Prison reform, including reforms mandated by the judiciary, is an issue that everyone but shareholders in private prison companies thinks is a positive development, for a number of reasons. Even former advocates of mass incarceration now generally agree that the so-called War on Drugs, with its attendant soaring arrest and ...
Michael Alan Crooker, wrongfully convicted in Massachusetts on a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, had his conviction reversed on appeal by the First Circuit in 2010, setting the stage for a certificate of innocence and a claim for financial damages from the federal government ...
The February 8, 2015 suicide of a woman held at the Washington, D.C. Jail and a recent report that blasted the facility for “non-compliance with basic standards established by national corrections authorities” have once again focused a spotlight on conditions at the main jail in the nation’s capital, where more ...
Pennsylvania State Security Firm Drops Terrorist Tag for Environmental Activists
by Derek Gilna
Domestic covert surveillance of peaceful political activists by law enforcement is not a new thing, although the newest manifestation of this practice is often justified on national security grounds. However, the state of Pennsylvania, who ...
The Michigan Law Prison Information Project (MLPA), an organization staffed largely by law students and supervised by Professor Margo Schlanger, compiled in January 2014, an exhaustive comparison of prison grievance policies. According to that organization, "The goal of the project was to gather and analyze prison grievance policies from ...53 ...
An Illinois man who was wrongfully convicted of a sex offense, and released from prison after his supposed victim was discredited, has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Chicago, the Chicago police department and other defendants as a result of his 2002 conviction for a rape he did ...
In August 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France ruled against the United Kingdom and in favor of UK prisoners who were denied the right to vote in the 2009 European elections. The prisoners had argued that the UK’s voting ban constituted a violation of their ...
Oklahoma death row prisoners filed a § 1983 civil rights lawsuit challenging the use of a new drug by prison officials to put them to death, but their effort fell short in the U.S. Supreme Court. The state had sought to use midazolam instead of sodium thiopental to perform executions, ...
New diagnostic computer programs designed to predict whether an offender will re-offend are being credited with helping reduce the number of prisoners in correctional facilities across the nation, but experts caution that while useful, the software tools are not perfect and should not be considered a panacea to long-standing issues ...
The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, has ruled that Florida’s system of allowing juries to make death penalty recommendations that judges may or may not follow is unconstitutional. According to Justice Sonia Sotomayer, the “jury’s recommendation is not enough. The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, ...
