On April 23, 2024, the mother of a deceased Missouri prisoner prevailed on appeal against the state Department of Corrections (DOC), which a lower court had found knowingly violated the Missouri Sunshine Law when it denied her records about her son and his suicide, awarding her $59,508.99 in damages and legal fees.

Jahi Hynes, 27, was eight years into a 13-year term for burglary when he fatally hanged himself at Southeast Correctional Center (SECC) in Charleston on April 4, 2021. But it was a cascade of failures by staffers with DOC and its contracted medical provider, Corizon Health—now YesCare—that were ultimately blamed in the wrongful death suit filed by the dead prisoner’s mother. 

Before she could file that complaint, however, Willa Hynes first had to battle DOC for more information than the phone call she received the day her son died, when a staffer told her that he had “hurt himself” and died, and that “the DOC could release no further information regarding the circumstances of his death.”

After months of fruitless email exchanges, Hynes retained counsel and filed a request pursuant to the state’s Sunshine Law for all records relating to her son, including surveillance camera footage covering ...

On November 19, 2024, the State of Wisconsin paid $42,000 to settle a trio of lawsuits filed by a state prisoner making claims of excessive force and deliberate indifference to his medical needs.

Waupun Correctional Institution prisoner Kurtis D. Jones engaged in an “inappropriate relationship” with an unspecified staffer in the Psychological Services Unit (PSU), but the relationship “ended badly,” he wrote in a letter to PLN.

According to his complaints, he got possession of a toothpaste tube cap in March 2022 and used it to cut at his arm on his artery. When guards found him, they doused him with O.C. spray to force him to let a nurse treat his wound, after which they refused to let him shower it off before strapping him onto a restraint table, he said. He was then left tied down for the next 40 hours. As Jones explained regarding the PSU staffer’s involvement in his ordeal, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

When finally removed from the table, Jones was placed under direct observation for threats of self-harm. However, in February 2023, he was allegedly allowed access to razors and—no surprise—used them to cut himself, slicing into two arteries ...

When 27-year-old Dashawn Jenkins died in New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex on April 1, 2025, it was the fifth detainee death of the year and at least the 38th since Mayor Eric Adams (D) took office in January 2022. The persistently rising death toll was a major reason that the federal court for the Southern District of New York cited in deciding to appoint a “remediation manager” to take over control and operation of the troubled lockup.

The actual number of deaths may be higher; a July 2023 report by City & State counted at least 120 deaths among those incarcerated at the jail between 2014 and 2022, though the City Department of Correction (DOC) reported just 68 during the same period.

Two more detainee deaths in 2024 were blamed on staff failures to follow policy, according to a report released on December 30, 2024, by the City’s Board of Corrections (BOC), which provides oversight to DOC.

One of those who died, Charizma Jones, 23, was admitted to the lockup in September 2023 and rapidly exhibited a “radical and unusual change in her behavior, which included hallucinating,” the report recalled. From September 16, 2023, through April 16, 2024, ...

Researchers from the Harvard Kennedy School have released data on jails which have the practice of releasing prisoners, usually approved for bond, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., revealing that this practice significantly increases the chances that a person will be harmed or placed in circumstances which will return them to jail.

The researchers started with some statistics about why this is important, and why it affects so many people. Some “514,000 people, greater than the population of major cities like Atlanta and Miami—are being held in our nation’s local jails,” and “[o]ver 10 million people are admitted to local jails every year.” And “[a]lthough the average stay in detention is about 26 days, or roughly 3 ½ weeks, most people are released on the day of arraignment or within one week.”

The study found that, “[f]or a significant minority, release occurs in the middle of the night.” This is because, of the 141 jails in the 200 largest cities in the U.S. by population, “131 release during the late night and only 10 do not.” Worryingly, almost no jails track and report what happens to people after they are released back into the community.

“Pima County, ...

A new report by The Sentencing Project (TSP) shows that the percentage of prisoners serving terms of life without parole—or “death by incarceration”—nationwide has increased, even as overall prison populations decreased. It is TSP’s sixth national census of people serving life sentences, which includes ‘life with the possibility of parole’; ‘life without the possibility of parole’; and ‘virtual life sentences,’ defined as those of 50 years or longer.

Researchers found that, since 2003, the percentage of prisoners serving a “death by incarceration” sentence increased 68%. This population was down 4% since 2020, but that’s relative to a shrinking of the total prison population by 13%. About one in six prisoners is serving such a sentence, totaling almost 200,000 prisoners across the United States.

Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. has only about 4% of the total population, yet it “holds an estimated 40% of the world’s life-sentenced population,” TSP found, “including 83% of persons serving LWOP.”

Nearly half of those serving life sentences are Black, far greater than that group’s 14% share of the U.S. population. Among women in prison, one in eleven is serving life, with those aged 55 or older accounting for two-thirds of the ...

An apparent error by attorneys for a former Idaho prisoner limited her recovery to just $62,500 after she was raped by a guard. In a letter to PLN on August 30, 2024, the Idaho Department of Administration confirmed that was the amount paid by the state Department of Corrections (DOC) ...

Missouri prisoners beware: On ­November 19, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to a prison guard who placed two “avowed enemy” prisoners in the same cell, precipitating an assault.

In July 2022, prisoner Robert J. Hall submitted to state Department ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

At the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on August 22, 2024, a Louisiana prisoner defeated a claim of qualified immunity (QI) by Defendant officials with the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) in his suit to hold them liable for ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

Two recent studies highlight decreased cancer survival rates for those who’ve been incarcerated and their partners, too. The studies effectively connect abysmal prison healthcare to the lack of access to cancer screenings that accompanies poor health insurance after release from prison. Researcher Jingxuan Zhao, M.P.H., senior ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit in federal court for the District of Columbia on December 20, 2024, challenging the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for treating sentence credits earned by prisoners towards early release under the First Step Act (FSA) as “optional.” The ...