by David M. Reutter

The political atmosphere surrounding criminal justice reform features strong rhetoric on both sides. Those who pontificate the “get-tough-on-crime” culture argue for increasing criminal sanctions and imposing punishment upon prisoners. On the other side are criminal justice reform advocates who push for a second chance by changing ...

By Paul Wright

The modern era of prison reform began in 1971 with the Attica Rebellion. Many Americans were horrified when New York state police and prison guards stormed the prison 52 years ago, in the process killing dozens of prisoners and hostages and wounding many more. The conditions that ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 3, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana only partly granted a motion for summary judgment filed by prison medical profiteer Wexford Health Sources, Inc. and its employees in a state prisoner’s civil rights action over a nearly three-year delay ...

by Mark Wilson

In a federal suit challenging excessive fees on jail and prison “debit release” cards, the federal court for the District of Oregon on July 13, 2023, certified a national class. The ruling follows another by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on December 22, ...

A divided Washington Supreme Court beat back prejudice with a November 2022 decision admitting a convicted sex offender to the state bar. Zachary LeRoy Stevens was charged as a teenager with four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor for sending child pornography to a detective posing as a 14-year-old ...

by David M. Reutter

A lawsuit filed in federal court for the Western District of Arkansas on January 13, 2023, makes a stunning claim: That a man was left to starve to death in jail because he couldn’t afford bail.

Larry Eugene Price, Jr., 50, was suffering an acute mental ...

On October 26, 2022, the federal court for the Eastern District of Tennessee granted dismissal to a complaint filed by two former detainees at the Grainger County Jail, after they accepted $110,000 to settle claims they were forced to perform “sex shows” for a guard.

As PLN previously reported, Candace ...

PLN previously reported a remarkably poor decision by prison officials at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Chino in 2017, who used two prisoners as “honey trap” bait to snare a male guard accused of sexual misconduct. [See: PLN, Sept. 2021, p.7].

One of the “Jane Doe” prisoners told ...

by Douglas Ankney

On December 8, 2022, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania agreed to pay state prisoner Warren Easley $30,000 to settle claims that guards and medical staff at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) in Frackville violated his civil rights.

Easley filed his suit pro se in federal court for the ...

by Mark Wilson

On September 19, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment to Illinois prison officials accused of violating a state prisoner’s civil rights with a 29-month surgery delay.

Richard White injured his left knee while playing basketball ...

When she met a pregnant young prisoner struggling with drug addiction, a guard at Louisiana’s Transition Center for Women (TCW) offered to care for the baby when it was born. On May 17, 2023, the day before the child arrived, the guard found out that, at least in state prisons, ...

by Douglas Ankney

According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS Report) in December 2022, “the number of persons under the jurisdiction of state or federal correctional authorities in the United States declined 1%, from 1,221,200 to 1,204,300” between December 31, 2020, ...

by David M. Reutter

As PLN previously reported, a man arrested and taken to jail in California’s San Bernardino County in March 2018 ended up in a hospital eight days later in critical condition, suffering severe dehydration, sepsis, and renal failure. Perry Belden then went into cardiac arrest and was ...

On June 20, 2023, a grisly riot broke out in a Honduran women’s prison in Tamara, 30 miles from the capital Tegucigalpa. It started when rival gang members from a different cellblock took keys from guards and locked down the area. The marauders then shot into the cellblock using contraband ...

By Mark Wilson

On December 27, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated summary judgment issued against a North Carolina prisoner for failing to exhaust his administrative remedies, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. Finding factual disputes regarding the availability ...

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread its cloud of death and misery in 2020, the one silver lining was a dip in the number of Americans incarcerated, which decreased by 17% – the fastest drop in history. However, the same racial disparities were evident that persisted before the arrival of the ...

by Douglas Ankney

In consolidated cases, the Massachusetts Superior Court for Suffolk County ordered preliminary injunctive relief on December 30, 2022, for a pair of transgender women incarcerated at the state’s Souza Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC).

Each woman filed a suit, which the Court consolidated. In the lead case, Jerome ...

by Eike Blohm MD

Pretrial hearings in February 2023 at Guantánamo Bay in the case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri – the man accused of devising the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole – included a stunning revelation: Detainees at the U.S. military base in Cuba were repeatedly subjected to sexual ...

