by Jo Ellen Nott
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) announced on April 7, 2022, that it will close one of its oldest prisons, Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI) Cedar Junction, citing a falling incarceration rate and nearly $30 million in needed repairs.
The maximum-security prison designed to hold 568 prisoners ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
Hawaii Department of Public Safety (DPS) Public Training Officer J. Marte Martinez, who oversaw the training of thousands of state prison guards and deputy sheriffs working as guards in county jails, was arrested in her office on April 7, 2022, on charges of perjury, tampering with ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
Nagpur, an educational and cultural center of nearly three million located at the geographical center of India, made judicial headlines on March 16, 2022, when the local bench of the Bombay High Court held Superintendent of Central Prison Nagpur Anupkumar M. Kumre guilty of contempt and ...
By Jo Ellen Nott
The warden was escorted from Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility and placed on mandatory leave on March 19, 2022, following allegations of sexual misconduct and the near-fatal stabbing of a minimum-security prisoner there.
The prisoner, who has not been identified, was stabbed during what was described ...
By Jo Ellen Nott
Sarena Townsend, the attorney heading internal affairs investigations for the New York City Department of Corrections (DOC), was abruptly fired by new DOC Commissioner Louis Molina on January 4, 2022.
One of the first priorities announced by incoming Mayor Eric Adams (D) was smoothing relations with ...
By Jo Ellen Nott
An examination of Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) employee and contractor arrests from March 2021 to April 2022 revealed that 18 were charged with introducing contraband, and another 10 were charged with assaulting prisoners. Six more were charged with having illicit relationships with prisoners under their ...
by Kevin Bliss and Jo Ellen Nott
On February 5, 2022, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a nine-year sentence had been handed down to the last of four Alabama prison guards convicted of beating state prisoners they suspected of smuggling contraband at Elmore Correctional Facility (ECF).
Three days ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
When Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (R) signed legislation in October 2021 to take $400 million of the state’s pandemic relief funds from the American Rescue Plan to build a trio of massive prisons, it was an attempt to assuage federal officials who have been investigating the ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On February 24, 2022, a former sheriff’s deputy in Harrison County, Texas, was sentenced for savagely beating a restrained detainee at the county jail, an assault which had already cost the County a $325,000 settlement the year before. For pleading guilty to “official oppression” in the ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
Before an armed standoff with Tempe police on January 6, 2022, former Arizona prisons chief Charles Ryan had been home drinking tequila. A lot of tequila. “Half a large bottle,” according to his wife. Then she heard a gunshot and found Ryan in the bathroom, bloodied ...
