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Florida Voters Restore Ex-Felons’ Voting Rights

In the November mid-term election, Florida voters approved Amendment 4, the Voting Restoration Amendment, a ballot measure amending the state’s constitution to eliminate a provision that permanently removed the voting rights for well over a million state residents convicted of felonies. The new amendment becomes Article VI, sections 4(a) and (b) of the state constitution,

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DOJ IG’s Report: BOP Fails to Meet Needs of Female Inmates

A report issued September 18 by the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Justice (DOJ) identifies shortcomings in how the leaders of DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the correctional facilities it operates fail to meet the needs of its female inmates. Women are about 7% of all sentenced federal inmates (10,567 out of

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“Making a Murderer” Defendant Asks Supreme Court to Undo Conviction

Brendan Dassey, the younger defendant convicted of crimes covered in the hugely popular 2015 Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse his conviction, arguing police coerced him into making false confessions. Dassey’s uncle, Steven Avery, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 2005

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Transfer Van Takes 18 Days to Move Inmate from Virginia to Texas

While at a convenience store in Winchester, Virginia, in September 2016, Edward Kovari was arrested by a local police officer who had been checking out-of-state license plates and found an outstanding warrant from Texas accusing Kovari of having stolen the car he was driving. A waiter in his upper30s, Kovari had recently moved from Houston

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Palestinian Prisoners Stage Hunger Strike

Around 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails launched a hunger strike on April 17, 2017, a date also known as Palestinian Prisoners Day. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Center for Studies, the strike was meant to protest the “difficult humanitarian conditions” inside Israeli prisons. Al Jazeera reported that the prisoners’ demands included bi-monthly family visitation,

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Innocence Project Emerging in Israel

Wrongful convictions are a well-known phenomenon in the United States; the administration of one of the world’s largest criminal justice systems virtually guarantees mistakes and failures. Famous cases such as that of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was framed for murder and spent 20 years in prison, and whose case was made into a movie, have

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Vermont Supreme Court Upholds Rights of Jailhouse Lawyers

In a unanimous and lengthy opinion, the Vermont Supreme Court dismissed a charge of unauthorized practice of law brought against a jailhouse lawyer. Martin Serendipity Morales, a prisoner who identifies as female, was being held at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Center when she was charged with a felony by Bennington County prosecutors. Her crime?

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Taping Inmate-Lawyer Conferences Stirs Outrage at Kansas Prison

It began last year during an investigation of contraband smuggling into the Leavenworth Detention Center, a privately run federal prison in Kansas operated by CoreCivic, formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America. During that investigation, a federal prosecutor in Kansas City told a private defense lawyer she could not lawfully represent a Leavenworth inmate,

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Prison Book-Banning Policies Called Arbitrary And Self-Serving

15,000 book titles have been have been banned from Texas prisons. By Christopher Zoukis Every year, the American Library Association declares the final week of September “Banned Books Week,” commemorated in many libraries with displays designed to highlight often-overreaching censorship of school and public libraries. This year, however, a far-flung wave of stories in many

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