California: A suit filed in state Superior Court for San Francisco County on December 1, 2025, accuses the New York Post and Los Angeles Times of defaming Nima Momeni, 41, while he was detained in the County’s San Bruno jail before his December 2024 murder trial. According to Peta Pixel, Momeni’s pro se suit also names photographer Paul Kuroda, who snapped the pictures showing the detainee apparently smiling, before his second-­degree murder conviction for killing CashApp founder Bob Lee the previous April. Momeni’s legal team argued that the images necessitated a change of venue, which the trial court refused. The suit seeks $17 million in compensatory damages for alleged losses, including diminished earning capacity.

California: KUSI in San Diego reported that a federal jury convicted San Diego County jail guard Jeremiah M. Flores, 45, on December 12, 2025, of violating a pretrial detainee’s civil rights by using excessive force and falsifying records. The trial was Flores’ second in the case; a previous jury deadlocked in November. The conviction stems from an August 2024 incident in which Flores shoved the shackled 57-­year-­old victim, identified as “J.P.,” head-­first into a holding cell wall, resulting in a spinal injury that required months of hospitalization. Flores also provided no medical aid and falsely claimed “no force was used” in his report. He faces up to 30 years in prison at his April 2026 sentencing hearing.

Connecticut: The Stamford Advocate reported that state prisoner Jaishon Bellamy, 27, died by apparent suicide at MacDougall-­Walker Correctional Institution on December 4, 2025, three days after he allegedly assaulted an unnamed guard. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents state Department of Corrections (DOC) guards, said that Bellamy attempted to sexually assault the guard before violently choking and punching her in an area outside surveillance cameras. But when Correction Ombudsman DeVaughn Ward met with Bellamy on the day before he died, the prisoner denied any attempted sexual assault and said that the scuffle was provoked by a verbal exchange. Ward said that the death raised “substantial questions regarding DOC policies, supervision, and mental health and safety practices.”

Georgia: Julius Deshawn Williams Jr., 29, a DOC cadet training to become a guard at Dooly State Prison, pleaded guilty on December 1, 2025, to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, according to WALB in Albany. Williams faces a maximum life sentence in federal prison without parole. He was apprehended on June 24, 2024, during a routine security check by fellow state DOC guards, who found four packages of 100% pure methamphetamine concealed in his pants and four more packages totaling 640 grams of the drug—plus a pistol—in his vehicle parked in the employee lot. Williams admitted planning to smuggle the loot to a prisoner.

Georgia: The U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Northern District of Georgia said that former Clayton County Jail guard Jabin Bethea, 29, pleaded guilty on December 10, 2025, to depriving an unnamed pretrial detainee of his civil rights by using excessive force. The charges stem from a May 2024 incident when Bethea was escorting the detainee, who asked, “Where am I going?” That apparently sparked an argument, during which Bethea slammed the detainee’s head into a wall and threw him to the floor. Though the detainee complied when ordered to put his hands behind his back, surveillance video showed that Bethea fired his Taser at least six times without justification, causing bodily injury. He is scheduled for sentencing in March 2026.

Indiana: When tipped-­off state DOC investigators reviewed footage from the body-­worn camera (BWC) of Pendleton Correctional Facility guard Ashley S. Smith, 38, they found her discussing a drug drop with prisoner Jaconiah Fields, WOWO in Fort Wayne reported. Shaking down his cell, they also found a condom stuffed with 10 Suboxone strips hidden inside a Kraft cheese container. Smith was arrested on December 11, 2025, after admitting to trafficking drugs into the prison and maintaining an inappropriate relationship with Fields. She was charged with Level 5 felonies for dealing a controlled substance in a penal facility and trafficking with a prisoner, along with marijuana dealing and official misconduct, and released on a $1,000 bond.

Israel: A report from Physicians for Human Rights-­Israel (PHRI) on November 17, 2025, documented nearly 100 deaths of Palestinians taken into Israeli custody since the Gaza war began in 2023—more than three times the 30 such deaths tallied in the previous decade. AP News said that autopsy reports show patterns of physical abuse and neglect, and one detainee who died within a week of capture showed signs of trauma consistent with a brain bleed. Another unnamed victim, 17, died from starvation. Testimonies from an unnamed former guard and a nurse at the notorious Sde Teiman military prison described routine beatings, as well as shackling wounds that resulted in amputations. The guard called the prison a “graveyard.” PHRI Director Naji Abbas said that the death toll “reveals a system that has lost all moral and professional restraint.” The Israeli Defense Forces disputed the high death count.

