by Jennifer Honig
Prisoners in the U.S. face stress and conditions that heighten their risk of suicide compared to the general population. Putting aside the question of whether a person might have a right to choose suicide, or a rational reason for it, the government has an obligation to care ...
by Dale Chappell
In a federal appellate court filing on August 20, 2020, nearly five years after a federal judge ordered officials to stop recording privileged calls between attorneys and their clients waiting for trial at the Leavenworth Detention Center (LDC) in Kansas, the U.S. government refused to comply with ...
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story is on jail suicides, with a particular focus on Massachusetts. Sadly, this is a topic we have covered extensively over the past 30 years. Despite extensive study and research on the causes of suicide, rates generally increased with the explosion of the prison ...
by Derek Gilna
Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) officials announced on March 19, 2021, that they were beginning mass vaccination of the state’s roughly 17,000 prisoners with doses provided to all 3,017 inmates at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Pearl.
“We talked to the guys and ladies upfront ...
by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
Course of the Pandemic
Declining numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths: After the peak in mid-January at about 220,00 cases per day, infections have been declining in the United States. In mid-March, infections appeared to be stabilizing at about 60,000 per day, a level similar ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 14, 2021, a winter storm with temperatures far below freezing swept through Texas causing an unprepared electrical grid to falter and resulting in at least 57 deaths. The storm caused widespread power outages and rolling blackouts. The frigid temperatures and lack of power also caused ...
by David M. Reutter
Massachusetts is one of just a few states to offer the COVID-19 vaccine to prisoners. The governor’s office, however, put an end to prison officials offering ‘‘good time’’ to prisoners who elect to be vaccinated. As of February 3, 2021, there were 95 positive cases at ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Reform groups in Connecticut have been riding the wave of protests in America to pressure the Connecticut Legislature into making lasting reforms and addressing issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the results have been underwhelming.
On September 29, 2020, two prison reform advocacy groups held ...
by Casey Bastian
On February 25, 2021, the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) settled an employment discrimination lawsuit filed by a former guard, who alleged he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias from his mostly White co-workers on the correctional staff Parnall Correctional Facility (PCF), a minimum-security prison in Jackson ...
by Ed Lyon
When Senate Bill 132 took effect January 1, 2021, protections promised by the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) were finally guaranteed by law to over 1,000 inmates held by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) who are “transgender, gender-nonconforming, non-binary, intersex, or ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) was accused of not providing nutritionally fit meals in an article published October 24, 2020. Prisoners say portions are too small to be of value, there are little to no vegetables, and starches are overused to make up caloric deficits.
The ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
A jail prisoner in Broward County gave birth in her cell recently, with staff ignoring her pleas for help until just prior to delivery. Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony fired two top administrators at the jail on October 15, 2020, just 24 hours after learning of the ...
by Sandy Rozek
Going back to 1991, when Rodney King was beaten by four police officers in California, public sentiment has periodically erupted in a general condemnation of law enforcement. In New York in 2014, the death of Eric Garner, placed in a chokehold and held on the ground for ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Virginia recently settled two outstanding lawsuits alleging the abuse of solitary confinement.
Taken together, the payouts cost the state’s taxpayers over $250,000. At a time when Virginia’s General Assembly made progress on other justice issues — abolishing the death penalty, legalizing marijuana and restoring felon voting ...
by Chad Marks
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas prison officials stopped all visits in the prison system between prisoners and families. Stopping the visits seemed to have little effect on keeping both prisoners and staff safe. Thousands of prisoners were infected and many died along with prison ...
by Juliette LaMarr
Mumia Abu-Jamal has contracted COVID-19 but is recovering, according to a March 8, 2021 story in The Philadelphia Tribune. A political prisoner and journalist — as well as a columnist for Prison Legal News — Abu-Jamal received his diagnosis in early March, after about a week ...
by Kevin Bliss
Ex-offenders are having a tougher time finding employment amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. With a national unemployment rate of 6.7% in December 2020, employers are able to pick applicants who do not have the stigma of a past felony conviction, and who historically have more job skills than ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on December 9, 2020, filed a lawsuit alleging that the state of Alabama is “deliberately indifferent” to unconstitutional conditions persisting at its state prisons, facilities that “are riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence,” according to Assistant U.S. Attorney General for ...
by David M. Reutter
Michael Raymond Riley, a former Florida prison guard, was charged with second-degree murder for killing a prisoner “by causing blunt force trauma to be inflicted on the victim’s neck or head area,” charged an indictment on November 10, 2020.
