by Douglas Ankney

In 2022, at least 28 detainees died while awaiting trial in the custody of the Harris County Jail (HCJ) – the highest number of deaths at the Texas facility in nearly two decades. Already 11 more have died in HCJ custody from January 1 to July 13, 2023. This article briefly examines: (1) the history of the jail’s substandard conditions, (2) staff abuses of detainees – including charges of manslaughter – and scandals, (3) the current and continuing substandard conditions, (4) the identified causes of these conditions and (5) the proposed solutions to end the deadly crisis.

History of Substandard Conditions

HCJ consists of three individual jails: the “1200 Jail” located at 1200 Baker Street; the “701 Jail” located at 701 North San Jacinto; and the “1307 Jail” located at 1307 Baker Street. The HCJ system also is separate and distinct from two City of Houston jails. The three HCJ lockups may hold nearly 10,000 people at any given time, including those convicted and serving jail sentences for Class B and Class C misdemeanors and those awaiting trial on felony and misdemeanor charges. That’s enough beds to let the county’s entire population – all 4.7 million of ...

by Jo Ellen Nott and Chuck Sharman

Long notorious for harsh prison conditions, Alabama’s Department of Corrections (DOC) shows no signs of remediating them despite not one but two suits by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of state prisoners.

In the most recent news out of Alabama lockups, a guard was convicted on April 19, 2023, of beating three compliant prisoners with a wooden riot baton at the now-closed Draper Correctional Facility (CF). Former DOC Sgt. Lorenzo Mills, 55, also lied about the incident afterwards. In October 2020, Mills left the three unnamed prisoners with injuries including a broken arm, pain, and bruising. He then falsified his official report, saying he had not used force against the men. [See: PLN, Oct. 2022, p.22.]  He was convicted of three civil rights charges and another for writing the false report. According to the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, Mills will “face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the civil rights charges and 20 years in prison for the obstruction of justice offense.”

Less than a week before Mills was convicted, Republican Gov. Kay ...

by Jordan Arizmendi

According to a report by the Georgia Current on April 14, 2023, jails in several of the state’s coastal counties were still profiting by extending COVID-19 visitation bans, forcing detainees and their loved ones to use more expensive phone calls or video calls to stay in touch.

When the report was published, over three years after the start of the pandemic, hundreds of detainees at the Chatham County Detention Center (DC) in Savannah were forced to choose from a menu of high-cost communication options: $1 to send out a tweet-sized text; $3 to make a 15-minute phone call; a whopping $8 to make a 20-minute video call. As a result, a detainee without a fat wad of cash is out of luck if he wants to speak to his wife or see his baby. Restrictions do not apply to visits with an attorney.

In-person visitation had resumed at the Glynn County DC. But there was still none at lockups in the other five counties: Bryan, Camden, Chatham, Liberty and McIntosh. In 2021 and 2022, these jails made at least $1.5 million in kickbacks from fees collected for phone and video calls, as well as text messages.

At ...

by Chuck Sharman

Thirty years since its last reboot, the troubled U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta has gotten another one, after violence and corruption led the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to transfer most prisoners elsewhere in late 2021. [See: PLN, Jan. 2022, p.22.]

The lockup is still designated a federal “penitentiary,” though it hasn’t held any high-security federal prisoners in over 30 years. Until 2021, the crumbling main facility – it dates to 1902 – held medium-security prisoners, with an adjacent work camp for low-security prisoners to come and go more easily to work assignments.

The main building now holds only low-security prisoners. But that didn’t stop U.S. Senators on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee from grilling outgoing BOP Director Michael Carvajal in July 2022 about a litany of problems at the lockup, including multiple escapes, as well as lawsuits resulting in payouts for prisoners who were sexually abused by guards or with restraints. [See: PLN, Dec. 2017, p.17; Aug. 2014, p.42; and Dec. 28, 2017, online.]

Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) accused Carvajal of “continuing to drive responsibility down the chain of command” for “gross misconduct” that had ...

by Jo Ellen Nott

On April 21, 2023, about 75-80 detainees staged a protest against their move inside Massachusetts’ Bristol County House of Correction. The move was to allow renovations to make their cells suicide resistant. Among their grievances was the high cost of items in the jail commissary, the sale of which is funding the renovations. Convenient for Sheriff Paul Heroux, the protest caused no injuries but enough damages to grab the attention of state lawmakers, who can throw more money his way for updates to the 40-year-old lockup.

Though the detainees were awaiting trial, Heroux said some face multiple murder charges and are more hardened than the lockup’s convicted prisoners, all of whom are serving sentences not exceeding two and a half years. The detainees began planning their protest the night before, when they learned they were being moved to cells with locks the following day. Heroux said that approximately half the cells in the 1,400-bed jail do not have locks because they lack toilets, so doors must remain opened to allow detainees bathroom access. The planned renovations to the facility include adding a toilet to every cell, along with a lock.

The stand-off began at 9 a.m, ...

by Matt Clarke

On February 8, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reinstated claims by Pennsylvania child support debtors jailed for civil contempt, who argued they were unfairly forced to perform unsafe and nearly uncompensated labor at a privately-operated, county-owned recycling center.

William Burrell, Jr. was jailed in Lackawanna County in 2014 for civil contempt after failing to make court-ordered child support payments. He qualified for the jail’s work-release program, which would allow him to pay off his child support debt and be released from jail rather than serving the entire length of his civil contempt sentence. However, the county had a policy requiring anyone seeking work-release to first work half of their sentence at the recycling center owned by the county’s Solid Waste Management Authority (SWMA).

SWMA is operated by a private company, the Lakawanna County Recycling Center, Inc. (LCRR). The firm paid laborers $5 per 8-hour work day – 63¢ per hour – for sorting trash in allegedly dangerous and disgusting conditions, including denying the workers portions of sack meals sent from the jail if they didn’t perform quickly enough.

