under criticism by advocates who have sought changes to New York’s criminal justice system, arguing the term dehumanizes people. Laws in New York will now refer to people in prison as “incarcerated individuals.”
  The change also comes as New York has sharply reduced the number of people in state prisons over the last decade and many facilities have closed in the state prison system. — Spectrum News1

• 18/04/2022
  Arkansas Prison Offers Bleak Reality, Outcome
  A testimonial: My name is Lamar Moore, but my nickname is Shone. I’m currently on my second trip in prison for aggravated robbery. Based on my experience, I strongly feel that there needs to be criminal justice and prison reform in Arkansas. First, I want to tell you about the behavior of the corrections officers and administrative staff based on my first-hand experience. The officers, who are mostly women, often cuss us out about the simplest things. I’ve been called stupid motherf- – – -r, dumbass and Black bastard. I was cussed at by a lieutenant once in the presence of the chief of security and a deputy warden, who both just stood there. We have a grievance procedure, but no one follows it because the wardens don’t enforce them. During the pandemic, I had 10 grievances, but I could not get a single staff sergeant to sign them. On one occasion, I was told by a sergeant that the administration would believe her over me even if I wrote a grievance against her. I knew it was true. — Prison Journalism Project

• 07/01/2022
  Can’t pay the court? Go to jail. Debtors’ prison lives on.
  Roxanna Beck spent seven days in jail because she was poor. It was 2020, and the resident of Elmore County, in Idaho, was arrested under a warrant for “failure to pay.” Failure to pay whom? The Elmore County Magistrate Court. Check nearly any municipal or county jail in the country, and you’ll find people locked up on the charge. It means the defendant owed fines and fees on previous court debt, in most cases, as in Beck’s, stemming from a misdemeanor conviction that had involved no jail time. Beck hadn’t committed another crime; but to try to collect the $643 she owed the court, a judge ordered her held on $6,400 cash bail. Beck had two options: Pay the bail, or pay the debt. If she couldn’t afford either one, then she was going to stay locked up in the modern equivalent of debtors’ prison. Sounds, ridiculous, right? The Idaho Supreme Court thought so — unanimously. Last summer, the court ruled in Beck’s favor that the process of issuing arrest warrants for people who fall behind on court debt, and jailing them to force payment, is “constitutionally infirm.” — The Washington Post

• 10/12/2022
  Assembly Republican says of replacing Green Bay prison
  Wisconsin’s second-oldest prison, the Green Bay Correctional Institution, has a laundry list of problems.A significant portion of the facility’s cells hold two prisoners despite being built for one person, according to a 2020 facility review. Many cells in the prison, built in the village of Allouez beginning in the 1890s, don’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, nor do they meet industry standards, the review found. It’s often 20% or more over capacity. And the infrastructure is failing.The Green Bay facility and the state’s oldest prison, the Waupun Correctional Institution, “are at or nearing the end of their useful lives,” the review found, although Green Bay was the “replacement priority” given recent investments in the Waupun prison.— La Crosse Tribune

• 06/10/2022
  Hurricane Ian is not over
  In recent days, southwestern Florida has been battered by Hurricane Ian, one of the strongest storms ever to hit the United States.From my prison window, I see the razor wire on a nearby fence vibrating violently in the wind. Water has made its way inside through a roof vent, a door and a few windows. We are surrounded by concrete but can still sense the strong winds outside. Power has flickered on and off all day, the water has been turned off and fire alarms have sounded constantly.Some prisoners are playing poker in the day room while others have been battling sporadic phone service as they attempt to reach loved ones.— Prison Journalism Project

• 25/10/2022
  Allen Hornblum : “A Conspiracy of Silence Surrounded Experiments on African-American Inmates”
  Between the 1950s and 1970s, thousands of African-American prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia served as guinea pigs for medical experiments conducted by an influential University of Pennsylvania dermatologist, Albert Kligman (1916-2010 ). They aimed to test products for companies such as Helena Rubenstein Cosmetics, Johnson & Johnson Laboratories and Dow Chemical, as well as for the US military. Inmates were exposed to pharmaceuticals, infectious agents such as herpes virus and staphylococcus aureus, LSD and components of agent orange. These experiments were halted in 1974 and it took almost fifty years for the first official apologies to be issued. — West Observer

