One could almost excuse the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials if they felt that the federal courts have them under special scrutiny, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has again made it clear that they have only themselves to blame. After yet more embarrassing revelations about ...
Guillermo Zavalas, his wife Ileana, and two other families in the same apartment building have settled their federal civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the City of New York, the New York City Police Department, and various individual officers, according to their attorneys, Jeffrey A. Rothman and Ronald ...
The City of Baltimore has settled a lawsuit filed by a citizen at Pimlico Racetrack who filmed an arrest at the track and whose cell phone camera was confiscated by police. Christopher Sharp was told by a Baltimore city officer, “Do me a favor and turn that off. It’s illegal ...
An audit performed by the Nassau County, New York Comptroller’s Office, following the standards of the New York State Commission of Corrections, or NYSCOC, and pursuant to state law, has criticized the financial management of the county’s jail commissary. The jail commissary is customarily the only place where prisoners can ...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been enjoined by a federal district court in Seattle, Washington from summarily denying personal recognizance bonds in certain detention proceedings as a result of a class action filed by Maria Sandra Rivera. Rivera was taken into custody in January of 2014 and told that ...
According to a new Sentencing Project study, vividly set forth in a series of graphs and tables, from the 1920’s to the late 1970’s, the total number of people incarcerated in the United States never exceeded 200,000. However, in 2012 the number of people in federal custody alone surpassed that ...
A new General Accounting Office (GAO) Report has called into question the Completeness of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) collection of data regarding sexual abuse and assault incidents in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. GAO reviewed data in facilities that had in excess of 1.2 million ...
The estate of Brandon Copas, a 27-year-old prisoner serving a nine-year sentence for aggravated vehicular homicide at the Warren Correctional Institution in Lebanon, Ohio, was awarded $350,000 in damages for the negligent medical care that Copas received after he was assaulted by another prisoner.
According to the complaint, on April ...
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Ludington certified a § 1983 class-action lawsuit affecting tens of thousands of people arrested and detained by the City of Detroit, and appointed a noted prisoners’ rights law firm in Chicago, Loevy and Loevy, to represent the lead plaintiff, Jonathan A. Brown. The judge held ...
by Derek Gilna and Joe Watson
Immigration reform advocates report little success with efforts to eliminate a little-known, controversial quota mandated by Congress that keeps approximately 34,000 undocumented immigrants incarcerated on a daily basis, including many who have committed no crime. Supporters of the quota contend it is an essential ...
