by David M. Reutter

A headline in the August 1965 edition of The Daily Oklahoman said that then-Sheriff Bob Turner of Oklahoma County “denies his jail’s ‘deplorable.’” A new jail was later built, but almost six decades later, a surprise inspection of the lockup in downtown Oklahoma City by the ...

By Paul Wright

Probably the biggest threat to the credibility of the American police state is that of wrongful convictions. American history has plenty of examples of prisoners being freed from lengthy prison sentences after being wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. But all things being equal those ...

On February 24, 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU-Wash.) filed suit accusing King County of violating a longstanding settlement agreement governing conditions at the county jail (KCJ) in Seattle. In 1998, ACLU-Wash. secured the settlement—known as the “Hammer Agreement”—to protect those incarcerated in KCJ from assault by ...

Charles Ryan, former Director of Arizona’s Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR), was sentenced on February 9, 2024, for an armed and drunken standoff with cops at his Tempe home in January 2022. However, there will be no jail time for Ryan, 73, even though cops said he waved ...

After a Pennsylvania newspaper’s investigation revealed that Dauphin County officials diverted money intended for prisoners earned from jail phone call kickbacks—spending it instead on staff perks and private contractors—state lawmakers began looking at ways to stop them.

On September 7, 2023, state House Rep. Chris Rabb (D-Philadelphia) introduced H.B. 1649, ...

On August 3, 2023, Rick Albers resigned as Sheriff of Colorado’s Clear Creek County, caving to pressure from county commissioners who accused him of failing to accept responsibility after his deputies fatally shot mentally ill motorist Christian Glass, 22, in June 2022.

The now-former sheriff announced in a Facebook post ...

As much as he works to maintain a highly trained and ethical staff, Sheriff Richard Roundtree of Georgia’s Richmond County finds the goal elusive. As of August 2023, 33 deputies had been arrested over the last three years, most of them guards at the county jail.

Roundtree has been the ...

A vote by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) on August 24, 2023, potentially makes thousands of prisoners eligible for reduced sentences who were sentenced as first-time offenders.

That’s because USSC members voted for retroactive application of an amendment to U.S. Sentencing guidelines that significantly reduced the offense level assigned to ...

Maurice Chammah

One morning in 2019, Kenyatta Emmanuel Hughes was released from Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York, and traveled 70 miles south to Carnegie Hall. That night, he stood before a crowd—flanked by a horn section, string quartet and backup singers—and sang words he’d written during his nearly ...

by Douglas Ankney

On August 18, 2023, an agreement was reached by Defendant officials with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) paying $10,936,250 to settle claims brought in a class-action lawsuit by prisoners and detainees who suffered for a week without electricity or heat at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) ...

Until December 1, 2023, Massachusetts prisoners and their families paid 12 cents per minute for phone calls, 14 cents in jails, though the first 10 minutes there every month were free. That added up to about $25 million annually—money that will now be saved, after the 2024 state budget took ...

In a stunning example of government overreach, a federal judge in Virginia handed an additional child pornography conviction to a prisoner at the Federal Correctional Complex in Petersburg on August 7, 2023—not for possessing images of a real child victim, but for drawing on pictures of children to depict them ...

On May 26, 2023, California’s Fifth Appellate District Court of Appeals largely agreed with a lower court’s ruling that barred the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and its healthcare arm, California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS), from paroling prisoners with serious medical needs only to “dump” them on ...

From New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, detainee David Mustiga, 43, was transported to the city’s Bellevue Hospital in February 2023, after a jail medical staffer told him he could trim his 300-pound weight with bariatric surgery. Mustiga thought he was going in for a pre-operative visit, only to ...

On July 28, 2023, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed a new law that eases restrictions on released prisoners still under state supervision. SB 423, which took effect in January 2024, modifies requirements to complete the final stages of a sentence, such as parole and mandatory supervised release.

Traditionally, these ...

Crystal Hinson’s journey back into society in April 2023 after release from the Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI) in Framingham exemplifies the biggest challenge often faced by women leaving prison: reuniting with their children.

