by Chuck Sharman
At the center of mass incarceration in the United States is a deeply troubling fact: More than two of every five people locked up have been diagnosed with a mental disorder. With nearly two million people caged in U.S. prisons and jails, that means the …
by Chuck Sharman
On June 5, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a $24 million punitive damages award against NaphCare for a Washington jail death, remanding the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington to make a new …
by Chuck Sharman
On June 13, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana granted class certification to a complaint filed against the Marion County Sheriff, alleging that there is a de facto ban on certain books at the County Adult Detention Center (ADC) in …
by Chuck Sharman
Relatives of a Missouri jail detainee who became nonverbal and fatally ill—while fellow detainees pleaded in vain with jailers to get him medical help—accepted a $450,000 settlement of their federal civil rights suit, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri granted …
by Chuck Sharman
In the “tough-on-crime” years that closed out the last century, parole was eliminated in many states, as well as the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). But as the U.S. Supreme Court noted most recently in Swarthout v. Cooke, 562 U.S. 216 (2011), there is no …
by Chuck Sharman
A decade after PLN secured a settlement halting censorship of soft-cover books at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in New Mexico’s Bernalillo County, its nonprofit publisher headed back to court on December 4, 2025, challenging new jail rules that violate the earlier agreement and the …
by Chuck Sharman
On November 10, 2025, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York returned a $112 million verdict in favor of Plaintiffs in a class-action suit accusing the Sheriff of Suffolk County of illegally detaining them in the County jail …
by Chuck Sharman
An executive order (EO) issued by then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D), allowing agents of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into the city’s Rikers Island jail complex, was declared illegal by a state judge on September 8, 2025. The ruling by the state …
by Chuck Sharman
On September 12, 2025, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio returned a verdict awarding $404,000 in damages to state prisoner Tommy Meadows on his claim that he was brutalized at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) near Lucasville in …
by Chuck Sharman
On November 25, 2025, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News (CLN), filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, accusing Walla Walla County and Jail Commander Steve Barker of violating its First …