On May 12, 2023, the federal court for the District of Oregon dismissed the murder indictment against Frank Gable, who was wrongfully imprisoned nearly 30 years for the 1989 slaying of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) director at the time, Michael Francke.

As PLN has reported, Gable was released ...

“The jury sent a strong message that Naphcare’s conduct was completely unacceptable,” said attorney Edwin Budge of the Seattle law firm of Budge & Heipt, PLLC.

He was responding to a federal jury’s July 2022 award of nearly $27 million to his client, the daughter of Cindy Lou Hill, a ...

by Douglas Ankney

On February 21, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered judgment in favor of a now-paroled prisoner against the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), after an assault by guards left him paralyzed. Based upon a jury’s verdict in ...

On March 3, 2023, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed into law SF26/HF28, also known as the “Restore the Vote” act. The bill, which was passed by Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate, allows ex-felons to vote immediately upon leaving prison instead of waiting until completion of any ...

by Tommaso Bardelli, Ruqaiyah Zarook and Derick McCarthy

“Prison iPads” became a lifeline during the pandemic. They also became a new way to squeeze money out of the incarcerated and their families.

This article originally appeared in Dissent on March 7, 2022, where it was published in partnership with The ...

by Douglas Ankney

While fans of college football get excited in November about upcoming bowl games, few ever mention the Turkey Bowl, likely because almost none of those fans will be in attendance. Played annually – except for the unusual 2020 season canceled due to COVID-19 – the game draws ...

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average U.S. life expectancy fell in both 2021 and 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic was generally blamed; however, a compendium of research published by the Kaiser Foundation’s KFF Health News on April 27, 2023, suggests another reason: mass incarceration.

With ...

At California State Prison in Sacramento on May 1, 2023, prisoner Mario Rushing, 46, was choking another prisoner when ordered by guards to cease and desist. Ignoring their commands, Rushing continued the attack – even after guards deployed chemical agents and other less-than-lethal measures to stop him. As the other ...

by Douglas Ankney

There was good news and bad news for former Virginia prisoner Jeramiah Chamberlain on December 22, 2021. That’s when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed dismissal of his suit against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC), alleging they failed to treat ...

On October 11, 2022, the federal court for the Central District of California approved a settlement resolving a suit over COVID-19 precautions and releases filed by prisoners at the Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) in Lompoc, California, in May 2020.

That was shortly after the pandemic hit the U.S., and the ...

by Benjamin Tschirhart

At 28 years old, drug addicted and semi-homeless, Kelly Harnett was nobody’s idea of a model citizen. So when implicated along with boyfriend Thomas Donovan in a July 2010 murder in a public park in Queens, New York, she knew it was bad. But she didn’t expect ...

In November 2022 the federal court for the Northern District of California shot down a suit by private prison giant CoreCivic which sought to weaponize anti-defamation law against one of the company’s more vocal critics.

As previously reported by PLN, CoreCivic took exception to remarks made by Morgan Simon in ...

On June 7, 2023, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed House Bill (HB) 23-1133, requiring the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to provide, administer and – most importantly – not to profit from communications services used by prisoners. Over the next two years, the state will pick up an increasing ...

On March 22, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit revived a suit filed five years earlier by a Tennessee prisoner who is legally blind. In his March 2018 complaint, Corey Tarvin accused the state Department of Corrections (DOC) of failure to accommodate his visual disability, and ...

Robert DuBoise received the second most important call of his life on June 9, 2023, when a Tallahassee public policy firm phoned to let him know that the efforts to obtain $1.85 million in compensation for the 37 years he spent wrongfully imprisoned were successful.

The first and most important ...