Leaving MCI-Framingham, the state’s only women’s lockup, former prisoners encounter challenges in some ways worse than those ...

by David M. Reutter

On April 24, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed a lower court and granted qualified immunity (QI) to officials with Missouri’s Department of Corrections (DOC) in a state prisoner’s complaint accusing them of violating his due process rights with a false ...

On July 19, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) warned the director of Arizona’s Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR), Ryan Thornell, that the state prison system systemically discriminated against prisoners with vision-related disabilities.

The letter from the Disability Rights Section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division followed a ...

by David M. Reutter

On July 12, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania unsealed the settlement agreement between PrimeCare Medical and the Estate of Charles Freitag.

As PLN reported, Freitag, 57, committed suicide on August 25, 2018, at the Bucks County Correctional Facility (BCCF), one ...

As reported by The Appeal on September 25, 2023, a Georgia prisoner with Hepatitis C was forced to pass up placement in a work-release program in order to maintain his medical care, which was not available to him outside of prison. That effectively extended his incarceration another year before he ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 15, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a paraplegic Arkansas jail detainee’s deliberate indifference and conditions of confinement claims, while reviving claims under the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 126 § 12101 et. seq.

The ...

it would prefer not to run a new Hawaiian lockup, private prison giant CoreCivic is pushing instead to build and lease it—and the firm has a high-placed ally in state Budget and Finance Director Luis Salaveria: Until the end of 2022 he was a registered CoreCivic lobbyist.

In a meeting ...

With unemployment at historic lows, Ohio is preparing prisoners for jobs after release by offering training in technical skills. In December 2023, the first group of eight state prisoners completed one such program, after training the previous eight months as tower technicians.

They are part of a group of prisoners ...

Alabama killed condemned prisoner Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, on January 25, 2024, the first execution conducted using nitrogen hypoxia, a controversial method that suffocates victims with nitrogen gas and robs them of oxygen. The risks of the procedure are so unknown that the state Department of Corrections (DOC) required a ...

Facing charges including attempted murder, assault and robbery, Christopher Lee Pray, 39, was being evaluated for fitness to stand trial on August 30, 2023, when he commandeered an Oregon State Hospital (OSH) transport van returning him from a local medical center. Though he was recaptured in Portland around 36 hours later, ...

On February 15, 2024, the Tampa City Council approved a $14 million settlement with Robert DuBoise, 59, a man who spent 37 years wrongfully imprisoned for a 1983 rape and murder he didn’t commit thanks to the two leading causes of wrongful convictions: junk forensic science and false testimony from ...

by Douglas Ankney and Casey J. Bastian

A spate of jail deaths in California’s San Bernardino County dating back to 2017 has led to at least four legal settlements totaling $3,232,500. Two additional settlements netted another $35,000 for detainees allegedly beaten by guards. Meanwhile one of the most recent jail ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 7, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed summary judgment for Defendant Wisconsin prison officials in a prisoner’s lawsuit that alleged a due process violation when he was deprived of an impartial disciplinary hearing decision maker.

Terrance Prude helped a ...

In a lawsuit filed in federal court for the Middle District of Alabama on December 12, 2023, a group of state prisoners accused the state Board of Pardons and Paroles (BOPP) of denying them release so that the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) can continue to force them to work, ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 14, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida awarded a permanent injunction to state prisoner Owen D. Denson, a Muslim known as Abdul Hakeen Jahmal Naseer Shabazz, permitting him to “maintain an untrimmed beard” without being “subject to any disciplinary ...

On August 15, 2023, the Associate Warden for Programs at North Carolina’s Bertie Correctional Institution pleaded guilty to COVID-19 program fraud. The state Department of Adult Correction (DAC) confirmed that Sean Tracy Dillard, 55, admitted scamming the North Carolina Housing Opportunities and Prevention of Evictions (NC HOPE) program by submitting ...

by Matt Clarke

On August 1, 2023, a South Carolina court awarded the parent company of a local newspaper $37,500 in attorney fees and costs in a successful action to enforce the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), S.C. Code. § 30-4-30, against Charleston County Sheriff Kristin Graziano. The action successfully ...

