by Alan Prendergast
In a news cycle dominated by reports of war, plague and insurrection, a single press announcement from Global Tel*Link (GTL) managed to convey some of the oddest news of all. Flash: The creators of the nation’s most beloved children’s television show are joining forces with GTL, the ...
by Paul Wright
PLN has been reporting on the prison phone industry for at least the past 30 years, from its inception to its current stranglehold on most means of human contact between prisoners and the outside world. This month’s cover story by Alan Prendergast reports on the public relations ...
by Casey J. Bastian
For decades, prisoners held by the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) have complained of inhumane conditions and mistreatment. Criticism of the 45-year-old main jail facility has also come from lawyers and judges, as well as detainees and their visitors. Yet it took a “flurry of complaints” ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A man disabled in a Louisiana jail privately operated by LaSalle Corrections has settled claims of neglect and mistreatment he suffered there and at another lockup the firm ran, accepting $405,000 for the months he allegedly spent in debilitating pain without treatment for his condition, further ...
by Ashleigh Dye
On December 7, 2021, Maryland lawmakers voted to override the governor’s veto and take away his power to overrule parole recommendations for state prisoners serving a life sentence.
After the bill, SB 202, passed earlier in the year, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed it in May 2021, ...
by Alleen Brown
This article was originally published by The Intercept on February 12, 2022. It is reprinted here with permission. The original, along with photos and maps, may be found at: https://theintercept.com/2022/02/12/prisons-texas-heat-air-conditioning-climate-crisis/
During the year Justin Phillips spent in an unair-conditioned segregation cell at the Coffield Unit, a ...
by Keith Sanders
People incarcerated at the San Diego County Jail have been suffering through a raging public health crisis. Unfortunately, this crisis has been as lethal or more so than COVID-19. Since 2006, over 200 people have died in custody at the California jail from abuse, neglect, and ...
by Ed Lyon
Two suits playing out in federal court in New York in mid-2022 will determine whether the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) is held to account for a policy that denied pain-relieving medication to state prisoners for years.
Back in March 2016, as the opioid ...
by Mark Wilson
On March 7, 2022, a federal court approved a $3.8 million settlement between a Michigan county and the estate of a detainee left to die of delirium tremens (DTs) in the county lockup.
The settlement followed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth ...
by Mark Wilson
On December 29, 2021, a federal court in Georgia granted a group of deaf and hearing-impaired state prisoners class certification in their suit against state prison and parole officials, challenging the adequacy of available hearing-related accommodations and services.
Seven deaf and hearing-impaired prisoners brought suit in federal ...
by Keith Sanders
On December 6, 2021, the Board of Commissioners of Clermont County, Ohio, voted to pay $750,000 to settle a suit brought by a former pretrial detainee allegedly subjected to unconstitutional mistreatment at the county jail. The vote ratified an earlier agreement reached between the parties, after a ...
by Jacob Barrett
On January 11, 2022, the Court of Appeal for the State of California, Fourth District, vacated a lower court’s authorization of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for a state prisoner, saying it must first consider whether, when competent, he had expressed any preferences, views, or beliefs that would operate ...
by Ed Lyon
Prison guards in Arizona, Utah and West Virginia have recently been reported indulging white supremacist and anti-prisoner views on the job.
Most recently, members of the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) Special Tactics and Operations team proudly sported patches bearing a skull and crossbones, eerily reminiscent of ...
Loaded on
July 14, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2022, page 26
Between May and July 2021, the state of Washington paid a total of $805,000 to settle a quartet of sexual abuse claims brought by former detainees at the state’s Naselle Youth Camp. However, criminal charges were dropped against their alleged abuser, a former counselor at the camp, for lack of ...
by Ed Lyon
Here’s a story with a familiar ring to it: A massive prison bureaucracy, which regularly clears its staff when prisoners are brutally abused, is forced by leaked video to finally hold someone to account—so it goes after the whistleblower.
