In a job with virtually no oversight, abuse of power runs amok
by Nicole Audrey Spector
Sure, the president of the United States wields immense power, as does the average member of the Senate and House of Representative, but when it comes to unchecked lawlessness, abuse of authority and corruption, ...
by Ed Lyon
A dozen immigrant asylum seekers who had tested positive for COVID-19 were released from a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center into the surrounding community of Calexico, California, in March 2021—the same month ICE was given a deadline to address deficiencies at the facility revealed ...
by Paul Wright
The past year and a half has consumed news coverage with the coronavirus pandemic. Since March of last year Prison Legal News has shifted its news coverage to COVID-19 and its impact on prisoners and the criminal justice system. With the vaccine roll outs we may be ...
by David M. Reutter
The Kentucky Supreme Court held that the Louisville Metro Government (LMG) are entitled to sovereign and qualified immunity in a lawsuit alleging violation of Ky. Rev. Stat. 71.040.
The court’s December 17, 2020, opinion was issued in an appeal brought by the Estate of James Hatcher. ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Progressive criminal justice reform has been slow to make it into the political mainstream, but one area where it is getting increased traction is around the use of private prisons. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and 2020 presidential candidate, recently opened an investigation into the American ...
by Dale Chappell
It’s no secret that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) has neither sped up the death penalty nor prevented terrorism. What continues to surprise many is that this much-criticized law has somehow survived, despite countless judges recounting their frustration with it. Indeed, it has survived ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Early in the pandemic, safety watchdogs called for state and federal prisoners to be released in order to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in cramped lockups. Social distancing is simply not possible in most prisons, and alleviating the crowded conditions was intended to reduce the potential ...
by Michael D. Cohen MD
Course of the Pandemic
Some of the worst surges of the pandemic are occurring in Brazil, India, and Uruguay. The surges seem to be driven in part by bad policies, like relaxing restrictions too soon. The surges also appear to be driven by variants of ...
by David M. Reutter
Three former Georgia Sheriff’s deputies were denied immunity on December 8, 2020, by Washington County Judge H. Gibbs Flanders in a criminal prosecution, according to a December 9, 2020 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The deputies face murder and related charges as a result of ...
by Kevin Bliss
New York state Senator Velmanette Montgomery sponsored a bill passed by both houses in August 2020 and signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo that will require the Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) to begin housing prisoners in prisons closest to the residences of their ...
by Ed Lyon
Hardly a summer passes that prisoners do not die from heat illnesses of one variety or another. This is especially true in the southern part of the country where retributive attitudes prevail along with an enslavement mentality that continues to linger from the antebellum era. This manifests ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Former President Donald Trump announced 143 pardons and commutations in the final hours of his term. While end-of-term pardons are the norm for outgoing presidents, the huge batch of last-minute announcements from the White House seemed to highlight the growing frustrations of those who believe the federal ...
by Brian Dolinar, TruthOut.org
"One thing about prison, youdon’t want to get sick in here,” says James Trent, who is incarcerated in Western Illinois Correctional Center. When the chance came to get the vaccine for COVID-19, most people inside got the shot “because this is very serious,” he told Truthout ...
by David M. Reutter
A settlement agreement was reached in a class action lawsuit alleging there was an “uncontrolled outbreak of COVID at the Chesapeake Detention Facility (CDF)” in Maryland. The complaint was filed in federal district court on February 20, 2021.
It alleged that, in less than one month, ...
by Ed Lyon
As early as February 2020, medical and corrections experts warned criminal justice officials across the U.S. of the danger COVID-19 posed to crowded prison populations, encouraging them to parole as many prisoners as feasible. By late 2020, though, officials with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MADOC) were ...
by Kevin Bliss and David M. Reutter
After a blockbuster report by federal investigators in December 2020 that slammed Florida’s Lowell Correctional Institution (LCI) for subjecting women to serial abuse, two state lawmakers rushed to act.
Rep. Diane Hart filed legislation in January 2021 to create a volunteer Citizens Oversight Council ...
by David M. Reutter
The New Hampshire Supreme Court held a prisoner has standing to pursue a lawsuit alleging breach of contract for the failure to comply with a settlement in a prison conditions lawsuit. The court concluded the State has waived sovereign immunity against suits alleging it has failed ...
by Anthony Accurso
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced on February 9, 2021, that the state Department of Correction (DOC) would permanently close its Northern Correctional Institution (Northern) in Somers by July 1.
