After a promising drop in California’s inmate population, the number of prisoners is rising again, led by a record increase in the number of second felony convictions for those who already had a prior conviction for a serious crime.
The conditions and ethics of solitary confinement in the U.S. are at the heart of a debate raging in the California corrections system.
LOS ANGELES — For the past 13 years John Martinez has been confined by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to a windowless cell, prohibited from any human contact and allowed out for only 90 minutes of exercise a day in a yard barely bigger than a dog run.
He was sent to prison for murder, but was placed in
