by Tracy Velázquez, Melissa Neal and Spike Bradford*
The practice of requiring someone to pay money to a court in order to remain free while awaiting trial is known as “money bail.” While considerable attention has been focused on other aspects of our criminal justice system, money bail is a ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 13
The U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has become the world’s most expensive prison, at around 30 times the average cost to house prisoners in detention facilities in the United States.
Each year the Department of Defense “spends approximately ... $800,000 per detainee,” Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 14
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) agreed to pay $15,700 plus a boombox to settle a prisoner’s excessive use of force claim.
The lawsuit, filed by state prisoner Tracye B. Washington, stemmed from events that occurred at Salinas Valley State Prison. Washington’s problems began on April 10, 2004, ...
This month’s cover story on the bail bonding industry focuses on one of the lesser discussed but equally important economic players in the U.S. prison industrial complex. One of the main causes of jail overcrowding in many local jurisdictions tends not to be mundane things like crime but rather bail ...
by German Lopez, Cincinnati CityBeat
In 1997, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) opened a private prison in Youngstown, Ohio. The Northeast Ohio Correctional Center was to hold out-of-state prisoners with the promise of profits and tax revenue for Youngstown, a largely industrial city that had struggled economically since its steel ...
In June 2012, Prison Legal News began running a full-page flyer for the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, asking people to get involved and take action. Within weeks, letters from PLN readers began flooding the Federal Communications Commission, urging the FCC to cap the high costs of interstate prison phone ...
The Other Death Sentence: More than 100,000 Americans are destined to spend
their final years in prison. Can we afford it?
by James Ridgeway
William “Lefty” Gilday had been in prison 40 years when the dementia began to set in. At 82, he was already suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease ...
by Matt Clarke
A June 2011 report by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) reveals how for-profit private prison companies use political campaign donations, lobbyists and relationships with government officials to increase their profits by promoting policies that result in more people being incarcerated.
Even in tight budgetary times when many ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 29
Unhappy with where she lived, Laurie Ann Martinez, 36, a psychologist employed with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), decided to convince her husband that they needed to move to a safer neighborhood.
Rather than simply having a conversation with her spouse about her desire to relocate, Martinez, ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 30
The State of Maryland has agreed to pay more than $60,000 in attorney fees to settle a longstanding lawsuit brought by a prisoner who had requested public records pursuant to the state’s Public Information Act.
While incarcerated at the Western Correctional Institution (WCI) in May 2002, Richard L. Massey, Jr. ...
Academic researchers in Hawaii believe that exiling offenders to private prisons thousands of miles away on the U.S. mainland is misguided. And the Hawaii Attorney General’s office (AG) – the state’s Big Kahuna of law enforcement – actually agrees.
A federally-funded report released last year by the AG recommends that ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 32
In February 2012, a Florida U.S. District Court approved a consent decree that settled a civil rights action challenging a postcard-only mail policy at the Santa Rosa County Jail (SRCJ). As a result of the settlement, prisoners are no longer restricted to postcards and can send and receive an unlimited ...
A prisoner’s lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Corrections, claiming a latex allergy so severe that he’s suffered burns and respiratory problems when touched by glove-wearing guards, appeared to have been resolved in August 2012 when DOC officials testified that they no longer use latex in their facilities. But Albert ...
by Matt Clarke
In September 2011, the Texas State Auditor released a report on the Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) used by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). The audit, which covered the period from September 2009 through November 2010, found inaccuracies ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 34
Avoiding the uncertainty of litigation, in January 2012 the State of California settled a lawsuit it had initiated two years earlier against the prison guards’ union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA).
According to the suit, the CCPOA owed the state at least $4.5 million for wages and benefits ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 36
Officials in Baxter County, Arkansas agreed to pay $20,000 to settle a former prisoner’s lawsuit that alleged he was assaulted by another prisoner as a guard stood by and failed to intervene.
The suit was filed by Howard Johnson for events that occurred on January 30, 2007 at the Baxter ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 36
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s injunction barring the application of a Wisconsin law that prohibits certain types of medical care for transgender prisoners.
Several Wisconsin Department of Corrections (WDOC) prisoners have been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (GID), a psychiatric condition in which an individual ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 38
The City of New York has paid $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the mother of a juvenile offender who was beaten to death at the Robert N. Davoren Center (RNDC) on Rikers Island.
Christopher Robinson, 18, was killed in October 2008 by a gang of prisoners who ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 38
An Illinois prisoner has accepted $2,500 to settle a lawsuit against Ameritech, in which he accused the telecommunications company of fraudulently and intentionally disconnecting phone calls made by prisoners.
Prisoner Johnnie Flournoy filed suit in state court in 2002. He alleged fraud and negligence against Ameritech, a prison phone service ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 40
A Pennsylvania state prison guard was arrested on September 27, 2011 and charged with 89 counts of physically and sexually abusing prisoners at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Pittsburgh. Seven other guards were initially suspended, and three face related charges.
Before his arrest, Harry F. Nicoletti, Jr., 60, had worked at ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 40
On October 29, 2011, James M. Donis, 50, who had been major of the guards and the fourth-highest-ranking official at the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was fired from his $68,631-a-year position. He had worked at the jail since 1989.
A federal lawsuit filed on October 7, 2011 accused ...
“A Clean Version of Hell” – that’s what a 2007 segment of 60 Minutes called the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum facility in Florence, Colorado, or ADX, home to some of the world’s most notorious murderers and terrorists. But according to a grimly detailed lawsuit filed in Denver on June 18, ...
Two Vietnamese activists jailed for advocating democracy were among more than 10,000 prisoners granted amnesty by Vietnam’s government on August 25, 2011 in celebration of National Day. Nguyen Van Tinh and Tran Duc Thach had been sentenced in 2009 to three-and-a-half and three years in jail, respectively – Tinh for ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 44
In its desperation to obtain a supply of sodium thiopental, one of the three drugs commonly used to carry out executions by lethal injection, the State of Nebraska circumvented the manufacturer, which does not sell the drug for use in capital punishment, and instead bought it from an Indian middleman. ...
Over the past decade more than 20 states have created “special sentences” that require community supervision for sex offenders after their release, even if they expire their prison terms. But Iowa is currently reevaluating whether the millions in taxpayer dollars spent on such post-release supervision is justified in light of ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 46
The County of Los Angeles has agreed to pay $161,000 to settle a civil rights action that claimed a juvenile offender was seriously injured while held at the Los Angeles County Probation Department’s Central Juvenile Hall (CJH), due to improper supervision.
The plaintiff, 17-year-old Alyssia Frenzel, was detained on an ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2012, page 50
Indiana: On June 21, 2012, former state prison guard Benjamin Hankins, 37, was sentenced to 64 years for killing his estranged wife, Lisa, in June 2011. Hankins shot his wife three times when she dropped off their children at his home, then waited several minutes before calling the authorities. Hankins, ...
