by Matt Clarke
On July 2, 2019, a strongly divided three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion terminating the consent decree in Brown v. Collier, which allowed Muslim prisoners in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to hold religious services without direct supervision ...
by Matt Clarke
In June 2019, a U.S. District Court ordered that a prisoner held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Aliceville, Alabama be released due to the poor medical care she received from the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for invasive breast cancer.
In 2013, Angela Michelle Beck, 47, pleaded ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 23, 2018, Maricopa County, Arizona agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit over the death of a prisoner at the Maricopa County Jail while self-styled “America’s Toughest Sheriff” Joe Arpaio was still in office.
Anthony Singleton, 27, was arrested on October 21, 2015. He ...
by Matt Clarke & David M. Reutter
In July 2019, seven prisoners died in facilities operated by the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC). The deaths followed a similar spate in August 2018, when 16 deaths occurred at the DOC’s three state prisons. Media coverage of the most recent deaths was ...
by Matt Clarke
In March 2019, Kern County, California agreed to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the parents and estate of a man who committed suicide at the county’s jail. The suit alleged jail staff ignored obvious signs of his mental instability and self-harm behavior at ...
by Matt Clarke
The Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) generated a media storm when, on July 22, 2019, it published a draft of a new department order that excluded elected officials and the news media from a list of people eligible for tours of state prisons.
The draft order was ...
by Matt Clarke
In August 2019, thanks to the efforts of newly elected Denver, Colorado councilwoman Candi CdeBaca, the city council declined to renew contracts worth a total of $10.6 million with GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) to operate six halfway houses. With a total of ...
by Matt Clarke
An investigation by the Dallas Morning News into the Christmas Eve 2016 death of prisoner Andy Debusk at the Parker County jail revealed that not only did the guards at the privately-operated facility contribute to Debusk’s death, but several were untrained and employed under temporary licenses. The ...
by Matt Clarke
In May 2019, a federal district court issued an amended judgment awarding $300,000 to a former employee of the Idaho Department of Correction (DOC) in a lawsuit over sexual harassment and a hostile work environment for women.
Cynthia Fuller worked for the DOC for eight years. Hired ...
by Matt Clarke
At a September 2019 hearing, a U.S. District Court judge threatened to throw officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) into the same excessively hot prison cells that the agency had failed to air condition.
Despite agreeing in 2018 to install cooling at the Wallace ...
