prisons on Vice

Who’s Getting Rich off the Prison-Industrial Complex?

Many of America's prisons are run by for-profit corporations, so clearly some people are making lots and lots of money off the booming business of keeping human beings in cages. But who are these people? Using some publicly available data, I came up with a few names. Full story

Here's Why Our Magazine Is Not Safe for Prison

A copy of our Cultural Atrocities issue (released in March) got sent to a guy currently serving time in the Putnam Correctional Institution in East Palatka, Florida. The other day, we got it back, with a nice note from the folks in charge of that prison letting us know why it cou… Full story

Pen Pals

Prisons I've Known and Yelped

I was kicked off Yelp probably about 15 times. I’m the ORIGINAL prison reviewer, along with some guy named Craig who did a nice review of Rikers four years ago and who probably got kicked off too. I lost my classic reviews, so I decided to make some more. Full story

Pen Pals

Inmates Love Lawsuits

A prisoner named Kim Millbrook won a Supreme Court case with a handwritten petition, which is impressive. Thanks to him, inmates have the right to sue scumbag pork chops in federal jails, but the truth is that an assload of taxpayer money gets wasted on inmates’ frivolous lawsuit… Full story

Australian Prisoners Are Giving Themselves DIY Penis Implants

Turns out that a sizable chunk of the inmate population in New South Wales, Australia, is getting inventive with their wangcentric entertainment and performing DIY penis-implant procedures on themselves with rusty razor blades and bits of scrap metal. Full story

Pen Pals

Down in the Hole

The cops definitely use the box as a tool, and it’s been seriously overused. In New York, the box is officially called a Special Housing Unit (SHU), and it is a serious tool to keep the inmates in check. I did very limited box time, and it scared the shit out of me. Full story

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Prisons Punish Families Too

Imagine your dad was locked up for most of your life. You’d grow up poor, probably full of anger, likely in a louse-filled neighborhood with unseemly influences, and you’d have a greater chance of becoming a whore or a thief or a drug dealer and following dear old Dad into jail… Full story

The Mysterious and Depressing Case of Prisoner X

On Tuesday morning, the Australian news network ABC broadcast a story revealing the identity of the mysterious “Prisoner X” who died in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison in 2010. In fact, “Prisoner X” was the subject of a case so secret that ABC claimed even the guards in… Full story

VICE Meets

Conrad Black

Conrad Black is a controversial former media baron who renounced his Canadian citizenship to become a British Lord, and later spent time in an American jail for fraud. We went to his sprawling estate in Toronto's luxurious Bridal Path neighborhood to chat with him about how the U… Full story

Pen Pals

Thirstbuckets

Normally, I like to coin my own crackerisms and slang when it comes to describing indescribable prison behaviors, but I can’t improve on “thirstbucket.” In case you don’t know, that’s ghetto terminology for inmates who have crackhead tendencies. Thirstbuckets fiend for everything… Full story