Italy: Euronews reported that Taulant Toma, 41, an Albanian national serving a sentence until 2048 for robbery, escaped from Milan’s maximum security Opera prison over the weekend of December 6-­7, 2025. It was his fourth successful escape from Italian and Belgian prisons since 2009. Toma reportedly sawed through iron bars and used knotted sheets to descend from his cell, taking advantage of a guard shift change. Police launched a nationwide manhunt, fearing he may flee the country. Investigators were reviewing surveillance footage for evidence of outside assistance. The escape was blamed in part on prison overcrowding and guard shortages. Opera prison held 1,338 prisoners, 153% of its designed capacity for 918, with only 533 of 811 guards that were needed, according to an official with the union representing guards..

Kansas: Following a traffic stop on November 30, 2025, Sedgwick County Jail guard Kadin Scritchfield, 20, was arrested and held on a felony warrant for a “revenge porn” incident in December 2024. The JC Post reported that Scritchfield was charged in St. Charles County, Missouri, with nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images and first-­degree harassment. The Office of Sedgewick County Sheriff Jeff Easter said it was unaware of the warrant, which was issued on October 1, 2025, a month after Scritchfield began his employment in September. The guard’s failure to disclose it was cited as grounds for his termination. He was being held without bond pending extradition to Missouri.

Kentucky: According to the Lexington Herald-­Leader, former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard Lt. Michael J. Childers pleaded guilty on December 1, 2025, to falsifying records after a 2021 assault on a prisoner at the U.S. Penitentiary in Big Sandy. The prisoner, identified as “J.B.,” was seeking protective custody when Childers admitted that he, along with fellow guard Lts. Terry Melvin and Kevin Pearce Jr. and two others, punched and tackled the prisoner, though he was not resisting. Childers then falsely reported that J.B. assaulted him to obstruct any further investigation. Melvin previously pleaded guilty, confirming that assaults on prisoners were a “commonplace occurrence,” as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2025, p.13.] His sentencing is scheduled for April 2026. Pearce was sentenced to five and half years for his role in three other prisoner assaults, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.12.]

Maine: In December 2025, state police began issuing playing cards to prisoners featuring details and photos from 69 unsolved homicides and at least 20 missing persons cases dating back to 1954. The Bangor Daily News reported that the cards, funded by the nonprofit Seasons of Justice and successful in over 15 states, are being distributed to Maine prisons to “harvest some tips from a unique population” that lacks normal media access. Det. Cpl. Michael Chavez stated that the goal is to prompt prisoners to provide vital, decades-­old information, possibly realizing that a former cellmate who talked about a crime was truthful. Cases highlighted included the 1991 homicides of Lorna Brackett and Vincent White, and the 2002 disappearance of Marilyn Lehan.

Maine: WMTW in Portland reported that three former York County Jail guards and a prisoner were indicted on misdemeanor charges on November 4, 2025, stemming from an alleged bribery plot. The “highly manipulative” prisoner, Connor McGlone, 29, was indicted on four counts of providing improper gifts to public servants and one count of conspiracy. He has since been transferred to Maine State Prison to serve a four-­year sentence for robbery, but his rap sheet dates to 2015 and includes convictions for theft, vehicle burglary, eluding an officer and illegal possession of a firearm. The three guards, Kayleigh Hamilton, 38, Emma Kehoe, 25, and Zarek Melick, 26, resigned after being accused of accepting bribes from McGlone in exchange for contraband. They were each charged with receiving improper gifts as a public servant; Kehoe was also charged with conspiracy. Sheriff William King seemed to find comfort in the fact that the guards were manipulated individually and not as a group. He also noted that the scheme was halted before any contraband entered the lockup.

Maryland: On December 15, 2025, a federal jury convicted former state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services guard Lt. Jermaine Sturgis, 41, of conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements, in a scheme to cover up excessive force used against an unnamed prisoner at Eastern Correctional Institution in July 2021. The Baltimore Sun reported that Sturgis participated in deleting surveillance video footage that documented the assault, and he subsequently provided false statements to FBI investigators. At his sentencing in April 2026, he faces a maximum of five years in federal prison for each count.

Minnesota: At the Minnesota Correctional Facility (MCF) in Stillwater, the state DOC is piloting Earned Living Units (ELUs) to reward prisoners who demonstrate good behavior and rehabilitation commitment, according to a Minnesota Public Radio report on November 24, 2025. Prisoners in ELUs are housed without a cellmate and enjoy more freedom of movement for work and recreation. One of them, Joseph Soltis, helped open a barber shop providing job-­training to fellow prisoners. The DOC reported that ELUs require fewer staff and reduce recidivism risks. MCF-­Stillwater is slated for closure in 2029, but DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell said the agency plans to expand the earned-­privilege model statewide.

