by Daniel A. Rosen | A young black man named Vincent Lamont Martin killed a white police officer named Michael Patrick Connors in November of 1979. Martin served 37 years in prison as a result. He was supposed to walk out of the Nottoway Correctional Center on May 11, after being granted parole on Good … Continue reading The Murder of Mercy: Attacking Virginia’s Parole Board
by Daniel A. Rosen | As a white guy in prison, it's tricky to talk about racial issues, but I'm going to proceed anyway. There was a Friday afternoon a couple years ago, a little wave of excitement and anticipation rippled through my prison dorm. Word had come from the rec workers, who were always … Continue reading Uncaging the Panthers: A Tribute to Chadwick Boseman
by Daniel A. Rosen | 2020 is suddenly looking a lot like 1972. Admittedly, back then we weren't warring against a global pandemic. But then, as now, a Republican president sought re-election in the midst of divisive societal turbulence, instead with a contentious foreign war as a backdrop. Then, as now, police violence against Black … Continue reading What Year Is It, Anyway?
by Daniel A. Rosen | The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paid out almost half a billion dollars in overtime in 2019, nearly twice what it paid in regular salaries. Responding to a public records request from CalMatters, CDCR provided salary data on regular and overtime pay for the last two years. Uniformed correctional … Continue reading Overtime Payouts in CA Prison System Approach $500 Million in 2019
by Daniel A. Rosen | "This moment calls for structural change and transformative change." -Patrice Cullors, BLM Co-founder | As the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism came to a head in 2020, the Trump Administration had an opportunity in an election year to provide real leadership and demonstrate that people's lives mattered. They … Continue reading Tear Down These Walls: A Justice Reform Agenda for the Biden Administration
by Daniel A. Rosen | A captain with the St. Louis County Justice Center is under investigation for potentially inappropriate use of a Taser in several recent cases. In May, a Taser was employed to subdue a woman in crisis with a history of mental illness. In June, the same captain used a Taser to … Continue reading St. Louis Corrections Officer Has History of Taser Abuse
by Daniel A. Rosen | A sixteen-year-old in Mississippi has spent almost a year and a half in an adult jail without being indicted. And his case is by no means unique; thousands more in the state are caught in the same circumstance. There are no laws in Mississippi limiting the amount of time defendants … Continue reading Teen Spends 17 Months In Mississippi Jail Without Indictment
by Daniel A. Rosen | I'm here at Virginia's largest facility, the Greensville Correctional Center in southern VA. This place holds up to 3000 inmates, and I've heard it's the largest state prison on the East Coast. On August 7th, we went on lockdown for the second time in four months. There were just too … Continue reading COVID-19 Update from Greensville Correctional Center, Virginia
by Daniel A. Rosen | Migrants in ICE custody in New Mexico were attacked with pepper spray in May to end a days-long hunger strike. The detainees, housed at a private facility run by CoreCivic in Torrance County, were protesting the food quality and lack of protection from COVID-19. "Suddenly they just started gassing us. … Continue reading ICE Detainees Pepper Sprayed Over Hunger Strike
by Daniel A. Rosen | Two pepper spray incidents in early 2019 at Maine's Cumberland County Jail raised questions of propriety and led to a review by the State Department of Corrections. In each case, the Maine DOC concluded that jail staff followed "expected practices" when subduing the inmates with chemical irritants. Both inmates were … Continue reading Pepper Spraying Mentally Ill Jail Inmates Conformed to Rules, Says Maine DOC
by Daniel A. Rosen | On August 18, Virginia's State Assembly will hold a special legislative session that's likely to be historic. Originally scheduled to take up budget issues related to the coronavirus pandemic, it now will focus on a range of other public safety issues, given the recent social unrest following George Floyd's murder. … Continue reading Virginia’s Special Legislative Session Must Address Real Justice Reform
by Daniel A. Rosen | When I watched the video of George Floyd's murder from my prison cell, my first instinct was sheer outrage, like people of conscience everywhere. My second thought: If cameras were as prevalent in prison as on the street, the public might see many more men of color who can't breathe, … Continue reading Public Safety Can’t Be Purchased With Police and Prisons
