by Matt Clarke
Iowa’s electronic database of registered voters, I-VOTERS, contains the names of about 69,000 convicted felons who are barred from casting ballots. But in June 2016, Iowa’s Secretary of State found that 2,591 of those names belonged to people who were not in fact felons. ...
by Matt Clarke
A memorandum from the House Subcommittee on National Security, released on January 2, 2019, concluded that misconduct by senior leadership in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) “appears to be largely tolerated or ignored altogether.”
The committee reviewed thousands of pages of case files and “was ...
by Matt Clarke
The second time was the charm. On November 6, 2018, Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state’s constitution that abolished all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude, after rejecting a similar ballot measure in 2016. [See: PLN, Dec. 2018, p.48; Nov. 2017, ...
by Matt Clarke
As previously reported in PLN, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) closed the Tamms Correctional Center as part of a cost-cutting consolidation of state prisons pushed by then-Governor Pat Quinn in 2013. [See: PLN, June 2013, p.1].
Since then the supermax facility has remained vacant, ...
by Matt Clarke
Using a type of contract known as an Intergovernmental Service Agreement (ISA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has partnered with local governments to place immigrant detainees in unused jail beds or detention centers built specifically for that purpose, creating a network of facilities that are often ...
by Matt Clarke
In a rare move, in December 2018 the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) transferred a pre-operative male-to-female transgender prisoner from a men’s prison to a women’s facility in order to conform with the prisoner’s gender identity. A similar, equally rare move was made by Massachusetts prison ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 30, 2018, in a substitute opinion, the Supreme Court of Idaho held that a trial court erred when it required a defendant to show he was prejudiced when the prosecution introduced evidence obtained from the seizure of notes from the defendant’s jail cell that ...
by Matt Clarke
Recently discovered evidence in a Thomson Reuters database revealed that, in June 2018, JP Morgan Chase Bank (JPMC) underwrote a $159.5 million bond to finance private prison operator CoreCivic’s construction of a 2,432-bed facility in Kansas. JPMC was already the largest debt holder for private prison ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 21, 2018, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a federal magistrate judge had no authority to sua sponte deem a motion for reconsideration withdrawn in a pro se civil rights complaint.
Former Texas state prisoner Eric Lawson filed suit pursuant to 42 ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 20, 2018, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal filed by officials at the Northeast Arkansas Community Corrections Center (NEACCC) in a lawsuit alleging they had failed to protect a prisoner from being physically and sexually harassed, threatened and assaulted, and instead punished ...
