by Douglas Ankney

When Missouri prisoner Robert Hebert learned in January 2023 that he had less than two years remaining on his prison sentence, the father of six and his family shared in the excitement. He planned to look for work in the concrete industry. Along with his wife, Rachelle ...

By Paul Wright

For almost a century the United States has waged its war on poor drug users, illegalizing alcohol, marijuana, opiates, cocaine, stimulants, hallucinogenic and other consciousness altering substances. I have never called this long running “war on drugs” either a failure or debacle. Its proponents have never bothered ...

On December 7, 2022, North Carolina prisoner Vinson Shane Hill prevailed in a negligence tort claim he filed with the state Industrial Commission (NCIC) over an injury he suffered while incarcerated at Scotland Correctional Institution in July 2019.

Hill, who has difficulty walking due to a prior auto accident, was ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 17, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed both a federal civil rights complaint and a proposed consent decree to resolve allegedly unconstitutional conditions at New Jersey’s Cumberland County Jail (CCJ). The filing ends a five-year investigation and aims to correct conditions that ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 17, 2023, lawyers for a group of 39 current and former prisoners at Delaware’s Sussex Correctional Center (SCC) largely beat back a motion brought by defendant prison officials to dismiss their complaint alleging a “systematic pattern” of beatings at the lockup in 2021 and ...

by David M. Reutter

“Carceral deference is a powerful principle built on faulty premises and with troubling and destabilizing effects,” declared Danielle C. Jefferis, an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law, in an article that appeared in the Fordham Law Review.

Deeply ingrained in criminal law ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 19, 2023, the Supreme Court of Ohio awarded prisoner Franklin Woods $700 in statutory damages against the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) for failure to comply with a public-records request.

On August 1, 2022, while Woods was incarcerated at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, he sent ...

An article published in Reason on January 26, 2023, cited numerous problems in probation systems nationwide, describing them as a “quagmire.” For the article, the magazine, a publication of the Libertarian California-based Reason Foundation, profiled Jennifer Schroeder, who was handed a drug charge in Minnesota and ended up placed on ...

On August 25, 2022, a California prisoner told the federal court for the Eastern District of California that he had reached an agreement with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to settle a suit he filed over denial of back surgery that he claimed left him in “excruciating ...

by Cristian Farias

New Jersey has been hailed for its approach to decarceration, including a bail reform law that some advocates see as a national model. And yet the state still supervises more than 120,000 of its residents under some form of probation or parole. According to the latest numbers ...

by Douglas Ankney

On August 23, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the judgment of a lower court in favor of Arkansas prisoner Deverick Scott, who claimed that a guard with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) provoked a fellow prisoner to attack Scott in ...

by Douglas Ankney

On January 25, 2023, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) signed Executive Order No. 6, establishing an Independent Prison Oversight Commission (IPOC). Created to address the “urgent need to provide transparency and accountability of Arizona’s corrections system,” Hobbs said that IPOC’s responsibilities include safeguarding the integrity of the ...

An article published in The Nation on March 10, 2023, chronicled the experience of former New York prisoner Johnny Perez. He spent over four years in a factory making hundreds of bedsheets daily, before ascending near the top of the pay scale to earn a whopping 32 cents an hour. ...

by David M. Reutter

The families of two women and five men who committed suicide while held in pretrial detention between July 2014 and November 2018 at New Jersey’s Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) have received a total of $2,372,500 to settle their claims against the County and its profiteering medical ...

A California bail bondsman was arrested on June 2, 2023, for allegedly using phony photos to defraud several county governments of $528,000 in bail refunds for defendants who in reality had never been apprehended. Fausto Alitano, 60, who was once a live-in bodyguard for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), was ...

A May 2023 report by Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) counts nearly 3.7 million Americans on probation or parole – nearly twice the nation’s total imprisoned population. This “mass supervision” brings the total number under control of the nation’s criminal justice system to about 5.5 million people – over 2,100 of ...

After separate escapes from a pair of Pennsylvania jails, two detainees were recaptured during summer of 2023 – but not before making headlines, as one eluded authorities for nine days and the other for two weeks.

