The State of Washington has consistently failed to provide timely competency evaluations and restoration services to defendants facing criminal charges. Despite years of litigation, injunctions, consent decrees, and contempt fines ranging into the hundreds of millions, problems persist unabated. With mentally ill detainees languishing in jails untreated and unable to ...

When government agencies—including corrections departments—enter contracts with private companies, they typically go through a competitive bidding process, beginning with a Request for Proposals (RFP). This ensures that taxpayers have access to information used to award government contracts, providing a level of fiscal responsibility. However, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC), ...

In an opinion filed on August 26, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed an appeal by the Sheriff of Louisiana’s Orleans Parish, who sought to halt construction of a mental health annex for detainees at the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) that was ordered under a ...

When Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March 2025 to send several hundred Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the tradeoff for Salvadoran Pres. Nayib Bukele was unclear. But on March 30, 2015, Dropsite News reported a clue: The deal included ...

On January 22, 2025, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) signed an agreement with a firm providing janitorial services at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, which promised to pay $1,029,175 in restitution to workers from whom managers extorted kickbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm, CleanTech, kicked ...

Three Arizona prisoners were murdered at the state prison complex in Tucson on April 4, 2025, by fellow prisoner Ricky Wassenaar, 61. He claimed to have a fourth victim, too, who died in November 2024, but state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry (DCRR) officials disputed that.

As PLN reported, ...

Joining other western European nations, Italy began permitting prisoners to have conjugal visits on April 18, 2025. Officials did not identify the prisoner making inaugural use of the newly constructed “sex room” at his prison in the Umbrian town of Terni.

The move follows a January 2024 ruling by the ...