by Keith Sanders
Over nine days in December 2015, during transport from Maryland to South Carolina to face charges he skipped child support payments, William Karn endured a grueling trek stretching more than 2,000 miles while shackled to a metal bench in a van owned and operated by Prisoner Transport Services (PTS) and Brevard Extraditions.
Karn, who was arrested in Maryland’s Montgomery County on a warrant out of Horry County, South Carolina, spent much of that time in handcuffs so tight that he was left with injuries to his wrists, he said. He also alleged deplorable conditions inside the van, with discarded refuse, human waste and flies.
The trip could have been completed in eight hours, but it lasted many times that long, meandering across five states to pick up and drop off other detainees along the way. During one infrequent bathroom stop, Karn fell out and injured his shoulder. But transporting guards refused him medical attention he said. When a fight erupted in the van, all the detainees were sprayed with a chemical agent and not allowed to wash it off afterwards.
On September 16, 2016, Karn filed a federal civil rights action in the U.S. District Court for ...
by Keith Sanders
For decades, prisoners were not eligible for federal financial aid for college education. So when Congress passed the Second Chance Act in 2020, rescinding ineligibility for felons and prisoners to access federal Pell Grant funding for college, advocates, educators and those in prison who might benefit all rejoiced. From a small list of pilot sites, eligibility was set to be restored at lockups throughout the country on July 1, 2023.
“The expansion of the Second Chance Pell Experiment will allow for opportunities to study the best practices for implementing the reinstatement of Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students, and will expand the geographic range of the programs,” the federal Department of Education said.
According to a 2018 report, less than 4% of prisoners obtain a postsecondary education, well below the national average of 29%. Nicholas Turner, president of the Vera Institute of Justice, estimates that over 765,000 prisoners will apply for Pell Grants once they become eligible this summer.
The former Pell Grant restrictions also affected prisoners after release. Some convictions, like drug crimes, kept released prisoners ineligible. So did prior default on student loans. Nevertheless, the fact that over 95% of individuals are eventually released from ...
by Keith Sanders
In February 2023, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) published a surprisingly positive assessment of restrictive housing and sex abuse in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) – the same month that BOP announced it was closing its deadliest lockup, the Special Management Unit (SMU) at the U.S. Penitentiary in Thomson, Illinois. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.16.]
The report satisfies one requirement of Executive Order 14074, which was issued by Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) on May 25, 2022 – on the second anniversary of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police – attempting to alter criminal justice and policing practices in the U.S.
Specifically, Biden’s order mandated that Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland determine whether DOJ and BOP had taken steps to ensure that restrictive housing in federal lockups is “used rarely, applied fairly, and subject to reasonable constraints.”
The new AG report first outlined BOP’s two main restrictive housing statuses: disciplinary segregation and administrative segregation. The former is defined as a “punitive housing status imposed as a sanction for violating a disciplinary rule,” while the latter refers to the use of restrictive housing for any non-punitive reason: investigative, protective, ...
by Keith Sanders
On March 15, 2023, the Ohio Supreme Court partially granted a writ of mandamus brought by a state prisoner, ordering Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Pavan Parikh to produce copies of court documents related to a 2001 case. The Court also awarded $1,000 in statutory damages to the prisoner, Kimani E. Ware, because the Clerk failed to provide the record within 10 business days of Ware’s request.
That brought Ware’s total haul to at least $5,000 from suing officials in the state for denying his records requests. The Court earlier granted him $3,000 in December 2022 for a similar denial by the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. [See: PLN, June 2023, p.58.] He was also awarded $1,000 in March 2021 for records denied by the City of Akron. See: State ex rel. Ware v. City of Akron, 164 Ohio St. 3d 557 (2021).
In this case, Ware sent a public records request to the Hamilton County Clerk in February 2021, pursuant to R.C. 149.43 of Ohio’s Public Records Act, seeking oaths of office for three judges, along with a docket sheet, a writ of mandamus, Motion to Dismiss and judgment filed on July 27, 2001. ...
by Keith Sanders
On March 31, 2023, most of South Dakota prisoner Travis McPeek’s federal civil rights claims were dismissed against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) – and he was barred from collecting damages on those that were not dismissed because he suffered no physical injury, as ...
by Keith Sanders
The opioid crisis has reached every segment of American society, from fentanyl-laced candy found in elementary schools to party-goers dying from innocent-looking pills that are really fatal fentanyl cocktails.
Opioid abuse killed over 80,000 people in 2021, pushing U.S. life expectancy to its lowest level in 25 ...
by Keith Sanders
On February 6, 2023, Judge Paul Wallace in Delaware Superior Court upheld a jury’s $15,001 award for damages against George Pyle, a guard with the state Department of Corrections (DOC), in a suit filed by Richard M. Chamberlain, a prisoner serving time at Howard R. Young Correctional ...
by Keith Sanders
The COVID-19 pandemic is over but not forgotten. Highlighting the virus’s deadly toll on American prisoners, an analysis published by the New York Times on February 19, 2023, tracked the impact of the disease during its first year. The data reveal significantly higher rates of infection and ...
by Keith Sanders
On January 19, 2023, Corrections Minister Enver Erdogan announced that the Australian state of Victoria is booting the private healthcare contractor from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre (DPFC). Effective July 1, 2023, Wellpath subsidiary Correct Care Australasia (CCA) will be replaced by the state-owned Western Health to ...
by Keith Sanders
Two of four detainees have been recaptured after escaping from jail in Mississippi’s Hinds County on April 29, 2023. The other two are dead. Meanwhile control of the Raymond Detention Center (RDC) remains in limbo after the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Fifth Circuit granted a ...