Burrell filed a pro se federal civil rights lawsuit in September 2014, alleging the ...

by Jordan Arizmendi

On April 29, 2023, Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) reduced the federal prison sentences of 31 people, each serving time on home confinement for nonviolent drug-related convictions. The commutation of sentences was one component of a strategy to help people transition from incarceration to employment, the White House said.

The sentences commuted included men and women convicted of drug possession in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas. Most of the convictions involved methamphetamine, but some were for possession of cocaine, heroin or marijuana. The 31 individuals were kept under home confinement until June 30, 2023, when their punishments ended. They were also not required to pay the remainder due of their fines, ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.

“These individuals, who have been successfully serving sentences on home confinement, have demonstrated a commitment to rehabilitation, including by securing employment and advancing their education,” the White House said. “Many would have received a lower sentence if they were charged with the same offense today, due to changes in the law, including the bipartisan First Step Act” passed in 2018 under former Pres. Donald J. Trump (R).   ...

by Chuck Sharman

On February 14, 2023, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced it was closing Special Management Unit (SMU) at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Thomson, Illinois, where seven deaths have been recorded since it opened in 2019, the highest death toll in any BOP facility.

Some 350 prisoners housed there were slated for transfer to other lockups, after they were gathered from prisons around the country to be punished with lengthy periods of isolation for disciplinary infractions.

The unit replaced an earlier one at Pennsylvania’s USP-Lewisburg that ironically closed for similar reasons. Staff was accused of violating prisoners’ civil rights almost since it opened in 2008. Lawsuits alleged that mentally ill prisoners were denied mental health care and punished with restraints. At least four prisoners were murdered by cellmates between 2010 and 2017. The Office of the Inspector General for BOP’s parent agency, the federal Department of Justice, criticized the mental health treatment, and the D.C. Corrections Information Council found in 2017 that the use of restraints resulted in prisoner injuries.

Much of the problem was blamed on double-celling violent prisoners, which continued at USP-Thomson’s SMU. Prisoners there have also been kept for long periods in isolation ...

by Douglas Ankney

On November 7, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that a district court erred in finding that Virginia prisoner David A. Richardson failed to present evidence that a policy of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) substantially burdened the exercise of his religious beliefs. Also, the Court said, the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia erred in granting Defendants summary judgment on an issue they hadn’t raised without giving Plaintiff notice and a reasonable time to respond.

Richardson is a prisoner at Deerfield Correctional Center, where DOC policy required him to remove his religious head covering while in the dining hall, visiting room and administrative buildings. He sued DOC Director Harold W. Clarke and Wardens Eddie L. Pearson and Tammy Williams, alleging, inter alia, that the policy substantially burdened the exercise of his religious beliefs. As an adherent of the Nation of Islam faith, he claimed, he is required to wear a kufi headcovering at all times, and preventing him from doing so violated his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000(1)(a) et seq.

After Richardson filed suit, DOC changed its ...

by Chuck Sharman

Ohio prisoners James O’Neal, Jerome Henderson and Melvin Bonnell were all scheduled to die by lethal injection between August and October 2023. However, on April 14, 2023, Gov. Mike Dewine (R) delayed each execution over two years.

DeWine was the state Attorney General when big pharmaceutical firm Pfizer announced in May 2016 that it was imposing “strict distribution controls to block states from obtaining and using its medicines in executions.” Then in January 2017, the federal court for the Southern District of Ohio declared the state’s three-drug execution protocol carried an unconstitutional “risk of serious harm.” However, that decision was vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in an en banc ruling issued in April 2017. See: Fears v. Morgan (In re Ohio Execution Protocol), 860 F.3d 881 (6th Cir. 2017).

After that, former Gov. John Kasich (R) forged ahead with three executions that went off fairly smoothly: Ronald Phillips, 43, in July 2017; Gary Otte in September 2017; and Robert Van Hook in July 2018. But a fourth execution was called off for Alva Campbell, 69, in November 2017, when executioners failed to locate a suitable vein for the lethal injection. Campbell ...

by Jordan Arizmendi

A spate of Connecticut commutations in 2022 didn’t come close to resolving the backlog in applications, only one of which had been granted in two years. But it piqued the ire of reactionary GOP lawmakers, like state Sen. John Kissel, who loudly called on Gov. Ned Lamont (D) to “stop this right now.” On April 10, 2023, Lamont caved to that demand, replacing Board of Pardons and Paroles (BOPP) Chairman Carleton Giles.

By then, Kissel and fellow Republican lawmakers had staged a bizarre press conference in March 2023, littering a stage with cut-up mugshots of prisoners who had received clemency. Where the face should be, however, text spelled out the crimes for which each had been convicted, the length of his sentence and how many years had been subtracted from it.

Connecticut is one of just six states that vests clemency authority in an independent body. As the new chair of BOPP, Jennifer Medina Zaccagnini also chooses which board members hear commutations, a power Kissel and his fellow Republicans accused Giles of abusing – even though Giles is a former cop. Within days of her appointment, Zaccagnini announced an indefinite hold on all future clemency actions in ...

by Jordan Arizmendi

On New Year’s Day January 2023, as storms swelled California’s Cosumnes River near Sacramento, officials at the county’s Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center (RCCC) evacuated all 1,075 detainees, as well as all staff, to other nearby lockups.

The Sacramento County Sherriff’s Office said that an emergency operation center was activated to assess flood risks and monitor conditions near the jail. After initially waiving aside the risks “[a]s weather conditions worsened and road conditions eroded,” jail officials finally decided to evacuate as “the impending threat of flooding at the facility grew by the hour.”

Down the road in Corcoran, two state prisons – California State Prison-Corcoran and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Substance Abuse Treatment Facility – sat two miles from the rising waters of Tulare Lake. Between the prisons and the lake, an extensive irrigation system maintained by one of the largest cotton producers in the world, J.G. Boswell Company, resulted in more flooding.

