Thomas Erumgold has done multiple "tours of duty," a euphemism he uses to refer to time behind bars. Prison, he says, is a lonely place to be, and keeping in touch with friends and family on the outside world "can sometimes feel like pulling teeth."

That all changed in 2012 when a company called JPay, known for its electronic money transfer service for inmates, installed a kiosk in his prison's common area where inmates could send emails and browse through a library of over 10,000 songs. Not long after, JPay also began selling prison-safe tablets, which inmates could use to write up their emails, listen to music downloaded from the kiosk, and play games.

With this technology, Erumgold had easy access to his son's mother in Oregon, his good friends in Hawaii and Virginia — all of the people who previously seemed so far out of reach. 

 “The ability to maintain contact with loved ones or people who actually care about you who have some positive things to say to you, it’s kind of priceless," Erumgold told me in 2014, while he was still in North Dakota State Penitentiary.

JPay is often criticized for its business practices — it has been accused of overcharging for services, offering shoddy technical support, and operating in the moral gray area of making money off the backs of prisoners and their loved ones — but the company also does a lot more good than people give it credit for.

For Erumgold, JPay's products were a salve for the loneliness that often pervades prison life. Based on discussions with Tech Insider and on social media, prisoners and their family members seem to agree. 

Shaking up an antiquated industry

JPay founder Ryan Shapiro has never been in prison, but to hear him tell it, he cares deeply about the inadequacies of the justice system.

In 2001, a friend's mother was taken to New York's infamous Riker's Island after being arrested by the FBI for allegedly embezzling funds from her boss. Once there, she found that she needed money on a weekly basis in order to eat well and pay for protection.

Shapiro's friend, also in New York, was forced to drive down to a detention center, waiting in line with at least 100 other people to hand cash to a worker behind a window. The friend would then have to wait for his mother to call to say that she got the money, often up to two weeks later.

"It was obvious to us that the industry needed disruption," says Shapiro, who previously worked in marketing for a tech startup. "We needed more convenient options to make payments."

This was the seed that planted the idea for JPay's electronic money transfer system, which lets people in the outside world send money to inmates via an online system that generally processes payments within a day.

JPay launched in 2002, and in the years since, the Florida company has expanded far beyond money transfers, coming out with a kiosk for email access and Skype-like video visitations, an MP3 player, and multiple versions of an electronic tablet, among other things. 

Before companies like JPay started installing kiosks, inmates only had access to the outside through letters, phone calls, and in-person visits. There are still plenty of prisons that don't offer email or video options at all. 

In early July, Shapiro unveiled JPay's newest product: the JP5Mini, a $70 tablet that's outfitted with wireless capabilities and an app store. No longer do prisoners have to download music and send emails from the JPay kiosk. Now they can do it from a personal device — inside their cells, in the weight room, or wherever else the wireless network works. 

The only hitch: everything comes at a cost, including emails, which require a paid virtual "stamp"to go through to recipients. Stamp pricing varies depending on the prison, but each one goes for about the same cost as a physical stamp. At the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Byrd Unit, for example, 20 stamps go for $9.80, while 40 can be had for $19.60.

Electronic money deposits also come at a price. The cost of sending between $100 and $199.99 at the Byrd Unit: $10.45.

The Steve Jobs of prison tech

JPay has been called the "Apple of the U.S. prison system." In a sense, that makes Shapiro the Steve Jobs of prison tech.

Like Jobs, he's a controversial figure in his industry. He's also created prison-ready analogues for many of Apple's offerings — albeit items that are designed more for durability than elegance — including a music library with over 10 million songs available for purchase, an MP3 player, tablets, and an app store. 

Shapiro is not the only one to offer these products — other companies also sell tablets and MP3 players to prisoners. But he has used his marketing savvy to get far more attention than his competitors, for better or worse.  

An extensive investigation in 2014 by The Center for Public Integrity accused the company of gouging inmates' families with unreasonable fees for its electronic money transfers. (JPay cut its fees for sending money to inmates after the investigation came out.)

The CPI investigation also condemned JPay for unfair practices in its music download and tablet businesses. Inmates in Ohio told CPI that the state takes away inmate-owned radios when music players and tablets go on sale. At the same time, JPay's songs can cost 30 to 50% more than they would on iTunes.

When I first spoke to Shapiro, not long after the CPI investigation was released, he brushed it off.

"[The reporter] clearly had his agenda before he even interviewed me. He went out and interviewed three or four different customers who were disgruntled, and made it seem as if our customer base was unhappy with our company. I can’t tell you how untrue this was," Shapiro says. "He didn’t go and interview any of our customers who are perfectly happy with us. I can’t tell you how many phone calls, how many people we meet who say we made a difference in their life."

A glance at JPay's Facebook page indicates that people are conflicted about the company.

There are plenty of complaints:

• "To JPay officials: the Machine OH DCI 0001 located at Dayton Correctional Institution has a broken USB port which physically needs to be fixed. Everyone's JP4s are locked because they cannot plug them in."
• "I send my Jpays to the Hughes Unit and they are routinely lost of late. Inmates should have to sign something when receiving a Jpay."
• "Video visits to my daughter in Dayton Ohio has not been completed the last 3 visits. The kiosk is ALWAYS broke.......A total rip off."

But also appreciative messages:

• "This is a great way to stay connected with your loved ones and make sure they are alright."
• "My love got out in March and we got married over the wkend. Thanks to jpay for making communication so much easier while he was incarcerated!"
• "I absolutely love the service jpay provides. From emailing to the video grams and music. It's awesome! It's so important to be able to keep in close contact with our loved ones!"