• 22/06/2022
  California woman exposes ‘secrets’ of notorious Dublin federal prison
  Investigations revealed prison employees at FCI Dublin regularly subjected inmates to sexual attacks. A federal prison in Dublin known as the ‘Rape Club’ for its culture of sexual assault and cover-ups is under heavy scrutiny and a Central California woman says she can expose some of its secrets.“It was like hell,” said Linda Chaney. Chaney sometimes uses biblical terms to describe the federal prison in Dublin.It wasn’t a religious experience at all during her stay there between 2019 and 2021, but she says the guards expected her not to be a Judas.“They’d be cooped up in the office with a girl or they’d be inside the refrigerator part and they wanted me to let them know when the other police come,” Chaney said — abc7News

• 21/04/2022
  Injustice at the Indiana Women’s Prison
  The US has the highest incarceration rate of women in the world and women are the fastest growing demographic within prisons. While many prisons have been accused of providing inadequate medical care, women’s prisons are infamous for being accused of providing inferior care, especially as it relates to reproductive health. Various theories have been posited as to why prisons struggle with women’s healthcare, from a gendered interpretation of the Eighth Amendment to the fact that very few women were imprisoned prior to the era of mass incarceration. Topics range from being shackled while giving birth to experiencing discrimination for being queer in prison. One of the latest additions to Reveal Digital’s American Prison Newspapers collection is Issues in the Indiana Women’s Prison, published at the eponymously named Indiana Women’s Prison. There is currently one issue from 2017.The topics within are uncharacteristically vulnerable for a censored prison newspapers. Topics range from being shackled while giving birth to experiencing discrimination for being queer in prison. The poetry it contains directly relates to the inferiority of the medical care as perceived by incarcerated women, as well as food injustice.— JSTOR Daily

• 13/09/2022
  The US Record on Protecting Our Children Is Abysmal
  In every state, children can be tried as adults. Child marriage is still happening in many states, and so is corporal punishment and child labor.The US is the only UN member country that has not ratified the international treaty on children’s rights. Most people might think this isn’t such a big deal because the US is good to children. But it turns out we aren’t and our state laws don’t help. — Human Rights Watch

• 30/06/2022
  LGBTQ people more likely than straight people to end up in prison.
  LGBTQ people are three times likelier to be incarcerated and more than twice as likely to be arrested compared to straight people.Prison rates are even higher among LGBTQ people of color.“Being poor, a person of color and LGBTQ puts you at the intersection of being arrested and incarcerated,“ one LGBTQ advocate said.— USA TODAY NEWS

• 22/06/2022
  Mum in prison
  Separating a child from their mother is generally recognised as being traumatic for children and something to be avoided unless the mother represents a risk to the child. Despite this, the state separates an estimated 17,000 children from their mothers via imprisonment every year. The overwhelming majority of the women have no history of violence and do not represent a risk of harm to anyone else. Most often, those offences have occurred because of reasons related to poverty, trauma or both – although we should not forget that around a third of women’s convictions are for not paying the TV licence fee — Fabian society

• 19/05/2022
  Updated charts provide insights on racial disparities, correctional control, jail suicides, and more.
  We usually only update our data visualizations about mass incarceration when a new report or briefing requires it. However, some graphs are so powerful that they warrant special treatment. In recent months, new data has been released about jail suicides, racial disparities, probation, and state incarceration rates. So we’ve updated a few of our most impactful charts with this new data to equip advocates, lawmakers, and journalists with the most up-to-date information available. — Prison Policy initative

• 02/11/2022
  Prison health care is only available if you can afford it
  Prison copays have hidden costs that ultimately harm incarcerated people’s health. When Ronald Marshall would hear about someone who was sick, he’d gather several days’ worth of food from his prison locker box and bring it to the sick person to encourage them to get care. Incarcerated people often face having to choose between purchasing hygienic supplies or food at the commissary or visiting the infirmary and incurring copay costs. Despite how quickly health issues can compound and spread within prison walls, like many in the U.S., incarcerated people often avoid seeking care because out-of-pocket copays can strain families with limited financial resources and saddle them with medical debt. — Prism

