by Matt Clarke
On June 5, 2024, the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) filed a notice of settlement in court indicating that it paid $135,000 to settle a prisoner’s lawsuit accusing a guard of intentionally allowing other prisoners into his cell so they could assault him.
In October 2020, Kevin ...
by Matthew Thomas Clarke
On June 17, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit decided a civil rights complaint brought by former St. Louis jail detainee Michael Jones, who was held eight months longer after his charges were dismissed. Despite the outrageous government conduct in his case, ...
by Matt Clarke
In June 2024, the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) ranked world incarceration rates as if each state in the United States was a separate country. The shocking but sadly unsurprising result: All states placed near the top of the list, with incarceration rates that far exceeded those ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 11, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) approved an agreement with Michigan’s Wayne County that promised to improve conditions at its jail in Detroit for prisoners with physical and mental disabilities. The County also agreed to hire an expert consultant to assist in implementation ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 18, 2024, the New York Supreme Court for Albany County found that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) routinely violated Correctional Law § 137(6)(k)(ii), the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act, by subjecting prisoners to solitary confinement that exceeded statutory limits ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 20, 2024, the Wayne County Commission in Detroit approved a $5 million payment on top of $2 million paid by the County’s insurer to settle a lawsuit brought by the estate of a County jail detainee beaten to death by a cellmate, who had a ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 9, 2024, the grandmother of a mentally ill detainee who died of dehydration at Texas’ Denton County Jail (DCJ) filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, accusing jail staff of deliberate indifference in allowing Heath Aaron Vandeventer to suffer severe dehydration and malnutrition before he perished ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 7, 2024, the federal court for the Southern District of Texas refused a motion by Defendant Harris County Jail officials in Houston to fully dismiss claims made by two Plaintiffs who intervened in a massive suit filed after 27 jail detainees died or were severely ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 3, 2024, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR) was ordered to implement a pilot program that would immediately bring two state prison complexes up to medical staffing levels recommended by experts appointed by the federal court for the District of Arizona. It ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 17, 2024, Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County settled a lawsuit brought by a Pittsburgh journalist challenging policies and practices that prevented employees of the county’s Bureau of Corrections (BOC) from speaking about matters of public concern at the county jail without first receiving permission from the warden. Under the settlement, the county revised the policies, acknowledging that “its employees and contractors have constitutional rights to speak on matters of public concern when acting as private citizens.”
As Director of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, Brittany Hailer “reported extensively on problems at the Allegheny County Jail [ACJ],” her suit noted. In 2023, with pro bono assistance from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and the Yale School of Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, Hailer filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming that the BOC policies violated the First Amendment. The lawsuit alleged that the policies “effectively silenced jail employees, hampering investigative reporting about issues at the Allegheny County Jail,” which had just recorded 13 deaths in two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2022, p.20.]
Once the suit was filed, “the ...
