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Nov 21, 2024 | 
mindsitenews.org | Kevin Light-Roth |Rob Waters
As many as half of all prisoners have ADHD. Research suggests treatment can help reduce recidivism and ease the reentry processKevin Light-Roth is an incarcerated journalist and organizer currently held at a prison in Washington state. For this story, he interviewed other prisoners in person and corresponded by email with experts. This story was produced in partnership with The Appeal. As far back as elementary school, Kurt Myers was always a class clown.
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Oct 8, 2024 | 
progressive.org | Kevin Light-Roth
Election season is in full swing, and across the country the politics of fear and hatred are once again gaining momentum. The rhetoric is nothing original: Rightwing hopefuls are scapegoating migrants, belittling the civil rights activism of disadvantaged communities, and using racially coded language to agitate centuries-old anxiety about the white majority being replaced.
And according to national polls, it’s working. Republicans are poised to gain control of the U.S. Congress.
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May 10, 2024 | 
rsn.org | Antoine Davis |Kevin Light-Roth
Tens of thousands of books are banned in US prisons, in an often arbitrary process that limits education opportunitiesOn a Monday night, just after six, Alicia Williams waits for the last stragglers to take their seats in her cramped classroom at the Washington corrections center. Her students braved western Washington’s fall weather to get here and they enter the room still ruffled from the wind, their khaki uniforms flecked with rain.
There is no rush.
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May 9, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Antoine Davis |Kevin Light-Roth
On a Monday night, just after six, Alicia Williams waits for the last stragglers to take their seats in her cramped classroom at the Washington corrections center. Her students braved western Washington’s fall weather to get here and they enter the room still ruffled from the wind, their khaki uniforms flecked with rain. There is no rush. Instead of the lesson she planned to teach, Williams will be relying on hastily adjusted notes and on-the-spot explanations.
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Mar 27, 2024 | 
thehill.com | Kevin Light-Roth
I should be a doctor by now. I completed my associate’s degree in 2016, and, after taking a year off to weave an economic safety net of vocational training, I enrolled in a bachelor’s program in the winter of 2017. And yet here I am, six years later, still slogging through the last courses between me and my degree. It isn’t the difficulty of my schoolwork that’s held me back, nor lack of commitment to education.
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Jan 5, 2024 | 
thestranger.com | Kevin Light-Roth
For a moment, there was hope. Seven years into a 45-year sentence, Redhawk Monte had seen countless politicians, activists, and jailhouse lawyers come and go, all selling different versions of the same dreamâthe system is changing, and there's a chance of going home. Their promises always came to nothing. Over time, Monte lost faith that change was possible.
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Dec 4, 2023 | 
thestranger.com | Kevin Light-Roth
This article is published in partnership with Solitary Watch. This was going to be the year for solitary confinement reform, Anthony Blankenship remembers thinking. A legislative coalition organizer for Civil Survival, he'd seen many bills start out with promising momentum only to die later in the legislative session. But 2023 had a different feel to it. "I was pretty optimistic in the beginning," says Blankenship, who is formerly incarcerated and a solitary confinement survivor.
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Dec 4, 2023 | 
solitarywatch.org | Kevin Light-Roth
This article is published in partnership with The Stranger. This was going to be the year for solitary confinement reform, Anthony Blankenship remembers thinking. A legislative coalition organizer for Civil Survival, he’d seen many bills start out with promising momentum only to die later in the legislative session. But 2023 had a different feel to it. “I was pretty optimistic in the beginning,” says Blankenship, who is formerly incarcerated and a solitary confinement survivor. “We had a great bill.
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Sep 15, 2023 | 
seattletimes.com | Kevin Light-Roth
Think of any prison movie you’ve ever seen. Early on, there’s always a scene that graphically captures the sort of degradation prisoners are subjected to. Watching it is sickening. You feel as if you’ve intruded on the most unsettling moment in a character’s life, and that the embarrassment is compounded by your witnessing it. It’s hard not to turn away from the screen when prison guards are depicted leering at a humiliated female prisoner as she undresses, or taunting a nude and nervous adolescent.
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Aug 22, 2023 | 
msn.com | Kevin Light-Roth
If you’ve never been a defendant in juvenile court, it goes like this: You spend a few days in a youth detention center. You’re locked in a cell at night, sleeping poorly on a thin plastic mat. At dawn, loudspeakers wake you and tell you to get dressed. You put on oversized jail coveralls and wait in line to be issued a paltry institutional breakfast that leaves your stomach hollow and pinched. Adults you don’t know tell you what to do. Kids you don’t know brandish open hostility.
