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 ...
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 ...
by Matt Clarke
In 2009, 191 of 210 clerk magistrates and assistants in Massachusetts padded their incomes by pocketing over $2.5 million in after-hours bail fees.
Clerk magistrates and assistants are paid salaries ranging from $84,000 to $110,000. Due to a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that bail hearings must ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 12, 2010, the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee (UPLC), a nine-member body appointed by the Texas Supreme Court that is responsible for enforcing statutes prohibiting the unauthorized practice of law, filed suit against Tony R. Davis, a former federal prisoner, and his two affiliated companies, ...
by Matt Clarke
If you are arrested in Harris County (Houston), Texas, you can usually pay a bondsman 10% of the bail amount to get out of jail. The bondsman pledges the full amount and assures your appearance in court. But what if you are one of the estimated 5% ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 13, 2010, a Wisconsin federal court issued a 68-page decision holding that a Wisconsin state law prohibiting hormone therapy for prisoners with gender identity disorder (GID) was an unconstitutional violation of their equal protection and Eighth Amendment rights.
Andrea Fields, Matthew Davidson (aka Jessica Davidson) ...
by Matt Clarke
Authorities at the Cherlapally Central Jail, a 2,100-bed facility near Hyderabad, the capital of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, announced in May 2010 that they will open an outsourcing unit. [See: PLN, July 2010, p.32].
The program will be privately run by Bangalore-based Radiant Info Systems ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 23, 2009, a California superior court ruled that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had to produce records requested two years earlier by Prison Legal News.
PLN made the request for documents related to “Paid Adult Legal Claims” from 2002-2007 resulting in payments ...
by Matt Clarke
In February 2010, the Idaho legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) released an audit report titled “Increasing Efficiencies in Idaho’s Parole Process.” Among other things, the report critiqued Olivia Craven, Executive Director of the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole, for failing to have a formal grievance ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 12, 2010, Haiti suffered a major earthquake that killed more than 230,000 people and, as a side effect, allowed thousands of prisoners to escape from the country’s most secure lock-up, the national penitentiary in Port-au-Prince. Les Cayes, Haiti’s third largest city, took less damage, though ...