Donald Zeller, a former Washington state inmate (and longtime JPay customer) who recently spoke to Business Insider, says that the company's products — including the first-generation JP3 media player and the Jp4 tablet — provided an escape from tedium and made the prison experience easier to handle.

But JPay's quality control and customer support are lacking, says Zeller. When the JP3 was released, "you'd get the device and it would work for a couple days, but then it wouldn't connect to a kiosk, or the device locks itself," he says.

"We've always had issues with the devices. We would submit support tickets to the company using the kiosk, and anywhere from three days to two weeks later, we would get a response that we'd have to mail back the property. Anywhere from a month to six months later we would get the devices back. There was no consistency."

The top priority: security

While inmates complain about device quality, JPay's takes security precautions seriously. The company runs its own private, locked-down WiFi network in the prisons that offer the JP5Mini, and inmates don't have access to an Internet browser on its tablets.

Prisoners can't easily the steal devices. Inmate credentials are digitally engraved upon delivery, and can't be deleted. If a prisoner tried to steal one from another inmate, he or she would have no way of using the tablet.

Inmates can't email anyone they want, either; people on the outside have to initiate contact first, ensuring that prisoners don't contact their victims. Prison staffers also have the option of screening emails. 

The clear plastic casing of JPay's tablets makes it difficult to hide contraband, and the device is designed to be tamper-proof. "There were some worries about the JP4 tablet being used as a weapon, but we’ve had no issues at all with those types of things," says Colby Braun, the warden at North Dakota State Penitentiary.   

JPay's presence only continues to grow. The company's various services are now offered at over 1,200 facilities in 34 states, ranging from low-security outfits to supermax prisons. In 2014, inmates sent over 14.2 million emails and 650,000 mobile payments through JPay's systems. Over 40,000 JP4 tablets — the most up-to-date JPay tablet at the time — were purchased.

Shapiro predicts that JPay's offerings will be in every state by 2020. He won't disclose the company's financial information, but says that it "has the largest footprint in corrections in the country" out of any prison tech outfit.  

The JP5mini vs. every other tablet 

The first thing to know about the new WiFi-enabled JP5mini is that it doesn't measure up to an iPad, or any other consumer tablet for that matter. The device, which has 32 gigabytes of storage and a dual-core processor, is incredibly sturdy, so it has that on delicate tablets that crack after a single drop on the ground.

As you can see, the tablet handily survives a big fall. It can also hold up in 250-degree temperatures, and the battery lasts long enough to play 12 hours of video and over 35 hours of music.

But its feature set is limited.

Here's what inmates can do today on the 4.3-inch, Android-based JP5mini: purchase music with an "iTunes-like experience," as Shapiro calls it; send email; and buy games from an app store. 

"We manipulate the games to work in our environment. We license, modify them, or buy them straight out and offer them in the app store in order to work in the prison environment," Shapiro says. 

JPay also plans to make movies, books, and learning apps available for purchase in the near future. In the fall, the company plans to roll out an education platform, but won't give details on what it will look like until then. 

Getting access to JPay's tablets is fairly simple for inmates who have the money. Prisoners can either order a device directly from one of JPay's kiosks and have it shipped to them, or family members on the outside can buy the tablets.

JPay shipped me a JP5mini to test out soon after the tablet launched. My verdict: it seems like a decent way to pass the time. The tablet came preloaded with a calendar, radio, calculator, music player, image gallery, email app (photo and video attachments are allowed), and a handful of games, including Tiltmazes and a version of tic-tac-toe.

If I were in prison and had enough cash, I'd probably buy one of these. 

While JPay's kiosk services remain popular, the company is now devoting most of its resources to developing tablets and apps, with an emphasis on future education apps. 

The future of prison education

Shapiro gets especially excited when he talks about JPay's future in the education space.

"We have to focus our energy on making sure that inmates don’t return to prison. If they’re trained and educated in prison on use of technologies or email, and they're taking coursework, we can reduce [recidivism]," he says. "We're developing course offerings, and we'll deliver college courses."

JPay isn't alone in its vision of providing educational materials to prisoners. Another company, American Prison Data Systems (APDS), provides prison tablets — ruggedized Samsung Android tablets — that are focused on education. These tablets are actually free for prisoners and paid for by correctional facilities. The hope is that the devices can prevent criminals from relapsing into lives of crime once they are released. 

"Our tablet does provide entertainment that could be a pacifier, keeping inmates calm, but our purpose is a higher purpose," APDS CEO Chris Grewe said when we spoke in 2014.  "We think, frankly, that some of our competitors have a practice of being mildly exploitative and having their sights set too low. Some other companies have mixed reputations with pricing and money transfers. They’re not education companies at heart."

APDS's offerings include offline Khan Academy courses, thousands of digital books, and an e-law library. 

The desire to reduce recidivism through education isn't unfounded. According to a 2013 study from the RAND Corporation, inmates participating in prison education programs have a 43% lower chance of returning to prison than those who don't. Participating inmates also have a 13% higher chance of getting employment upon release. 

JPay is still much larger than APDS, so its footprint in the educational space will also be bigger, at least for now. With approximately 2.2 million adults imprisoned in the U.S., the  prison tech industry still has plenty of room to grow.

Shapiro says that he's seen a flood of requests for proposals (RFPs) from state agencies looking for prison tablets.

"They see the advantages, the necessity," he says. "There's no point in fighting it. You’re just fighting being more efficient. It's good for the public, for the security of the prison, and for the inmates."

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Thomas Erumgold has done multiple "tours of duty," a euphemism he uses to refer to time behind bars. Prison, he says, is a lonely place to be, and keeping in touch with friends and family on the outside world "can sometimes feel like pulling teeth."

