Lance Tapley, a longtime freelancer for the Portland Phoenix, has been honored with the Excellence in Legal Journalism Award from the Maine State Bar Association, recognizing his work investigating inmate abuse at the Maine State Prison. Tapley will be honored at a dinner next week.Tapley’s prison features — the first installment of which won first place in the long-form-news-story category in the nationwide competition held by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies in 2006 — has continued for more than a year. The Portland Phoenix series has exposed physical and psychological torture of prisoners by guards, the failure of prison officials to care for mentally ill inmates, the unfulfilled promises of top-level state administrators to make reforms, and efforts by staff in the office of the state’s attorney general to obstruct court orders seeking to improve inmate treatment
Related:
The 10th Annual Muzzle Awards, Letters to the Portland editor: December 29, 2006, An insult to justice, More 
- The 10th Annual Muzzle Awards
Mitt Romney will say or do anything if he thinks it will help him become president.
- Letters to the Portland editor: December 29, 2006
Cheers to Lance Tapley for his quality reporting on the Maine State Prison and the apparent political persecution of Deane Brown (see “ Lockdown ,” December 15).
- An insult to justice
Portland Phoenix freelancer Lance Tapley was given the Maine State Bar Association's Excellence in Legal Journalism Award last week at the association's annual meeting.
- 10 years later, we told you so
Like many in the alternative press, we pride ourselves on being ahead of the game. Sometimes, of course, that means we're wrong about what might be coming down the pike — that's part of the risk of being "out front" and not just reacting to the news as it happens.
- Letters to the Portland editor: May 4, 2007
God bless the First Amendment.
- State should protect inmates’ rights
As Lance Tapley points out, denying prisoners access to human-rights protections is a mistake (see "Less Than Equal," October 2).
- Letters to the Portland editor: September 9, 2007
Mr. Tapley’s pessimism is entirely realistic.
- Letters to the Portland editor, July 25, 2008
The Black Bird Legal Collective would like to thank Lance Tapley for his continued exposure of Maine prison issues.
- Stonewalling is normal
I could cite many examples of the difficulty in reporting to the Maine public what goes on behind the cement and bureaucratic walls of the public’s prison system — especially, in reporting brutal practices. I will give just a few.
- Letters on the prison series
Portland readers respond
- Waves of activism
The three federal consent decrees were a product of Maine’s previous wave of prisoner-rights activism — more than 35 years ago.
- Less
Topics:
This Just In
, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, Prisons, torture, More
, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, Prisons, torture, Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, Maine State Bar Association, Less
