Prison is not a place conducive to maintaining good mental health, whether in the United States or elsewhere. The Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom has found that depression and suicide are major problems in that nation’s prison system. According to a University of Warwick report, citing a Ministry ...
Scott Degina, a New York state prisoner, sued the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) for damages as a result of negligent treatment of his severe urological problems. He further alleged that due to the negligence of prison medical staff, he suffered for years from undiagnosed urothelial cancer, which ...
Female prisoners at the HM Prison Bronzefield in Surrey, England are paid around $15 per week to produce designer “dust bags” for high-end purses sold in the most exclusive shops. The prison, operated by for-profit company Sodexo, said the project, called “Stitch in Time,” is coordinated by Blue Sky Inside, ...
On August 21, 2015, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal filed by jail officials seeking reversal of a district court’s denial of qualified and statutory immunity in a case involving a prisoner’s death.
Carlton L. Benton was a pre-trial detainee at the Lucas County, Ohio jail in ...
Massachusetts state prisoners Randall Trapp and Robert Ferreira filed an amended complaint in Superior Court that accused the Department of Corrections (DOC) of violating a 2003 settlement agreement guaranteeing proper observance of Native American religious practices under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person Act (RLUIPA). The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial ...
A study by the non-partisan Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, titled “U.S. Prison Population Trends 1999-2014: Broad Variation Among States in Recent Years,” found there has been an average 2.9% decline in the number of state prisoners over that period of time. During the 15-year period examined, 39 states experienced declines ...
According to a September 8, 2015 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Morrison C. England, Jr., the State of California implemented the Alternative Custody Program (ACP) in 2012 with the goal of reversing the worrisome trend of an increasing female prisoner population. Under the ACP, incarcerated women who qualified for ...
Although courts give broad latitude to corrections officials to restrict access to materials that might negatively impact institutional security, that latitude does not generally extend to blanket bans on newspapers. On July 6, 2015, a federal district court in Chicago held in a summary judgment order that Cook County Sheriff ...
Lester Dobbey, confined at Illinois’ Stateville Correctional Center in 2011, sought treatment at the prison’s medical unit for severe tooth pain that was later determined to be an abscessed molar. When he arrived for a dental appointment, a guard told him the dentist was not in, his appointment was cancelled ...
Richard J. Gonzalez, 30, was being held at a jail in Ford County, Illinois when his already precarious health took a turn for the worse. On the evening of May 18, 2012, Gonzalez was found on the floor of his cell, apparently suffering from a seizure. He was transported to ...
