This article was produced in partnership with AL.com, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This article was originally published on September 30, 2019.
By Connor Sheets, ProPublica
Michael Tidwell’s blood sugar reading was at least 15 times his normal level when sheriff’s deputies took him to the hospital. But before they loaded the inmate into the back of a car, deputies propped up his slumping body and handed him a pen so he could sign a release from the Washington County Jail.
“I could barely stand up or keep my eyes open,” he recalled.
Tidwell said that he didn’t know what he was signing at the time, and that he lost consciousness a short time later. The consequences of his signature only became clear in the weeks that followed the 2013 medical emergency.
By signing the document, which freed him on bond from the small jail in south Alabama, Tidwell had in essence agreed that the Washington County Sheriff’s Office would not be responsible for his medical costs, which included the two days he spent in a diabetic coma in intensive care at Springhill Medical Center ...
by David M. Reutter
Fearing his existing medical condition could transform his sentence to death if he caught COVID-19, federal prisoner Richard Cephas elected to escape. After nearly a month on the run, Cephas turned himself in on April 20, 2020, resulting in a new charge for the escape.
Cephas ...
by Paul Wright
It seems like an eternity since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the U.S. in January of this year and the first deaths began occurring in March. Now, each day brings grim news for American prisoners. Everyone I know in the prisoner rights community is working long, hard hours ...
by Matt Clarke
A Los Angeles-based company has been selling to jails and prison systems phone-monitoring technology that searches for keywords, touting it as a way to discover COVID-19 infections early.
LEO Technologies developed the Verus system, which has already been deployed in at least 26 facilities in 11 states, ...
States should release from prison far more than the very small percentage of low-level, nonviolent offenders they hold.
by Joseph Margulies, Boston Review, April 20, 2020
http://bostonreview.net/law-justice/joseph-margulies-prisons-and-pandemics
COVID-19 spreads where people congregate. With rare exception, it preys on the weakest among us—the elderly, the sick, the infirm—which is why it ...
Loaded on
June 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2020, page 15
Noting a “significant level of infection” of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 in the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) at Elkton, Ohio, U.S. Attorney General William Barr directed federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Michael Carvajal on April 3, 2020 to “move with dispatch” to save vulnerable prisoners at the low-security ...
by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
We are entering a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Efforts to prevent infection by closing all but essential businesses, staying at home, physical distancing, wearing face masks, frequent hand washing, no face touching, and disinfecting frequently touched surfaces have begun ...
Women of color are fearful about the Covid-19 outbreak within the system
by Victoria Law, ZORA by Medium (zora.medium.com)
Theresa is currently isolating alone in her Harlem apartment. Because Theresa has asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), thus making her more vulnerable to Covid-19, her adult daughters ...
by Jayson Hawkins
On October 17, 2019 a former Missouri prisoner accused of faking injuries while in Boone County Jail was ordered to repay almost $1.3 million from a settlement in which he had accused deputies of using excessive force.
In October 2015, after an altercation in the dinner line at ...
Loaded on
June 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2020, page 20
A GEO Group-run jail in Queens, New York City, saw coronavirus cases surge in the facility in May 2020.
The 222-bed medium/minimum-security federal Queens Detention Facility, New York City’s only privately run jail, reported 25 prisoners and 10 staff members tested positive for the virus, according to the Queens Daily ...
by Chad Marks
William Garrison was 16 years old when he was arrested and eventually convicted of first-degree murder. He would spend the next 44 years of his life behind bars.
On April 13, 2020, Garrison’s cellmate called for help after Garrison was gasping for air. Macomb Correctional Facility staff ...
by Ken Silverstein
Ever since the coronavirus epidemic exploded in the United States earlier this year, government officials have reassured the public that they had things tightly under control. On February 26, before anyone in the country had died from COVID-19, President Donald Trump confidently stated that only 15 Americans ...
by Ken Silverstein
David Fathi is Director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, which brings challenges to conditions of confinement in prisons, jails, and other detention facilities, and works to end the policies that have given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world. He ...
by David M. Reutter
In the months prior to the COVID-19 pandemic being declared, voting rights activists were gaining momentum in helping those in jail register and arrange to cast ballots. In the aftermath of the pandemic’s outbreak, activists now worry that eligible voters in prisons and jails will be ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 5, 2020, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed a Florida district court’s preliminary injunction that required officials at Miami’s Metro West Detention Center (Metro West) to employ numerous safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and imposed extensive reporting requirements.
Metro West ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) is being criticized for its mishandling of circumstances surrounding a prisoner’s release during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kevin Cherry was released from Marion Correctional Institution (MCI) April 11, 2020. Three days later, he tested positive for COVID-19. Cherry said guards ...
Can governments safely release hundreds or thousands of people from prison?
We offer 14 historical examples to show that, in fact, they already have.
by Peter Wagner, Prison Policy Initiative
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/04/09/large-scale-releases/
To protect the American public from COVID-19, schools have closed, non-essential stores have been shuttered, people with desk jobs ...
by Ed Lyon
Prisons are obvious contagion grounds for COVID-19, and conditions in Alabama are among the worst in the nation. Now, it appears, those conditions could get worse even as the coronavirus problem is rapidly spreading at prisons in Alabama and across the country.
