In collaboration with Rise magazine, Jezebel is publishing a series of articles written by parents affected by the child welfare system. This post, the fourth in the series, features narratives by Deborah McCabe and Adisha Garner, two parents who were unable to reunite with their children. In New York City, an…
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered Alabama to improve prison conditions for its mentally ill inmates on Tuesday, after finding the state’s prisons provide “horrendously inadequate” care for incarcerated people wth psychiatric problems. “Surprisingly,” the ruling reads, “the evidence from both sides…extensively…
What image do the words “residential center” conjure in your mind? Perhaps a place where people live of their own volition. A rehab center, maybe, or a college dorm. But for migrants who have been held at the Berks County Residential Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania for days, months, even a year, it means a place they…
The Justice Department is planning to end the use of private prisons in the United States, the Washington Post reports. The government has concluded that prisons run by private corporations are “both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services” than prisons run by the feds, the paper says.
The latest available statistics from the Justice Department document 1 in 36 adults, or 6,851,000 people, as having been under the supervision of the U.S. correctional system in 2014. Of that number, 744,600 were held in local jails. A new report from the Vera Institute of Justice and the Safety and Justice Challenge…
The Associated Press revealed today that the state of Louisiana has spent three years and over $1 million so far fighting a lawsuit that would require them to put air conditioning on death row. An expert for the plaintiffs estimated that installing air conditioning would have cost around $225,000. Small government!…
In a remarkably civil letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the state would comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act “wherever feasible.” That’s a big step from previous Governor Rick Perry, who called the law “counterproductive” and “unnecessarily cumbersome.” Texas is…
As of 2010, there were around 205,000 women in prison in the United States, and a million more under some kind of criminal justice supervision, counting those on probation and parole. But would the country benefit from not incarcerating women? At all? Ever?
Considering that the United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, at 754 per 100,000 (as of 2009) (Jesus), this is probably a much-needed resource.
A transgendered woman incarcerated in the Massachusetts state prison system has won the right to have the state pay for her sex reassignment surgery, after a US District Judge agreed that the surgery was "medically necessary." Naturally, this has led to people making A Big Thing about what "medically necessary" means,…
After being arrested in 2005 for forging checks, Amber Lovill failed multiple drug tests while on probation. After failed yet another drug test while pregnant, she was jailed for the good of the child. Activists say this constitutes gender discrimination.
Debra Schaefer, warden at the SCI Muncy correctional facility in Pennsylvania, treats the inmates like she treats her children. "Some days I go in there and I feel like I'm a foster mother," she says — "the only difference is I show my children love." Debra is one of three women profiled in a Times of London piece on…
