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 ...
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, ...
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, ...