A study by the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit legal organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, has found widespread discrimination in jury selection in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. The discriminatory practices appear to be most prevalent in serious criminal cases, including capital ...
The Big Sandy Regional Detention Center, a jail in Paintsville, Kentucky, became the focus of a Kentucky State Police investigation after the death of a prisoner in March 2009. Additionally, a jail guard was accused of sexual harassment and later indicted. Those incidents followed allegations of financial mismanagement related to ...
The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting an investigation into military contracts issued to ArmorSource, an Ohio company, and then subcontracted to Federal Prison Industries (FPI), commonly known as UNICOR, following the recall of 44,000 potentially defective combat helmets. According to U.S. Representative Chris Carney, “FPI has not met protective ...
The Kansas program that as recently as two years ago was cited as a model for reintegrating prisoners into society after their release no longer exists, according to state Rep. Pat Colloton, who heads the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice.
Despite hard statistics that showed recidivism rates for ...
A federally-funded program designed to help states remove illegal immigrants held in state prison systems if they agree to immediate deportation from the U.S. has had no impact in Rhode Island, according to Steve Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union.
The Rapid REPAT (Removal of ...
A May 2010 investigative report in the Boston Globe took the Massachusetts Probation Department to task for bypassing qualified candidates for available job positions, instead employing at least 250 friends, relatives and financial backers of politicians and top court officials. According to the Globe, “[r]eports of irregularities in the [hiring] ...
U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups, in a February 2010 decision, ordered former Utah State Prison guard Louis Poleate to pay $435,332.50 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages to prisoner Priscilla Chavez for a rape that occurred in September 2001. Poleate had already served five years in ...
Three prison officials were found liable in abuse claims stemming from a month-long lockdown at Bayside State Prison following the killing of prison guard Frederick Baker in 1997, according to former federal judge John W. Bissell, named as Special Master by the U.S. District Court of New Jersey to investigate ...
Native American companies, many of which have no experience in prison management, are earning large sums of money as conduits for Department of Homeland Security contracts which are then subcontracted out to other firms.
Although apparently legal under current laws and regulations, the practice raises issues of accountability due to ...
