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: California inmates detail prison conditions of maggots, mice falling in dining hall
Maggots and mice have fallen onto inmates’ dining tables at a California state prison where holes in the roof also allow rain and bird droppings to seep through and streak the walls, according to an inmate lawsuit that charges the state isn’t moving fast enough to repair deteriorating prisons.USA: should a pregnant person ever go to prison?
Siwatu-Salama Ra knew it was time to go to the hospital. As the early stages of her labor began on a day in late May 2018, officers placed handcuffs on her wrists and led her into the transport van. She arrived to the hospital and to a delivery room where, inside, armed guards would wait all day an…USA: in Alabama prison reveal horrific conditions and abuse
A trove of photographs depicting brutalized and murdered prisoners in Alabama’s St. Clair Correctional Facility has thrust the treatment of our nation’s 2.3 million incarcerated people into public view. The first horror is what these people have endured in prison. The second horror is that while sh…USA: free prison calls could finally be coming to connecticut
Connecticut may soon be the first state in the nation to make calls from prison free for incarcerated people and their families, following on the heels of New York City, which became the first city to do so last year. Decades of research have shown that keeping in touch with loved ones while incarc…USA: federal prisons official used prisons labor
The Bureau of Prison’s South Central regional director utilized incarcerated people from a Texas prison to work on a landscaping project at his church. A high-ranking Federal Bureau of Prisons official used incarcerated people from a Texas prison to provide labor for his church to finish a landscap…USA: Terminal Island prison inmates went without heat during the coldest February in decades
Hundreds of inmates at the Terminal Island federal prison on the harbor front spent one of the coldest periods in decades in frigid cells with no heat and only blankets for warmth before they were transferred temporarily to another facility.USA: Gangs, lack of guards spark teen riot at understaffed Texas juvenile prison
Spurred by boredom, gang conflicts and anger over a lack of guards, teens at a North Texas juvenile prison rioted for six days, assaulting officers and each other during a mass disturbance that boiled over during a football game.USA: it costs about 50 times more to make a call from an Illinois jail Than from an Illinois state prison
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USA: from life in prison to published author
Drug deals and gun violence were everyday realities for Chris Wilson growing up. Straddling homes in D.C.’s Lincoln Heights neighborhood and Prince George’s County’s Temple Hills community, Wilson watched his mother fall victim to both domestic abuse and drug abuse. Many of his friends were locked…