A federal judge in Baton Rouge has called for the unconditional release of Albert Woodfox, the only remaining imprisoned member of the Angola 3.

Woodfox, 68, was placed solitary confinement at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and other state facilities for more than 40 years for reasons related to the 1972 murder of prison guard Brent Miller. 

Civil rights advocates lobbied Facebook to stop automatically deleting all profiles of current American prisoners, The Daily Beast has learned. But the debate on whether someone is too dangerous ever to have one is still raging.

One day at work, Larissa admitted to logging onto Facebook “to see my kids’ Easter pictures.”

She had been put on work furlough because the Alabama Department of Corrections deemed her a low security risk. She was allowed to leave prison to work shifts at a local Burger King.

Congress members are pushing to restore Pell Grants to help prisoners pay for their college education.
 
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet / June 3, 2015

In 1965, Congress passed Title IV of the Higher Education Act, allowing prison inmates for the first time to apply for Pell Grants to finance their college educations. For decades, tens of thousands of prisoners took advantage of this benefit, using it to finance a path into opportunities after they served their sentences.

Dateline: Intensive Care Unit Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, PA
PRESS CONFERENCE AT 11AM TUESDAY MARCH 31
Location: Outside Emergency Room Entrance,
Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, PA
700 E Norwegian St, Pottsville, PA
For information contact: Bret Grote - 412-654-9070

Mumia Abu-Jamal in Medical Crisis - 20hrs Doctors refuse to talk to lawyers and family Vigil ICU in Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, PA.

Literally after 20 hours of torture Mumia remains disappeared. His family and his lawyers have been prevented from receiving any information.

On the morning of Monday March 30th, prison officials at SCI Mahanoy say that Mumia Abu-Jamal had a "medical crisis" and was transported from the prison to the intensive care unit at the Schuylkill Medical Center, in Pottsville. PA.

Shackled to the bed, alone, and prevented from knowing that his family is close by he remains in intensive care. Prison officials and hospital officials when not spreading misinformation are denying Mumia's family access to visits, while also denying the family and his lawyers any information or records about his condition.

Mumia's family is keeping vigil in the ICU critical care visiting room.

His supporters and lawyers were at trial challenging the Revictimization Review Act aka the "Mumia Silencing Act" in Harrisburg, PA when they received word that he had been taken to the hospital.

The Abolitionist Law Center's Bret Grote is in Pottsville and vigorously preparing legal action to gain access to his client for the family and access to his medical records so that independent doctors can intervene.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s brother Keith Cook stated “The rules that the prisons have are very arcane. They don’t give out any information about prisoners to their families or anyone else. It’s like you have your hands tied because you don’t know how the prisoner is and you have no way of talking to him. I remember a month ago--- Phil Africa exercising in the prison, next thing they know they moved him to a hospital and didn’t tell his family where he was, and three days later he was dead.

"It’s scary. This situation needs to change. The prison authorities need to be more humane to the families of prisoners.”

Pam Africa stated "Prison Officials are lying. Mumia is going through torture at the hands of Department of Corrections through medical neglect. It is clear to people that they want to kill Mumia. They gave him the wrong medication which made his condition worse. Inmates on the inside who questioned what was happening have been subjected to direct retaliation by the superintendent. They have been moving concerned inmates out of Mumia's unit in an effort to both bury and keep this critical information from the public."

Johanna Fernandez of the New York Campaign to Bring Mumia Home noted “Mumia has been complaining about being ill since January. If he had gotten the proper care he needed originally, he would not be in this situation. This crisis illustrates the problem of health care in American prisons as a basic human rights violation. I am personally concerned because Phil Africa of the MOVE organization was rushed to the hospital not long ago in good health and a few days later he was dead. We need to fight to defend Mumia’s life, and that of all prisoners.”

Bret Grote bretgrote@abolitionistlawcenter.org 412-654-9070
Johanna Fernandez 917-930-0804 jfernandez1202@gmail.com 917-930-0804
Pam Africa 267-760-7344
Keith Cook kdc52@aol.com 919-302-4177

The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm inspired by the struggle of political and politicized prisoners, and organized for the purpose of abolishing class and race based mass incarceration in the United States. 412-654-9070

CALL NOW and demand that Mumia's family can visit him at the medical center: 570-773-2158

SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Rd, Frackville PA
Superindendent John Kerestes
(570) 773-2158 x8102

We do not trust that the prison officials will provide any transparency on Mumia's medical emergency. They indeed told us Phil Africa was fine, and he passed away the next day.

We need you to help us demand family visitation rights at Schuylkill Medical Center NOW!

We will send a trial update shortly.
Please make the call right now: 570-773-2158 x8102

The inmates and prison activists fighting solitary confinement have Supreme Court Justice and key swing vote Anthony Kennedy on their side.

While speaking before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and Federal Government on Monday, Kennedy blasted the U.S. prison system for isolating inmates.

originally published in CounterPunch

Please take the time to read and spread this open letter to the media from Assata Shakur, exiled former Panther in Cuba.  Assata’s story is a perfect example of the racist injustice meted out by this government and its so-called law enforcement agencies.  I’m worried about our courageous sister, who has a $2 million bounty on her life, now that the U.S. has opened the door to Cuba.  Hands off Assata!!

I am a 20th Century Escaped Slave

by ASSATA SHAKUR

Out of California’s years-long litigation over reducing the population of prisons deemed unconstitutionally overcrowded by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, another obstacle to addressing the U.S. epidemic of mass incarceration has emerged: The utility of cheap prison labor.

By RICHARD FAUSSETNOV. 16, 2014 

JACKSON, Miss. — In 1982, Christopher B. Epps, a young schoolteacher, took a second job as a guard at the facility known as Parchman Farm, the only prison operated at the time by the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Eventually he had to choose a path. “It worked out that I was making more as a correctional officer than as a teacher,” Mr. Epps would later recall in an interview for a corrections newsletter.

BEACON, N.Y. — After 28 years in prison, Freddie Cox emerged from the Fishkill Correctional Facility, not quite a free man, but free enough.

A sister had cued up Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” on her car’s CD player, and, after hugs, Mr. Cox put his two small bags and his typewriter in the car and squeezed in alongside the others, heading away from prison, windows down.

Mr. Cox had been imprisoned for a 1986 murder in Coney Island, Brooklyn. He said then and he says now that he is innocent — and he has maintained that position at four parole hearings.

Web developer Eddie Griffin just finished an internship at a tech company and is on the hunt for a new position. But his background sets him apart from many of Silicon Valley’s programmers.

Just over a year ago, the 58-year-old Richmond resident was in San Quentin State Prison, serving the 13th year of a 27-to-life prison sentence. He was given a second chance under Proposition 36, the 2012 measure that reformed the state’s “three strikes and you’re out” law, and appears to be making the most of it.