As extreme weather events worsen, it is imperative that buildings with occupants locked inside must be evacuated to let them survive brutal floods. These are also some of the structures most at risk in storms; land for the two state prisons ...

by Keith Sanders

For decades, prisoners were not eligible for federal financial aid for college education. So when Congress passed the Second Chance Act in 2020, rescinding ineligibility for felons and prisoners to access federal Pell Grant funding for college, advocates, educators and those in prison who might benefit all rejoiced. From a small list of pilot sites, eligibility was set to be restored at lockups throughout the country on July 1, 2023.

“The expansion of the Second Chance Pell Experiment will allow for opportunities to study the best practices for implementing the reinstatement of Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students, and will expand the geographic range of the programs,” the federal Department of Education said.

According to a 2018 report, less than 4% of prisoners obtain a postsecondary education, well below the national average of 29%. Nicholas Turner, president of the Vera Institute of Justice, estimates that over 765,000 prisoners will apply for Pell Grants once they become eligible this summer.

The former Pell Grant restrictions also affected prisoners after release. Some convictions, like drug crimes, kept released prisoners ineligible. So did prior default on student loans. Nevertheless, the fact that over 95% of individuals are eventually released from ...

In a surprising turn of events, the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) granted a stay of execution to condemned Oklahoma prisoner Richard Glossip on May 5, 2023. The decision marks the ninth time Glossip, 60, has come close to facing the death penalty for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of a motel where Glossip worked as a manager. He has steadfastly protested his innocence, and mounting evidence of his possible wrongful conviction has raised doubts about his guilt.

In its decision, SCOTUS also granted an extraordinary plea made by state Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) after the state Pardon and Parole Board (PPB) voted to deny Glossip clemency on April 26, 2023 – even though Drummond had argued for it. Citing a “litany of errors” at Glossip’s trial, Drummond said executing him would be “an excessive sentence for the man who did not commit this violent act when the man who did will remain housed at the taxpayer’s expense for the rest of his life.”

Before he was turned down by PPB, Drummond also pleaded for Glossip to the state Court of Criminal Appeals. However, the court denied that appeal on April 20, 2023. When ...

by Jordan Arizmendi

On May 30, 2023, over a year after her felony conviction for fraud and conspiracy, Elizabeth Holmes, 39, founder of bogus and bankrupt blood-test maker Theranos, arrived at her home for the next 11 years: the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) in Bryan, Texas.

Photographs showed Holmes entered the lockup smiling. The minimum-security FPC-Bryan has been nicknamed ‘Club Fed’ for its relative comfort: Prisoners share four-person rooms, sleep in bunk beds, play Uno late into the night and can purchase hobby items, like crochet needles, from the commissary.

The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) established an FPC adjacent to each higher-security penitentiary so that lower-security prisoners assigned to work details could come and go more easily. Each FPC has dormitory housing, a low staff-to-inmate ratio and little to no perimeter fencing. White collar criminals populate most cells.

But Holmes will still make lifestyle adjustments. Instead of her trademark black turtlenecks, she’ll wear khaki pants and shirts. She can have no jewelry, except a wedding band or a religious medallion, and nothing worth over $100. Her work assignment is mandatory and pays $0.12 to $1.15 per hour – not bad for someone with no reported net worth, but a ...

by Chuck Sharman

On May 3, 2023, the family of Joe Nathan James Jr., an Alabama prisoner executed in July 2022, sued Gov. Kay Ivey (R) and other state officials, claiming he suffered excessive pain and was unconscious too long before his death, thwarting his intent to apologize to his family, the victim’s family, and recite the Muslim profession of faith, the shahada, as his final words.

“Alabama must own up to its wrongs,” said Hakim James, who is representing his brother’s estate.

During the 18-minute execution, James, 50, did not open his eyes or respond to standard consciousness checks by guards. The suit alleges that was likely because he had already been given midazolam a heavy sedative that is part of the state’s three-drug execution protocol, during an extended attempt to set up intravenous (IV) lines in his arms that was not completed more than three hours past the scheduled execution time.

An autopsy report released by the state Department of Forensic Sciences found no evidence of a “cutdown procedure” to insert the IV lines, though it did not count the puncture wounds on James’ arms. The lawsuit notes that a privately arranged autopsy performed after the execution found ...

by Chuck Sharman

Troubles mounted for Sheriff John Grismore of Vermont’s Franklin County on May 11, 2023, when state lawmakers took a significant step toward his impeachment. The same day, Grismore lost access to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a crucial criminal records database used in policing.

Because his NCIC access was revoked, Grismore was also locked out of the Vermont Crime Information Center and its records system, Valcour. Although other authorized users at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department can continue using the national database and Valcour, they are prohibited from sharing information with Grismore.

His problems predate his November 2022 election, when then-Cpt. Grismore was accused by two fellow deputies of kicking a detainee and charged with assault on August 7, 2022. He pleaded not guilty and then won election. But his prosecution is ongoing.

The impact of Grismore’s restricted access to these critical systems on his day-to-day work as a law enforcement official and the extent to which members of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department are aware of these restrictions remains unclear. The databases contain valuable information such as wanted and missing persons, stolen property records, and domestic violence protection orders.

In December 2022, while Grismore was ...

by Chuck Sharman

After 29 years in prison, condemned Arizona prisoner Barry Lee Jones was freed on June 15, 2023. Callous state prison officials dropped him on a street in Phoenix. Undeterred, Jones walked in the heat to the only address he recalled: the office of Arizona Public Defenders (AFD).

Jones, 64, was convicted in 1995 of abusing and killing his ex-girlfriend’s daughter, Rachel Gray, 4. Her mother, Angela Gray, served 11 years in prison for reckless child abuse because she failed to get her child life-saving medical treatment.

Years later, now-retired AFD investigator Andrew Sowards discovered discrepancies in the testimony the medical examiner gave at the two trials. He also found unexamined tissue samples from the child’s corpse that showed scarring, indicating her injuries were sustained before the day Jones allegedly abused her.

