Suicide is the leading cause of death among jail detainees according to an August 2015 report by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. While 80% of jails in the U.S. reported no deaths in 2013, six percent reported two or more. Florida’s Alachua County Jail (ACJ) fell into the …
In an ironic twist, a Florida drug court judge was removed from the bench after enrolling in a substance abuse treatment program herself.
In December 2013, Broward County Judge Gisele Pollack, 57, took a two-week leave to participate in a substance abuse program after admitting to consuming alcohol …
An unlikely alliance between a prison guard and a former prisoner ended in both being charged with enslaving two teenagers and forcing them into prostitution.
While serving time for a parole violation and drug offense from February 2007 to September 2008, Pennsylvania prisoner Rasul Abernathy, 32, met guard …
by David Reutter and Joe Watson
Former Louisiana death row prisoner John Thompson has spearheaded an organization that aims to help the wrongfully convicted and former prisoners successfully rebuild their lives.
Thompson was sentenced to death for the 1984 fatal shooting of a hotel executive from a …
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a grant of summary judgment in a prisoner’s civil rights action alleging the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) has a widespread practice and custom of transferring prisoners in retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Glenn Smith, who the Eleventh Circuit …
Delbert Tibbs, a peaceful advocate to abolish the death penalty, has lost his battle against cancer and died at the age of 74. His advocacy was borne of personal experience of being wrongfully convicted.
Tibbs was born on June 19, 1939, in Shelby, Mississippi. At the age of …
Georgia’s 2012 sentencing reform law is saving taxpayers $20 million annually, said Gov. Nathan Deal during a speech to a University of Georgia alumni group.
The top priority for Deal going into the 2012 legislative session was House Bill 1176. In the end, it made it through the …
Pennsylvania courts are frequently imprisoning people who are unable to pay fines. Proposed rule changes aim to end debtor’s prisons, but the real problem may be a lack of oversight for the local courts that oversee such cases.
Ann Lisa Wodarski has been sent to jail six times …
A 2013 law passed by Louisiana lawmakers was expected to save $6 million by diverting drug offenders to treatment and shortening the prison sentences of such offenders by having them complete a drug treatment program. The law has not worked as planned, leaving the Louisiana Department of Corrections (LDOC) …
“We’re at a fork in the road,” Alabama state Senator Cam Ward, chairman of the Prison Reform Task Force, said in June 2014. “We have two paths to choose from and neither one is easy. Those of us on the task force can solve, it or federal courts can …
