by Casey J. Bastian
On June 27, 2022, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) announced it found Legionella bacteria in the water system at Jacksonville Correctional Center. The discovery of the bacterium — which causes a potentially fatal type of pneumonia known as Legionnaire’s disease — came just months after ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart and Casey J. Bastian
On July 20, 2022, the nonprofit Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) reported a spike in the share of state prisoners serving long sentences, with 57% now locked up for ten years or more. As a result, the average length of time served has ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On April 18, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue a writ of certiorari to hear a challenge that the abandoned property policy of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. See: Conyers v. City of Chi., 142 ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On June 18, 2022, almost three-and-a-half years after former President Donald J. Trump (R) signed the First Step Act (FSA) into law in December 2018, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced that sentence recalculations under the law had been completed for about 8,600 — or ...
by Casey Bastian
In August 2022, during their federal civil rights trial for running down and fatally shooting an unarmed jogger, Ahmaud Arbury, in Brunswick in February 2020, attorneys for father and son defendants Greg and Travis McMichael offered their guilty pleas on one condition: That the federal judge overseeing ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On March 1, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a federal prisoner’s lawsuit, finding that even though a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) staffer put him at risk of assault, damages were not warranted because the “risk never materialized.” ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On March 21, 2021, an agreement was reached between Wisconsin’s Portage County and a class of plaintiffs consisting of current and former detainees at the county jail to settle claims that their privileged communication with their attorneys was unlawfully intercepted. Under the settlement, Defendants and their ...
by Casey J. Bastian
In a decision published on January 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that accumulated prison wages constitute neither “substantial resources” nor a “material change” to a prisoner’s resources that would allow the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to confiscate them ...
by Casey Bastian
As of March 31, 2022, nearly one-third of guard positions were vacant in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), leaving the remaining guards’ duties “augmented” with additional prisoner supervision. Cooks, nurses, teachers, counselors, and case managers have also had prisoner security added to their workloads.
The union ...
by Casey J. Bastian
For decades, prisoners held by the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) have complained of inhumane conditions and mistreatment. Criticism of the 45-year-old main jail facility has also come from lawyers and judges, as well as detainees and their visitors. Yet it took a “flurry of complaints” ...
