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 ...
by Matt Clarke
Cutting the U.S. prisoner population by half is the goal of the #cut50 and End Mass Incarceration movements, and of the criminal justice reform group JustLeadershipUSA, but that will not be possible for at least 75 years unless the issue of long sentences for violent offenses is ...
by Matt Clarke
New York federal jury awarded a former state prison teacher $9.19 million after she proved that a guard had sexually harassed and stalked her – both at work and at home – and that high-ranking prison officials who were informed of the problem retaliated against her and ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 7, 2019, Maricopa County, Arizona agreed to pay a prisoner $175,000 to settle claims related to jail guards reading his legal mail, sharing it with the Attorney General and FBI, and failing to deliver his letters to his attorney.
Thomas Orville Bastian, who represented himself ...
