The revised United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, named the Nelson Mandela Rules, were adopted unanimously in December 2015 by the UN General Assembly and set out the minimumstandards for good prison management, including to ensure the rights of prisoners are respected. The 122 Rules cover all aspects of prison management…
Read below and see online for 2 responses to the NYT article No Quick Fix for Mental Illness,” by Norman J. Ornstein (Op-Ed, March 7) To the Editor: Once again devoted parents with resources are unable to save a mentally ill adult child from the legal system and a flawed mental health bureaucracy. Confidentiality precludes my…
“But what is needed is more transparency, not less. The general public needs to understand what happens inside prisons – the good, the bad and the ugly – and to open a genuine dialogue around why, for the most part, prisons don’t work and, in many respects, represent the very antithesis of blind justice. Meanwhile,…
Jim Simpson, a senior advocate at the NSW Council for Intellectual Disability, said prisons were “being used to warehouse people” who needed disability support services “to lead a decent life”.http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mental-illness-and-cognitive-disability-the-norm-among-prisoners-report-20170810-gxtf9y.html
Louis D. Brandeis Quotes. “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” “Whatever limitations the PLRA has imposed on prison- ers’ rights litigation, it is imperative to prevent the statute from pulling an iron curtain across…
We need an oversight committee, Getting quality health care can be hard enough for everyday people. But for the more than 49,000 people in Illinois prisons, that process can be even tougher. Two years ago, a team of court-approved researchers went to eight prisons across the state and reported widespread problems, including major backlogs and…
In a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, December, 2016 “Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison population — 576,000 people — are behind bars with no compelling public safety reason This report finds the following: • Of the 1.46 million state and federal prisoners, an estimated 39 percent (approximately 576,000 people) are incarcerated…
This is a copy of a recent article on prisons today: In 2015, the National Lawyers Guild adopted a resolution calling for the dismantling and abolition of all prisons. As an organization, we recognized mass incarceration in all of its iterations—policing, violence, incarceration, forced labor, privatization and capitalism—as a crisis that we must resist in all of…
The Problem Our prisons and jails are filled with people with mental illnesses. There are at least 8,000 people with mental illnesses in prisons operated by the Illinois Department of Corrections. There are at lest 3,000 people with mental illness in Illinois’ ninety nine county jails, including approximately 2,000 in the Cook County Jail.…
Judges, Prosecutors, and Defense Attorneys are rarely held accountable for misconduct even when it is proven that their actions have been responsible for wrongful convictions. As a result, the families and individuals irreparably harmed by their collective judicial malfeasance have no legal recourse or punitive remedies available. This is an unacceptable practice. Officials should be…
