by Steve Horn
It has killed far more Americans than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, claiming over 200,000 lives since 2010 according to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. It has swept the nation, from large cities to small towns in every state. A 2017 report from ...
How the Americans with Disabilities Act could change the way the nation’s jails and prisons treat addiction.
by Beth Schwartzapfel, The Marshall Project
Before Geoffrey Pesce got on methadone, his addiction to heroin and oxycodone nearly destroyed him: He lost his home, his job, custody of his son – and his driver’s license. So even after he began to rebuild his life, Pesce relied on his parents to drive him to a methadone clinic for his daily dose. One day last July, his mother was unexpectedly unavailable, and desperate not to relapse, he drove himself.
En route, Pesce was pulled over for going six miles above the speed limit and charged with driving with a suspended or revoked license, which carries at least 60 days in jail. Pesce began staring down the day he would plead guilty and, as mandated by the rules of the jail in Essex County, Massachusetts, stop taking the addiction drug that he said saved his life.
Most jails and prisons around the country forbid methadone and a newer addiction medication, buprenorphine, even when legitimately prescribed, on the grounds that they pose safety and security concerns. The drugs are frequently smuggled into facilities and sold ...
by Paul Wright
For at least the past 50 years, the U.S. government has purported to wage a war on poor drug users. Poor people who used drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana were duly arrested, prosecuted, convicted, caged and even killed in vast numbers – yet with each ...
by Matt Clarke
Undocumented immigrants in the United States often face wage theft when their employers underpay or refuse to pay them for their labor. A federal class-action lawsuit filed by the Attorney General for the State of Washington has highlighted how such workers continue to face wage theft even ...
by Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis
In the early part of the last century, Robert Stroud was considered one of the most notorious and dangerous individuals in the U.S. prison system. Born in Seattle, Stroud ran away from his abusive father at the age of thirteen. He settled in Alaska ...
by Matt Clarke and Mark Wilson
The Spokane County jail in Washington State recently marked its ninth prisoner death since June 2017. But it was hardly unique. A study released in May 2019 by Columbia Legal Services (CLS), a nonprofit law firm, counted 210 prisoner deaths in local jails across ...
by Matt Clarke
With the passage of House Bill 650, which Governor Greg Abbott has already signed into law, Texas took a first step toward protecting the dignity of women held in state prisons.
There are more women prisoners in Texas than in any other state. The number of women ...
by Ed Lyon
On October 2, 2016, Amanda Bridges was housed in an administrative segregation cell at Maine’s York County jail, serving a six-month sentence for violating her probation.
Jailer Jonathan Carpenter entered her cell and began to kiss her until he heard someone in the hallway, so he left. ...
by Matt Clarke
In June 2019, the Arizona legislature’s Joint Committee on Capital Review approved $16.5 million in special funding for the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) to repair faulty cell door locks at ASPC-Lewis, after a June 2018 surveillance video aired by a Phoenix TV station showed prisoners leaving ...
by David M. Reutter and Kevin Bliss
An activist investor organization has forced Boca Raton, Florida-based GEO Group, which operates or manages almost 75,000 for-profit detention facility beds across the U.S., to adopt a shareholder resolution requiring the company to issue a report on implementation of its human rights policy. ...
by David M. Reutter
A Michigan federal district court awarded costs in a case that alleged prison officials violated the religious rights of four Michigan prisoners during their observance of Ramadan – a holy month for Muslims.
The case went to trial and the jury awarded each plaintiff $150 in ...
Loaded on
Sept. 8, 2019
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2019, page 28
On March 8, 2019, the Human Rights Defense Center, PLN’s parent nonprofit organization, filed suit in the Supreme Court for Albany County, New York against the State Attorney General’s Office for failure to comply with a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request.
According to HRDC’s verified Article 78 petition, ...
by Matt Clarke
The “Feeling Cute” social media challenge went viral in the spring of 2019, with photos tagged #FeelingCuteChallenge showing people in their work clothes, declaring they are “feeling cute” as they make a joke about their jobs. The statements were a variation of an online meme known ...
by Matt Clarke
It may have seemed like an April Fool’s joke to many Pennsylvanians when, on April 1, 2019, former prisoner Brandon Flood became the new secretary of the state’s Board of Pardons (BOP). In fact, it was part of a multi-prong strategy by Lt. Governor John Fetterman, who ...
by Scott Grammer
On March 3, 2019, Brian Riling, 38, was in custody after being arrested on intimidation charges. His girlfriend told police that he had sent her a number of text messages threatening to attack her, calling her a prostitute and saying he would kill himself. Court records showed ...
