by Chuck Sharman
During Ukraine’s successful offensive to liberate the southern city of Kherson in October 2022, retreating Russian forces took 2,500 Ukrainian prisoners with them. What followed was a Kafka-esque journey through five countries, at the end of which the same Russian army that led the prisoners out of jail detained them again – this time for violating immigration laws.
“They asked me, ‘How did you enter Russia?’” said Ruslan Osadchyi, one of the Kherson prisoners. “‘You brought me here,’” he recalled replying, “‘under the muzzles of automatic guns!’”
Curiously, the Ukrainian convicts were passed over by recruiters from the Wagner Group, a private mercenary army partially drawn from Russian lockups. Instead, as another Ukranian prisoner recalled, they “were received with shouts, beatings, [and] humiliations” upon arrival at a Russian-controlled prison.
“Face to the ground,” recounted Oleksandr Fedorenko, 47, “don’t look, don’t speak, and blows, blows, blows.”
Russian officials have not publicly acknowledged the transfer of Kherson prisoners into Russia, which would violate international law prohibiting the forced removal of non-combatants from an occupied zone. The prisoners suffering this haphazard treatment, many convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape, had also been left behind by Ukrainian forces retreating from Russian’s ...
by Chuck Sharman
A guard and a prisoner at Oahu Community Correctional Center in Honolulu were among four people convicted on federal conspiracy charges in a drug-and-gun-smuggling scheme at the lockup. All but the guard were sentenced in February and May 2023.
On February 10, 2023, prisoner Robert S. Gibson, 38, had 100 months added to his sentence for masterminding a plan to smuggle the contraband into the lockup. He was being held there for kidnapping, robbery and impersonating a law enforcement during a home invasion committed after walking off a work furlough in 2015.
Two days earlier, on February 8, 2023, his girlfriend, Ceceliacharity Hilo, a/k/a Cece Adams, was convicted of buying the meth for him and passing it to co-conspirators. For that she was sentenced to 27 months of time she had served plus two years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment.
Gibson’s stepsister, Keicha K.W. Brunn-Kekuewa, 30, pleaded guilty to setting up calls between the two in late 2019 and early 2020, as well as accepting the meth Hilo obtained. For that she got a 20-month prison term on May 10, 2023, plus two years of supervised release. She also lost her job as a ...
by Jordan Arizmendi and Chuck Sharman
A huge fire inside an immigration detention facility in Ciudad Juarez, just across the Mexican border from El Paso, killed 38 men on March 28, 2023. Another 28 were left with injuries, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.
While smoke filled the building and ...
by Chuck Sharman
Three guards at the Cook County Jail in Chicago were arrested in separate violent incidents during one week in April 2023. The jail recorded its seventh detainee death of the year the month before, one from a fatal beating, the other a fatal overdose. A jail nurse ...
by Chuck Sharman
In the age of social media, when anyone can become a star overnight, there is an unlikely group joining the ranks of internet fame-seekers: prisoners. From behind bars at a UK prison, one incarcerated video blogger has reportedly amassed 24,000 followers who watch his Tik Tok ...
by Chuck Sharman
On January 3, 2023, the Atlanta City Council unanimously adopted Ordinance 22-O-1891, clearing the way for the city to pay $1.3 million to settle claims by a Black transgender woman that she was locked up in the city jail for five months on trumped-up charges. The settlement ...
by Chuck Sharman
On February 14, 2023, Montana joined a dozen other states to end prison gerrymandering, the practice of having census takers count prisoners where they are incarcerated, rather than in their hometowns. It is also the third state to do so without enacting a new law.
Gerrymandering ...
by Chuck Sharman
On April 17, 2023, Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly filed bills to repeal the state’s death penalty. HB999 was introduced in the House and SB600 in the senate two months and one day after Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) – a onetime supporter of ...
by Chuck Sharman
On March 13, 2023, an attorney in Missouri’s Iron County helped a 64-year-old resident file a pro se motion in court, asking for an indigency hearing she never got before being ordered to pay restitution for letting her dog off-leash. When she couldn’t pay, Lori Ann Stuehmeyer ...
by Chuck Sharman
Old ghosts have come back to haunt the promotion of Vincent Grinnage to head the Emergency Services Unit (ESU) for the New York City Department of Correction (DOC).
It cost the city $3.3 million to settle the lawsuit filed over the suicide of Kalief Browder in 2015, ...
