Incarceration in America

I spent three years teaching young men between the ages of 16 and 18 in a public high school run by the New York City Department of Education on Rikers Island, one of the world's largest penal colonies. Because Rikers is a jail, all of my students were awaiting trial. Most of them had been …

Advertisement

The Brutal Reality of Life in America’s Most Notorious Jail

FROM THE ATLANTIC I’ve been locked up in maximum-security prisons for two decades. My time on Rikers Island was worse. By John J. Lennon Nina Berman / Redux JANUARY 23, 2023 This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, For the past …

A bill to fight expensive prison phone call costs heads to Biden’s desk

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1146370950/prison-phone-call-cost-martha-wright-biden January 1, 20239:01 AM ET JULIANA KIMTwitter Prison inmates make one of their daily allotment of six phone calls at the York Community Reintegration Center. John Moore/Getty Images Legislation that aims to curb the costs of phone calls behind bars is heading to President Biden's desk for his signature. The Martha Wright-Reed Just and …

In the Building

This is a chapter from my memoir about teaching incarcerated high school students on Rikers Island in NYC that was published in the literary magazine, J Journal. The memoir is titled The New Plantation: Lessons from Rikers Island (published in 2019 by Deerbrook Editions): https://www.jjournal.org/post/in-the-building In the Sprungs, I had grown completely comfortable with my …

Rikers: A Bright Green Future for a Dark Place?

One day, Rikers could be a source of light, in the form of solar power. Plus, Lee Zeldin’s efforts to avoid positions some New Yorkers consider unenlightened. By James Barron Nov. 2, 2022 You're reading the New York Today newsletter.  Local reporting on the stories that define the city. Plus weather, upcoming events, Metropolitan Diary and more. Get …

Sentence: Ten Years and a Thousand Books in Prison

Daniel Genis. Viking, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-525-42955-5 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-42955-5 A man does hard time with the help of literature in this striking and soulful debut. Journalist Genis revisits his stint in New York State prisons from 2003 to 2014 after committing a string of knife-point street robberies to fund his heroin habit at the age of …

THIS IS NOT JUSTICE

A Philadelphia teenager and the empty promise of the Sixth Amendment By Jake Tapper https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/11/campaign-to-free-incarcerated-philadelphia-teenager-sixth-amendment/671527/ Painting by Fulton Leroy Washington (MR WASH). Source: Malike Sidibe for The Atlantic. OCTOBER 12, 2022 This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.  …

Maine prison debate team beats MIT in historic competition

Courts and Crime Maine Public | By Susan Sharon Published October 20, 2022 at 5:44 PM EDT From left: Anita Volpe, Tatyana Tomlinson, Victoria Scott, Daniel Porter, Chandler Dugal and Shaun Libby from the Maine Department of Corrections debate team. Last week, with little fanfare, a historic, livestreamed debate took place. On one side: a pre-law student, …

Seventh in a Series of Readings from The New Plantation: Lessons from Rikers Island

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRr6GvznsiM&t=1s Reading from The New Plantation: Lessons from Rikers Island “The New Plantation takes us into the chaos of Rikers Island, giving us the vivid voices of young men–kids, really–caught in the unrelenting grip of institutional racism. I found it riveting.” –Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys, Ernie’s Ark, and One-in-a-Million Boy “It’s easy to forget …

A Filmmaker Who Sees Prison Life With Love and Complexity

The Culture Issue - The New York Times Garrett Bradley has made a documentary, “Time,” that stubbornly resists all the easy ways of thinking about incarceration in America. By Ismail Muhammad October 6, 2020 When I first watched “Time,” Garrett Bradley’s feature documentary debut, I found myself confused at what exactly I was audience to. Was …

Sixth in a Series of Readings from The New Plantation: Lessons from Rikers Island

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1t0hA7byLpE “The New Plantation takes us into the chaos of Rikers Island, giving us the vivid voices of young men–kids, really–caught in the unrelenting grip of institutional racism. I found it riveting.” –Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys, Ernie’s Ark, and One-in-a-Million Boy “It’s easy to forget people of whatever age who have been disappeared by …