by Chuck Sharman
On September 15, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York issued a preliminary injunction ordering the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) to immediately begin complying with a state law that bars holding mentally ill prisoners in solitary …
by Chuck Sharman
The small Seattle suburb of Issaquah (pop. 39,664) paid a whopping $5.5 million for a pair of withdrawal deaths at the city lockup, according to settlement agreements completed in September and October 2024. The latest agreement was completed with a release from the Estate of …
by Chuck Sharman
A jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado returned a verdict on April 9, 2025, awarding $4 million to the Estate of Jackson Maes, a detainee whose cries for help allegedly went largely ignored by staffers at the Saguache County Sheriff’s …
by Chuck Sharman
When he was sentenced to prison on July 3, 2025, former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard Mikael Rivera, 48, received an eight-year term for sexually assaulting three prisoners at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Aug., 2025 p.62.] …
by Chuck Sharman
In a frustrating series of court rulings, three Texas prisoners seeking redress for a guard’s blatant sexual abuse saw their last claims dismissed on April 15, 2025. Though devastating for them, the case offers an important warning to other prisoners that they need to keep …
by Chuck Sharman
Two suits filed by victims of guard rapes at Kansas’ Sedgwick County Adult Detention Center were concluded in April 2025, with three women taking $527,979.50 from Sheriff Jeff Easter for the sexual predations of a pair of his guards.
The …
by Chuck Sharman
Officials in Minnesota’s Ramsey County agreed on April 9, 2025, to pay $3.6 million to settle claims filed for the Estate of Dillon Bakke, a 32-year-old hemophiliac who suffered a brain hemorrhage that went undiagnosed and untreated for three days at the county jail before …
by Chuck Sharman
Backtracking from new rules passed just a year ago that would have lowered phone call rates in prisons and jails to $0.06 to $0.12 per minute, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on October 28, 2025, to hike those rate caps to $0.10 to $0.18 …
by Chuck Sharman
Prisoners released from terms for violent sexual offenses may find that Florida is not “the free state” that it claims to be. In an en banc ruling on August 15, 2025, the state Court of Appeal (COA) for the Fifth District reversed an earlier panel …
by Chuck Sharman
With just a week to go before his scheduled execution by firing squad, attorneys for Utah prisoner Ralph Menzies, 67, won a stay from the state Supreme Court on August 29, 2025, after they successfully argued that his worsening vascular dementia may have robbed him …
