by David M. Reutter
A $200,000 settlement was reached to resolve a civil rights action alleging a guard at Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish Jail subjected a 15-year-old detainee to repeated sexual abuse.
The complaint stated that every day that guard Eddie Williams, 69, worked between June 2015 and January 2016, ...
by David M. Reutter
The superintendent of Pennsylvania’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility, which is run by GEO Group, resigned in November after a media investigation uncovered a buried whistleblower complaint alleging racist and abusive behavior.
John A. Reilly, Jr., was recruited in 2001 as deputy superintendent George ...
by David M. Reutter
Campaign contributions from private medical provider Wellpath to Virginia’s Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman may be legal under Virginia law but are raising ethical questions. Wellpath is already under federal investigation for a contract renewal in Norfolk County.
Wellpath was known as Correct Care Solutions until ...
by David M. Reutter
Pennsylvania’s Erie County agreed to pay $1.15 million to settle a civil rights action alleging the county jail had a policy that “required a non-medical person to make a medical decision about what to do with someone suffering from a medical emergency.”
The lawsuit was filed ...
by David M. Reutter
After decades of leading the charge during the tough-on-crime era, Democratic presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. is trying to fashion himself as a champion of prison reform. Since July 2019 his campaign website has included proposals to abolish the death ...
by David M. Reutter
After nearly six years of languishing in jail because he could not afford a quarter-million dollar bond, a jury in Jefferson County, Kentucky acquitted Eugene “Red” Mitchell.
The jury’s September 18, 2019 acquittal of Mitchell on charges that he raped, sodomized and murdered Sheila Devine showed ...
by David M. Reutter
A Florida federal district court has awarded $420,683.53 in attorney fees and costs in a class-action suit challenging the use of solitary confinement and lack of educational opportunities for juvenile offenders held at the Palm Beach County Jail.
PLN previously reported the facts and settlement in ...
by David M. Reutter
Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County Prison (LCP) has paid $45,000 to settle a civil rights action alleging a guard used excessive force on a prisoner.
Multiple guards approached prisoner Marquice Gatewood on December 9, 2017, and told him that he would be taken to “medical” and then to ...
by David M. Reutter
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held on September 18, 2019 that the “prison mailbox rule” applies to detainees held in a civil commitment center.
The ruling resulted from an appeal by Rayvon Boatman, a detainee at the Florida Civil Commitment Center (FCCC), which holds civilly ...
by David M. Reutter
"We finna show y’all some real shit, man, on how we live here that y’all ain’t seen.”
With that introduction, a Florida prisoner begins a video that is being proclaimed the first documentary on prison conditions produced by a prisoner. Shot on a series of contraband ...
