by Matt Clarke
In 2006, Anita Goodman lost her 31-year-old son Aaron to an overdose of prescription medication as a wave of similar deaths rolled through Harris, Jefferson and Orange Counties in Southeast Texas.
Aaron picked up a prescription drug habit in college and had been fighting his addiction to ...
by Matt Clarke
Former New Mexico Corrections Secretary Joe R. Williams did not pursue contractual penalties against Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) or GEO Group despite chronic understaffing by the two private prison companies, which operate four facilities in New Mexico.
GEO and CCA manage prisons for the New Mexico ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
