Prison System Corruption News Articles

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In late September 1983, an 11-year-old girl named Sabrina Buie was found murdered in a soybean field in Robeson County. She had been raped, beaten with sticks and suffocated with her own underwear. Within days, police got confessions from two local teenagers, Henry Lee McCollum, 19 at the time, and his half brother, Leon Brown, who was 15. Both were convicted and sentenced to death. On [September 2], a state judge ordered both men freed after multiple pieces of evidence, some of which had never been turned over to defense lawyers, proved that neither Mr. McCollum nor Mr. Brown was responsible for the crime. DNA taken from a cigarette found at the crime scene matched a different man, Roscoe Artis, who is already serving life in prison for a similar murder committed just weeks after Sabrina Buie’s killing. Virtually everything about the arrests, confessions, trial and convictions of Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown was polluted by official error and misconduct. No physical evidence linked either man to the crime, so their false confessions, given under duress, were the heart of the case the prosecutors mounted against them. Both men’s confessions were handwritten by police after hours of intense questioning without a lawyer or parent present. Neither was recorded, and both men have maintained their innocence ever since. Equally disturbing, Mr. Artis was a suspect from the start. Three days before the murder trial began, police requested that a fingerprint from the crime scene be tested for a match with Mr. Artis, who had a long history of sexual assaults against women. The test was never done, and prosecutors never revealed the request to the defense.

Note: For more on this, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prison corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

As many as 300 people who were sentenced to death in the United States over a three-decade period were likely innocent. Dozens of defendants sentenced to death in recent years have been exonerated before their sentences could be carried out, but many more were probably falsely convicted, said University of Michigan professor Samuel Gross, the study's lead author. "Our research adds the disturbing news that most innocent defendants who have been sentenced to death have not been exonerated," Gross wrote in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their research, Gross and his colleagues examined the 7,482 U.S. death sentence convictions between 1973 and 2004. Of those, 117 had been exonerated in recent years, thanks to the efforts of numerous groups and a tide of public attention to issues surrounding the death penalty. Gross and his co-authors ... estimated that about 4 percent of those sentenced to death were actually innocent, nearly three times the number exonerated during that period. Once inmates' sentences are commuted to life, they are far less likely to be exonerated, mostly because there are fewer legal resources given to their cases, Gross said. "If you were never sentenced to death, you never had the benefit - if you call it a benefit - of that process," he said. Although the study focuses on a period ending 10 years ago, the percentage of false death sentence convictions likely holds true today, Gross said.

Note: For more on the terrible injustices within the corrupt prison-industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

The FBI has launched an investigation of the Corrections Corporation of America over the company's running of an Idaho prison with a reputation so violent that inmates dubbed it "Gladiator School." CCA has operated Idaho's largest prison for more than a decade, but last year, CCA officials acknowledged it had understaffed the Idaho Correctional Center by thousands of hours in violation of the state contract. CCA also said employees falsified reports to cover up the vacancies. The announcement came after an Associated Press investigation showed CCA sometimes listed guards as working 48 hours straight to meet minimum staffing requirements. The understaffing has been the subject of federal lawsuits and a contempt of court action against CCA. The ACLU sued on behalf of inmates at the Idaho Correctional Center in 2010, saying the facility was so violent that inmates called it "Gladiator School" and that understaffing contributed to the high levels of violence there. In 2012, a Boise law firm sued on behalf of inmates contending that CCA had ceded control to prison gangs so that they could understaff the prison and save money on employee wages, and that the understaffing led to an attack by one prison gang on another group of inmates that left some of them badly injured.

Note: If the above link fails, use this one for the same Associated Press article covering prisons corruption on the website of the UK's Guardian. For more on corruption in the prison-industrial complex, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

Are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? The police have a special inclination toward confabulation ... because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so. That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote [that] “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.” The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. New York City officers have been found to engage in patterns of deceit in cases involving charges as minor as trespass. Jeannette Rucker, the chief of arraignments for the Bronx district attorney, explained in a letter that it had become apparent that the police were arresting people even when there was convincing evidence that they were innocent. To justify the arrests, Ms. Rucker claimed, police officers provided false written statements, and in depositions, the arresting officers gave false testimony.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on police and prisons corruption, click here.

