In the case of prisons, this means separate directors of women's, children's, young offender's, local and training and resettlement prisons, in the way that high-security prisons have been directed since 1995.
Even so, incarceration reform has begun to go mainstream nationwide, and this moment represents fertile ground, at least at the local level, for a total rethink of how to lock up people we suspect (or, in the case of prisons, think we know) are dangerous.
There are too many cases of prisons failing to identify inmates who are a suicide risk despite the presence of clear warning signs, an official watchdog has warned after a "troubling" 64% rise in self-inflicted deaths behind bars in the past year.
Sometimes – as in the case of the prison term for its hacker-in-chief royal correspondent – it topples right in.
Ruling in the case of a prison inmate who struggled for years to get medical treatment for a contagious disease, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered the State Department of Corrections to enact regulations codifying its responsibility for inmates' health.
Following dozens of suicides among suspects (39 people killed themselves in the 2001 case), most European countries now also systematically assess suspects of child abuse-related crimes for suicide risk and, in the case of a prison sentence, protect them from other inmates.
In the case of the prison company, the illegal gifts were well known and documented: free van rides to Albany for two lawmakers, $100 boxes of chocolate sent to two lawmakers on Valentine's Day, a $200 plane ticket for one Assembly member, and a $113 fruit basket for another.
Raven Rakia looks into the case of a prison near a coal-ash dump in Pennsylvania where many inmates have gotten cancer.
The marginal cost for dental treatment is estimated based on the case scenario of prison X in Malaysia.
That program recounted the case of an elderly prison inmate, Clarence Earl Gideon, and the ultimately successful struggle to have the United States Supreme Court establish the right of impoverished defendants to legal counsel.
In separate letters to House leaders this month, Mr. Powell and Mr. Ashcroft said the spending proposal now awaiting Senate action would hinder the work of their departments, result in layoffs, and, in the case of the federal prison system, lead to the closing of some units and crowding at others.
