Prison Reform

4WardEverUK

The prisoner risk algorithm that could program in racism

Domiciliary Prisonsource: TBIJ News
published: 14 November 2019

A new algorithmic tool for categorising prisoners in UK jails risks automating and embedding racism in the system, experts and advocacy groups have warned.

The tool draws on data, including from the prison service, police and the National Crime Agency, to assess what type of prison a person should be put in and how strictly they should be controlled during their sentence.

Critics told the Bureau that the new system could result in ethnic minority prisoners being unfairly placed in higher security conditions than white prisoners. This would exacerbate long-standing problems of discrimination exposed in an excoriating review two years ago by the Labour MP David Lammy.

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4WardEverUK

The crisis of Aboriginal women held in prison in Australia

Domiciliary Prisonsource: Aljazeera News
published: 2 December 2019

Melbourne, Australia – Vickie Roach was 12 the first time she was imprisoned.

Forty-eight years ago, in the early 1970s, she was arrested after running away from abusive foster homes and institutions.

“The morning after you arrive, you have to go see the doctor. They would examine you to see if you were pregnant or had STDs. And if you weren’t cooperative they would hold you down and do it,” said Roach, now 60.

For a young girl who had been sexually abused, this procedure was “traumatic”. But her contact with the criminal justice system in Australia began even earlier – when she was two. 

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4WardEverUK

Film-making pair team up to tell British woman’s story [Ruth Ellis]

Ruth Ellis
Ruth Ellis

source: Rome Sentinel
published: 9 November 2019

She was the last woman hanged in Great Britain after being convicted of shooting her lover to death. And a director/producer in Los Angeles, originally from Rome, and a cameraman/videographer from Barneveld, are teaming up to tell her story.

Peter-Henry Schroeder, owner and operator of PHS Productions, owes his acting roots to his mother Marie Angotti-Schroeder, who while living in Syracuse, enrolled her sons and daughter in the Syracuse Children’s Theatre, which continues today.

While his two brothers pursued other avenues, Peter-Henry and sister Maria Curley, continued with their passions for the performing arts. Curley is the co-founder of Present Company Productions, an Oneida-based theater company that produces, among its projects, dinner theater at Theodore’s Restaurant in Canastota.

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