With assistance from American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project (NPP) attorneys, plaintiffs were able to fend off an attempt to terminate a 37-year-old class-action civil-rights lawsuit challenging the provision of medical and mental health services to pretrial detainees in the 8,200-bed jail system of Maricopa County, Arizona. An Arizona ...
The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) reached a landmark settlement in a case involving excessive solitary confinement of 16- and 17-year-old (juvenile) prisoners. The settlement, filed on October 17, 2014, ushers in wide ranging reforms, limiting how solitary confinement can be used in disciplinary cases involving ...
On November 13, 2015, a Kentucky court of appeals held that neither a jail nor a bank acted illegally when the confiscated the checks prisoners had on them when they were booked into the jail, deposited the unendorsed checks and used some or all of the money to pay jail ...
On April 22, 2016, the Supreme Court of Kansas held that the son of a woman murdered by an escaped state prisoner could not sue the state for her personal injuries and wrongful death. The district court had granted the state summary judgment after finding it was immune from liability ...
Despite Oklahoma having a wrongful-conviction compensation statute on the books since 2003, few exonerees in that state have received payment.
One example of the battles exonerees face is the case of Greg Wilhoit, who was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of his wife. Her body was discovered in ...
High-profile crimes allegedly committed by two former Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoners after they were released early from prison has generated controversy over how the DOC calculates release dates.
Desmond La'don Campbell was convicted of attempted kidnapping and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Between 2007 and 2012, he ...
A Colorado state prisoner filed a federal civil rights action in September 2014, alleging denial of medical care for a dental infection that nearly killed him and left him with partial paralysis of his tongue and a resulting severe speech impediment.
According to court documents, Christopher Tantlinger, 32, was a ...
The death of 35-year-old Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner Christopher Lopez at the San Carols Correctional Facility on March 17, 2013, would have been rejected if submitted as a plot for a novel. It is too unbelievable! Guards found him nearly unconscious on the floor of his cell and, ...
The Texas Office of Violent Sex Offender Management (OVSOM), which supervises civilly committed Texas sex offenders, has been the subject of multiple controversies in recent months. These included secretly housing civilly committed sex offenders (CCSOs) in residential neighborhoods in Austin and Houston, contract mismanagement, missing records, administrative errors and officials ...
The San Luis Regional Detention and Support Center opened with a capacity of 548 beds in 2007. Initially, it housed male and female immigration detainees. In 2009, Emerald Correctional Management took over operation of the center, located in San Luis, Arizona. Emerald initiated a 368-bed expansion of the center which ...