AFD attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition for Jones, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) at his trial. The federal court for the District of Arizona agreed and tossed his conviction in 2018, a decision affirmed the following year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But in May 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision, saying federal courts cannot hear an ...

By Naila Awan and Katie Rose Quandt  

On April 26, 2022, President Joe Biden used his executive powers to commute the federal sentences of 75 people — a first step toward addressing his campaign promise to release some individuals “facing unduly long sentences.” While this action is promising and will be life-altering for each of the 75 individuals, it took nearly 100 days into his second year in office for Biden to act on his promise and grant clemency to a single person. What’s more, many of the people receiving commutations are already released on home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and all were convicted of “nonviolent” drug offenses.

If Biden intends to truly deliver on his promises to enact large-scale criminal justice reform, this set of commutations should merely mark the beginning of a broader initiative. In fact, nothing is holding him back: the President has the power to grant commutations to large categories of people in federal prisons independently — without any action by Congress, the Department of Justice, or another third party. Despite this broad power, most U.S. presidents in the era of mass incarceration have been hesitant to use their powers of commutation.

In 2021, ...

On September 20, 2022, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Sen. Jon Ossoff, issued a scathing report that slammed the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for failing to effectively implement the Death in Custody Reporting Act, Pub.L. No. 113-242.

First passed in 2000 and reauthorized in 2014, the law requires states that accept certain federal funds to report deaths in prisons, jails and police custody to DOJ. The information is vital to show the number of people dying in custody in different jurisdictions and how - e.g., homicide, suicide or various types of illness.

From 2001 to 2019 – the years that data was reported so far since the law took effect – approximately 84,500 people died while in custody. In 2019, the most recent data cited in the Subcommittee’s report, 3,853 people died in state and privately-operated prisons nationwide while 1,200 died in local jails, where suicide was the leading cause of death. The report excluded deaths in federal detention, which are reported separately.

But spotty reporting makes those numbers suspect, Senators said, noting at least 990 in-custody deaths that were missed in Fiscal Year 2021 alone. Moreover, that same year, the “vast majority” of custodial ...

by David M. Reutter

“For decades, women incarcerated in New York state prisons have been raped, assaulted, sexually abused, harassed, and verbally degraded” by male guards, as officials “turned a blind eye to the sexual misconduct.” That explosive allegation was made in a lawsuit filed on November 29, 2022, seeking damages for sexual abuse alleged by a former prisoner at the now-shuttered Bayview Correctional Facility.

The suit was made possible by passage of the state’s “look back” law, the Adult Survivors Act. When it took effect in July 2022, it opened a 12-month window for victims of sexual abuse to bring legal claims that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.

The claimant in this case was identified in court pleadings as “LK Doe 2.” Her complaint alleged that prisoners held at Bayview, a medium-security all-female prison in New York City operated from 1979 to 2012, “were at high risk of being sexually abused by the predominately male prison staff.” New State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) records from 2007 to 2012 show “women were involved in 30% of sexual misconduct cases and 61% of sexual harassment cases, despite accounting for only 5% of all state ...

by Matt Clarke

Corizon Heath, Inc. has engaged in legal maneuvers over the course of the past year that are intended to limit how much it must pay on over $38 million in debt to companies that supplied it with staffing, medical supplies and real estate, as well as plaintiffs and attorneys who won lawsuits against the firm and government entities it had agreed to indemnify for lawsuit losses.

Corizon began the first step of the legal maneuvers known as the “Texas 2-step” in April 2022 when it converted to a Texas corporation. At the time, Corizon’s headquarters was in Tennessee, and it was not conducting any business in Texas. The sole reason it became a Texas corporation was to perform a “divisional merger,” a process permitted under Texas law in which a corporation divides into multiple successor corporations with assets and liabilities assigned to the successors as it sees fit under Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code, §§ 10.00l(a), 10.003.

In this case, Corizon survived and retained all of its expired contracts and their corresponding liabilities plus $1 million in cash, the right to collect on its insurance policies, and the right to collect up to $4 million under a “funding ...

by David M. Reutter

By June 8, 2023, misdemeanor criminal records of those previously convicted in Missouri of a nonviolent marijuana-related offense were scheduled to be expunged. Felony expungement is set to follow by December 8, 2023. Though some counties have dragged their feet, the process is underway to implement post-conviction relief provided by passage of Amendment 3 to the state constitution in November 2022.

Approval of the ballot initiative made it legal for those 21 and over to buy and use recreational amounts of marijuana. Expungement of most marijuana-related convictions recognized that the constitution now effectively decriminalizes marijuana use in the state.

Expungement clears all charges and seals or destroys the case record. By June 5, 2023, the state had expunged over 32,500 misdemeanor cases and another 10,000 felony cases. After spending a dozen years in prison on a marijuana conviction, Sean Farmer, 36, said he was “super grateful” for the chance to clear his record.

“I got reintegrated with my children (and) my girlfriend,” he said. “It’s surreal. When I wake up in the morning sometimes I don’t know where I’m at, and then I look around, I’m like, oh God, I’m here.”

Missouri now allows consumers to ...

by Matt Clarke

On March 21, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reinstated a former federal prisoner’s lawsuit under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb et seq., alleging religiously motivated harassment by guards with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) caused him to cease daily Muslim prayer at his workplace in the prison commissary and then cost him his job.

In 2009, Charles Mack was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania. A devout Muslim as well as a paid worker in the prison’s commissary, he tried to observe the basic tenet of his faith that he pray daily at five specified times, as his work duties allowed. Mack typically went to the back corner of the commissary to pray for about five minutes.