On April 16, 2020 the ...
by David M. Reutter
Detainees at CoreCivic’s Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC) in California were enthusiastic when told they would be issued face masks to protect themselves from COVID-19. The mood changed quickly when employees conditioned that issuance on the signing of a contract that held CoreCivic “harmless” from wearing ...
by Derek Gilna
As of May 12, 2020, the number of COVID-19 infections had exploded at a trio of federal prisons in southern California, placing one at the top of all 142 facilities operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Lompoc, located in Santa Barbara ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
In response to a motion filed by the ACLU, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California unsealed documents in June 2019 related to the failures of San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and its mental health provider, Correctional Physicians Medical Group ...
by Christopher Zoukis
On April 17, 2020, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the Oakland County Jail due to its mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Plaintiffs filed a class action complaint against the Oakland County Jail ...
by Derek Gilna
Prisoners struggling to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic — often without masks, sufficient cleaning supplies or the ability to social distance — are crying for help to the outside world by any means possible. Some prison authorities have responded by cutting off their access to phones and ...
by Bill Barton
The Rhode Island Board of Elections voted in December 2019 to fine correctional officers’ union president Richard Ferruccio for allowing the union’s Political Action Committee (PAC) to exceed the state’s limit on annual campaign contributions for three successive years. Ferruccio agreed to pay the $1,020 penalty after ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The silence is deafening. Over a week in mid-May, Prison Legal News tried to contact public information officers at seven federal prisons seeking an answer to a straightforward question: What are you doing to protect prisoners at your facility from COVID-19?
The answer?
As of press time, ...
by Kevin Bliss
Hawaii’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) has now banned contact visits at three of the state’s correctional institutions: Oahu Correctional Community Center (OCCC), Maui Correctional Community Center (MCCC), and Halawa Correctional Facility (HFC).
The only way families and friends of those incarcerated there can see their loved ...
by Ed Lyon
As of April 1, 2020, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) counted just over 122,000 prisoners in custody, more than 25 percent lower than its 2006 peak, continuing a downward trend that began after a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that capped the state prison ...
by Christopher Zoukis
On April 6, 2020, New York Supreme Court Judge Mark Dwyer ordered the release of 18 pre-trial detainees held at Rikers Island in response to a lawsuit brought by attorneys Lauren Gottesman and Mary Lynne Werlwas of the Legal Aid Society, and Robert Briere. The lawyers had ...
by Douglas Ankney
A county in rural Kansas is jailing people over unpaid medical debt, CBS News reported in February 2020. The county is Coffeyville, Kansas, which has a poverty rate twice the national average.
It’s also the place where attorneys such as Michael Hassenplug have built a successful law ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 3, 2019, a Missouri jury entered judgment in favor of a former Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) employee who alleged she had suffered workplace sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and retaliation. The jury awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages.
Ana Barrios was hired by the DOC ...
by Derek Gilna
An April 22, 2020 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, with the collaboration of researchers from Washington State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Tennessee, shows that COVID-19 deaths in jails, prisons and the communities where they are located will skyrocket unless there ...
by Ed Lyon
Despite settling a landmark prisoner civil rights case in 2016, and after a bloody 2018 riot led to a nationwide prisoner work strike that same year, conditions in facilities run by the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) remain so bad that prisoner advocates in late-2019 appealed ...
by Kevin Bliss
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards had yet to act on a July 2019 recommendation by the state Board of Pardons and Parole to grant Gloria Williams’ request for commutation.
Williams is Louisiana’s longest incarcerated prisoner, the last of the three people sent to prison for a robbery ...
by Bill Barton
It’s scarcely news that people incarcerated in federal prison are often desperate for any possible chance to return home. Unfortunately, prisoners aren’t really in a position to verify the legitimacy of assorted offers of shortened sentences, and misinformation is rampant.
On its website, the group Oaks of ...
by David M. Reutter
Like most prison systems, the Louisiana Department of Corrections (LDOC) has been battling the COVID-19 pandemic in crammed facilities that make for easy transmission of the highly contagious coronavirus. As a consequence, the number of positive tests for the disease within LDOC facilities continues to grow, ...
by Kevin Bliss
Florida is one of a handful of states that doesn’t pay prisoners to work, constituting what some consider slave labor. Meanwhile, the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) continues to use prison labor during the coronavirus pandemic, despite the obvious risk it poses.
The Florida Times-Union reported in ...
by Ken Silverstein
Don Specter is the executive director of the Berkeley, California-based Prison Law Office, a nonprofit public interest law firm that provides free legal services to adult and juvenile offenders. It has litigated numerous successful institutional reform cases that, among other things, have improved health-care services, guaranteed prisoners ...
by David M. Reutter
Incarceration is not the answer to crime, concludes a December 19, 2019 report by the Tennessee Criminal Justice Investment Task Force (CJITF). “Despite incarcerating more people and spending over $1 billion annually on corrections in the state budget, Tennessee has the fourth highest violent crime rate ...
by Chad Marks
On December 12, 2019, the Board of Supervisors of Mississippi’s Issaquena County granted an eleventh-hour reprieve to the Issaquena County Regional Jail just five days before it was set to close and over 300 prisoners were to be moved. The Mayersville jail is the county’s largest employer, ...
by Douglas Ankney
An audit of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MDOC) released January 9, 2020, found that the agency was failing to provide prisoners with timely health care and proper reentry services, including help with needed medical appointments. As a result, prisoner health has been jeopardized, especially after release, ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 27, 2019, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 88, the union that represents Nebraska Department of Corrections (DOC) workers, announced a “Letter of Agreement” that provides for increased worker pay and creates a new career ladder for DOC guards.
