Prisons beset with gang-related violence, overcrowding, understaffing and weak funding.
by David M. Reutter
Between late last year and early April 2020, more than 30 Mississippi prisoners died due togang violence, suicide or illness – over 10 times the average of 3.4 prisoner deaths per year between 2014 and 2018. ...
by Bill Barton
Lawyers representing music stars Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Mario “Yo Gotti” Mims, along with Carter’s entertainment company, Team Roc, filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Mississippi on January 14, 2020, on behalf of 24 prisoners held at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. The suit’s ...
by Paul Wright
With COVID-19 still dominating prison and jail related news, it is worth keeping in mind that detention conditions did not miraculously improve because of a pandemic. Rather, already bad conditions have gotten steadily worse, inadequate and negligent medical care systems have been overtaxed, and their already limited ...
by David M. Reutter
As the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread across the nation, so did the push to release prisoners from the “Petri dish” of close confinement that exists inside jails and prisons. While some Florida jails released non-violent offenders, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) battened the hatches ...
by Ken Silverstein
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, prisoners, their families and advocates have braced for major outbreaks at America’s prisons and jails. It’s still not clear just how bad prisoners are going to be hit, but numbers are climbing at an alarming rate. As of June 9, joint ...
by Matt Clarke
Around the globe, governments are releasing prisoners in an attempt to mitigate the threat of COVID-19-related mass deaths in their jails and prisons. However, Third World countries are far ahead of most of the so-called “advanced” nations. They have released torrents of prisoners compared to a trickle ...
by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
Though the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage in the United States and around the world, numerous areas of the country have staged re-openings. They were premature and poorly conceived, so it’s no surprise that half the states have increasing numbers of cases.
Several states subsequently ...
by Matt Clarke
The COVID-19 pandemic, or rather government officials’ inept reaction to the pandemic, has led to unrest in prisons around the world—especially in South America and the Middle East. This has resulted in the escape of hundreds and the death of dozens of prisoners.
The typical initial response ...
by Kevin Bliss
The family of Roger Lee Wells will receive $1 million in compensation for his death on March 10, 2018, after he suffered several consecutive seizures without ever receiving proper treatment at the Cascade County Detention Center located in Great Falls, Montana.
Wells was arrested a week earlier ...
by David M. Reutter
Much has been made of essential employees as the economy shut down in an effort to “flatten the curve” of the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus has been on the bravery of health-care workers in hospitals and nursing homes. One group that has gone ignored are guards ...
by Ed Lyon
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”That’s a famous quote from Luke Skywalker, a character in 1977’s Star Wars, as his Millennium Falcon spacecraft emerges from faster-than-light speed only to find Alderaan, its destination planet, has been destroyed. But this phrase of foreboding was also recently ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
With prison reform a hot topic that has gained nationwide attention over the last decade, prison lifestyle videos on YouTube offer a window into the prison experience for many Americans.
Collectively, the four most popular prison channels on YouTube have more than 2.1 million subscribers. The ...
by Derek Gilna
On June 9, 2020, the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a split decision, vacated a preliminary injunction issued by a district court that directed the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to determine which prisoners at Elkton Federal Correctional Institution Elkton were eligible for transfer or release ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A New Jersey man who was sentenced to one year in prison died on May 10, 2020, while in custody at the Central Reception and Assignment Facility in Trenton, where prisoners go before they are sent to a regular prison.
According to court records, Ricardo Williamson ...
by Dale Chappell
After seeing surveillance video of a group of prisoners drinking hot water from the same cup – allegedly attempting to raise their body temperature before it was checked by a nurse – and then sharing sniffs of a face mask, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said ...
Loaded on
July 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2020, page 26
A secret Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) document, obtained by ProPublica, is being used to evaluate the security levels of prisoners, leaving some who qualified for release to home confinement stuck in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic with little explanation of how they were evaluated.
The First Step Act ...
by Derek Gilna
Federal District Court Judge Rachel P. Kovner on June 9, 2020, denied a “preliminary injunction that would release all MDC inmates whose age or medical condition places them at heightened risk from the virus and would manage almost every aspect of the facility’s COVID-19 response,” according to ...
https://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/2020/05/25/compliance-or-critical-thinking/
By Terry A. Kupers, M.D., M.S.P.
(Many thanks to Willow Katz and Dolores Canales for support and editing)
Prisoners consigned to solitary confinement or Security Housing Unit (SHU) are derided as “the worst of the worst.” But when I enter SHUs around the country in preparation for expert testimony ...
by Kevin Bliss
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report May 6 based on data gathered from 54 state and territorial health departments, claiming about 5,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among prisoners in state and federal prisons, jails and detention centers.
