by Christopher Zoukis
America’s jails and prisons have a serious contraband problem. From the smallest county jails to state prisons holding thousands of prisoners, the nation’s correctional system is overrun with illegal goods of every variety. Fast food, heroin, marijuana—you name it, and it’s been smuggled into a prison.
The ...
by Paul Wright
The good news seems to be that COVID-19 rates in prisons and jails, like the rest of the country, appear to be decreasing as vaccination rates increase. Visiting is being restored in many states and there seems to be some return to pre-pandemic normalcy. At the Human ...
by Michael D. Cohen MD
The United States continues to re-open as daily new cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline. However, the national numbers obscure the fact that these reduced outcomes are uneven across the states. In states and counties where less than 50% of the people have volunteered ...
By Ken Silverstein
“I’m running for Mayor so every family can see their future in Seattle,” says Casey Sixkiller. “It requires bold action, leadership experience when it matters most, and a mayor who wakes up every day focused on rebuilding a more equitable, inclusive, and thriving city.”
One can understand ...
by David M. Reutter
Inmate Magazine Service (IMS) has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the State of Florida. The Plaintiffs alleged violation of federal and state laws meant to protect consumers in IMS’s failure to ensure prisoners received the magazines they ordered through it.
IMS and ...
by Ed Lyon
Usually the highest elected official of a county in the U.S. is the sheriff. In Ohio, the highest elected county official in the state’s counties is the county executive. That position is analogous to a city mayor and is responsible for appointing the county sheriff and jail ...
by John Herrick, The Colorado Trust
Last summer, Matthew Harter, a 50-year-old from Lakewood, Colo., was incarcerated at Centennial Correctional Facility South, a prison in Cañon City, when he started to have trouble breathing.
Harter didn’t have COVID-19. He had anxiety, he said, because he was in quarantine, alone in ...
by Kevin Bliss
Nancy King, a 70-year old woman with a history of mental health issues, was shot and killed at the Spokane County Jail (SCJ) December 4, 2020, after entering the lobby carrying a knife.
Jack King, Nancy’s nephew, told the Spokane-Review that Nancy King suffered from alcoholism and ...
by David M. Reutter
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a jury’s judgment in a civil rights action alleging guards at Wisconsin’s Madison County Jail (MCJ) were deliberately indifferent to a detainee's medical care. The court found the jury was improperly instructed to determine if the defendants’ actions were ...
by Kevin Bliss and Keith Sanders
Six months after the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a highly critical report accusing the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MADOC) of violating the constitutional rights of mentally ill prisoners by holding them in isolation too long, the agency has not made conditions any less ...
by David M. Reutter
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of state law negligence claims based upon a prisoner being forced to self-apply a medication that was not supposed to be dispensed to patients. The court, however, affirmed the dismissal of a deliberate indifference claim.
The court’s ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky granted plaintiffs’ motion seeking class certification in a suit alleging the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections (LMDC) holds people after their court-ordered release.
In February 2017, plaintiffs Jacob Healy, James Michael Jarvis, Jr., Cynthia Dawn Yates, and ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 17, 20201, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the convictions of two former Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) prison guards for attempted distribution of methamphetamine while reversing for new trial the attempted distribution convictions of two other DOC guards and ...
by Kevin Bliss
Expansion of the prison industrial complex over the past decades has included the privatization of health care which has come at the detriment to those inside, according to a recent study.
Micaela Gelman, professor of New York University School of Law, penned the article, Mismanaged Care: Exploring ...
by David M. Reutter
In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on November 2, 2020 vacated lower court rulings that held prison officials were entitled to summary judgment in a claim alleging a prisoner was confined in unsanitary cells with human waste for six ...
by David M. Reutter
California’s Fourth Appellate District affirmed a judgment finding two San Diego Sheriff’s deputies and two jail nurses were liable for injuries to an arrestee following his arrest.
The court’s February 2, 2021, opinion was issued in an appeal by the defendants after a jury found for ...
Loaded on
July 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2021, page 33
The Wisconsin Supreme Court held “that neither the Wisconsin Constitution nor the purposes underlying Miranda warnings support a judicially created rule treating all incarcerated individuals as ‘in custody.’”
The court’s January 29, 2021 opinion was issued in an appeal brought by Brian L. Halverson. He was held at the Vernon ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 1, 2021, the Office of the Inspector General of California released a report highly critical of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Essentially, the report said the CDCR failed to properly test and screen prisoners it was transferring from a prison with a large ...
by Keith Sanders
America’s criminal justice system is designed by and for men. It characterizes offenders as violent and victims docile, where offenders kill and victims die. Within this framework, women are often marginalized and unjustly prosecuted, especially victims of domestic violence who fend off their attackers with deadly force. ...
by Kevin Bliss
Vice News and North Carolina Health News (NCHN) completed a study of the North Carolina Department of Corrections (NCDOC) to examine COVID-related deaths and published an article based on the results. It said that the number of deaths linked the virus was greatly underreported.
Billy Bingham, a ...
After one person died and another spent a month in a coma, state officials found Legionella bacteria in the water at two New Jersey prisons.
by Akela Lacy, The Intercept
After Jamil Robinson drank the water from the infirmary at East Jersey State Prison, he became so violently ill that prison officials ...
by Matt Clarke
The non-partisan Government Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report in February 2021 entitled, Immigration Detention: Actions Needed to Improve Planning, Documentation, and Oversight of Detention Facility Contracts. Key findings in the report included a failure of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to follow its own guidelines ...
by Casey J. Bastian
A major driver of mass incarceration is the abusive rate at which life sentences are imposed, as a report from the Sentencing Project examines. Referred to as “death by incarceration,” long-term sentences have become the lifeblood of America’s hyper-incarceration rates.