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The exposure of regular prisoner abuse at Los Angeles' jails has lead to a reform of the system, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The New York Times reports that the settlement between the LA County Sheriff’s Department and the Justice Department will aim to improve how mentally ill prisoners are treated and crack down on physical, mental, and sexual abuse by deputies in the country's biggest jail system.

“This is one of the few times in my career that I’ve seen reform on such a big scale,"Margaret Winter, the associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, told The Times.

"Not that there aren’t still significant problems, but this is a major, real thing.”

The settlement came after the LA County Sheriff's Department disclosed a number of problems in the jails, which eventually led to the indictment of over a dozen Sheriff's Department staff.

Some of the changes announced are meant to reduce suicides and implementing more investigations into all suicide attempts, as well as better assessing the mental health state of the inmates. Other changes include more crisis intervention training for jail employees and a requirement for inmates to spend more time outside of their cell.

The settlement also addressed the use of force in jail and expanded on a previous settlement announced in December 2014, which implemented new policies presided over by a three-person panel that would address the culture of systematic abuse.

According to lawsuits against sheriff's deputies, guards would award each other points for breaking prisoners' bones and inmates were also regularly racially insulted and at least one was sexually assaulted.

Other changes in the settlement focus on the better treatment of mentally ill inmates, and more mental health professionals would be added to work at the prison. The changes also include training for jail staff on how to work with mentally unstable prisoners.

The Times notes that as many as 4,000 mentally ill prisoners are housed in the county’s jails each day, according to LA County sheriff Jim McDonnell.

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Richmond, California, had 46 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2007, making it one of the most deadly places in the United States —up there with murder capitals like Flint, Michigan, and New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Read more: http://www.techinsider.io/insight-that-could-reduce-murders-and-prison-populations#ixzz3iG6l8PVp

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mass incarceration, a problem that President Barack Obama and nearly all 2016 White House hopefuls agree must be tackled, can only be substantially reduced by easing punishments for some violent criminals, according to an analysis released on Tuesday.

A range of ideas for shrinking the swelling U.S. prison population, now at 2.2 million, was advanced by the Urban Institute, a policy think tank, in the wake of Obama's historic prison visit last month and call for congressional sentencing reform legislation.

The Urban Institute unveiled an online tool, called the Prison Population Forecaster, to measure how the changes would affect the prison population, which grew exponentially over the past four decades even as crime dropped to all-time recorded lows.

The issue especially resonates in the African-American community, with black men six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.

The tool is meant to help determine what states actually need to do to trim prison populations by as much as 50 percent, said Urban Institute researcher Bryce Peterson. It uses data from 15 states that represent nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison population.

The first example focused on narcotics offenses. Many states have been reforming their drug laws, and if the number of people imprisoned for drug offenses were cut in half, that could shrink the prison population by 7 percent by 2022.

Sentencing reform for property offenses such as burglary could have an even greater effect, as would rethinking the decision to lock up parolees who commit technical violations of their release. Imprisoning half as many parole violators could reduce prison populations by 14 percent by 2022.

But with most people in state prisons incarcerated for a violent offense, the most effective method would be shortening the length of stays for some violent crimes, the researchers said.

In Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island, reducing the length of incarceration for violent offenses by 15 percent would cut the prison population by 50 percent more than reducing drug admissions, the institute said.

"We believe there is no way to have a substantial impact on mass incarceration without considering violent offenses," Peterson said.

"Not every person in prison for a 'violent offense' is a murderer or an imminent danger to the public," he said. "Violent offenses include simple assaults, (like) a bar fight."

The 15 states in the forecasting tool are Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

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In 1980, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Jerry Hartfield’s murder conviction and ordered a new trial. But the trial never happened.

Twenty-six years later, Hartfield crafted a handwritten petition arguing, essentially, he was serving time for a crime he was no longer convicted of. The person who helped him craft the petition?

His cellmate, a jailhouse lawyer. It took almost ten years, but it worked: Hartfield’s new trial started this week.

“Jailhouse lawyer” is an informal term for a prisoner who helps other inmates with legal filings. And in most places, the help is just that: informal.

Though the term is occasionally used synonymously with “hack” (“a lawyer who throws out any and all arguments, even blatantly wrong ones,” according to Urban Dictionary), jailhouse lawyers have been at the heart of several key legal victories: the right to an attorney, the right to be protected from abuse by other prisoners and by guards, and the right to free exercise of religion.

In his book Jailhouse Lawyers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps America’s most well-known jailhouse lawyer, described the practice as “law written with stubs of pencils...law learned in a stew of bitterness, under the constant threat of violence, in places where millions of people live, but millions of others wish to ignore or forget.”

The Training

Occasionally jailhouse lawyers are actual lawyers: people who went to law school before they were convicted of a crime. Most often, however, they are self-taught, spending long hours in the prison law library. With no access to the internet, they read outdated law books and case law on CD-ROMs.

“The reality of being a jailhouse lawyer is it takes intensive legal study, just the same way it does for lawyers on the outside,” says Rachel Meeropol, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-author of theJailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook. “It’s an incredibly difficult endeavor.”

A handful of states provide more formal means for inmates to provide competent legal help to other inmates. One of the most well-established of these programs is in Louisiana, where 115 “offender counsel substitutes” serve 19,000 of their fellow inmates. They receive 40 hours of training each year and must prove their chops on a standardized adult education exam to earn the coveted job. Michigan and Florida have similar programs.

