by Keith Sanders
On February 25, 2021, the estate of Carmela DeVargas, who died while in custody at the Santa Fe County Detention Center, filed a federal lawsuit against the Santa Fe County Board of Commissioners and its employees. The suit alleges officials at the Detention Center failed to provide ...
by Keith Sanders
A recent investigation by KARE 11, a Minnesota-based NBC news affiliate, has brought much-needed attention to systematic failures at jails throughout Minnesota. Many local and state correctional facilities in that state, according to the months-long investigation, do not provide prisoners with adequate medical and mental health care. ...
by Keith Sanders
In recent decades, the inability of state corrections departments to procure the necessary drugs to carry out lethal injections and kill people has led to a gradual decline in the number of executions in America. Many states have put a moratorium on death sentences as a result, ...
by Keith Sanders
At 6:22 pm on March 14, 2021, Marvin David Scott III was arrested by police in Allen, Texas for possession of less than two ounces of marijuana. Soon after being transferred to the Collin County Detention Center and placed in the custody of the Sheriff’s Office, Scott ...
by Keith Sanders
Two prisoners recently filed suit against the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) alleging that guards used unmuzzled dogs to attack and maul them. The plaintiffs are represented by Kelly Jo Popkin, an attorney with Rights Behind Bars, and the D.C.-based firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.
On ...
by Kevin Bliss and Keith Sanders
Six months after the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a highly critical report accusing the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MADOC) of violating the constitutional rights of mentally ill prisoners by holding them in isolation too long, the agency has not made conditions any less ...
by Keith Sanders
America’s criminal justice system is designed by and for men. It characterizes offenders as violent and victims docile, where offenders kill and victims die. Within this framework, women are often marginalized and unjustly prosecuted, especially victims of domestic violence who fend off their attackers with deadly force. ...
by Keith Sanders
According to the protestors, conditions at the local lockup have become intolerable. On April 4, 2021, at approximately 8:30 p.m. detainees at the St. Louis City Justice Center (CJC) covered security cameras, smashed windows, threw furniture out onto the street below, and set fires, chanting “we want ...
by Keith Sanders
Compared to other experiences inside American prisons, spending time in solitary confinement is the harshest and most dehumanizing. Between 50,000 and 60,000 individuals languish in concrete boxes no larger than a closet for 22-plus hours a day. They are deprived of books, magazines, radios, television and visitation ...
by Keith Sanders
Imagine a future in America that is radically different than it is today—an America where police do not brutalize and kill people, a society without institutionalized racism and classism, a country where jails and prisons do not exist. Envisioning such a bold future is what Barring Freedom ...
