by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
Introduction
The novel coronavirus is now a global pandemic and is widespread in the United States, causing a disease called COVID-19. It is likely that a majority of the population will eventually become infected with this virus. Here is some information about the coronavirus and ...
by Kevin Bliss
The surviving family of Kevin Lee McLaughlin, who died of a heart attack in California’s San Luis Obispo County Jail (SLOCJ) in April 2017, attempted to withdraw from a $41,850 settlement negotiated in its wrongful death lawsuit, which claimed deliberate indifference to McLaughlin’s emergency medical needs resulting ...
by Paul Wright
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. This is one of the very few times in our 30 year history where we have changed a cover story midproduction after the magazine has already been laid out, but that is what we are doing now. Our original cover story ...
by Matt Clarke
In October 2019, Arizona settled for $33,000 a pro se federal lawsuit brought by a state prisoner who alleged he was assaulted by an Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) guard while handcuffed behind his back.
According to court documents, DOC prisoner Shawn Michael Folta was incarcerated at ...
by Douglas Ankney
A December 10, 2019 report from ProPublica said the city of New York paid management consulting firm McKinsey & Company $27.5 million to reduce violence at jails on Rikers Island. But an investigation by the publication revealed that McKinsey manipulated reform efforts to give an appearance of ...
by Kevin Bliss
An Illinois federal district court held on September 9, 2019, that Larry Harris was retaliated against when he was punished and transferred to a less-desirable prison because of what his daughter, Amanda Carrasco, posted on her Facebook account.
Harris filed a § 1983 complaint against officials of ...
by Bill Barton
On January 28, 2020, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) voided several regulations used by the state Department of Correction (DOC) to justify denying 29 petitions by prisoners for medical parole, also known as “compassionate release.” The ruling came in a case by one of a number ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Nadezda Steele-Warrick, a prisoner at Albion Correctional Facility, was on the right track. After her 2015 conviction for assault, she had been a model prisoner, obtaining her GED, securing a spot in preferred housing, and working as a teacher’s assistant and exercise coach. She even earned ...
by Brian Sonenstein, Shadowproof
Every state in the nation has reported prison staffing shortages since 2017, according to research by Shadowproof.
This is concerning because “staff shortages” are historically used to push for greater investments in prison systems, oftentimes riding reform waves like the one the United States is ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 13, 2019, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s dismissal of a federal lawsuit brought by PLN against the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) over censorship of the magazine at the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado.
BOP ...
by Matt Clarke
As previously reported in PLN, Florida-based GEO Group has had a litany of problems at the jail it operates for Liberty County, Texas. During a rocky 57-day stretch in mid-2019, there were prisoner escapes and suicides, discovery of contraband, guard theft of prisoners’ trust fund monies ...
by Bill Barton
Roderick Douglas, 38, of Monroe, Louisiana, was sentenced to serve 60 months in prison for his role in a conspiracy with five other guards at Richwood Correctional Center (RCC) to violate the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Douglas was sentenced June 5, 2019, by U.S. ...
by David M. Reutter
In 2019, Colorado, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Nevada enacted legislation to restore voting rights to felons who have been released from prison but are still under such supervision, the latest of 24 states to make similar moves since 1997. Still, a 2016 estimate by the nonprofit ...
by David M. Reutter
With the 2016 passage if its Wrongful Imprisonment Act, Michigan became one of 33 states with legislation creating a fund to compensate wrongfully convicted people, paying them $50,000 per year of their incarceration. But by early 2020 the fund didn’t even have enough money to pay ...
by Dale Chappell
The Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) teamed up with the University of Denver’s Prison Arts Initiative and took some prison plays on the road last December. It’s the first time a prison play has gone on tour.
