by Matt Clarke
On April 4, 2022, the federal court for the Northern District of Georgia gave final approval to a settlement in a lawsuit brought by mentally ill women incarcerated at the South Fulton Jail. The agreement included numerous changes to jail policies and practices, along with monitoring and ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 1, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a district court’s denial of qualified immunity (QI) to staff in a Texas jail who allegedly ignored the medical needs of a prisoner for 32 hours while he “moaned in pain, twitched, thrashed, ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 6, 2022, the New Hampshire Personnel Appeals Board upheld the firing of former State Trooper Haden Wilber, who allegedly illegally searched a woman during a traffic stop, found suspected heroin residue, and then — together with fellow Trooper Matthew Locke — falsified evidence that got ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 23, 2022, a jury convicted the last of three ex-prison guards indicted in the fatal beating of a prisoner at Western Illinois Correctional Center (WICC) four years earlier.
Former Lt. Todd Sheffler, 54, was found guilty of conspiracy to deprive civil rights, tampering with a ...
by Matt Clarke
In February 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau published what may be the first multi-state report on the mortality of released prisoners. After their incarceration, “former prisoners have higher mortality rates than their demographic counterparts in the general population,” the study warned.
The study compared the deaths of ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 11, 2022, California’s Santa Clara County paid $7 million to settle its part of a lawsuit brought by a former detainee who suffered a spinal injury in his cell at the county’s Elmwood Correctional Center, where responding guards and ambulance staff were allegedly so negligent ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 9, 2021, an agreement was reached by Richland County, Ohio, paying $4 million to settle claims in a suit that was about to be brought by the family of Alexander Jose Rios, a pretrial detainee who died at the county jail following an altercation with ...
by Matt Clarke
Within eight days spanning the end of April and beginning of May 2022, four prisoners were murdered in separate incidents at three California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) prisons. At least eight prisoners are being investigated in connection with the murders, all but one of which ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 11, 2022, the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois enjoined the state Department of Corrections (DOC) from keeping 25 sex offenders imprisoned who were eligible for mandatory supervision release (MSR) but whose new housing violated a state law that bars more than one ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) held that a Texas death row prisoner was likely to prevail on his claims under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq., that the state unduly burdened ...