The charge stems from the death of ...
by David M. Reutter
Over six months after concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person visitation at Michigan state prisons in March 2020, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) launched a pilot program of video visitation on October 9 to offer an avenue for prisoners and their families to connect ...
by Ed Lyon
Around 3 p.m. on March 11, 2019, prisoners at the Maui Community Correctional Center (MCCC) rioted. Some started a fire, some broke fire-suppression sprinklers, while others smashed fixtures.
Outside, police were called in to help restore order and conduct a subsequent investigation to assign culpability for prosecution ...
by Mark Wilson
The California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) was cited on March 1, 2021, by the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) and fined $24,300 for “serious” violations stemming from a June 2020 exposure to COVID-19 of prisoners employed in a metal fabrication and vehicle-outfitting facility at ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 12, 2020, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that 18 U.S.C. §§ 111 and 1114, which criminalize assaulting federal officers, apply to private prison guards detaining federal prisoners. The court affirmed a federal prisoner’s conviction for punching a guard at a federally contracted privately ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 22, 2020, a rural and politically conservative county in western New York implemented one of the nation’s most progressive transgender jail policies, also agreeing to pay a transgender woman $60,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from her mistreatment in the Steuben County Jail (SCJ).
The ...
by Derek Gilna
COVID-19’s impact on American society has been dramatic, but no more so than in prisons and jails. While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended maintaining “social distancing” and governmental officials closed or mandated drastically reduced capacity of public buildings to stop the spread of ...
by Casey Bastian
The story of Archie Williams shocks and inspires. A Black man spent 36 years in a Louisiana prison for the rape and stabbing of a White woman before his 2019 release. There was just one problem: Williams was innocent.
Despite this experience, Williams has maintained a warm ...
by Derek Gilna
Pennsylvania state prisons continued to suffer through a spike in COVID-19 cases in March 2021, with Albion Correctional Institution in Erie County and the State Correctional Institution (SCI) in Huntington each reporting 100 new cases in the first full week of the month. With 235 active cases ...
by David M. Reutter
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections paid $105,000 to settle a prisoner’s excessive use of force lawsuit. The December 2, 2020, settlements resolves the suit brought by prisoner Kuan Barnett.
Barnett’s civil rights action stemmed from events that occurred at Columbia Correctional Institution. While locked in his ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Like local jails and prisons across the country, Alabama’s carceral system is being sorely tested by COVID-19 — and prisoners are paying the price.
For weeks, Dylan Garrard fell asleep on a thin foam mat on the floor of his jail cell, next to a toilet. ...
by Dale Chappell
If you’re one of the millions of Americans with a conviction barring you from serving jury duty in your state, maybe it’s not one of the rights you lost that you miss. After all, many people aren’t disappointed when they’re skipped for jury duty.
But state laws ...
by Matt Clarke
An academic study by a University of Pennsylvania professor published in November 2020 shows that mismatched economic incentives — local governments making sentencing decisions while the state government pays the costs of incarceration — are an important factor in increased incarceration. The study found that when the ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 26, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law measures to protect the state’s LGBTQ population, including special provisions that empower them to choose the pronoun and honorific that prison staff, volunteers, and contractors are required to use when referring to them and whether to ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
Sic semper tyrannis! “Death to tyrants!”one spectator angrily proclaimed, as the city of Baltimore demolished the State of Maryland’s oldest and most austere penitentiary, an 80-foot high, granite, medieval-style castle with roots dating back to 1811—a feat of nostalgic architecture, but one that represents 200 ...
by Robert Dunham, Death Penalty Information Center
In his new book, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty, journalist Maurice Chammah presages the death of America’s capital punishment system. Chammah expertly weaves together systemic issues with individual, humanizing case details to illustrate the ...
by Kevin Bliss
Republican Senator Jeffrey Brandes of Saint Petersburg filed a bill to exclude certain Florida citizens from benefiting from the increased minimum-wage measure, known as Amendment 2, passed by well over 60% of the state voters in November 2020.