Taking less than 20 seconds to escape from the Warren County Prison on June ...

On April 7, 2023, the federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina granted a motion by PLN’s publisher, theHuman Rights Defense Center (HRDC), to compel the state Department of Public Safety (DPS) “to produce an adequately prepared designee for a second deposition” in the nonprofit’s suit accusing the ...

A report published by The Marshall Project (TMP) on May 19, 2023, found that the disciplinary process in the New York Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) “fails to hold many guards accountable” in cases where they are accused of abusing prisoners.

Records of 5,642 disciplinary cases from the ...

Texas state prisoner Richard Luna saw his claim revived against officials with the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) on February 6, 2023, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit determined that a lower court erred when it dismissed his challenge to a housing assignment that resulted ...

by Benjamin Tschirhart

When you’re arrested in St. Louis, it doesn’t much matter whether you end up in the city’s jail or the lockup in adjacent St. Louis County; both are mired in controversy. But in a letter defending city Jail Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah, Mayor Tishaura O. Jones (D) took ...

by Benjamin Tschirhart

On June 22, 2023, the chief prosecutor in Arizona’s Maricopa County dropped a suit filed to force the state to execute condemned prisoner Aaron Gunches. As previously reported by PLN, the state Supreme Court issued a death warrant on March 2, 2023, authorizing the execution of Gunches, ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that a district court cannot dismiss a prisoner’s complaint and at the same time declare it a “strike” for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). Under that statute, as amended by the Prison ...

On May 31, 2023, the federal court for the Northern District of Ohio consolidated a state prisoner’s pro se suit into a class-action with almost 30 others that have been filed over exposure to toxic vinyl chloride that was spilled in a train derailment three months earlier. Josh Turner, 30, ...

Vermont’s Department of Corrections (DOC) announced in April 2023 that Wellpath LLC would replace VitalCore Health Strategies to provide healthcare in state prisons. Wellpath corporate predecessor Correct Care Solutions (CCS) held the contract from 2010 to 2015. Then Centurion took over until 2018, after which CCS/Wellpath returned, only to be ...

On May 19, 2023, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed into law SF 2909, the Judiciary and Public Safety budget bill. Introduced by two Democratic state lawmakers, Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten and Rep. Esther Agbaje, the measure made calls free in all state prisons. With it, Minnesota joins California, Colorado ...

by David M. Reutter

During their 2023 session, Connecticut lawmakers took a pass on legislation to rein in routine prison strip searches, which advocates testified were “humiliating” and “intrusive.” There was, however, widespread interest in appearing interested in the problem, resulting in a predictable decision by legislators to vote for ...

After his death in 2010 at age 69, John Vincent Damon’s family members would occasionally walk through Tamborine Mountain Cemetery in Queensland, Australia, just to stand at his grave. He left behind a wife and two adult children in Australia, plus three stepdaughters from an earlier marriage in the U.S. ...

After locking down almost 129,000 prisoners for nearly two weeks to search for contraband, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) announced on September 18, 2023, that “normal operations” had resumed at 64 of its 98 facilities. But prison officials had little to show for the effort, confiscating just $376 ...

According to a report by the Charleston Post & Courier on July 31, 2023, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC) had dispatched a team to inspect the Richland County jail, after a series of stabbings, escapes and contraband smuggling by guards.

The Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center has been ...

December 31, 2023, will be the last day to file for reparations under California’s Forced or Involuntary Sterilization Compensation Program (FISCP). State lawmakers created it in 2021 to offer compensation to thousands of victims who were sterilized without their consent in the Golden State starting at the beginning of the ...

As reported in Filter Magazine on July 26, 2023, Tennessee’s South Central Correctional Facility (SCCF) has become the birthplace of “Be the Change” (BTC), the first known openly LGBTQ+ community in any of the state’s 14 prisons.

A private medium-security prison operated for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) by ...

