Information, topic by topic, on prisons across the world

August 16, 2017

USA: ACLU files lawsuit against state over prison conditions

News

Material conditions United States

ACLU drew a line in the sand for Nebraska prisons. They’ve crossed it. Crowded prisons and a shortage of corrections officers and mental health workers have created a humanitarian crisis, ACLU of Nebraska officials say.

August 10, 2017

USA: no child deserves a life sentence. But try telling prosecutors that

News

Long-term prisoners United States

In 2012, the Supreme Court took a step toward righting a terrible wrong by banning mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for children.

August 8, 2017

USA: defendants kept in the dark about evidence, until it’s too late

News

United States

New York is one of 10 states where prosecutors can wait until just before trial to share evidence, which critics say is unfair. But a new bill could change the rules.

August 8, 2017

My visit to Tewhan Butler

Testimonial

United States

The visit of a French woman to a prison of medium security in the United States …

July 23, 2017

United States: condemned to death — and solitary confinement

News

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.

July 22, 2017

Estados Unidos: denuncian abusos contra dominicanos en cárceles y centros de detención

News

United States

This article is not available in English. If you wish, you can consult the Spanish version.

July 22, 2017

United States: how the US imposes the worst of its prison paradigm abroad

News

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…

July 21, 2017

United States : mentally ill prisoners in Louisiana were made to bark like dogs for food, new lawsuit claims

News

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…

July 21, 2017

North Dakota’s Norway experiment

News

United States

Late one night in October 2015, North Dakota prisons chief Leann Bertsch met Karianne Jackson, one of her deputies, for a drink in a hotel bar in Oslo, Norway. They had just spent an exhausting day touring Halden, the maximum-security facility Time has dubbed “the world’s most humane prison,” yet n…

July 21, 2017

USA: a warrant to search your vagina

News

United States

Doubling down on the drug war is likely to result in increased violence, not increased public safety.

July 20, 2017

United States: the accident that changed my life in prison

News

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…

July 19, 2017

United States: nine lessons about criminal justice reform

News

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…

July 18, 2017

United States: how to count the hidden prisoners

News

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…

July 17, 2017

USA: what statistics can’t explain about life on parole

News

United States

Last Saturday my family and I took the ferry to Governors Island, where we happened upon a gallery hosting an exhibit, “Escaping Time: Art From U.S. Prisons.”

July 13, 2017

United States: my friend killed himself in an Alabama prison

News

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…

June 27, 2017

USA: jails are replacing visits with video chats and families are devastated

News

Social ties United States

Governor Brown approved the state’s 2017 budget along with a measure that stops jails from continuing to replace in-person visitation with video calling and gives inmate families their first hour of video visitations each week for free.

June 26, 2017

USA: transgender inmate says prison wrongly halted hormone meds

News

LGBTQI United States

A transgender inmate at Lackawanna County Prison says she suffered physical and psychological harm because prison medical staff halted hormone medications needed to help her transition from a biological male to a female.

June 24, 2017

United States: nineteen women inmates graduate with associate degrees

News

North America Women United States

College graduations are emotional occasions, but it would be hard to match the level of enthusiasm and joy that pervaded the gymnasium at the Washington Corrections Center for Women this month when 19 inmates received diplomas.

June 23, 2017

United States: the importance of raising the age of criminal responsibility

News

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…

June 23, 2017

United States: judge accepts sweeping reforms of Arizona death penalty protocols

News

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…

June 22, 2017

United States: a new war on drugs

News

North America Drugs United States

Jeff Sessions wants a new war on drugs. It won’t work.

June 22, 2017

United States: prosecutors: prison supervisor ordered juveniles hog-tied

News

North America United States

An indictment says a former supervisor at a South Carolina juvenile prison ordered guards to hog-tie two inmates and leave them lying on their stomachs for two hours because they made too much noise.

June 22, 2017

United States: gang revolt at Florida prison injures 1 inmate, 7 officers

News

North America Protest United States

A gang revolt at a Florida state prison injured seven corrections officers and one inmate Wednesday morning, authorities said.

June 21, 2017

United States: lawyers contest constitutionality of Nebraska death penalty

News

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…