by Matt Clarke
Newly elected Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva held a press conference in late January 2019, claiming that court-ordered reforms in the county’s jail system had caused an increase in violence among its 18,000 prisoners – and that the previous sheriff had covered it up. But ...
by Matt Clarke
A lawsuit over the 2015 death of Adams County, Colorado jail detainee Tyler Tabor was secretly settled for $3.9 million in August 2018. The settlement only became public after court documents were filed complaining that Corizon Health had met only $1 million of its $3.7 million settlement ...
by Matt Clarke
Some readers may recall how a hacker targeted Dallas, Texas-based Securus Technologies, a prison telecom company, resulting in the records of some 70 million phone calls made by over 63,000 prisoners being released on the Internet in November 2015. That incident revealed Securus was recording prisoners’ calls ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 5, 2019, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a prisoner cannot waive challenges to portions of his prison discipline to circumvent the requirements of Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994) and Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641 (1997). Rather, ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 8, 2019, Montgomery County, Ohio agreed to pay $115,000 to resolve a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a former jail prisoner who was pepper-sprayed while “largely strapped into” a seven-point restraint chair.
Charles Wade was being booked into the Montgomery County Jail on October ...
by Matt Clarke
In December 2018, the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) released surveillance video of a major riot that occurred at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Yuma’s medium-security Cheyenne Unit on March 1, 2018. The ADC had previously issued a report on the disturbance, in which one prisoner was killed ...
by Matt Clarke
Two reports on long-term recidivism among prisoners released from state and federal prisons showed very high arrest rates. The rate for state prisoners was 83% over a nine-year study period, while it was 39.8% for nonviolent and about 64% for violent federal prisoners over an eight-year ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 7, 2018, a federal district court awarded a Kansas Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner $250,000 in a lawsuit over a guard’s excessive use of force.
Wesley L. Adkins filed a pro se civil rights action after he was assaulted by DOC guard Marshal ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 15, 2019, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s denial of qualified immunity to an Ohio jail guard who allegedly ordered a prisoner to expose herself and masturbate for him.
Michele L. Rafferty and Katie L. Sherman were in the same housing ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 11, 2019, the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) issued a report on the “State of Phone Justice,” noting progress on reducing state prison phone rates but fewer reforms in local jails, where high rates and fees persist.
Since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ...