Mack was easily identifiable as a devout Muslim because he wore religious headgear and was exempted from handling pork products in the commissary. Most of the guards assigned to the commissary had no problem with his prayers, he said. But two guards, Doug Roberts and Samuel Venslosky, allegedly targeted Mack for religious animus. Because of his religious beliefs, the two guards – who were assigned to ...

by Chuck Sharman

On June 8, 2023, a judge in Alabama’s Lauderdale County handed a life sentence without parole to a state prisoner for escaping the county lockup with his jail-guard lover, who then committed suicide as pursuing police closed in. Casey White, 39, pleaded guilty to felony escape in a deal with prosecutors, who dropped a capital murder charge that might have sent him to death row.

White was serving a 75-year prison sentence for attempted murder with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) when he was transferred to the Lauderdale County Detention Center in 2020 to face trial for a 2015 murder in the county. Not quite two years later, jail Assistant Director Vicky White, 56 – who was no relation – hurriedly arranged her own retirement and sold her home at a steep discount for cash to finance the prisoner’s escape on April 29, 2022. Their getaway triggered a nearly two-week manhunt before cops caught up with the couple near Evansville, Indiana, running their car off the road on May 9, 2022. Vicky White then fatally shot herself. [See: PLN, Nov. 2022, p.58.]

“You think you know someone,” county Sheriff Rick Singleton said of his dead ...

by David M. Reutter

Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Council took control of the county jail commissary on March 28, 2023, after a watchdog found over $500,000 worth of items were missing. The investigation also found that monies from the canteen fund were misappropriated by the Sheriff’s Office, which has been operating under interim Sheriff Joseph Greiner.

But even jail guards questioned the county’s next decision, awarding a contract to run the commissary to Keefe Commissary Network. That’s because Keefe owner TKC Holdings also owns Trinity Services Group, the contractor long criticized for poor quality meals served to detainees and prisoners.

After receiving a complaint about donations of expired food from the Cuyahoga County Jail commissary, the County’s Inspector General (IG) began an investigation. That uncovered problems from 2020 and 2021, ranging from shoddy bookkeeping to a lack of oversight that “increases the risk of theft or unauthorized transactions going undetected,” the IG said.

The IG found $376,206 in recorded commissary inventory that wasn’t in the warehouse. It guessed there were accounting errors, or waste from expired food, or even potential theft. Around the time the report was issued in June 2022, three guards were fired for stealing commissary snacks for themselves ...

by David M. Reutter

As of January 23, 2023, only $250,000 had been tapped of a $2.5 million allocation made by the Washington legislature in 2022 for grants to counties to ease ballot access for those in jail.

Many people in jail are eligible to vote because they are being detained pretrial or they have a low-level conviction. But these eligible voters are often denied ballots or even information about how to request one.

When Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton presented a plan in September 2022 to increase voter registration and participation in the County’s two jails with grant funds, she met stiff resistance and was denied approval.

Politics were clearly at the forefront. “So, if you’re a candidate that’s campaigning on a position of being tough on crime, obviously you’re not going to get a lot of votes out of the jail, and the inverse of that also could apply,” Commissioner Al French noted at the meeting.

Responded Dalton, “We don’t speculate how people vote. We just need to make sure that they have the opportunity to register to receive a ballot and return the ballot.”

But French, in an interview with Bolts Magazine, doubled down on his ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

Members of Princeton Theological Seminarians for Peace and Justice (SPJ) sent a letter on March 14, 2023, calling for resignation of seminary Board of Trustees Chairman Michael Fisch. After learning Fisch’s hedge fund, American Securities, owns prison telecom giant ViaPath, the group complained that the way the firm profits off exploiting prisoners – many people of color – runs counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ, which their group should be exemplifying.

Dozens of seminary alumni signed the letter, including Rev. J. Amos Caley, leader of New Jersey’s Reformed Church of Highland Park; Pastor Erich Kussman of St. Bartholomew Lutheran Church in Trenton; as well as SPJ moderator and seminarian Angel Nalbega. They demanded seminary President Jonathan Walton ensure more transparency and greater accountability for Board members, finding it especially concerning that what Fisch and other members do appears contrary to SPJ’s mission.

“We are appalled,” read the letter, “that the board of trustees is chaired by someone who makes profit from conditions we have been taught to work against and have been trained at the Seminary to mitigate in our roles as pastors, chaplains, and social workers.”

ViaPath is a privately held company known until ...

by Chuck Sharman

A group of women who claimed they were raped by a physician’s assistant at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex has now been screwed two more times. First, prosecutors apparently bungled the criminal case against their alleged assailant. Then a lawsuit the group filed was stayed by the federal court for the Southern District of New York on March 8, 2023, pending the outcome of bankruptcy proceedings filed by one of the defendants, former jail healthcare provider Corizon Health.

The group of 29 former detainees alleged that the City and Corizon Health should have stopped Sidney Wilson from abusing his role in the jail’s medical unit to ply them with gifts – including Popeye’s Chicken, a sex toy and prescription drugs – as he “repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted and abused” them between 2015 and 2017. [See: PLN, Nov. 2016, p.63.]

Wilson, now 66, was criminally charged. But the charges were dropped in June 2021. Bronx Senior Assistant District Attorney Nancy Strohmeyer admitted then that the case “could not be brought into compliance” with reform laws passed the year before, which set strict timelines for prosecutors to share discovery materials with defendants.

Though their alleged assailant ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

Writers Victoria Law and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff penned a Time magazine article on March 29, 2023, collecting accounts from female prisoners about difficulties dealing with menstruation while in prison. They found the current criminal justice system has weaponized menstruation, using it as a means to punish and oppress female prisoners.

Approximately 10% of the U.S. prison population – 170,000 people – is incarcerated in women’s prisons across the country, 90% of them under age 55. Almost all of these women have to cope with a monthly period behind bars, where insensitivity and even harassment from guards add humiliation to this natural body function.

In 2017, U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D–N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) submitted a bill requiring the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to supply menstrual care products free of charge in prison. BOP made the change voluntarily shortly thereafter, and it became law with passage of the First Step Act in 2018. [See: PLN, Jan. 2019, p.34.]