“Louisiana is the world’s prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.” That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the state’s largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it. The picture that emerges is one of convicts as chattel and a legal system essentially based on human commodification. • One in 86 Louisiana adults is in the prison system, which is nearly double the national average. • More than 50 percent of Louisiana’s inmates are in local prisons, which is more than any other state. The national average is 5 percent. • Louisiana leads the nation in the percentage of its prisoners serving life without parole. • Nearly two-thirds of Louisiana’s prisoners are nonviolent offenders. The national average is less than half. In the early 1990s, the state was under a federal court order to reduce overcrowding, but instead of releasing prisoners or loosening sentencing guidelines, the state incentivized the building of private prisons. But, in what the newspaper called “a uniquely Louisiana twist,” most of the prison entrepreneurs were actually rural sheriffs. They saw a way to make a profit and did.

Note: To read the powerful 8-part investigation of the Louisiana prison system from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, click here. For more on the cruelty and corruption of the prison-industrial complex, click here.

The US criminal justice system is a broken machine that wrongfully convicts innocent people, sentencing thousands of people to prison or to death for the crimes of others, as a new study reveals. The University of Michigan law school and Northwestern University have compiled a new National Registry of Exonerations – a database of over 2,000 prisoners exonerated between 1989 and the present day, when DNA evidence has been widely used to clear the names of innocent people convicted of rape and murder. Of these, 885 have profiles developed for the registry's website, exonerationregistry.org. The details are shocking. Death row inmates were exonerated nine times more frequently than others convicted of murder. One-fourth of those exonerated of murder had received a death sentence, while half of those who had been wrongfully convicted of rape or murder faced death or a life behind bars. Ten of the inmates went to their grave before their names were cleared. The leading causes of wrongful convictions include perjury, flawed eyewitness identification and prosecutorial misconduct. "The most important thing we know about false convictions is that they happen and on a regular basis … Most false convictions never see the light of the day," said University of Michigan law professors Samuel Gross and Michael Shaffer, who wrote the study. "Nobody had an inkling of the serious problem of false confessions until we had this data," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

Note: For key reports from major media sources on the injustices and corruption of the prison-industrial complex, click here.

On Bastoy, an island 46 miles south of Oslo, [125] residents live in brightly colored wooden chalets, spread over one square mile of forest and gently sloping hills. They go horseback riding and throw barbecues, and have access to a movie theater, tanning bed and, during winter, two ski jumps. Despite all its trappings, Bastoy island isn't an exclusive resort: it's a prison. Bastoy's governor ... describes it as the world's first human-ecological prison a place where inmates learn to take responsibility for their actions by caring for the environment. Prisoners grow their own organic vegetables, turn their garbage into compost and tend to chickens, cows, horses and sheep. The prison generally emphasizes trust and self-regulation: Bastoy has no fences, the windows have no bars, and only five guards remain on the island after 3 p.m. In an age when countries from Britain to the U.S. cope with exploding prison populations by building ever larger and, many would say, ever harsher prisons, Bastoy seems like an unorthodox, even bizarre, departure. But Norwegians see the island as the embodiment of their country's long-standing penal philosophy: that traditional, repressive prisons do not work, and that treating prisoners humanely boosts their chances of reintegrating into society. Norway's system produces overwhelmingly positive results. Within two years of their release, 20% of Norway's prisoners end up back in jail. In the U.K. and the U.S., the figure hovers between 50% and 60%. Of course, Norway's ... prison roll lists a mere 3,300 inmates, a rate of 70 per 100,000 people, compared with 2.3 million in the U.S., or 753 per 100,000 the highest rate in the world.

Note: Why aren't other countries taking heed of Norway's excellent example? Part of the reason is that some companies make massive profits from the prison system. For more on this, click here.

