by Mark Wilson

Five years after Oregon prison officials and state prosecutors abandoned them, a group of state prisoners sexually assaulted by a prison nurse finally secured a measure of justice from federal prosecutors. On October 17, 2023, the federal court for the District of Oregon handed a 30-year federal ...

By Paul Wright

As we close out the last issue of the year, our cover story on the Oregon prison nurse who was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison for raping women prisoners in his care illustrates the confluence of medical neglect and sexual abuse by staff, both of which ...

In the U.S. in 2023, there are about 172,700 incarcerated women and girls, according to research and advocacy group Prison Policy Initiative. Many are among those prisoners—both male and female—who together have an estimated 2.7 million to 3.6 million minor children. A recent report on a special program for moms ...

Civil commitment in the U.S. is not well-understood, beginning with what it is: A sentence to be served at a facility in order to receive treatment or therapy, though that itself is often scientifically questionable. A civil commitment is also frequently, though not always, mandated in civil court proceedings after ...

by Matt Clarke

On March 13, 2023, the California Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District reinstated a putative class-action lawsuit brought by a prisoner at San Quentin State Prison alleging a problematic prisoner transfer led to a severe outbreak of COVID-19 early in the pandemic.

As PLN reported, ...

A “Provider Handbook” for “Physicians, Psychiatrists, Dentists, Nurse Practitioners, and Physician Assistants” employed in Illinois state prisons by Wexford Health Sources warns that “[i]nmates can be very manipulative,” so healthcare workers are advised to “[n]ever take anything from or bring anything to an inmate.”

“Do not authorize special privileges,” the ...

by Dylan Jeffrey

Society isn’t being done any favors keeping literature out of the hands of incarcerated people.

Prison is horrible, violent and degrading and stagnant. Really the only good thing about it is that there’s plenty of time for reading. Prison libraries are mostly mediocre, though; anyone with discerning ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 20, 2022, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDJC) said that a prisoner reported missing the day before at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont had been “found within the prison’s perimeter fence.” But in a letter to PLN, fellow prisoner David W. Jones challenged ...

On January 27, 2023, the Vermont Supreme Court held that a state prisoner was not entitled to benefit from an earned-time program because he committed his offense after the program was authorized but sentenced before it went into effect. Finding no ex post facto violation in this Catch-22, the Court ...

On November 4, 2022, the North Carolina Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court’s decision denying class certification in a challenge brought by state prisoners to the use of solitary confinement. In its ruling, the high court agreed with defendant officials from the state Department of Public Safety (DPS) ...

By March 1, 2023, more than 17,000 New York parolees had been discharged early since the Less is More (LIM) Act took effect a year earlier, cutting the number of people on parole statewide by nearly 40%. Signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on September 17, 2021, after it successfully ...

On September 12, 2022, the state of Indiana reached a $4,500 settlement to resolve a state prisoner’s claim that guards confiscated his property without following prison procedure and then threatened retaliation when he filed grievances.

Victor Karp was held at Correctional Industrial Facility in Pendleton on June 16, 2020, when ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 12, 2023, the Supreme Court of Ohio compelled the Mansfield Correctional Center (MCC) to provide to Amirah Sultaana the names and identification numbers of the prisoners who assaulted her son while he was incarcerated there.

On October 7, 2021, Sultaana requested “the names of the ...

On March 1, 2023, the federal court for the Southern District of Ohio granted dismissal of a suit brought by a former Cincinnati jail detainee after she accepted a $40,000 settlement from the Hamilton County Board of County Commissioners for an assault by jail guards four year earlier.

The day ...

by David M. Reutter

As of March 2023, a long-term California prisoner now paroled had received settlements totaling $26,500 in two lawsuits that alleged his First Amendment rights were violated when prison officials took retaliatory actions because of grievances and litigation he filed.

The most recent victory for Jared M. ...

