by Matt Clarke
On February 28, 2020, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1589(a), 1595, or TVPA, applies to privately operated immigration detention centers. The Act prohibits forced labor and it subjects violators to criminal and civil liability.
Plaintiffs Wilhen ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 1, 2020, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) began enforcing sweeping new restrictions on the mail received in its 104 prisons. The new policy basically bans prisoners from receiving anything except letters written on plain white paper mailed in plain white envelopes.
The mail ...
by Matt Clarke
Around the globe, governments are releasing prisoners in an attempt to mitigate the threat of COVID-19-related mass deaths in their jails and prisons. However, Third World countries are far ahead of most of the so-called “advanced” nations. They have released torrents of prisoners compared to a trickle ...
by Matt Clarke
The COVID-19 pandemic, or rather government officials’ inept reaction to the pandemic, has led to unrest in prisons around the world—especially in South America and the Middle East. This has resulted in the escape of hundreds and the death of dozens of prisoners.
The typical initial response ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 22, 2020, Rodney Myers was removed from his position as warden of a federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, after severe criticism of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former warden’s failure to isolate prisoners with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and requiring staff to work ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 14, 2020 the United States Supreme Court rejected a class-action lawsuit filed by two elderly Texas prisoners that would have forced the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to provide masks, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies to prisoners in an effort to combat the novel ...
by Matt Clarke
The mothers of three children of a prisoner who died of an overdose of fentanyl while incarcerated at the Orleans Justice Center, the Parish’s jail, have filed a lawsuit against employees of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office (OPSO) and Wellpath (the jail’s contract provider of prisoner medical ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 24, 2019, a Maine state court found that a state prisoner’s rights were violated when he was held in segregation for 22 months without “meaningful periodic review.” However, the court denied the prisoner’s request that it impose limitations on the Maine Department of Correction (DOC) ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 10, 2020, cybersecurity research team vpnMentor reported the discovery of an unsecured cloud storage server containing data from JailCore, an online management and compliance application used by jails to streamline functions like logging prisoner checks. While some of the information generated is public, other information ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 8, 2019, a federal court denied summary judgment on some claims against seven Connecticut Department of Corrections (DOC) supervisory personnel who Cara Tangreti, a former prisoner at the state’s only women’s prison, alleged placed her in danger of repeated sexual assaults. Four guards were fired ...
