The State of Washington has consistently failed to provide timely competency evaluations and restoration services to defendants facing criminal charges. Despite years of litigation, injunctions, consent decrees, and contempt fines ranging into the hundreds of millions, problems persist unabated. With mentally ill detainees languishing in jails untreated and unable to ...

When a New York appellate court tossed the conviction of Kaitlyn Conley, 32, in January 2025 for the fatal 2015 poisoning of her employer, veterinarian Mary Yoder, 60, the case returned to Oneida County District Attorney (DA) Todd Carville. He has yet to decide on retrying her. But curiously, the ...

On April 10, 2025, a jury in tiny Abingdon, Virginia (pop. 8,295) refused to assign liability to a half-dozen state Department of Corrections (DOC) employees accused in the death of mentally ill prisoner Charles Givens, 52, at Marion Correctional Treatment Center.

As PLN reported, five guards and the former warden ...

When government agencies—including corrections departments—enter contracts with private companies, they typically go through a competitive bidding process, beginning with a Request for Proposals (RFP). This ensures that taxpayers have access to information used to award government contracts, providing a level of fiscal responsibility. However, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC), ...

In an opinion filed on August 26, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed an appeal by the Sheriff of Louisiana’s Orleans Parish, who sought to halt construction of a mental health annex for detainees at the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) that was ordered under a ...

When Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March 2025 to send several hundred Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the tradeoff for Salvadoran Pres. Nayib Bukele was unclear. But on March 30, 2015, Dropsite News reported a clue: The deal included ...

On January 22, 2025, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) signed an agreement with a firm providing janitorial services at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, which promised to pay $1,029,175 in restitution to workers from whom managers extorted kickbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm, CleanTech, kicked ...