James Ridgeway

In 1965, James Ridgeway helped launch the modern muckraking era by revealing that General Motors had hired private eyes to spy on an obscure consumer advocate named Ralph Nader. He worked for many years at the Village Voice, has written 16 books, and has codirected Blood in the Face, a film about the far right. In 2012, he was named a Soros Justice Media Fellow.

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America's 10 Worst Prisons: ADX

A federal isolation facility that's "pretty close" to hell.

—By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

| Wed May. 1, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

The exterior of ADX prison, Florence, Colorado

The "Alcatraz of the Rockies" Bacote et al. v. Federal Bureau of Prisons

"If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment.

#1: ADX (federal supermax)

#2: Allan B. Polunsky Unit (Texas)

#3: Tent City Jail (Phoenix)

#4: Orleans Parish (Louisiana)

#5: LA County Jail (Los Angeles)

#6: Pelican Bay (California)

#7: Julia Tutwiler (Alabama)

#8: Reeves Country Detention Complex (Texas)

#9: Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility (Mississippi)

#10: Rikers Island (New York City)

#11: 7 Dishonorable Mentions

Read the complete introduction to our 10 Worst Prisons project.

Doing time is not supposed to include being raped by fellow prisoners or staff, beaten by guards for the slightest provocation, driven mad by long-term solitary confinement, or killed off by medical neglect. These, however, are the fates of thousands of prisoners every year—men, women, and children housed in lockups that give Gitmo and Abu Ghraib a run for their money.

The United States boasts the world's highest incarceration rate, with close to 2.3 million people locked away in some 1,800 prisons and 3,000 jails. Most are nasty places by design, aimed at punishment and exclusion rather than rehabilitation; while reliable numbers are hard to come by, at last count 81,622 prisoners were being held in some form of isolation in state and federal prisons.

[Read the full article]

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Louisiana Attorney General Says Angola 3 "Have Never Been Held in Solitary Confinement"

Actually, they've been in solitary for 41 years.

—By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

| Sat Mar. 23, 2013 2:41 AM PDT

This story first appeared online at Solitary Watch.

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace in the early 1970s, when they were placed in solitary confinement. Photo from “In the Land of the Free.”

James "Buddy" Caldwell, attorney general of the state of Louisiana, has released a statement saying unequivocally that Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, the two still-imprisoned members of the Angola 3, "have never been held in solitary confinement while in the Louisiana penal system."

In fact, Wallace, now 71, and Woodfox, 66, have been in solitary for nearly 41 years, quite possibly longer than any other human beings on the planet. They were placed in solitary following the 1972 killing of a young corrections officer at Angola, and except for a few brief periods, they have remained in isolation ever since.

The statement from Caldwell follows on the heels of a ruling by a federal district court judge in New Orleans, overturning Albert Woodfox's conviction for the third time—in this instance, on the grounds that there had been racial bias in the selection of grand jury forepersons in Louisiana at the time of his indictment. Subsequently, Amnesty International, along with other activists, mounted a campaign urging the state of Louisiana not to appeal the federal court's ruling. In the absence of an appeal, Woodfox would have to be given a new trial or released.

[Read the full article]

Big Labor's Lock 'Em Up Mentality

How otherwise progressive unions stand in the way of a more humane correctional system.

—By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

| Fri Feb. 22, 2013 4:01 AM PST

protesting union efforts to save Tamms prison

Protesters rallied against a union campaign to save Illinois' notorious Tamms prison.

On January 4, the Tamms Correctional Center, a supermax prison in southern Illinois, officially closed its doors. Tamms, where some men had been kept in solitary confinement for more than a decade, was notorious for its brutal treatment of prisoners with mental illness—and for driving sane prisoners to madness and suicide.

The closure, by order of Gov. Pat Quinn, was celebrated by human rights and prison reform groups, and by the local activists who had fought for years to do away with what they saw as a torture chamber in their backyard. But it might have been accomplished sooner were it not for a competing progressive faction: Big Labor.

The major force holding up Tamms' closure was the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which, according to its website, represents 85,000 corrections employees nationally. The union challenged Quinn's order through its legislative allies, stalled it via the courts, and mounted a public campaign to keep Tamms open. It was perhaps the most visible and contentious example of a phenomenon seen, in one form or another, around the country: otherwise progressive labor unions furthering America's addiction to mass incarceration. In terms of prisoners rights in general, and solitary confinement in particular, unions are seen as a major obstacle to more-humane conditions.

[Read the full article]

Welcome to the New Federal Supermax

The recently acquired "Gitmo North" doesn't jibe with the government's stated goal of reducing solitary confinement.

—By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

| Mon Feb. 11, 2013 4:02 AM PST

The new facility will hold "SMU and ADX type inmates," writes a spokesman. Kevin E. Schmidt/Quad-City Times/Zuma

Even as it announces a review and reduction of its solitary confinement practices, the US Bureau of Prisons has confirmed that a newly acquired prison in Illinois will hold federal prisoners in supermax conditions. "Thomson will be a high security prison holding inmates with various security needs, including SMU and ADX type inmates," BOP spokesperson Chris Burke said via email.

Thomson is the unused prison that the federal government recently bought from the state of Illinois. ADX, the notorious federal supermax in Florence, Colorado, holds its prisoners in 23-hour-a-day isolation with virtually no human contact. Federal SMUs, or Special Management Units, such as those found in Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, hold their prisoners in near round-the-clock lockdown in two-person cells. Both are forms of long-term isolation, and both have been denounced by human rights and prisoners rights groups as an inhumane and ineffective form of punishment, sometimes amounting to torture.

[Read the full article]

After Sandy, a Taxpayer Bailout for Flood-Prone Developments?

—By James Ridgeway and Michael Mechanic

| Tue Nov. 13, 2012 2:39 PM PST

From a Coast Guard flyover of Long Island after Hurricane Sandy. DVIDSHUB/Flickr

The catastrophic damage left by Hurricane Sandy has once again underscored the costly shortcomings of the way we—that is, federal taxpayers—insure property owners against the monster storms that are becoming ever more predictable as the planet warms and sea levels rise.

Storms, not terrorists, present the biggest threat to the coastal cities and communities that are home to more than half of all Americans—not to mention critical conduits for international trade. And yet the FEMA-administered federal flood insurance program, which took a bath after Hurricane Katrina six years ago, is still foundering. As the New York Times reported this morning:

The federal program collects about $3.5 billion in annual premiums. But in four of the past eight years, claims will have eclipsed premiums, most glaringly in 2005—the year of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma—when claims totaled $17.7 billion. Private insurance companies have long avoided offering flood insurance to homeowners.

"It's like rat poison to them," said Tony Bullock, an insurance industry lobbyist, explaining how the risk outweighs the benefit for private insurers. "You need the federal backstop."

While Sandy's overall financial toll has yet to be tallied, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has estimated damages in New York state alone at $50 billion. No more than $20 billion of the overall cost will be covered by private insurance, says Cynthia McHale, director of the insurance program at Ceres, a sustainable-economy coalition consisting of companies, investors, and public-interest groups. This puts most of the remaining burden on state and federal governments.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]