A former guard at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta and four employees of its food service contractor, Summit Food Services (SFS), are among a half-dozen people accused of running a smuggling ring at the lockup.

Two were arrested on January 19, 2024. One of them, former guard Tiffany Davis, ...

by Matt Clarke

On November 22, 2023, the federal court for Southern District of New York granted a permanent injunction to a class of prisoners held by the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) who sued for relief from chronic pain they suffer. It replaced a preliminary injunction ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 24, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court’s orders granting California prisoners a pair of 12-month extensions to a Settlement Agreement reached in 2015 with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to end the practice ...

by Douglas Ankney

On September 14, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dealt a death blow to claims filed by the estate of a Texas jail detainee against the county that held him when he died. But all was not lost for the Estate of Savion ...

by Matt Clarke

On August 3, 2023, the Supreme Court of New Jersey held that a state prisoner’s parole could not be conditioned on his enrollment in a residential treatment program (RTP) when he is eligible for automatic release under the Earn Your Way Out (EYWO) Act, N.J.S.A. 30:4-123.55b to ...

by David M. Reutter

Back in June 2022, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) agreed to pay $40,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a prisoner repeatedly subjected to sexually assault by a guard at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Mariana, Florida. But the settlement with “Jane Doe” specifically ...

Texas prisoner Billy Chemirmir, 50, was serving two life without parole sentences for murder when cellmate Wyatt Ellis Busby killed him on September 19, 2023, during an altercation in their cell at the H.H. Coffield Unit in Tennessee Colony.

Chemirmir was convicted in 2018 of killing Lu Thi Harris, 80, ...

Douglas Ankney

According to an analysis from California’s Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD), reforms to the state’s felony-murder statutes had a dramatic effect by August 3, 2023. By then the agency had found sentence reductions granted to 602 state prisoners, since state lawmakers passed SB 1437 in 2018 ...

by Douglas Ankney

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit offered an Illinois state prisoner a hard lesson on July 27, 2023, affirming dismissal of his medical neglect claim against prison contractor Wexford Health Sources, Inc., for lack of evidence that expert testimony could have provided.

While playing ...

by Matt Clarke

On August 18, 2023, the federal court for the Western District of Texas granted defendant officials with the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) only partial dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a guard who lost her unborn child after being repeatedly denied permission to leave work ...

by David M. Reutter

A civil rights action filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on July 1, 2023, alleged that officials at Miami-Dade County’s Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center (TGKCC) were deliberately indifferent to the serious medical needs of pretrial detainee Randy Heath, whose death ...

A little over a year after becoming director of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Colette Peters faced questions on September 13, 2023, from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who hammered her about transparency, unfulfilled promises and missing answers to questions submitted a year ago—only then to signal their ...

On August 18, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for officials with the Nevada Department of Corrections (DOC) in a prisoner’s claim that it limited his access to courts. The Court’s ruling maintains a perfect score for prison officials facing such challenges across ...

The issue of illegal immigration is a contentious one. Though entering the country illegally is a violation of civil immigration law, migrant families and children who do so are most often treated like criminals and held in prison-like detention centers. Some are jails run by counties and cities leasing bed ...

by Matthew Clarke

On August 24, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed an $800,000 jury award against a contract doctor at an Arkansas jail, in a suit brought on behalf of a detainee who died of sepsis after her appendix ruptured while incarcerated.

Linda S. ...

On July 31, 2023, Minnesota Lawyer reported that Carlton County is constructing a new justice center that, as part of a growing trend, will include a detention center designed to be more humane and healthier for detainees.

The 117,000-square foot facility will house the sheriff’s department, courts, public defender offices ...

On September 26, 2023, the federal court for the Northern District of California found “clear and convincing evidence” that private for-profit prison and jail healthcare provider Wellpath, Inc., had violated the terms of a settlement agreement in a long-running case challenging its provision of healthcare to prisoners and detainees at ...

