by Daniel A. Rosen
“This is an industry that profits from human suffering.”
—David Fathi, Director, ACLU’s
National Prison Project
Starting with math may be a bad idea, but numbers help tell this story: In Virginia, keeping the average prisoner behind bars costs taxpayers about $30,000 per year; in some ...
by Paul Wright
This issue of Prison Legal News marks our 31st anniversary since we first began publishing in May, 1990. During that time period we have witnessed many changes in the criminal justice system, pretty much all of them negative for prisoners and criminal defendants alike. (We belatedly ...
by Chad Marks
Prisons have been locking prisoners in cells for up to 22 hours a day, and in some cases 24 hours a day, as the virus has swept through the prison system like a tornado. Some people say this method is helping spread the virus among those in ...
by Mike Fitzgerald, originally published by the Riverfront Times
Derrick Howard was tough — prison tough.
Howard grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Normandy. In his late teens, before his first stretch in prison, he acquired the street name of “The Black Italian Snake.”
Proud of the moniker, ...
by Jayson Hawkins
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) shuttered its Wayne Scott Unit in Brazoria County on December 15, 2020. Its Neal Unit in Amarillo and Gurney Unit outside Palestine were also closed by the end of 2020.
TDCJ said the latter two were expected to be temporary ...
by Art Gage
Imprisoned veterans across the country need to know about the service-connected disability compensation and rehabilitation benefits they may be eligible for. Even as prisoners, veterans still have options which are not available to the general population that could greatly impact their lives, especially as they work toward ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has postponed COVID-19 vaccinations for prisoners, although a March 1, 2021 story by The Marshall Project and the Associated Press placed the state prison system eighth in the nation in deaths, per 100,000 prisoners, due to the virus.
The ADOC has ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Heriberto Delvalle’s story sounds like a Kafka novel, but it’s sadly true. After serving his 15-year sentence for attempted murder in a Florida state prison, he was detained by federal immigration officials, and remains there to this day — almost 12 years later. The 70-year-old Cuban ...
by Juliette LaMarr
Mariame Kaba has released a book in response to the rise in abolitionist thinking in the last year, per a February 23, 2021 article for NBC News. Last summer, as thousands gathered in the streets to demand racial justice, many turned to Kaba and other abolitionist ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Joseph Messere, a 68-year-old prisoner in Massachusetts, was just days away from death in December 2020 when his attorney got a phone call from state officials. The Parole Board and state Department of Corrections told David Apfel “we really want your client released as soon as ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 12, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated claims by a New York City man that he was the victim of malicious prosecution by police and excessive use of force by jail staff.
Jarrett Frost was arrested by New York City police in January ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Folsom Prison was once the setting for an iconic musical performance, when Johnny Cash first played live there in 1968. Now, Folsom prisoners are performing their own songs, and telling their stories with help from the Prison Music Project.
The Long Time Gone album was released ...
by Jayson Hawkins
A two-year federal investigation into the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MDOC) found that prisoners’ constitutional rights had been violated in regard to mental health care.
Investigators cited hundreds of instances of MDOC employees failing to prevent suicide or other self-harm among prisoners who had been designated for ...
by David M. Reutter
The Idaho Supreme Court held that Board of Correction Rule 135.06 did not create an exemption under the Public Records Act. The court, therefore, ordered the release of documents about the death penalty that did not identify individuals.
The court’s November 20, 2020, order was issued ...
by David M. Reutter
An Oregon federal district court issued a preliminary injunction that requires the COVID-19 vaccine to be offered to all adult prisoners in the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC).
The court’s February 2, 2021 order also granted provisional class certification to all adults in ...
by Mark Wilson
A January 2021 watchdog report painted a grim picture of a losing struggle by officials with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) against an outbreak of COVID-19 the previous year at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island in San Pedro, California. Ten prisoners died there of ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 17, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgment in a lawsuit alleging a guard at New York’s Suffolk County Correctional Facility (SCCF) sexually harassed and sexually assaulted female prisoners.
The lawsuit was filed by prisoners Tara Lucente, Jaimie ...
by David M. Reutter
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal granted qualified immunity to prison officials in a civil rights action alleging prison noise that stemmed from implementing a court order requiring round-the-clock welfare checks in California’s prison system. The court held it was not clearly established that officials would ...
by Ed Lyon
Two facts concerning prison are apparent to those who have been there, as well as to their loved ones: assimilating into prison is difficult at best but re-assimilating back into society after release can be exponentially harder.
Whether a former prisoner’s conviction was for a violent, nonviolent, ...
by Ed Lyon
A teenager in Salinas, California, Sy Newsom Green, began his high school year on a high note. Green was accepted to attend the prestigious Palma School, an all-male, Catholic institution.
Unfortunately, near the end of his freshman year both of Green’s parents lost their jobs due to ...
by David M. Reutter
Smoking has long been a past time for people. In some cultures, it’s like a rite of passage. In our more modern times, it is portrayed as a bad habit. Either way you look at it, the fact is: some people just like to smoke.