This is the basic outline of what happened ...
by Douglas Ankney
On January 3, 2022, the Supreme Court of California held that the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) did not abuse its authority when it promulgated regulations excluding from nonviolent-offender parole review any prisoner currently serving a sentence for a violent felony, even one not designated ...
by Kevin Bliss
On November 19, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned a lower court’s decision to rule there was sufficient evidence requiring a jury finding in a case against the City of Miami Beach and one of its police officers, who is accused of ...
by Jacob Barrett
On February 7, 2022, the federal court for the Eastern District of California allowed claims to proceed against Nevada County and a group of its jail guards for the 2019 suicide of detainee Linda Miller, who died just five days after a transfer back to the jail ...
by Mark Wilson
On January 24, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit vacated the dismissal of a federal prisoner’s suit and remanded the case to the district court, after finding that prison officials failed to carry their burden of proof that administrative remedies were actually available ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 22, 2022, an inspector appointed by the federal court for the Western District of Tennessee reported that the Shelby County Jail remained understaffed even as a surge in bookings drove up the number of prisoners and detainees held there, frustrating efforts to fully vaccinate ...
by David M. Reutter
In two recent cases, federal courts have granted orders to seize funds from prisoners after sizable balances in their canteen accounts came to prosecutors’ attention.
In federal court for the Western District of Michigan on August 19, 2021, Judge Janet T. Neff granted prosecutors’ motion to ...
by Ed Lyon
In February 2022, watchdog groups called for a U.S. ban on imports of fishing nets from Thailand, after a December 2021 report by Thomson Reuters Foundation that found some of that country’s 280,000 prisoners are being forced to make the nets by hand under threat of punishment ...
by Jacob Barrett
On September 16, 2021, headlines trumpeted the end of solitary confinement in Washington state prisons, even quoting Gov. Jay Inslee (D) to call it “the right thing to do.” So come March 2022, why was the state Department of Corrections (DOC) still holding some 600 prisoners in ...
by Cooper Quintin and Beryl Lipton
This article was first published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on September 7, 2021. It is reprinted here with permission.
Prison wardens and detention center administrators have, for years, faced what they believe to be a serious problem. While they can surveil every ...
by Jory Smith and Chuck Sharman
On February 22, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue a writ of certiorari to hear an appeal by an impoverished New York sex offender who was forced to remain in prison two years after his release because state restrictions made finding housing ...
by Kevin Bliss
n October 22, 2021, federal Judge Robert Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida certified a class of plaintiffs in a suit accusing the state Department of Corrections (DOC) of housing juveniles and juveniles with disabilities in solitary confinement under unconstitutional conditions.
G.H. and R.L. are ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that an Arkansas prisoner had not failed to state an actionable claim against prison medical officials when he accused them of not maintaining his bilateral hearing aids. The decision reversed a ruling by ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 18, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reinstated a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a former Kentucky jail prisoner who had sex with a transport guard, finding a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether she consented to the ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
In Phoenix on April 26, 2022, the Maricopa County State Attorney’s Office indicted Charles Lee Ryan, former Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, on two felony charges stemming from an armed standoff with Tempe police officers on January 6, 2022, after which Ryan admitted he ...
by Paul Wright
Over the course of its 233-year history, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has reversed its prior decisions on occasion. Until now those reversals have generally been to expand constitutional rights for the populace, not to take them away. On June 24, 2022, when the SCOTUS issued ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 29, 2021, the Court of Appeal for the First District of California decided that a “bail bond premium financing agreement” is a consumer credit contract and, under California Civil Code § 1799.91, is unenforceable against any cosigner to whom the statutory notice is not ...
by Kevin Bliss
When the Virginia Board of Local and Regional Jails (BLRJ) met unannounced and in closed session on April 20, 2022—in plain violation of the state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)—Executive Director Ryan McCord shrugged it off as a “typo” on the calendar.