Over Labor Day weekend 2023, approximately 100 prisoners refused to return to their cells at Minnesota Correctional Facility (MCF) in Stillwater. They were protesting limited access to showers, phones and recreation, which the state Department of Corrections (DOC) blamed on a staff shortage.

The protest lasted seven hours on September ...

Matt Clarke

On August 25, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reinstated a Wisconsin prisoner’s claim that officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 126 § 12101, et seq., by refusing to make ...

On August 1, 2023, the federal court for the Eastern District of California approved a $1.7 million payment to settle lawsuits accusing the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) of fouling the environment around Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) with polluted stormwater discharges.

As part of the Prison Ecology ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 8, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed dismissal of a claim alleging two guards at Florida’s Polk County Jail (PCJ) interfered with Ricky Lee Christmas’ First Amendment right to communicate freely and confidentially with his attorneys by forcing him ...

of dying and medically enfeebled state prisoners were expected to be released when Illinois lawmakers passed the Joe Coleman Medical Release (JCMR) Act. But an investigative report released on August 30, 2023, found that two-thirds of prisoner requests had been denied in the first 18 months after the law was ...

After more than three decades on the lam, a Louisiana fugitive was back at Claiborne Parish Detention Center on September 19, 2023. As he was handed over to Bienville Parish Sheriff’s deputies at a Houston airport, video showed that Greg Lawson, 63, laughed.

It all started on April 24, 1990, ...

The former pastor at a Florida church who ran its diversion program for DUI arrestees was arrested on August 7, 2023, accused of coercing program members into a shoplifting ring that allegedly stole $1.4 million in merchandise from St. Petersburg-area Home Depot stores.

Investigators with the state Office of Agricultural ...

Utah-based Management & Training Corporation (MTC) announced on September 18, 2023, that it returned $5.125 million to the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC), after a state investigation found the private prison operator understaffed lockups operated for DOC.

As PLN reported, Mississippi Auditor Shad White submitted a civil demand in November ...

by David M. Reutter

In October 2023, an attorney representing the estate of an Ohio pretrial jail detainee who suffered a fatal seizure after her June 2018 incarceration said the parties had reached a $900,000 settlement agreement.

The announcement by R. Craig McLaughlin of Elk & Elk Co., LTD in ...

to an AP News report on August 20, 2023, tribal courts—the judicial system in Native American communities—increasingly offer holistic ‘healing to wellness’ (H2W) programs for criminal defendants. Similar to restorative justice initiatives, H2W programs provide substance abuse treatment and counseling during a term of incarceration, followed by support services such ...

After allegedly attacking one guard on September 5, 2023, Texas prisoner Kiheem Grant, 48, was brutally beaten by a group of 11 more, four of whom have now resigned from the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Seven more were disciplined. But no criminal charges have been filed. Grant remains ...

Just three of five seats remained filled on the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board after Chairman Richard L. Smothermon mailed his resignation on August 4, 2023, to Chief Justice M. John Kane IV of the state Supreme Court, which appointed Smothermon to the position in 2021. That followed the resignation ...

The state of Michigan has agreed to pay former prisoner Jeff Titus, 71, a total of $1.03 million for nearly 21 years he spent incarcerated for killing two hunters before his convictions were overturned. Titus, who consistently maintained his innocence, then became eligible for compensation from the state’s wrongful conviction ...

Alabama: On January 3, 2024, Blount County Sheriff Mark Moon fired and arrested a county jail guard for having oral sex with a detainee at the lockup. The Birmingham News reported that Garrett Law, 26, violated policy by wandering alone at night into the women’s area of the jail, for ...

Having recorded eight deaths in eight years, Virginia’s Arlington County Jail was likely desperate for good news when it reported in mid-November 2023 that detainees competed in the lockup’s first pickleball tournament.

The densely populated county adjacent to Washington, D.C., saw six jail deaths in as many years before cutting ...