The ...
by Derek Gilna
Sandoval County, New Mexico on February 24, 2020, settled a public records lawsuit with the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the parent corporation of Prison Legal News, which alleged that the county had refused to provide records that were required to be released under the state’s ...
Loaded on
June 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2020, page 53
By May 8, 2020, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections had released almost 1,600 prisoners as the coronavirus spread, Madison.com reports.
“The vast majority — 1,447 individuals released from March 2 to May 4 — are inmates who had been detained because they violated terms of their probation, parole or extended ...
by David M. Reutter
New York federal judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto on July 31, 2019, sentenced former Bureau of Prisons Lieutenant Eugenio Perez to 25 years in prison. A jury in May 2018 found Perez guilty of six counts of deprivation of civil rights, four counts of aggravated abuse, five ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Over 600,000 people are released from prisons across the U.S. each year, and a growing number of reentry providers are prepping to absorb increasing numbers as states reform their systems.
In California, though, as the state implements long-overdue reforms in the criminal justice system, people are ...
by Ed Lyon
As the threat of COVID-19 contagion has become tangible to prison populations across the United States, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has implemented risk management and mitigation protocols throughout its prison system.
Among these is the cessation of accepting new prisoners from county jails and transfers ...
by Derek Gilna
On May 13, 2020, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the parent organization of Prison Legal News, settled a federal civil rights action concerning California’s Tehama County Jail censorship of prisoner publications like PLN in violation of the First Amendment.
The complaint, filed February 14, 2020 ...
by Kevin Bliss
More than 200 guards, prisoners and civilians have been convicted of corruption at the Baltimore Department of Corrections’ prison system over the last four years. In a major new case revealed in December 2019, then-acting Captain Kevin Hickson and 24 other members of the Baltimore Central Regional ...
by Ed Lyon
On January 23, 2020, the family of an Arkansas man who was executed three years earlier, filed a lawsuit to obtain evidence from the scene of the murder for which he was convicted, hoping to finally submit it for DNA testing.
“My family has been unable to ...
by David M. Reutter
Colorado prison officials agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging a guard severely beat a prisoner who was experiencing a seizure.
Prisoner Jayson M. Oslund entered the Colorado Department of Corrections for the second time in September 2010. He had a documented history of ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 16, 2019, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of Colorado federal prisoner Aaron Sandusky’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, thereby remanding the case for further proceedings. The writ claimed that a congressional appropriations rider prohibits the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) ...
by Matt Clarke
In November 2019, the family of a New Mexico prisoner who committed suicide while incarcerated at a privately operated prison agreed to a $500,000 settlement against the psychiatrist, Andrew Kowalkowski, who subcontracted with Corizon. Earlier in 2019, the family entered into confidential settlements with the two other ...
by David M. Reutter
Florida federal district Judge Mark E. Walker entered a protective order to end retaliation against state prisoner Johnny Hill.
The court’s January 28, 2020, order was entered to protect one of the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit challenging the conditions of confinement in Florida’s segregation units. ...
by Matt Clarke
Following his release, a former Nevada Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner who was injured while working as a firefighter for the Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF) challenged the calculation of his post-release worker’s compensation benefits based on his miniscule prison salary. On December 26, 2019, the Nevada ...
by David M. Reutter
Pennsylvania state court jury found on November 19, 2019 that the Berks County Jail violated the constitutional rights of women by denying them the same access to reentry privileges as men. The jury awarded $2,800 in compensatory damages to the lead plaintiff in the case, Theresa ...
by Chad Marks
A deadly tornado ripping through South Carolina on April 13, 2020 has forced the federal Bureau of Prisons to start moving hundreds of prisoners from FCI Estill.
The prison, located west of Charleston in Hampton County, took a direct hit from the tornado, an EF-4 on the ...
by Douglas Ankney
A Gallup poll revealed that 60% of Americans believe that life in prison without parole is a better approach for a murder conviction than the death penalty. The poll was cited in the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2019 year-end report. “The death penalty has now disappeared from ...
by David M. Reutter
On April 7, 2020, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and its GOP-dominated legislature lost another round in their battle to limit a voter-approved amendment to the state constitution providing automatic restoration of voting rights to most convicted felons “upon completion of all terms of sentence including ...
Loaded on
June 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2020, page 63
Alabama: Doctors have warned about the toxicity of K2, a common synthetic marijuana smuggled into prisons. Alabama Department of Corrections narcotics dog Jake, a 5-year-old Belgian Malinois, died after an allergic reaction to the substance found in a July 2019 contraband search at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore County. ...