About 40 prisoners from the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility traveled ...
by Kevin Bliss
Ex-felons are gaining more opportunities to rebuild their lives after release without having the stigma of incarceration hanging over their heads. With such measures as Ban the Box, Second Chance Employment, and self-startups, people with criminal convictions are getting a leg up on employment, a major factor ...
by David M. Reutter
When former Florida Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011, he pushed to privatize health care for Florida prisoners. He promised the move would save taxpayers millions of dollars and it did, at least until 2014. An audit ordered by the state legislature found that since ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
In September 2019, California prison administrators and officials agreed to put a hold on a policy known as “incremental release” after complaints from prisoners and their relatives that it had been used to promote a “divide-and-conquer” strategy at state prisons by orchestrating “gladiator fights” among prisoners, ...
by Douglas Ankney
On October 21, 2019, Snohomish County, Washington, agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit related to the death of Lindsay Kronberger. Kronberger had been a detainee at the Snohomish County Jail (“SCJ”) before she died in January 2014 of causes related to dehydration and opioid ...
by Kevin Bliss
After January 10, 2020, prisoner riot left three guards injured at Massachusetts’ Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC), prisoners and their loved ones said prisoners were subjected to retaliation, losing their property, being tased, locked down 23 hours a day and denied access to phones and visits. Attorneys and ...
by Ed Lyon
Nationally known actress, fashionista and activist Kim Kardashian West has two new loves. One of them is the law and the other is a burning desire to help society’s lowest esteemed class, its convicted criminals.
Kardashian, the wife of rapper Kanye West, has recently completed a one-year ...
by David M. Reutter
A new law that reduces the minimum age to be a Florida prison guard has not helped resolve “critically low” staffing levels. Effective July 1, 2019, the minimum age to be a guard was reduced from 19 to 18.
Florida has struggled for over a decade ...
by David M. Reutter
A $1 million settlement was reached in May 2019 in a lawsuit alleging the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC) left a pretrial detainee in an unlit confinement cell to die from untreated diabetes.
When Wickie Yvonne Bryant, 55, was booked into ACDC on September 14, 2015, ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Artificial Intelligence, long thought to be the wave of the future, has become a present reality in prisons around the globe. Facilities in Hong Kong and China have already established themselves on the cutting edge of “smart” incarceration.
The former has outfitted prisoners with wristbands similar to ...
by Dale Chappell
The suicide rate among guards in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) keeps increasing, reaching a record high in 2019 for the most suicides in a single year: 14.
Top brass at both state and federal prisons have known for years that the suicide rate of prison ...
by Ken Silverstein
As we are putting together the April issue of PLN, the situation with the novel coronavirus is changing by the hour, if not the minute. In the United States, the number of cases has climbed from 213 on March 8 to 173.041 on March 31 — ...
by Nicole Wetsman, The Verge
Note: This story was originally published March 7.
This week, a person incarcerated in King County Jail in downtown Seattle was taken to the hospital after they were suspected of having the new coronavirus. The county says there are no cases currently in the jail, ...
by David M. Reutter
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) sued a vendor and its owner for scamming over 80 prisons of $530,000 by selling diluted spices and food products.
The suit, filed November 1, 2019, was brought under the False Claims Act (FCA), also known as “Lincoln’s Law,” for violations ...
by David M. Reutter
The Michigan Department of Corrections and its medical vendor, Corizon Health, agreed in October 2019 to pay $1.25 million to settle a lawsuit involving the death of a mentally ill prisoner who died of dehydration after guards turned off the water in her confinement cell.
Darlene ...
by David M. Reutter
Pennsylvania's Lackawanna County paid $1.1 million to settle yet another lawsuit alleging several Lackawanna County Prison (LCP) guards sexually assaulted female prisoners. That brings the total for lawsuits the county has agreed to settle over the last three years to $2.4 million, most of which was ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
On March 9, with fears of coronavirus spreading, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York held a press conference to announce the debut of a new hand sanitizer called NYS Clean. It will be produced by state prisoners paid approximately 16 cents per hour through CorCraft Products, ...
by Bob Williams
On March 16, 2020, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision dismissing a suit brought by a released prisoner over the fees charged to use the release funds placed on a debit card. The Human Rights Defense Center represented the plaintiff in this case. ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Several late or missing reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) highlights a trend toward less reporting and accountability by the federal government.
