Category Archives: Prisoners

How To Write Prison Grievances

Posted May 1st, 2013
Shon R. Hopwood
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I recently learned about a new book on how prisoners can write grievances complaining about their conditions in prison. The book, written by Terri LeClercq, is called “Prison Grievances: When to Write, How to Write.” The reason why this book is so good for prisoners is because it is written in a simple, and easy [...]
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Cockle Printing And My Second Chance

Posted January 14th, 2013
Shon R. Hopwood
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This past week, the Seattle Times published an op-ed I wrote about the need for prison reform. In the article, I talk about how I caught a big break following my release from federal prison. I was released in October of 2008, during the heart of the recession, and everyone found it difficult to obtain [...]
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Saving Lives: The Post-Prison Education Project

Posted December 22nd, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
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Want to change a life? Make the community safer? Save taxpayer dollars? Incarcerating someone for one year costs around $35,000–as I wrote about yesterday in The Atlantic.com–it’s the equivalent of a year’s college tuition. It also leads to more crime in the long run as the national recidivism rate for returning prisoners hovers around 66%. [...]
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A Halfway House Nightmare

Posted June 26th, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
When I saw that halfway houses were trending on Twitter last week, I almost started laughing. I didn’t know what the story was about, but I could take an educated guess. In case you missed it, the New York Times ran a series of pieces on the deplorable conditions at private New Jersey halfway houses. Then, [...]
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Why You Shouldn’t Bank With Wells Fargo

Posted April 29th, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
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If you are concerned about the number of citizens we as a society simply give up on by locking them up for decades, then you might want to think about not banking with Wells Fargo. Charles Davis at Salon writes that the Wells Fargo used bailout funds to invest in the GEO Group, the second largest private prison [...]
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Supreme Court Takes A Close Look At Prisoner Transsexual Case

Posted March 11th, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
Last week, the Supreme Court relisted a case involving some transsexual prisoners’ claims that the State of Wisconsin violated their right to adequate medical care by failing to provide them with hormonal therapy. The case is Smith v. Fields, No. 11-561. Both the Federal District Court and Seventh Circuit found in favor of the prisoners, concluding that the [...]
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The Seventh Circuit Rules that Pro Se Prisoner Missed His Chance at Resentencing

Posted March 7th, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
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I wrote this past year about the obstacles that prisoners filing pro se face when challenging their convictions and sentences. The Seventh Circuit’s opinion today in United States v. Wyatt kind of typifies the problems inherent in a system that requires uneducated prisoners to fend for themselves and learn the law within a year in order to meet [...]
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The Supreme Court’s Latest Miranda Ruling Is A Failure All The Way Around

Posted February 27th, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
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What happens when no one comes to the defense of defenseless prisoners? Rulings like last week’s decision in Howes v. Field, No. 10-680, where the Supreme Court held that law enforcement questioning of an inmate inside a prison about allegedly criminal events that occurred outside the prison is not necessarily a custodial situation for Miranda purposes. Or, [...]
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The Way in Which Federal Prosecutors Charge Offenses Leads to Different Sentences Between White and Black Males

Posted February 13th, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
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Professors Marit Rehavi and Sonja Starr recently published this piece, entitled Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences.  After analyzing data, the professors concluded that federal prosecutors charge offenders differently by race, and those charging differences often lead to disparities in sentences. Not surprisingly, men of color are charged, and therefore, sentenced more harshly. Here [...]
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Michelle Alexander’s Book on Mass Incarceration

Posted February 1st, 2012
Shon R. Hopwood
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I’ve been reading lots of write-ups for Law Professor Michelle Alexander’s book on the American criminal justice system, entitled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. From what I’ve read, and heard from others in the legal community, it sounds like an amazing work. You can find the website for the [...]
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