But this bill affected only the federal prison system; more than 35 states lack similar menstrual care protections in their laws. A Texas prisoner named Kwaneta said she was allotted just one pack of pads and ...

by Matt Clarke

On January 25, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report finding the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) was deliberately indifferent to the due-process rights of state prisoners who were held long past their release dates. DOJ also found that DPSC has been aware of this problem for more than a decade yet refused to take effective steps to ensure the timely release of its prisoners.

The report noted that between January and April 2022, 1,108 (26.8%) of the 4,135 prisoners DPSC released were held past their release dates. The median over-detention was 29 days, but 31% were over-detained at least 60 days and 24% at least 90 days.

Although Louisiana does not compensate over-detained prisoners, it does have to pay to keep them incarcerated – at least $2.5 million a year, DOJ estimated. That is because DPSC uses 104 local parish jails to incarcerate about half of its 26,000 prisoners, as well as privately operated lockups where it contracts for bed space. All prisoners held at jails, however, remain in custody of DPSC, which is responsible for their timely release.

It is this extensive use of local jails, along with an ...

by Douglas Ankney

On March 16, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the grievance procedure in Chicago’s Cook County Jail is an “incomprehensible trap,” making it effectively unavailable to a detainee and so excusing his failure to exhaust administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e.

While incarcerated at the jail, Gerald Hacker was found standing in a doorway by guard D. Sandoval, who ordered Hacker to return to his bed. Hacker is almost entirely deaf, with just 10% hearing in his right ear and none in his left. Unable to hear the guard, he did not comply. Sandoval responded by shoving Hacker, knocking him unconscious. Hacker later awoke at Cermak Health Services, handcuffed to a bed.

Hacker filed an administrative grievance with the jail. That same day, he received a written notice informing him that his grievance had been referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), as per jail policy, as well as to the Divisional Superintendent. The notice said Hacker could follow up on the investigation by contacting either OPR or the Divisional Superintendent. Attached to the referral notice was a form allowing Hacker ...

by Eike Blohm, MD

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is highly overrepresented among U.S. prisoners, along with other infectious illnesses such as MRSA, Hepatitis-C and tuberculosis. [See: PLN, Jan. 2023, p.38; Feb. 2023, p.52; and June 2023, p.41.]

The high prevalence of HIV among prisoners is due to the selective incarceration of Americans who struggle with intravenous substance use, as well as a lack of mandatory and universal testing protocols in prisons.

After an initial outbreak infected five gay men in Los Angeles in June 1981, the then-unknown disease was called GRIDS: gay-related immunodeficiency syndrome. Coinciding with what was then still a young movement for gay rights, HIV/AIDS became stigmatized as a punishment for what many religious people view as sinful and immoral behavior. Sadly, the negative impact of this stigmatization persists even today.

How is HIV transmitted?

HIV is a virus transmitted from one person to another by blood, usually due to unprotected sexual intercourse or sharing needles (e.g., during tattooing or drug use). It cannot be transmitted through casual contact such as shaking hands or exchanging hugs, nor by inanimate objects such as toilets seats or drinking cups. Thus, an HIV-positive cellmate does not pose an infection risk ...

by David M. Reutter

On February 2, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, in large part, an order that found ongoing violations of the rights of disabled prisoners at California’s R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD) and five additional state prisons, all resulting from the failure to adequately investigate and discipline staff misconduct by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

The opinion was issued in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in 1994, alleging widespread violations of the American with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. ch. 126, § 12101, et seq., and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq.

In 2018, auditors from CDCR and Class Counsel attorneys conducted a compliance review of disability policies at RJD. The resulting memo documented prisoner reports that “staff members forcefully remov[ed] some [Class] members from wheelchairs” and “assault[ed] inmates [who] were already secured with restraint equipment.”

A state “strike team” was sent to RJD to investigate the reports. It found 48 of the 102 prisoners interviewed “provided specific, actionable information, relevant to the foundational concerns” of staff misconduct that prompted the review.

The strike team recommended, among other things, installing surveillance cameras at certain ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

On March 24, 2023, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed HB 186, making his the fifth state to adopt a firing squad as a means of execution. Taking effect July 1, 2023, the law allows the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to use a firing squad whenever the state is unable to obtain drugs necessary for lethal injection.

Idaho follows Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina in allowing firing squads to supplement execution procedures, prompted by pharmaceutical companies denying sales of their products for the purpose of taking lives. [See: PLN, Nov. 2022, p.20; and Feb. 2023, p.52.] The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) allows the same option at prisons in the five states.

The Idaho bill was sponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug (R) and Sen. Doug Ricks (R), who said the difficulty in obtaining lethal injection drugs could continue indefinitely, and execution by firing squad is still humane. “This is a rule of law issue,” Ricks said. “Our criminal system should work, and penalties should be exacted.”

Some states have refurbished defunct electric chairs in the wake of the lethal injection drug scarcity. Others have begun experimenting with new drug cocktails. Nebraska’s DOC executed ...

by Matt Clarke

On February 24, 2023, an Oklahoma federal jury awarded $14 million in compensatory damages and $68 million in punitive damages to the estate of a woman who died of a heart attack in the Tulsa County Jail, despite repeatedly requesting medical care to no avail.

Gwendolyn Young, 52, had serious medical and mental health conditions requiring prescribed medication plus regular monitoring and evaluation when she was booked into the jail on October 16, 2012. She suffered from diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia, and she had a prior history of cardiovascular disease and strokes. Correctional Healthcare Companies (CHC) - now Wellpath - was under contract to provide healthcare to the jail’s detainees.

According to the complaint later filed on her behalf, Young repeatedly told jailers and CHC staff that she was experiencing nausea and vomiting, along with pain in her abdomen and lower back. But her complaints were ignored. Two hours before she died in a segregation cell, Young told jail staff she was vomiting blood. A jailer looked at the vomit and told her there was “not enough blood” – in fact he said it looked like Kool-Aid. Mere minutes before she expired, Young told a nurse she ...

by Matt Clarke

On February 22, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) held that its decision in Lynch v. Arizona, 578 U.S. 613 (2016), was a “significant change” in the law as that term is used in Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g). The decision cleared the way for a death row prisoner to pursue state habeas corpus relief. In issuing it, the high court also put down an apparent rebellion by the Arizona Supreme Court (ASC).

