by Anthony W. Accurso

Spit hoods are a type of restraint used by prison and jail guards, as well as other law enforcement and custodial healthcare professionals, ostensibly to protect themselves from the bites and spit of detainees. The instructions are simple: place the hood over a detainee’s head to ...

by Paul Wright

Since our inception PLN has reported on the myriad means used to torture American prisoners. Torture and the wanton infliction pain have been an integral part of imprisonment since people first decided to start caging each other. In American history it has been a constant. As recently ...

On May 11, 2024, the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) rehired Ned McCormick, the former official in charge of a Rikers Island lockup where a massive guard pile-­on exactly one year earlier left a detainee quadriplegic. McCormick also got a salary raise to $212,187 for his new position ...

On April 1, 2024, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) signed SB 874 into law, effectively nullifying a state Supreme Court ruling issued the previous year that directed the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to remove hundreds of released sex offenders from lifetime GPS monitoring.

DOC began removing the monitors in ...

On July 1, 2024, the last of 13 people was sentenced in a drug-­smuggling scheme at Alabama’s Donaldson Correctional Facility that included five prisoners. The last of those, Otis “Big O” Bowers, 44, had been sentenced on April 4, 2024, to 235 months in federal prison, after he and fellow ...

As of October 3, 2024, guilty pleas had been entered for all but one of 17 people indicted for defrauding the federal government of COVID-­19 benefits. In all, the group received $341,205 in benefits to which they were not entitled, using personal information stolen from detainees incarcerated at the Southwest ...

Lenders to Aventiv Technologies, parent of prison telecom Securus Technologies, have given it until 2025 to sell or face bankruptcy. The company owes $1.3 billion in debt that it hasn’t been able to refinance, since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began preparations to slash call prices behind bars and cap ...

Five former Missouri prison guards were charged on June 28, 2024, in the death of prisoner Othel Moore, Jr. at Jefferson City Correctional Center in December 2023. Four guards were charged with second-­degree murder and a fifth with accessory to involuntary manslaughter.

Moore, 38, suffocated after guards Justin Leggins, 34, ...

On April 5, 2024, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said that 15 prisoners on California’s death row from the county would be resentenced to life without parole. Rosen utilized a state law empowering district attorneys to reassess sentences deemed unjust, citing his loss of faith in capital punishment’s ...

Virginia’s shifting rules on sentence credits for state prisoners continue to end up before the state Supreme Court, which has twice spanked state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) for failing to abide by the law. Several former prisoners who won release also filed a class-­action suit for damages in federal ...

On August 16, 2024, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) announced a ban on use of the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA). The controversial technology analyzes voice tremors that supposedly betray when a prisoner is lying. But it has been found scientifically unreliable—one expert said it was no ...

In a petition filed on September 30, 2024, the Republican Attorneys General of 14 states asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to block new rate caps on prison and jail calls that were issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the previous July.

As PLN reported, ...

On June 26, 2024, a Florida jury recommended the death penalty for former state prison guard Zephen Xaver, 27, who was convicted of the execution-­style murders of five women at a Sebring bank in 2019. The slayings occurred just two weeks after Xaver resigned from the state Department of Corrections ...

by David M. Reutter

On November 6, 2023, three of the “Fairbanks Four” accepted $5 million from the Alaska city for 18 years they spent wrongfully incarcerated for a teen’s 1997 murder before their exoneration in 2015. The case featured almost every hallmark of a wrongful conviction, including a confession ...

On August 24, 2024, Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader reported that prisoners at several state prisons took advantage of a software vulnerability in state-­issued Securus Technologies tablets to fraudulently create over $1 million in digital credits. The counterfeit funds were used to purchase email stamps, video visits and entertainment like games, music, ...

by David M. Reutter

Alabama’s Dallas County Jail (DCJ) has a “scheme” of releasing very ill detainees to avoid the cost of their medical care. That explosive allegation lay at the heart of a lawsuit filed on April 4, 2024, by the family of Mary Strong, who died just days ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 5, 2024, the City of New York agreed to pay $28.75 million to settle a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint filed by Madeline Feliciano, whose grandson Nicholas Feliciano hanged himself in November 2019 at the city’s Rikers Island jail complex—after which city Department of Correction (DOC) ...

by David M. Reutter

On April 11, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found error in a lower court’s judgment for Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) officials in a lawsuit accusing them of infringing on prisoner Eric Demond Lozano’s ability to practice his religion.

As ...