Missouri: Pike County Jail guard Rayann L. Prather was charged with two felony counts of sexual conduct in the course of public duty on November 26, 2025, for allegedly maintaining a sexual relationship with an unnamed detainee. According to KHQU in Hannibal, an investigation began after an unnamed fellow guard observed Prather entering the detainee’s cell and closing the door behind herself on two separate days in November 2025, remaining in the cell for four and five minutes, respectively. On November 15, 2025, investigators recovered a prohibited cellphone belonging to the detainee; it contained text messages between the two, in which Prather discussed their sexual relationship and her hopes of getting pregnant—even sharing a screenshot from a menstrual cycle tracker noting the days she was seen in the cell as days she had sex. She was being held on a $50,000 cash-­only bond.

New Hampshire: To ease a severe staffing shortage, the state DOC was offering a $10,000 hiring bonus to new guard recruits in December 2025, according to WMUR in Manchester. DOC Commissioner Bill Hart reported a 47% guard vacancy rate across the prison system. Joseph Kenney, who serves on the Executive Council of Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a fellow Republican, called the incentive a step forward but stressed it is not a “cure-­all.” The staff shortage forces existing guards to work substantial overtime, worsening their “high-­pressure environment.” Starting pay is $26 per hour, and no prior experience is required to apply for the positions.

New Jersey: The New York Daily News reported that celebrity BOP prisoner Sean “Diddy” Combs, 56, organized and funded an elaborate Thanksgiving meal for 1,000 fellow prisoners in November 2025 at the Federal Correction Institution at Fort Dix, where he is serving a 50-­month sentence. Combs purchased commissary items, and fellow prisoners spent two days preparing meals for every housing unit—enough to feed approximately 200 people per building—while overcoming obstacles like the absence of stoves and microwaves. Prisoners even used ID cards to cut up some food items. Combs, who was transferred in October from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, was convicted in July 2025 on two counts of violating the Mann Act for transporting individuals across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.

New Jersey: Atlantic County Jail guard Sebastian Flores-­Huamani, 24, was arrested on December 2, 2025, and charged with official misconduct and sexual assault of an unnamed prisoner in her cell at the Atlantic County Justice Facility in Mays Landing. WPVI in Philadelphia reported that the alleged assault occurred on September 4, 2025. No other details were provided, and the incident remained under investigation.

New York: News Nation Now reported that former New York City DOC guard Dionisio Rosario, 35, was sentenced to 90 days in jail on November 16, 2025, after a jury convicted him four months earlier of tampering with evidence and falsifying records at the City’s Rikers Island jail complex. While searching a cell in the Robert N. Davoren Center during Ramadan in April 2023, Rosario confronted an unnamed Muslim detainee, sprayed him with chemical agent, and then planted a 4.5-­inch sharpened piece of plexiglass in his cell. He later filed four false reports claiming he found the contraband. But the entire sequence of events was captured on surveillance video and his own BWC. He was arrested in October 2023 and suspended from his $92,000 job without pay. His July 2025 conviction ended a DOC career that began in 2016.

New York: Already facing up to two years in prison after pleading guilty to helping cover-­up fellow guards’ fatal beat-­down of prisoner Messiah Nantwi at Mid-­State Correctional Facility earlier in 2025, former state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) guard Joshua Bartlett, 49, was arrested on December 1, 2025, following a months-­long investigation by state police that resulted in additional charges of sexual abuse and forcible touching. The new charges involved an unnamed victim, who was apparently not incarcerated, according to WSYR in Syracuse. DOCCS fired Barlett in June 2025, a month after he agreed to plead guilty to falsifying business records and hindering prosecution in the coverup of Nantwi’s death, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, July 2025, p.43.] On the new charges, he was booked into Oneida County Jail, with bail set at $100,000.

North Carolina: Corrections1 reported that Christopher Neal McCray, 40, a detainee at Forsyth County Jail, was sentenced to 18 to 31 months in prison on November 14, 2025, after pleading guilty to felony charges, including conspiracy and possession of contraband phones. McCray and three co-­conspirators—former guards Laura Jean Davis, 45, Alfred Alonzo Scott Jr., 30, and former Aramark employee Donetta Denise Jones, 39, were involved in a plot to steal the identities of 18 incarcerated individuals. Using the phones and illegally accessed jail computers, they obtained prisoners’ personal data, including Social Security numbers and dates of birth. The conspiracy’s objective was to use this data to apply for credit lines to post bond money, though they were reportedly unsuccessful. The former staff members received probation for their roles. McCray, already facing drug and weapons charges, now faces potential federal probation violations from D.C. that could result in a seven-­year federal sentence.

