Blog of Rights
Margaret
Winter

Margaret Winter is the Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. She was lead counsel for plaintiffs in the case that led to the closing of Mississippi's supermax prison. She is currently challenging overcrowding, excessive force, mistreatment of the mentally ill, and other unconstitutional conditions of confinement in the Los Angeles County Jail, the largest jail in the nation. Winter has successfully argued a prisoner's rights case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

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04/30/2012
Private Prisons

Private Prisons Are the Problem, Not the Solution

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project & Gabriel Eber, ACLU National Prison Project at 4:38pm

For the past two years, the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center have been investigating and exposing a horrifying pattern of abuse against juveniles and the mentally ill in two Mississippi prisons operated by the GEO Group, one of the biggest for-profit prison operators in the world.

Recently, we got some good news and some bad news.

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03/29/2012
Solitary Confinement

"A Picture of Such Horror as Should Be Unrealized Anywhere in the Civilized World"

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project at 1:27pm

A federal court judge has put a stop to the state of Mississippi's practice of putting kids convicted as adults in solitary confinement.

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12/21/2012
HIV/AIDS Discrimination in Prisons

VICTORY! Henderson et al. v. Thomas et al.

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project at 3:01pm

Today a federal judge in Montgomery, Alabama entered a historic decision in the quarter-century-old fight for equality for prisoners living with HIV.   It’s the culmination of a month-long trial in a class-action lawsuit by the ACLU that put Alabama’s discriminatory and dehumanizing treatment of prisoners with HIV under a national spotlight.

Driven by stubborn prejudice and willful ignorance, Alabama has been categorically excluding prisoners with HIV from a host of rehabilitative, educational, trade skills and vocational programs—even barring those with serious mental health needs and substance abuse problems from critically important treatment programs.  Alabama houses them in HIV-only dormitories, and forces all male prisoners with HIV to wear a white wrist-band night and day—a latter-day yellow star.

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04/10/2012
L.A. County Jail

Los Angeles Sheriff Endorses Report Recommending Swift Closure of Infamous Jail

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project at 1:41pm

A new report released today finds L.A. County's Men's Central Jail, the largest and most violence-plagued in the nation, can be shut down by the end of 2013.

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08/26/2010

Don't Let the Military's Deadly "Pain Ray" Machine Invade the L.A. County Jail

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project & Peter J. Eliasberg, ACLU of Southern California at 2:50pm

Los Angeles County Jail has just installed an Assault Intervention Device — an invisible microwave-beam weapon originally developed by the military — as a way to subdue inmates by focusing a microwave beam on them to make them feel "intolerable heat."

Sheriff Lee Baca unveiled this giant robot-like device at a news conference last week, noting the "The Assault Intervention Device appears uniquely suited to address some of the more difficult inmate violence issues," since it will "allow us to quickly intervene without having to enter the area and without incapacitating or injuring either combatant."

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03/12/2012
Solitary Confinement

Rethinking Solitary Confinement in Mississippi and Beyond

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project at 11:12am

A Sunday New York Times article gives a critical and searching look at solitary confinement and a new model for prison reform in Mississippi.

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09/09/2010
L.A. County Jail

L.A. County Jail Still Plagued by Deputies Who Abuse and Retaliate Against Inmates

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project & Peter J. Eliasberg, ACLU of Southern California at 4:19pm

The ACLU of Southern California and the ACLU National Prison Project today released a disturbing new report on the Los Angeles County Jail that documents numerous, serious allegations of physical abuse and retaliation at the hands of sheriff’s deputies. As part of its official, court-appointed monitoring role in the jails, the ACLU has received more than 70 complaints over a five-month period in 2010 from prisoners who describe a climate of fear and brutality.

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07/29/2010

Corruption and Abuse By LA County Deputies Contribute To Suicide, Report Confirms

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project at 4:06pm

John Horton was held in solitary confinement in the Los Angeles County Men‘s Central Jail following his arrest for drug possession. He committed suicide.

In the days leading up to his death in March 2009, jail staff noted that Mr. Horton was despondent. His cell was a dimly-lit, windowless, solid-front box the size of a closet. His body was already stiff by the time security staff discovered him hanging from a noose in his cell, with his hands bound – one of eight successful apparent suicides in the L.A. County jails in the past calendar year.

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02/27/2012
Solitary Confinement

Groundbreaking Decree in Mississippi Bans Solitary Confinement of Kids Convicted as Adults

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project at 12:23pm

The decree will also require the state to move such kids out of a brutally violent private prison and into a facility operated in accordance with juvenile justice standards.

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09/13/2012
HIV/AIDS Discrimination in Prisons

A Policy of Shame: the Fight to End HIV Segregation in Prison Continues

By Margaret Winter, National Prison Project at 10:01am

Alabama segregates all prisoners with HIV, and houses them separately from all other prisoners – it’s an HIV ghetto.  As soon as you walk into Limestone Correctional Facility, the prison where Alabama houses all male prisoners with HIV, you know who has the virus:  they are forced to wear a white armband day and night.  

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