Prisons

NYCLU Files Lawsuit Against State Over DOC's Solitary Confinement Policies

The New York Civil Liberties Union yesterday filed a lawsuit in federal court charging New York State prison officials with overseeing policies that lead to the "arbitrary and unjustified use" of solitary confinement for prison inmates.The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Leroy Peoples, spent more than two ... More >>

New York Department Of Corrections Defends -- But Is Reviewing -- Solitary Confinement Policies

The New York Civil Liberties Union released a report yesterday detailing the "inhumane, arbitrary use of solitary confinement" in New York state prisons. Based on the report, the group is now calling for drastic reforms in how the New York State Department of Corrections deals with inmates in segre ... More >>

Letters From the Hole: SHU Inmate Says Prison Staff Confiscated His Son's Report Card

The New York Civil Liberties Union recently released a report outlining the "inhumane, arbitrary use of solitary confinement" in New York state prisons.Included in the report are handwritten letters from several inmates placed in segregated housing (solitary confinement) for various -- in many cases ... More >>

New York Prisoner Spent More Than 20 Years In Solitary Confinement: Report

It's not easy to feel a great deal of sympathy for many of the convicted criminals locked away in New York's prisons, we know. But a new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union might just conjure up at least some compassion. Then again, maybe it won't -- they're still criminals.Regardless, th ... More >>

Whip It Good

With In Defense of Flogging, Peter Moskos ponders a return to the lash

Shutting Upstate Jails for City Kids Has Made a Fiery Bronx Bureaucrat a Host of Enemies

People upstate consider the Bronx's Gladys Carrión Satan incarnate

Prison Riot Caused by Prison Food

​Everyone knows that prison food isn't exactly the stuff that gastronomic fantasies are made of, but apparently it's bad enough to incite inmates to actual violence. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that a corrections officer told Kentucky lawmakers that the August riot at the Northport Tra ... More >>

Jail Guard Charged In Inmate Assaults

Prosecutors in the Bronx have indicted a correction officer for beating up two inmates and trying to cover up one of the incidents at jail housing teenage detainees. The case emerged from an broad investigation into problems at the Robert N. Davoren Center that started after the fatal 2008 beating ... More >>

Lonnie Jones's Head Is Worth $20,000 in Coney Island. Blame the Brooklyn Bloods.

The New York native was released from prison after serving more than five years for a murder he didn't commit. Here's why he's still not free.

Woman Mistaken for a Man in City Jail Sues Over Her Ordeal

​Jail guards somehow mistook a mother of four for a man and stuck her in an all-male holding area for two days, where inmates urinated on her shoes, exposed themselves to her and threatened her with rape, the Voice has learned. Joan Gonzalez, 43, of the Bronx, repeatedly pleaded with correcti ... More >>

City Jails Get a New Commissioner

​The city jails system has a new commissioner. Dora Schriro, a former special advisor in the Department of Homeland Security, was tapped this week to replace Martin Horn, who has gone on to a cushy job as a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Schriro in the past has also run ... More >>

Jail Scandal Revelation: They Needed a Minyan!

In case you were wondering why all the Orthodox Jewish inmates ended up in the city jail in Manhattan known as the Tombs, where they could enjoy special treatment, we think we have an answer. Supposedly, an inmate is an inmate is an inmate, barring medical and security issues, and the rules say the ... More >>

Rikers Boss Steps Down -- After 2-Year Voice Series

City Correction and Probation Commissioner Martin Horn, one of Mayor Bloomberg's longest serving appointees, announced his resignation today. He's leaving a jail system that for the last two years has been the subject of Voice stories about corrections officers condoning and even arranging violence ... More >>

Sotomayor Strip-Search Opinion Offers Clue to Her Civil Rights Stance

Last week, while President Obama was vetting her credentials out of the Oval Office, Judge Sonia Sotomayor firmly dissented from her appeals court colleagues on a case that -- while it surely won't be considered a landmark ruling in the vein of saving Major League Baseball -- suggests her approach t ... More >>

Rikers Fight Club: The Knockout Punch

Documents show that top officials in the city's jail system were regularly briefed on violence and extortion between teen inmates.