One in every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion in 2008, according to a new study. Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation and public assistance, based on state and federal data. Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which quadrupled in the past two decades, according to [a new report] by the Pew Center on the States, the first breakdown of spending in confinement and supervision in the past seven years. The increases in the number of people in some form of correctional control occurred as crime rates declined by about 25 percent in the past two decades. As states face huge budget shortfalls, prisons, which hold 1.5 million adults, are driving the spending increases. Pew researchers say that as states trim services like education and health care, prison budgets are growing. Those priorities are misguided, the study says. “States are looking to make cuts that will have long-term harmful effects,” said Sue Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. “Corrections is one area they can cut and still have good or better outcomes than what they are doing now.” About $9 out of $10 spent on corrections goes to prison financing (that includes money spent to house 780,000 people in local jails). One in 11 African-Americans, or 9.2 percent, are under correctional control, compared with one in 27 Latinos (3.7 percent) and one in 45 whites (2.2 percent).

Note: Crime is down 25%, yet prison spending is 400% of what it was 20 years ago. Is there anything strange here? The prison-industrial complex is mighty big and in many ways mighty corrupt.

New York City is an expensive place to live for just about everyone, including prisoners. The city paid $167,731 to feed, house and guard each inmate last year, according to a study the Independent Budget Office released this week. “It is troubling in both human terms and financial terms,” Doug Turetsky, the chief of staff for the budget office, said on Friday. With 12,287 inmates shuffling through city jails last year, he said, “it is a significant cost to the city.” by nearly any measure, New York City spends more than every other state or city. The Vera Institute of Justice released a study in 2012 that found the aggregate cost of prisons in 2010 in the 40 states that participated was $39 billion. The annual average taxpayer cost in these states was $31,286 per inmate. New York State was the most expensive, with an average cost of $60,000 per prison inmate. The cost of incarcerating people in New York City’s jails is nearly three times as much. 83 percent of the expense per prisoner came from wages, benefits for staff and pension costs. Some 76 percent of the inmates in the city were waiting for their cases to be disposed. The wait times have grown even as the number of felonies committed in the city has declined. Since 2002, the time spent waiting for cases to be disposed of has gone to 95 days, from 76 days, [former city correction and probation commissioner Michael] Jacobson said.

Note: This CNN chart shows that most states spend two to three times as much on their prison inmates than they do on students in school. What does that say about our priorities? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prison system corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

My journey into healing began 10 years later when an envelope containing a greeting card slid beneath my cell door at Florida State Prison. Inside was a card embossed with a dove carrying an olive branch–an image that would come to symbolize restorative justice in my life. "I've been thinking about you over the years," it read. I stared at her handwriting, confused. When I wrote back, she revealed, "You killed my daughter and grandson." That sat me down. The impact of what I'd done suddenly became tangible. I wept–for Pat, for Chris, for Agnes. We began exploring the shades and textures of the tragedy that connected us. Our relationship became a living example of restorative justice–pouring our spirits out like wine into each other's hearts. On the morning of our meeting, I walked alone across the compound toward the visiting park. My heart raced as I prepared to meet the woman whose life I had shattered. Inside the visitation booth, I waited, unsure. When Agnes entered–small, strong, radiant–her presence filled the room. We had already done the hard work through years of letters and calls. This meeting was about connection, remembrance, and honoring the restorative justice we'd built. Agnes pressed her palm to mine through the glass. Her eyes met mine. I broke down. "I'm sorry," I cried again and again. "I forgive you," she said softly. "And I love you." That moment–her smile through tears–was the purest expression of restorative justice I have ever witnessed.

Note: Watch a powerful clip of Leonard Scovens sharing his story with vulnerability and humanity. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive human interest stories and repairing criminal justice.

The U.S. federal-prison population swelled from 24,000 prisoners in 1980 to 219,000 in 2013. And federal prisons are just the tip of the iceberg — factor in state prisons and local jails, and there are 2.2 million people locked up in this country. The U.S. Sentencing Commission ... is charged with setting and adjusting the detailed schedule of penalties for those convicted of federal crimes. In April 2014, the commission approved a reduction in sentences for certain drug crimes going forward. In his final months in office, President Obama has focused more on the need for criminal-justice reform. He has used the executive power of clemency to commute some of the most egregiously unfair sentences of 89 federal drug convicts. But a handful of pardons don't amount to much when there are hundreds of thousands of federal prisoners. Nearly half of federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes. Of those, 60 percent were subject to mandatory minimums when they were sentenced. Stephanie George was a 26-year-old mother of three when she was convicted on drug-conspiracy charges because the man she was dating had kept drugs and money in her house. Under the federal three-strikes-and-you're-out law, she was sentenced to life in prison. George was locked up nearly 18 years before Obama commuted her sentence. One of her sons died shortly before her release. She says she doesn't think most politicians consider the costs a mandatory-minimum sentence brings.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing prison system corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.

