by John E. Dannenberg
An exhaustive analysis of prison phone contracts nationwide has revealed that with only limited exceptions, telephone service providers offer lucrative kickbacks (politely termed “commissions”) to state contracting agencies – amounting on average to 42% of gross revenues from prisoners’ phone calls – in order to obtain ...
by Mike Rigby
It is common knowledge among PLN readers that prison and jail phone rates are priced far above those in the free world. But just how overpriced are they? What is the average kickback (commission) rate provided by phone companies, and how much in kickbacks is paid each ...
A September 2010 article in the New York Times highlighted an interesting phenomenon that has become more evident in an era where DNA evidence is available to help conclusively prove guilt or innocence – the fact that many people confess to crimes they did not commit, and serve lengthy prison ...
The gouging of prisoner’s families and friends by prison and jail officials and the telephone industry is a well-known phenomenon but also one that is fairly recent. Telephones were not introduced into prisons and jails until the 1970s (the state of Texas was the last to introduce phones to its ...
by Matt Clarke
In 2009 the Texas legislature amended a law, codified at Article 16.22 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with the intent to require early identification of mentally ill jail prisoners so they can receive appropriate treatment and consideration upon sentencing.
Bexar County, which includes the city of ...
by Corey Weinstein, MD
It was a little more than sixty years ago that the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). For the first time in history, governments from around the world declared that “All human beings are born free ...
For nearly two decades, Colorado state prisoner Marke E. Bogle worked as a licensed electrician for the Colorado Department of Corrections. In 1987, with the prison system’s approval, he tested and obtained his journeyman’s license. The next year he was licensed as a master electrician, and prison officials paid for ...
To understand how badly we’re doing the most basic work of journalism in covering the law enforcement beat, try sitting in a barbershop. When I was getting my last haircut, the noon news on the television—positioned to be impossible to avoid watching—began with a grisly murder. The well-educated man in ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2011
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2011, page 28
by Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye
The Defense Department forced all “war on terror” detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called “pharmacologic waterboarding.”
The U.S. military administered the drug despite Pentagon ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2011
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2011, page 32
On July 29, 2010, the Washington State Court of Appeals affirmed that prisoners have standing to request records under Washington’s Public Records Act (PRA). The court also held that photographs of guards; personnel, compensation and training records; and intelligence and investigation reports were not exempt from disclosure. Finally, guards who ...
Paying your bills on time is a basic element of efficient fiscal management. Apparently, however, it is a basic element that the New York Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) failed to master, since the Department’s tardy payments resulted in $58,553 in unnecessary interest on 2,384 late vendor bills.
The problems ...
Two audits of Texas’ parole system, in 2008 and 2010, revealed a number of problems and inefficiencies.
According to the first audit, released in June 2008, approximately 1,250 Texas parole officers supervised 77,526 parolees during fiscal year 2007. Five counties – Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis – accounted for ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2011
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2011, page 35
The Oregon Supreme Court, sitting en banc, held that the Oregon Board of Parole (Board) had improperly deprived a parolee of his right to call witnesses at a revocation hearing.
Parolee Thomas Edward O’Hara was arrested on March 9, 2005 for a parole violation after his parole officer, two other ...
Since 2003, Maryland’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Board has awarded about $1.8 million to claimants with criminal convictions. In Baltimore, over 120 people who received victims’ compensation had been arrested for selling or manufacturing drugs; more than seventy of those payments went to families to cover burial expenses.
Deandra M. Gaskins ...
In Maine’s last gubernatorial campaign, the controversial Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison operator, spent $25,000 on behalf of Republican candidate Paul LePage, now Maine’s newly-elected governor. The money was given to the Republican Governors Association’s Maine political action committee, which spent heavily on LePage. No ...
by Matt Clarke
In March 2010 the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) released a report on the impact of in-prison sex offender treatment programs on recidivism rates. The results of the study “suggest that prison-based treatment in Minnesota produces a significant, albeit modest, reduction in sex offender recidivism.”
The report ...
by Mike Brodheim
In August 2010, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced plans to deploy a high-tech heat ray device, originally developed by Raytheon Company for use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, as a tool to respond to prisoner unrest at the Pitchess Detention Center’s North County Correctional ...
by Mike Brodheim
On August 26, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law after conducting a hearing to determine whether it was appropriate to terminate the prospective relief provisions of the Clark Remedial Plan (CRP). The CRP ...
by David M. Ruetter
The GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison company, announced on December 21, 2010 that it will pay $415 million in an all-cash deal to acquire Behavioral Interventions, Inc. (BI). The purchase allows GEO to expand beyond detention services into the area of community supervision.
BI ...
by Mike Rigby
One downside of the information age is that both prison guards and prisoners have found themselves in trouble due to their accounts on Facebook, the Internet’s premier social networking site.
Three Nebraska prison guards were fired in March 2010 due to a Facebook post in which they ...
Massachusetts has agreed to pay $1,162,468 to settle a class-action suit on behalf of 486 detainees who were strip searched without cause at the Franklin County Jail.
The sheriff maintained a policy of routinely strip searching all detainees who were admitted to the jail. The policy did not require individual, ...
The North Carolina Department of Corrections (NCDOC) “could save about $11.5 million a year by requiring hospitals and other medical service providers to bill Medicaid for eligible inmate inpatient hospital and professional services,” according to an August 2010 report by the North Carolina State Auditor’s Office.
The NCDOC “cooperates with ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 8, 2010, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France held that four suspects being detained in the United Kingdom pending extradition to the United States on terrorism charges could challenge their extradition based upon the expected prison conditions they would be subjected ...
by Matt Clarke
In September 2010, Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) officials announced the suspension of a dozen employees at the Pendleton Correctional Facility following a crackdown on contraband smuggling. [See: PLN, Oct. 2010, p.50]. Pendleton houses about 2,000 prisoners and has approximately 600 employees.
The crackdown, which included cell-by-cell ...
For 14 years, Texas State Rep. Terri Hodge (D-Dallas) was a staunch defender of minorities and prisoners’ rights in the Texas legislature. On October 1, 2007, federal prosecutors indicted Hodge on 14 counts of corruption including bribery, fraud and conspiracy. The indictment created a firestorm of controversy.
The 31-count main ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2011
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2011, page 48
On June 1, 2010, a Wisconsin prisoner entered a no-contest plea to charges that he helped his cellmate hang himself.
Adam Peterson, 20, and Joshua Walters, 21, were unlikely acquaintances. Peterson, never in trouble with the law before, was serving a life sentence for murder at the Dodge Correctional Institution ...
by Matt Clarke
Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie insisted on budget cuts in 2010, except when it came to funding treatment centers, formerly called halfway houses. Gov. Christie wanted to increase funding for treatment centers by $3.1 million, from $61.5 million to $64.6 million, which would benefit prisoners after ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2011
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2011, page 49
The South Carolina Department of Corrections agreed to pay $85,000 to settle a wrongful death case and survival action in the murder of a prisoner by his cellmate.
Perry Correctional Institution prisoner Charles D. Martin was serving a five-year non-violent sentence. He was assigned on September 12, 2005 to a ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2011
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2011, page 50
Arkansas: Garland County deputy Garvin Todd Reid, 27, was fired in February 2011, then arrested on charges that he raped a female trustee in a supply room at the county jail.
“There were no actual witnesses. There was a detention deputy who had come in as the two individuals [were] ...
