by Matt Clarke
In July 2011, anyone with at least $5 million to spare was invited to bid on a 373-bed, state-of-the-art, turn-key minimum-security prison on 30 acres of land in the cotton-farming town of Littlefield, Texas.
The tiny town, with a population of 6,500, agreed to build what was ...
by Matt Clarke
In September 2010, the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee calculated that over a four-year period, former Governor Bill Richardson (D) failed to collect $18.6 million in penalties from private prison companies that breached their contracts with the state by allowing their for-profit facilities to remain understaffed by ...
by Matt Clarke
An article in the May 2011 issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome reported that the HIV infection rate among people being booked into New York City jails was much higher than the average in the general population, but lower than the 1998 rate. In ...
by Matt Clarke
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles was required to provide due process in the form of a hearing similar to a parole revocation hearing before imposing onerous sex offender restrictions (Special Condition X) on prisoners who had been ...
by Matt Clarke
In June 2011, the family members of an Oklahoma state prisoner who was murdered by his cellmate at a privately-operated GEO Group prison in Lawton, Oklahoma received a $6.5 million jury award.
On January 30, 2005, Lawton Correctional Facility prisoner Ronald L. Sites, 48, was strangled to ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 19, 2011, a federal jury in North Carolina awarded $10 million to the parents and estate of a teenager who died after being shocked with a Taser fired by a police officer. The defendant in the case was Taser International, Inc.
In March 2008, 17-year-old ...
by Matt Clarke
In March 2011, Lt. Colonel Vyacheslav Tippel, former head of the prison department for the St. Petersburg region in Russia, received a seven-year sentence for ordering the rape and torture of a prisoner. Six other prison officials with the Federal Service for the Execution of Punishment (FSIN) ...
By Matt Clarke
On January 29, 2009, the Arizona Court of Appeals held that plaintiffs’ attorney fees must be paid by the state in the Bilke case.
Mitchell Paul Bilke, Charles Roberts, Kenneth Asherman, Felton Hale, Richard S. Berry, Mervin L. Davis and Damon D. Fisher are Arizona state prisoners ...
By Matt Clarke
On April 12,2011, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion upholding the $2.5 million jury award and $250-per-hour attorney-fees award to two women who were wrongly convicted of felonies.
Kimberly Sykes and Tevya Grace Urquhart were wrongly convicted of larceny by conversion and false report ...
by Matt Clarke
At an annual cost of $175,000 per civilly-committed sex offender, New York’s civil commitment program is the second most expensive in the country (Washington state is first at a cost of $177,000 per prisoner). As of December 2010, the more than $40 million-per-year program, which has the ...
