California Maybe Replacing Its ‘Prison-Industrial Complex’ With Something Far Worse

The main players in California’s “treatment-industrial complex” are the very same ones involved in the for-profit prison industry.

Sarah Cronin
By Sarah Cronin
National Prison Strike

California made headlines last week when Governor Jerry Brown allocated a record $11.4 billion to the state’s corrections department in his May Revision to the budget, translating to $75,560 per individual — the highest per-inmate cost in the nation. Media outlets ran amok with headlines comparing the costs of imprisonment to tuition at the

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Media Silent As U.S. Prisoners Continue To Hunger Strike Abysmal Conditions

Prisoners across the U.S. have been holding hunger and labor strikes since last year, with tens of thousands of inmates protesting abuse and poor conditions. But news reports on the strikes have been few and far between, leaving prisoners’ requests for humane treatment in the dark.

Roqayah Chamseddine
By Roqayah Chamseddine
prison strike

On Oct. 30, 2016, Robert Earl Council was found sprawled unconscious on the floor of his cell in Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility after being on hunger strike for 10 days. Medical staff at the prison force-fed him intravenously, as his blood sugar levels had reached dangerous levels. But Dara Folden, a member of the Free Alabama

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New Documentary Examines One State’s Struggle To Reform Solitary Confinement

More than thirty states have pursued some kind of reform of their policies for solitary confinement. PBS FRONTLINE’s “Last Days Of Solitary” looks at Maine’s attempts to reform the practice.

Kevin Gosztola
By Kevin Gosztola
An inmate stands at his cell door at the maximum security facility at the Arizona

Published in partnership with Shadowproof. “You lose all feeling. You become immune to everything,” says Sam Caison, a prisoner who has been in and out of solitary confinement. “You’re not the same after spending so much time by yourself in those conditions. I don’t care who you are, you don’t come out the same person.” Caison was in a

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The War On Drugs Is A War On Minorities: Former El Reno Prison Inmate Freed By Obama Speaks Out

Jason Hernandez, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1998 for his role in a drug conspiracy, starting when he was only 15.

Democracy Now
By Democracy Now
A prison guard on horseback watches inmates return from a farm work detail at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La.

President Obama became the first sitting president in history to visit a federal prison Thursday when he toured the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. After passing through several security gates, Obama stepped inside a 9-by-10 cell and walked through a section called Cell Block B that houses prisoners who are part of a drug

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