On May 23, 2023, the health, medicine and life sciences journal STAT released a scathing report detailing the shabby care prisoners received early in the COVID-19 pandemic at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Massachusetts. Not only did prison officials fail to perform an adequate number of tests for ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 25, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said a lower court erred by ignoring a former state prisoner’s claim that the Department of Corrections (DOC) violated his due process rights by failing to apply earned credit deductions to his sentence.

While ...

A new report released in May 2023 by Solitary Watch and Unlock the Box, groups dedicated to abolishing the use of solitary confinement, found that a lot more Americans are locked up in solitary confinement than previous estimates indicated: 122,840 people, caged in isolation for 22 or more hours on ...

On September 20, 2023, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner announced that nine of his deputies had been indicted in the death of Gershun Freeman, a 33-year-old Black man who died in custody at the Memphis lockup during a psychotic episode in October 2022.

The incident came to light only after ...

U.S. District Judge David Proctor has told lawyers to be ready for trial in November 2024 in a suit filed by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) in federal court for the Northern District of Alabama against the state’s troubled Department of Corrections (DOC).

As PLN has reported, that suit ...

On April 19, 2023, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed SB 5087 into law, ending the death penalty in the state. The state’s Supreme Court had already ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 2018 “because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” However, it remained on the ...

Though its population is relatively small, with just over 600 detainees, Ohio’s Montgomery County Jail lost seven of them in the first seven months of 2023. That’s more jail deaths than the combined total in the state’s five most populous counties. It’s just one less than the number of deaths ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 5, 2023, the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed that denying a state prisoner visits from people he didn’t know prior to incarceration did not implicate any liberty interest created by the state – so he was not entitled to relief when his grievance over the ...

On May 22, 2023, the Circuit Court in Alabama’s Limestone County rejected an appeal by former Sheriff Mike Blakely to his conviction on charges of first-degree theft and using his public office for personal gain. After 38 years in office, Blakely was the state’s longest-serving Sheriff when he was sentenced ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 4, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a Mississippi prisoner’s claim that his due process rights were violated when a doctor dosed him without his consent with psychotropic medication.

Chaz Pinkston, the Court noted, had “a complex ...

On March 1, 2023, the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) released Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023, which found an astonishing number of U.S. women and girls – almost one million – are either incarcerated or on probation or parole. That included nearly 172,700 females held in U.S. state and ...

For its entire three decades of publication, PLN has been reporting developments in a class-action suit brought by California state prisoners challenging grossly deficient mental health care provided by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Filed in 1990, the suit eventually resulted in appointment of a Special Master ...

When Anthony Novak created a Facebook page that parodied the police department in Parma, Ohio, he may have been attempting satirical humor. But he wasn’t laughing when police officers searched his apartment, seized his phone and laptop, then arrested and jailed him for four days. Why? They claimed he violated ...

by Matthew Clarke

The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, raises several barriers for prisoner litigants, not least being a “three strikes” provision that prevents indigent prisoners from having court fees waived by filing in forma pauperis if they have also had three prior cases dismissed because ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 23, 2023, the Oklahoma Legislature approved a $1.05 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit stemming from the preventable death of a state prisoner. The settlement followed an order by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on May 29, 2022, that ...

In yet another case involving an unarmed, non-resisting suspect killed by the police, Edward Bronstein, 38, was five minutes from his home when he was pulled over by officers with the California Highway Patrol (CHP) on March 31, 2020. They thought he was driving under the influence, even though a ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 3, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a federal prisoner’s civil rights suit, finding his Fifth Amendment claim did not fit within the precise confines authorized by Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of ...

Alexei Navalny, the incarcerated political rival of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, alleged on May 30, 2023, that he was forced to listen to pro-war and anti-Semitic songs as part of “re-education” efforts at the IK-6 prison, where he is serving a nine-year sentence for promoting “extremism” with his criticisms of ...

Alabama: Three jail guards in the Yellowhammer State were hit with drug smuggling charges in August 2023 and another the month after. WAFF in Huntsville reported that Morgan County Jail guard Bobby Simmons, 19, was arrested on August 3, 2023, when he was charged with promoting prison contraband for allegedly ...