More than two dozen prisoners at the Menard Correctional Center in Illinois protested conditions in the prison’s high security unit (HSU) by staging a series of hunger strikes, most of them sustained for weeks.
The protests at the Menard facility, about 60 miles southeast of St. Louis, began on January ...
A study of self-harm cases in New York City jails published in the March 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health found that prisoners placed in solitary confinement are almost seven times more likely to try to hurt or kill themselves than those not in isolation.
The three-year ...
A new report from the Sentencing Project highlights prison closures and correctional bed reductions in a half-dozen states in 2013 and outlines the dynamics for more closures in 2014 and beyond.
North Carolina led what the Sentencing Project called “the continued trend of prison closures” last year by reducing its ...
Closing a few prisons won’t be enough for significantly reduce the U.S. prison population of more than 1.5 million men and women, according to a report from the Sentencing Project. Real reductions argues the Washington, D.C. advocacy group, will only happen with serious legislatives reforms to sentencing policies and practices ...
After Florida officials closed the Gainesville Correctional Institution (GCI) for good in March 2012, the state's Department of Corrections fought to keep the property and lobbied to use some of the space left behind for probation offices.
Instead, both the state and city elected to turn the page on the ...
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Boston-based Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts (PLSM) and attorney Leonard Singer filed suit against the Massachusetts Department of Correction in January 2014 to prevent prison officials from using drug-sniffing dogs to search visitors.
“Putting visitors through the humiliation of dog searches will reduce visits ...
What happens when voters elect a public official once deemed a public threat by the criminal justice system? From Connecticut to Virginia, Michigan to New Hampshire and Oregon to Oklahoma – just a few of the places where former prisoners have been voted into office – it’s politics as usual. ...
A winter outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus is being blamed for the death of one prisoner and sickening 40 others, including five staff members, at the Putnamville Correctional Facility in Greencastle, Indiana in January 2016. Some of the prisoners were in serious enough condition to require hospitalization at the ...
U.S. District Judge Gary Fenner ruled on February 6, 2014, that a Missouri law that effectively prohibits prisoners from getting married is unconstitutional because it violates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
The law – Missouri Revised Statute § 451.040.2 – requires applicants to fill out marriage licenses ...
It took the deaths of eight people since 2010 incarcerated at the Snohomish County Jail in Everett, Washington—or, as a result, at least two pending claims against the county—to convince jail officials in August 2013 to finally hire a lone doctor to work at the facility.
When 59-year-old Bill Williams—jailed ...
