In August 2014, a Massachusetts federal district court granted summary judgment to a class of 176 former and current prisoners who challenged a policy at the Western Regional Women’s Correctional Center (WCC) that allowed male guards to videotape female prisoners being strip searched. The court held the policy violated the ...
Florida, with the nation’s third-largest prison system, has a long and sordid history of abusing, neglecting and even killing its prisoners. Because most state prisons are in insular rural areas, the general public, aside from those with incarcerated loved ones or friends, has minimal awareness of what really occurs within ...
In defending itself against a lawsuit brought by a juvenile who was raped by a guard, Louisiana’s Terrebonne Parish Juvenile Detention Center cast blame for the incident on the 14-year-old victim. The matter was resolved with an undisclosed settlement amount.
At issue were the actions of the guard, Angelo Vickers, ...
A Georgia state court ordered the state Attorney General and head of the state ethics commission to each pay $10,000 as sanctions for discovery violations in a whistleblower suit filed by the former executive director of the Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission (ethics commission).
While head of the ethics ...
A federal district court awarded $197,505 in attorney fees following a jury's nominal damage award after finding excessive force by guards upon detainees was a custom or practice at the Sacramento County Main Jail (SCMJ).
The plaintiffs, a prisoner and non-prisoner at the time the action was filed, brought suit ...
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) agreed to a $10,000 settlement in a prisoner’s lawsuit alleging injuries due to a guard’s negligence and failure to provide medical treatment.
While working on a work crew at Lebanon Correctional Institute (LCI), prisoner Christopher T. Jackson was “negligently struck, knocked down, ...
Florida Northern District federal court denied the cross-motions for summary judgment in PLN’s lawsuit challenging the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) impoundment and rejection of PLN based upon ad content.
The current suit is not the first round of litigation on the issue of FDOC censoring PLN. FDOC began censoring ...
A confidential settlement was reached on July 30, 2013 in a lawsuit stemming from the death of a pre-trial detainee from untreated diabetes while held at Kentucky’s Whitley County Detention Center (WCDC).
Ronald S. Lawson, 26, was booked into WCDC on July 24, 2010. His family advised jail personnel upon ...
Officials at Tennessee’s Davidson County Jail (DCJ) are outraged at being “duped” into allowing a film crew record inside DCJ under the guise of creating a documentary and then seeing it be transformed into a music video.
Rapper Struggle Jennings, whose real name is William Harness, was serving time at ...
More than 1,000 prisoners have been released since California voters approved in 2012 the reform of the state’s harsh three strikes law. Despite not being provided pre-and post-release services afforded other prisoners, the strikers have a lower recidivism rate than other released prisoners.
At the height of ...
