When I lived in Texas, I kept wondering if I should go to the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville. It was both horrifying and fascinating at the same time. Why would someone go see an electric chair in a prison largely dedicated to celebrating law...
prisons
Mississippi officials are complaining about the state's declining prison populations. Why? Because county, state, and private funding models were all built on prison profit and losing prisoners now creates budget.
Given our national goal for decades of jailing as many people of color as possible for long periods of time, it's hardly surprising that growing old in prison has become.
To what extent does Hillary Clinton deserve responsibility for her husband's policies? How much credit should she get for the good ones? How much should we damn her for the bad ones? How much of the politics of the 1990s matter in the 2010s? These...
I don't think anyone mentioned this when it happened two weeks ago, so let me do so here. Obama deciding to "ban the box," i.e., eliminate the job application question.
Slaves in Jamaica David Cameron visited Jamaica this week. Presumably, the farmer's pig farmers locked up their stock for the duration. Anyway, Cameron went full Cass Sunstein in his speech.
Michelle Alexander has called the prison system The New Jim Crow for how it replicates the racial discrimination of the past. That's only part of it though becuase a racist justice system combined with seeing prisoners as cheap labor means that black people are once...
If you are like me, i.e. a good American, you are outraged by those herring choker Norwegians and their prison systems designed to rehabilitate inmates so they can be productive.
This is an incredible story of inmates at an Indiana prison doing grassroots research on the history of their own prison with assistance from a historian-volunteer. Not surprising, the findings.
The California Attorney General's office opposed the release of inmates because the state wanted to use them as cheap firefighter labor. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that attorneys in Harris’ office had unsuccessfully argued in court that the state could not release the...
It's entirely possible that in 100 years, historians will look back on the early 21st century United States and remark not only on the racist prison system that shows how.
The prison-industrial complex finds new ways to generate profit. So it's hardly surprising that probably the industry most exploitative of labor in American history--agriculture--is more than happy to take advantage..