by Kevin Bliss and Jo Ellen Nott
On February 5, 2022, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a nine-year sentence had been handed down to the last of four Alabama prison guards convicted of beating state prisoners they suspected of smuggling contraband at Elmore Correctional Facility (ECF).
Three days ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
When Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (R) signed legislation in October 2021 to take $400 million of the state’s pandemic relief funds from the American Rescue Plan to build a trio of massive prisons, it was an attempt to assuage federal officials who have been investigating the ...
by Paul Wright
This month’s cover story is part of our ongoing coverage from the killing fields of Southern prisons, where Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida are vying for the title of deadliest prison system in America. The political and moral bankruptcy of the legislative and executive branches in ...
by Keith Sanders
The U.S. Supreme Court lowered the bar for a pre-trial detainee to sustain a civil rights claim over an alleged use of excessive force in Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015), saying it is necessary to show only that the alleged injury was objectively unreasonable, ...
by Keith Sanders
In 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment, New York state had been executing people since 1608. The total number of individuals put to death by the state in that period is staggering: 1,130. Yet as appallingly high as that number may be, more people ...
Reviewed by Michael B. Mushlin, Professor of Law, Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University
The PLRA Handbook is an essential indispensable resource for anyone who is planning to file a prisoners’ rights case in federal court. The subject of the book, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”), now ...
by Keith Sanders
After a trial on November 3, 2021, a Missouri court ruled in favor of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) in a challenge to its decision replacing its private healthcare contractor Corizon with a competitor, Centurion Health.
At stake was a $1.4 billion seven-year contract to provide ...
by Ashleigh Dye
On January 14, 2022, Texas 138th District Court Judge Gabriela Garcia set an execution date for Melissa Lucio: April 27, 2022. That is when the 53-year-old will face death for her 2008 conviction of murdering her two-year-old daughter, a charge she still denies. It will also be ...
by Tyler Hicks
When Jerome Van Zandt was booked into Harris County Jail in November 2020, he was optimistic. “There’s no way I’ll be here more than three months,” he told himself. A Navy veteran with 20 years of service, he had been caught with less than a gram of ...
by Matt Clarke
“The Texas Rangers are investigating.”
The words bring all the swagger of the Lonestar State’s frontier-justice history to reports of crime, lending a wild-west ring to them even today, when the state has 29 million residents, 85% of whom live in urban areas. But just how serious ...
by Derek Gilna
Louisiana State Prison (LSP) in Angola, Louisiana, was found “deliberately indifferent” to the Eighth Amendment rights of its nearly 6,400 prisoners to receive competent medical care, according to an opinion issued by a federal district court judge, which she refused to reconsider in a ruling handed down ...
by Mark Wilson
On December 22, 2021, a Florida federal court approved the settlement of a class-action lawsuit challenging conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic in three U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities in Florida. Under the terms of the agreement, vaccinations will be offered to all detainees at ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 20, 2021, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts reversed a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a prisoner challenging frequent food substitutions at Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Norfolk, as well as the lack of a food substitution policy in the Massachusetts prison system. ...
Brings total the firm is ordered to pay to $37.6 million
by Matt Clarke
On December 14, 2021, a Washington federal court issued additional orders in lawsuits against Florida-based private prison operator GEO Group for failing to pay immigration detainees the state-mandated minimum wage, adding over $14.3 million to the ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Prison phone services provider Global*Tel Link (GTL) agreed to a settle a long-running class-action on December 20, 2021, with changes to company policies and up to $67 million to compensate customers for seizing funds in any account that remained inactive for 90 days. Though the amount ...
Loaded on
April 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2022, page 34
On February 15, 2022, an on-going staffing crisis at Florida’s Citrus County Detention Facility (CCDF) prompted county officials to start fining its privately contracted operator, Tennessee-based CoreCivic, $2,500 a day for running the prison short-staffed. Three days later, on February 18, 2022, County Administrator Randy Oliver informed county commissioners that ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 24, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that private companies providing health care for prisoners are not entitled to assert qualified immunity or appeal its denial.
The underlying case was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 7, 2021, the Connecticut Department of Corrections (DOC) paid $1.65 million to settle a lawsuit alleging medical personnel failed to diagnose and treat a 19-year-old state prisoner who died of lupus.
The settlement resolves a lawsuit brought by the estate of Karon Nealy, Jr. ...
by Chuck Sharman
A report released on January 31, 2022, by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) shows the financial burden that falls disproportionately on poor families as a result of interaction with the private companies in the criminal justice system.
CFPB was created in the wake of the ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On February 24, 2022, a former sheriff’s deputy in Harrison County, Texas, was sentenced for savagely beating a restrained detainee at the county jail, an assault which had already cost the County a $325,000 settlement the year before. For pleading guilty to “official oppression” in the ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
Before an armed standoff with Tempe police on January 6, 2022, former Arizona prisons chief Charles Ryan had been home drinking tequila. A lot of tequila. “Half a large bottle,” according to his wife. Then she heard a gunshot and found Ryan in the bathroom, bloodied ...
by Keith Sanders
Individuals leaving prison often face obstacles securing basic necessities like employment, housing, and health care. This can make reintegration into society exceedingly difficult. The restrictions and limited opportunities that ex-prisoners face often contribute to higher recidivism rates, especially the inability to find gainful employment.
