by Douglas Ankney
Beginning in July 2021, California will stop accepting nearly all youth offenders at three facilities operated by the Division of Juvenile Justice (“DJJ”). This resulted from an August 2020 deal between Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature whereby the majority of offenders age 25 and younger ...
by Douglas Ankney
Gerrymandering is defined in U.S. politics as “the dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible.” Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary ...
by Douglas Ankney
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced in June 2020 that it would spend more than $5.25 million on a program to distribute large, curated collections of books to prisons and juvenile detention facilities across the country.
The program will provide the same 500-book collection to 1,000 prisons. ...
by Douglas Ankney
An October 15, 2020 report from the Santa Fe New Mexican revealed that in March 2020, the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) paid $1.4 million to settle a whistleblower complaint that exposed deficiencies of private health-care provider Corizon Correctional Health Care (Corizon) and the NMCD’s failure to ...
by Douglas Ankney
According to a June 2020 report from Medical News Today, the infection and mortality rates — and a lack of testing — for COVID-19 disproportionately affects Black and Latino populations within the United States based upon the available data. Because the government has been reluctant to ...
by Douglas Ankney
On July 31, 2020, a motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri revealing that CoreCivic and Securus Technologies (Defendants) had agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging illegal recording of attorney-client conversations at the Leavenworth Detention Center ...
by Douglas Ankney
The chaplains of various faiths in the jails of Los Angeles County are united in a common mission: remind prisoners of their humanity. Often in one-on-one visits, the chaplains patiently listen to tragic stories of suffering, offer counseling, or share a prayer or religious teaching. A simple ...
by Douglas Ankney
On December 3, 2019, fourteen prisoners filed suit alleging repeated rapes and other sexual abuse at two federal prisons for women in Florida. Senator Marco Rubio demanded that the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) investigate the allegations. Nine months later, Rubio again wrote Attorney General William Barr, complaining ...
by Douglas Ankney
On June 10, 2020, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) sent a letter to then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper requesting information about the Department of Defense’s (“DOD”) reliance on the American Correctional Association (“ACA”) for accreditation of military confinement and corrections facilities.
“The importance of ...
by Douglas Ankney
On December 10, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee approved a class action settlement in which Madison County agreed to pay $1.25 million over claims alleging that Sheriff John Mehr violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).
Natasha Grayson, an employee of ...
