A report released in February 2014 by Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) found most California county jails were out-of-compliance with a 2012 law limiting the use of restraints on pregnant prisoners.
LSPC helped enact a 2012 law, California Penal Code (CPC) §3407, restricting the use of restraints on ...
According to statistics released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), the number of "major use of force" incidents climb sharply from 6,071 in 2005 to 7,151 in 2013, an increase of 17%.
TDCJ officials claim that the fluctuations in the numbers are random and not tied to any ...
On April 2, 2014, Terrell Harris, a prisoner at the Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans, Louisiana, pleaded guilty to a felony obscenity charge for masturbating in a cell minutes before a jury returned an acquittal on the charge. He received a ten-year prison sentence in a plea bargain that ...
According to a report released by the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, the profits for Ohio Penal Industries (OPI) increased to $7.8 million in fiscal year (FY) 2013, the fourth straight year of increasing profitability. OPI operates 21 programs at 14 prisons throughout the state.
In 2009, OPI had a record ...
In April 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report on the use of solitary confinement for women prisoners in the United States. The report concluded that while solitary was an extreme punishment that should not be used on anyone unless lesser measures have failed and the prisoner ...
On August 18, 2014, a Texas federal jury awarded a state prisoner $1,000 on his claim of excessive use of force by a prison guard. Enforcement of that judgment, however, would prove difficult.
Florencio Hernandez was incarcerated at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont, Texas when he became involved in a ...
In February 2015, Sacramento County, California agreed to settle three pro se federal civil rights actions filed by a former Sacramento County jail prisoner alleging theft of his mail, opening of his legal mail outside his presence and failure to provide at least three hours of out-of-cell recreation time per ...
Despite years of controversy that included sitting vacant for months after it was built and staff members being arrested for smuggling contraband and having sexual relationships with prisoners, the Jack Harwell Detention Center in Waco, Texas has rebounded. It now houses more prisoners, obtained a lower interest rate on the ...
The Sixth Circuit allowed a prisoner to revive the appeal of her federal habeas corpus action in the interests of justice after she won a civil rights lawsuit against prison guards who prevented her from filing a timely notice of appeal a decade earlier.
Hattie Tanner, a Michigan state prisoner ...
A federal jury awarded a former Jefferson County Detention Center prisoner more than $11 million against the sheriff and the jail’s privately-contracted medical provider, Correctional Healthcare Companies (CHC) – now Correct Care Solutions – after he was denied medical treatment for at least 16 hours despite obvious signs of a ...
