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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2 Swing States That Swing on Felon Disenfranchisement

—By James Ridgeway

| Fri Nov. 2, 2012 3:08 AM PDT

A new infographic from the Prison Policy Initiative (cropped version below) does a nice job of illustrating the massive vote-suppression tactic we wrote about previously—one that could hand two crucial states to Mitt Romney. While most states forbid people to vote while in prison, and many extend that ban to people on parole, only a handful make it next to impossible to regain your right to vote if you've ever been convicted of a felony. Do the crime, and you'll never vote again.

Among that handful of states are two where Obama and Romney have been running neck and neck—Florida and Virginia. (Nate Silver's model shows Romney leading in Florida and Obama ahead in Virginia.) According to PPI's data, a full 9 percent of Florida's voting-age population is disenfranchised because they have at one time been incarcerated. In Virginia, the figure is 6 percent.

Given that a disproportionate number of disenfranchised ex-felons are people of color, and that Obama polls far ahead of Mitt Romney in the black and Latino communities, the assumption is that a majority of the missing votes would favor Obama—possibly enough to win him these states even if only a fraction of ex-felons voted. The results of this election may therefore hinge on the denial of a basic right to men and women who have long since paid their debt to society, but remain permanently excluded from the democratic process.

Click on image to see the full poster. Prison Policy Initiative

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Prisoners to Remain on Rikers Island As Hurricane Sandy Heads for New York

—By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

| Mon Oct. 29, 2012 10:07 AM PDT

UPDATE, October 30: NYC DOC Deputy Commissioner Matthew Nerzig provided the following statement via email: “No power outages on Rikers last night. No significant flooding or disruption of our operations. The Commissioner [DOC Commissioner Dora Schriro] spent the night there.”

The authors would still appreciate hearing from families whose loved ones (prisoners or staff) weathered the storm on Rikers and can provide accounts of their experiences. Email: solitarywatchnews@gmail.com.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

At a press conference yesterday afternoon on New York City’s preparations for Hurricane Sandy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was asked about the safety of prisoners on Rikers Island, which lies near the mouth of Long Island Sound, between Queens and the Bronx. Bloomberg appeared annoyed by the question, and responded somewhat opaquely: “Rikers Island, the land is up where they are and jails are secured.” Apparently unable to fathom that anyone’s main concern would be for the welfare of the more than 12,000 prisoners on Rikers, Bloomberg then reassured listeners: “Don’t worry about anybody getting out.”

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

The Other Death Sentence

More than 100,000 Americans are destined to spend their final years in prison. Can we afford it?

—By James Ridgeway

| Tue Sep. 25, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

A Kentucky inmate is admitted to the hospital. Click here to see more of Tim Gruber's great photos from inside a prison nursing unit.

Editor's note: This article was supported by a MetLife Foundation Journalists in Aging Fellowship, a collaboration of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America.

William "Lefty" Gilday had been in prison 40 years when the dementia began to set in. At 82, he was already suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease and a host of other ailments, and his friends at MCI Shirley, a medium security prison in Massachusetts, tried to take care of him as best they could. Most of them were aging lifers like Lefty, facing the prospect of one day dying behind bars themselves, so they formed an ad hoc hospice team in their crowded ward. They bought special food from the commissary, heated it in an ancient microwave, and fed it to their friend. They helped him to the toilet and cleaned him up. Joe Labriola, 64, tried to see that Lefty got a little sunshine every day, wheeling his chair out into the yard and sitting with his arm around him to keep him from falling out.

But Lefty, who was serving life without parole for killing a police officer during a failed bank heist in 1970, slipped ever deeper into dementia. One day he threw an empty milk carton at a guard and was placed in a "medical bubble," a kind of solitary confinement unit with a glass window that enables health care staffers to keep an eye on the prisoner. His friends were denied entrance, but Joe managed to slip in one day. He recalls an overpowering stench of piss and shit and a stack of unopened food containers—Lefty explained that he couldn't open the tabs. Joe also noticed that the nurses in the adjoining observation room had blocked the glass with manila folders so they wouldn't have to look at the old man.

[Read the full article]

“Ignorance, Fear, and Bias" in Alabama’s Treatment of HIV-Positive Prisoners

The ACLU goes to trial against a throwback state policy that effectively quarantines inmates who carry the virus.

—By James Ridgeway

| Mon Sep. 17, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

In an extraordinary trial that kicks off today in federal court in Montgomery, Alabama, the American Civil Liberties Union will take on what David Fathi, director of the group's National Prison Project, calls "the last vestiges of state-sponsored discrimination against people living with HIV."

While it is hardly unusual for prisoners to be denied rights that most people take for granted, Alabama inmates who test positive for HIV are effectively quarantined, barred from prison activities, and—hewing to a policy with chilling historical echoes—male inmates are forced to wear white armbands to signal their HIV status. We are treated "like we are contagious animals," a female inmate wrote in a letter to the warden of Tutwiler prison. "We have no recreations. Basketballs are flat and playing cards are beyond recognition…It's like punishment 3 times over. Prison, the virus, then the denial of an education, or trade. We are secluded from everyday life."

[Read the full article]

Federal Prisons Chief to Inmates: Don't Kill Yourself

—By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

| Fri Aug. 10, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Federal Bureau of Prisons director Charles E. Samuels has been in the hot seat lately over the BOP's treatment of some of the prisoners in its custody—most notably the mentally disabled prisoners housed in solitary confinement at ADX Florence, the federal supermax prison in Colorado. Samuel's latest response was to write an uncharacteristically touchy feely letter to all federal prisoners, urging them not to commit suicide.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed in June alleges that many ADX prisoners suffer from severe mental illness that has been exacerbated or even caused by their years of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation in small concrete cells. It claims that the BOP fails to provide even a semblance of psychiatric care to these prisoners, with grisly results. According to a litigation fact sheet, "inmates often mutilate themselves with razors, shards of glass, sharpened chicken bones, writing utensils and other objects. Many engage in prolonged fits of screaming and ranting. Others converse aloud with the voices they hear in their heads. Still others spread feces and other waste throughout their cells. Suicide attempts are common. Many have been successful."

Another lawsuit, filed earlier in the spring, accuses ADX officials of denying proper mental health care to inmate Jose Martin Vega, who subsequently hanged himself in his cell.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]