by Matt Clarke

On March 29, 2007, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, awarded a Russian prisoner 15,000 Euros ($20,060) in damages for incarcerating him in extremely overcrowded conditions.

On November 26, 2001, Andrey Frolov, a Russian prisoner, filed an application against the Russian Federation pursuant to ...

In June 2006, Navarro County, Texas, agreed to pay $375,000 to the family of a juvenile prisoner who received no medical attention following his imprisonment in the county jail and died the following day.

Jesus Martinez, a minor, was arrested on April 12, 2003, after he was found unconscious in ...

by John E. Dannenberg

In the continuing saga of a troubled private prison in Adelanto, California, the facility was sold to the County of San Bernardino for $31.2 million in February 2006. However, controversies haunted the county for another year. The facility's owner, Maranatha Corrections (in turn owned by Moreland ...

by John E. Dannenberg

Missouri enacted a new law declaring the identity of those personnel participating in the execution process to be a state secret. The statute provides a legal cause of action for damages and punitive damages against those "leaking" such information, and bars any licensing board or department ...

by John E. Dannenberg

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) settled a lawsuit brought by Jesus Christ Prison Ministry (JCPM) that sought to overcome CDCR's rigid bar to mailing free materials to prisoners. The settlement was based on the intervening Ninth Circuit decision in Prison Legal News v. ...

On November 3, 2007, a conference in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois brought together 88 participants from 29 different prison book projects across the country. A similar event of this kind has not taken place since a 2002 conference in Philadelphia.

Participants shared information about issues of fundraising, censorship, and how to work ...

On February 20, 2007, the Dallas County, Texas, Jail agreed to pay $950,000 for its negligent mistreatment of three mentally ill individuals, one of whom died, while imprisoned at the jail awaiting competency hearings.

In 2004, James Monroe Mims, a man in his 50s, was sent from the state mental ...

reviewed by John E. Dannenberg

In a classic case of "follow the money," The Institute On Money In State Politics (IMSP) reviewed influence-peddling by private prison corporations (and their leaders, lobbyists, and subcontractors) who made political contributions to curry favor for their firms -- leading inexorably to vast increases in ...

On May 11, 2006, Ohio state prisoner Marrion P. Smith was shot in the head by prison guard Gary Myers during a foiled escape attempt. Smith had been transported from the Mansfield Correctional Institution to the Ohio State University Medical Center, where he was to undergo an MRI. Smith managed ...

by Matt Clarke

The number of New Jersey state prison system employees terminated for disciplinary reasons rose from 33 in 2005 to 69 in 2006. 52 of the 2006 firings are final; 17 are on appeal. The reasons for the firings range from beating prisoners without provocation and allowing prisoners ...

Michigan's Solution to Prisoner Healthcare: Close the Prison

by David M. Reutter

In December 2006, a federal district court found the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) in contempt in the long-running Hadix case, and ordered prison officials to submit a plan to ensure that prisoners receive adequate medical care [See: ...

Sentenced to Science: One Black Man's Story of Imprisonment in America, by Allen M. Hornblum

Published by Pennsylvania State University Press, 232 pages, 16 illustrations, Cloth Bound, $24.95

Book Review by Greg Dober

In 1964, medical research in prison led Dr. Albert Kligman and Edward "Butch" Anthony to cross paths ...

In June 2006, the FBI began a civil rights investigation into a prisoner's beating administered by guards at the Maximum Security Unit in Tucker, Arkansas. The investigation, surprisingly, was requested by prison officials.

The officials were investigating an incident that occurred in the prison's dining hall on Memorial Day in ...

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held that "verifying medical evidence" to support a prisoner's delayed medical treatment claim can come from the prisoner's medical records and the prisoner.

That ruling came in the appeal of prison officials after an Illinois federal jury found them liable, awarding the prisoner ...

On October 22, 2007, Prison Legal News filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against Fulton County and Sheriff Myron Freeman, due to a Fulton County Jail policy that prohibits prisoners from receiving any books, magazines or newspapers other than religious publications.

The same ...

by David M. Reutter

Sexual relationships involving guards and prisoners in Arizona jails have resulted in criminal charges on both sides of the bars.

An investigation at the Yuma County Jail snared three guards and four female prisoners. The guards, Justin Herrera, 26, Kenneth Smith, 34, and Jose Espinoza, 26, ...

by David M. Reutter

Former Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) Secretary James Crosby and his protégé, Allen Clark, have been sentenced to federal prison terms for accepting kickbacks from profits generated from prison visiting park canteens.

PLN has previously reported on how prison officials' greed, corruption and brutality ran rampant ...

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) settled with a prisoner who had sued for failure to properly treat his diabetic condition that eventually resulted in blindness and amputations. The $600,000 settlement included attorney fees and costs.

When Daniel Cordero entered CDCR's Reception Center at Wasco State Prison on ...

Lord Glennie of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scotland ruled that the blanket policy of imprinting all prisoner originated phone calls with the warning, "This call originates from a Scottish prison" violated the European Convention on Human Rights because it "inhibited (the prisoner's) social rehabilitation" and was "embarrassing." But ...

It's common knowledge that outside the federal Bureau of Prisons, California and Texas have the largest prison systems in the U.S. So it should come as no surprise that bail bonds are big business in both states. But the bonding industry has recently come under fire for unethical practices in ...

On December 15, 2006, a federal court awarded $50,000 to a prisoner who was burned with hot water by another prisoner while in a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, jail.

Peter Muse claimed that on April 23, 2004, while he slept, another prisoner assaulted him with boiling water that the other prisoner heated ...

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the conviction of a convicted felon for voter fraud. During the 2004 election cycle, Kimberly Prude was serving a term of supervised release for a forgery conviction in Wisconsin. Under Wisconsin law, Prude was not eligible to vote until she finished her ...

California Prisoner Workers' Compensation Eligibility Questioned by Legislators

by John E. Dannenberg

In 2006, the California state Compensation Insurance Fund paid $5.73 million to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to cover prisoner workers' compensation claims. This figure includes claims for parolees unable to work because of their prison ...

Veterans were about half as likely as non-veterans to be imprisoned in 2004, but more than twice as likely to be serving time for a sex offense, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics said in a report released on May 20, 2007. Veterans were also more likely to have been ...

The former Director of the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2007 on charges of taking $50,000 in kickbacks from health care vendors that received state prison contracts. Two lobbyists, one the former Undersheriff of Cook County, were also indicted, as well ...

Arizona: On June 6, 2007, Phoenix police arrested Loren Williamson, 33, a guard at the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix on charges that he raped a girl repeatedly for six years from the time she was six years old until the date of his arrest.

Arizona: On October 16, 2007, ...