by Jayson Hawkins
As of December 1, 2022, the CaliforniaDepartment of Insurance (DOI) had decided to let two bail agents keep their licenses, even though they hired a bounty hunter who broke into the home of one of their clients and fatally shot the man – who had no active ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Etymology, the study of word origins, provides insight into commonly used words. For instance, ‘cell’ and ‘hell’ share an ancient root meaning ‘hide’: A resident of either is unseen, hidden away from society and the realm of the living.
How apt then that artist Jesse Krimes entitled ...
by Jayson Hawkins
On April 17, 2023, Arizona prisoner Jasper Rushing, 43, was again sentenced to death for the grizzly murder of his cellmate. He was first condemned for the killing in 2015, but the state supreme court tossed that sentence two years later because prosecutors failed to inform the ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Haiti’s recent history reads like an endless tragedy of natural disasters and political upheavals. In between devastating hurricanes and earthquakes, a presidential assassination and gang wars paint a picture of a failed state. Violence regularly halts traffic in or out of the nation’s capital. Many residents rely ...
by Jayson Hawkins
On September 28, 2022, four former guards at Georgia’s Valdosta State Prison were sentenced for beating a handcuffed prisoner and then attempting to conceal what happened. Sgt. Patrick Sharpe, 30, received four years for orchestrating the assault by ordering two subordinates, Jamal Scott, 35, and Brian Ford, ...
by Jayson Hawkins
To justify rules making life difficult for prisoners, officials often point to contraband — even when facts point in another direction. That was the case when the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) rolled out a new policy for prisoner packages in May 2022. ...
by Kevin W. Bliss and Jayson Hawkins
On April 12, 2022, the federal court for the District of Columbia approved a settlement agreement to resolve a class-action lawsuit which challenged conditions of confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic at the DC Jail. Like an earlier preliminary injunction (PI) issued in the ...
by Jayson Hawkins
After Kesley Vial, a 23-year-old Brazilian immigrant, hanged himself at the Torrance County Detention Facility in Albuquerque on August 24, 2022, his death became one of four reported for the year by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency has reported a total of 41 detainee ...
by Jayson Hawkins
On March 29, 2022, the federal court for the Southern District of California approved a settlement between the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department (SDSD) and the widow of a 21-year-old U.S. Marine who committed suicide while held in pretrial detention at the county’s Vista Detention Facility (VDF). ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Like many prison systems across America, Maine’s Department of Corrections (DOC) has a work-release program that allows prisoners to hold jobs in local communities while serving their sentence. But when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, the programs were suspended as part of the effort to ...