Now Colorado will ...
by Jacob Barrett
On October 6, 2021, San Diego County agreed to a $2,950,000 settlement in a wrongful death suit filed by the wife of Heron Moriarty, a mentally ill detainee at the county jail who suffocated himself there in 2016. Not only was he one of more than 200 ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On June 2, 2021, a federal jury in New York City ruled in favor of a prisoner at the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex, deciding the city and the jail’s warden were liable for injuries he suffered there in a 2009 gang attack and awarding ...
by Keith Sanders
On May 26, 2021, the Supreme Court of California filed en banc a new administrative order changing the Court’s published Internal Operating Practices and Procedures regarding the confidentiality of clemency records. The Court had previously treated such records as confidential. Now clemency records that are forwarded to ...
by Chuck Sharman
In a filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on January 5, 2022, Florida-based GEO Group—the nation’s largest private prison operator—laid bare its strategy to keep federal dollars flowing into the company’s coffers, despite a Presidential Executive Order that bars the U.S. Department of Justice ...
by David M. Reutter
A settlement agreement setting out guidelines for care that the Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) will provide to prisoners with Hepatitis-C was finalized on May 14, 2021, calling for enhanced screening of incoming prisoners and altering policies and procedures governing who can receive Direct-Acting Antiviral (DAA) ...
by Jayson Hawkins
As of June 29, 2021, the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) has changed its policy of housing prisoners according to their gender assignment at birth, regardless of whether they are transgendered or of any non-binary sexual orientation. The policy change is part of an agreement settling ...
by Kevin Bliss
On October 5, 2021, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California statute, Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), barring private companies from entering new contracts with any government—including the federal government—to operate jails, prisons, or detention centers in ...
by Matt Clarke
In July 2021, the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) settled state and federal lawsuits brought by a prisoner kept in solitary confinement for 22 months without seeing any evidence of a disciplinary violation. DOC agreed to reform its solitary confinement policies, including a 30-day cap on stays ...
by Matt Clarke
Medical parole has always been rare, but new policies in California and Massachusetts are causing medical parolees to be reincarcerated and further limiting those eligible for medical parole.
California has approved 210 medical paroles since 2014, far more than most other states. But its new policy announced ...
by Chuck Sharman
On October 28, 2021, a Colorado man dismissed his suit against Weld County after agreeing to accept a $325,000 settlement for injuries allegedly inflicted on him by guards at the county jail, where he was held as a pre-trial detainee. The settlement also includes an agreement by ...
by David M. Reutter
In a ruling on September 27, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that a “mixed dismissal” of a Pennsylvania prisoner’s civil rights action does not count as a strike under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 that would prevent him ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 3, 2021, a federal court in Illinois granted a state prisoner’s motion for sanctions against Wexford Health Sources for responding to a specific discovery request by providing 272,000 pages of documents it had converted into a nearly useless format.
With the assistance of Oakbrook attorney ...
by Jayson Hawkins
On July 21, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the ruling of a lower court in Colorado that denied a motion by state prison officials to dismiss a prisoner’s civil rights claim on the grounds that they enjoyed qualified immunity (QI).
Officials ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 13, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California awarded a former Santa Clara County pretrial detainee $11,000 in damages for injuries received when he was assaulted by a guard at the county jail. The Court then charged the defendant another $188,340.08 ...
by Megha Ram, Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center
A fight over the correct standard for jail conditions cases is playing out in courts across the country. This is an important fight with far-reaching consequences for the constitutional rights of pretrial detainees.
It stems from the Supreme Court’s decision in ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 26, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court’s decision not to expand a preliminary injunction issued on behalf of California jail detainees to include a requirement of access to outdoor recreation and direct sunlight for convicted prisoners.
The ...
Loaded on
April 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2022, page 58
On July 21, 2021, the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) settled a suit filed by a state prisoner whose private text message to his intimate partner was flagged for violating prison policy because it contained the word ‘cum.’
After the prisoner, Liam O’Neil-Barrett, sent the message from Oregon State Correctional ...
by Kevin Bliss
A Pennsylvania prisoner’s long and contentious history with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) came to a bitter end on September 29, 2021, with an agreement by the state to pay $100,000 to his brother after the prisoner hanged himself.
The prisoner, Joel Snider, 44, was found ...
by Jayson Hawkins
In recent years, courts have begun to recognize that extended periods of solitary confinement are detrimental to the physical and mental health of prisoners. While some prisoners are placed in segregation for disciplinary reasons, those sentenced to death are often housed in solitary for decades while awaiting ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 2, 2021, a federal district court in New York approved an agreement by Montgomery County to pay $1 million to resolve a federal class-action lawsuit alleging it provided inadequate nutrition to people held at its jail. The agreement includes an additional $317,083.22 in fees ...
Loaded on
April 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2022, page 62
Arizona: After two escaped prisoners were recaptured and returned to the Arizona State Prison in Florence on January 31, 2021, Phoenix station KNXV reported that at least part of the blame for their escape was assigned to short-staffing of guards at the state Department of Corrections (DOC). Carlos Garcia, ...
