Prison

If last week wasn’t big enough with historic rulings on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court made two more major announcements on Monday. One is that the court has once again agreed to weigh the issue of affirmative action in higher education, saying Monday that it will consider a challenge to the University of […]

Arrested at 17, Carlos Montero has been in Riker’s Island for 7 years without being convicted http://t.co/aMP8eaWNs0 via @dailykos — JoeInWV (@wvjoe911) June 16, 2015 A 24-year-old Manhattan man has spent nearly seven years in New York City’s Rikers Island jail awaiting trial, a jaw-dropping record for pretrial incarceration that is unlikely to end soon, […]

For the three years Kalief Browder sat in New York’s Rikers Island, he probably wondered what the difference would have been if his family could have posted the $3,000 bail that would have gotten him out of the jail and back on the street to await trial. Instead he languished there, just a couple football […]

#BREAKING: After 4decades of #solitary confinement, tonight a judge granted #AlbertWoodfox unconditional release! pic.twitter.com/jTpr1fZi6q — AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) June 8, 2015 A federal district court on Monday ordered the release of 68-year-old Albert Woodfox, a former Black Panther, who spent 40 years in solitary confinement after a prison riot resulted in the death of a Louisiana […]

Unsanitary and dangerous conditions at the Baltimore City Detention center prompted civil rights lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union to file a motion Tuesday alleging the city’s facilities have led to “unnecessary suffering,” the New York Times reports. In the filing — which details the “dank and dangerous” conditions that serve as a host […]

Two women have filed an explosive lawsuit against a Rikers Island corrections officer and the city of New York, charging that they were raped repeatedly by the officer with the complacency and consent of the city, reports CNN. The class action suit, filed Tuesday in federal court, alleges serial rape and sexual abuse by a […]

President Barack Obama will be leaving office on a high note. According to a new CNN/ORC poll, his approval rating has increased amongst Americans. For the first time in nearly two years, more people say they look at President Obama in a positive light. Forty-eight percent of Americans believe he’s doing a good job, while […]

The rekindled relationship between the United States and Cuba has taken yet another step forward. On Tuesday, the White House announced that President Obama plans on moving Cuba off the government’s list of nations that support terrorism. The decision came after a meeting between President Obama and Raúl Castro, President of Cuba, that took place […]

Two Florida corrections officers and one former officer trainee have been arrested in a plot to kill a Black inmate who was being released from prison, the Florida Attorney General’s office said Thursday, according to CNN. The men, Thomas Jordan Driver, 25; David Elliot Moran, 47; and Charles Thomas Newcomb, 42, were charged with conspiracy […]

When Frederick Hutson landed in prison at the age of 24 on a drug trafficking charge in Florida, he was surprised to learn that it cost $17 to make a 15-minute interstate phone call, according to the Huffington Post. The exorbitant rate made it difficult to stay in touch with family. That’s when the seeds […]

A new report from MetricMaps details a shocking statistic — in 16 states in the nation, there are more people locked up in correctional facilities than those residing in college dorms. Most of the states highlighted in the report are in the South and most of the inmates are Black. Out of the 16 states listed in […]

UPDATE: 12:15 PM EST According to CNN, Fairfax County police are confirming that the prisoner who escaped a Virginia hospital Tuesday is now in police custody. Story developing… ————- Police are searching for a prisoner who managed to grab a security guard’s gun and escape a Virginia hospital early Tuesday, running off barefoot and in a […]