by Derek Gilna
In June 2017, Prison Legal News obtained a substantial settlement from the Livingston County, Michigan Sheriff’s Office in a censorship lawsuit. The Livingston County jail agreed to settle after five years of litigation that challenged the facility’s mail policies and practices.
According to PLN managing editor Alex ...
by Derek Gilna
The Trump administration has proposed a reduced budget for the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that would require the agency to cut its staff. As another result of budget cuts, the BOP has quietly terminated the contracts for more than a dozen halfway houses. Consequently, federal prisoners ...
by Derek Gilna
An order entered by Western District of Arkansas federal judge Timothy L. Brooks on September 28, 2017 gave a mixed result to both sides in a hotly-contested lawsuit over excessive costs for prison and jail phone calls.
In this case, one of the nation’s largest prison phone ...
by Derek Gilna
Cynthia Louis Hobbs was convicted, along with her husband, of aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and sentenced to 56 months in prison and five years of supervised release. After she left prison in November 2014, her supervised release was uneventful until her husband ...
by Derek Gilna
William A. Miller, incarcerated at FCC Terre Haute, a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facility in Indiana, entered prison with a serious health problem – a thalamic brain tumor that required a lower bunk assignment, or “pass,” issued by prison medical officials. He was initially given a lower-bunk ...
by Derek Gilna
Rahim McWilliams, an Illinois state prisoner, injured his hand in a fall and filed a claim in federal court for damages, claiming lack of proper medical treatment and permanent disfigurement. He alleged he was indigent and sought a waiver of the filing fee with an in forma ...
by Derek Gilna
The family of deceased prisoner Jimmy Richardson filed a federal lawsuit against the Schenectady County Jail in New York in April 2017, alleging that the facility and its medical contractor, Correctional Medical Care, wrongfully withheld medication that could have prevented his death.
The complaint alleges that the ...
by Derek Gilna
A December 2, 2016 decision by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a finding by the Merit Systems Protection Board, has cast in doubt the operations of the chief internal investigative body of the U.S. Department of Justice – the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) ...
by Derek Gilna
After numerous failed inspections and failures to perform necessary maintenance, the jail in Estill County, Kentucky was forced to close by order of state correctional officials on March 31, 2017. Approximately two dozen prisoners were transferred to other facilities. This is the second time the county jail ...
by Derek Gilna
Charles Murphy, an Illinois state prisoner housed at the Vandalia Correctional Center, raised the ire of several guards on July 25, 2011 when he refused to eat at a dining hall table and chair he maintained were wet. Cuffed without incident and led to segregation, he was ...
