prison reform
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Congress Considering Making Pell Grants Available to Inmates, Reversing Decades-Long Ban
With droves of research suggesting education is one of the most effective tools to rehabilitate those currently serving sentences behind bars, Congress is trying to do something to make education more available to inmates. According to NPR, The Restoring Education and Learning Act, a bipartisan bill in Congress would allow incarcerated people to use federal…
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Chicago’s New GPS-Tracking Ankle Monitors Can Record Kids Without Their Consent
As cities and towns across America come to grips with the country’s mass incarceration problem, many jurisdictions are looking to digital surveillance, particularly ankle monitors, for solutions. But as a new report detailing Chicago’s use of electronic monitoring reveals, these technologies can be every bit as harmful to the people wearing them as putting them…
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‘Real Life For a Black Kid in America’: Free Meek Docuseries to Premiere Summer 2019 on Amazon Prime
Meek Mill has had his share of Dreams and Nightmares, but now he’s documenting what has been his reality for more than a decade since he was arrested for illegally owning a firearm and assaulting a police officer when he was 18 years old. According to the Hollywood Reporter, a six-part docuseries entitled Free Meek…
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Meek Mill, Justice League NYC Demand Action as Hundreds of Inmates Go Without Heat, Hot Water at Brooklyn Detention Center
With its spate of polar vortexes and record-breaking temperatures, this winter has been especially torturous. But for inmates housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., these brutal conditions have officially crossed into inhumane. According to the New York Times, despite temperatures as low as 3 degrees Fahrenheit, over 1,600 inmates have spent the…
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New York City Settles With Family of Kalief Browder for $3.3 Million
New York City will pay $3.3 million to the family of Kalief Browder, a Bronx native whose unlawful imprisonment on Rikers Island became the subject of national headlines and a critically acclaimed documentary. Browder, accused of stealing a backpack which contained cash and an iPod, was detained and held on Rikers Island for three years,…
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In a Stunning Move, the President Does Something Presidential That Actually Helps Black People [Corrected]
A broken clock is right twice a day, sometimes Kodak Black makes listenable music and sometimes, just sometimes, President Trump does something good. On Wednesday surrounded by some of his most famous blacks including that one pastor with the conk, Trump announced that he was supporting a bipartisan prison reform bill that would give former…
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A Little Piece of Light: With a New Memoir, Donna Hylton Proves There Is Life After Prison
Dear Kim Kardashian West, My name is Donna Hylton. I am a mother who served 27 years in prison, including years in solitary confinement. I am an author and leader for social justice and an advocate for women and criminal-justice reform. You clearly had a successful meeting with the president at the White House to…
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Muslim Inmates Finally Granted Meals During Ramadan After Days With No Food
Inmates in Washington state have been losing more than 20 pounds each during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan because of prison policies, according to a lawsuit brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR contends that during Ramadan, prison officials are refusing to provide prisoners with food between sundown and sunrise, the only time…