by Monte McCoin
As PLN has reported numerous times, before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Holt v. Hobbs, 135 S.Ct. 853 (2015) [PLN, Aug. 2015, p.50], Muslim prisoners were routinely denied their right to grow a beard as required by the tenets of their faith. [See, e.g.: ...
by Monte McCoin
Researcher Lila Margalit, with the Israel Democracy Institute’s Amnon Lipkin-Shahak Center for Security and Democracy, published a blog entry on June 7, 2018 that detailed a landmark 2017 judgment entered by the Israeli Supreme Court. The decision established a minimum area of personal space for ...
by Monte McCoin
PLN previously reported the 2017 arrests of a trio of Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) guards for repeatedly and violently sexually abusing at least six female prisoners who had been housed at the federal jail in Brooklyn, New York. [See: PLN, Nov. 2017, p.1; Jan. 2018, p.63].
On ...
by Monte McCoin
The Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Advocacy, a student-led group known as HOPE, was established in the 1950s as part of Harvard University’s Phillips Brooks House Association. Since its inception the organization has provided tutoring and educational programs for incarcerated men, women and juveniles, but in ...
by Monte McCoin
On March 7, 2018, President Trump issued an executive order that launched the Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry. The order revoked a presidential memorandum that had established a similar Federal Interagency Reentry Council as a U.S. Department of Justice initiative during the Obama ...
by Monte McCoin
In November 2017, a U.S. District Court judge set a February 2019 trial date in a civil suit to resolve allegations that CoreCivic – formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America – failed to prevent the sexual assault of a teenage boy with developmental disabilities while he ...
by Monte McCoin
On April 10, 2018, a group of gunmen attacked the Santa Izabel Prison Complex near the northern Brazilian city of Belem. The state security service said 21 people were killed in the military-style assault on the facility. One guard was killed; government officials identified prisoners and outside ...
by Monte McCoin
Former prisoner Bobby Battle, an Oklahoma City native with a sixth-grade education who filed a lawsuit that ultimately led to historic reforms and the desegregation of Oklahoma prisons, died on December 25, 2017 at the age of 80.
“He must have just had native intelligence, one of ...
by Monte McCoin
Prison Legal News has reported several times on the trend of prison contraband smuggling via remote-controlled aerial drones, both in the U.S. and other countries. [See, e.g.: PLN, May 2018, p.14; Nov. 2017, p.52; Sept. 2016, p.18].
South Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC) Director Bryan Stirling announced ...
by Monte McCoin
Former FCC Coleman guard Albert Larry Harris, Jr., 27, was sentenced to 24 months in prison on February 15, 2018 after Senior U.S. District Court Judge James D. Whittemore accepted his guilty plea for taking a bribe as a public official.
According to a press release from ...