On July 25, 2022, a settlement was reached between Corizon Health, Inc. and an Arizona prisoner to whom it allegedly denied eye care, resulting in partial vision loss. Under the agreement, the firm owes $100,000 to Kevin Campbell, inclusive of legal costs and fees.

One of the nation’s largest for-profit ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 1, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment to a NaphCare nurse accused of deliberate indifference to a pretrial detainee’s sickle cell disease that resulted in his death at Ohio’s Hamilton County Justice Center. But ...

On May 2, 2023, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (DCS) released its investigation into a disturbance at Tecumseh State Correctional Facility nearly two years earlier, during which guards fired 200 projectiles at a prisoner, leaving three rubber pellets embedded under his ...

In the early morning hours of May 3, 2022, Kyle Kepley, 35, used a bedsheet to hang himself at the Rockingham County jail. An electrician who worked part-time and struggled with bipolar disorder and drug addiction, he had been detained when he was unable to post a $25,000 bond.

Kepley ...

After his release from federal prison, doctors told Jeffrey Ramirez, 41, that there were no more options for treating his cancer that had been diagnosed—but belatedly treated—while he was still in custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). So he passed the time with his teenage daughters and his ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 17, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997 e, does not apply to an action filed in state court and removed to federal court by the defendants. The Court had ...

In a three-minute meeting on May 31, 2023, the State Building Commission of Tennessee approved a request from the Department of Correction (DOC) for budget revision, funding, and amendment to the existing CoreCivic contract to operate South Central Correctional Facility (SCCF) in Wayne County.

The approval added two years to ...

As reported by the Atavaist on May 31, 2023, Gary Settle, a federal prisoner in North Carolina, has outlived his 18-month diagnosis with terminal prostate cancer—and is still in prison.

Settle is serving an unprecedented 177-year term for bank robberies he pulled off in Central Florida during the early 1990s. ...

by Matt Clarke

On May 19, 2023, the federal court for the Southern District of Illinois denied a state prison warden’s motion for summary judgment in a federal civil rights lawsuit over cell mold that caused a prisoner to suffer an infection and pneumonia. But when the pro se prisoner ...

On May 26, 2023, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the conviction of former Dawes County Sheriff Karl J. Dailey for official misconduct. In a split decision the Court agreed with both a county court and a district court’s findings that Dailey was guilty for refusing to accept a prisoner from ...

“We recognize them as people, not just a number,” said Rev. Alfred Twyman. The chaplain with New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) was talking about corpses of people who died in a state prison, in a report published in Gothamist on May 15, 2023.

For decades, bodies ...

Nearly four years after billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was found fatally hanged in his cell at a now-shuttered federal lockup in Manhattan, officials attempted to confirm it was a suicide in a report released on June 27, 2023, by Michael Horowitz, Inspector General (IG) for the U.S. Department of ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 14, 2023, the federal court for the Southern District of Florida issued its latest ruling in a long-running case brought by detainees at the Broward County Jail exposed to a risk of COVID-19 infection during the pandemic. Overruling Plaintiffs’ objections, the Court adopted the ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 25, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) held that a post-trial motion is required only to preserve findings of fact for appellate review—not a purely legal question resolved at summary judgment. The high court accepted the case on January 13, 2023, ...

The report addressed high rates of incarceration in England and Wales, though its lessons apply to the U.S., where incarceration rates are even higher. The countries’ shared inclination toward imprisonment reflects a desire to safeguard the public from potential threats, which enjoys popular support. However, a punitive approach to crime—rather ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 5, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a Texas prisoner’s civil rights complaint that alleged prison staff delayed and impeded his access to emergency medical care after the onset of his stroke symptoms. The Court found the ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 4, 2023, the U.S. Court of appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment against a federal prisoner in Indiana who claimed he was subjected to a physical assault for filing grievances. But the Court affirmed judgment on two other claims ...

