"To Get Stuff and Sell It for As Much As We Can Get": Federal Prison Industries and Electronics Recycling
by Aaron Shuman
In recent months, UNICOR Recycling has experienced a number of challenges in its efforts to build the infrastructure of U.S. electronics recycling into the infrastructure of federal prisons. ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 8
At Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Prison Activist Resource Center we have been working to end the exposure to toxics of people working in electronic recycling programs in prison, particularly in UNICOR work programs within the Federal Prison System. Sworn statements from people in prison have played a vital ...
This editorial is being written in Wichita, Kansas on February 14, 2007. For the past two days PLN?s executive director, Don Miniken, and I have been attending the bench trial before USDC Judge Monte Belot in Prison Legal News v. Werholtz. PLN filed the lawsuit in 2002 challenging the Kansas ...
On August 30, 2006, a jury in Prince George?s County, Maryland, awarded $6.4 million to a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for the brutal rape and murder of his wife. During trial the jury heard compelling evidence indicating that County Police Department detectives lied about the suspect?s supposed confession, denied ...
Joe Arpaio: America?s Toughest Sheriff or Most Corrupt?
by Alex Friedmann
Joe M. Arpaio, the head lawman over Maricopa County, Arizona, bills himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff." While "toughest" may be subject to debate (literally -- in September, 2006 Arpaio debated L.A. County Sheriff Leroy Baca over who ran the ...
California?s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the state Legislature?s watchdog over prison operations, reviewed guards? use of leave for union-related business and found that California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) accounting controls were so loose as to put in grave doubt the validity of $12 million of such ...
Florida Warden Susceptible to Liability in Valdes' Murder; Suit Settles for $1,169,923.42
by David M. Reutter
While former Florida Department of Corrections director James Crosby was never charged in the murder of Florida death row prisoner Frank Valdes, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held that Valdes' family presented ...
Creating art can expand our human experience and help us grow. For prisoners, having contact with the outside world is crucial because many are in a place where educational programs, letters or visits are rare or non-existent. The Prisons Foundation strives to make things better for the prisoners who want ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 20
The State of Hawaii settled a suit brought by the United States government, resolving a suit over unconstitutional conditions of confinement at the Hawaii Youth Corrections Facility (HYCF) in Kailua, Hawaii.
On August 16, 2004, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a year-long investigation of conditions, policies and ...
Cunningham v. California: Who's Covered and Who's Not?
by Kent Russell
On January 22, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Cunningham v. California, __ S.Ct. __, 2007 WL 135687 (No. 05-6551), holding that California?s determinate sentencing law, which allows CA judges to impose upper-term sentences (i.e., the highest of the ...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a study showing that the spread of HIV in prison is extremely low. Of 856 males in Georgia?s prisons who tested positive for HIV in 2005, only 76 acquired the virus inside prison.
The study dispelled the myth that prisons are ...
China's Death Penalty On Wheels
by Gary Bunter
China's death penalty has gone mobile. Death vans are now replacing firing squads as the preferred method of execution.
In the past, condemned prisoners were executed publicly in prisons or court buildings. Kang Zhongwen, designer of the Jinguan Automobile death van, says ...
Sheriff's Deputies Charged in Prisoner's Death; Both Get Prison Time
by Gary Hunter
Jail guards Ronald Eugene Parker and Brandon Gray Huie were charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of a prisoner in North Carolina's Davidson County jail, and both received prison terms.
Carlos Claros-Castro, 28, a ...
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals crushed a determined attempt by the California Board of Prison Terms (BPT-- now called the Board of Parole Hearings) to transmogrify the California Supreme Court?s decision in In re Dannenberg, 34 Cal. 4th 1061 (2005) to stand for the proposition that California?s lifer ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The federal court Receiver for healthcare in California state prisons (see: PLN, Mar. 2006, p.1, Federal Court Seizes California Prisons? Medical Care; Appoints Receiver With Unprecedented Powers) surmounted his first statutory bureaucratic obstacle to gaining constitutional healthcare. On October 17, 2006, U.S. District Judge Thelton E. ...
by John E. Dannenberg
On August 3, 2006, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley signed into law H-1323, a bill creating an eight-member Innocence Commission wherein prisoners who have exhausted their court appeals but still claim they were wrongly convicted may reopen their convictions by offering new evidence not previously considered ...
Two prisoners escaped from Arkansas? Benton Unit prison on July 9, 2006. Tab Delancey and Clifton Sanders were drivers in the prison?s work-release program.
Arkansas was one of the few states that, until recently, allowed unsupervised prisoners to transport other prisoners to and from free-world jobs.
?We can?t do it ...
by John E. Dannenberg
On September 20, 2006, Tennessee-based Prison Health Services (PHS), a for-profit prison medical care contractor [see: PLN, Nov. 2006, pp.
1-10], exercised an escape clause just ten months into its ten-year $645 million contract to provide medical services to 25% of Florida?s prison population. The company ...
California Inspector General Assesses DOC's Compliance With Past Audit Recommendations
by John E. Dannenberg
California's Inspector General (IG), Matthew Cate, who has oversight responsibility over the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), issued an exhaustive 363 page Accountability Audit reporting the degree of compliance with 22 earlier separate IG ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 28
A federal court in Hawaii issued a preliminary injunction, prohibiting harassment, abuse, discrimination and isolation of juvenile detainees who are, or are perceived to be, lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT).
The Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF) is a secure juvenile detention facility ?existing in a state of chaos? in ...
Former New York Police Chief Bernard B. Kerik, proclaimed hero of 9/11, fell to his lowest point yet after pleading guilty to two unclassified misdemeanor charges on June 30, 2006.