What Everyone Gets Wrong

“There’s this story about prisoners constantly using lawsuits to complain about frivolous things,” says Meeropol. The image of the prisoner with too much time on his hands, filing one lawsuit after another, gained currency in the 1990s, and remains potent today. “Rikers Island inmates cost city big $$ with ‘frivolous’ lawsuits,” blared the New York Post (citing anonymous sources) in 2013. A San Diego paper ran a similar story that same year.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act— passed in 1996 in response to this perception about inmate lawsuits (a case involving an inmate who sued over receiving the wrong type of peanut butter was referenced often during its consideration) — includes a “three strikes” provision. Poor inmates who have had three lawsuits dismissed lose the right to have their filing fees waived for any future lawsuits. Because filing fees can run into the hundreds of dollars, requiring inmates to pay the fee often makes it impossible for them to file lawsuits in the future.

The Insider’s Perspective

Shon Hopwood became a jailhouse lawyer during his 11-year federal sentence for bank robbery. One of Hopwood’s earliest filings for a fellow inmate, John Fellers, was ultimately won before the U.S. Supreme Court. (After his release from prison in October 2008, Hopwood went to law school and will begin a faculty position at Georgetown Law School in late August.)

Because prisons typically have rules preventing inmates from paying one another, jailhouse lawyers are “paid” in creative ways. When Hopwood was working on a petition for a fellow inmate who was Italian, “every Friday, I would take my plastic bowl and meet him at the housing unit, and he would bring me back a bowl of pasta and homemade pasta sauce he and the other Italian gentlemen had made” using generic marinara sauce from the commissary supplemented with fresh vegetables smuggled out of the kitchen.

“To this day, it’s the best spaghetti I’ve ever had.” Another inmate paid for his petition — which ultimately helped shave 10 years off of his sentence — by buying Hopwood a typewriter ribbon and a card for using the copy machine. “For $12 of commissary, he got 10 years off his sentence,” Hopwood says.

Retaliation

Jailhouse lawyering can be a high-stakes proposition. Stories abound of retaliation, both big and small, by prison administrators against those who make trouble for them in the legal system.

The New York Civil Liberties Union identified at least 100 instances of inmates being sent to solitary confinement for providing “unauthorized legal assistance.” In a federal lawsuit, a prisoner named Avon Twitty accused the Bureau of Prisons of moving him to a “Communication Management Unit,” designed to limit prisoners’ access to other prisoners or the outside world, as a result of his jailhouse lawyering (he was paroled in 2011, and his role in the case was dismissed).

Says Hopwood, “Once you start suing prison staff, things get real real quick.”

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Former inmates at a privately run Nashville jail say they worked without pay building bean-bag "cornhole" games, plaques shaped like footballs, birdhouses and dog beds so that officials could sell them through their personal business at a flea market.

Inmates can legally be required to work without pay, in some circumstances, but jail employees are not supposed to profit from their labor. But former inmates Larry Stephney and Charles Brew say that is what happened with Stand Firm Designs, run by two jail employees and one former employee, according to their business card.

Although the company website says Stand Firm Designs is "composed of retired contractors," Stephney and Brew said they produced some of the company's products while working without pay in the jail's woodshop under fear of retaliation.

Those products were sold at the Nashville Flea Market and through the website, they said. Plaques went for $10 to $20 and bean-bag toss games commonly called cornhole were $50, they said.

A section of the website with pictures of the plaques Stephney and Brew say they produced has recently been taken down.

To prove the items being sold by Stand Firm Designs were made by inmates, Stephney and Brew concealed their names under pieces of wood nailed to the backs of items. They also wrote the number 412148, which refers to a section of Tennessee code that makes it illegal for jail officials to require an inmate to perform labor that results in the official's personal gain. The AP was shown some of the items with the concealed names and numbers.

Stand Firm Designs is operated by Rob Hill, a building trades instructor at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility; Steven Binkley, a computer instructor who works out of a room adjoining the woodworking shop; and Roy Napper, who formerly worked at the jail run by Corrections Corporation of America.

The former inmates said Hill and Binkley also took orders from guards and higher-ups throughout the jail for the products they produced.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is probing allegations of misuse of inmate labor at the facility, at the request of Davidson County District Attorney General Glenn Funk.

Messages left for Hill and Binkley were not returned. Napper said the allegations are not true.

"All I can tell you is it's really just a bogus thing. There's not really any slave labor going on over there," he said. "Since it's under investigation, I can't really tell you anything else."

While some of the things Stephney and Brew built were for the facility, like cabinets, most were not, they said. At one point they made 25 birdhouses that they were told were for one of the wardens, Stephney and Brew said.

A message for the warden was not returned.

The jail is run by Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, through a contract with the Davidson County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's office referred questions to CCA. Company spokesman Jonathan Burns said in an email that CCA was cooperating with the investigation, and that the company has a zero-tolerance policy regarding criminal conduct by employees. He declined to address the specific allegations.

The Stand Firm Designs website calls the company a "Christian-based organization" and alludes to the company name with a Bible quote on the home page, "Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong." The company's logo is its initials inside a Christian fish symbol.

Stephney said his job title at the jail was "tutor" in the building trades department. Rather than helping other inmates learn a trade, he said he spent six hours a day, five days a week working without pay for Hill, Binkley and Napper. Although other inmates were supposed to be learning about building, only the tutors were allowed to touch the tools in the woodshop, he said.

Brew was a tutor but also a trustee who had permission to move around the facility fairly freely. That meant sometimes working even longer hours than Stephney.

"I've been in that shop at 11 o'clock at night, 1 o'clock in the morning," Brew said.

Of the work programs in general, CCA's Burns said in an email, "Providing inmates with voluntary, high-quality and impactful re-entry programs that help prepare them for success upon release is one of CCA's top priorities."

Burns said programs like the building trades class at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility are voluntary, and inmates can discontinue participation upon giving notice in accordance with established procedures.