Two weeks later, Reuters ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 22, 2020, Rodney Myers was removed from his position as warden of a federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, after severe criticism of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former warden’s failure to isolate prisoners with confirmed cases of COVID-19 and requiring staff to work ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
Special interest groups are becoming more concerned with the government surveillance equipment provider, Special Services Group (SSG). As of early 2020, it had about $2.6 million in contracts with over a dozen U.S. agencies, including the FBI, CIA and ICE, selling covert surveillance equipment such as ...
by Dale Chappell
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a federal lawsuit against a private prison run by CoreCivic in Florence, Arizona, claiming that staff has failed to protect its prisoners and the community from the coronavirus, according to a story in The Appeal and court records.
According ...
by David M. Reutter
A Michigan federal district court found on January 6, 2020 that allegations by a prisoner tutor that prison officials retaliated against him for blowing the whistle on GED test cheating were sufficient to survive summary judgment.
Munin Kathawa, a prisoner at Michigan’s G. Robert Cotton Correctional ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 14, 2020 the United States Supreme Court rejected a class-action lawsuit filed by two elderly Texas prisoners that would have forced the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to provide masks, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies to prisoners in an effort to combat the novel ...
by Ed Lyon
The efficacy of states continuing to retain elderly prisoners has been questioned by corrections experts for decades. The problems with continuing to needlessly incarcerate senior prisoners has become even more germane amidst the ongoing coronavirus crisis as activists, along with prison reformists, urge Alabama to release its ...
by Ed Lyon
A $1.15 million settlement was reached on January 31, 2020 in the case of a women who gave birth to premature twins, but one died in a prison bathroom.
In 2012, South Carolinian Sinetra Geter was sentenced to two years in prison for violating parole. She discovered ...
by Christopher Zoukis
As a result of a ruling June 5, 2020, hundreds of immigrant detainees held by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in south Florida may have to be released. That day a federal judge for the Southern District of Florida agreed the agency was likely “[shuffling] people ...
by David M. Reutter
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgment for defendants in a civil rights action alleging a guard sexually assaulted and used excessive force upon a prisoner.
The ruling, on January 7, 2020, came in an appeal brought by Kirstin Sconiers. His ...
by David M. Reutter
A prison health expert report found that Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) is “not prepared to effectively contain any outbreak of COVID-19 and its practices put detainees and staff at grave risk of infection, serious illness, and even death.”
The April 3, 2020 report was a ...
by Dale Chappell
Surveillance video released in January 2020 from the Ottawa County Jail in Miami, Oklahoma, provides graphic evidence of the neglect and abuse suffered by detainee Terral Ellis at the hands of jail staff in the days leading up to his death from septic shock and pneumonia in ...
by Ken Silverstein
Alec Karakatsanis is the founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Civil Rights Corps. He previously worked as a civil rights lawyer and public defender with the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and as a federal public defender ...
by Matt Clarke
The mothers of three children of a prisoner who died of an overdose of fentanyl while incarcerated at the Orleans Justice Center, the Parish’s jail, have filed a lawsuit against employees of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office (OPSO) and Wellpath (the jail’s contract provider of prisoner medical ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On January 11, 2020, a group of about a dozen protesters gathered outside the administrative offices of the the Utah Department of Corrections (UDOC) in Draper. They were there to express their anger over a policy change, one that ended a five-year-old effort to segregate members ...
by Douglas Ankney
Taxpayers of the state of Indiana will pay $425,000 to prisoner Jay Vermillion as the result of an agreement reached on October 21, 2019, between him and employees of the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC). This agreement settled Vermillion’s § 1983 lawsuit alleging the IDOC employees unlawfully ...
by Ed Lyon
Thirty-six-year-old Ashley Via Menser of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, is battling both cervical and ovarian cancer from prison after being convicted and sentenced in January 2020 for shoplifting $109.63 worth of groceries.
As her case progressed through court, her cancer progressed, too. She was scheduled for an oncology appointment ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 24, 2019, a Maine state court found that a state prisoner’s rights were violated when he was held in segregation for 22 months without “meaningful periodic review.” However, the court denied the prisoner’s request that it impose limitations on the Maine Department of Correction (DOC) ...
by Douglas Ankney
Forty-one-year-old Atlantic County jail detainee Mario Terruso, Jr. died after coughing up blood and begging for water, according to a report in nj.com in September 2019.
Alan Wright, who knew Terruso for about 15 years, was working as a jail runner delivering food trays and cleaning carts ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 10, 2020, cybersecurity research team vpnMentor reported the discovery of an unsecured cloud storage server containing data from JailCore, an online management and compliance application used by jails to streamline functions like logging prisoner checks. While some of the information generated is public, other information ...
by Mark Wilson
An Oregon federal court in January 2020 compelled NaphCare, Inc., the private medical care provider for the Washington County Jail (WCJ) in Hillsboro, to disclose lawsuits and financial records in a wrongful death action stemming from the June 2017 detox death of a detainee.
