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Articles by Matthew Clarke

Physicians for Human Rights: CIA Performed Illegal Medical Experiments While Torturing Prisoners

by Matt Clarke

According to a report released by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) in June 2010, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) performed illegal non-consensual human medical experiments on high-value terrorism detainees in connection with torturing those detainees. Also see article on p. 8.

The PHR report was released following ...

Texas Pays for Geriatric Prisoners, Rarely Grants Medical Parole

by Matt Clarke

In the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), geriatric prisoners – those over 55 years old – comprise only 7.3% of TDCJ’s population. However, they account for almost one-third of the prison system’s medical expenses. Geriatric prisoners average $4,700 in annual health care costs compared to an ...

Onerous Ohio Sex Offender Restrictions Drive Some Underground

by Matt Clarke

Public officials in Cleveland, Ohio have noticed that some registered sex offenders are dropping out of sight. When the officials attempted to confirm the offenders’ registered addresses, they found they didn’t live there. The reason for this development is Ohio’s sex offender residency restrictions, which prohibit registered ...

$33 Million Settlement in New York City Jails Strip Search Class-Action

by Matt Clarke

On March 16, 2010, New York City agreed to settle a long-standing class-action lawsuit challenging the strip search policy used in the city’s jails. The settlement was for over $33 million, which included an estimated $3 million in attorney fees.

The suit originated as a class-action civil ...

Medical Examiners Lack Qualifications, Competence, Oversight

by Matt Clarke

Most people will only have direct contact with a medical examiner, also known as a forensic pathologist, after they are dead. Thus, medical examiners have a certain mystic quality and are perceived as both doctors and sleuths who use scientifically-proven forensics techniques to reconstruct crimes, determine causes ...

Texas Capital Defendants with Hired Attorneys Rarely Receive Death Sentences

by Matt Clarke

In February 2010, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) published an issue brief on the relationship between hired defense counsel and the death penalty. The brief concluded that defendants charged with a capital crime who hired a private attorney, even if only for a ...

U.S. Department of Justice Releases Report on Deaths in Jails

by Matt Clarke

In July 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report on mortality in U.S. jails from 2000 through 2007. During the 8-year period covered by the report, 8,110 prisoners died in U.S. jails. The number of deaths increased each year from 905 ...

Former Ohio Prison Guard Dies Shackled to Hospital Bed

by Matt Clarke

For five years, Jeff Maier, 53, was an Ohio prison guard. Then for 13 months he was an Ohio state prisoner. The change from one side of the bars to the other occurred after Maier was discovered smuggling drugs into the facility where he worked. Following his ...

Civilly Committing Sex Offenders Strains Some States’ Budgets

by Matt Clarke

The twenty states that have civil commitment programs will spend close to a half-billion dollars in 2010 to incarcerate and provide treatment for some 5,200 civilly-committed sex offenders. The per-offender cost for civil commitment is much higher than the cost of incarcerating people in prison, and has ...

Washington State Federal Court: Unconstitutional to Shackle Prisoner in Labor

by Matt Clarke

On May 3, 2010, a U.S. District Court in Washington State held it was unconstitutional to shackle a prisoner in labor.

Cassandra Brawley, 30, was a Washington state prisoner. In 2006 she was arrested for second degree theft and received a fourteen-month prison sentence. She was five ...