United States of America
Seen in the press
Read our selection of press reports about this country. This is a short description of prison conditions on a national scale.
USA: NJ limits solitary confinement in prisons, hailed as "historic" criminal justice step
New Jersey will limit the use of solitary confinement in correctional facilities and effectively ban it outright for certain people, including the young and elderly, pregnant women and members of the LGBTQ community.
United States: dans les prisons américaines, les nouilles lyophilisées remplacent les dollars
This article is not available in English. This article is available in the following versions: French
United States: what do people in solitary confinement want to see?
Willie Sterling III imagined this: a line of people, bonded by a belief in his humanity, travelling up a hill in southern Illinois to a cross that sits at its peak. The cross was Bald Knob Cross of Peace, a colossus more than a hundred feet tall. It was made of concrete and varnished with porcelain…USA: migrant child drawings depict jail-like scenes of detention
In one drawing, stick figures sleep on the ground under blankets watched by other figures with hats. Another picture has frowning stick figures behind what appears to be a chain-link fence. One shows two toilets in a small room. All of the drawings include imposing jail-like bars covering most of t…USA: New York City’s plan to build new jails draws backlash
Despite corrections staff shuttling through the massive complex that houses roughly 7,800 inmates, from the outside, the jails on Rikers Island look abandoned. An eerie serenity is marred by the sounds of jet planes from neighboring LaGuardia Airport. The roars rattle around the rundown jails, them…USA: the U.S. prison system can harm young brains, scientist warns
A teen’s brain does not magically mature into its adult form the night before someone’s 18th birthday. In fact, brain development will continue into a person’s 20s. This neural fine-tuning has serious implications for young people caught in the U.S. justice system, argues neuroscientist B.J. Casey.USA : gangs ran this private prison
It was a prison brimming with violence, awash in weapons—and severely short on guards to patrol its cell blocks. But security-camera footage caught the action when Brad Fitch arrived in unit F at Mississippi’s Wilkinson County Correctional Facility on Jan. 31, 2018.USA: après la prison
This article is not available in English. This article is available in the following versions: French
USA: Texas prison guards to get a small raise, but some doubt it will help with chronic understaffing
The state’s two-year budget provided $84 million to increase salaries for correctional officers and other prison employees as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice faces nearly 4,000 empty guard positions.United States: San Francisco announces plan to stop charging jail inmates for phone calls
San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Sheriff Vicki Hennessy on Wednesday announced plans to stop charging inmates to make phone calls from jail and to eliminate the county’s markups on items sold at the jail commissary.United States: after a transgender woman’s death at Rikers, calls for justice and answers
In April, Layleen Polanco, a transgender woman, was arrested on misdemeanor assault charges and sent to the Rikers Island jail complex because she could not afford to pay a $500 bail. Nearly two months later, she was found dead in her cell.United States: how secret languages thrive behind bars?
On a now-private Facebook page, a prison guard in Texas casually joked last month about wanting to “gas” prisoners (throw urine or feces at them). Others in Georgia and Missouri posted about putting inmates in “the box” or “the hole” (slang for sending them to disciplinary confinement).