Could the failure to move forward on USP Letcher indicate an end of the Appalachian prison boom?
by Panagioti Tsolkas
“I refuse to have our community’s future built on the backs of other people.” That’s what Letcher County, Kentucky resident Elizabeth Sanders said to an NBC reporter last year who ...
by Bill Barton
More restrictive regulations for visits in Massachusetts prisons – originally adopted in March 2018 and later amended effective March 1, 2019 – have spurred at least five lawsuits against the state’s Department of Correction (DOC) by both prisoners and visitors. At stake is restriction of an ...
by Scott Grammer
Francisco Valdes, 44, a jailer with the sheriff’s office in Will County, Illinois, was the subject of a secret prosecution at that county’s courthouse. Valdes was charged with two misdemeanor counts of battery in December 2018.
After the fact of the secret prosecution was revealed by ...
by David M. Reutter
A federal district court awarded $488,111.78 to Jeffrey P. Larson, formerly a warden with the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC). He alleged that he was subjected to retaliation for defending and supporting the promotion of his administrative assistant, Larriann Ludwick.
Larson was asked to “right the ...
by Matt Clarke
Thanks to the activism of Colorado prisoner Tiffany McCoy, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) has rescinded its prohibition against prisoners receiving greeting cards, postcards and drawings.
In 2018, the DOC implemented a policy whereby prisoners only received black-and-white photocopies of greeting cards, postcards ...
by Ed Lyon
For those who have been residing on the moon or perhaps Mars, Michael Avenatti, 48, is a high-profile attorney who has, until recently, represented clients like Stormy Daniels, a noted porn actress who claims to have had an extramarital relationship with President Donald Trump. Avenatti has ...
by Dale Chappell
The City Council in Jackson, Mississippi approved a payment of $300,000 on October 4, 2018 to settle a wrongful death claim after the family of a man who died in the city jail filed a lawsuit in federal court.
The case involved Jamaal Mallard, who was ...
by David M. Reutter
A federal district court chastised the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) for its “long and sordid history of neglecting” prisoners infected with hepatitis C (HCV). Finding a “risk of such deliberate indifference reoccurring in the future,” the court entered a permanent injunction that requires the FDOC ...
by David M. Reutter
A legislative audit, released in December 2018, concluded that it costs Georgia about 10 percent more to house comparable prisoners in private prisons than in state-run facilities. The audit, completed as part of a study on criminal justice reforms, found that it costs $44.56 per ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Overcrowded prison populations across the nation have forced states to seek alternatives to incarceration. One solution being used in Idaho is intensive rehabilitative programs called “riders” that can take the place of prison sentences.
About one out of six Idaho prisoners are selected for rider ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 3, 2019, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court did not err when it failed to consider a prisoner’s request for substitute appointed counsel after the attorney initially appointed by the court said the prisoner’s lawsuit was without ...
by Dale Chappell
In a class-action habeas petition challenging the Indiana DOC’s Sex Offender Management and Monitoring (INSOMM) program as being unconstitutional, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held on April 25, 2019 that INSOMM’s requirement that prisoners admit to crimes they had not been charged with violates their ...
by David M. Reutter
Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) assistant general counsel Eric Giunta resigned after making “absolutely unacceptable” comments on Facebook about a video portraying systematic racism.
The video was posted by Providence College assistant theology professor Holly Taylor Coolman. It blamed the challenges facing black people and communities ...
by David M. Reutter
In April 2019 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released the results of a three-year investigation into men’s prisons operated by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), finding that conditions in the facilities violate prisoners’ guarantee of protection from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth ...
by David M. Reutter
Following a March 10, 2017 jury award totaling $250,000, a Massachusetts federal district court awarded $410,116.87 in attorney fees and costs in a prisoner’s lawsuit raising Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claims.
Prisoner William Cox, 57, who is mentally disabled, was awarded a verdict against Steven ...
by Matt Clarke
At the vast majority of the nation’s jails, when someone is arrested their money is confiscated during the booking process. Those funds are placed in a trust account, where prisoners’ families and friends can also deposit money to be used to purchase food and hygiene items from ...
by Scott Grammer
Anthony Dewayne Huff, 58, was arrested in Garfield County, Oklahoma on June 4, 2016 for public intoxication and booked into the Garfield County Detention Facility. Two days later he was put in a restraint chair and, on June 8, was “found unresponsive” while still strapped in the ...
by Scott Grammer
Dr. Arthur Zitrin died at age 101 on May 11, 2019. He was a psychiatrist and leading bioethicist who believed that doctors should take no part in lethal injections. His son Richard, an attorney and professor of legal ethics, said Zitrin died of chronic lung disease complicated ...
by Mark Wilson
"The Oregon State Hospital has known about this for 16 years,” criminal defense attorney Amanda Thibeault said as she fought back tears. “I feel like I’m failing my client. For too long the Oregon legislature and the agencies it funds have placed other priorities ahead of protecting ...
by David M. Reutter
A former Missouri sheriff who campaigned on getting tough on drug dealers was sentenced to six months in prison plus four months on house arrest after pleading guilty to identity theft and wire fraud.
