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 …
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 …
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.
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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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
by Matt Clarke
On August 11, 2020, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that prisoners retain Fourth Amendment rights to bodily privacy requiring that physical and visual strip searches be reasonable. In doing so, it overruled two circuit precedents to the contrary.
In 2011, over 200 …
by Matt Clarke
On August 10, 2020, the U.S. signed off on a settlement of $2 million, including up to 25% in attorney fees, in a lawsuit brought by a federal prisoner who was denied necessary emergency eye surgery for closed-angle glaucoma for months. By the time she …
by Matt Clarke
On June 23, 2020, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an Ohio prisoner could be executed despite a previous botched attempt. Romell Broom was taken to the Ohio execution chamber on September 15, 2009, to be put to death by lethal injection. For …
