by Jordan Arizmendi and Chuck Sharman
Attendance at parole hearings by all five members of the Nebraska Parole Board has improved, after a 43-month stretch from 2018 to 2021 when all five showed up for just 37% of parole hearings. [See: PLN, Nov. 2022, p.53.]
When media reports in March 2022 highlighted that statistic, attendance jumped. It jumped again after state lawmakers introduced a bill in January 2023 to define “neglect of duties” – a reason for removal from the board – as missing three hearings in a year.
Over the next two months after LB 631 was introduced by Sen. Terrell McKinney (D-Omaha), attendance at parole hearings for the full board quickly climbed to 63%. The bill was still pending after a floor debate in the state legislature on March 31, 2023.
Board members pointed to reasons other than media attention for their attendance improvement, including the waning COVID-19 pandemic and fewer family deaths, as well as medical leave in 2021 and 2022 for board chair Rosalyn Cotton, leaving her attendance rate over the past five years – missing 22.7% of hearings – the lowest of any board member.
Board counsel Nicole Miller called the earlier low attendance ...
by Chuck Sharman
A collection of graphic videos reported by the Los Angeles Times on June 24, 2023, pulled back the curtain on rampant violence and chaos inside Los Angeles County jails. The footage, saved on a discarded thumb drive, portrays a shocking lack of supervision from jailers, as well ...
by Chuck Sharman
On June 20, 2023, a lawsuit accusing prison food service giant Aramark Correctional Services survived screening under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, in the federal court for the Southern District of Indiana.
State prisoner Michael Scuteri, who filed the suit pro se ...
by Chuck Sharman
Since its peak nearly two decades ago, New York’s prisoner population has fallen by half. Added to the millions of dollars it cost the state Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) to build the prisons are millions more to shutter them. Some closed properties were sold at auction, but in most cases the state recovered only a fraction of its initial investment. The remaining former prisons, often located in remote rural areas, have proven impossible to sell, leaving the state with white elephants.
Or maybe it’s better to call them chickens, hatched from mass incarceration, clucking loudly as they come home to roost.
DOCCS has closed more than two dozen state prisons over the past 15 years, six since the beginning of 2022 closed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). In some instances, investors purchased the properties but failed to find buyers who wanted to redevelop them. More often, it’s the state left holding the bag.
A rural prison creates its own mini-economy, with hotels and restaurants and convenience stores for those visiting prisoners, along with housing and services for those who staff them. All of that slowly goes dark when the prison closes. Hoping to revitalize ...
by Chuck Sharman
On January 23, 2023, just 10 days after Ryan Everson was put in Missouri’s Clay County Jail, the 42-year-old was found dead in his cell. That his three children no longer had a father is cruelly ironic, since Everson was behind bars for failure to pay $50 in child support.
The office of Sheriff Will Akin said the cause of death was suicide. But Everson’s family questioned why he was left alone in his cell despite having seizures. Moreover, they argue, jailing him was never going to help his children, ages 17, 19 and 20.
Instead it added to the growing number of deaths in the jail, the third in 21 months. With an average daily population of 313 detainees, according to Inside Prison, the jail’s annual death rate now stands at 548 per 100,000 – over three times higher than the U.S. average of 167 per 100,000 reported most recently by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Statistics on the number of parents jailed for nonpayment of child support are spottier. The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement in 2010 counted 662,000 incarcerated parents who owed child support, but the vast majority were behind bars for ...
by Chuck Sharman
After a media investigation found Illinois prisoners were forced to pay for abortion procedures – even covering the wages of guard escorts to and from medical providers – Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) ordered the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to change its policy.
As a result, DOC spokesperson Naomi Puzello announced on November 2, 2022, that incarcerated women would no longer have to cover these expenses, and those who previously paid for them could get reimbursed.
That’s especially important to a woman working a prison job, which in Illinois pays an hourly wage that tops out at 89 cents. Covering just one hour of the $47,508 starting salary for a state prison guard would require her to work four days or more.
Advocates for abortion rights expressed surprise and elation at the decision. Emily Hirsch, a legal fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, emphasized the importance of ensuring unfettered access to critical healthcare, including abortion, for every person in need.
“We applaud the Governor’s Office for taking an important step toward that goal,” she said.
Puzello confirmed that the new guidelines had been implemented and that DOC’s privately contracted healthcare provider, Wexford Health Sources, ...
by Chuck Sharman
On April 21, 2023, South Carolina prisoner Dexter Lawrence, 27, was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for his role in a “sextortion” scam that targeted U.S. military personnel. Two co-conspirators also previously received federal sentences for money-laundering. Two other state prisoners were sentenced for blackmail in a similar scheme that led a young soldier to commit suicide. All must complete sentences they are already serving with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) before they begin their new terms.
The prisoners ran the scam from their cells from 2015 to 2017, and it worked like this: Using contraband cellphones to access the internet, they created fake accounts on dating sites, pretending to be females as they targeted on-duty U.S. military personnel and enticed them to request nude photos. It’s unclear whose photos the prisoners sent. But after they did so, an accomplice phoned the recipients, pretending to be an irate father claiming the photos were of his underage daughter. Of course, the “dad” was not so angry that he couldn’t be bought off. [See: PLN, Apr. 2019, p.63.]
Threatened with arrest and dishonorable discharge on child pornography charges, some ...
By Chuck Sharman
An off-duty Florida prison guard was arrested on June 7, 2023, after he allegedly shot a woman several times outside her home.
Wilner Cyprien, 31, a state Department of Corrections (DOC) guard at Martin Correctional Institution in Indiantown, was allegedly waiting outside the woman’s home in a ...
by Chuck Sharman
In a surprising shift, the Texas Legislature approved construction of new state-run prisons for youth and transferring some teenagers from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) to the more punitive adult prison system. The passage of SB 1727 on May 29, 2023, marked a departure from the ...
by Chuck Sharman
In a statement to a local Jacksonville news station on June 6, 2023, the healthcare provider for at the Duval County Jail denied wrongdoing in the death of a former detainee who missed critical doses of drugs to prevent rejection of his transplanted heart. Instead, Armor Correctional ...