• 28/09/2022
  We Need to Stop Monkeypox from Spreading Behind Bars
  Public health experts who watched with horror as COVID-19 ripped through United States jails, prisons, and immigration detention facilities are sounding the alarm about monkeypox. Overreliance on incarceration and punishment has created settings in which infectious diseases easily spread. It is frustrating that medical experts were largely ignored as they called for the release of incarcerated people with medical conditions, those nearing the ends of their sentences, or those who pose little risk to public safety. As a result, jails, prisons, and immigration detention facilities were rampant breeding grounds for COVID-19, harming incarcerated people and who worked in facilities and circulated the virus among their communities. The best way to stop the preventable spread of infectious diseases is to free people from these dangerous, dirty settings. As monkeypox continues to spread as a public health emergency, nearly 2 million people remain unnecessarily confined in inhumane conditions. The virus was first reported in Illinois’s Cook County Jail in July. Since then, other jails and prisons have also reported cases. — VERA

• 27/07/2022
  CDD must act to prevent monkeypox explosions in prisons.
  Monkeypox has arrived behind bars, and the coming weeks will dramatically reframe how we think about this outbreak. This virus has already caused tens of thousands of cases across dozens of countries, occurring mostly among men who have sex with other men.The current epidemiology of the outbreak in the U.S. necessitates resources to educate, vaccinate and treat men who have sex with men, especially Black and other minority men who are often pushed aside during public health crises. But we must act now to address how American mass incarceration will accelerate this health emergency, because many of the grim realities of our system of incarceration will cause a rapid spread of this virus, just as occurred with COVID-19.— The Hill

• 20/04/2022.
  Federal probe finds severe problems in Mississippi prison
  A Mississippi prison violated inmates’ constitutional rights by failing to protect them from violence, meet their mental health needs or take adequate steps for suicide prevention, and by relying too much on prolonged solitary confinement, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday. “The problems at Parchman are severe, systemic, and exacerbated by serious deficiencies in staffing and supervision,” the department said in its report. It said the Mississippi Department of Corrections “has been on notice of these deficiencies for years and failed to take reasonable measures to address the violations, due in part to non-functional accountability or quality assurance measures.” “Years of MDOC´s deliberate indifference has resulted in serious harm and a substantial risk of serious harm to persons confined at Parchman,” the department said. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said 10 homicides and 12 suicides have occurred among inmates at Parchman since 2019. — Mail Online

• 25/11/2022

The Search for Beauty in a Prison Cell
“We call them freedom libraries to remind us of the urgency of it all, and we carve the shelves into curves to suggest a universe that bends toward justice,” writes Reginald Dwayne Betts, the creator of Freedom Reads (million_book).“Prison , particularly for Black Americans, gets reduced to simple caricatures of violence and suffering. Inside the confines of a jail cell, through a book, I discovered salvation.” Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer and creator of Freedom Reads, an initiative to curate libraries and install them in prisons across the country. — The New York Times

• 22/11/2022
  Jail Is a Death Sentence for a Growing Number of Americans
  In Houston’s jail, where the population is at its highest in a decade, 24 people have died this year. More than half had a history of mental problems. Matthew Shelton was contending with diabetes and periodic substance abuse when he moved in with his sister outside Houston in order to get his life together. Three months later, facing an old criminal charge of driving while intoxicated, he turned himself in to the Harris County Jail one day in March with a supply of the insulin he relied on to stay alive.After two days, he told his family that no one was allowing him access to the insulin: He was trying to manage his illness by discarding the bread from the sandwiches he was served. He was alone, frightened and cold, he said. His mother, frantic, tried repeatedly to phone the jail but could not reach anyone. “We sent money for him to buy socks and ChapStick, and he never bought them,” she said. Three days later, Mr. Shelton, 28, was found dead in his cell, after having slipped into a diabetic coma.He was one of 24 people who have died this year in the jail, located in Houston, a far higher death rate than what is reflected in the most recent statistics for jails around the country. — The New York Times