The announcement came just days after a lawsuit was filed on February 4, 2021, by Disability Rights Connecticut ...
by David M. Reutter
An in-person inspection of the Calhoun County Correctional Facility (CCCF) to determine if it is compliant with COVID-19 policies was ordered by a Michigan federal district court.
“Through filings submitted as part of the bail process and supplemental briefing, the Court has repeatedly received information suggesting ...
by Jimmy Jenkins, KJZZ.org
When she arrived at the Perryville state prison, Alexandria Hunt noticed the facility was home to more than just incarcerated women.
“At first there were little baby field mice in the dorms,” which Hunt said the women would catch and release into the nearby farmland of ...
by David M. Reutter
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that a New York prisoner has rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to be released upon mandatory conditional release. The court, however, found those rights were not clearly established at the time relevant to the complaint and it ...
by Ed Lyon
While problematic at any other time, prison overcrowding has proven deadly during the global COVID-19 pandemic because social distancing is one of the main weapons epidemiologists recommend to combat the spread of this highly contagious, often fatal disease. COVID-19 had infected nearly one in five U.S. prisoners ...
by Ed Lyon
Jennifer Bowen Hicks wandered the United States for many years freelancing for literary magazines and teaching writing classes before making her home in Minnesota. In 2011, she decided to share her unique writing skill with state prisoners, thinking of her own incarcerated relatives and friends.
Of the ...
by Ed Lyon
Kentucky in December 2020 reopened Otter Creek Correctional Center (OCCC), leasing it from CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), but staffing it with state employed Department of Corrections (DOC) staff. Its new name is the Southeast State Correctional Complex (SSCC) and it’s now a ...
by Matt Clarke
It may not be surprising to readers of Prison Legal News that many prisons throughout the US are named after people who were slave owners, officers in the Confederate Army, racists, and participants in the abusive convict leasing system (See PLN, Jan. 2021, p. 48).
On ...
by Keith Sanders
Compared to other experiences inside American prisons, spending time in solitary confinement is the harshest and most dehumanizing. Between 50,000 and 60,000 individuals languish in concrete boxes no larger than a closet for 22-plus hours a day. They are deprived of books, magazines, radios, television and visitation ...
by Matt Clarke
In February 2021, the California Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued its finding that a $10 million effort by the state prison system—to address deficiencies that OIG previously uncovered in reporting staff misconduct—had “failed” and that the process “remains broken.”
The report documents the latest round ...
by Ed Lyon
"Watch out for the kids, he’s here,” was one of the hurtful comments Dion Harrell often overheard whenever he attended a neighborhood barbecue or get-together. In 1992, 22-year-old Harrell, an African American man, was wrongfully convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl, based on flawed eyewitness testimony.
This ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 16, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a federal prisoner’s Bivens action, because First Amendment claims are not cognizable Bivens claims.
Federal prisoner Scott Callahan is incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, ...
by Keith Sanders
Imagine a future in America that is radically different than it is today—an America where police do not brutalize and kill people, a society without institutionalized racism and classism, a country where jails and prisons do not exist. Envisioning such a bold future is what Barring Freedom ...
by Douglas Ankney
According to the Connecticut Post, as of January 23, 2021, the number of people confined in Connecticut jails and prisons was 9,083—the lowest it has been in the last 32 years. That number represented 3,326 fewer prisoners than on March 1, 2020, and was less than ...
by Matt Clarke
In December 2020, Detention Watch Network (DWN) published a report showing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities caused an increase of over 245,000 COVID-19 cases in nearby communities. The presence of an ICE facility increased the risk of a serious COVID-19 outbreak caused by community ...
by Ed Lyon
In a public move, shrouded in a cloak of utter secrecy, the Bedford County, Pennsylvania Board of Commissioners suspended with pay their jail’s senior and assistant wardens, ceding operational authority to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC).
The board announced its move on Monday, November 30, 2020, ...
by David M. Reutter
Three former women detainees with psychiatric and physical disabilities allege that Sergeant John Raible “brutally assaulted” them while they were held at Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Jail (ACJ). The complaint alleged other officials and guards at ACJ were aware of Raible’s “excessive history of assaulting incarcerated people ...
by David M. Reutter
As Virginia was poised to consider a bill to end private prisons, the GEO Group entered the fray with donations to legislators and lobbyists. The bill met a quick and sudden death in senate committee.
Virginia has one private prison, Lawrenceville Correctional Center (LCC). The GEO ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
Following multiple PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) investigations into the inappropriate actions of six sheriff’s Office employees, all were summarily fired from their positions at the Howard County Jail in Kokomo, Indiana, in early March 2020.
