What He Said, and What it Says About Us

By BitcoDavid Texas – the state that’s turning execution into a pastime – publishes the last words of death row inmates. We got this story from an excellent piece in the Gray Lady. If you read it, pay particular attention to the comments section. We tend to forget that in America, most people view inmates

Book Review: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

By Joanne Greenberg This is a memoir of fifteen months spent in Danbury Federal Prison work camp. In the range of prisons, this was the highest (best); the others were downhill from there. Piper had been a drug dealer, left the drug game, and ten years later was arrested in connection with a sweep arrest

It’s Not All Bad

ABC News reported on the growth and progress of Community Courts. I got the article from AnotherBoomerBlog – Marsha Graham. The idea, albeit quite new, is simply stellar. These are small local courts set up to deal with low level crimes – vandalism, drunkenness and prostitution. Here’s the article link: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/courts-handle-low-level-crimes-us-17301887#.UF97GWfi6Sq Instead of dolling out

Not Providing Interpreters for Deaf Persons Can Result in Tragedy as Loss of Life as Well as Be Costly for Jail Systems

Shawn Francisco Vigil, died in prison. He was not provided an interpreter during the medical/psychological intake process, was placed in isolation and committed suicide. Below, the link to the Denver Post‘s coverage: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21565502/denver-settles-city-deaf-man-who-died-jail Jail officials had housed Vigil in a special unit away from the general population and failed to do any “meaningful analysis of

Progress in California

I got this in my e-mail a few days ago: Dear David, We have exciting news that you helped make happen!  Two important victories today in California –  Senate Bill 9 and Assembly Bill 1270 took major steps forward in the legislature. First, Senate Bill 9 just passed the state Assembly 41-34! After six years of hard work by many

The School to Prison Pipeline Is Even Bigger for the Deaf

This is an article published in the New York Times. It states that children with disabilities are more likely to be suspended from school, than are non-disabled students. But, they didn’t need a study to prove this. They just needed to read DeafInPrison.com. We’re well familiar with both the school to prison pipeline, and the

Too Many Prisoners – From Prisonmovement’s Weblog

This is a reblog of an article that appeared in Prisonmovement’s Weblog, over the weekend. For those of you not familiar with them, here’s what they say about themselves: Against the death penalty; the United States Criminal Justice System is flawed, broken, yet fixable; Prison Reform and Sentencing Reform should be major agenda’s for each

The Injustice of Lonliness as Punishment

[The tagline for DeafInPrison.com is Sentenced to Solitude in Silence. Our contributor JoanneGreenberg sent this in. –Ed.] The hardest part of being deaf and in prison may not be the rapes, the missing of messages or the misunderstanding in general. It might be the absence of other deaf people. Imagine a Russian or Basque speaker

Interview with Mr. Jesse Doiron English Professor and Leader of Inmates Book Club

I interviewed my colleague, Mr. Jesse Doiron who is an English professor at Lamar University in Beaumont, TX. For the past five years, he has led an interesting inmates’ book club. I asked him how he got the club started and how the inmates liked it. Implications for starting such book clubs for deaf inmates