The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has proposed new sweeping censorship rules for information going into and out of California prisons
Public comment remains open, years after the call. Use this tool to send a note with your objection to the vague and over-reaching regulations, which characterize all political materials as “oppositional to society and authority”.
Continue reading CA Corrections Department Proposes New Sweeping Prison Censorship Rules
An open letter signed by 50 social justice groups, including MA, detailing the final phases of federal prison phone reforms: Coordinated by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR)
Leadership Conference et al ICS 3d NPRM Reply Comments 2-8-16 final
Communities United For a Responsible Budget (CURB) puts out an annual report on how California counties are doing in making strides towards lower rates of imprisonment. This year, every single one got a failing grade, the competition being between a fail, a double fail and a triple fail.
ColorOfChange partnered with Media Matters for America to study how accurately local news stations are covering the role of Black people in crime. The result is an outrageous level of distortion: news stations report that Black people are involved in murder, assault and theft an average of 75% of the time in New York City, which exceeds the actual NYPD arrest rates for those crimes by 24 percentage points.
ColorOfChangeNewsAccuracyReportCardNYC
Update: Wisconsin senator Tammy Duckworth is trying to get a bill going to regulate video visitation and preserve in-person visitation rights.
Sign the petition to show support for her efforts.
A case study by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and Grassroots Leadership.
In September 2014, a group of Dallas-area advocates led a fight against an initiative that would have introduced video visitation capability to the Dallas County jail. The company proposing to provide services to Dallas had buried in its contract a requirement that the jail eliminate in-person visitation, thus leaving those who wished to visit prisoners only one option – visit by video. Or, don’t visit at all.
The prison industrial complex–one of America’s costliest public institutions, fueled by billions in tax dollars and millions of devastated lives–operates largely without public scrutiny. While mainstream news outlets flood us with sensational crime reporting, they pay comparatively little attention to the brutal conditions within U.S. prisons. Continue reading MEDIA LOCKOUT: PRISONS AND JOURNALISTS, by Helene Vosters