Brandes is a long-time GOP member who also has ...
Loaded on
April 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2021, page 52
Rojas, 39, spent 15 years as a gender nonconforming (GNC) prisoner who endured abuse from guards. Finally, in the last year of the sentence at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), the largest women’s prison in the state, Rojas decided to fight back by documenting abuse, filing grievances and forcing the ...
by Kevin Bliss
On January 28, 2021, Parnall Correctional Facility’s chief medical officer announced an extreme infestation of scabies, and the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) declared an institution-wide outbreak. The DOC said all 1,286 prisoners, their clothing and their bedding would be treated, and their personal property quarantined.
MDOC ...
by David M. Reutter
In reversing a district court’s judgment, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that a deaf prisoner be allowed “access to point-to-point videophone calls because the evidence at trial established that the detainee [otherwise] lacked any ability to communicate with the Deaf.”
The Fourth Circuit held ...
Our study of 14 jails finds that there were 8% more overall minutes used during the pandemic, despite the fact that nationwide jail populations have fallen about 15%.
by Andrea Fenster, Prison Policy Initiative
People in jails spent 8% more time on the phone over a three-month period of 2020 than ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 3, 2020, the GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the nation, revealed that it had suffered a ransomware attack in August of that year that exposed sensitive personal information of employees, immigrant detainees and prisoners.
GEO said it was sending data-breach ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
In 1995, during a tough-on-crime era across the country, Virginia abolished parole entirely, along with several other states. But it wasn’t until 2000 that jurors sentencing defendants were told of that change. As a result, jurors may have recommended more prison time, incorrectly believing offenders would ...
by Derek Gilna
Despite the fact that prisoners and staff at Colorado’s state prisons have been ravaged by COVID-19 infections and death, Colorado Governor Jared Polis reversed course and decided not to prioritize vaccines for prisoners. However, prisoners who are considered high-risk by reason of pre-existing condition or age will ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act filing, which wrote about its findings in an October 29, 2020 story, filed by Buzzfeed, we now know that more than 40 immigrants have died while in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), often because of neglect ...
by Kevin Bliss
After 25 years of alternative sentencing through the use of drug courts, experts are still divided on their effectiveness and the ethics that drive the system, according to a November 2, 2020, story in The Boston Globe.
The tough-on-crime policies that dominated the 1980s were soon ...
by Derek Gilna
Many troubling details surround the 13 executions carried out by the Department of Justice in the final months of the Trump administration, including allegations that the drug used, pentobarbital, caused intense pain and suffering before death are reportedly being suppressed by federal officials. If the federal justice ...
by Dale Chappell
A new watchdog nonprofit in New Mexico is focusing on exposing the culture of secrecy in the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD), which the group says interferes with the ability to monitor civil rights violations against prisoners.
Called the New Mexico Prison and Jails Project (PJP), it ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) and its medical health-care provider, Centurion Managed Care, have been under investigation by the Vermont Defender General’s Prisoners’ Rights Office (PRO) and the law firm of Downs Rachlin Martin after the death of Kenneth Johnson, a 60-year-old Black prisoner at Northern ...
Loaded on
April 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2021, page 62
Alabama: Two Alabama jail guards were arrested in just two months for allegedly smuggling cellphones to inmates. In February 2021, 27-year-old D’Mario Jones was fired and charged with two counts of promoting prison contraband at the Lee County Detention Center in Opelika where he worked. According to a report by ...
