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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