Guilty pleas from two former guards at West Virginia’s Southern Regional Jail were filed on August 8, 2024, for their roles in the fatal beating of detainee Quantez Burks, 27, in May 2022. As PLN reported, two other former guards, Andrew Fleshman, 21, and Steven Nicholas Wimmer, 24, pleaded guilty ...

On May 31, 2024, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed S.B. 72 into law, making his the first state in the U.S. to require jails to operate in-­person polling stations for eligible detainees to cast a vote.

Some 6,000 people are held in the state’s jails on any given day, ...

by Douglas Ankney

On May 3, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to Los Angeles County Jail nurse Trieste Turner in a civil rights claim brought after she cleared a detainee for release and he committed suicide. Turner argued against ...

On July 15, 2024, the federal court for the Central District of California removed medical care from continued monitoring of conditions at San Bernardino County jails under a 2018 consent decree. The move comes less than three months after the most recent death of a mentally ill detainee, whose family ...

by Dana McKinney White and Lisa Haber-Thomson

Architects and designers must reckon with their role in the past and future of mass incarceration.

The U.S. carceral landscape is a loose network of sites of detention that includes jails and prisons, along with detention centers, prison camps, and juvenile detention centers. ...

Under the terms of a settlement announced in the bankruptcy of former prison medical contractor Corizon Health on July 17, 2024, the firm’s creditors will receive almost 39% more than the amount they originally negotiated. However, that brings the total settlement to just $75 million, far too little to satisfy ...

In a desperate bid to get new heat-­related workplace safety rules adopted before summer arrived, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) agreed on April 18, 2024, to drop prisons and jails from the measure.

Two temperature thresholds trigger successive provisions of the proposed regulations. After a workplace reaches ...

On March 14, 2024, the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), a Massachusetts-­based non-­profit known for its data-­driven research on criminal justice, published its 10th annual report detailing how many people are locked up in the U.S. among all the myriad ways they can be incarcerated. As PPI noted, “to end mass ...

When Florida lawmakers approved a $116.5 billion annual state budget on March 8, 2024, it included $3.5 million for a new Alachua County water pipeline that is critical to the health and safety of state prisoners confined at Lowell Correctional Institution and the Florida Women’s Reception Center.

After prisoner Paula ...

Hurricane Helene left a trail of disaster across six states after making landfall in Florida on September 26, 2024. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton reached Florida’s Gulf Coast on October 9, 2024, causing more destruction across the state. Close to three million Floridians had lost power as of ...

On May 17, 2024, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender (OPD) filed 11 habeas petitions for detainees awaiting trial at the state’s Reception Diagnostic and Classification Center in Baltimore after they reported raw sewage overflowing from unflushable toilets and sinks dispensing brown water, forcing them to live in cells ...

On March 25, 2024, Virginia prisoner Steven Allen Riddick, 50, agreed to accepted $23,138 from the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to settle claims made in several civil rights cases filed in federal court for the Western District of Virginia. Under the settlement, DOC also agreed to make good-­faith efforts ...

South Carolina state prisoner Javarius G. Teague, 32, will head to federal prison when he leaves Evans Correctional Institution in 2029; the federal court for the District of South Carolina sentenced him on May 8, 2024, to spend another 33 months behind bars for extorting money from U.S. military personnel ...

by David M. Reutter

On September 30, 2024, the federal court for the District of Oregon sanctioned private prison and jail medical contractor Wellpath, LLC for destroying evidence in a suit filed over a detainee death at the Josephine County Jail (JCJ). It was the second time in just over ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

On May 6, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld a district court’s denial of qualified immunity (QI) to a Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) prison guard who allegedly repeatedly assaulted a compliant and restrained prisoner.

Corey Fisherman is incarcerated at DOC’s ...

On May 31, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s order granting a class-­action habeas corpus petition and corresponding injunction, directing the state of Oregon to provide attorneys for indigent pretrial detainees within seven days of their initial appearance on criminal charges. Otherwise, ...

by David M. Reutter

Sheriff Chad K. Nichols (R) of Georgia’s Rabun County was sentenced on September 13, 2024, to five years of probation and fined $1,000 after pleading guilty to violation of oath by a public officer. That followed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the ...

On April 2, 2024, the Washington Court of Appeals, Division II, reversed a decision by the state’s Indeterminate Sentence Review Board (ISRB) that relied only on hearsay evidence to sustain a criminal charge underlying a parole violation.