With an order denying class certification on March 24, 2023, the federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania left just two plaintiffs to proceed with claims against York County Prison and a controversial training contractor it hired, Corrections Special Applications Unit (C-SAU). As previously reported by PLN, the two ...

by David M. Reutter

After a jury in the federal court for the Northern District of California awarded $504,000 in compensatory damages in the excessive-force case he brought against the San Francisco Jail, a former pretrial detainee was awarded another $14,034.31 in legal costs on November 28, 2022, followed by ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 14, 2022, the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) successfully beat back a challenge to use of solitary confinement in its prisons, when prisoner/plaintiffs stipulated to dismissal of their claims. Not content with that victory, apparently, DOC then issued a press release on January 12, ...

by Douglas Ankney

On February 17, 2023, a former guard at the Federal Correctional Complex in Yazoo City, Mississippi, got a light sentence for defrauding the U.S. of $12,586 in loans she swindled from the COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). When she pled guilty to wire fraud on November 9, ...

by Matt Clarke

On April 18, 2023, Loyola University’s College of Law published a paper detailing the ways prisoners are often denied access to public records that those not incarcerated can easily obtain. Professor Andrea Armstrong and Distinguished Professor of Law Dr. Norman C. Francis described how various state statutes ...

by Douglas Ankney

In January 2023, rappers Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Mario “Yo Gotti” Mims agreed to dismiss the lawsuit they had brought on behalf of 227 prisoners challenging conditions at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. The stipulation provided for dismissal of all claims “without prejudice” – meaning they could ...

On February 14, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint in federal court for the District of Minnesota against the state Department of Corrections (DOC) concerning violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 126, § 12101 et seq.

At issue was ...

A fire erupted at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville early on August 25, 2023, forcing the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to evacuate 655 prisoners – 400 of whom had to be relocated to other prisons due to the extent of the damage.

Video footage from the scene ...

by Douglas Ankney

On January 26, 2023, Texas death-row prisoners Mark Robertson, George Curry, Tony Egbuna Ford and Rickey Cummings filed suit in federal court for the Southern District of Texas on behalf of themselves and a putative class of similarly situated prisoners against officials with the state Department of ...

On February 22, 2023, Colorado state court judge Scott A. Sells held that Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell had legal authority to participate in an controversial agreement with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – despite a 2019 state law prohibiting law enforcement officials in the state from holding anyone ...

by Eike Blohm, MD

Hemorrhoids are a very common problem that people do not like to talk about because of their intimate location. Hemorrhoids are both preventable and treatable, but can become significant health problems if ignored.

What exactly is a hemorrhoid?

A hemorrhoid is a vein that has been ...

On March 1, 2023, prison financial services profiteer JPay hit a legal wall in a challenge to fee-laden debit cards issued to prisoners on release. As PLN has reported, former California state prisoner Adam Cain — represented by the Seattle law firm of Sirianni Youtz Spoonemore Hamburger PLLC, California attorney ...

by Douglas Ankney

Owing in part to the diligent efforts of Michigan prisoner Mark White and a suit he filed in March 2023, it appears that employees of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) consider themselves under no obligation to abide by terms of a settlement agreement limiting prisoners’ exposure ...

by Douglas Ankney

On January 31, 2023, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report counting 4,895 sexual assaults on U.S. prisoners and detainees in just three years. From 2016 through 2018, the report said, there were 2,666 incidents of substantiated prisoner-on-prisoner sexual victimization and 2,229 incidents of substantiated ...

by Matthew Clarke

On April 5, 2023, the federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri gave final approval to a $3.25 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit alleging the City of Maplewood improperly jailed defendants in a modern-day debtor’s prison simply because they were unable to pay fines, fees, ...

by Matt Clarke

On April 5, 2023, the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia refused a motion for judgment as a matter of law, or in the alternative a new trial, made by defendant prison officials and their private medical contractor, Armor Correctional Health Services, in a civil ...

The jail in San Francisco County is the first in the nation to provide its detainees with tablets and free access to content, such as legal resources, e-books and music. The county Sheriff’s Office (SFSO) announced on May 25, 2023, that it successfully launched its tablet program, expanding a pilot ...

In March 2023, Utah lawmakers approved a settlement with the federal government for abusing its grants, which may also reward Reginald Williams, a state prisoner who blew the whistle on the abuse. But the law also took pains to make sure no other prisoners can follow in his footsteps.

When ...

Alabama: On August 12, 2023, an Alabama jail guard was caught – in uniform – stealing Pokemon cards from a Walmart. WBMA in Birmingham reported that Josh Hardy then fled store security on foot before cops caught him in a nearby restaurant. Calhoun County Sheriff Matthew Wade announced “with great ...