by Douglas Ankney
On September 8, 2020, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilkin of the Northern District of California ordered additional remedial measures—including body-worn cameras for guards—as relief in a class-action suit claiming allegations of abuse of disabled prisoners by guards at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility (“RJD”) in San Diego. ...
by Douglas Ankney
Law professors Shirin Sinnar (Stanford Law School) and Beth A. Colgan (UCLA School of Law) explored the viability of victim compensation and restorative justice as alternatives to sentencing enhancements for hate crimes in New York University Law Review’s September 2020 issue.
During the decades dominated by ...
by Douglas Ankney
In late September 2020, private correctional healthcare contractor Wellpath paid $4.5 million to settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a mentally ill teen who died from dehydration while incarcerated in 2016 at the Benton County Jail in Kennewick, Washington.
The family’s attorney, Edwin ...
by Douglas Ankney
Beginning in July 2021, California will stop accepting nearly all youth offenders at three facilities operated by the Division of Juvenile Justice (“DJJ”). This resulted from an August 2020 deal between Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature whereby the majority of offenders age 25 and younger ...
by Douglas Ankney
Gerrymandering is defined in U.S. politics as “the dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.” Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced in June 2020 that it would spend more than $5.25 million on a program to distribute large, curated collections of books to prisons and juvenile detention facilities across the country.
The program will provide the same 500-book collection to 1,000 prisons. ...
by Douglas Ankney
An October 15, 2020 report from the Santa Fe New Mexican revealed that in March 2020, the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) paid $1.4 million to settle a whistleblower complaint that exposed deficiencies of private health-care provider Corizon Correctional Health Care (Corizon) and the NMCD’s failure to ...
by Douglas Ankney
According to a June 2020 report from Medical News Today, the infection and mortality rates — and a lack of testing — for COVID-19 disproportionately affects Black and Latino populations within the United States based upon the available data. Because the government has been reluctant to ...
by Douglas Ankney
On July 31, 2020, a motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri revealing that CoreCivic and Securus Technologies (Defendants) had agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging illegal recording of attorney-client conversations at the Leavenworth Detention Center ...
by Douglas Ankney
The chaplains of various faiths in the jails of Los Angeles County are united in a common mission: remind prisoners of their humanity. Often in one-on-one visits, the chaplains patiently listen to tragic stories of suffering, offer counseling, or share a prayer or religious teaching. A simple ...
