As a cost-cutting measure, Polk County, Florida Sheriff Grady Judd has decided his jail will no longer provide underwear to prisoners. “There’s no state law, there’s no federal law that says we have to provide underwear in the county jail,” he said.
Judd has instituted several other changes to make ...
by David M. Reutter
An August 2011 performance report by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) found that a prison doctor failed to properly follow-up with his patients, and improperly discontinued medications and treatment without meeting with patients. The review that led to the report was spurred by ...
by David M. Reutter
An $880,000 settlement has been reached in the death of a prisoner at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in SeaTac, Washington. The lawsuit alleged that the prisoner died due to negligent medical care.
When Roxanne Brown, 62, flew into Seattle from Bangkok to give a lecture ...
by David M. Reutter
When Florida lawmakers used a backdoor approach to try to privatize almost 30 state detention facilities in 2011, they likely did not anticipate the outcome. By the time the political dust had settled, the union representing prison employees had successfully sued to stop the privatization plan, ...
After Rikers Island officials discovered 65,000 pounds of spoiled meat at the jail, at least one official suggested that it be served to prisoners. The meat, valued at $130,816, was found rotting on July 11, 2011 when nauseating smells began emanating from two freezer trailers that had stopped working.
A ...
In March 2011, PLN reported on the political machinations that led to the construction of Florida’s Blackwater River Correctional Institution (BRCI), which is operated by GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison firm. BRCI was opened at a time when there was excess bed space in Florida’s prison system and ...
With an economic malaise still affecting the nation, millions of people are looking for work. Florida is among the states that have seen job losses over the past four years, and ex-cons are especially hard-pressed to find employment upon release. Rather than offering more jobs to people in the community, ...
On June 16, 2011, the Illinois Supreme Court held that prison officials may not seize the wages a prisoner earns to satisfy the cost of incarceration. The Court’s unanimous ruling also vacated a judgment of more than $455,000 against an Illinois state prisoner for reimbursement of incarceration costs.
Kensley Hawkins ...
On April 15, 2011, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s grant of summary judgment to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in a civil rights action alleging Eighth Amendment violations after CCA staff left a mentally ill prisoner in his squalid segregation cell for nine months.
The ...
A settlement agreement between the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) and two civil rights organizations that publish the Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook (JLH) overturned the VDOC’s ban on JLH and requires that five copies of that publication be placed in each of the state’s prison libraries. The settlement also provides for ...
