by David M. Reutter
Opioid addiction has reached epidemic proportions. Handling withdrawal from those drugs is something that many jails are unprepared to handle. Kentucky’s Mason County Detention Center (MCDC) was so unprepared that it allowed Jenny Fulton, 27, to deteriorate and die over a four day period. In April ...
by David M. Reutter
A record number of prisoners – 356 – died while in the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) in 2016. Even more died during 2017.
Topping the chart in 2016 was Dade Correctional Institution (DCI) with 13 deaths – twice the number of any other prison except Charlotte Correctional Institution, which had 7, and facilities that house elderly or ill prisoners.
DCI has been under scrutiny since the Miami Herald published an investigative report about the death of Darren Rainey, 50, a schizophrenic prisoner serving a drug-related sentence who was fatally scalded in a shower in the facility’s mental health unit on June 23, 2012 – apparently as part of a sadistic punishment by guards. [See: PLN, April 2017, p.38; Feb. 2016, p.1].
Despite a letter sent to State Attorney Katherine Frenández Rundle by advocacy group Stop Prison Abuse Now (SPAN), no official explanation has been forthcoming as to why no one was held accountable for Rainey’s death. Prosecutors announced in March 2017 that criminal charges would not be filed against prison staff.
In 2000, there were just 191 deaths among FDOC prisoners. The increase in the system’s mortality rate since then has ...
by David M. Reutter
A federal investigation into an assault on a prisoner by guards at Mississippi’s State Penitentiary at Parchman included a claim that then-Superintendent Earnest Lee impeded the prison’s own review of the incident.
As previously reported in PLN, another FBI investigation resulted in federal charges against ...
by David M. Reutter
Less than two years after opening the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC) in January 2016, the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) imposed a $43,750 fine against the prison’s private operator, Nashville-based CoreCivic.
Formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, and the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, ...
by David M. Reutter
Some people arrested on felony charges in Mississippi face months, a year or even longer in jail before they are indicted. Some are never indicted before their release. All have one thing in common: they are too poor to afford an attorney or post bond.
According ...
by David M. Reutter
A federal class-action suit filed in June 2017 paints the U.S. Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania essentially as a solitary confinement warehouse filled with prisoners who suffer from serious mental illness. The suit alleges that prisoners are given crossword and Sudoku puzzles in place of counseling or ...
by David M. Reutter
In May 2017, the sheriff’s office in Henrico County, Virginia entered into a $12,000 settlement to resolve a lawsuit alleging an undocumented immigrant was held in jail beyond his scheduled release date.
Following his arrest for drunk driving, James S. Alfaro-Garcia, an undocumented immigrant from El ...
by David M. Reutter
Increases in use-of-force incidents, violence and disturbances in Florida prisons have been blamed on understaffing, a problem ticking like a time bomb in the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC).
Guards employed by the FDOC, which is the third-largest prison system in the U.S., are among the ...
by David M. Reutter
As its lethal injection drug supply neared expiration last year, Arkansas embarked upon the most ambitious death penalty plan since capital punishment was revived by the Supreme Court in 1976: The state scheduled eight executions over an 11-day period in April 2017. Protests and court challenges ...
by David M. Reutter
An audit personally overseen by Florida state Rep. David Richardson concluded the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) had approved a pricing scheme that allowed Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), now known as CoreCivic, to operate the Lake City Correctional Facility (LCCF) at a significantly higher cost ...