Jeffrey Collins has watched 14 men draw their final breaths. Over 25 years at the Associated Press, the South Carolina-based journalist has repeatedly served as an observer inside the state's execution chamber, watching from feet away as prison officials kill men who were sentenced to capital punishment. South Carolina has recently kept him unusually busy, with seven back-to-back executions in 14 months. The state revived the death penalty last September after a 13-year pause caused by the decision of pharmaceutical makers to stop selling lethal injection drugs to the state. Officials acquired pentobarbital, a sedative, only after legislators passed a law shielding the identities of suppliers. That secrecy surrounding the execution process means the role of observers has never been more vital. Executions aren't filmed, making journalists' accounts the only impartial record of state-sponsored killings, their words often cited by lawyers and courts. "I don't think executions should be publicly broadcast, but I think they need to be videotaped," [said Collins]. "We don't get to see everything. With lethal injections, there could be problems if the needle isn't put in the vein correctly or the drugs are bad, but we don't get any look into either of those things. With firing squads ... the target could get placed poorly. But when the curtain opens, the target has already been placed, so we don't get to witness that either. The secrecy prevents the entire story from being told."

Note: Wrongful convictions and official misconduct have led to at least 93 innocent defendants being sentenced to death. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption.

The US Bureau of Prisons (BoP) has agreed to pay $115m to more than 100 survivors of a major sexual abuse scandal, a historic settlement of litigation that exposed widespread misconduct of officers at a federal prison. The payout settles 103 claims of sexual abuse and retaliation for reporting misconduct by people who were incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin, a troubled women's institution located in California. Staff harassment and assault of those in custody at FCI Dublin ... was pervasive and widely documented, and the facility was known internally as the "rape club". Seven former Dublin employees, including the warden who ran the prison and the chaplain, have been criminally convicted of sexual crimes, and more than 20 other employees were placed on leave and under investigation. The bureau announced the permanent closure of Dublin earlier this month, and former residents have been transferred to other federal prisons across the country. The settlement appears to be the largest single payout in BoP history. The agreement is a major victory for advocates fighting misconduct in women's prisons, who have documented how sexual abuse is a systemic problem across the US prison system. Staff have sexually abused incarcerated residents in at least two-thirds of federal women's prisons over the last decade, with some women abused for months and years, a US Senate inquiry found in 2022.

Note: To understand how disturbing and common sexual abuse in prison is, read this Human Rights Watch report that documents dozens of first-hand accounts of rape and sexual slavery in prison systems across 34 states. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

New research shows the meditative exercise improves mental health, reduces stress and can prevent reoffending. The power of yoga to change [a prisoner's] life is backed by two Swedish studies that found it may reduce reoffending. The new study, led by Professor Nra Kerekes at University West, Trollhtten, in Sweden, and published last week in Frontiers in Psychiatry, found that 10 weeks of regular yoga can lead to a significant reduction in obsessive-compulsive and paranoid thinking, which in turn, say researchers, can make reoffending less likely. This effect is specific to yoga, and not to exercise in general, they found. It can also lead to a decrease in somaticisation (mental distress leading to physical symptoms such as breathing problems, heart pains and stomach upsets). The study of 152 volunteers in nine medium- and high-security prisons in Sweden builds on a 2017 study of the same volunteers that showed that yoga improved stress levels, concentration, sleep quality, psychological and emotional wellbeing, as well as reducing aggression and antisocial behaviour. A Prison Service spokeswoman says: Research shows activities like this can make prisoners less likely to reoffend, keeping the public safer. She was unable to explain why, given this evidence, it wasnt government policy to make yoga available to all prisoners, but said it was up to individual prison governors to decide which activities to offer.