Stephney and Brew said they did not feel free to refuse the work. Stephney said he was afraid of making a complaint, worrying that contraband could be planted in his cell, jeopardizing his parole.

"You do anything there as an inmate, you get put in the hole," Stephney said. "If they do something wrong, they should get in trouble too."

Brew also worried something bad would happen to him if he complained.

"It was common knowledge," he said. "Who are you going to tell? I couldn't even file a grievance on the issue."

Both Stephney and Brew were serving time for probation violations. Stephney was released in June and Brew was released in July.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh Devine said Friday the investigation is ongoing.

SEE ALSO: New York prison guard admits to doing favors for escaped inmates in exchange for snitching on other inmates

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Maryland has permanently shuttered the Baltimore City Detention Center after years of rampant corruption and criminal activity inside the jail, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Tuesday.

“The final closure of this detention center removes a stain on the reputation of our state and Maryland’s correctional system," Hogan said in a statement. "For years, corruption, criminal activity, and deplorable conditions have plagued this facility, but that ends today.”

The state began transferring the jail's 1,000 inmates on July 30, and the last of the inmates have now been moved to other facilities. The detention center's 772 employees will all be transferred to other jails.

Though Hogan said criminal activity had plagued the facility for years, the most shocking allegations of corruption came in April 2013, when an indictment against 13 former corrections officers there was unsealed. 

Prosecutors claimed guards let members of the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang terrorize their jails and break the law behind bars. The guards were indicted for racketeering along with seven inmates, including the gang's alleged ring leader, Tavon White, according to the 44-page indictment.

The Black Guerrilla Family gangsters allegedly bribed guards to bring them cellphones and other contraband necessary to launder money and deal drugs from behind prison walls.

White also allegedly seduced several female guards in the Baltimore City Detention Center, impregnating four of them.

By allegedly bribing and sometimes wooing guards, BGF members were able essentially to rule the facility that was supposed to be guarding them. In one call made from the BDCC, White allegedly said, "This is my jail. You understand that? I’m dead serious....I make every final call in this jail."

The jail was made even more perilous by its shoddy construction, according to Hogan.

"The Baltimore City Men’s Detention center is a patchwork maze of a dozen buildings that dates to the 1850s and has been added onto many times over the years, including 11 renovations," the governor's office said in a press release. "The facility’s age far pre-dates modern penal facility standards and best practices that make its blind corners, dark corridors, and other hazardous conditions extremely dangerous."

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Jamycheal Mitchell, who was arrested four months ago on charges of stealing food worth $5, has been found dead in his jail cell.

The 24-year-old had mental-health problems, according to The Guardian, which broke the story, and he was arrested on misdemeanor charges on April 22 after being "accused of stealing a bottle of Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake worth a total of $5 from a 7-Eleven."

He was held without bail at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Virginia.

The Guardian interviewed court officials and representatives from the police department and the jail itself, but found that none of them could explain why Mitchell wasn't granted bail.

Mitchell's body has not yet received an autopsy, even though he died August 21. An official at Hampton Roads told The Guardian that he seems to have died of "natural causes."

Mitchell's family, though, believes Mitchell died after refusing meals and medication.

Roxanne Adams, his aunt and a registered nurse, said he had schizophrenia and bipolar disorder for five years.

A judge ordered that Mitchell should have been moved to and treated at a state-run mental-health facility after finding that he was not competent to stand trial, but the hospital didn't have any vacancies.

"He was just deteriorating so fast," Adams told The Guardian. "I kept calling the jail, but they said they couldn’t transfer him because there were no available beds."

Adams said that some of Mitchell's relatives were not permitted to visit him because Mitchell hadn't given their names as approved visitors.

"His mind was gone because he wasn’t taking his meds, so he didn't have a list for anyone to see him," Adams told The Guardian.

Mitchell had spent time in jail twice before — in 2010 and 2012 — also on charges on petty larceny and trespassing, and was released both times. In the 2012 incident he had spent a month in a state hospital.

Read the full story at The Guardian >

SEE ALSO: A staggering number of American black men are now 'missing'

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Yelp isn't just a place for users to rate restaurants and bars — it's also a place to talk about jails.

As The Marshall Project points out, former inmates and loved ones visiting friends and family are rating the quality of correctional institutions on the site.

Jails are listed on Yelp's "Public Services & Government," along with libraries, landmarks, DMVs, and post offices. Reviewers often comment on how the facilities are, and talk about their experiences — just as they would with any other place on Yelp.

"The staff came off a little rude. But warmed up after a hour I had to spend with them in the waiting room," Victoria R. wrote in a 3-star review of California Correctional Intitution. "After watching what kind of people they have to deal with I understand why they can be very cold. After all it is a prison."

Reviews also offer intensely personal firsthand experiences. Jenny L. wrote a review for Austin City Jail about her experience inside after she took sleeping pills and drove.

"So, one morning, I wake up next to a girl in the big house,"she wrote. "It took a minute to realize where I was, and I started asking the girl questions.  My cellie told me I was in jail, and then she started crying.  I asked why, and she said she had to poop.  That's cool, whatever, do it.  So she sits on the silver toilet, pooping and crying, and apologizing to me. Dude, just stop crying and pooping, because I might make a shiv out of a toothbrush."

Some reviews offer a look into establishments known for their harshness, and can provide helpful advice for future inmates. The reviews for Rikers Island Correctional Facility are rife with tales of fear and abuse.

“When I would shower, I would take my clothes and wash them, people thought it was funny, but it was really a way for me not to get my own clothes robbed being there was no jump suits,” Jason A. wrote in a 1-star review. “Food tasted like wet noodles and grill gristle…. I later learned to get a muslim halal card, and a jewish card, and know the kitchen staff to see which card would get me a better meal for the day.”