• 14/08/2022
  California has the chance to limit solitary confinement. It should take it.
  Kevin McCarthy is a formerly incarcerated Californian who spent more than a decade in solitary confinement, beginning when he was just 16. He had been caught with drugs and needed addiction treatment and counseling. Instead, he was abused by being placed in solitary confinement, experiencing human touch only “in the form of handcuffs slapped on my wrists and guards’ hands squeezing the back of my neck.” “I often tell people that I would have preferred a physical beating to being held in isolation. Bruises and cuts heal, but the wounds in my mind and soul are so deep that I do not believe I will ever fully recover,” Mr. McCarthy wrote recently in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle.— The Washington Post

• 28/07/2022
  A burning issue of heat exposure in prisons.
  « In the last 120 years, the average temperature on earth has risen more than 1C degree due to soaring greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity. As a result of global warming, heat waves have a significant influence on public health. Among the most affected are prisoners as they often cannot mitigate the consequences of the temperature rise. During the heat waves, they experience constant exposure to extreme temperatures. Currently, the temperatures recorded in some of the French incarceration centres reached 46C degrees. Such imprisonment conditions are a serious threat to prisoners’ health and life. » — Legal aide clinic for prisoners

• 19/01/2022
  ‘I felt a responsibility to look’: As Guantanamo Bay turns 20, photographers reflect on the US prison’s legacy
  As the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan approached, George W. Bush announced that “America has no interest in being the world’s jailer”. Fifteen years later, the detention camp created at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base remains open and has become a millstone for successive administrations intent on closing it. The centrality of this prison, which opened 20 years ago this month, in the events of the last two decades has resulted in a steady flow of people traveling to it, to participate in or report on trials, or in some cases to focus on conditions at the prison itself. These have included many photographers, some of whom produced largely illustrative press photographs, others seeking to make a statement about the camp and what it represents. The British photographer Edmund Clark has focused on the prison in three of his projects, including his 2010 book Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out, which examined the long-term impact of incarceration. “I was making work in a prison when the detention camps at Guantanamo became global news,” he says. “I could see how these experiences of incarceration represented how America and its allies were responding to the 9/11 attacks.” Clark began photographing the homes of British former Guantanamo prisoners following their release back to the UK, juxtaposing these images with photographs of the prison. — The Art Newspaper

• 24.12.2022
  Movement grows to abolish US prison labor system that treats workers as ‘less than human’
  Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work in US prisons as part of their sentences, often without basic protections and for little to no pay. More than 150 years after slavery was outlawed in the US, California remains one of dozens of states in the country that allows slavery and indentured servitude as a punishment for a crime in its state constitution, a vestige of the US Constitution’s 13th amendment. In 2021, an estimated 791,500 incarcerated people worked in US prisons as part of their sentences, often without basic workplace protections and under dangerous working conditions for little to no pay. — The Guardian

• 18/11/2022
  What can native american people in prison teach us about community and art?
  After his Knox County conviction to a mandatory life sentence of 60 years when he was 16 years old, Tyshon Booker appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of such a sentence that was made without consideration of his youth or other circumstances. The Tennessee Supreme Court has ruled that sentencing juveniles to mandatory life in prison is unconstitutional because it is cruel and unusual punishment. — JSTOR Daily

• 19/09/2022
  Why are prisoners paid a pittance to make glasses I prescribe for poor kids?
  Julius Oatts is a pediatric ophthalmologist and assistant professor at the University of California at San Francisco. The California penal code requires that the state purchase products, such as eyeglasses, made by imprisoned people overseen by the prison industry authority. Colleagues and I recently published an article in the American Journal of Public Health examining the relationship between taxpayer-funded health care and prison labor in California. We found, through a public-records request and confirmed with the California Prison Industry Authority, that the state’s Medicaid contracts account for up to 74 percent of the authority’s approximately $13 million annual revenue from optical services — The washington post