Ohio: An attorney for former Lucas County Jail detainee Manuel Mathis filed a $75,000 demand in December 2025, after WTVG in Toledo reported that jail surveillance video showed guard Todd Anderson slamming Mathis’s head into a door frame. The incident happened on August 3, 2025, when Anderson was escorting Mathis to a holding cell. The video showed he forced Mathis, who was bent over and restrained, headfirst into the door. Mathis suffered a head injury and busted lip. Anderson claimed he was preventing Mathis from spitting, but an internal affairs investigation determined the force was excessive and violated jail policy. He was disciplined and removed from booking duties, though Mathis’s attorney, Lafayette Tolliver, argued that the guard should be fired for violating the duty not to injure or degrade the incarcerated.

Ohio: For attempting to smuggle narcotics into Grafton Correctional Institution, Austin Siebert, 30, was sentenced on November 18, 2025, to more than a decade in federal prison, according to WCPO in Cincinnati. As PLN reported, Siebert was arrested in February 2025, after he and an unnamed prisoner accomplice were caught on a recorded phone call discussing shipments of books—including a copy of Vice President JD Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy—whose pages were sprayed with drugs. Their scheme relied on the “Amazon technique,” in which they ordered books online, canceled and returned the orders, then bought separate copies and sprayed drugs on the pages before shipping them to the jail with the original labels—making the packages appear to come directly from the retailer. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.62.]

Ohio: According to WEWS in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County officials warned the public in November 2025 about a sophisticated new scam in which criminals impersonate sheriff’s deputies to defraud victims. The scheme capitalizes on real-­time jail booking data, convincing victims that a recently arrested loved one can be released on electronic monitoring with payment of a fee. Authorities emphasized that law enforcement will never call to demand money for fines, bond fees, or to prevent arrest for missed court appearances, such as jury duty. But victims unfamiliar with those justice system details lost hundreds or thousands of dollars in the scam. Officials were reviewing how real-­time jail apps might help these schemes.

Ohio: Hamilton County Jail guard Jordan Anderson, 26, was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault on November 20, 2025, for allegedly using his uniform belt to strike an unnamed detainee. WXIX in Cincinnati reported that Anderson admitted to hitting the detainee twice in his lower back and buttocks with the county-­issued belt on November 19. Surveillance video captured the guard walking down the hall with the belt detached and using it to make a swinging motion toward the detainee. Anderson was placed on administrative leave and booked into the jail where he had worked before he was released on $1,000 bond the next day.

Ohio: Former state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) guard James P. Jackson, 40, was sentenced on December 4, 2025, to 30 months in federal prison for attempting to smuggle contraband into work with him at the Trumbull Correctional Institution in Leavittsburg. The USAO for the Northern District of Ohio said that Jackson, who was employed as both a guard and a maintenance worker by DRC between 2022 and 2024, pleaded guilty to extortion under color of official right. Court documents revealed that he agreed to accept $2,000 to deliver packages to an unnamed prisoner. When he was intercepted with them while attempting to enter the lockup, the seized packages were found to contain 97.67 grams of methamphetamine, 207.63 grams of synthetic cannabinoid, 32.85 grams of PCP and other drugs, plus a cellphone and SIM cards. Jackson was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release.

South Carolina: A drone dropped a package containing a luxury illegal feast into the yard of Lee Correctional Institution on December 7, 2025, in Bishopville, South Carolina, according to the state DOC. The Washington Times reported on the early Christmas gift, writing that the seized package contained a raw steak, crab legs, Old Bay seasoning, multiple cartons of cigarettes, and bags of marijuana. The drone was recovered on the same morning as the drop. DOC officials are investigating the incident while noting that dropping illegal items into a prison is a felony carrying a sentence of up to ten years. Flying a drone near a prison in the Palmetto State can get you 30 days in jail on a misdemeanor conviction. Smugglers have resorted to drones following the installation of higher fences and netting designed to stop thrown or catapulted packages.

