After a century of using conjugal visits as prisoner –control practice, Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Commissioner Christopher B. Epps has brought that privilege to an end. Only five states now allow conjugal visits.
In the Jim Crow days of the early 1900s, the warden of Parchman Farm, now the ...
In ordering the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) to provide prisoners with kosher meals, the federal district court overseeing the litigation brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) overruled FDOC”s objection to giving DOJ oversight authority into compliance with the injunction.
PLN previously reported on the court’s April 30, ...
Jails have become an essential part of Virginia’s mental health system, but they lack the capacity to satisfy the current demand for mental health services. That is a finding of a report by Virginia’s Office of the State Inspector General (SIG). The biggest factors in that systematic failure are a ...
by David Reutter
Prisoners are sent to death row to die for their crimes. The shortages of drugs used for lethal injection has delayed executions, resulting in many death row prisoners dying from natural cases or suicide. The recent frequency of this in Alabama exhibits the hypocrisy of death sentence ...
Pennsylvania prison officials have paid a total of $183,000 to settle lawsuits brought by three prisoners who alleged that guards at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Pittsburgh physically and sexually abused them.
One of the federal civil rights actions was filed in February 2012 against two guards and five current or ...
A federal district court held that a Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) policy which limits prisoners in administrative segregation to having no more than two personal books at a time violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The court limited its ruling to the plaintiff’s as-applied claim, ...
PLN’s intervention in a federal lawsuit alleging Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) had improperly classified supervisors at two Kentucky prisons as being exempt from overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and Kentucky’s Wage and Hour Act resulted in the court unsealing the settlement in the case.
The ...
Georgia: $453,000 Jury Verdict against Private Jail Medical Contractor
by David Reutter
A Georgia federal jury awarded $452,917.50 to a former detainee for injuries that resulted from inadequate medical care at the Hart County Jail.
Monica Robinson was on probation for a criminal offense on April 20, 2012 when she ...
Michigan: Private Prison More Costly than State-Run Prison, Attracts Out-of-State Contracts
by David Reutter
The GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest for-profit prison companies, has signed contracts with Vermont and Washington State to house prisoners at a GEO prison in Michigan, after a review by Michigan officials determined it ...
Privatized Prisoner Transportation Service Poses Problems
by David M. Reutter
Several lawsuits against the self-proclaimed “nation’s largest prisoner extradition company and one of the largest international transporters of detainees” have cast a harsh light on a contractor hired to fulfill the traditional government role of transporting prisoners from place to ...