• 8/07/2022
  Op-Ed: In prison, the work of journalism is challenging but essential
  I am one of nearly 3,000 people in San Quentin State Prison who are paying for past mistakes. Most of us want to do the right thing so that we can earn parole or clemency and get back to our families and communities. My “right thing” is journalism. Every day I walk the yard listening to the struggles and triumphs of fellow prisoners, gathering material to tell our story. My goal is to answer: So what? More than 26 years behind walls have shown me that free people aren’t really paying attention to what’s happening in our society’s prisons and jails. Journalists, especially those on the inside, have a duty to show what is going on and why it matters. To answer the “so what.” There is no privacy and no access to the internet. I use a typewriter and pen to send my stories to publications. Sometimes I feel the pressure that I may offend powerful interests. As an example, since contradicting the official report regarding the 2015 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at San Quentin, I’ve been persona non grata to some prison officials. — Los Angeles Times

• 18/05/2022
  Prison Yoga Project Goes International, Expands into Europe.
  The Prison Yoga Project, which provides trauma-informed yoga classes at California’s San Quentin State Prison (SQSP) and other prisons across the country, is expanding its reach into Europe. The demand to have yoga in Europe was high,” said James Fox, founder of the organization, in an interview on Nov. 9. “Europeans understand the value that yoga has for the person, just like Americans do.” — Prison journalism project

• 19/02/2022
  Brave Behind Bars: Prison education program focuses on computing skills for women
  A programming language textbook might not be the first thing you’d expect to see when walking into a correctional facility. The creators of the Brave Behind Bars program are hoping to change that. Founded in 2020, Brave Behind Bars is a pandemic-born introductory computer science and career-readiness program for incarcerated women, based out of The Educational Justice Institute at MIT (TEJI). It’s taught both online and in-person, and the pilot program brought together 30 women from four correctional facilities across New England to study web design. One of the co-founders, Martin Nisser, a PhD student from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), explains the digital literacy and self-efficacy focused objectives: “Some of the women haven’t had the opportunity to work with a computer for 25 years, and aren’t yet accustomed to using the internet. We’re working with them to build their capabilities with these modern tools in order to prepare them for life outside,” says Nisser. Even for the students who became incarcerated more recently, it can be difficult to keep up with the fast pace of technological advances, since technical programs in correctional facilities are few and far-between. — MIT News

• 24/04/2022
  Life after life in California’s prisons
  In 2006, California’s prison system housed more than 170,000 people, 199% of the capacity it was designed to hold. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that health conditions in the state’s overcrowded institutions violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The decision led to the enactment of legislation that resulted in a slow and steady decrease in the number of people behind bars, particularly those serving life sentences. The COVID-19 pandemic has since forced the state to further ramp up release efforts. During 2020, more than 27,000 people were released from California prisons, the largest one-year release the state has ever seen. This raises the question: How are former lifers reintegrating into a drastically changed society after leaving prison? — Los Angeles Times

• 04/05/2022
  Prisons and jails will separate millions of mothers from their children in 2022
  This Mother’s Day as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to put people behind bars at risk nearly 150,000 incarcerated mothers will spend the day apart from their children. Over half (58%) of all women in U.S. prisons are mothers, as are 80% of women in jails, including many who are incarcerated awaiting trial simply because they can’t afford bail. — Prison Policy Initiative

• 08/02/2022
  California is closing San Quentin’s death row. This is its gruesome history
  Three years after an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom slammed the brakes on executions in California, which hasn’t put anyone to death in 16 years anyway, California’s death row is about to be slowly dismantled. Its 737 residents, all still technically under sentence of death, are slowly being moved away from the condemned cells at San Quentin, a place where California has, by three successive methods — the noose, the gas and the needle — put men and women to death since 1893. These slow-mo evictions are what voters OKd in 2016 when, at the same time they ordered the state to speed up the death penalty, they also agreed to moving the condemned to other prisons, emptying out the most infamous section of one of the most infamous prisons in the nation. In the last couple of years, COVID-19 has killed at least a dozen California death row inmates, more than the state has put to death in about 30 years, and while it’s never a good bet to predict what California voters might do, the latest changes in law and practice might — just might — make the death penalty the 514th and last of the list of the San Quentin dead. — Los Angeles Times