by Matt Clarke
On September 16, 2020, the estate of a woman who died while incarcerated at the Bi-State Justice Center Jail in Texarkana filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Bowie County, Texas, LaSalle Corrections and its parent company, Southwestern Correctional. The lawsuit alleges denial of medical care, which ...
by Matt Clarke
In August 2020, New York City agreed to settle a lawsuit over the death 15 months before of a Dominican-born transgender detainee who died of epileptic seizures while in segregation at the Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC) on the city’s Rikers Island jail complex. The $5.9 million ...
by Matt Clarke
Thanks to a public records request by The Associated Press, news broke in March 2020 that Louisiana-based private prison firm LaSalle Management Company had settled for $177,500 a lawsuit over a 2016 incident in which five prisoners were pepper-sprayed while handcuffed and kneeling.
Adley T. Campbell, ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 12, 2020, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit against four Texas police department employees alleging they knew a prisoner was suicidal when they gave him a blanket, failed to remove the blanket from his cell and failed to monitor him before he ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 11, 2020, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reinstated some of the claims brought by a couple seeking permission to marry, one of whom is an immigration detainee being held in a private prison operated by GEO, under contract with the federal Bureau ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 15, 2020, the Nebraska Supreme Court held that documents related to the procurement and use of drugs used in executions by lethal injection are subject to disclosure and such documents containing the non-disclosable names of members of the state’s execution team should be redacted, not ...
by Matt Clarke
A research team of internationally recognized prison experts from multiple academic institutions will be working with state prison officials from Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas to perform the most comprehensive study ever made into the causes and effects of prison violence.
The experts expect ...
by Matt Clarke
The family of a Texas detainee who died of a suicidal overdose under jailers’ noses can continue its lawsuit against Young County, Texas. That decision was handed down on April 22, 2020, by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed in part a summary judgment ...
by Matt Clarke
The once self-styled “Toughest Sheriff in America” has lost a bid to reclaim the office of Maricopa County sheriff. He was defeated in the Arizona Republican primary on August 4, 2020.
The controversial Joe Arpaio earlier lost his office in the 2016 election cycle. He then tried ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 17, 2020, a Washington judge awarded over $110,000 in penalties and attorney fees to a former state prisoner whom another state judge had already freed, all because Snohomish County officials’ clumsy handling of public records requests had threatened his rights, as well as those of ...