by Benjamin Tschirhart
On November 18, 2022, almost four years after Congress passed the First Step Act (FSA) to reduce the population incarcerated by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), new BOP Director Colette Peters finally clarified the agency’s policy to implement the law.
FSA was signed into law by ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
No one in prison expects to eat fine cuisine. The food served is merely intended to keep prisoners alive, with no thought given to how much it is or isn’t enjoyed. Yet certain people are seeing enormous benefits from prison food — just not prisoners.
In a ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
Most prisoners quickly learn that slavery has never been fully abolished in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution allows prisoners to be compelled to work for little or no pay, and most jurisdictions take advantage of the provision. In California, some state prisoners are ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
By the time he filed a pro se complaint against the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in U.S. District Court for the District of West Virginia in May 2020, prisoner Marc Pierre Hall was a “frequent litigant in the federal courts,” as the U.S. Court of Appeals ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On July 15, 2022, Pennsylvania’s Bedford County agreed to pay $60,000 to a former detainee in the county jail, settling claims that guards purposefully failed to protect him from a vicious assault by a mentally ill detainee incarcerated there with him.
The suit was filed by Jeffrey ...
by Benjamin Tshirhart
On August 22, 2022, as many as half of the prisoners in the maximum-security unit of Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institution staged a hunger strike, protesting conditions in the 144-year-old prison. But officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) denied it happened.
“There have been no ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On June 14, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to officials with Virginia’s Department of Corrections (DOC) in a suit by a group of state prisoners alleging they were held in solitary confinement too long.
Red Onion ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On June 17, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court’s decision denying qualified immunity (QI) to federal prison wardens in Connecticut, who were accused of unconstitutionally restricting prayer practices for Muslim prisoners.
In 2014, while held by the federal Bureau ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
Wexford Health Sources had been sued over 50 times in just four years when the state of New Mexico terminated the firm’s contract to provide healthcare to state prisons. That was in 2007. So the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was understandably alarmed ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
From payoffs to teachers over biased tests to oversight for excessive force in New York City jails, there’s money in being a federal monitor for New York City agencies. But are the results worth the incredible outlay by taxpayers?
The history of these monitors and “special masters” ...
