by Kevin Bliss
When 55-year-old William Brown, a pretrial detainee from Brooklyn, suffered a medical emergency and died on December 15, 2021, it was the 16th death recorded for the year of someone incarcerated at Rikers Island, the sprawling and troubled New York City jail complex. Former Mayor Bill ...
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story on Rikers Island is one of dozens of articles we have run on the New York City jail over the past 32 years, and it shows the entrenched nature of police state power in America. Located in the heart of America’s biggest and ...
Experts fear “another potential tinderbox scenario” akin to the early days of the pandemic.
by Beth Schwartzapfel and Keri Blakinger
In the Philadelphia jail, the number of COVID-19 cases has tripled in the last two months. In Chicago’s lockup, infections have increased 11-fold in the same period. And in New York, city jails are struggling with a mushrooming 13-fold increase in less than a month.
From local lockups in California to prisons in Wisconsin to jails in Pennsylvania, COVID-19 is once again surging behind bars, posing a renewed threat to a high-risk population with spotty access to healthcare and little ability to distance.
At this point it’s unclear whether the surge in infections is due to the highly contagious omicron variant. Still, as caseloads across the country skyrocket and omicron becomes the dominant variant, experts worry the coronavirus is once again poised to sweep through jails and prisons. As in the world outside prison bars, many incarcerated people are struggling with pandemic fatigue. They’re also facing uncertain access to booster shots, widespread vaccine hesitancy and pandemic-driven staffing shortfalls that have created even harsher conditions.
As with previous iterations of the virus, everything about prisons and jails makes them a setup ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
The latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the omicron variant of the coronavirus is affecting prisons and jails across the U.S. Just how bad is it during these winter months?
Omicron Out West: Looking Surprisingly Good
California reported 2,350 active prisoner infections as of ...
by Douglas Ankney
A suit brought by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) alleging a price-fixing and kickback scheme by prison telephone service providers Global Tel*Link Corp. (now known as ViaPath), Securus Technologies, LLC, and 3Cinteractive Corp. (3Ci), survived a motion to dismiss by Defendants on September 30, 2021.
HRDC, ...
Incident Prompts State Legislative Hearing
by Jacob Barrett
On December 28, 2021, long-time PLN contributor and jailhouse lawyer Mark Wilson, 52, was released from a 120-day stint in solitary confinement at the Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI) prompted by a disciplinary report (DR) over a toy phone left on his ...
by David M. Reutter
After guards at the Lake County Jail (LCJ) in Illinois were sued for using excessive force by tasering an unresisting prisoner, the parties reached a settlement for $90,000 on June 30, 2021.
The prisoner, Christopher Davis, was held at LCJ while awaiting sentencing and housed in ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2022, page 24
On September 7, 2021, Inmate Magazine Service (IMS) owner Roy Snowden entered into a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) that prohibits him from “advertising, marketing, promoting, or offering for sale . . . any magazine subscriptions.” He also agreed to pay ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held on August 24, 2021, that two Michigan prison employees were not entitled to qualified immunity in a lawsuit alleging they were deliberately indifferent to a prisoner’s safety.
The case involved an October 15, 2015, incident in ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 6, 2021, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, filed an appeal in Maine state court after being denied access to public records. PLN had sought a copy of the settlement in a lawsuit brought by ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 23, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada awarded a former state prisoner $5,000 for physical pain and another $5,000 for mental anguish caused by an unprovoked beating he received from a guard while shackled at Southern Desert Correctional Center (SDCC) nearly ...
Marshals Service Also Eyeing Work-around
by Keith Sanders
On September 21, 2021, a little over a week before the federal government contract was set to expire at the Western Region Detention Facility (WRDF) in San Diego, the facility’s private operator, Florida-based GEO Group, announced it had secured a six-month extension ...
by Kevin Bliss
Class-action status was granted on May 25, 2021, to a federal lawsuit brought by a half-dozen prisoners held by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at its Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York, who said that when the power went out in January 2019 and ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Many issues surrounding criminal justice and law enforcement have been up for debate in recent years, yet the jury is back on the question of Tasers used on people in custody. The weapon has been banned by the biggest private prison corporations in America, as well as ...
by David M. Reutter
A Bloomberg Equality report published on January 11, 2022, gave little hope that the omicron variant behind a resurgence in the COVID-19 pandemic would spare immigrant detainees held for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with 1,254 people in isolation out of 22,142 in custody, a ...
by Matthew Clarke
On September 30, 2021, over 156 years after the end of the Civil War, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced the renaming of four prisons and a drug addiction treatment facility whose previous names honored racists, enslavers, and chattel slavery.
The Morrison Correctional Institution ...
by Keith Sanders
When Brant Daniel found himself in one of California’s most violent and corrupt prisons, the California State Prison (CSP) in Sacramento, known as New Folsom, he knew he was in trouble. Daniel, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, potentially faces the death penalty for the ...
Company Walks From Similar Case in Maine
by David M. Reutter
In November 2021, a year after a federal district court in California approved a $900,000 settlement in a class-action lawsuit alleging Securus Technologies, Inc. unlawfully recorded privileged calls between detainees and attorneys, the prison phone giant was still fighting ...
by Ed Lyon
On July 15, 2021, a settlement agreement and order was entered in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, putting an end to a four-year-old class action lawsuit against the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) and Department of Education (DOE) over the pitiful state of ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2022, page 39
On March 23, 2021, an agreement was executed paying $7,500 to settle three complaints a former pretrial detainee had brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging guards at Chester County Prison twice physically assaulted him when he was held ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2022, page 40
For at least the second time in four years the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) is making headlines for connections between its employees and white supremacist groups.