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Just 17 days into a 30-day jail sentence for an unpaid traffic ticket, David Stojcevski, 32, died naked and twitching on the floor of his cell in Macomb County, Michigan, outside of Detroit, reports Kevin Dietz for Detroit's Local 4.

Six days into that sentence, Stojcevski had been put into a mental-health cell, where he was under constant video surveillance and suicide watch.

The video shows, however, that, for the last two days of his life, Stojcevski didn't get off the ground.

Stojcevski's brother has now filed a lawsuit targeting Macomb County, the sheriff, employees of the jail, and the jail's medical contractor, The Detroit News reports.

The suit seeks monetary compensation, court costs, attorneys' fees, punitive damages, and policy changes to prevent similar cases in the future, according to the paper.

Macomb County attorney John Schapka told The Detroit News that he's confident that the county defense would prevail.

Stojcevski died as a result of "acute withdrawal from medication," according to his death certificate, as reported by Dietz. He was prescribed methadone, Xanax, Klonopin, and oxycodone for his mental health and his drug addictions.

Ten days into his sentence, Stojcevski was allegedly told that his "medication has not been ordered at this time," according to the suit, as reported by CBS Local Detroit.

During his withdrawal, Stojcevski reportedly lost 50 pounds, hallucinated, and suffered seizures. Multiple experts told Dietz these behaviors are clear signs of withdrawal.

Guards in the mental health unit are required to monitor surveillance video and take notes on prisoners' conditions every 15 minutes, according to Dietz. As such, Stojcevski should have been checked on 96 times a day. It's not clear whether guards were watching, but when they finally did enter his cell, Stojcevski had already stopped breathing.

Though Stojcevski died in June 2014, the lawsuit and video obtained by Detroit Local 4 have brought widespread attention to the case.

Prisoners in the unit aren't given clothes for their own protection, according to Dietz.

Conditions of various levels of police custody, including transport and jail, have come under scrutiny in recent months due to high-profile coverage of the death of Freddie Gray in April and Sandra Bland in July.

Stojcevski's family hopes that the release of the disturbing footage of his conditions and death will help prevent future cases like his.

The video is below.

Warning: Some readers may find it disturbing.

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Some 6,000 drug offenders in federal prisons around the country will be set free at the end of the month, the Washington Post reported Tuesday afternoon, as part of punishment reductions put in place by the US Sentencing Commission last year which have been made retroactive.

The mass release, the largest in federal prison history, represents a significant step in President Obama’s efforts to reform the criminal justice system, a mission now picking up steam with both parties in Congress. 

The “Drugs Minus Two” policy from the US Sentencing Commission, an independent agency responsible for determining sentences for federal crimes, went into effect last November, giving the Department of Justice a year to prepare for the release, the Post’s Sari Horwitz reports.

Most former inmates will be supervised in programs such as halfway houses, and roughly one in three are foreign nationals who will immediately be deported.

Critics are concerned about an explosion of crime, particularly considering that nearly half of the nation’s 100,000 drug offenders in federal prisons may eventually qualify for early release.

The Justice Department points to a study arguing that recidivism rates do not vary significantly between prisoners with early release and those who serve a full sentence.

They also emphasize that early release is not automatic; eligible inmates will have to petition a judge. Early releasers are still serving “substantial prison sentences,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told the Post.

Prison reform advocates frequently point to social justice ideals as their motive, but practical concerns also play a role: there’s simply no room for all the people America jails. At 724 prisoners per 100,000 people, it’s the highest rate in the world.

Only recently has locking people up become such an American tradition. As Ms. Horwitz reports, the US population has grown by a third since 1980, while federal prison populations jumped by 800 percent, putting them 40 percent over capacity. It’s an expense that threatens other Justice priorities, from fighting violent crime to human trafficking, Department officials told Horwitz in February.

“We’re at a moment where some good people in both parties, Republicans and Democrats, and folks all across the country are coming together around ideas to make the system work smarter, make it work better,” Mr. Obama said in July, announcing a complementary effort to commute sentences for some nonviolent drug offenders. 

His claim that folks “are coming together” is now bolstered by a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill presented to Congress this week, which “its authors hailed not only as the most important federal justice overhaul in a generation, but also as an example of how Congress can work when lawmakers are willing to compromise,” says The New York Times.

The bill seeks to make prisoners’ sentences more proportionate to their crimes, chipping away at "tough on drugs" measures now deemed excessive, and would outlaw juvenile solitary confinement.

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Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was convicted Sunday in Iran after he was prosecuted on several charges, including espionage.

The 39-year-old Iranian-American from California had already been imprisoned for 447 days, longer than any other Western journalist in Iran since 1979, according to the Post.

Despite the publicity surrounding Rezaian’s case, Iran’s penchant for jailing journalists has been tapering off of late, with China taking up the mantle as the world’s biggest jailer of members of the press.

Forty-four journalists were counted as sitting in Chinese jails by December 2014, versus 30 in Iran, according to the Committee To Protect Journalists. Combined with Iran, the two countries put away a third of the 221 incarcerated journalists worldwide last year.

Most members of the media locked up in Iran had been accused of either anti-statism or reporting false news. Three other Americans are also being detained or unaccounted for in Iran, all of them for longer than Rezaian.

In China, a rising number of incarcerations have been driven by the detention of journalists from ethnic minorities, mostly Tibetans and Uighurs. Of the 44 jailed last year, 22 worked for traditional print media, small publishing houses, or mainstream foreign media organizations including German weekly newspaper Die Zeit and overseas websites.