But BLRJ has an enormously ...
by Mark Wilson
On March 14, 2022, a federal grand jury in Oregon issued a 25-count indictment against a former nurse at the state’s only women’s prison, accusing him of sexually assaulting a dozen prisoners there from 2016 to 2017. Three days later, Tony Daniel Klein, 37, was fired by ...
by Keith Sanders and Benjamin Tschirhart
When a caregiver fails to seek medical attention for a person during an emergency, inflicting instead additional pain and suffering and looking on while that person dies, a reasonable person might conclude that the caretaker has committed criminal neglect. In fact, on October 22, ...
by Jacob Barrett
At a graduation ceremony held in the Nash Correctional Institution gym on December 15, 2021, a degree in pastoral ministry was awarded to 24 twenty-four North Carolina prisoners. Offered by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, the four-year, in-person program is the only one so far available from an ...
by Matt Clarke
In a decision handed down on December 6, 2021, a federal court in Illinois decided that the Constitution’s proscription against the federal government’s efforts to “commandeer” functions that rightfully belong to individual states outweighs the “supremacy clause” of Article VI, which makes federal law “the supreme law ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On January 14, 2022, Judge Jennifer Dorsey ruled for the federal court for the District of Nevada that it has jurisdiction over a nationwide potential class of defendants in a suit by attorney Kathleen Bliss, who alleged her rights were violated when private prison operator CoreCivic ...
by Casey J. Bastian
In a decision published on January 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that accumulated prison wages constitute neither “substantial resources” nor a “material change” to a prisoner’s resources that would allow the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to confiscate them ...
by Casey Bastian
As of March 31, 2022, nearly one-third of guard positions were vacant in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), leaving the remaining guards’ duties “augmented” with additional prisoner supervision. Cooks, nurses, teachers, counselors, and case managers have also had prisoner security added to their workloads.
The union ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
In a decision reached on December 6, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit clarified calculation of the presumptive parole release date for a federal prisoner sentenced to several consecutive sentences, including a term of “life,” under pre-1987 sentencing law.
For murdering two ...
by Ed Lyon
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic persisted and more variants appeared in late 2021, courts were steadily easing restrictions to mitigate its spread in prisons. A case in point: Massachusetts, where initially strong rulings by the state Supreme Court eroded over time.
As early as January 2020, before ...
by Kevin Bliss and Ed Lyon
In September 2021, a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit research and advocacy group Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) gave a failing grade to 42 U.S. states for their efforts to mitigate the spread of the disease in their prisons and ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 8, 2022, PLN finally obtained documents revealing that private prison operator GEO Group, Inc., formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., paid $10 million to settle two lawsuits brought by the family of a prisoner who was murdered at a Texas jail the firm operated. The ...
by Jacob Barrett
CoreCivic, the nation’s second-largest for-profit private prison operator, settled a class-action suit filed by former prisoners at the company’s Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility (MDDF) in Nashville on November 30, 2021. After deductions for costs and attorney’s fees, the $150,000 settlement fund provided payouts to each class member ...
by David M. Reutter
On January 28, 2022, the Supreme Court of Kansas held that a state court has no authority to revoke and remand a state probationer to prison except by an action that is timely initiated with a warrant or notice to appear. Since the proceedings against probationer ...
by Mark Wilson
On March 1, 2022, a lawsuit challenging clemency orders by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) was mostly rejected in Marion County Circuit Court. However, in ruling on the commutations for former offenders sentenced as juveniles, Judge David Leith decided in favor of district attorneys and ruled that ...
by Kevin Bliss
Despite a watchdog report finding state prisons so short-staffed that some guard supervisors sought demotions to take advantage of ballooning hourly overtime pay, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (DCS) will not see any help from lawmakers this session, after an ambitious prison overhaul bill died in ...
Loaded on
July 15, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2022, page 63
Alabama:The Birmingham News reported that a jail guard in Mobile was arrested on May 17, 2022, for smuggling adult movies intoMobile County Metro Jail. The guard, Fredrick Johnson, 37, was charged with 21 counts of promoting contraband that included a camera, phone chargers, and flash drives, as ...