The Crime and Justice Research Alliance, a nonprofit group that advocates for more funding for and access to criminal justice data, sent ...
by Bill Barton
On December 6, 2109, Governor Ralph Northam suspended a Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) policy that authorized strip searches of minors.
An 8-year-old girl had been subjected to a strip search November 24, 2019, at Buckingham Correctional Center (BCC) in Dillwyn, before authorities allowed the child to ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Groups in several states are drawing increased attention to the high cost of jail and prison phone rates, and pushing to reduce or eliminate such charges. HRDC, the publisher of PLN, has been a leader in this movement since 1992 and founded the Prison Phone ...
by Ed Lyon
Regarding employment for newly released prisoners, two stereotypical jobs often come to mind, washing dishes and bussing tables at diners or restaurants. While those jobs are certainly still available, more and more prisoners are taking advantage of hospitality education and training to become cooks and chefs, filling ...
by Chad Marks
The family of Morgan Bluehorse, who committed suicide in solitary confinement at the age of 29, will receive $500,000 from the Washington state Department of Corrections, in a settlement reached November 13.
Bluehorse was a 29-year-old man when he found himself in an isolation cell at Airway ...
by Bill Barton
Then convicted Newport Beach sex offender Trenton Veches won parole in mid-March 2019, it was granted despite opposition by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has otherwise displayed a progressive criminal justice reform position, including his controversial death penalty moratorium announced in March. But since taking office in ...
by Kevin Bliss
The women’s work camp at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County, Florida, reported 18 confirmed cases of Legionnaires’ disease in early February of this year.
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said it was working with the Department of Health (DOH) to identify the source of the infection, ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Many prisoners who get their convictions overturned, especially after serving lengthy prison terms, rightly expect to be compensated when they prove they never should have been prosecuted. However, exonerees in California often face a difficult battle for compensation, made all the more challenging by homelessness.
Glenn ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 7, 2019, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an Ohio rule requiring a person alleging medical negligence to include a medical professional’s affidavit stating the claim has merit cannot be applied to a federal prisoner’s legal action against the federal Bureau of Prisons ...
by Bill Barton
On October 11, 1982 Terry Allen was arrested and charged with sexual assault, after he allegedly forced a woman he’d just met at the McDonalds where she was employed to drive him in her car to a secluded spot and perform oral sex on him.
But in ...
Allegations in a Missouri lawsuit shed light on how some jail officials use restraint chairs, which have been linked to dozens of deaths.
by Maurice Chammah, The Marshall Project, published in partnership with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Shortly after Christmas in 2016, Albert Okal began acting strangely in the Wayne County Jail. He was “jumping around, seeing things,” his lawyer says. The 41-year-old was facing a charge of driving while intoxicated in southeastern Missouri.
Okal does not recall why he became so agitated, but his lawyer said Okal does remember how the jail staff responded: They cuffed his wrists and ankles to a “restraint chair,” where they force-fed him, covered his head with a blanket, addressed him with the n-word and refused to let him use the bathroom, leaving him to urinate and defecate on himself. He remembers being restrained for five days, his lawyer said.
Last fall, Okal sued Wayne County, the county sheriff Dean Finch, and a number of jail staffers, claiming this experience left him with physical pain and emotional trauma, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch previously reported. Wayne County jailers have denied placing Okal in the device.
Okal’s lawsuit is the latest keyhole into the ...
by David M. Reutter
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in an unpublished opinion, reversed the dismissal of a Georgia prisoner’s First and Eighth Amendment damage claims that alleged he was denied a vegan diet that conformed to his Muslim religious beliefs.