Those ...
by Daniel E. Rosen
In most states, prisoners pay an average of $2 to $8 copays for medical appointments, lab tests, and medication. But as prisons across the country have become COVID hotspots, some departments are waiving the fees to encourage prisoners to seek treatment for virus symptoms.
Most states ...
by Juliette LaMarr
Washington Governor Jay Inslee in April 2021 signed House Bill 1090, which bans private, for-profit detention facilities in the state. According to the text of the bill, this includes “any facility in which persons are incarcerated or otherwise involuntarily confined for purposes including prior to trial or ...
by Michael D. Cohen MD
Course of the Pandemic
The United States has lately stabilized at around 60,000 new infections per day. This is not good, as daily infections need to go down much further before control of the pandemic can be achieved. At least deaths and hospitalizations have continued ...
by Matt Clarke
Editors’ Note: On March 17, the IRS announced that the federal income tax filing due date for individuals filing for the 2020 tax year was extended from April 15, 2021, to May 17, 2021.
No Republican senator voted to ...
by Daniel Matheson
On April 20, 2021 a bipartisan bill entitled the “Dignity for Women Who Are Incarcerated Act” was filed in the North Carolina state legislature. The bill would end the degrading act of shackling imprisoned women during their pregnancy that, until recent decades, was a common practice throughout ...
by David M. Reutter
A federal district court fined the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) $1.1 million for failing to meet performance measures (PM) in a 2015 Stipulation Settlement from a class-action lawsuit.
The court’s February 24, 2021 order was the latest move to compel ADOC to comply with its ...
by David M. Reutter
On April 6, 2021 a Washington State federal district court granted summary judgment to the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) in a lawsuit seeking to obtain documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
On March 20, 2018, ...
Low rates of vaccine uptake among correctional staff make it clear that withholding the vaccine from people who are locked up — or offering it only to a small fraction of the prison population — is senseless.
by Wanda Bertram and Wendy Sawyer, Prison Policy Initiative
Correctional staff in most states have been eligible ...
by Kevin Bliss
In a report published January 2, 2021, two immigrant advocacy groups — Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention (AVID) and Immigration Law Lab (ILL) — accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials of holding migrants in abuse-ridden detention camps.
The prolonged use of solitary confinement, ice-cold detention ...
by Douglas Ankney
On March 16, 2021, Daniel Ruiz’s four children and his mother, Angelica Chavez, filed suit in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in relation to his death from COVID-19 that he contracted due to infected prisoners being transferred to San Quentin and the ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) houses over 3,200 prisoners in solitary confinement at any given time, according to a report, “Solitary: The Family Experience,” released in February of this year by the civil rights group Citizens for Prison Reform (CPR).
The report discussed the effects of ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 12, 2020, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington held that a trial court erred when it dismissed a prisoner’s contempt motion over the release of his sex offender treatment records in violation of a court’s injunction because there was no ongoing contempt. However, ...
by Kevin Bliss
After spending time in prison, rebuilding your credit can be a difficult but important task, and even more so if your credit score suffered because you couldn’t pay your debts while in prison. Nick Cesare, a staff writer for the website FiscalTiger.com, suggested working to repair credit ...
by Douglas Ankney
As a surge in migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border made headlines in March 2020, the federal agency in charge was still trying to address deficiencies uncovered in an oversight report released the summer before.
According to a July 2020 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office ...
by Matt Clarke
The estate of a Philadelphia man who died of asthma in a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) prison filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the DOC and officials alleging he was denied adequate medical care after excessive amounts of pepper spray were deployed against him.
According ...
by Juliette LaMarr
Kristen Clarke is President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). As evidenced by her April 14, 2021 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, many Republicans do not intend to make her confirmation easy.
On credentials and experience alone, ...
by Margo Schlanger, University of Chicago Law Review Online, March 5, 2021
I. Introduction
Kamyar Samimi, a sixty-four-year-old legal permanent resident from Iran, died in U.S. immigration detention in December 2017. After more than four decades in the United States, he’d been confined at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, a ...
by Ed Lyon
On November 27, 2020, Efrain “Stone” Reyes died in his mother’s Bronx, New York apartment from COVID-19 he contracted while at the Queens, New York Correctional Center (QCC). He was 51.
Prior to his stay at the Queens lock up, Reyes was housed at the Manhattan Correctional ...
Loaded on
May 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2021, page 62
Alabama: In February 2021, Huntsville TV station WHNT reported a delay in the trial on theft and ethics charges of Mike Blakely, sheriff of Limestone County, Alabama. According to the report, retired Colbert County Circuit Judge Pride Tompkins, who had been appointed to hear the case at a trial scheduled ...
by David M. Reutter
Artwork that appeared on the side of Reading Prison in Berkshire, England, according to curator Vince John, appears to be a “new Banksy.”
The painting shows a prisoner in stripped garb escaping on a rope made of bedsheets as he repels down the wall with a ...
