Ryan Derousseau's blog

“Investment bankers” are apparently pushing Governor Eliot Spitzer to privatize transportation, and other areas, including the prison system, this according a Crain’s New York Business article.

The price to run prisons will rise over the next five years according to a study done by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Along with that, the amount of people in prison will also rise to an amount of 1 in every 178 people.

I came across a blog today advocating architects to put a moratorium on designing prisons. It led me to another site created by Architects, Designers, Planners for Social Responsibility, and they plead for architects and planners to sign up and pledge not to help in any project involving prisons. But is that really the best way to create change?

Could the state prison industry go global, or at least go to Mexico? This idea is getting thrown around in the Texas Legislature in order to provide a place for the "8,000 Mexican citizens" that are arrested in the state, according to the Houston Chronicle.

An inmate's letter home depicts illegal and disturbing practices occurring inside one of California's prisons, including debtor's prison.

Wright Thompson and espn.com published a story this week about an ex-high school football player, homecoming king, and well-liked full of potential young man, who at 17 received oral sex from a 15 year-old. In Georgia this meant Genarlow Wilson would receive a felony prison sentence of 10 years.

One way many inmates smuggle drugs into the prison is by family care-packages, but the state of Ohio has taken the packaging out of the hands of family-members altogether.

The Deaths in Custody Reporting Act expires at the end of the year. This act, which was passed in 2000, created a system in which all deaths among inmates must be reported in a certain manner.

The state with the most prisoners in the nation, as of 2004, according to the Bureau of Justice, with over 168,000 inmates, has finally come to some sort of realization that more and more prisons will not curb the crime rate.

In East Tennessee, a prison had a unique fixture unlike other detention centers in the states, and maybe the world, with a webcam that had a 24-hour seven days a week stream.

Marvin Francis uses toilet paper to create sculptors that now sell for $3,000 each, and he is just one of many who try to express what is like sitting in a cell for the rest of their natural lives.

America locks up 5.8 times more black men per 100,000 than South Africa under the Apartheid. When this happens money moves away from the community where the inmate is from, and into the rural community where the inmate is moved to.

A mother of a 21-year old mentally ill inmate, spoke out against the medical care of the mentally ill today according to MLIVE.com. She has done this because according to reports, her son was stripped naked and bound by his legs and arms for four days and lying in his own urine, and never received medical attention.

A couple weeks ago Gold Star Fragrances Inc. published a list of ten fragrances most frequently bought by United States prisoners. So if you want that inmate aroma,...

Websites, movies and even music have become popular as they depict, or make fun of the prison system. These forms of entertainment have become part of pop culture, and people will pay for this unusual escape from reality.