by Derek Gilna

In June 2016, In the Public Interest (ITPI), a non-partisan public policy group, published a report titled “How Private Prison Companies Increase Recidivism,” based upon the fact that for-profit prisons rely upon incarceration to generate revenue – thus they have no incentive to provide rehabilitative programs that reduce recidivism. In a country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, this is a recipe for disaster.

According to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), “50% of incarcerated people return to prison within three years of being released.” The ITPI report noted that “Academic research has found that incarcerating people in prisons operated by private companies, which have business models dependent on incarceration, increases the likelihood of those people recidivating.”

The report further said that while governmental agencies, which do need not to generate profit, typically operate prisons with the goals of rehabilitating prisoners and protecting public safety, private prisons are beholden to stockholders who expect to receive a return on their investment.

“Often,” ITPI wrote, “achieving the profit comes at a cost to prisoners, those who work inside the prisons, and the broader public.”

Private prison companies sell their services to government agencies on ...

by Derek Gilna

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has certified for class action status a lawsuit by various immigration detainees against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The complaint, filed in December of 2013, alleged that DHS and ICE have provided telephone services that are unduly restrictive and expensive, and that the immigrant’s “constitutional and statutory rights are being violated while they are held in government custody pending deportation proceedings.

Prison Legal News has not only reported on exploitative prison phone systems, but has also participated in many lawsuits where prisoner communications with their family, friends, and legal representatives have been restricted.

According to the Court’s opinion, “ICE contracts with Yuba County, Sacramento County, and Contra Costa County to hold immigration detainees in the Yuba, Elk Grove and Richmond Facilities.”  These facilities are “geographically isolated from the San Francisco Immigration Court” as well as from “the immigration attorneys who practice removal defense, most of whom are based in or near San Francisco.”  In addition, the facilities are often geographically isolated from detainees’ family members or friends who might be able to help them in their immigration proceedings.

The same opinion ...

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former counterterrorism consultant.

He left the CIA in March 2004, later serving as a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior intelligence advisor to Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry. Kiriakou also authored a bestselling book, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.

In 2007 he appeared on ABC News, during which he became the first CIA officer to confirm that the agency had waterboarded detainees, which he described as “torture.” His interview revealed that waterboarding was official U.S. policy approved at the highest levels of the government.

Federal officials began investigating Kiriakou immediately after his public comments, and five years later he was charged with multiple felonies under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies.

Eventually, to avoid a trial and potential 45 years in prison, Kiriakou opted to plead guilty to a single reduced charge in exchange for a 30-month sentence.

He reported to a federal facility in Loretto, Pennsylvania on February 28, 2013, where he continued to speak out in an online blog called Letters from Loretto.

PLN ...

Note: This is the full PLN interview with John Kiriakou; a shorter version was published as our April 2017 cover story, here.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former counterterrorism consultant.

He left the CIA in March 2004, later serving as a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior intelligence advisor to Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry. Kiriakou also authored a bestselling book, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.

In 2007, he appeared on ABC News, during which he became the first CIA officer to confirm that the agency had waterboarded detainees, which he described as “torture.” His interview revealed that waterboarding was official U.S. policy approved at the highest levels of the government.

Federal officials began investigating Kiriakou immediately after his public comments, and five years later he was charged with multiple felonies under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies.

Eventually, to avoid a trial and potential 45 years in prison, Kiriakou opted to plead guilty to a single reduced charge in exchange for a 30-month sentence.

He reported to a federal ...

A riot at an Alaska prison “kind of blew up” because, according to prisoners, the phone service provided by Securus was shoddy and the company charged unreasonable rates.

Sparked by a widespread disconnection of phone calls one Monday night in October 2015, prisoners housed in E Dorm at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center (LCCC) disabled surveillance cameras, broke a window, ripped a table out of the concrete floor and then stacked the table and mattresses against a door into the dorm, preventing guards from entering.

Shortly after midnight, however, guards were able to break through the barricade and round up an undisclosed number of prisoners, placing them all in segregation. No one was injured according to Alaska DOC officials.

“For weeks, everybody’s been on edge about [the phone rates],” an LCCC prisoner identified only as Alec told the Juneau Empire in a phone interview from the facility. “The most important things we have in here are connections with our family.”

Texas-based Securus entered into a new contract with the Alaska DOC in September 2015. Per the terms of that contract, prisoners would be able to call cell phones (which they had been unable to do previously), but Securus would also ...

A former high-ranking official at a New Jersey county jail, convicted on federal charges for illegally listening to and recording the private phone conversations of jail union leaders, has lost his appeal and will remain in federal prison.

