by Matt Clarke
In January 2017, Otero County, Colorado paid $150,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a jail prisoner who was sexually assaulted by a former guard.
Jennifer Hernandez, a mother of two, was booked into the Otero County Jail as a pretrial detainee.
“It’s a little backwater jail ...
by Matt Clarke
According to a December 15, 2016 news report, Debbie Moak, then-director of the Arizona Governor’s Office of Youth, Faith and Family, issued a letter of guidance recommending that criminal justice agencies not adopt policies supported by Start by Believing.
Start by Believing, a nonprofit victim-centered initiative, works ...
by Matt Clarke
In December 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released two reports on deaths in state and federal prisons and local jails, covering more than a decade of mortality data ending in 2014.
As of yearend 2014 there were an estimated 1,433,800 prisoners ...
by Matt Clarke
Santa Clara County, California has agreed to pay $3.6 million to the family of a mentally ill man who was beaten to death by guards in the county’s San Jose jail. The three guards who killed him, who had attacked another prisoner the day before, were charged ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 7, 2017, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court erred when it dismissed a prisoner’s civil rights lawsuit that was brought in forma pauperis without first evaluating his exculpatory explanation that prison staff had refused to give him a required trust ...
by Matt Clarke
In 2007, Texas asked the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments to recommend ways it could reduce incarceration and criminal justice expenditures, then enacted most of the recommendations. This package of reforms became known as "The Texas Model." In recent years, the Texas Model has ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 10, 2013, a Texas jail compliance team discovered mentally ill Harris County jail prisoner Terry Goodwin, 54, in a cell "amid heaps of trash, swarms of bugs, and piles of his own feces." Goodwin had apparently been locked in the cell for at least a ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 11, 2016, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association's (OCSEA) challenge to the statute allowing for the private operation or sale of certain Ohio state prisons. In doing so, the court rejected the union's claim that the statute violated state constitutional ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 12, 2015, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that to execute a person following the state legislature's prospective abolition of the death penalty would violate the state constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Eduardo Santiago was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in ...
