Human Rights Defense Center Publication: Prison Legal News
When your loved one is in prison having reading material not only helps the time go by, but if it is something pertinent to the legal system it can also be helpful. During the 15 years that my brother was in prison he read Prison Legal News and would send me interesting articles to read. There was a lot of helpful information for him in those articles, but there were also situations that he read about that he couldn’t do much about. So sometimes he would get frustrated and these were good topics for discussion to help ease his frustration by talking about it. One of the issues that he read about and couldn’t do much about was the prison food. I found a copy of the publication from 2006 about the food situation, and it hasn’t improved much since then.
The Prison Legal News was first published in 1990 and still going strong with thousands of subscribers. It is distributed monthly and published by Human Rights Defense Center, a non-profit organization. When you go to their website you’ll see their mission right away: Dedicated to Protecting Human Rights. The publication provides articles on criminal justice topics of interest to inmates, criminal justice professionals such as lawyers, students, and information for families and friends. The Prison Legal News website, www.prisonlegalnews.org, provides additional information as well as links that can only be accessed from a computer. I’ve listed the links below, and if any are of interest, you can go to their website.
Prison Legal News Links (available on their site)
- Control Units and Supermax Facilities
- Criminal Justice Reform and Advocacy
- Death Penalty / Capital Punishment Resources
- Disenfranchisement / Voting Rights
- Drug War Resources
- Education / Prison Issues
- Elderly in Prison
- Forensics, DNA, and Evidence-Related Links
- Human Rights and Social Change
- Immigration Issues
- Innocence Projects and Wrongful Convictions
- International
- Internet Based Prisoner Related Publications and Groups
- Journals
- Justice Blogs
- Juvenile Detention
- Legal Guides for Prisoners
- Legal Resources
- Magazines, Newsletters and Info Resources
- Media Access / Resources
- Medical Issues & Resources
- Movies
- Open Records and Freedom of Information Requests
- Police Brutality and Accountability
- Prison and Jail Phone Calls
- Prison and Corrections History / Historical Information
- Prison Employees, COs, etc.
- Prisoner Advocacy Groups, Projects and Organizations
- Prisoner Legal Services and Complaints about Conditions
- Prisoners’ Families and Children
- Prison in the Arts – Song, Dance, Plays, Poetry
- Prison Medical Issues, Experiments, Health Care
- Prison Privatization / Privatization of Prison Services
- Prison Torture, Abuse, Sexual Abuse & Rape
- Radio Programs
- Religion in Prisons
- Research and Statistics
- Resources for Released / Soon to be Released Prisoners
- Sentencing Issues (Mandatory Minimums, Three Strikes, etc.)
- Sex Offender / Sex Offense Issues
- State by State Prison-Related Resources
- War on Terror – Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo
- Women’s Issues – Prison and Corrections
Prison Phone Justice
I now subscribe to Prison Legal News and one of the articles that recently caught my attention is about the ongoing dilemma of the cost of calls from prison. According to the article, Why Prison Phone Rates Keep Going Up Even Though The FCC Regulated Them, that even with all the work that has been done to try to decrease the cost to talk to loved ones in prison, the price is still going up!
Families of prisoners in the U.S. pay as much as $1 a minute to talk to their loved ones behind bars, which is why the Federal Communications Commission stepped in last fall to regulate the industry, which is controlled by a few private firms. And yet families expecting financial relief got a surprise in June: Their rates went up, again.
If you want more information on the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, go to www.phonejustice.org.
You can read the whole article in International Business Times, published on 6/30/16 and written by Eric Markowitz: http://www.ibtimes.com/why-prison-phone-rates-keep-going-even-though-fcc-regulated-them-2388200
For more information on calling loved ones in prison see Phone Calls at Prison the Hidden Sentence Blog.
Human Rights Defense Center websites:
Prison Legal News Website
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