by Matt Clarke
On August 21, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the proper standard of review to be applied to facially discriminatory prison regulations challenged as violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause is intermediate scrutiny, the standard previously applied to similar claims ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 5, 2020, the Idaho Supreme Court held that state prisoners have no right to paid or unpaid employment despite a state law stating that the board of correction “shall provide for the care, maintenance and employment of all prisoners,” Idaho Code § 20-209.
Idaho state ...
by Matt Clarke
A Texas city has used jail prisoners to move bodies of COVID-19 victims into refrigerated trailers that served as temporary morgues, paying them $2 an hour to do the dangerous and emotionally taxing work.
In November 2020, a surge of COVID-19 cases overwhelmed the health care system ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 21, 2020, a New York federal court issued an order denying the state summary judgment on some claims arising from a woman’s visit to a prison that resulted in her prosecution for bringing her seizure and pain medications into the prison.
Lisa Bobbit arrived at ...
By Matt Clarke
According to a report by the United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics published in August 2020, the number of people in the U.S. under carceral supervision—prison, jail, probation, or parole—declined 2.1% from 2017 to 2018. This continued a more than decade-long decline in the ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 26, 2020, federal prisoners aided by civil rights groups and a major international law firm, filed a class action lawsuit challenging the handling of a COVID-19 outbreak by the Bureau of Prison (BOP) at the Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) at Butner, North Carolina.
With 27 ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 19, 2020, the parents of a prisoner who committed suicide a year earlier at a privately operated Tennessee prison filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Nashville-based CoreCivic, alleging the company’s employees ignored threats and attempts by the prisoner to kill himself as well as ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 15, 2020, the Montana Supreme Court reversed the granting of summary judgment in a case challenging a jail’s blanket strip search policy on constitutional and statutory grounds. The court held that the policy was not unconstitutional but did violate the clear language of § 46-5-105, ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 8, 2020, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) announced that 655 of the 1,066 prisoners held at the La Paz unit in the state prison complex in Yuma had tested positive for COVID-19. It is ADCRR’s largest outbreak of the disease since ...
by Matt Clarke
Questions are currently being raised about the historic figures in whose honor statues were erected and schools and streets were named. Names include those of segregationists, slave owners and racists. Now, attention is being directed to the individuals who prisons are named after, some of whom were ...
