Prison Abuse Reporting Pays off.

Thank you Ken Kopczynski from PCI for sending all these emails out.

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From Texas Prison Bidness:. A little old, but a good reminder that sometimes it's wise the listen to the people we institutionalize - be they in schools, hospitals, nursing homes or prisons. Their solutions to problems with the system - even just the day to day ordeals of prison life - would be worth soliciting for anyone really wanting to know the "truth" about what goes on inside, and on what should be done to keep people safe - and get them home alive. 

The most pressing issues I've heard of from prisoners and their families across the ADC include substandard, sloppy, and unresponsive medical care; high incidences of suicides; sexual abuse and exploitation of female prisoners by male guards,  callous disregard for prisoner requests, needs, safety. Sanitation is a huge issue in part because the women have to do all the cleaning and aren't allowed adequate amounts of disinfectant (it could be used as a "chemical weapon") to kill things like HIV, HepC, flu and cold viruses, and so on. One has a pretty good chance of contracting a number of diseases in prison - as evidenced by the shorter life span that people have in prison as opposed to the outside. Anyway, here's an article on our favorite multinational private prison corporation, forwarded from www.PrivateCI.org

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Reporter Who Broke CCA Abuse Case Nominated for Texas Emmy

Wed, 09/26/2007  ( Bob)

The Laredo Morning Times is reporting that local Univision reporter Wendolyn Morales has been nominated for a Texas Emmy for her work covering the case of Tomas Contreras.

As readers of Texas Prison Bid'ness might remember, Contreras is the longtime U.S. resident who detained while re-entering the country on a 18 year-old minor drug conviction. He was subsequently held for months at two Laredo detention centers run by Corrections Corporation of America and beaten when reporting poor conditions.

After Morales' report, U.S. representative Tammy Baldwin became involved in the case and Contreras was released soon after.

Congrats to Ms. Morales on this nomination and we wish you the best of luck covering stories of importance like this.