by Douglas Ankney
Of the many hurdles prisoners and jail detainees face, the statute of limitations for a civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is among the first. Now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has made it even harder to clear, with …
by Douglas Ankney
As a teen in the South, I often heard it said: “Being poor ain’t no sin.” But apparently it has become illegal. According to a report from the Vera Institute of Justice, Kentucky’s courts charge myriad fees and fines to plug budgets riddled with holes …
by Douglas Ankney
On December 22, 2023, the Supreme Court of Alaska reversed dismissal of a state prisoner’s claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) who admitted improperly holding him in segregation for 504 days, 335 of which—over …
by Douglas Ankney
On January 23, 2024, the Washington Court of Appeals sent the case of a state prisoner back to the trial court that convicted him of second-degree domestic violence rape and assault, finding the counts must be dismissed or retried because officials at the jail where …
by Douglas Ankney
Colorado lawmakers wasted little time in this year’s session before killing Senate Bill 12 (SB 12) on February 7, 2024. Though the state has one of the country’s highest recidivism rates—about 50%—the one-year pilot program that would provide up to $3,000 in conditional cash assistance …
by Douglas Ankney
A New Jersey prisoner filed a putative class-action lawsuit on December 19, 2023, alleging that privileged telephone communications with his attorney were recorded by the jail where he was held, provided to prosecutors and used against him at trial. Disturbingly, this is not …
by Douglas Ankney
On April 2, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois denied relief to Wexford Health Sources, Inc., the private healthcare contractor for the state Department of Corrections (DOC), from a $750,000 jury verdict for delayed surgery that left a …
by Doug Ankney
On December 14, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri granted only part of a motion by defendant state prison officials to dismiss a complaint filed by Muslim state prisoners, who accused guards of beating and pepper-spraying them while …
by Douglas Ankney
“If we refused to work we had to stand on top of a wooden box in the sun. It was called ‘doin’ the scarecrow’ and some guys passed out from the heat”—Florida prisoner Ronald Smith, quoted by formerly incarcerated journalist Ryan Moser in Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation, JStor Daily (Nov. 2023).
That quote is not a relic of the 19th century. Smith was talking about 1988, when he was part of a “gun squad”—a group of prisoners who toiled outdoors under the eye of guards on horseback armed with 12-guage shotguns.
As PLN reported, prisons have not been left out of the modern effort to erase the names of slavers and Confederates from public buildings that once honored them. [See: PLN, Feb. 2022, p.32.] Name changes are easy. But what about the men and women caged inside the prisons, who are still routinely coerced to work for little or no pay? While most elected officials disavow any ambition to return to America’s slaveholding past, the ugly practice continues. Slavery is almost “mandated” as appropriate “punishment” for crime in the U.S. Constitution. Apparently, the United States cannot …