While held at Valdosta State Prison (VSP) in ...
by Ed Lyon
Regular readers of Prison Legal News may remember the April 2019 article (page 61) chronicling the story of Wisconsin prison guard Sergeant Robert Wilcox. Wilcox placed images of a rat, signifying an informant, next to the names of five prisoners working for a gang intelligence investigator, Captain ...
by Ed Lyon
Oregon citizen Tina Ferri began serving a 70-month sentence for felony assault and methamphetamine possession at the Oregon Department of Corrections’ (ODC) Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (CCCF) for women in October of 2017.
In March of the following year, an Oregon appeal court reversed her assault conviction, ...
by Jayson Hawkins
With opioid overdoses claiming the lives of over 68,000 Americans annually, detention facilities have reported a corresponding rise in drug-related deaths among those incarcerated or recently released. (See PLN, September 2019, p. 1.) California’s nearly three dozen penal institutions recorded 997 overdoses in 2018, more than ...
by David M. Reutter
The Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) agreed to a $1.5 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging a 14-year-old was the target of several beatings and attacks and was raped in a shower by a 17-year-old detainee.
The lawsuit identifies the victim as “N.T.” and relates ...
by Ed Lyon
In January 2018, Jose Guadalupesettled a lawsuit for a total of $1,250,000 for a “severe beating” he suffered at the hands of jailers in the city’s notorious Rikers Island complex. He would eventually net a bit less than half of that amount after paying attorney’s fees and ...
by Dale Chappell
If you’ve ever had to rely on a prison law library to research for a court filing, you know just how sorely lacking they can be. And that’s if you were even able to access the law library. Many states do not provide law libraries for prisoners. ...
by David M. Reutter
A $252,000 settlement was reached in October 2019 in a lawsuit brought by the estate of a pretrial detainee who hanged himself at Pennsylvania’s Northampton County Prison (NCP).
Kyle A. Flyte, 21, was booked into NCP on March 5, 2017 and was placed on “Level II ...
by Jayson Hawkins
The water at Douglas Prison, which has over 2,000 of Arizona’s prisoners, had a “noticeable petroleum odor and taste” and “was burning [prisoners’] skin after showers and causing diarrhea” in June 2019, Jimmy Jenkins of KJZZ-FM reported.
The problem arose after the facility switched to a different ...
by Kevin Bliss
A Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on October 29, 2019 that there was a rational basis for the jury to determine that nurse Angela McLean and guard Joseph Cichanowicz did not violate prisoner James Lewis’ constitutional rights by delaying medical assistance, and that the United States ...
by David M. Reutter
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PDOC) has agreed to operate a Capital Case Unit (CCU) “as a general population unit that exclusively houses prisoners sentenced to death.” That change in conditions is part of a settlement agreement to a lawsuit that challenged death row prisoners’ conditions ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
In August 2016, just after an Obama administration decision to stop contracting with for-profit private prisons sent its stock price tumbling, GEO Group, Inc., the country’s largest private prison contractor, donated $100,000 to a super PAC aligned with then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump.
Through a wholly ...
by David M. Reutter
The Pennsylvania Board of Psychology revoked the license of psychologist James Harrington and imposed $62,233 in civil penalties and costs. The revocation was based on seven suicides over an 18 month period at SCI Cresson, which has closed since the deaths nearly a decade ago.
The ...
by Chad Marks
U.S. District Court Judge Loretta A. Preska has ordered the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and Community Supervision (DOCCS) to pay up in a victim of contempt case.
Amy Jane Agnew, an attorney representing Anthony Medina a prisoner who is blind, filed a complaint ...
Loaded on
April 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2020, page 62
Afghanistan: The Ministry of Interior Affairs is working on a draft proposal aimed at reducing jail time, while promoting “reading culture.” By the end of 2019, Afghanistan had at least 35,000 prisoners in jails across the country. If the proposal is adopted, a prisoner could receive a six-day prison ...
by David M. Reutter
The estate of a pretrial detainee who died at Arkansas’ Pulaski agreed to a $425,000 settlement to resolve a civil rights action. The settlement requires payment from Pulaski County and its medical vendor, Turn Key Health Clinics.
Sharon L. Alexander, 41, was arrested on December 13, ...
