Rounding up some news and commentary concerning prisons and jails in the US
A particular large prison in a small country just to the south of the United States has generated a whole lot of news and commentary in recent weeks. While many others continue to cover that story robustly, I figured I would round up here a number of notable pieces I have seen in recent days about prisons in the USA:
From The Appeal, “Locked In, Priced Out: How Prison Commissary Price-Gouging Preys on the Incarcerated“
From the Brennan Center for Justice, “Northern European Prisons Illustrate Focus on Dignity“
From Inquest, “A Torture Among Tortures: Even in ancient societies not known for their delicacy about violence, solitary confinement stood out as a horror. In our own time we are far less clear-eyed about its violent nature.”
From The Marshall Project, “Fish Tanks, Plants and Podcast Studios — Some States Try a New Approach to Incarceration“
From The New Yorker, “Starved in Jail: Why are incarcerated people dying from lack of food or water, even as private companies are paid millions for their care?”
From the Petrie-Flom Center, “The Constitutive Contradictions of Prison Health Care in the United States“
From the Prison Policy Initiative, “New national data help fill 20-year data gap: Offense data for people in local jails“
From the Vera Institute of Justice, “People in Jail and Prison Are Erased from Unemployment Data. It’s Distorting Economic Reality.“
From the Washington Post, “They were on federal death row. Now they may go to a supermax prison.“