Arizona’s legislature recently passed a law charging prison visitors a onetime $25 fee as a way to help close the state’s $1.6 billion budget deficit. Middle Ground Prison Reform, a prison advocacy group, challenged the law in court as a discriminatory tax, but a county judge upheld its constitutionality.

Fees like that, slapped on prisoners and their families, couldn’t be more…

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If anyone doubts that the young people locked up in our jails are children they should spend some time in one of those prisons around holiday time.

I did just that for the 10 years I taught high school students, some as young as fifteen, in an adult county jail, and every year it got tougher to deny the impact being locked up for the holidays had on these teens.

Jail’s a pretty isolating place. That’s one of the ideas. But in lockup they watched a lot of TV—that great purveyor…

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Statewide test day and Damian was psyched. He didn’t sleep much the night before from worrying. Still, he was there on time, ready to go. Now he sat hunched over his desk, head down, lips moving as he read, his pen

carefully inching across the paper.

He was like any other kid in his grade taking the mandated English exam. The only difference was that he was locked up in an adult county jail in Westchester,…

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“Zero tolerance.” It sounds like a good idea: “Put your foot down.” “Get tough.” “We’re not taking it anymore.”



The American public, worried about the purported drug and gun wars being fought in our cities in the 1990s, grabbed onto this concept. In turn, a number of states and municipalities adopted “zero tolerance” laws.



Since then “zero tolerance” has pervaded our culture.



Draconian drug laws impose harsh sentences on nonviolent offenders, glutting prisons… Continue