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From the mid-1970s to the mid-’80s, America’s incarceration rate doubled, from about 150 people per 100,000 to about 300 per 100,000. From the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, it doubled again. By 2007, it had reached a historic high of 767 people per 100,000. In absolute terms, America’s prison and jail population from 1970 until today has increased sevenfold, from some 300,000 people to 2.2 million. In 2000, one in 10 black males between the ages of 20 and 40 was incarcerated — 10 times the rate of their white peers. At a cost of $80 billion a year, American correctional facilities are a social-service program — providing health care, meals, and shelter for a whole class of people. An authoritative report issued last year by the National Research Council concluded, “the current U.S. rate of incarceration is unprecedented by both historical and comparative standards.” Even once an individual is physically out of prison, many do not elude its grasp. In 1984, 70 percent of all parolees successfully completed their term without arrest and were granted full freedom. In 1996, only 44 percent did. As of 2013, 33 percent do. Deindustrialization had presented an employment problem for America’s poor and working class of all races. Prison presented a solution: jobs for whites, and warehousing for blacks. Mass incarceration “widened the income gap between white and black Americans,” writes [historian] Heather Ann Thompson ... “because the infrastructure of the carceral state was located disproportionately in all-white rural communities.”

Note: The article above provides a detailed history of some U.S. policies that created the corrupt prison industry.

Harvey Hill wouldn't leave John Finnegan's front yard. He stood in the pouring rain, laughing at the sky, alarming his former boss' wife. Finnegan dialed 911. "He needs a mental evaluation," the landscaper recalls telling the arriving officer. Instead, Hill was charged with trespassing and jailed. At the Madison County Detention Center ... guards tackled the 36-year-old, pepper sprayed him and kicked him repeatedly in the head. After handcuffing him, two guards slammed Hill into a concrete wall, previously unpublished jail surveillance video shows. They led him to a shower, away from the cameras, and beat him again, still handcuffed, a state investigation found. Video showed Hill writhing in pain in the infirmary, where he was assessed by a licensed practical nurse but not given medication. Hill was sent straight to an isolation cell. Within hours, he was dead. And he had a lot of company. Hill's is one of 7,571 inmate deaths Reuters documented in an unprecedented examination of mortality in more than 500 U.S. jails from 2008 to 2019. Death rates have soared in those lockups, rising 35% over the decade ending last year. Casualties like Hill are typical: held on minor charges and dying without ever getting their day in court. At least two-thirds of the dead inmates identified by Reuters, 4,998 people, were never convicted of the charges on which they were being held. Reuters is making the full data it gathered available to the public here.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

The surveillance video taken from outside Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell on the day of his first apparent suicide attempt has been permanently deleted, federal prosecutors said. Epstein, the disgraced financier who was facing federal sex-trafficking charges, was found semiconscious in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC, in New York around 1:27 a.m. on July 23. But that video is now gone because MCC officials mistakenly saved video from a different floor of the federal detention facility. The FBI made the discovery last week while reviewing a copy of the video provided by MCC officials. "After reviewing the video, it appeared to the government that the footage contained on the preserved video was for the correct date and time, but captured a different tier than the one where [the cell housing Epstein and his cellmate] was located.” The filing was made in a case involving Nicholas Tartaglione ... who was Epstein's cellmate on the day of the incident. The July incident was investigated as a possible suicide attempt, assault or ruse by Epstein to get himself transferred to a different facility. Tartaglione's attorney, as part of an effort to exonerate his client, asked the jail to preserve video from outside the cell. The MCC agreed, but "the MCC computer system listed a different, incorrect cell for Tartaglione," prosecutors said in the court filing. A backup video system was in place, but the requested video wasn't available because of unspecified "technical errors," the court filing says.

Note: Just a little bit suspicious... For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.