Eritrea has consistently had the worst record for jailing members of the press in Africa for the last five years and was third worst worldwide in 2014, with 23 journalists locked up as of December. None of them have been tried or charged with a crime, said the CPJ.

According to Iranian state television, an Iranian revolutionary court issued a verdict in Rezaian’s trial on Sunday, but officials have not clarified what that conviction may be.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former guard at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex in New York City was convicted on Thursday of assaulting an inmate in 2009, leaving him permanently blind in one eye.

Victor Rodman was found guilty of assault by state Supreme Court Justice Martin Marcus in the Bronx following a two-week non-jury trial, the Bronx district attorney's office said.

In addition, Marcus convicted Rodman and another corrections officer, Michelle Hubert, of covering up the assault by filing false reports claiming Rodman was not in the building at the time of the incident.

Rodman was accused of striking Carlos Sanchez across the face after a fight between Sanchez and another inmate.

Both Rodman and Hubert face up to four years in prison at their sentencing on Dec. 15.

Defense lawyers for Rodman and Hubert were not immediately available for comment.

Rikers Island houses approximately 10,000 prisoners on any given day, making it one of the country's largest jail complexes.

In recent months, city and federal authorities have investigated allegations of rampant violence and other problems at the facility. Dozens of staff members have been arrested for assaulting inmates and smuggling contraband, among other charges.

On Tuesday, former Rikers guard Austin Romain was sentenced to 3-1/2 years in federal prison for smuggling marijuana and other banned items into the jail.

Next week, a federal judge is expected to consider whether to approve a settlement between the U.S. Justice Department and New York City aimed at reducing violence at Rikers. The agreement calls for a federal monitor and other reforms. 

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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The business of charging inmates exorbitant rates for phone calls just became a lot less profitable. 

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday said it will put caps on the costs of calls from prisons. Calls from prisons could cost as much as $14 a minute, before the limits were put in place. 

Its bad news for the private equity funds that own these phone-call businesses. The biggest company, called  Global Tel* Link, is owned by American Securities.

American Securities, which manages about $13 billion, invested in Global Tel* Link in 2011, according to the fund's website. A spokeswoman for the investor declined to comment. 

Global Tel*Link, which was previously owned by Goldman Sachs' private equity arm and Veritas Capital, controls about 50% of the prison call market. 

When the FCC first floated the idea of capping call rates, last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that American Securities was exploring a sale of Global Tel*Link. The newspaper cited unidentified sources and said it wasn't clear if the effort to sell the business was linked to the potential regulations. 

The FCC said it has now barred most add-on fees imposed by the companies, and took other steps to cut the average rate for inmate calls to  $1.65 for a 15-minute call.

"With the cost of a call sometimes ballooning to $14 per minute once inside prison walls, the FCC for the first time capped rates for local and in-state long-distance inmate calling, and cut its existing cap on interstate long-distance calls by up to 50 percent," the regulator said. "Extra fees and charges can increase the cost of families staying in touch by phone with loved ones who are incarcerated by as much as 40%."

Another company in the sector is Securus Technologies. It is owned by Abry Partners, which didn't respond to a request for comment. 

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A Venezuelan state prosecutor who helped lead charges against opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has fled the country and accused the socialist government of pressing him to use false evidence to unfairly condemn Lopez, local media reported.

News website La Patilla posted a video in which a man who identifies himself as Franklin Nieves says the trial violated the rights of Lopez, who was sentenced to nearly 14 years in September on charges stemming from his role in a wave of protests in 2014.

"I decided to leave Venezuela with my family as a result of the pressure being exerted by the executive branch ... that I continue defending the false evidence that was used to condemn Leopoldo Lopez," says the man in the video.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the authenticity of the recording. The state prosecutor's office and the Information Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

One of Lopez's lawyers, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, said via Twitter that Nieves' statements showed Lopez's imprisonment was illegal.

Opposition leaders say Lopez's trial was a mockery of justice and point to it as evidence that the government of President Nicolas Maduro is stifling dissent. Global rights groups widely condemned the trial proceedings as unfair.

Government leaders say Lopez, considered part of the hard-line wing of the opposition, incited violence last year that kicked off more than three months of opposition street protests, which ultimately left more than 40 people dead.

"Those of you who know me know the anguish that I went through, how I didn't sleep ... the pain and the pressure that I felt by continuing with a farce," Nieves said.

Opposition critics say the judicial system is controlled by the ruling Socialist Party and widely used to intimidate government adversaries.

In 2012, supreme court magistrate Eladio Aponte fled the country and later accused the government of systematically intervening in the courts for political ends.

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(Reuters) - A self-styled debt collector for a Mexican drug cartel, who admitted to killing dozens of people over more than three decades, was sentenced on Monday to life in prison without parole for nine murders in California, officials said.

Jose Manuel Martinez, who accepted a plea deal in October that spared him the death penalty, was sentenced in a court in Tulare County, located some 250 miles (400 km) southeast of San Francisco, according to Stuart Anderson, a spokesman for the county's district attorney.

Martinez, 53, was charged with stabbing and shooting nine victims aged 22 to 56 from 1980 to 2011, prosecutors said.

He admitted to shooting a 56-year-old man in his bed in 2000 and dumping at least three bullet-ridden bodies in orange groves in Tulare and Kern Counties over the course of his criminal career.

Martinez also pleaded guilty to attempted murder, kidnapping and murder for financial gain.

Previously he had admitted to murdering a man who made what Martinez said were disparaging remarks about his daughter in 2013 in Alabama and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. He was also suspected of a 2006 double murder in Florida, prosecutors said.

