By Heather Schoenfeld, Kimberly Rhoten, and Michael C. Campbell

In recent years US prisons have failed to meet legally required minimum standards of care and protection of incarcerated people. Explanations for the failure to protect prisoners in the United States focus on the effects of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and the lack of adequate external oversight. However, very little scholarship empirically examines how different systems of accountability for prisoners’ rights work (or do not work) together. In this article, we introduce an accountability framework that helps us examine the prisoners’ rights “accountability environment” in the United States. We then compare two post-PLRA case studies of failure to protect incarcerated women from sexual assault in two different states. We find that the prisoners’ rights accountability environment is a patchwork of legal, bureaucratic, professional, and political systems. The patchwork accountability environment consists of a web of hierarchical and interdependent relationships that constrain or enable accountability. We argue that ultimately the effectiveness of prisoners’ rights accountability environments depends on whether protecting prisoners’ rights aligns with the priorities of dominant political officials. Our argument has implications for efforts to improve prison conditions and incarcerated people’s well-being. 

Law & Social Inquiry Volume 00, Issue 00, 1–30, 2024 

By David M. Doyle and consisted of Dr. Avril Brandon, Dr. Joe Garrihy, r. Amina Adanan and Prof. Denis Bracken  The Irish Penal Reform Trust and  h Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology

The Irish Penal Reform Trust launched an independently commissioned exploratory research study on the rights and experiences of foreign national and minority ethnic groups in the Irish penal system on Thursday 27 April 2022. "Sometimes I'm missing the words": The rights, needs, and experiences of foreign national and minority ethnic groups in the Irish penal system were supported by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) under the Human Rights and Equality Grant Scheme 2020-2021. Very little information exists on the needs and lived experiences of minority ethnic and foreign national people in prisons and on probation in Ireland. This report aims to bridge that gap and consider these needs and experiences within the context of relevant policy and law. The report was commissioned by IPRT from the Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology.

The need for reform is outlined in 18 recommendations made in the report.

Findings from the research include: 

• Based on an analysis of the quantitative data provided by the Irish Prison Service (IPS), it was found that foreign nationals may receive longer sentences than Irish nationals for controlled drug offenses and sexual offenses.

• Further analysis, along with interviews from professional stakeholders, established that the IPS data – while including statistics on prisoners’ nationality – was deficient in the areas of ethnicity and religion of the prison population.

• Interview data revealed that there were significant challenges faced by foreign nationals and minority ethnic people in prison concerning access to services, respect for different religious backgrounds, as well as language and communication barriers.

• Experiences of racism at different stages of the criminal justice process had the effect of limiting trust with any part of the penal system.

Dublin: Irish Penal Reform Trust, 2022. 73p.

By Columbia Legal Services

  Washington’s prisons are public institutions run by the state Department of Corrections (DOC). The purpose of state correctional institutions is ostensibly to rehabilitate individuals, and to do so without a profit motive or by facilitating profit-seeking behavior. However, the state realizes enormous cost-savings from underpaying its captive labor force as little as $1.00 per hour. People incarcerated perform essential operations jobs like cleaning units and bathrooms or working in food service, all for meager pay far below Washington’s statewide minimum wage. People in prison also often perform unpaid labor as DOC fails to approve all jobs as paid positions. Washington State has recognized in other settings that underpaying detained workers is wrong. In 2017, Washington State sued the GEO Group—a for-profit corporation running the private immigration detention center in Tacoma—for failure to pay its workers (people in custody in the detention center) in accordance with Washington’s minimum wage law. At the time, the GEO Group was paying workers in custody $1.00 per day. The State brought this lawsuit – and has so far prevailed – on the basis that private prisons must comply with Washington State wage laws. And yet, the State has not taken similar steps to protect people in state, local, or municipal prisons and jails. Instead, state law currently exempts people housed in public carceral facilities from the definition of “employees” for the purposes of Washington’s minimum wage and labor standards laws. Further, people in Washington state prisons face severe consequences if they refuse to work, including lengthier prison sentences. This system of coerced and underpaid labor within DOC is nothing short of modern-day slavery. And, in keeping with this sordid legacy, people in prison face ongoing discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and immigration status—all of which are barriers to gaining and maintaining the employment people need to avoid punishment and to earn enough to pay for basic necessities. Correctional Industries (CI) is the division within DOC that operates businesses and employs people in custody in Washington prisons. CI reported over $133 million in revenue and over $38 million in assets in fiscal year 2023. The majority of CI workers fall into one of two classes of employment: Class II and Class III. Class II jobs are generally referred to as “CI jobs,” and entail working outside the prison unit, either in an operations role (e.g., food production, laundry, etc.), or producing other goods and services (e.g., furniture manufacturing) that CI then sells to various government agencies and nonprofit organizations. Class II workers usually earn between $0.80 and $2.85 per hour and are eligible for overtime pay.6 Class III jobs are generally considered “unit jobs,” and include porters, facility maintenance, and other essential tasks around the prison units. Despite the wide range of prison jobs, DOC fails to provide people in prison with sufficient opportunities for real-world job training or skill acquisition, leaving people in custody unprepared to gain employment after release.   In response to growing awareness and concern over labor exploitation in prisons, in 2023, the state legislature allocated funds to increase the wage floor for Class III jobs from $0.42 to $1.00 per hour. However, DOC then capped worker earnings at $40 per week.7 Even with this raise, people in DOC custody are paid far below the 2024 state mandated minimum wage of $16.28 per hour, and meanwhile the cost of living in prison is rising.

Seattle: Columbia Legal Services. 2024, 62pg