The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has broadened the definition of rape, first established in 1927, to include "penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim." ...
Los Angeles County Jail deputies have a reputation for brutal treatment of prisoners, and have paid out millions of dollars in settlements as a result. However, even a man visiting his brother Robert at Men's Central Jail and his wife were not exempt from police brutality. As a result of ...
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), has a long-standing policy of segregating gang members in Special Housing Units (SHU) to reduce violence. It also has a policy of day-for-day good time for CDCR prisoners. This case arose out of a 2010 statute reducing the good time credits of ...
Archie Wilder and Andrew Doan, prisoners in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, both had the misfortune of being bitten by dogs participating in prison training programs. Both filed suit in the Ohio Court of Claims, and both won $7,500.00 settlements from the Ohio prison system.
Doan and Wilder, ...
Robert Regan, a 67 year old arrested on a warrant in Rockdale County, Georgia, was carrying $764.00 when he was arrested. When he finally released, instead of being given cash or a check for the money seized during the arrest, he was given no choice but to accept a debit ...
In 2011, Daniel Sisson, a 21-year-old asthma-sufferer with a severe heroin addiction and already in a drug-diversion program in San Diego County, California, was arrested again for drug possession. When he went with his mother to court to face yet another drug charge, he was arrested and taken into custody. ...
Congress is looking to cut the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Bureau of Prisons (BOP) budget, and at its request the federal government’s General Accounting Office (GAO) has published a comprehensive study of that budget for the years 2009 to 2013. To no one’s surprise, that budget revealed that the BOP ...
Apparently U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s impending retirement from government service has not extinguished his desire to rein in over-zealous federal prosecutors. In a September 24, 2014 memo to federal prosecutors made public, Holder has instructed them to only utilize 851 sentencing enhancements in the instances where “unique facts and ...
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia has set up the first federal unit nationwide unit to internally identify, investigate, and possible wrongful convictions, U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen Jr. said. “This new unit will work to uncover historical injustices and to make sure that we are doing everything ...
California legislators passed a bill in August of 2014 that should put an end to a clear abuse of power by the state's jailers. Female state prisoners in California have been the victim of scores of forced sterilizations by prison medical officials in the past decade. According to the Center ...
