For most white people reading about Sandra Bland’s deadly encounter with the Texas police, what she experienced is almost unimaginable. If you’ve never had the experience of driving while black, it’s hard to get your head around how failing to use your turn signal could so quickly devolve the way it did into a police… Read More
IL Dept. of Corrections on the Hot Seat for Allegedly Refusing FOIA Requests Chicago, IL – Prison Legal News (PLN) filed a lawsuit today in the Circuit Court of Cook County against the Illinois Dept. of Corrections (IDOC), alleging violations of the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). PLN, a monthly news publication that reports… Read More
How can it be that lots of children – about 10,000 on any given day, around 250,000 per year – are stuck in adult jails and prisons? Right there with the grown up convicts. If that doesn’t outrage you, it should. Maybe you know a young teenager (your own kid? a nephew? a neighbor?). Imagine… Read More
Great news to report: Daniel Andersen’s convictions for rape and murder were just overturned by an Illinois court. Daniel spent 27½ years in prison for these crimes he did not commit, and compelling DNA evidence now supports his innocence claim. But how did the wrongful conviction happen? Well, for starters, he was convicted back when… Read More
Just-released security tape shows cops lied after they shot Jovan Webb, who survived April 5th police shooting CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, 7/22/15 – Attorneys for Jovan Webb, a black Waterloo, IA resident, filed suit in federal court here today against the City of Waterloo and some of its police officers for unlawfully shooting him five times… Read More
President Obama’s recent prison visit to Cellblock B of the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma inspires hope that maybe our country is finally ready to address its mass incarceration problem. The president’s prison tour, coupled with his acknowledgement that our country’s excessive prison sentences for nonviolent offenders exact an enormous moral and financial… Read More
American prisons are notorious for subjecting prisoners to the risk of sexual violence. Yet, shockingly little is done to stop sexual assault in our prisons, and the public remains not just unconcerned, but sickeningly amused by the problem. Think about how often prison rapes are the punchline of a joke in movies or on television. … Read More
It is stunning to realize how often a witness confidently looks across a court room, points, and declares, “I was there. I saw it all, and I’m sure that he’s the one who did it,” only to be just plain wrong. Eyewitness identifications are powerful and compelling trial evidence, and yet DNA analysis has revealed… Read More
With autism on the rise in this country, unacceptable clashes between police officers and autistic people indicate that there is a serious need for better education of our nation’s police forces about the differences people with autism present. Autism is a general term for a complex neurobiological condition characterized by non-typical brain development. There is… Read More
Mandatory minimum sentences are prison sentences set by lawmakers rather than judges, where a statute requires an automatic, minimum prison terms for certain crimes, without permitting the judge to impose a more lenient sentence when the situation warrants. Without mandatory minimum sentences, the judge can consider factors like the defendant’s prior record, a history of… Read More
