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When "get tough" voter measures requiring inmates to work for free, undermined the Oregon State Constitution, lawmakers simply amended it. Prison Legal News co-editor and inmate Pens looks at the impacts on prisoner and labor rights.

Alex Friedmann doesn't look like the kind of guy who would incite a prison riot. Slight and bespectacled, Friedmann measures his words carefully and is quick to point out his own biases. So it came as a bit of a surprise a few weeks ago when Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in the world, abruptly transferred Friedmann from its medium-security lockup in Clifton, Tennessee.

The CMT Blues scandal and the host of human rights and labor issues it raises, is just the tip of the iceberg in a web of interconnected business, government and class interests which critics dub the ''prison industrial complex.''

The co-editor of Prison Legal News, a Washington State prisoner himself, Wright reports on private companies, like Boeing, that are making out like bandits by using prison labor.

WASHINGTON (March 5, 2002) -- A dangerous killer who targets kids is on the loose, and he's got a new disguise. That's the premise of an animated ''e-movie'' that spoofs Philip Morris' proposed corporate name change to The Altria Group. The tobacco giant's shareholders will vote on the name change at their annual meeting April 25. Billed as ''the movie Philip Morris doesn't want you to see,'' the short animation was released today by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

UBS, the Swiss bank, is being investigated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission for failing to carry out adequate due diligence before working on share offerings for several Chinese companies. The bank says that it is at risk of being suspended from doing business in the city.

The U.S. government is investigating Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge firm and market maker that manages some $25 billion in client money, for allegedly giving smaller investors a bad deal. The Department of Justice wants to know if the firm is taking advantage of the complexity of high-speed trading.

Did a few individual traders in London conspire to rig global interest rates in order to enrich themselves or were they just pawns in an ongoing conspiracy by major banks designed to routinely skim billions from the international financial system?

Investment Technology Group (ITG), a U.S. stock broker, paid a $20.3 million fine for running a secret operation named Project Omega to take advantage of "dark pools" trading orders made by its clients. Experts say that Barclays and Credit Suisse may also soon pay fines for dark pools trading scams.

Six major international banks - Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Union Bank of Switerland (UBS) - have agreed to pay $5.6 billion in fines for rigging global foreign exchange markets. Four of the six have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior, an unprecedented admission.

Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay out a record $2.5 billion fine to settle U.K. and U.S. government investigations into allegations of fixing global interest rates, just months after six other banks paid out $4.3 billion on similar charges. Activists say that the banks should have faced criminal charges.

A cache of secret documents has thrust HSBC, the world's second largest bank, into the limelight for helping international clients dodge taxes. A series of articles published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is finally pushing reluctant governments to act almost eight years after the original leaks.

A whistleblower has stepped forward to provide evidence that executives at JP Morgan, a major Wall Street bank, were aware that the bank was selling bad mortgages - but she says that the U.S. government has failed to do anything with the evidence that she has provided to them.

Argentina and Belgium have separately accused HSBC bank's Geneva branch of setting up a network of offshore accounts to help their citizens avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. The charges are apparently based on a trove of documents provided by Hervé Falciani, a former HSBC employee turned whistleblower.