by David M. Reutter
The families of two women and five men who committed suicide while held in pretrial detention between July 2014 and November 2018 at New Jersey’s Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) have received a total of $2,372,500 to settle their claims against the County and its profiteering medical ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 17, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed both a federal civil rights complaint and a proposed consent decree to resolve allegedly unconstitutional conditions at New Jersey’s Cumberland County Jail (CCJ). The filing ends a five-year investigation and aims to correct conditions that ...
by David M. Reutter
“Carceral deference is a powerful principle built on faulty premises and with troubling and destabilizing effects,” declared Danielle C. Jefferis, an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law, in an article that appeared in the Fordham Law Review.
Deeply ingrained in criminal law ...
by David M. Reutter
The political atmosphere surrounding criminal justice reform features strong rhetoric on both sides. Those who pontificate the “get-tough-on-crime” culture argue for increasing criminal sanctions and imposing punishment upon prisoners. On the other side are criminal justice reform advocates who push for a second chance by changing ...
by David M. Reutter
On March 3, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana only partly granted a motion for summary judgment filed by prison medical profiteer Wexford Health Sources, Inc. and its employees in a state prisoner’s civil rights action over a nearly three-year delay ...
by David M. Reutter
A lawsuit filed in federal court for the Western District of Arkansas on January 13, 2023, makes a stunning claim: That a man was left to starve to death in jail because he couldn’t afford bail.
Larry Eugene Price, Jr., 50, was suffering an acute mental ...
by David M. Reutter
As PLN previously reported, a man arrested and taken to jail in California’s San Bernardino County in March 2018 ended up in a hospital eight days later in critical condition, suffering severe dehydration, sepsis, and renal failure. Perry Belden then went into cardiac arrest and was ...
by David M. Reutter
After a jury in the federal court for the Northern District of California awarded $504,000 in compensatory damages in the excessive-force case he brought against the San Francisco Jail, a former pretrial detainee was awarded another $14,034.31 in legal costs on November 28, 2022, followed by ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 14, 2022, the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) successfully beat back a challenge to use of solitary confinement in its prisons, when prisoner/plaintiffs stipulated to dismissal of their claims. Not content with that victory, apparently, DOC then issued a press release on January 12, ...
by David M. Reutter
On January 17, 2023, the last of four former Hawaii prison guards convicted of beating a state prisoner was sentenced to federal prison. The sentences ranged from one to 12 years. Three of the guards – Jason Tagaloa, 31, Craig Pinkney, 38, and Jonathan Taum, 50 ...