Family of Dead Inmate Confronted by Angry Correction Officers Outside Court

Simmering tensions between the family of a teenager beaten to death at Rikers Island and correction officers erupted today at the Bronx courthouse.    As an arraignment for several inmates charged in the case ended, more than 30 correction officers confronted members of Christopher Ro ... More >>

Jails Commissioner Finally Confronted by City Council

In the ongoing controversy over the murder of teenager Christopher Robinson at a Rikers Island jail, someone in the City Council finally tried to pin down Correction Commissioner Martin Horn on what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did to stop it.    Robinson was fatally beaten i ... More >>

Rikers Fight Club: More Widespread Then The City Admits

Even as indictments came down for two jail guards accused of using teen inmates as enforcers, Correction Department officials sought to downplay the breadth of the problem.The indictments last month followed the October murder of teenager Christopher Robinson in the Rikers Island jail for young offe ... More >>

Rikers Fight Club

After indications for more than a year that guards were using inmates as enforcers, New York's jails are rocked by a pair of indictments

Study: Denying College to Prison Inmates Is Boneheaded

Bill Clinton and the Pataki administration made a huge mistake when they signed legislation in the mid-1990s that blocked state prisoners from obtaining a college education from their cells.    That's the finding of a report released Friday by the Correctional Association of New York, a leading p ... More >>

More Heads Roll in Wake of Rikers Jail Murder

Rikers Death Forces Out High Jail Official

City Jails Chief Gets Off With Only a Few Sentences

Council members barely question Martin Horn on the deadly teen jail at Rikers

Teen Murder at Rikers Jail

New details about the slow and painful death of a Brooklyn kid. Did guards turn a blind eye?

Woman-on-Woman Rape Claim at Rikers

New allegation at scandal-ridden jail

A Quiet Little Death at Bellevue

Inmate Patrick Miller didn't beat the system. It beat him.

A Short Life Ends on Rikers Island, in a Place Where Suicide Isn't Supposed to Happen

Seven Jail Guards Busted, 14 Pull a Sickout, One Sneaky Smuggler at Rikers

Rikers Island Fight Club

Jail guard indicted for pitting inmates against each other

The Rockefeller Drug Laws: 35 Years of Unjust, Biased Policy

Drug Counselor at Rikers Gets Busted for . . . Dope

Months after selling coke to an undercover, cops find him with 100 packets of 'Black Gold'

Do NOT Go Directly to Jail

Visiting a loved one in Rikers? Good luck.

Holding Pattern

Another kind of 9/11 victim, Narinder Singh spent more than five years locked up for no crime at all

Board Approves Eavesdropping, Uniforms for City Jails

Jail Watchdog Caught Snoozing

Underfunded, inept board just lies there while Bloomberg implements draconian rules in city's huge system

Rikers Revenge

A former guard sues the city jail chief over his statements in the Voice

Jail Guard Blues

An officer's whistleblowing should have been heeded, says a union president in the wake of a Voice report

Letters

What the Jail Guard Saw

Rikers officers encourage gang violence: surprising testimony and the stats to back it up

Deadly Restraint

Two jail fatalities involve use of force in both cases, but only silence from officials.

Last Meal: Tennessee Sucks

Who Killed Robert Konopka?

His psychotic Rikers cellmate—or the prison system itself?

'Shakespeare Behind Bars'

NY Inmates: Locked-Up, Counted Out?

Rotting Away

Thousands of New York inmates have hepatitis C. Only a few hundred get treatment.

Andre's World

A kid needs imagination to survive high school and jail on Rikers Island

Tanisha's Scars

Inside Bedford Hills prison, women swallow pins and slice their arms

Baby Madness

How one young woman's delusions cost her years of freedom

The Making of the Map

Million-Dollar Blocks

The neighborhood costs of America's prison boom