by Keith Sanders
Incarceration poses many health risks. Violence, inadequate medical care, as well as physical and emotional trauma, all take a sometimes deadly toll inside American jails and prisons. Yet one often overlooked problem incarcerated Americans encounter is obesity. Health experts have raised the alarm for several decades about ...
by Keith Sanders
On November 17, 2021, the Ohio Court of Claims awarded a state prisoner $185,000 for injuries sustained when he was bitten by a dog on a K-9 unit visiting from a local jail.
Derek Woods, 23, was inside the gym at Trumbull Correctional Institution in Leavittsburg on ...
by Keith Sanders
On March 14, 2022, an Iowa court awarded $3.5 million to the estate of a pretrial detainee who suffered a seizure and was left to die in the Cerro Gordo County Jail (CGCJ).
Ricky Christianson was arrested for a probation violation and taken to the jail on ...
by David M. Reutter and Keith Sanders
A law that severely limits the use of solitary confinement in Connecticut jails and prisons took effect July 1, 2022. It also creates an ombudsman position within the state Department of Corrections (DOC), selected from candidates nominated by a new nine-member advisory panel ...
by Keith Sanders
Just ten days after being sentenced to death for the 2017 murders of two state prison guards, a prisoner was found unresponsive in his cell at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison on June 26, 2022. Guards performed life-saving measures, but Ricky Allen “Juvie” Dubose, 29, was pronounced ...
by Keith Sanders
A recent study of deaths over the past ten years inside Los Angeles County jails revealed that over half of those recorded as “natural” showed evidence of physical harm.
The study was published June 1, 2022, by researchers at UCLA’s Carceral Ecologies Lab, in conjunction with the ...
by Keith Sanders
One of the most unjust consequences of mass incarceration in America is that it removes millions of citizens from the political process. Most prisoners lose voting privileges at least through their parole, though sometimes for life. But disenfranchisement is not the whole story; people with criminal histories ...
by Keith Sanders
On April 6, 2022, Pennsylvania’s Delaware County assumed control of its jail for the first time in 24 years, after terminating its contract with the Florida-based GEO Group. Prior to that, the 1,800-bed George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornton was the state’s last privately-operated county lockup. ...
by Keith Sanders
On April 7, 2022, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) announced indictments against seven federal prisoners for the brutal murder of two fellow prisoners in their Texas lockup, an incident that prompted a rare nationwide lockdown of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
The victims, Guillermo Riojas, ...
by Keith Sanders
On October 22, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey awarded $215,000 in damages to a former pretrial detainee at the Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) for injuries suffered during an assault there by guards and police officers.
Lourenzo Witt, the plaintiff, was arrested ...
