by Matt Clarke
On March 17, 20201, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the convictions of two former Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) prison guards for attempted distribution of methamphetamine while reversing for new trial the attempted distribution convictions of two other DOC guards and ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 1, 2021, the Office of the Inspector General of California released a report highly critical of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Essentially, the report said the CDCR failed to properly test and screen prisoners it was transferring from a prison with a large ...
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 ...
