by David M. Reutter

Historically, prisoners have been largely left out of the technology wave changing the way the rest of the world communicates and does business. It wasn’t until March 2009 that the first phones for prisoner use were installed by the Texas Department Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Before then, prisoners were limited to legal calls. To use the phones, prisoners could not have any major disciplinary infractions. Gang-affiliated offenders or those on death row could not use them at all. Almost 15 years later, the Internet and cellphone have swept society, but many prisoners are still left with a wall phone – at exorbitant prices – or snail mail.

Of course most prisoners use their electronic devices to communicate with friends or family members, some they have been out of contact with for years or decades. In Florida from around 1999 to 2009, accepting a 15-minute collect call from a prisoner to someone in Michigan cost around $26. Intrastate prisoner calls were so cost prohibitive that many prisoners were told not to call anymore.

Since then prices for phone calls have decreased, squeezing earnings for the prison profiteers peddling communication services. But smart executives foresaw the future lay in ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 6, 2023, the Nevada Department of Corrections (DOC) reached an agreement with a group of state prisoners to settle claims that a change in chapel schedule substantially burdened the exercise of their religion, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal constitution, as well as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000cc, et seq.

Under terms of the settlement, DOC paid $75,000 to four of the prisoner-plaintiffs and agreed to schedule three weekly Episcopal religious services plus another three for The Way faith group. A picture of a wolf that was visible from the chapel was also removed from Lovelock Correctional Center (LCC).

The agreement resolved claims brought pro se in federal court for the District of Nevada by prisoners Norman Shaw, Joseph Cowart and Ansell Jordan, as well as former prisoners Charles Wirth and Brian Kamedula. They alleged that when Warden Renee Baker took over LCC on August 29, 2016, she sought to bring the chapel into strict compliance with DOC Administrative Regulation (AR) 810 to end alleged threats to prison safety and security caused by the “lack of supervision and increased foot traffic ...

by David M. Reutter

Finding that changes in pretrial release procedures of Prince George’s County “may or may not be ameliorative,” the federal court for the District of Maryland on June 7, 2023, refused to dismiss a complaint filed by a group of pretrial detainees who claim the county’s bond review process and pretrial release program are unconstitutional.

The suit was filed almost a year earlier in July 2022 against the county, its jail officials and 11 of its judges by a group of pretrial detainees. They alleged that during bond reviews in the county’s district and circuit courts, judges “abdicated their constitutional duty” and unlawfully deferred to the county jail’s pretrial services program to determine a defendant’s level of supervision or release from jail.

Despite being entitled to release, many defendants often languish in jail for weeks or months while waiting for pretrial services to make a determination on their release eligibility, the lawsuit alleged. Plaintiffs called the process opaque, saying it was bogged down in backlogs. They sought class-action status.

Defendant county officials and judges moved for dismissal, asserting immunity and also arguing that a federal court had no jurisdiction over the issues. They further argued the lawsuit ...

by David M. Reutter

“For decades, women incarcerated in New York state prisons have been raped, assaulted, sexually abused, harassed, and verbally degraded” by male guards, as officials “turned a blind eye to the sexual misconduct.” That explosive allegation was made in a lawsuit filed on November 29, 2022, seeking damages for sexual abuse alleged by a former prisoner at the now-shuttered Bayview Correctional Facility.

The suit was made possible by passage of the state’s “look back” law, the Adult Survivors Act. When it took effect in July 2022, it opened a 12-month window for victims of sexual abuse to bring legal claims that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.

The claimant in this case was identified in court pleadings as “LK Doe 2.” Her complaint alleged that prisoners held at Bayview, a medium-security all-female prison in New York City operated from 1979 to 2012, “were at high risk of being sexually abused by the predominately male prison staff.” New State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) records from 2007 to 2012 show “women were involved in 30% of sexual misconduct cases and 61% of sexual harassment cases, despite accounting for only 5% of all state ...

by David M. Reutter

By June 8, 2023, misdemeanor criminal records of those previously convicted in Missouri of a nonviolent marijuana-related offense were scheduled to be expunged. Felony expungement is set to follow by December 8, 2023. Though some counties have dragged their feet, the process is underway to implement post-conviction relief provided by passage of Amendment 3 to the state constitution in November 2022.

Approval of the ballot initiative made it legal for those 21 and over to buy and use recreational amounts of marijuana. Expungement of most marijuana-related convictions recognized that the constitution now effectively decriminalizes marijuana use in the state.

Expungement clears all charges and seals or destroys the case record. By June 5, 2023, the state had expunged over 32,500 misdemeanor cases and another 10,000 felony cases. After spending a dozen years in prison on a marijuana conviction, Sean Farmer, 36, said he was “super grateful” for the chance to clear his record.