In July 2021, when sixteen members of a white supremacist gang were arrested—on a racketeering indictment that included charges of murder and kidnapping—prosecutors ...
But She Probably Won’t Collect It From the Defunct Provider
by Mark Wilson
On April 1, 2021, a Michigan federal court entered a $1 million default judgement for a woman who was impregnated by another patient while she was detained in a mental healthcare facility.
Felicia Quizel Morgan was a ...
by Casey J. Bastian
Transgender women imprisoned in the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) notched another victory in their legal battle for gender dysphoria treatment on December 13, 2021, when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois agreed to appoint a Special Monitor to ensure the state ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2022, page 44
The Lawrenceville Correctional Center (LCC), Virginia’s only remaining for-profit prison, now also has the dubious distinction of reporting seven prisoner deaths in 2021. One of those deaths has been confirmed as a homicide. One is suspected to be a fatal stabbing. Two are reported or suspected to be drug overdoses. ...
by Ed Lyon
The former District Attorney of Suffolk County, New York, Thomas Spota, and his former top assistant, Christopher McPartland, appeared before a sentencing judge in a federal courtroom on August 10, 2021. But instead of seeking the harshest sentences allowed by law as they had often done for ...
Another Guard Escapes Liability by Refusing to Participate
by Jacob Barrett and Matt Clarke
What happens to a prison guard accused of using excessive force who fails to show up for trial? A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit says the answer there is: ...
by Harold Hempstead
On September 27, 2021, a three-count indictment was filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, accusing a former guard at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville of violating a prisoner’s civil rights and obstructing justice by attempting to cover up his crime. The ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2022, page 48
On September 7, 2021, Judge David Hurd of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York ruled that a detainee should be granted injunctive relief and continue receiving methadone treatment for his opioid addiction while being held on a probation violation at the Jefferson County Jail (JCJ) ...
by Matt Clarke
After a trio of federal court rulings in 2021 regarding the labor of immigrant detainees, the first one remained the clearest victory so far for plaintiffs. That was a decision on January 20, 2021, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, holding that detainee ...
by Jacob Barrett
A recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit highlights the importance of producing expert testimony to refute assertions made by defendant health care providers that their inaction—especially when it results in the loss of an eye—is deliberately indifferent.
The Court’s decision on ...
by Douglas Ankney
On October 20, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court’s injunction ordering system-wide relief to protect detainees held for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from COVID-19. In so doing the Court continued a trend of reversing protective injunctions put ...
by Matt Clarke
As previously reported by PLN, federal appellate courts in the U.S. have taken a dim view of challenges to conditions of confinement that place prisoners at elevated risk from COVID-19.
Early in the pandemic, in May 2020, the Eleventh Circuit stayed an injunction issued by a federal ...
“I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”
by Ed Lyon
In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, County Executive Armond Budish (D) is now the last man standing in a decade-long county government and jail malfeasance and mismanagement scandal, after his appointed jail director, Ken Mills, was sentenced to a nine-month ...
by Matt Clarke
After a federal appeals court vacated a district court’s judgment in favor of Connecticut prison officials, they settled for $100,000 with a prisoner forced to exercise in full restraints for six months a decade ago.
On January 27, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 8, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused a request to rehear en banc a decision by a three-judge panel of the Court that three months earlier affirmed a grant of qualified immunity to a guard who monitored phone calls ...
But Highlights Negligence of DOC and Wexford Health Staff
by Dale Chappell
Hinting that “another area of law” may provide relief, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on August 9, 2021, affirmed summary judgment of a lawsuit filed against the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) and its ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 9, 2021, the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to a decision handed down by the state’s First District Court of Appeal on March 29, 2021, reinstating most charges that a trial court had dismissed against four prisoners involved in a riot ...
by David M. Reutter
In a ruling on March 30, 2021, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that prison officials were entitled to qualified immunity because it was not clearly established that a prisoner had a right to fair notice of a security detention hearing.
The Court’s opinion was ...
Seventh Circuit Also Rules Internal Investigation Does Not Toll Exhaustion
by Jacob Barrett
A June 16, 2021, ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit highlights the importance for prisoners who file grievances to make sure they are not so narrowly drawn as to preclude filing a ...
by Keith Sanders
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held on August 23, 2021, that a district court erred in dismissing a former federal prisoner’s intentional tort claims.
The former prisoner, Bryan Kerr Dickson, was incarcerated by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Federal Correctional Complex ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2022, page 62
On March 26, 2021, the U.S. DistrictCourt for the Western District of Kentucky granted summary judgment to a state prisoner who sued a former guard for assaulting him while he was compliant and restrained.
Kentucky State Penitentiary prisoner Michael Cooper filed suit pro se under 42 U.S.C. §1983, alleging former ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2022, page 62
Alabama: According to Birmingham Real-Time News, a kidnapper was recaptured after being erroneously released from jail in Jefferson County, Alabama, on December 17, 2021. The prisoner, Matthew Burke, 35, was apprehended during a traffic stop after being released from the Jefferson County Jail on Dec. 11 due to ...