Almost three decades ago, the Court held that capital juries must be advised when a defendant is ineligible for parole, in Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 (1994). But the Arizona high court ignored that ruling. So in its 2016 decision in Lynch, the Court specifically said its earlier decision applied to Arizona’s capital sentencing scheme – overturning binding ASC precedent which consistently ignored what SCOTUS had ruled for almost 30 years. Incredibly, though, the Arizona high court remained stubbornly opposed.

John Montenegro Cruz was convicted of capital murder. The only aggravating factor found by the jury was that the victim was a police officer. The 1994 version of Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. Sec. 41-1604.09(I)(1) eliminated ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 6, 2023, a Michigan prisoner dismissed his complaint against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) after agreeing to accept $30,000 to settle claims that he suffered the “stigmatizing consequences” of being falsely classified as a sex offender.

In January 2018, Willie E. Harper, Jr. entered DOC custody, after pleading guilty to First Degree Home Invasion. As part of his plea agreement, prosecutors dropped a charge of Criminal Sexual Conduct. Yet when Harper arrived at Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center, a DOC “Classification Director” named Egbuchulam assigned him a “high assaultive risk,” apparently based in part on the dropped charge.

Worse, Harper was assigned to Muskegon Correctional Facility (MCF), site of the state Sex Offender Program (SOP), in which his classification meant he would be enrolled. Worse still, he would have to “admit” to sex offenses in order to complete SOP, and if he didn’t, his parole might be denied or delayed.

Harper objected and asked for an administrative hearing, but none was provided before he was transferred to MCF. There two mental health practitioners named Arkesteyn and Foster oversaw SOP. Harper named them in a grievance he filed and carried all ...

by David M. Reutter

On February 14, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court’s denial of qualified immunity (QI) to James LeBlanc, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC), in a lawsuit alleging he was liable for detaining prisoners beyond their sentence expiration – by incorrectly calculating their release dates, not by failing to notify the people charged with making release happen, which is the subject of another suit. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.??.]

Percy Taylor was sentenced in 1995 to 10 years and subsequently released on parole. He committed a new offense in July 2001, but he wasn’t arrested until February 20, 2002. Taylor was then convicted on October 15, 2003, and sentenced to life imprisonment as a habitual offender. His parole was also revoked. The life sentence was eventually reduced to 20 years with “credit for all time served.”

Taylor learned in 2017 that his full-term release date was March 16, 2021, and his good-time adjusted date was May 5, 2020. Taylor believed his release date should have been the end of October 2017, but no later than January 1, 2018, with proper good-time credit application. ...

by Keith Sanders

In February 2023, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) published a surprisingly positive assessment of restrictive housing and sex abuse in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) – the same month that BOP announced it was closing its deadliest lockup, the Special Management Unit (SMU) at the U.S. Penitentiary in Thomson, Illinois. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.16.]

The report satisfies one requirement of Executive Order 14074, which was issued by Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) on May 25, 2022 – on the second anniversary of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police – attempting to alter criminal justice and policing practices in the U.S.

Specifically, Biden’s order mandated that Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland determine whether DOJ and BOP had taken steps to ensure that restrictive housing in federal lockups is “used rarely, applied fairly, and subject to reasonable constraints.”

The new AG report first outlined BOP’s two main restrictive housing statuses: disciplinary segregation and administrative segregation. The former is defined as a “punitive housing status imposed as a sanction for violating a disciplinary rule,” while the latter refers to the use of restrictive housing for any non-punitive reason: investigative, protective, ...

by Benjamin Tschirhart

On March 16, 2023, Judge Sue Myerscough of the federal court for the Central District of Illinois sentenced former state prison guards Alex Banta, 31, and Todd Sheffler, 54, to 20 years in prison for the fatal beating of a handcuffed and helpless prisoner, Larry Earvin, at Western Illinois Correctional Center (WICC) in 2018.

A third co-defendant, former guard Willie Hedden, 44, cooperated in prosecution of the other two and received a shorter prison sentence of six years on March 22, 2023. All three were also ordered to serve five years of supervised release. Banta and Sheffler each must also pay a $500 special assessment. Hedden’s special assessment is $300. See: USA v. Sheffler, USDC (C.D.Ill.), Case No. 3:19-cr-30067.

“Forget what you learned at the academy. We do things differently here.” That’s what Banta recalled hearing on his first day of work at WICC in 2014, from Internal Affairs officers giving new recruits a lesson in reality. “Things will happen that you might need to ignore,” they reportedly continued. “If things happen with an inmate, aim for the body and not the face.”

Banta learned that lesson and put it into practice with Earvin, a 65-year-old ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 29, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit raised the high bar a prisoner must clear in civil rights litigation just a little bit higher. It held that a federal prisoner must exhaust both internal and external remedies before pursuing a claim in federal court under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (RA), 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq.

The Court’s opinion affirmed a district court’s finding that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, requires exhaustion of available remedies from both the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Administrative Remedy Program (ARP) and the Director for Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) of BOP’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice.

On February 28, 2019, while imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, Webster Williams developed a strong urge to urinate while walking to his work assignment. Williams suffered from several medical conditions, including kidney disease, and took a prescribed diuretic that caused excessive urination. But just as he headed to the restroom, an alarm triggered elsewhere in the prison.

BOP Unit Manager Willis responded by heading to the restroom and telling prisoners there to return to their cells. ...

by Chuck Sharman

Depending on who’s telling the story, Missouri prisoner Michael Tisius, 42, got either what he deserved or the last in a long line of bad breaks when he was executed on June 6, 2023, hours after the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) refused to hear his last appeal.