The fall from grace of Cory Hutcheson, 36, the former sheriff of ...
by Scott Grammer
On March 6, 2019, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a federal lawsuit filed by Wisconsin prisoner Ezra R.E. French. According to the ruling, French was working on a yard crew at the Green Bay Correctional Institution when a guard ordered ...
by Kevin Bliss
Under a policy adopted in 2017 by the Comptroller of New York City, none of the city’s five pension funds has any investments in private prison operators due to concerns about investing public money in companies that profit from mass incarceration. Now that ban may also be ...
by Dale Chappell
A man held at the Lauderdale County jail in Mississippi for failure to register as a sex offender settled a federal lawsuit over permanent injuries he received when he was “jumped” by other prisoners while guards failed to stop the attack.
Jarrett R. Nelson was booked into ...
by Douglas Ankney
"Help us.” “We are dying in here.” “They are trying to kill us.”
Those were just some of the pleas that civil rights and mental health advocates heard from prisoners who shouted through the walls during a tour of Virginia’s Hampton Roads Regional Jail (HRRJ) in March ...
by Dale Chappell
A sleeping guard at the Lancaster County jail in South Carolina, who was supposed to be watching a suicidal prisoner who killed himself, prompted the county to settle a wrongful death suit for $507,500.
When Randy Stevens’ friend called 911 in May 2014 because Stevens was suicidal, ...
by Dale Chappell and Douglas Ankney
As of late July 2019, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had released over 3,000 prisoners under the First Step Act, a landmark criminal justice reform measure signed in December 2018 by President Trump. [See: PLN, April 2019, p.1; Jan. 2019, p.34]. The ...
by David M. Reutter
A Georgia federal district court has approved a settlement agreement in a class-action lawsuit challenging conditions and practices in the Special Management Unit (SMU) at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison.
The suit was filed pro se in 2015 by prisoner Timothy Gumm, and the district ...
by Dale Chappell
The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit by providing lifesaving treatment to thousands of prisoners with hepatitis C (HCV), which will cost the state at least $41 million. [See: PLN, June 2019, p.44].
The suit, filed by the ACLU of ...
by Ed Lyon
As of May 2019, a new policy at the Jackson County Detention Center in Missouri requires female attorneys to remove any brassieres with metal underwires before passing through a metal detector in order to gain access to the jail for client meetings. The bra may not then ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 27, 2019, private prison operator The GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, Florida, announced that it would stop operating the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility in Clayton.
The company cited inadequate compensation in its contract that made it impossible to recruit and retain staff in ...
by Dale Chappell
In a case that demonstrates exactly why the First Step Act included much-needed changes for compassionate release for federal prisoners, the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana granted immediate release to a terminally ill, wheelchair-bound prisoner after the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) rejected his request ...
by David M. Reutter
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a prisoner’s placement in administrative segregation while under investigation for a new crime does not trigger his right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment or the Speedy Trial Act.
Before the appellate court was the ...
by David M. Reutter
Last year the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PDOC) implemented a policy that prohibits prisoners from receiving original correspondence from their family members and friends. The policy went into effect in September 2018 in response to a 12-day statewide lockdown the prior month after an “unprecedented number ...
by Matt Clarke
After the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) settled a lawsuit over excessive heat filed by prisoners at the Wallace Pack Unit, by agreeing to air condition the facility and move heat-sensitive prisoners to cooler cells, many thought the issue of heat-related deaths in Texas prisons had ...
by Ed Lyon
While media attention tends to focus on the use of DNA evidence to free wrongly convicted prisoners – the Innocence Project counts 365 such exonerations since the first in 1989 – far more DNA samples are collected from convicted offenders held in all 50 states and by ...
Loaded on
Sept. 9, 2019
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2019, page 63
Alabama: The Montgomery County jail uses NaphCare, a private company, as its medical provider. Sasha Garvin, 27, had Crohn’s disease; she was held at the jail for failure to appear for traffic violations. Garvin told the nurses she needed to go to the hospital on May 17, 2017. She ...
