News Articles
This site contains over 2,000 news articles, legal briefs and publications related to for-profit companies that provide correctional services. Most of the content under the "Articles" tab below is from our Prison Legal News site. PLN, a monthly print publication, has been reporting on criminal justice-related issues, including prison privatization, since 1990. If you are seeking pleadings or court rulings in lawsuits and other legal proceedings involving private prison companies, search under the "Legal Briefs" tab. For reports, audits and other publications related to the private prison industry, search using the "Publications" tab.
For any type of search, click on the magnifying glass icon to enter one or more keywords, and you can refine your search criteria using "More search options." Note that searches for "CCA" and "Corrections Corporation of America" will return different results.
ICE Bans Crayons in Family Detention Center Visiting Area
Prisoners who cause property damage in correctional facilities often receive swift punishment. It was no different for the very young prisoners held in one of the United States’ most controversial detention centers. Housed with their immigrant mothers in the GEO Group-operated Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, some creative toddlers marked on a table in the visitors’ area of the facility with crayons while their parents spoke with attorneys, prompting a ban on crayons for all children in the visitation area.
On November 17, 2016, The Guardian reported that Barbara Hines, a University of Texas adjunct professor and member of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), had written to ICE officials. Hines said of the crayon ban, “Treating a child’s color markings as ‘destruction of property’ is altogether inappropriate. And such markings are a cost that comes with the detention of children. It is extremely disturbing that ICE’s concern for GEO’s property takes precedence over the wellbeing of the children and their mothers’ rights to legal advice.”
Lawyers working on behalf of the nearly 600 mothers and children detained at Karnes said the ban on crayons was unnecessarily punitive. A petition circulated by RAICES calling for an end to the ban had gathered over 1,860 signatures as of January 2017.
Sources: www.theguardian.com, https://action.mijente.net