In 2020, ISRB released Lorne Blaylock from prison and transferred him to community ...

Two Illinois prisoners staged hunger strikes in June 2024 to protest the state’s foot-­dragging in granting sentence credits provided a year earlier under a new law. With promises from Robinson Correctional Facility officials to expedite review of their cases, Bernard “Benny” Lopez ended a 24-­hour hunger strike on June 10, ...

On October 8, 2024, federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) spokesman Ben O’Cone announced a change to the TRULINCS messaging system used by prisoners: Starting then, no more than 10 prisoners can be addressed in any single message. The move put an end to what had been the functional equivalent to ...

On June 6, 2024, Arizona prisoner Edmund Powers settled a claim against three state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR) guards for $850. Though relatively small, it was Powers’ third such settlement since 2020, bringing his total payout to $92,850.

The most recent case involved injuries Powers sustained from ...

by Douglas Ankney

As PLN readers know, medical care in America’s prisons and jails is horrific even by the low standard courts have set to determine what is constitutionally sufficient. In yet another case, the State of Maryland and Wexford Health Sources, the privately contracted medical provider for its Department ...

by Douglas Ankney

On July 26, 2024, the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) was sued by the surviving parents of murdered state prisoner Joseph Walter Brown, 36, who was killed in July 2022 by fellow prisoner Demarquis Antonio Glenn in their shared cell at Macon State Prison (MSP). An earlier ...

In a May 2024 interview about the “Scared Straight” program he founded 50 years earlier, former New Jersey prison warden Bob Hatrak, 83, dismissed research showing that the program actually has a counterproductive effect on juvenile participants, insisting he “would do it again.”

Sidelined by an accident from a dreamed-­of ...

by Matt Clarke

After granting a rare stay of execution minutes before a condemned Texas prisoner’s date with death, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) agreed on October 4, 2024, to hear his challenge to a state law that prevents him from seeking DNA testing to reduce his ...

On August 2, 2024, Florida-­based Armor Health Management LLC petitioned the Miami-­Dade County Circuit Court to liquidate its assets to Enhanced Management Services (EMS), as part of a global settlement with creditors. That will free EMS and its owner, Dr. Jose Jesus Armas, of the bulk of debt owed by ...

The Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC) in Tacoma, Washington, owned by private prison giant The GEO Group, Inc., is the sole detention facility in the state of Washington for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2023, state lawmakers targeted it with House Bill 1470, imposing numerous requirements on private ...

Miami-­based Armor Correctional Health had virtually no experience in providing medical care to prisoners when Dr. Jose Jesus Armas started the firm in 2004, but over the next few years it amassed millions of dollars in contracts with county jails through apparent political maneuvers and promises of huge financial savings, ...

by Douglas Ankney

Over seven years after California prisoner David Scott Harrison sued the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the prison system removed some, though not all, of the gender-­based personal property restrictions that he challenged. In a letter to PLN on May 23, 2024, he also shared ...

On September 25, 2024, North Carolina’s Department of Adult Correction (DAC) settled a federal civil rights suit filed by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) over censorship of PLN and HRDC’s other monthly publication, Criminal Legal News (CLN). The agreement obligates DAC to change policies related to incoming publications, deliver ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

On April 24, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed dismissal of a former federal prisoner’s Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) claim for an injury allegedly caused by federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guards. A lower court had dismissed the claim, finding ...

On July 12, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved a $1.5 million settlement in a case involving the suicide of detainee Areon Marion in Chicago’s Cook County Jail. The order directed how the funds should be distributed among surviving family members and the attorneys ...

On February 29, 2024, a jury in federal court for the Western District of Pennsylvania awarded $500 to a state prisoner for his excessive force claim against a state Department of Corrections (DOC) guard. Along the way to that small victory for Stefon Johnson, the district court provided important clarification ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

Since reporting a federal Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation was opened in September 2024 into sexual abuse of prisoners at two California lockups, PLN has obtained documentation of $4 million in settlement payouts to five victims of a former guard at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) ...

On April 11, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed a grant of qualified immunity (QI) to Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) guards at the State Correctional Institution in Benner, who doused an asthmatic prisoner with pepper spray while performing a “cell extraction” in his restricted ...

Alabama: Former state Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Henry Guice, Jr., 46, was sentenced to 75 months in federal prison on September 9, 2024, for his role in a drug smuggling conspiracy at Staton Correctional Facility. The Birmingham News reported that a fellow guard was inspecting the prison parking lot ...