Ryan Rideout

Latest Articles

Three years and counting

The Portland Phoenix' s prison scoops keep piling up
For the past three years, Portland Phoenix contributing writer Lance Tapley has been the only reporter in Maine to pay attention to the appalling conditions suffered by inmates in the Maine State Prison
By PORTLAND PHOENIX STAFF | November 05, 2008

State sued over inmate’s death

Silencing alarms
As severely mentally ill Maine State Prison inmate Ryan Rideout prepared to hang himself from a sprinkler in his cell on the night of October 5, 2006, other inmates frantically pressed panic buttons in their cells.
By LANCE TAPLEY | March 05, 2008

Inmate sues prison officials in federal court

First amendment watch
Did the Maine Department of Corrections violate the First Amendment’s free-speech guarantee by keeping inmate and human-rights activist Deane Brown from contact with the news media?
By LANCE TAPLEY | May 18, 2007

Cracks in the armor

Prison employee may be disciplined in suicide case; interview policy to be rewritten
A couple of cracks have opened in the state’s armor of prison secrecy.
By LANCE TAPLEY | January 31, 2007

Sluggish response to suicide

Supermax watch
An eyewitness to the suicide of Ryan Rideout, a 25-year-old, severely mentally ill Augusta man who hanged himself with his bedding in his Maine State Prison Supermax cell on October 5, calls into question the official version of events.
By LANCE TAPLEY | January 03, 2007

Lockdown

What do prison officials have to hide?
If you were a reporter and you received a letter like the one excerpted below, what would you make of it? Lance Tapley discusses reporting the prisons
By LANCE TAPLEY | December 14, 2006

Stonewalling is normal

Reporting the prison system
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.
By LANCE TAPLEY | December 13, 2006

More trouble in the Supermax

Prison watch
A hunger strike has ended at the Maine State Prison in Warren, but all is not well at the state’s largest house of corrections.
By JEFF INGLIS | October 25, 2006

Hunger strike at Maine's Supermax Prison

Suicide attempts reported
Inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement Supermax unit in Warren have been on a hunger strike since Saturday night. Death in the Supermax. By Lance Tapley
By LANCE TAPLEY | October 18, 2006

Death in the Supermax

Prisons
A 25-year-old inmate killed himself in the state’s Supermax prison on October 5, corrections officers say. But while a Rockland newspaper quoted the prison warden as saying the inmate was not considered a suicide risk, Ryan Rideout had a long history of mental illness and suicidal behavior.
By LANCE TAPLEY | October 11, 2006

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