More than ten times the number of mentally ill people are in prisons across the United States then are under treatment in mental health facilities. As of 2012, according to a new report, there were an estimated 356,000 prisoners with severe mental illness – including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other acute forms of brain disease -- in prisons and jails, while state psychiatric hospitals contained approximately 35,000 patients with severe mental illness.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Méndez has concluded that the state of New York violated the rights of three incarcerated men “to be free from torture” by locking them up them in long-term solitary confinement.  The findings, which were submitted to the UN Human Rights Council last month, were published alongside similar “observations” on the human rights practices of nearly 70 other countries.

A review of Oakland City Attorney lawsuit data and hundreds of federal and state court cases has found that since 1990, Oakland has spent $74 million dollars to settle at least 417 lawsuits accusing its police officers of brutality, misconduct and other civil rights violations.

FRENCH CAMP, Calif. —California's $840-million medical prison — the largest in the nation — was built to provide care to more than 1,800 inmates.

When fully operational, it was supposed to help the state's prison system emerge from a decade of federal oversight brought on by the persistent neglect and poor medical treatment of inmates.

But since opening in July, the state-of-the-art California Health Care Facility has been beset by waste, mismanagement and miscommunication between the prison and medical staffs.

NEW YORK (AP) — From the day of his 1989 arrest in a deadly New York City shooting, Jonathan Fleming said he had been more than 1,000 miles away, on a vacation at Disney World. Despite having documents to back him up, he was convicted of murder.

Prosecutors now agree with him, and Fleming left a Brooklyn court as a free man Tuesday after spending nearly a quarter-century behind bars.

At a time when New York State is winning praise for removing vulnerable people from solitary confinement in its prisons, the case of Mark Gizewski offers a sobering counterpoint.

Although he suffers from extreme physical disabilities and lives with constant pain, Gizewski has been in and out of solitary confinement for various prison rule violations. Now, he is suing the state in federal court, asserting that he has suffered medical neglect and physical abuse while held in New York’s prison system.

Forty-eight years. Forty-eight years of professed innocence. Forty-eight years of incarceration, 30 of which were in solitary confinement. Forty-eight years since June 10, 1966 when two children and their parents were stabbed to death and their home set ablaze. And 48 years since Iwao Hakamada, the longest-serving death row inmate in the world, was arrested, thrown in jail and ultimately sentenced to death for it.

On Tuesday [3-18-14], author and activist Sarah Shourd spoke to Democracy Now! about the time she spent in an Iranian prison after crossing the border from Iraq while on a hike with two friends. Shourd was held for more than one year, and spent much of that time in solitary confinement. Here's how she described the experience:

I spent hours and hours crouched by the small food slot in my door, just listening for sounds, pacing compulsively, eating my food with my hands. And there were times that I screamed and beat at the walls of my cell.

PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) - A federal judge Monday [3-24-14] ordered an Oregon county to pay Prison Legal News $802,000 in attorneys' fees and costs for a lawsuit that challenged censorship of inmates' mail.

     Prison Legal News, a nonprofit monthly by and for prisoners, sued Columbia County and its Sheriff Jeff Dickerson in January 2012 after jailers censored the magazine and letters to detainees.

     Columbia County, whose seat is St. Helen's, allowed prisoners to receive only postcards and banned magazines.

February 19, 2014 –  The New York Civil Liberties Union and the New York State Department of Community Corrections (DOCCS) today announced an unprecedented agreement to reform the way solitary confinement is used in New York State’s prisons, with the state taking immediate steps to remove youth, pregnant inmates and developmentally disabled and intellectually challenged prisoners from extreme isolation.