Latest news with #juvenileprison
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Washington Post
Wisconsin inmate sentenced to 5 years for role in guard's death
MADISON, Wis. — An 18-year-old inmate who pleaded guilty to charges related to the death of a guard at a Wisconsin juvenile prison was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison. Rian Nyblom pleaded guilty in April to two counts of being a party to the crime of battery by a prisoner. As part of a plea deal, the original charge of felony murder with special circumstances was reduced. An additional charge of battery by a prisoner was dismissed.
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Associated Press
Wisconsin inmate sentenced to 5 years for role in guard's death
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — An 18-year-old inmate who pleaded guilty to charges related to the death of a guard at a Wisconsin juvenile prison was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison. Rian Nyblom pleaded guilty in April to two counts of being a party to the crime of battery by a prisoner. As part of a plea deal, the original charge of felony murder with special circumstances was reduced. An additional charge of battery by a prisoner was dismissed. Cory Proulx, 49, was a guard at the Lincoln Hills-Copper Lakes juvenile prison when he was punched multiple times by a 16-year-old inmate, fell and hit his head on the pavement in June 2024. He died a day later. According to prosecutors, the 16-year-old inmate was upset at a female guard whom he felt was abusing her power. He threw a cup of what he thought was soap at her and repeatedly punched her. The inmate then ran into the courtyard and Proulx followed to stop him. The complaint said the 16-year-old then punched Proulx multiple times, causing him to fall to the ground and hit his head on the pavement. Nyblom told investigators that he knew the 16-year-old was upset with the female guard and wanted to splash her with conditioner and then start punching her, according to a criminal complaint. Nyblom said about 15 minutes before the fighting began he got extra soap and conditioner from guards and secretly gave it to the 16-year-old, the complaint alleged. Nyblom said that he didn't see the 16-year-old punch the female guard but he watched as the boy punched Proulx and Proulx hit his head, according to the complaint. Nyblom's attorney, Joseph L. Bauer, didn't immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment following the sentencing Wednesday. Nyblom was sentenced to five years in prison, minus 405 days already served, by Lincoln County Circuit Judge Galen Bayne-Allison. He was relocated from the juvenile prison to the Lincoln County Jail last year. Nyblom was sent to Lincoln Hills a month before Proulx was killed after being charged with criminal damage to property and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors. He pleaded no contest to both charges in May and was found guilty. The other inmate, who is now 17-years-old, faces one count of first-degree reckless homicide and two counts of battery by prisoners. He pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect and a trial is set to begin in February. He has been charged as an adult but The Associated Press is not naming him because his attorneys could seek to move the case back into juvenile court, where proceedings are secret.
Telegraph
01-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Love Ferrante? Read this intelligent Neapolitan writer
On Nisida, an island off the coast of Naples and site of a notorious juvenile prison, one inmate called Zeno – a 15-year-old who has been detained for shooting and killing another boy – is given a simple task by his Italian teacher, Ms Martina: write down what you're thinking, and you'll get furlough for Christmas. Zeno duly complies. And so through a run of sprawling entries that make up Francesca Maria Benvenuto's engrossing debut novel, So People Know It's Me, we learn about Zeno's life both before prison and inside it. There's his impoverished upbringing, which forced his mother to resort to sex work; descriptions of friends he's made on the inside, among them a guard called Franco; his girlfriend, Natalina; and the story of his slow capture by a world of criminal drug gangs that has led him to where he is now. Almost instantly, we see that Benvenuto is presenting us with that most tempting of literary archetypes: the loveable rogue, who despite having committed some of the most awful acts imaginable, still wins our sympathy through charm, and – in the case of a young criminal such as Zeno – the glimpses of innocence he occasionally betrays. We see this, and we prepare ourselves not to be taken in by it. Only here, through the unusual twists and turns of Benvenuto's narrative, the trick of the archetype works on us all the same. Compelling though this is, So People Know It's Me has an equally strong sales pitch: Benvenuto is an accomplished criminal lawyer who has defended minors in court. Her book draws from the experiences of her mother who – just like Ms Martina – worked as a teacher on Nisida, home to a very real prison for young people. And yet Benvenuto avoids wielding that authority too heavily. She never bashes over our heads the very legitimate moral problems of housing minors in a prison complex as on Nisida; rather, intimate experience affords her an empathy that feels real without being sentimental. Zeno is under no illusions that what he has done is wrong – but that does not make him less human or beyond hope. With time, his simple writing exercise becomes a project of self-realisation; near the end of the novel, Zeno begins to envision a life for himself beyond prison, perhaps even as a writer. As befits her setting near Naples, Benvenuto's original prose blends Italian with Neapolitan. Inevitably, the translator Elizabeth Harris has replaced this interplay between two languages with just one: but the more diminished English, with Zeno's voice peppered with vague colloquialisms, feels as though it belongs everywhere and nowhere at once ('she don't got no problems'). And where Harris has let the occasional Neapolitan word or phrase stand on its own – strunz, scornacchiato, 'nnammurata – we're only reminded of a layer of meaning that has been lost. This dualism is important, though: in particular, I'm left wondering where Benvenuto might have originally slipped into Neapolitan to distinguish between other dualities, such as between social classes or children and adults. (That isn't to criticise Harris's work, however. Another translator might have cast the Neapolitan in another mutually intelligible dialect – imagine a back and forth between English and Scots – but the specificities of Italy would still be lost.) But perhaps this musing is all too hypothetical, and in any case, the unavoidable compromises of translation aren't enough to detract from Benvenuto's strength as a storyteller. Her messaging is similarly deft: everybody is simultaneously the product of structural problems and also not, as Zeno proves. Good people can arise even from difficult circumstances and vice versa. That's a philosophy that survives change and iteration – and is always worth retelling.