Martinez was arrested by U.S. border police in western Arizona in 2013 after a records check showed that he was wanted on a homicide charge in Alabama. He told investigators he was a debt collector for a Mexican drug cartel.

"This serial killer and self-described 'hitman' will spend the rest of his life behind bars," Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said in a statement in October.

"It is my fervent hope that this brings some solace to the families who survived through the loss of their loved one and then lived many years wondering if there would ever be answers, resolution, and ultimately justice," Ward said.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in New York; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Crystal Patterson didn't have the cash or assets to post $150,000 bail and get out of jail after her arrest for assault in October.

So Patterson, 39, promised to pay a bail bonds company $15,000 plus interest to put up the $150,000 bail for her, allowing to go home and care for her invalid grandmother.

The day after her release, the district attorney decided not to pursue charges. But Patterson still owes the bail bonds company. Criminal justice reformers and lawyers at a nonprofit Washington D.C. legal clinic say that is unconstitutionally unfair.

The lawyers have filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Patterson, Rianna Buffin and other jail inmates who argue that San Francisco and California's bail system unconstitutionally treats poor and wealthy suspects differently.

Wealthy suspects can put up their houses or other valuable assets — or simply write a check — to post bail and stay out of jail until their cases are resolved. Poorer suspects aren't so lucky. Many remain behind bars or pay nonrefundable fees to bail bonds companies.

San Francisco public defender Chesa Boudin says some of his clients who can't afford to post bail plead guilty to minor charges for crimes they didn't commit so they can leave jail.

Boudin represented Buffin, 19, after her arrest for grand theft in October. Buffin couldn't afford to post the $30,000 bail or pay a bond company a $3,000 fee and so contemplated pleading guilty in exchange for a quick release from jail even though she says her only crime was being with the "wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Fortunately, the district attorney declined to charge Buffin and she was released after being held for three days.

"My family was worried," said Ruffin, who lost her $10.50 an hour baggage handler job at the Oakland International Airport after her arrest.

The lawsuit filed by the Equal Justice Under Law in San Francisco federal court in October seeks to abolish the cash bail system in the city, state — and the country. It's the ninth lawsuit the center has filed in seven states.

"The bail system in most states is a two-tiered system," said center founder Phil Telfeyan. "One for the wealthy and one for everyone else."

The center has settled four lawsuits, convincing smaller jails in states in the South to do away with cash bail requirements for most charges.

Telfeyan said a win in California could add momentum to the center's goal to rid the country of the cash bail system, which the lawyers say is used by most county jails in all 50 states. The federal system usually allows non-violent suspects free without bail pending trial and denies bail to serious and violent suspects.

"The country watches what happens in California," said Telfeyan, a former Department of Justice attorney who founded the Washington organization in 2013 with a partner and the first-ever grant from the Harvard Law School Public Service Venture Fund in 2013.

Telfeyan said it's not his goal to put out of business the classic neon-advertising bail bonding industry, but conceded the business model would become obsolete if he convinces courts that the cash bail system is unconstitutional.

The industry didn't acknowledge Telfeyan's first lawsuits filed earlier this year.

But on Monday, lawyers for the California Bail Agents Association filed court papers seeking to formally oppose the San Francisco lawsuit. The association argues that government lawyers for San Francisco and the state are offering only "tepid" opposition to the California lawsuit.

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi argues that most jail inmates are awaiting resolution of minor, non-violent crimes and that letting them free while awaiting court hearings will save the city millions of dollars. Mirkarimi said non-violent suspects can be monitored electronically and with frequent visits from law enforcement officials to ensure they don't flee the area and attend all their court hearings.

In January, Telfeyan and his colleagues from Equal Justice Under Law will ask a judge to temporarily suspend San Francisco's cash bail system until the lawsuit is resolved. Telfeyan said a victory in San Francisco and the elimination of cash bail in the city will most likely lead to the abolition of cash bail in all of the state's 58 counties.

Maggie Kreins, who is president of bail agents group, the says the longtime system of putting up money or an insurance-backed bail bond is better at getting people to show up in court and it saves the public costs of monitoring defendants or hunting down bail jumpers.

Kreins said that California's "bail schedule" could be reformed to lower bail amounts for minor crimes, but that scrapping the system completely would be a mistake.

"What is the incentive to go to court if you don't lose anything for failing to appear?" Kreins said.

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Cook County Jail in Chicago - the biggest single-site jail in the United States - was placed on lockdown on Tuesday after staffing dropped below normal levels, said Cook County Sheriff's spokesman Ben Breit.

Eighteen percent of day shift workers - 142 correctional officers - said they could not come for the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift for various reasons, including illness, family issues and the cold weather, he said.

The staff no-shows were not due to a labor dispute, he said.

Inmates will still go to court hearings and have visitors, but recreation and other programs were canceled, he said.

Breit said this level of lockdown was not uncommon when staffing was low. The jail currently holds around 8,500 inmates, but has capacity for many more.

(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales; Editing by Fiona Ortiz, Chizu Nomiyama and Phil Berlowitz)

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Shaker Aamer, who was held in Guantanamo Bay for 14 years without being charged for a crime, is the last British detainee to be freed. On Monday, he demonstrated outside the US embassy in London, demanding the prison be closed.

During the demonstration, Aamer reunited with his friend Mohamed Ahmed, who had campaigned for his freedom.

"I haven't seen this man for over 14 years," Aamer told Reuters. "And you see him crying, like a baby. Imagine the rest of the brothers who are sitting there waiting for their loved ones. I think they deserve to go home."

Aamer said he plans to spend the rest of his life campaigning for former detainees, as well as current detainees held without trial.

Story by Jacob Shamsian and editing by Ben Nigh

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