HRC has just received word that Alfonso Percy Pew has been released back into general population!

Alfonso was held naked in a solitary confinement "strip cell" at SCI Rockview since March 11.

An Action Alert about his situation went out on March 26.

Thanks to everyone who called in to the prisons to demand his release!

Former Black Panther Russell Maroon Shoatz has been held in torturous conditions of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania prisons for the past thirty years. He has not had a serious rule violation for more than two decades. Maroon’s role as an educator, human rights defender, writer, and critical intellectual of liberation movements is widely renowned.

From April 8 to May 10, the Campaign to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz is calling for an intense call-in and write-in campaign to bring pressure on the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC), to release Maroon from solitary confinement and into the general prison population. This is the first major phase of a coordinated political-legal campaign, beginning with Maroon’s attorneys sending a “Demand Letter” to the PA DOC on the morning of April 8, 2013. The letter, outlining the legal and humanitarian reasons why an immediate release from solitary is needed, gives the PA DOC an opportunity to correct the grave injustices being carried out on a daily basis before litigation begins.. read more to ACT NOW

Former Black Panther political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz

transferred to SCI Mahanoy, still held in solitary confinement

HRC has just received an urgent letter from a trusted source about Alfonso Percy Pew (BT-7263):

He is in the hole at SCI-Rockview on a HUNGER STRIKE and he is currently being held in a “strip cell” with no hygiene products or clothes, no blanket, sheets, towel or wash clothes, property, books, etc. He is naked with just a medical thin smock on (paper gown with the back open like the hospitals use for patients). HE’S BEEN IN A STRIP CELL SINCE 3/11/2013, supposedly for his own protection. THIS IS PUNISHMENT FOR ALFONSO'S HUNGER STRIKE, AND IT IS TORTURE.            act now...

In this edition: Allegheny County Jail updates, Disability Rights Network files lawsuit against solitary, DOC releases recidivism report, and...

PA Prison Report Special – An interview with Lorenzo Johnson

Posted Sunday, February 25, 2013

This time last year, Lorenzo Johnson was living in New York after spending 16 years in Pennsylvania prisons for a crime he did not commit. Johnson thought the nightmare of being sentenced to life without parole – the other death penalty – was behind him. But in a stomach-churning turn of events, he finds himself back in a Pennsylvania prisons, State Correctional Institution (SCI) Mahanoy.

In this edition: Retaliation and racial harassment against prisoners at SCI's Greene and Albion, Allegheny County Jail is sued for the death of a prisoner in 2012 , and more...

Paul Rogers has been released into the general population at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Smithfield after spending 12 years in solitary confinement. His release comes after a letter writing and phone call campaign by family and supporters, including the Human Rights Coalition.   read more..

In this edition: Fair phone rates action alert, Prisoner kept 12 years in solitary confinement on verge of release, Study on crimininalization of pregnancy, and more...