by Chad Marks
In a lawsuit filed on January 29, 2019, Securus Technologies, Inc., one of the nation’s two largest prison telecom companies, accused the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) of ignoring provisions of the Florida Constitution when exercising budgeting and appropriation powers, and doing so at the expense of ...
by Chad Marks
Lawmakers in Minnesota are considering a bipartisan bill aimed at reducing the state’s prison population. Data from August 2018 indicate that the adult prison population was 9,849, and some legislators have expressed concerns about racial disparities in the prison system.
According to recent ...
by Chad Marks
Four people have been charged with extortion, money laundering and identity theft by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
In May 2018, Sahar Sarid, Kishore Vidya Bhavnanie, Thomas Keesee and David Usdan, allegedly the operators of Mugshots.com and Unpublisharrest.com, found themselves on the wrong side of ...
by Chad Marks
Scott Brettschneider, 61, a criminal defense attorney from Queens, New York known by many as “Mighty Whitey,” was arrested on March 26, 2018 in connection with accusations that he falsified documents to get one of his clients an early release from prison. He and ...
by Chad Marks
Guadalupe Robles Plascencia became a naturalized U.S. citizen in May 1998, and San Bernardino, California has been her home for nearly 40 years. It’s where she raised her five children. It also is the place where she and one of her daughters opened their own business ...
by Chad Marks
On November 16, 2018, a federal judge in the Northern District of Ohio granted a motion for class certification in a case where jail staff were accused of issuing unsolicited fee-laden debit cards to prisoners upon their release.
Amber Humphrey was arrested in September 2017. At the ...
by Chad Marks
A federal judge in Indiana ruled on June 12, 2018 that prison doctor Paul Talbot must answer a complaint filed by state prisoner Billy J. Lemond.
Lemond was incarcerated at the Pendleton Correctional Facility when he required back surgery. On August 24, 2015, he underwent decompressive laminectomy ...
by Chad Marks
The United States is home to five percent of the world’s population and around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Our incarceration rate is 19 percent higher than Turkmenistan’s, 36 percent higher than Cuba’s and 57 percent higher than Russia’s. There is no other democracy that has ...
by Chad Marks
Through December 31, 2018, there have been 1,490 executions in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Almost 90 percent have been carried out by lethal injection, which is considered more humane than hanging, electrocution or the gas chamber. But executions have ...
by Chad Marks
Since the 1940s, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has maintained a firefighting corps composed of prisoner volunteers. In late 2018, when the Camp and Woolsey fires destroyed the town of Paradise and hundreds of homes in upscale Malibu, over 1,400 prisoners contributed 15 ...
