In the last two decades, Mr. Goodstein noted, female guards have used federal laws against sex-based discrimination to win the right to monitor all jails and prisons -- not just those for women.
The court has been monitoring those prisons as part of a 1985 consent decree.
When you consider that the government still spends money monitoring private prisons, and that it's stuck running the parts of the system that private companies thought were money losers, the case that private prisons save money looks shaky.
The equipment now used to scan carry-on luggage and passengers in American airports costs roughly one-third as much as the more sophisticated systems that were developed for screening entry into high-security buildings, monitoring prisons or searching for drugs at immigration stations, Mr. Sheridan said.
They serve long sentences, often in restrictive, Muslim-majority units, under intensive monitoring by prison officers.
Meanwhile, city officials in Conneaut are asking state police for additional assistance in monitoring the prison's perimeter.
According to John Klumpp, the barge's first captain, in 2002, "the Coast Guard, after years of monitoring the prison barge, finally accepted the reality that that it was, de facto, a jail and not a boat".
In the confines of his cell, Lee (No. 3) can see his lawyers but otherwise is allowed only three ten-minute conversations a day with visitors through a grated window, all monitored by prison guards.
Her experience includes monitoring prison conditions for the federal courts, litigating class actions to improve prison medical treatment, and coordinating legal rights workshops for women with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda.
The Howard League, monitoring prison conditions, says staff shortages mean large numbers of prisoners are locked up for 23 or even 24 hours a day, lying on bunks in tiny shared cells.
