by Chuck Sharman
On September 26, 2025, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and Wayne County agreed to pay $2 million to settle claims brought by the mother of a former detainee at the County Juvenile Detention Facility (JDF) in Detroit, who alleged that officials …
by Chuck Sharman
In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama on January 26, 2026, state prisoner Joseph Allen Renney said that he had reached agreements with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) and its contracted medical provider, Wexford Health Services, settling …
by Chuck Sharman
Under a legal settlement approved on December 2, 2025, prisoners with learning disabilities held by the Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) moved several steps closer to receiving the educational instruction necessary to achieve a high school diploma or its equivalent. Though they are entitled by …
by Chuck Sharman
On January 16, 2025, a grand jury in Georgia’s Richmond County reported that its inspection of the County jail revealed serious overcrowding, with mattresses on the floor pressing many cells into double-occupancy. As if to underscore the problem’s seriousness, a detainee was violently assaulted and …
by Chuck Sharman
On January 22, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found the state’s felony disenfranchisement law ran afoul of the power granted by Congress when the state was readmitted to the Union after the Civil War. Though the ruling does not …
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 …