Kerik, also a former Director of the New York Department of Corrections, admitted to improperly accepting $165,000 worth of remodeling ...
The Alabama DOC has launched an innovative program to vaccinate prisoners for Hepatitis A and B. Hepatitis is a disease that damages the liver with the potential to be fatal. Alabama optimistically hopes to inoculate over half of its prisoners during the next year at a cost of one-half million ...
After three prisoner fatalities and two wrongful death payouts totaling $17.25 million, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, has finally discontinued the use of restraint chairs in county jails.
On August 21, 2006, Arpaio told The Arizona Republic that the jail?s restraint chairs have been replaced by restraint beds. ...
On May 23, 2006, Vermont became the fiftieth and final state to outlaw sex between detention facility employees and prisoners. The proposed measure had been under debate for five years before Governor James Douglas finally signed the bill into law.
Amnesty International has pushed for the measure since 1999 when ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The United States District Court (N.D. N.Y.) rejected the New York Department of Corrections' (NYDOC) attempt to moot a class action claim filed by HCV (Hepatitis-C) infected prisoners who had sued to receive treatment for their deadly disease. The principal roadblock to treatment had been a ...
On August 21, 2006, a Georgia state court awarded $5.1 Million to the family of a college student who was killed when he fell from a DeKalb County garbage truck while performing community service.
Vince Currid, 22, had been sentenced to 40 hours of unpaid slave labor, euphemistically referred to ...
Nearly half of the nation?s 2.3 million prisoners suffer from some sort of mental disorder, according to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released in September 2006. Yet fewer than a third of those receive any treatment.
The numbers are disturbing. Overall, the report reveals that 64% ...
by John E. Dannenberg
On October 27, 2006, the U.S. District Court (C.D. Cal.) issued an ?Order to Show Cause (?OSC?) re Issuance of Preliminary Injunction or Temporary Restraining Order,? plus imposed initial restraints, regarding the ongoing unconstitutional overcrowding at the Los Angeles County Main Jail (MCJ). These conditions were ...
Two calls a week from her incarcerated son costs Marjorie Arniotis over $150 per month. Lorraine Green pays around $200 a month to talk to her imprisoned son and was paying more until one of her sons was acquitted in January 2006.
New Jersy jails and prisons have long been ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 36
On December 27, 2006, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts agreed to pay $205,000 to settle a class action lawsuit alleging hundreds of arrestees were illegally strip searched at the Hampshire Jail and House of Corrections between January 18, 2002 and November 7, 2002.
Lead plaintiff Charles Ryan IV was arrested in ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 37
US Settles Prisoner's UNICOR Whistleblower Suit for $6,000
On October 27, 2006, the United States paid $6,000 to settle with a federal prisoner who claimed he was fired from his UNICOR job in retaliation for filing safety complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
In his lawsuit, originally ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 38
A Washington appeals court has overturned a lower court's grant of summary judgment to telephone companies in a lawsuit alleging they failed to disclose rates to recipients of prisoner-initiated phone calls as required by state law.
In 2000, Sandy Judd, Zuraya Wright and Tara Herivel filed suit against five phone ...
Some citizens of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania feel that county work-release prisoners are forfeiting too much of their salary to a greedy judicial system.
Businessman Lewis Knepp employs work-release prisoners. He tells how one of his employees, who earns $10 an hour and takes home $317 a week has $257 garnished ...
[Certified Jailhouse Lawyer Program Proposed]
By Evan R. Seamone, Esq., Reprinted from Yale Law & Policy Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2006), pp. 91-147.
Reviewed by John E. Dannenberg
Attorney Evan R. Seamone wants to promote justice by raising the stature of jailhouse lawyers nationwide. He proposes having a mini-Bar ...
On February 13, 2006, The U.S. District Court (E.D. Cal.) entered a remedial Stipulation and Order to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to force CDCR to implement the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) policy that the court had previously ordered on June 9, 2005. CDCR?s failure to comply with ...
From January to May 2006, 480 Texas prisoners tested HIV-positive upon their release from prison. Testing for the virus has now become mandatory in Texas before a prisoner can be released.
The bill for mandatory testing, passed in May 2005, was sponsored by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston.
?We need to ...
by John E. Dannenberg
On May 25, 2006, Kent County, Michigan agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit for $275,000 brought by the family of a Grand Rapids man who died of a heart attack suffered after struggling with arresting police. County officials denied any liability, but paid off to ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 41
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed in part and reversed in part an Ohio federal district court?s dismissal of a prisoner?s complaint for failure to comply with the exhaustion requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).
Christopher Bell, a prisoner at Ohio?s Trumball Correctional Institution, filed a ...
Colorado State Penitentiary II (CSP-IT) is slated for construction in early 2007. It will hold the state?s most dangerous prisoners locked down for 23 hours per day. Ironically, the 948 pre-fab cells will be built by prisoners in the Freemont prison facility located about a mile down the road.
Andy ...
Loaded on
March 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2007, page 42
Arizona: On December 22, 2006, Yuma state prison captain Wiliam Kangas, 52, was sentenced to 100 years in state prison after a jury convicted him of possessing child pornography. The crime was reported to police by a fellow Arizona Department of Corrections guard who was repairing Kangas? computer and found ...
On March 9, 2006, the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming awarded $16,200.50 in enhanced fees plus $2,105.28 in costs to an attorney for time spent monitoring compliance with remedial measures at the Carbon County (Wyoming) Jail.
In August 2003 Carbon County officials sought to terminate a 1987 ...