Tisius was 18 in 1999 when he tried to pawn a rented stereo and was locked up on a misdemeanor charge in the Randolph County Jail. There he met Roy Vance, then 27, who later recalled the teen was “a kid in a grown man’s body, and I knew I could manipulate him into what I wanted him to do.”

Following a plan they hatched, Tisius returned to the jail after his release with Vance’s then-27-year-old girlfriend, Traci Burlington, on June 22, 2000, under the guise of delivering cigarettes to the prisoner. The plan was to overpower guards to steal their cell keys. But instead Tisius shot and killed jail supervisor Leon Egley, 33, and guard Jason Acton, 36. However,
their keys didn’t open Vance’s cell.

Leaving him there, Tisius and Burlington fled and were captured the next day, after their car broke down 130 miles away in ...

by Keith Sanders 

On March 15, 2023, the Ohio Supreme Court partially granted a writ of mandamus brought by a state prisoner, ordering Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Pavan Parikh to produce copies of court documents related to a 2001 case. The Court also awarded $1,000 in statutory damages to the prisoner, Kimani E. Ware, because the Clerk failed to provide the record within 10 business days of Ware’s request.

That brought Ware’s total haul to at least $5,000 from suing officials in the state for denying his records requests. The Court earlier granted him $3,000 in December 2022 for a similar denial by the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. [See: PLN, June 2023, p.58.] He was also awarded $1,000 in March 2021 for records denied by the City of Akron. See: State ex rel. Ware v. City of Akron, 164 Ohio St. 3d 557 (2021).

In this case, Ware sent a public records request to the Hamilton County Clerk in February 2021, pursuant to R.C. 149.43 of Ohio’s Public Records Act, seeking oaths of office for three judges, along with a docket sheet, a writ of mandamus, Motion to Dismiss and judgment filed on July 27, 2001. ...

by Jo Ellen Nott

On April 14, 2023, U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola sentenced a federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) site supervisor in Miami to four months in prison followed by a year of supervised release, after accepting his guilty plea to one count of abusive sexual contact against a federal prisoner on house arrest, whose case he was assigned.

Benito Montes de Oca Cruz, 60, worked as a compliance monitor for Riverside House, a private facility operated under contract from BOP to provide custodial, supervisory and disciplinary control of federal prisoners on home confinement.

During a supervision visit on December 28, 2020, Montes de Oca Cruz engaged in sexual contact “with and by the victim.” More specifically he touched the prisoner’s breasts, genitals, and buttocks, made her get naked, then got on top of her. Montes de Oca Cruz finished the home visit by ordering the prisoner to masturbate him.

The prisoner had little choice but to submit to her monitor when he demanded sexual favors. But revenge is a dish best served cold, as French author Eugène Sue wrote in the 1800s. Montes de Oca Cruz most likely did not suspect his victim retained evidence of the ...

by Douglas Ankney

A review of court records by PLN has found repeated sanctions for discovery violations against private prison healthcare provider Wellpath in suits across the country blaming the firm’s dismal care for prisoner deaths – including four since 2020.

Washington – Benton County Jail

First, the firm was twice sanctioned in a suit alleging that the death of Marc Moreno at Washington’s Benton County Jail was caused by employees of a Wellpath corporate predecessor, Correctional Healthcare Companies (CHC).

Plaintiffs sought discovery in 2018 of documents related to prior complaints about healthcare at the jail, as well as audits of the jail’s medical services and electronically stored information (ESI). The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington granted a motion to compel discovery on April 9, 2019, giving Wellpath 14 days to comply. But months later, on January 8, 2020, the Court found CHC in contempt of its earlier order, and it levied a sanction for $7,290 in fees to pay Plaintiff’s attorneys from Budge & Heipt PLLC in Seattle and the Law Office of George Trejo in Yakima. CHC was also ordered to execute a search plan to locate the missing ESI, including emails of all ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 23, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held it was not error to deny qualified immunity (QI) to a New York prison official who “affirmatively decided” not to heed a federal court decision that it was unconstitutional to administratively impose post-release supervision (PRS) on a state prisoner. But it reversed an award for resulting damages, sending the case back to a district court to determine when exactly they should begin to be calculated.

The case follows another recently heard concerning administratively imposed PRS, which the Court first found unconstitutional in 2006, holding that PRS may be imposed only by a court, not by the state Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS). [See: PLN, Apr. 2010, p.46.] In March 2022, the federal court for the Southern District of New York refused a bid by DOCCS to decertify the class in suit then action brought by prisoners subjected to illegally imposed PRS. [See: PLN, Oct. 2022, p.50.]

This case involved the illegal imposition of PRS on state prisoner Shawn Michael Vincent. As PLN has previously reported, Vincent was sentenced in 2001 to five years imprisonment and released conditionally on ...

Alabama: A state Department of Corrections (DOC) guard was arrested on June 10, 2023, for allegedly smuggling drugs, including meth, to a prisoner at Kilby Correctional Facility, 1819 News reported. Charlie Townsend, 28, resigned from his position upon his arrest by the Law Enforcement Services Division. He was booked and released on $775,000 bail. Townsend allegedly brought in 88 grams of meth, 104 grams of fentanyl, 30 grams of marijuana and multiple Xanax pills, in addition to 208 grams of synthetic drugs. He planned to sell the stash for $1,500 but now faces charges of trafficking methamphetamine, use of position for personal gain, and second-degree promoting prison contraband. DOC’s Contraband Interdiction Program (CIP) was responsible for the arrest and the agency said more charges are possible.

Alaska: Kodiak Police Department Chief Tim Putney announced on May 11, 2023, that a guard at the city lockup was arrested and charged with third-degree sexual assault of a detainee, according to a report by Alaska Public Media.  Fredrick Fangonilo flirted with his victim, at that time the only female detainee at the jail, before requesting they “hook up.”  He released her to do cleaning duties but she ended up performing oral sex ...