Over the last few weeks, the Rodney Reed case has ignited a firestorm of interest, as celebrities, activists, and politicians worked to delay his Nov. 20 execution on the basis that he might be innocent. According to the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE), since 1989, 2,515 men and women have been exonerated after proving their innocence. In total, among all known exonerees, Americans have shelled out a staggering $4.12 billion to incarcerate innocent men and women since 1989. That’s largely money spent on trials, and the cost of housing inmates in prison. According to the Bureau of Prisons, in the fiscal year 2017, the average cost to house a prisoner was over $36,000 a year in federal facilities. But black men make up the majority of those wrongfully convicted — approximately 49%. And since 1989, taxpayers have wasted $944 million to incarcerate black men and women that were later found to be innocent. That number climbs to $1.2 billion when including Hispanic men and women. On average, from the time a person enters the criminal justice system until they are exonerated, $1.26 million is spent per inmate who is facing the death penalty. The total sum — $4.12 billion spent on all known exonerees — also includes $2.2 billion that taxpayers have paid the innocent in compensation since 1989 for the time they were imprisoned, according to a 2018 NRE study. But while a large sum, only 44% of exonerees have ever received compensation.

Note: Read also how thousands have been sentenced to life in prison for non-violent crimes. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

A freshman's dorm mattress at Mississippi State University. A Georgia Medicaid patient's eyeglasses. The goalpost padding at Bauxite High School in Arkansas. The burn ban flag at the Boerne Fire Department in Texas Hill Country. All of them were made by people incarcerated in American prisons. In the United States, prison labor is everywhere, a practice nearly as old as our nation itself. Incarcerated workers are responsible for producing over $2 billion in goods annually, much of which is sold via federal and state prison industries to public institutions. Incarcerated workers make between 33 cents and $1.41 per hour working for state-owned businesses – though in six states, prison workers aren't paid for their labor at all. Proponents of prison labor argue that these work programs are designed to be rehabilitative and beneficial for incarcerated people. But Carla Laroche, Felder-Fayard associate professor of law at Tulane University and the Murphy Institute, says it's more complicated. "Prison labor goes back to enslavement," she said. "Someone is being held in a facility, a prison, and told, ‘You must work.' They don't have a choice whether they work or not, what skills they want to learn, or what kind of job they have. And some people might say, great – everybody has to work. Everybody has to pay their bills. But we have the ability to leave. We have the ability to choose. And we can work for ourselves. In some prisons, if you do not work, you will be held in solitary confinement."

Note: US prison labor is linked to hundreds of popular food brands. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption.

Down here in the tombs, there aren't any windows," writes Tremane Wood from inside his cell. Wood, 46, spent 17 years incarcerated in H Unit – the underground cells at the state prison in the rural town of McAlester, Oklahoma, where no natural light ever reaches. According to prisoner letters seen by the Guardian and published here for the first time, H Unit – also known by the prisoners as the "tombs" – features a series of windowless cells that are built banked into the earth. The letters also tell of infestations of vermin, unsanitary conditions, and frequent instances of physical and sexual violence. The lack of sunlight is a matter of particular concern to the prisoners. Dr Sondra Crosby, an expert in torture survivors and a public health professor at Boston University and Physicians for Human Rights, calls it "a form of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and torture". Crosby, who has worked with people imprisoned after 9/11 in CIA "black sites", says lack of sunlight was "used to punish people in the darkness of the prisons in Afghanistan". The letters from H Unit offer a glimpse into this sunless world. The prisoners – of whom there are currently 248 in total, according to prison authorities – write of living in squalor, and frequent violence and rape. Many are held in solitary confinement, with almost no human contact. Others stay in two-person cells, where they say violence is common because the space is not large enough for two men. "I've heard men scream and yell and seen them pulled out of cells with blood and waste running down their leg from sexual assault … maybe 5 times," [inmate Edward Sparks III] wrote. [Another prisoner] wrote that "the guards are putting chilli pepper symbols on their vest as a badge for every inmate that they are spraying with mace and the pepper ball gun."

Note: The American prison system has been described as a "sexual jungle" where prison officials quietly permit rape as a way to control the population. To understand how disturbing and common sexual abuse in prison is, read this Human Rights Watch report that documents dozens of first-hand accounts of rape and sexual slavery in prison systems across 34 states. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.