By Panagioti Tsolkas In July of this year, former prisoners and their family members raised concerns about a variety of prison issues at a hearing with state lawmakers. This included repeated concerns with water quality at multiple facilities. One former prisoner stated that water in the East Arkansas Unit was not even “fit to take […]

Michael Barajas' article "A Prison By Any Other Name" perfectly lays out the cruelty, greed, and dishonesty widespread in civil commitment centers nationwide.

By Panagioti Tsolkas Wayland Coleman, a prisoner at MCI-Norfolk, stepped out of the shower and noticed something strange last year. It was as if his towel was, in his words, “was used to wipe dirt off the floor.” [Image of Coleman to the right] “I don’t know exactly what is in this water, but I […]

Friends, Stop Prison Abuse Now (SPAN) would like to ask you to make appeals for the health of Kristopher Rodriguez, a severely mentally ill prisoner now at Lake Correctional Institution near Orlando. SPAN has tried for some time to help him, and have always been inspired by his mother, Gemma Pena, who has tried singlehanded […]

The area was once locally renown for coal mining and uranium milling, and while the beauty of the land endured despite the industrial activity, there’s not much aside from prisons happening there economically anymore.

Propose a Track for Free Movement 2018. Free Movement is a Southern powered laboratory for creativity, freedom, and organizing taking place March 23-25th, 2018 in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Two years ago, the concept of Prison Ecology was introduced to the world, building off the work of jailhouse lawyers, scholars and activists around the country. On many occasions spanning the last 4 decades of the prison boom (in which prisoner populations increased by 700%), prisoners and their advocates had noted environmental concerns in local […]

Late last month, we started a petition asking Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle to allow an independent investigation of the death of Darren Rainey (https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-darren-rainey-a-mentally-ill-inmate-killed-by-state-prison-guards-in-florida). Now, with over 9,100 signatures, we have send the letter below, making our case to Ms. Rundle, with the help of everyone who supported this effort. We will […]