by Ashleigh Dye
When prison telecom company Global Tel*Link (GTL) agreed to slash the price for calls that it charges detainees held by the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) in November 2021, it was only because advocates of the incarcerated convinced county officials to forfeit kickbacks the firm ...
by Ashleigh Dye
A woman who gave birth in a cell in 2017 at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, has been awarded $250,000 to settle a lawsuit she filed the following year against Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern and jail employees, including its privately contracted healthcare staffers. The ...
by Ashleigh Dye
On April 18, 2022, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) signed House Bill 863, legislation that will repeal the 32-year-old law creating the Mississippi Prison Industries Corporation (MPIC), a non-profit entity tasked with providing job training that ultimately reduces recidivism for prisoners. Barring further action by state legislators, ...
By Ashleigh Dye
In October 2021, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (DOC) paid $920,000 to settle a four-year-old lawsuit filed against the small town of Ridgeland after it threatened to cut off water and sewer service over unpaid bills owed by DOC’s prison there, Ridgeland Correctional Institution (RCI).
The ...
by Ashleigh Dye and Jayson Hawkins
A New Jersey prison guard was arrested on October 1, 2021, on charges he ran a “fight club” in the kitchen he supervised at Bayside State Prison, regularly beating and torturing prisoners who worked under him there.
“A badge is not a license to ...
by Ashleigh Dye
In September 2021, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paid more than $15 million to private prison operator GEO Group for deportation flights to repatriate thousands of Haitian migrants. The contract covered 44 charter flights from Texas to Haiti over a two-week time period, followed by another ...
by Ashleigh Dye
On January 14, 2022, Texas 138th District Court Judge Gabriela Garcia set an execution date for Melissa Lucio: April 27, 2022. That is when the 53-year-old will face death for her 2008 conviction of murdering her two-year-old daughter, a charge she still denies. It will also be ...
Plans to de-privatize prisoner healthcare
by Ashleigh Dye
On December 11, 2021, the Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) announced that the state Supreme Court had denied an Emergency Motion to Stay and Petition for Review filed by Armor Correctional Health, the private contractor whose termination DOC announced the previous July. ...
