by Casey J. Bastian and Benjamin Tschirhart
Citing “bureaucratic incompetence,” as well as “flawed, confusing and insufficient” policies and procedures, a December 2022 report by a federal government watchdog attempted to answer the question: How did a notorious but elderly criminal end up transferred by the federal Bureau of Prisons ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
Calling conditions in Los Angeles County jails “abhorrent,” attorneys representing a group of incarcerated plaintiffs appeared before a federal judge on April 19, 2023, asking him to hold the county in contempt of a recently granted injunction. That was after three detainee deaths in just nine days ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
An October 2022 report by the Office of Correction and Law Enforcement (OCLE) in California’s Santa Clara County faults the county Sheriff’s Department (SCSD) for prematurely closing an investigation into the death of a mentally ill detainee during a transfer between county jails in August 2018. After ...
by Ben Tschirhart
On August 16, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the verdict of a federal jury, stripping $20,000 in damages awarded to a former federal prisoner in New York for mental and emotional injury suffered during confinement. In its decision, the Court made ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On September 29, 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed S.B. 1008 into law, barring government agencies in the state from collecting any part of the revenue from providing calls in prisons and jails. It also makes calls completely free at state prisons and juvenile detention facilities. ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In July 2019, Jonathan Lee Smith was a prisoner at the U.S. Penitentiary near Kentucky’s Big Sandy River, when he got in a fight with another prisoner and guards responded. That led to allegations that two of them used excessive force against the prisoner: Lt. Terry Melvin ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On April 5, 2022, a former jail guard in Buffalo pleaded guilty to a first-degree felony count of promoting prison contraband. Jason Stachowski, 48, had already resigned from the Erie County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) on February 17, 2022, after investigators acting on an anonymous tip discovered that ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On October 3, 2022, the State Appeals Board of Iowa heeded the advice of the state Attorney General’s office and unanimously rejected the claims of a group of state prisoners overdosed with COVID-19 vaccine.
When prisoners at Iowa State Penitentiary (ISP) were given vaccinations for COVID-19 in ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
Human resources manager Jeanette Carmack called them “really, really good guys”: nine prisoners from the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) who filled positions in the Public Works and Parks, Recreation and Golf departments at the city of Delta. That was until the Take TWO (Transitional Work Opportunity) ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
The drugs are coming in the mail. Or so they say. There’s no question that the drugs are coming into Missouri state prisons; an average of 34 prisoner overdoses a month is a trend that officials can’t afford to ignore. Their answer? Restrict the freedoms and infringe ...
