by Matt Clarke
The non-partisan Government Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report in February 2021 entitled, Immigration Detention: Actions Needed to Improve Planning, Documentation, and Oversight of Detention Facility Contracts. Key findings in the report included a failure of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to follow its own guidelines ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 5, 2020, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (SJC) held that a trial court had the authority to enjoin the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) from engaging in unconstitutional practices related to segregation and the court erred when it restored a prisoner’s good time credits ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 17, 2021, a Kentucky federal court dismissed a lawsuit brought by a woman who was abandoned by jailers while a pretrial detainee and forced to give birth alone in a cell. The lawsuit had been settled for $200,000.
According to court documents, on May 15, ...
by Matt Clarke
For the first time since Americans’ opinion about the death penalty versus life imprisonment was polled, a majority of Americans favor life imprisonment over the death penalty.
In 1985, Gallup began asking the question: “If you could choose between the following two approaches, which do you think ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 15, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a prisoner who had consented to being transferred to a psychiatric unit after a suicide attempt could not sue prison officials who delayed returning him to prison after he withdrew his consent. ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 8, 2021, the Colorado Supreme Court held prisoners are entitled to a preliminary hearing on pending charges even if they are incarcerated pursuant to a previous conviction.
David Subjack and Darryl Lewis Lynch are Colorado State Penitentiary prisoners who were charged with the class 4 ...
by Matt Clarke
Opposition by community leaders forced the president of the historically Black Tennessee State University (TSU) in Nashville to change her decision to join the board of directors of the private prison company CoreCivic.
News media reported that TSU President Glenda Glover had decided to join the board ...
by Matt Clarke
It may not be surprising to readers of Prison Legal News that many prisons throughout the US are named after people who were slave owners, officers in the Confederate Army, racists, and participants in the abusive convict leasing system (See PLN, Jan. 2021, p. 48).
On ...
by Matt Clarke
In February 2021, the California Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued its finding that a $10 million effort by the state prison system—to address deficiencies that OIG previously uncovered in reporting staff misconduct—had “failed” and that the process “remains broken.”
The report documents the latest round ...
by Matt Clarke
In December 2020, Detention Watch Network (DWN) published a report showing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities caused an increase of over 245,000 COVID-19 cases in nearby communities. The presence of an ICE facility increased the risk of a serious COVID-19 outbreak caused by community ...