County officials terminated ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 8, 2019, a federal court denied summary judgment on some claims against seven Connecticut Department of Corrections (DOC) supervisory personnel who Cara Tangreti, a former prisoner at the state’s only women’s prison, alleged placed her in danger of repeated sexual assaults. Four guards were fired ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit announced a new rule on January 16, 2020 concerning what constitutes a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment when a prisoner alleges a sexual assault by prison staff.
The new rule was established ...
by David M. Reutter
On January 31, 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgment in a civil rights action alleging a guard at California’s Kern County Jail (KCJ) made sexual comments to a female juvenile detainee, groomed her for sexual abuse, and looked at ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 28, 2020, a California court of appeal affirmed the judgment of a lower court sustaining the demurrer of nine counties that were sued by jail prisoners and their families as a challenge to excessive jail phone rates as an unconstitutional tax under Proposition 26.
The ...
by Mark Wilson
On October 31, 2019, an Oregon federal court held that a claim that extended parole postponement pursuant to the retroactive application of a new law violates the ex post facto clause and is not cognizable in a 28 USC § 2254 federal habeas corpus proceeding. Such a ...
by Douglas Ankney
Amherst-Pelham Regional High School (APRHS) English teacher Sara Barber-Just was rubbing sleep from her eyes at 5:30 a.m. while reading the June 28, 2019, online edition of The New York Times. Then her jaw dropped in amazement when she saw the story about her journalism class’ ...
by David M. Reutter
A Florida federal district court declared portions of Florida’s felon voting system unconstitutional. It issued injunctive relief that orders a new process put in place for indigent persons who owe financial obligations as part of a criminal sentence.
In 2018, 64.55% of Florida voters approved Amendment ...
by Jayson Hawkins
March 2020 brought sweeping changes to the way people lived and worked as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country. Prisons, where social distancing was often difficult or impossible to practice, proved especially vulnerable to COVID-19, yet the Delaware Department of Correction pushed ahead ...
by Mark Wilson
An Oregon federal court held that a sentence that prohibits a juvenile offender’s possible release until he is 88 years old violates the Eighth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because it denies a “meaningful opportunity” for release.
The Eighth Amendment requires a state to ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 1, 2020, the Texas Attorney General’s Office issued an opinion holding that all records related to a private prison contractor’s operations in the state were public information subject to the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA). The opinion bars an effort by the GEO Group to ...
by Matt Clarke
In December 2019, the Providence Journal received a requested breakdown of money paid to applicants for prison guard positions with the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (DOC). The DOC sent a spreadsheet of 251 payments of between $286.63 and $3,096.36, totaling $380,419.
The money was part of ...
by David R. Reutter
A Kentucky federal district court awarded the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) and its co-counsels $104,711.37 in attorney fees and costs in a lawsuit alleging the Kentucky Department of Corrections (KDOC) censored books sent to prisoners.
The court’s May 15, 2020, order resolves all issues in ...
by Jayson Hawkins
The first phase of economic relief stemming from the COVID-19 crisis included $350 billion in loans aimed at keeping U.S. small businesses afloat. The CARES Act, as approved by Congress, offered hope of surviving the pandemic to any business with fewer than 500 employees.
The Small Business ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 10, 2019, the City of Meriden, Connecticut, settled for $1,393,000 a lawsuit brought by the estate, minor son, and minor daughter of a woman who committed suicide while being held at the Meriden Police Department.
Late in the evening of January 18, 2016, Meriden city ...
by Dale Chappell
A former CoreCivic nurse who worked at the private, for-profit company’s Bent County Jail in Colorado filed a federal lawsuit March 18, 2020, claiming sex discrimination by her supervisors after she filed complaints about the lack of medical care to prisoners.
CoreCivic workers at the Bent County ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced prisons across the country to alter the educational programs they offer. The change has highlighted the inequality in available technology between different state prison systems and revealed that many educators are concerned not only with education, but also with the prisoners’ ...
by David M. Reutter
The Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) agreed to place 3.9 million Tablet Media Credits into the accounts of prisoners who bought songs through the now-defunct digital music player program.
In 2011, FDOC allowed prisoners to purchase MP3 programs through a contract with Access Corrections. Over the ...
by Kevin Bliss
Waste disposal workers, called “hoppers,” of Orleans Parish went on strike May 5, 2020, demanding the city of New Orleans provide them with better personal protective equipment (PPE) and hazard pay due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to Pay Day Report. People Ready, contracted through Metro ...
Loaded on
July 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2020, page 62
Arizona: A Maricopa County grand jury indicted Daniel Davitt, 60, on January 14, 2020 on charges of second-degree murder in the death of Lower Buckeye Jail guard Gene Lee on October 30. Buckeye Jail video shows Davitt talking to Lee on October 29, then suddenly grabbing Lee by the ...
