by Derek Gilna
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned portions of a district court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by three federal prisoners – Yassin Aref, Kifah Jayyousi and Daniel McGowan – who sought damages as a result of their confinement in Communications Management Units (CMUs). The appellate ...
by Derek Gilna
In a setback for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL), the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit declined to overturn a district court’s judgment that found the U.S. Attorney’s discovery handbook, also known as the “Blue Book,” was not subject to disclosure under the ...
by Derek Gilna
In September 2016, Harvard Law School published a report titled “Confronting Criminal Justice Debt: A Guide for Policy Reform,” which questioned the moral justification of a criminal justice system that relies on fees extracted from mostly-indigent defendants to function.
As noted in the report, “Monetary sanctions often serve purposes that have nothing to do with advancing the values typically associated with criminal justice. Although fines are designed to act as punishment or a deterrent, fees do not advance the traditional purposes of the criminal justice system.”
Instead, criminal justice “user fees,” as distinguished from fines, are more effective at perversely preventing defendants from successfully putting their lives in order, maintaining employment and supporting their families. As indicated by a recent U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Ferguson, Missouri’s fee-based court system, the weight of criminal justice debt falls disproportionately on the poor and people of color, and perpetuates a cycle of recidivism when the fees go unpaid. [See: PLN, Dec. 2016, p.54].
The Harvard report further noted that in Ferguson, such “policing practices and routine courtroom procedures led African Americans to face higher fines, more warrants for failing to pay criminal justice debt and greater exposure ...
by Derek Gilna
A January 2017 report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) examined the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners with physical disabilities, based upon interviews with disabled prisoners who were “locked in cages the size of a regular parking space.” The report described some of the challenges “faced by people with disabilities in correctional settings, such as lack of access to proper medical and mental health care, as well as rehabilitative therapy, programming, visitation, and other necessities.”
In addition to interviews with current and former prisoners, the ACLU consulted with attorneys, disability rights advocates, a service provider that works in the corrections system, current and former correctional staff, and public records obtained from state Departments of Corrections. Ten jurisdictions provided information, though many states had no methodology for collecting data on disabled prisoners housed in solitary.
According to the report, “for prisoners with physical disabilities, solitary confinement imposes additional harms” that prevent them from receiving the “regular physical therapy, exercise, and access to proper prescription medications to maintain a healthy existence.” As a result, disabled prisoners suffer muscle deterioration as well as mental suffering caused by being isolated from other people for up to 22 hours a ...
by Derek Gilna
Last year, Disability Rights Washington's AVID (Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities) Prison Project published a report titled “Making Hard Time Harder: Programmatic Accommodations for Inmates with Disabilities Under the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
The report, released on June 22, 2016, detailed many of the significant challenges faced by disabled prisoners. As noted by AVID, “People with disabilities in state and federal prison are generally protected by Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the [Rehabilitation] Act.” The ADA (42 U.S.C. § 12131) applies to prisoners in state facilities, while § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. § 794(a)) applies to both federal and state prisons.
The needs of disabled prisoners are becoming increasingly significant, AVID notes, because many in the aging U.S. prison population are suffering some form of disability and there has been “a rise in the number of people with mental illness and developmental and cognitive disabilities.”
According to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics, there are 1,561,500 state and federal prisoners in the U.S., of whom 31% have some form of disability.
Statistics also show that disabled prisoners serve, on average, fifteen additional months compared to those with no ...
by Derek Gilna
Faced with the censorship of its monthly publication and other correspondence by a jail in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, Prison Legal News, a project of the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), filed suit in federal district court in September 2015. Following 16 months of litigation, the Pottawatomie ...
by Derek Gilna
As public and legislative pressure builds to reduce the number of prisoners held in state and federal correctional facilities, the private prison industry has changed gears to offer rehabilitative and treatment services – a shift criticized in a February 2016 report titled “Incorrect Care: A Prison Profiteer Turns Care into Confinement.” The report, published by Grassroots Leadership, a non-profit organization, claims that this latest venture is part of the “treatment industrial complex” – a nod to the confluence of political, social and business interests known as the prison industrial complex.
As an increasing number of states have taken modest steps to rein in mass incarceration, the nation’s prison population leveled off in 2010 and has declined very slightly in recent years. As a result, private prison companies such as CoreCivic (formerly CCA) and the GEO Group have begun diversifying their business practices, including expanding into such areas as community corrections, reentry facilities and GPS monitoring for people on community supervision.
For example, CoreCivic has acquired Correctional Alternatives, Inc., Correctional Management, Inc. and Avalon Correctional Services – all community corrections providers, while in February 2017 the GEO Group announced its purchase of Community Education Centers (CEC), which operates ...
by Derek Gilna
Michael Alan Crooker, convicted of “mailing a threatening communication and possession of a toxin without registration,” received credit toward his federal prison sentence “for 2,273 days he spent imprisoned on a prior conviction for transportation of a firearm in interstate commerce by a convicted felon,” according to ...
by Derek Gilna
The “Eric Williams Correctional Officers Protection Act” (S.238), named after a federal prison guard murdered by a prisoner at USP Canaan in Pennsylvania, passed both houses of Congress by unanimous votes. The bill provides authority for Bureau of Prisons (BOP) employees to carry OC pepper spray in medium and higher security facilities.
Federal lawmakers were energetic in their praise of Williams, 34, and lamented his death in the line of duty. He was kicked down a flight of stairs, brutally beaten and stabbed over 100 times by prisoner Jessie Con-Ui on February 25, 2013; Williams was working alone in a housing unit at the time. [See: PLN, July 2013, p.56].
Con-Ui, 40, is currently facing first-degree murder charges and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. He reportedly said he killed Williams over a “disrespect issue.”
Under the Act, federal prison employees who are allowed to carry pepper spray must undergo training; further, the Government Accountability Office is required to evaluate the impact of the legislation, including the effect of issuing pepper spray to BOP staff on reducing crime and violence in federal prisons, whether staff at lower-security facilities should be provided with pepper spray and recommendations ...
by Derek Gilna
A June 2016 report by The Sentencing Project found that blacks are incarcerated in state prisons at much higher rates than whites – up to ten times the incarceration rate in five states. The report offered recommended solutions to what is clearly a national problem.
Fueled by “America’s failed experiment with mass incarceration,” the U.S. prison population has increased over 500% in the past forty years. Fortunately, states like New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and California have adopted meaningful reforms that reduced their incarceration rates by 20-30%, while still driving down crime rates. Sadly, despite reforms in various states, the disparity of incarceration rates of blacks and Hispanics compared to those of whites is still shocking.
The Sentencing Project describes the harsh reality: “African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at a rate that is 5.1 times the imprisonment of whites. In five states (Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, and Wisconsin), the disparity is more than 10 to 1.” Additionally, according to the report, “In twelve states, more than half of the prison population is black: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.” The racial disparity is ...
