By Boston Woodard For four decades, politicians and the public have expanded prisons and toughened laws such as Three Strikes, but now many analysts say the pendulum appears to be swinging in a new [...] Continue Reading
Police
The Prison Press
By Boston Woodard Newspapers written and published in prison have been in existence in America since 1800, beginning with the Forlorn Hope in New York state. The paper’s founder, prisoner William [...] Continue Reading
Where Am I?
By Maria Telesco On election night, a TV pundit proclaimed, “Tomorrow, half the people will be happy, and the other half will be angry.” The problem is, he failed to tell me which group I’d be in, [...] Continue Reading
Journey to Freedom
By Maria Telesco What would you do if your sister was convicted of murder and sentenced to death? If there was no body found, no blood, no “missing person” report, no evidence that a murder had even [...] Continue Reading
Prison System Punishes Community Alliance Writer
By Mike Rhodes Boston Woodard, who has been writing for the Community Alliance newspaper for the last seven-plus years, has been put in solitary confinement in a California state prison. This is [...] Continue Reading
Exonoree Says “Death to the Death Penalty”
By Richard Stone Sabrina Butler has the dubious honor of being the only American female “exonoree”—a death row inmate who has later been found not guilty of the crime she was incarcerated for and [...] Continue Reading
State-Sanctioned Torture in Pelican Bay SHU
By Daniel Treglia Located just a few miles from the Oregon border is a prison tucked into the redwood forest known as Pelican Bay. It’s said that Pelican Bay was designed to house the “worst of the [...] Continue Reading
Death Without the Possibility of Parole
Community Alliance Writer Thrown in the Hole (Again) By Mike Rhodes Days before going to press we learned that our colleague Boston Woodard has been put into solitary confinement. Woodard, who writes [...] Continue Reading
With Your Help, We Can and Shall Abolish the Death Penalty
By Maria Telesco Thanks to all for your responses to the booklet A Taxpayer’s Guide to the California Death Penalty. Now that you’ve read it and know the facts, we are preparing for the next phase. A [...] Continue Reading
The Guilty Governor and the Prison Boom
By Catherine Campbell (Author’s note: This is part two and the last section of an article that began in the November issue of the Community Alliance. Part one covered the period of California prison [...] Continue Reading
The Guilty Governor and the Prison Boom
By Catherine Campbell (Author’s note: This is part one of a two-part series on the history of the California prison boom. Part two will appear in the November issue of the Community Alliance.) Our [...] Continue Reading
The Martyrdom of Troy Davis: Shariah Law and Bloodthirsty American “Justice”
By Maria Telesco In days of yore, crime victims’ families took swift revenge. If a neighbor stole your goat, they’d slaughter his entire herd in retaliation. If someone was killed, they’d massacre [...] Continue Reading