Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Report from high-security prison in Norway. Where rehabilitation is focus, not retribution. Prisoners include murderers, paedophiles. Yet every cell has flat-screen TV and private shower. Warden can't remember last fight
Incarceration rate highest in US, triple Iran's, seven times China's. Most prisoners are in privately owned prisons. Prison profits help pay for law enforcement. Strong chain of incentives for local sheriffs to keep prisons full
Gripping report on a turning of the tables in Libya. Many of the Gaddafi regime's jailers and torturers are now themselves in prison. Where their victims may confront them, and in some cases exact retribution
There appear to be four main functions of incarceration: Deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation and protection. But can all of these functions be provided by the same punishment? Or are they inevitably in conflict?
Anyone still think for-profit prisons are a good idea? Well, this should change your mind. Horrifying account of a children's prison out of control. Drugs, weapons, beatings, rapes commonplace. Often with prison staff complicit
Robber, con artist, plane hijacker, escaped prisoner, domestic terrorist. George Wright is all of the above. He spent 41 years on the run. Until police trapped him in Portugal. But there was still time for one last great escape
"A government that creates mass incarceration is the obvious result of the ideologies of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism that have come to dominate in the wake of the New Deal liberal order’s collapse." Here's why
Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were placed in solitary confinement at Angola prison in 1972, blamed for the killing of a guard. They are still there. "Being in a cage for such an extended period of time, it has its downfalls"
This month two men in Louisiana will complete 40 years in solitary confinement. What does incarceration like this do to a prisoner's mind? And is it even legal, when it's for such an extended time?
On the importance of “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” by William Stuntz, which reveals "how justice is administered by prosecutors who have every incentive to threaten defendants with the harshest possible sentence"
America's prison system as moral catastrophe. More African Americans incarcerated than were enslaved in the 1850s. More rapes inside prison than out. A society that allows little way back for ex-cons. Provocative remedy proposed
More than six million people are under "correctional supervision" in the US – more than were in Stalin's Gulags. Why so many? This superb account suggests there's been a serious failure of common sense and humanity
Image from Wikimedia Commons
