So much for “hope” and “change.” President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is simply more of the same – more prisons, more guards, more cops. At least when it comes to the criminal justice system, Republicans and Democrats apparently have no trouble ...
On January 4, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court side-stepped resolving an important case that would have likely exposed prosecutors to greater liability when they engage in prosecutorial misconduct.
The case, Pottawamie County v. McGhee and Harrington, S.Ct. No. 08-1065, was filed by Curtis W. McGhee, Jr. and Terry J. Harrington ...
As the federal prison population continues to rise – to over 206,500 prisoners as of mid-year 2009 – violence in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is both up and down, according to recent data obtained from BOP officials.
Last summer PLN reported increasing levels of violence in the BOP, ...
Recently-released prisoners are at a higher risk of death, according to studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the American Journal of Public Health.
For a NEJM report entitled Release from Prison – A High Risk of Death of Former Inmates, the authors reviewed data related ...
Over the past several years a split has developed between the federal courts of appeal over the scope and constitutionality of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), a component of the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
SORNA requires sex offenders to keep their ...
The Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) has agreed to pay $125,000 to the family of a prisoner who died from pneumonia caused by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
On March 27, 2008, Jeremy Swaser was given a check-up by medical staff at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. He had ...
The lethal injection protocol adopted by the Kentucky Department of Correction (DOC) was promulgated in violation of the state’s Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the Kentucky Supreme Court decided on November 25, 2009.
Kentucky, like most other states that have the death penalty, uses a three-drug lethal injection protocol to carry ...
On November 12, 2009, Canyon County, Idaho agreed to settle a federal class-action suit against the Canyon County Jail (CCJ) that raised a myriad of claims related to unconstitutional conditions.
Filed in March 2009 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of prisoners at the jail, the lawsuit ...
Melodee Hanes, the live-in girlfriend of U.S. Senator Max Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, has received a high-level political appointment with the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Hanes’ new job at the DOJ comes on the heels of a brewing scandal concerning her nomination for U.S. Attorney for Montana. ...
On November 4, 2005, Earl Krugel was killed while exercising on the recreation yard at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Phoenix, Arizona, a medium-security facility.
Krugel, an activist for the Jewish Defense League, had been prosecuted and convicted for his role in a plot to bomb a California mosque ...
