prison justice Archives

Bishop: Reports of women prisoners being abused are ‘disgusting, shameful’

Feb 26, 2021

The women housed at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, the only women’s prison in the state of New Jersey, seem to have the cards stacked against them.

By Catholic News Service

Bishops support Biden’s racial equity orders related to housing, prisons

Feb 2, 2021

The chairmen of two U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committees welcomed recent executive actions by President Joe Biden to address racial equity in housing and the use of private prisons by the federal government.

By Catholic News Service

As pandemic spreads in Brazil’s prisons, inmates complain of torture

Jan 30, 2021

After Brazil’s prisons imposed restrictive measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, complaints of torture in correctional facilities increased by 70 percent, according to the nation’s bishops.

By Eduardo Campos Lima

Prisons as pandemic super-spreaders: Latin American church raises alarm

Aug 13, 2020

Ignoring early warnings and pleas from bishops’ commissions for prison ministry, countries across Latin America are seeing rising COVID-19 infection rates and deaths among inmates in their generally overcrowded prisons.

By Eduardo Campos Lima, CNS

Iowans who have completed sentence for felony conviction can now vote

Aug 13, 2020

More than 40,000 people in Iowa who have completed sentences for felony convictions have regained the right to vote and run for office because of an executive order signed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

By Barb Arland-Fye

Catholic leaders decry prisoners’ exposure to COVID-19 during pandemic

May 24, 2020

A May 19 statement by 14 Catholic leaders, including five bishops, decried the danger people in prison are exposed to during the coronavirus pandemic.

By Mark Pattison

New York religious leaders endorse bill to end solitary confinement

May 14, 2019

Solitary confinement is in widespread use in prisons across the United States and, in New York state alone, more than 3,000 inmates are isolated in 6-by-10 cells for over 23 hours a day.

By Mike Matvey