by Chad Marks
A deadly tornado ripping through South Carolina on April 13, 2020 has forced the federal Bureau of Prisons to start moving hundreds of prisoners from FCI Estill.
The prison, located west of Charleston in Hampton County, took a direct hit from the tornado, an EF-4 on the ...
by Matt Clarke
Jails throughout the nation have become hotspots for coronavirus infection, endangering the lives of prisoners, staff, and the public.
The Riverside County jail system in California reported the death of Sheriff’s Deputy Terrell Young, 52, on April 2, 2020. He drove prisoners, one at a time, from ...
by Matt Clarke
The September 14, 2019, death of prisoner Albert Dorsey, 60, at the Hardeman County Correctional Facility (HCCF), a private prison operated by Tennessee-based CoreCivic, was initially called a suicide by the medical examiner. The prison’s report said he died alone in his cell that “no one else ...
by Matt Clarke
Despite a reduction in the Texas prisoner population, state prisons are spending record amounts on prisoner health care. The reason is not an improvement in the health care afforded prisoners. Pending lawsuits allege inadequate health care — especially for Texas prisoners infected with the Hepatitis C virus. ...
by Matt Clarke
A man from New York City was held three years in a Rikers Island jail before a Brooklyn jury acquitted him October 1, 2019 of a knife-point armed robbery.
Mike Colon, 51, was just eight months out of prison when four police cars slid up beside him ...
by Matt Clarke
After the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) received $17.7 million from the state legislature’s Joint Committee on Capital Review to repair defective cell locks at a maximum-security prison, a whistleblower revealed that paperwork showing the repairs had been made was falsified, The Arizona Republic reported in December ...
by Matt Clarke
In October 2019, Arizona settled for $33,000 a pro se federal lawsuit brought by a state prisoner who alleged he was assaulted by an Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) guard while handcuffed behind his back.
According to court documents, DOC prisoner Shawn Michael Folta was incarcerated at ...
by Matt Clarke
As previously reported in PLN, Florida-based GEO Group has had a litany of problems at the jail it operates for Liberty County, Texas. During a rocky 57-day stretch in mid-2019, there were prisoner escapes and suicides, discovery of contraband, guard theft of prisoners’ trust fund monies ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 13, 2019, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s dismissal of a federal lawsuit brought by PLN against the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) over censorship of the magazine at the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.
BOP ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 7, 2019, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an Ohio rule requiring a person alleging medical negligence to include a medical professional’s affidavit stating the claim has merit cannot be applied to a federal prisoner’s legal action against the federal Bureau of Prisons ...