An investigation published by The Marshall Project on May 19, 2023, examined the struggle by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) to hold its guards accountable for abusing state prisoners. Over a span of more than a decade, the agency recorded numerous physical attacks by ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 11, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the moment a prisoner files a motion to dismiss his federal civil rights suit, a district court losses jurisdiction over it. So it therefore has no authority to find the action ...

The last five of a group consisting of condemned Louisiana prisoners who had sought clemency hearings were shot down by the state Board of Pardons on October 13, 2023. Among them was Antoinette Frank, a former New Orleans cop and the only woman on the state’s death row, who was ...

On April 10, 2023, two advocacy groups for gender equality and justice released a new report arguing that young women—especially young women of color—continue to be punished for violence they endure as victims of sex trafficking.

In Criminalized Survivors: Today’s Abuse to Prison Pipeline for Girls, the directors of Georgetown ...

Stuck in distant second place in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) vetoed a new criminal justice reform measure on June 27, 2023, even though it was passed by most members of his own party in the statehouse where they dominate.

The measure would ...

Steven R. Clark, 68, the last prisoner eligible for parole since Maine abolished its parole system in 1976, was released after receiving approval from the state Parole Board on June 9, 2023. He had been denied parole in 2018 but had been granted parole previously under the old system.

The ...

by Douglas Ankney

On May 24, 2023, the Court of Appeal of California, Sixth Appellate District, issued a mandate commanding the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to restore over $2,600 to the trust account of state prisoner Mona Salcida Murillo.

She received three money orders in 2021 for ...

A wrongful termination suit filed against jail healthcare profiteer PrimeCare Medical, Inc. on May 23, 2023, brought disturbing details to light in the death five months earlier of an elderly detainee at Pennsylvania’s Dauphin County Prison (DCP).

When Richard A. Carter, 63, was taken to the jail after a dispute ...

On June 9, 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved a total compensation award of $113,362 for the Center for Accessible Technology (CAT), finding the organization had made a substantial contribution to PUC’s rulemaking on prison phone services.

CAT, a non-profit that advocates for disability rights, filed a claim ...

by Douglas Ankney

“This appeal arises from the tragic death of Antonio May,” began the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on June 7, 2023. As longtime PLN readers know, “tragic” deaths are often those for which no one is held liable. Sure enough, the ...

A report published in June 2023 by the Vera Institute of Justice revealed that the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. has risen quickly from lows reached during the COVID-19 pandemic though it hasn’t yet reached pre-pandemic levels.

Between 2019 to mid-2020, America’s total jail and prison population decreased ...

by Matt Clarke

On September 11, 2023, class-action status was granted to a suit filed the previous April against the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), accusing the prison agency of ignoring provisions of the Humane Alternatives to Long-term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act, Correctional Law § 137(6)(k)(ii).

HALT ...

A year after their murder convictions were tossed and they were freed from an Illinois prison where they’d spent 26 years, a pair of brothers got a certificate of innocence from a state court on May 31, 2023. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Erica Reddick also offered an apology to ...

by David M. Reutter

On September 12, 2022, the federal court for the District of New Jersey denied a motion for summary judgment by the defendant New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) in a state prisoner’s claim alleging that designating the Nation of Gods and Earth (NOGE) a security threat ...

On September 13, 2023, the wife of former Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán was released from custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Emma Coronel Aispuro, 34, had served just under two years of a three-year sentence handed down in November 2021 for her role in ...

On October 19, 2023, the last of a group of 37 Mississippi prison gang members and their accomplices pleaded guilty in federal court to selling drugs and committing violent crimes in state lockups. From its founding in Chicago in 1952, the Simon City Royals expanded to prisons in several states ...

Alabama: Within 48-hours of booking into the Morgan County Jail on August 29, 2023, Miles Rea Batson, 39, had two second-degree assault charges added to his public intoxication charge as well as another for disarming a law enforcement agent. WHNT in Huntsville reported that during booking on the drunkenness charge, ...