South Carolina: Former Lexington County Detention Center detainee Parris Sutton, 28, filed suit in state Court of Common Pleas on December 8, 2025, alleging that a guard named “Roland” aggressively slammed a cell door on his hand in November 2023, severing the tip of his left index finger. The State in Columbia reported that the partial amputation occurred after Sutton asked the guard for toilet paper. At the time he was awaiting trial for the point-­blank shooting of his ex-­girlfriend; she testified against him from the wheelchair to which she is now bound, and he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison in January 2025. For the loss of his fingertip, Sutton’s suit accuses the Office of Sheriff Jay Coon of gross negligence and negligent hiring and training. See: Sutton v. Lexington Cty. Sheriff’s Off., S.C. Comm. Pleas (Lexington Cty.), Case No. 2025CP3205244. Sutton’s attorney, Elizabeth Dalzell, has another pending case against Coon and his jail for releasing detainee Cody Smith into the cold in January 2024, after he allegedly spent his two-­month incarceration fruitlessly seeking medical attention from the jail’s contracted healthcare provider, Wellpath. Once released, Smith collapsed outside the jail, where a relative picked him up and took him to a hospital; there doctors diagnosed him with AIDS, which could have been treated earlier, the suit notes, if Wellpath staffers had given Smith an HIV test during medical screening, as the federal Centers for Disease Prevention and Control recommend. Defendants have removed that suit to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. See: Smith v. Lexington Cty., USDC (D.S.C.), Case No. 9:25-­cv-­11568.

Texas: According to KDFW in Dallas, a Hood County grand jury returned an indictment on November 6, 2025, charging a nurse at the County lockup, Rachel Sanders Miller, with criminal negligence in the April 2025 death of prisoner Michael Turner Jr. Details of the death have not been released, but the indictment accused Miller of failing to take reasonable action to obtain medical care for Turner after being informed that the prisoner was in severe medical distress. Criminal charges against jail medical staff following prisoner deaths are rare in Texas, even though the state reported 136 such deaths this year, according to Texas Jail Project Executive Director Krish Gundu. Turner’s daughter, Sara Youngblood, said she insisted that he turn himself in after moving to Texas to live with her and her family because the move violated his parole conditions in another state. “We were trying to set a good example for our children,” she said.

United Kingdom: An unnamed prison guard was under investigation after footage surfaced on TikTok in late November 2025 showing him playing a FIFA-­style video game with a prisoner inside his cell while another guard watched. According to the Daily Star, the clip was shared by a prisoner using a contraband cellphone. The Ministry of Justice defended the guard’s “relationship building” as a method to tackle violence. But Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick carped that “[p]rison is supposed to be for punishment,” not a “holiday camp.”

Wisconsin: Former Lake County jail guard Brittany L. Molleda, 28, and her wife, Zion Police Department Off. Shazay M. Molleda, 40, were arrested on felony child abuse charges on November 12, 2025, according to the Lake and McHenry County Scanner. Brittany Molleda was charged with intimidating the victim. Shazay Molleda was charged with strangulation, suffocation, and child abuse. The criminal complaint alleges that Shazay Molleda choked the child until she was “barely breathing,” while Brittany Molleda repeatedly struck her daughter with a spatula. The child sustained multiple abrasions and red marks, undermining the couple’s claim that they were intervening during a “mental health episode.” Three of the four charges against both parents are felony offenses carrying lengthy prison sentences. They were held in the Kenosha County Jail.

Wisconsin: WEAU in Eau Claire said that Taylor Schabusiness, 28, who is serving a life sentence for murdering her boyfriend, received an additional sentence for disorderly conduct on December 1, 2025, after pleading guilty two months earlier to attacking a nurse and a guard at Taycheedah Correctional in July 2024. As PLN reported, surveillance video showed that Schabusiness lunged at the unnamed nurse and then grabbed a metal tray and swung at the unnamed guard when she attempted to intervene. The prisoner was pepper-­sprayed and subdued; the guard required hospital treatment. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p.62.] Schabusiness, who was strapped to a chair when she appeared for sentencing, apologized to the court: “I didn’t mean to go off on that bitch like that at all, and I’m sorry for that.” She requested a lighter 10-­day sentence, but the court imposed the maximum 90-­day term, which will run consecutive to her life sentence for dismembering boyfriend Shad Thyrion in 2022.

Wyoming: Arrested during a targeted traffic stop of a vehicle as it returned from meeting a known drug supplier in Colorado on November 14, 2025, Drew Allen Moore, 35, was charged with an additional felony for attempted smuggling into a correctional facility when he was strip-­searched at the Laramie County Detention Center, and jailers found nearly 25 grams of suspectedfentanyl tied to his genitals. That was on top of 57 grams of suspected fentanyl pills and paraphernalia found inside the car during the stop, along with marijuana in Moore’s personal backpack, Cap City News reported. Moore was a passenger riding in the rear seat of the Chevy Traverse when it was stopped for a traffic violation. A K-­9 alert then led to the search that found the drugs and related items, including “pipes, torches, burnt tinfoil and a partially smoked fentanyl pill” that were also recovered from Moore’s backpack, the news outlet added.

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