“I got reintegrated with my children (and) my girlfriend,” he said. “It’s surreal. When I wake up in the morning sometimes I don’t know where I’m at, and then I look around, I’m like, oh God, I’m here.”

Missouri now allows consumers to ...

by David M. Reutter

Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Council took control of the county jail commissary on March 28, 2023, after a watchdog found over $500,000 worth of items were missing. The investigation also found that monies from the canteen fund were misappropriated by the Sheriff’s Office, which has been operating under interim Sheriff Joseph Greiner.

But even jail guards questioned the county’s next decision, awarding a contract to run the commissary to Keefe Commissary Network. That’s because Keefe owner TKC Holdings also owns Trinity Services Group, the contractor long criticized for poor quality meals served to detainees and prisoners.

After receiving a complaint about donations of expired food from the Cuyahoga County Jail commissary, the County’s Inspector General (IG) began an investigation. That uncovered problems from 2020 and 2021, ranging from shoddy bookkeeping to a lack of oversight that “increases the risk of theft or unauthorized transactions going undetected,” the IG said.

The IG found $376,206 in recorded commissary inventory that wasn’t in the warehouse. It guessed there were accounting errors, or waste from expired food, or even potential theft. Around the time the report was issued in June 2022, three guards were fired for stealing commissary snacks for themselves ...

by David M. Reutter

As of January 23, 2023, only $250,000 had been tapped of a $2.5 million allocation made by the Washington legislature in 2022 for grants to counties to ease ballot access for those in jail.

Many people in jail are eligible to vote because they are being detained pretrial or they have a low-level conviction. But these eligible voters are often denied ballots or even information about how to request one.

When Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton presented a plan in September 2022 to increase voter registration and participation in the County’s two jails with grant funds, she met stiff resistance and was denied approval.

Politics were clearly at the forefront. “So, if you’re a candidate that’s campaigning on a position of being tough on crime, obviously you’re not going to get a lot of votes out of the jail, and the inverse of that also could apply,” Commissioner Al French noted at the meeting.

Responded Dalton, “We don’t speculate how people vote. We just need to make sure that they have the opportunity to register to receive a ballot and return the ballot.”

But French, in an interview with Bolts Magazine, doubled down on his ...

by David M. Reutter

On February 2, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, in large part, an order that found ongoing violations of the rights of disabled prisoners at California’s R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD) and five additional state prisons, all resulting from the failure to adequately investigate and discipline staff misconduct by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

The opinion was issued in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in 1994, alleging widespread violations of the American with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. ch. 126, § 12101, et seq., and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq.

In 2018, auditors from CDCR and Class Counsel attorneys conducted a compliance review of disability policies at RJD. The resulting memo documented prisoner reports that “staff members forcefully remov[ed] some [Class] members from wheelchairs” and “assault[ed] inmates [who] were already secured with restraint equipment.”

A state “strike team” was sent to RJD to investigate the reports. It found 48 of the 102 prisoners interviewed “provided specific, actionable information, relevant to the foundational concerns” of staff misconduct that prompted the review.

The strike team recommended, among other things, installing surveillance cameras at certain ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 6, 2023, a Michigan prisoner dismissed his complaint against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) after agreeing to accept $30,000 to settle claims that he suffered the “stigmatizing consequences” of being falsely classified as a sex offender.

In January 2018, Willie E. Harper, Jr. entered DOC custody, after pleading guilty to First Degree Home Invasion. As part of his plea agreement, prosecutors dropped a charge of Criminal Sexual Conduct. Yet when Harper arrived at Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center, a DOC “Classification Director” named Egbuchulam assigned him a “high assaultive risk,” apparently based in part on the dropped charge.

Worse, Harper was assigned to Muskegon Correctional Facility (MCF), site of the state Sex Offender Program (SOP), in which his classification meant he would be enrolled. Worse still, he would have to “admit” to sex offenses in order to complete SOP, and if he didn’t, his parole might be denied or delayed.

Harper objected and asked for an administrative hearing, but none was provided before he was transferred to MCF. There two mental health practitioners named Arkesteyn and Foster oversaw SOP. Harper named them in a grievance he filed and carried all ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 29, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit raised the high bar a prisoner must clear in civil rights litigation just a little bit higher. It held that a federal prisoner must exhaust both internal and external remedies before pursuing a claim in federal court under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (RA), 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq.

The Court’s opinion affirmed a district court’s finding that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, requires exhaustion of available remedies from both the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Administrative Remedy Program (ARP) and the Director for Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) of BOP’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice.

On February 28, 2019, while imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, Webster Williams developed a strong urge to urinate while walking to his work assignment. Williams suffered from several medical conditions, including kidney disease, and took a prescribed diuretic that caused excessive urination. But just as he headed to the restroom, an alarm triggered elsewhere in the prison.

BOP Unit Manager Willis responded by heading to the restroom and telling prisoners there to return to their cells. ...