One of every seven prisoners is ...
by David M. Reutter
A Connecticut federal district court ordered the release of information related to prison health care. The court’s November 3, 2020, order was issued in a civil rights action alleging Connecticut prison officials were deliberately indifferent to a prisoner’s medical needs.
The lawsuit was filed by the ...
by Jayson Hawkins
The use of DNA testing to overturn hundreds of wrongful convictions in the U.S. has revealed deep racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. Emboldened by victories at the polls in 2018 and 2020, Democrats are calling for the end of capital punishment in many states. In ...
by David M. Reutter
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that Connecticut was preempted under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 from indemnifying a guard and then seeking to recover over 60% of the judgment via state recoupment statutes. The court emphasized that its holding was based on the facts of ...
by David M. Reutter
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a civil rights complaint against a Georgia Sheriff. The Court held the Sheriff was entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity.
The Court's May 7, 2021, opinion was issued in an appeal brought by Oqueshia Andrews. Her civil ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Does more fresh air, sunlight, and space for rehabilitative programs mean a prison or jail is more humane? That’s the question many architects are struggling with as expensive new facilities are built around the country.
Architecture and design may be able to play a key role ...
by David M. Reutter
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s order granting attorney’s fees after it found the Illinois Department of Correction (IDOC) was in “substantial noncompliance” with a consent decree in a class action lawsuit filed by deaf and hard of hearing prisoners. It reversed ...
by David M. Reutter
In a reversal of its own precedent, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that 42 U.S.C. section 1997e(e) permits claims for punitive damages without a showing of physical injury.
The court’s en banc ruling was issued on April 9, 2021 in an appeal brought by ...
by David M. Reutter
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a grant of summary judge to a prison official in a lawsuit alleging a prisoner was retaliated against for filling a grievance. It also affirmed the district court’s order denying the prisoner’s motion to compel discovery.
The court’s June ...
by Ed Lyon
When Minnesota state prisoner C. Fausto Cabrera was transferred to the Rush City Correctional Facility (RCCF), he came across a photo by acclaimed photographer Alec Soth on a book cover of a poetry collection. It was of a rusted, homemade knife that had been wired together.
Thus ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 5, 2020, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (SJC) held that a trial court had the authority to enjoin the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) from engaging in unconstitutional practices related to segregation and the court erred when it restored a prisoner’s good time credits ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 17, 2021, a Kentucky federal court dismissed a lawsuit brought by a woman who was abandoned by jailers while a pretrial detainee and forced to give birth alone in a cell. The lawsuit had been settled for $200,000.
According to court documents, on May 15, ...
by David Reutter
The Maine Department of Corrections (MDOC) announced on February 12, 2021, that it is expanding medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for prisoners with opioid-use disorder. The move is an expansion of a pilot project that started from an executive order issued in April 2019 by Gov. Janet Mills.
Going cold ...
Loaded on
July 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2021, page 54
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in an unpublished decision, found that a prisoner stated a claim showing he was in imminent danger of physical harm, and that a district court erred in dismissing the prisoner’s complaint based on a Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) three strikes bar.
The Court’s ...
by David M. Reutter
An Oregon federal district court issued an order that certified a class in a lawsuit challenging the issuance of debit cards by NUMI upon release in lieu of the cash that was confiscated from detainees upon arrest.
The Courts June 8, 2021, order was issued in ...
by Ed Lyon
What happens when a state prisoner or jail detainee dies in Hawaii’s custody? Few people know because prison officials do not tell anyone. Well, hardly anyone. A heavily redacted report goes to the state’s governor, who supposedly runs the Department of Public Safety (DPS), the state’s prison ...
Loaded on
July 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2021, page 56
Three Illinois prison guards have been fired and indicted on federal charges for the fatal beating of a handcuffed prisoner. On May 17, 2018, Western Illinois Correctional center guards Lt. Todd Sheffler, 51, Sgt. Willie Hedden, 41, and Alex Banta, 28, were escorting prisoner Larry Earvin, 65, from a residential ...
by Matt Clarke
For the first time since Americans’ opinion about the death penalty versus life imprisonment was polled, a majority of Americans favor life imprisonment over the death penalty.
In 1985, Gallup began asking the question: “If you could choose between the following two approaches, which do you think ...
by David M. Reutter
The Iowa Utilities Board ordered phone vendors that provide services to jails to lower their rates from as high as $1 per minute. The order comes after a two year review in which the Human Rights Defense Center, the publisher of Prison Legal News, urged ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 15, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a prisoner who had consented to being transferred to a psychiatric unit after a suicide attempt could not sue prison officials who delayed returning him to prison after he withdrew his consent. ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 8, 2021, the Colorado Supreme Court held prisoners are entitled to a preliminary hearing on pending charges even if they are incarcerated pursuant to a previous conviction.
David Subjack and Darryl Lewis Lynch are Colorado State Penitentiary prisoners who were charged with the class 4 ...
by Matt Clarke
Opposition by community leaders forced the president of the historically Black Tennessee State University (TSU) in Nashville to change her decision to join the board of directors of the private prison company CoreCivic.
News media reported that TSU President Glenda Glover had decided to join the board ...
by Keith Sanders
According to the protestors, conditions at the local lockup have become intolerable. On April 4, 2021, at approximately 8:30 p.m. detainees at the St. Louis City Justice Center (CJC) covered security cameras, smashed windows, threw furniture out onto the street below, and set fires, chanting “we want ...
Loaded on
July 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2021, page 62
Alabama: According to a report by the Alabama Political Reporter, a state prisoner was fatally stabbed by another man incarcerated with him at Fountain Correctional Facility in Atmore on May 4, 2021—just one day before his scheduled release, which would also have been his twenty-fourth birthday. Pending an autopsy on ...