by Daniel A. Rosen When those who have been incarcerated run for elected office, they can speak with authority about prison reform. They bring credibility that others simply can't. In 2020, more ex-inmates than ever are coming out of the shadows and running for office, viewing their time behind bars as an asset. They're bringing … Continue reading Former Inmates Are Running for Office in 2020
by Daniel A. Rosen | Rumor had it that Knuckles was born in jail. I took that as metaphorical, apocryphal maybe, but then again sometimes I wasn't sure. He was the head barber for the jail, and he lived in my cellblock. He was about sixty, rotund, and his fade and mustache were always perfect. … Continue reading Knuckles the Barber
by Daniel A. Rosen | The people "want law and order. They need law and order. They may not say it, but they want it." That's not a quote from Mussolini or Putin. It's from Donald Trump's June press conference on police reform. Apparently, Trump knows what people want better than they do. This is … Continue reading What the People Want
by Daniel A. Rosen | The theme song is catchy and instantly recognizable - and it’s part of the problem. The criminals are the "bad boys," and the hero cops are coming for them. After 33 seasons, "Cops" was temporarily pulled off the air in late May when protests about George Floyd's death gained momentum. … Continue reading Defund the Police Shows: “Cops” Is Gone and “Law and Order” Should Be Next
by Daniel A. Rosen | I'm sitting here in my prison cell, watching the protests on TV and doing some quick math. Every year in this country, according to the Washington Post, roughly a thousand men and women die at the hands of police. About half of them - 500 people - are unarmed. And … Continue reading The ‘Blue Normal’: Doing the Math on Policing and Justice in America
by Daniel A. Rosen | The fictional LA homicide detective Harry Bosch, penned by Michael Connelly, had a simple credo - as all good heroes do: "Either everyone matters, or no one does." And the gut-wrenching events of late keep bringing to mind that hard-boiled noirish wisdom. This isn't claiming "everyone matters" in the usual … Continue reading Do Any Lives Still Matter?
by Daniel A. Rosen | I'm an inmate at the Greensville Correctional Center in southern Virginia, the state's largest prison with over 3,000 inmates. Until now, we'd been spared much of the chaos engulfing other prisons - no inmates were reported positive for COVID-19 and only a handful of guards had been confirmed cases. All … Continue reading COVID Status: Code Red – Report from a Prison Cell
by Daniel A. Rosen | A young man named Vincent Lamont Martin killed a police officer named Michael Patrick Connors in November of 1979. He's served 37 years in prison as a result. He was supposed to walk out of the Nottoway Correctional Center on May 11th, 2020, after being granted parole on Good Friday. … Continue reading The Murder of Mercy
by Daniel A. Rosen | According to a recent Associated Press article (Barr to Prosecutors: Look for Unconstitutional Virus Rules, Michael Balsamo, April 27, 2020) Attorney General William Barr "ordered federal prosecutors across the U.S. to identify coronavirus-related restrictions from state and local governments 'that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of … Continue reading Barr to Governors: You Answer to Me Now
by Daniel A. Rosen | I am a registered sex offender serving five years in prison for soliciting a detective posing as a teen online. Let's get that out of the way up front. If you're still reading: The Virginia Department of Corrections is working to effect the early release of up to 2,000 state … Continue reading Let My People Go, Too
by Daniel A. Rosen | It seems people locked down at home due to the Coronavirus outbreak have taken to comparing themselves to prison inmates on social media. That's not really amusing to those of us actually locked down in prisons and worried about what happens when (not if) the virus gets in here. But … Continue reading A Nation of Coronavirus Inmates
by Daniel A. Rosen | In early February this year, the Virginia Department of Corrections sent out a self-congratulatory press release claiming that the Commonwealth has the lowest three-year recidivism rate in the country, at just over 23 percent. My fellow inmates and I find that figure not at all credible; we know they've massaged … Continue reading The Realities of Recidivism in Virginia
by Daniel A. Rosen | Last year, Attorney General William Barr attributed Jeffrey Epstein's suicide in prison to a "perfect storm of screw-ups" that resulted in his ability to take his own life. By this we understood him to mean that guards were derelict in making their rounds, and a cellmate who might have raised … Continue reading The ‘Perfect Storm’ of Dysfunction in American Prisons
Three Hots One Cot 