by David M. Reutter
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that a prisoner exhausted administrative remedies when he followed the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) Inmate Grievance Procedure, but the Central Office Review Committee (CORC) failed to respond within the 30 days it is ...
by David M. Reutter
In a ruling August 3, 2020, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals encouraged a lower court to extend its supervision over a settlement agreement in a class-action lawsuit brought in 2009 against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) by prisoners placed in solitary ...
by David M. Reutter
On January 6, 2021, a federal court in California issued an injunction extending the provisions of a temporary restraining order it had handed down two weeks earlier and excoriated officials from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and their private prison contractor, the GEO Group, for ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 7, 2020, Kentucky’s Larue County Detention Center agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging former guard Jerome Perry sexually abused nine prisoners.
The women’s lawsuit alleged that between February 1, 2018, and August 20, 2018, Perry “harassed, assaulted, abused, and sexually ...
by David M. Reutter
The conditions under which residents exist at Parchman are subhuman and deplorable in a civilized society,” wrote Dr. Marc Stern, a correctional health-care consultant hired by lawyers representing Parchman prisoners, in a report to federal court filed June 8, 2020. “I’ve been to prisons in sub-Saharan ...
by David M. Reutter
The Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) on August 6, 2020 agreed to pay $4.65 million to prisoner Cheryl Weimar, who was beaten “to within an inch of her life” two years earlier by guards at the Lowell Correctional Institution (LCI). The investigation into the beating continued ...
by David M. Reutter
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s grant of judgment for prison officials in a class action that alleged that the Tennessee Department of Corrections’ (TDOC) Hepatitis C treatment program violates the Eighth Amendment.
The district court’s judgment was entered after a four-day ...
by David M. Reutter
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on August 10, 2020, reversed a Tennessee federal district court’s order denying defendant’s motion for summary judgment on a claim that a sheriff was deliberately indifferent to a pretrial detainee’s safety because his jail was overcrowded.
Zachery Beck was assaulted ...
by David M. Reutter
Prison journalism is on the comeback in California, and it’s being credited as a rehabilitative tool that is impacting prison reform advocacy in a positive way.
When The Prison Mirror was founded in 1887 at Stillwater Prison in Minnesota, newspapers were commonplace in prisons. The Prison ...
by David M. Reutter
Shortly after the deadliest prison riot in 25 years, officials launched an investigation into the events surrounding the April 25, 2018, incident at South Carolina’s Lee Correctional Institution (LCI). After more than two and a half years and at least $190,000 spent on a special investigation, ...