Kirk Eady, 46, of East Brunswick, New Jersey, was convicted in March 2015 on charges of illegal interception of wire, oral or electronic communications of others. On September 10, 2015 he was sentenced to 21 months in prison plus three years of supervised release.

Eady appealed, seeking to overturn his conviction and sentence on the grounds of inappropriate application of sentencing guidelines, inappropriate use of a government witness as an “expert” and improper jury instructions. His appeal was rejected by the Third Circuit on May 4, 2016.

According to the criminal complaint, Eady was a deputy director at the Hudson County Correctional Facility and represented the county in labor negotiations with unions representing guards and other employees at the jail. From March to July 2012, Eady intercepted conversations between several members of the union who, according to court documents, had criticized Eady’s work performance.

He had intercepted the calls by using an online prank service known as “Evil Operator,” which, for a ...

The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit focused on racial and economic policy, in conjunction with Forward Together and a dozen other community and civil rights organizations recently released a study which surveyed hardships experienced by former prisoners and their families. The study examined the experiences of over 1,080 current and former prisoners, along with their family members.

The study presented a number of striking conclusions. While almost two-thirds of families of prisoners had a hard time fulfilling basic needs, half indicated problems obtaining adequate food and shelter. This was in large part due to the primary breadwinner often being the one incarcerated, leaving their spouse and children behind to find ways to continue to get by.

The study also showed that the cost burden of incarceration and public defense systems is often placed on families of prisoners. According to the study, criminal defendants often have to pay for court fees, fines, phones calls, and commissary purchases. The court fees, which can include costs for public defenders and a jury trial fee, amounted to $13,607 for study participants; a number more than the $11,770 annual poverty line. Most criminal defendants have annual incomes below this threshold. Such costs ...

Prisons are designed to be closed institutions, cut off from the rest of the world. Contraband cell phones, however, are opening them up and exposing the reality of what happens behind the walls. When Demetria Harris saw a photo of her son, incarcerated at the Burruss Correctional Training Center (BCTC) in Forsyth, Georgia, she was horrified.

The picture, posted online in late March 2015, had a caption that read, “When you disrespect the Nation, it brings nothing but pain and suffering.” The term “Nation” was a reference to the Gangsta Disciples gang, also known as “GD Nation.”

In the photo, Harris’ son, Cortez Berry, then 17 years old, had a swollen eye and was hunched down with a makeshift leash around his neck held by one of two prisoners standing menacingly behind him. Harris had learned of the picture and her son’s beating when a friend told her the photo, uploaded by BCTC prisoners using an illicit cell phone, was circulating on Facebook.

By the beginning of April 2015 the picture of Berry had gone viral, attracting nationwide media attention and the interest of such high-profile individuals as Reverend Al Sharpton. Shortly following the publication of the photo, a number ...

By Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept

The Chicago Police Department has acquired and used several varieties of advanced cellphone trackers since at least 2005 to target suspects in robberies, murders, kidnappings, and drug investigations. In most instances, officers only lightly described the devices’ advanced technical surveillance capabilities to courts, which allowed the police to use them, often without a warrant.

Now, after a lengthy legal battle waged by Freddy Martinez, a Chicago software technician, court orders and case notes were released, painting a more detailed picture of how the second-largest police precinct in the U.S. uses surveillance technology to track cellphones.

Martinez, who leads the Lucy Parson Labs, a Chicago-based nonprofit that advocates digital rights and transparency, originally sued for records in September 2014. He provided the released documents to The Intercept.

The Chicago Police Department did not respond to request for comment.

Cell-site simulators, or IMSI catchers, are typically suitcase-sized devices that emit signals over the wireless spectrum, masquerading as legitimate cellphone towers. When a nearby phone attempts to connect to a tower either to make a call or to check for service, it will instead link-up to the rogue device, beaming back information about its location, its owner, ...

In one of the latest attempts to squeeze money out of those least able to afford it, companies that specialize in providing phone and video visitation services to prisoners in Texas jails on a local monopolistic basis are moving to limit or eliminate free and in-person visitation. This forces prisoners' friends and families to use expensive remote video visitation, increasing the companies' profits and the "commissions" they pay the jails. But these profits do not come cheap. The cost is measured in diminished and broken relationships between prisoners and their families--especially their children. This loss of intimate family contact leads to increased disciplinary and contraband problems.

Psychologists and prison administrators have long agreed that in-person prisoner visitation has significant benefits, including helping maintain family bonds and providing a prisoner management tool. The former leads to calmer, better behaved prisoners who are less likely to return to prison after release. The latter means that visitation is so important to prisoners that the threat of losing it as a disciplinary sanction is sufficient incentive to improve the behavior of some otherwise recalcitrant prisoners.

When free in-person visitation is eliminated and replaced with expensive video visitation, those benefits may be lost both because ...