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Articles by David Reutter

Warden Granted Qualified Immunity for Two-year Visitation Suspension

Warden Granted Qualified Immunity for Two-year Visitation Suspension

 

by David Reutter

 

A prison official who suspended a prisoner’s visitation privileges was entitled to qualified immunity because, under the facts of the case, the prisoner did not have a clearly established right to visitation, the Fourth Circuit Court of ...

Second Circuit: Federal Prisoner States Conditions of Confinement Claim

Second Circuit: Federal Prisoner States Conditions of Confinement Claim

 

by David Reutter

 

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a federal prisoner sufficiently stated a claim alleging the conditions of his confinement violated the Eighth Amendment.

The case involved an appeal from a New York ...

Seventh Circuit Clarifies Standard for Recruiting Counsel in Pro Se Cases

Seventh Circuit Clarifies Standard for Recruiting Counsel in Pro Se Cases

 

by David Reutter

 

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held that an Illinois federal district court, like many federal courts in Northern Illinois, used an improper standard when refusing to exercise its discretion to recruit counsel ...

Federal Court Must Give Reasons for Special Conditions of Supervised Release

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district court’s imposition of four special conditions of supervised release, due to the court’s failure to explain its reasons for imposing them.

Rashan R. Doyle was convicted in New York of attempted sexual abuse in the first degree; as a result ...

Violence, Security Lapses and Media Attention Lead to Reforms at Georgia Prison

A series of investigative news reports by Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Joy Lukachick, published from February to December 2013, revealed numerous problems in Georgia’s prison system – particularly at Hays State Prison (HSP), located around 40 miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee – and resulted in lawsuits, security improvements and ...

Controversy, Litigation and Performance Problems Plague Private Probation Services

by David M. Reutter and Alex Friedmann

Defendants who are placed on probation and ordered to pay a growing array of fines and fees levied by local governments facing budget deficits, combined with additional fees charged by private companies hired to provide probation services, are increasingly being squeezed into burdensome ...

Study Finds Prisoners Inappropriately Using Topical Antibiotics

by David M. Reutter

Research into the use of topical antibiotics in correctional facilities found that prisoners frequently use antibiotics for reasons inconsistent with their recommended purpose.

A two-year study of 822 New York state prisoners was presented at the 39th Annual Educational Conference and International Meeting of the Association ...

Debtors' Prisons Returning to America

As the United States was becoming an independent nation with its own values and form of government, it discarded an archaic English system that drove the poor into greater poverty. When the U.S. ended the practice of debtors’ prisons in 1833, it ensured that people would not be jailed merely ...

GEO Group Pulls out of Mississippi Prisons

by David M. Reutter

Last year, the GEO Group – the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company – announced that it was pulling out of its contracts to operate three Mississippi prisons. That development came shortly after a federal court announced sweeping changes at the GEO-run Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility ...

Declining Prison Populations Leave Towns with Empty Jails, Debt

by David M. Reutter

Several Texas towns are bemoaning their bad business decision to enter into the for-profit incarceration industry as the bottom began dropping out of that market 5 or 6 years ago. Over a two-decade boom in prison building, rural communities in Texas and other states were able ...