Of the six terminations, two occurred on the same day ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Officer Phillip Tippett, 47, died on Christmas Day 2020, shooting himself with a gun he brought into Coleman, a federal prison complex in Sumter County, Florida.
Joe Rojas, a spokesperson for the AFGE Council of Prisons union, said Tippett had been under investigation due to an inmate ...
by David M. Reutter
A December 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found that federal law enforcement and detention agencies documented an alarming number of fatalities, including 92 arrest-related deaths and 897 deaths in custody in fiscal years (FY) 2016 and 2017 combined.
The DOJ report was ...
by David M. Reutter
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held “that a facility caring for unaccompanied children fails to provide a constitutionally adequate level of mental health care if it departs from accepted professional standards.”
The court’s January 12, 2021 decision was issued in an appeal brought by a ...
by David M. Reutter
"Nationwide, crime and jail admissions decreased between 2007 and 2017, yet spending on jails increased 13%, to $25 billion, over that span,” concludes a study issued by the Pew Charitable Trusts on February 1, 2021. That spending could decrease if localities continued practices that lowered population ...
by Matt Clarke
The State Auditor of Texas issued a report in March 2021 about the sale and production of food and fiber by the Agribusiness, Land and Minerals Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). The report concluded that, whereas most of the audited cost statement data ...
by Ed Lyon
For over 200 years the United States Constitution has been revered by some, regarded as a nearly perfect bedrock governing document. Except ... it has not been, and still is not. There is a movement fast gaining momentum to remove by amendment the Constitution’s most glaring, unjust ...
by Juliette LaMarr
Washington state has moved to restore voting rights to people with felonies upon their release from prison, according to an April 7, 2021 article in The Seattle Times. With votes being largely along party lines in the Democrat-controlled legislature, House Bill 1078 was swiftly sent to ...
by David M. Reutter
The Mississippi State Auditor on December 16, 2020, issued a report that made 18 findings of deficiencies within the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC).
MDOC has been plagued with violence, staff shortages, and deplorable conditions. MDOC sought an additional $78 million from legislators for 2021 to ...
Public institutions often have ties to state-run prison labor companies. Students at one university system are trying to challenge that.
by Lilah Burke, Inside Higher ED
New York governor Andrew Cuomo walks past cells in Clinton Correctional Facility in 2014.
Lots of furniture at City University of New York institutions is made ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 13, 2021, the Fourth Circuit court of appeals reversed the judgment of a federal district court which, following a two-day bench trial, found against a deaf federal civilly committed sex offender who challenged the BOP’s denial of access to point-to-point videocalls.
The appellate court ordered ...
by Matt Clarke
According to a January 13, 2021 opinion by the Ninth Circuit court of appeals, district court erred in upholding meritless objections to the summary judgment evidence supporting a lawsuit brought by the family of a man who died of a drug overdose in a California jail and ...
by Jayson Hawkins
In the summer of 2020, the social landscape of the United States was shaken by nationwide demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd. In response, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told his employees that the company was committed to “addressing racial injustice and inequity.” To that end, ...
by Kevin Bliss
Izzie Ramirez, reporter for Vice, wrote a summary of the many resources available to anyone wishing to learn about the U.S. prison system. The article, published Jan. 22, 2021, discusses the varied inequalities of the prison industrial complex and how it exploits people for financial gain. ...
by Keith Sanders
The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC) is experiencing chronic staff shortages at its facilities across the state that have led to an alarming increase in riots, gang violence, homicides, and suicides.
According to the Southern Center for Human Rights, in 2020 alone, there were an estimated 25 ...
by David M. Reutter
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found a prisoner’s material facts in an excessive use of force claim were sufficient to overcome the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
The court’s January 4, 2021, opinion was issued in an appeal brought by North Carolina prisoner Willie James ...
by Ed Lyon
COVID-19 has been particularly virulent in Colorado’s relatively small prison system. In the months between April 2020 and January 21, 2021, over 1,400 prisoners tested positive for coronavirus at the Sterling Correctional Facility alone. Nine of those men did not survive. Over 9,000 COVID-19 cases have been ...
Loaded on
June 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2021, page 62
Australia: A February 2021 ruling by the Supreme Court in the Australian province of Victoria presented “a rare win” for a prisoner contesting prison procedures, according to a report by The Conversation. The convict, 56-year-old Craig Minogue, argued that Barwon Prison’s random drug testing and strip-searching policies violated protections of ...
by Matt Clarke
In a January 2021 statistical brief, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics addressed the issue of the race and ethnicity of perpetrators of violent crimes in 2018.
Based on data compiled by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, it found that while Black ...
