The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/corrections/prisons/)
After corrections officers guarding the late financier Jeffrey Epstein were accused of sleeping on the job, new federal prison director Kathleen Hawk Sawyer said other such cases have been reported, and that the agency is replacing its faulty surveillance cameras.
The state is second only to Florida in the number of inmates serving life terms, 5400 as of last year. The state allowed The Appeal to publish a photo essay on some of the oldest men in the state’s prisons.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it reached a settlement in its class action lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections that allows death row inmates to be held in the same manner as general population inmates. An ACLU lawyer called the state’s practices “horribly inhumane.”
Two men who were released from life prison terms in California and Louisiana told criminologists that many like them have changed over the decades and deserve to be freed, saving tax money and adding to the productive work force.
Most of the $82 million set aside to help communities cope with the loss of prison jobs, as New York shuttered prisons, has either gone unclaimed or was diverted to a troubled high-tech economic development program far from most of the intended beneficiaries.
The issue includes articles and essays by Piper Kerman of “Orange Is the New Black” and journalist and former inmate Keri
Blakinger of the Houston Chronicle.
As he prepared for release after more than 27 years in captivity, TCR columnist Jeremiah Bourgeois found it hard to let go of the “trauma induced by incarceration.” But he reports promising changes in the relationship between guards and inmates in the prison he’s leaving behind.
New York prison officials vowed security upgrades after two murderers escaped in 2015, but employees continue to smuggle in items including cell phones, liquor and pornography.
CoreCivic, The GEO Group and Management & Training Corporation joined forces in “The Day 1 Alliance” to promote their viewpoint amid criticism from Democratic presidential candidates and others.
Congress is likely to appropriate $75 million to implement the law aimed at federal prisoner re-entry. Some advocates say a tool being used to assess inmates’ risk of recidivism is racially biased.