by Kevin Bliss and Daniel A. Rosen
In a June 2020 report, an official with the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) determined that employees at the Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) in Portland followed “expected practices” in using pepper spray on detainees bound for a state psychiatric hospital.
The review by ...
by Kevin Bliss
Higher education in prisons is being negatively impacted by the COVID-19 quarantine. Prisons are finding their post-secondary programs evolving into correspondence classes or falling away completely. Advocates fear that this will affect every aspect of an offender’s release up to and including his or her potential for ...
by Kevin Bliss
A major outbreak of COVID-19 has hit Alaska’s biggest prison. Nearly 300 prisoners out of about 1,300 inmates at the Goose Creek Correctional Center near Wasilla tested positive for COVID-19, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) reported in late November. One prisoner, 69, died from complications of ...
by Kevin Bliss
Melford Henson, a 65-year-old California resident serving time at the California Institute for Men (CIM) for a DUI, died May 6, 2020 of COVID-19. His wife, Tracy Henson, was informed that she would need to pay a $900 cremation fee should she wish to recover his cremains. ...
by Kevin Bliss
Angelina Resto filed suit against the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) in 2017, claiming discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She won her case in 2018 and was the first transgender prisoner in the U.S. to be transferred to a woman’s facility. She has since been ...
by Kevin Bliss
Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) was forced to declare an overcrowding emergency on July 1, 2020. Capacity in the state’s 10 prisons was at 151%, exceeding the 2015 mandated 140% threshold.
In an effort to help reduce population, parole board chairwoman Roslyn Cotton said that the ...
by Kevin Bliss
California’s Office of Inspector General released a 47-page report in August 2020, which stated that vague testing guidelines, faulty thermometers and inadequate training contributed to the COVID-19 outbreak in the state’s prisons, killing 54 prisoners and nine guards while infecting 9,500 others.
“Nine is an extraordinary number ...
by Kevin Bliss
A captain with the St. Louis County Justice Services Center in Clayton, Missouri was under investigation for allegedly abusing prisoners with histories of mental health problems. The captain had been accused of assaulting a prisoner with a mental health issue on June 1, 2020 and then confining ...
by Kevin Bliss
Jamel Floyd, a 35-year-old Black male held at the federal Bureau of Prison’s (BOP) Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, died after being pepper sprayed by guards June 3, 2020.
Floyd was serving a 12- to 15-year sentence for a Long Island home invasion committed in 2007. ...
by Kevin Bliss
n March 2020, the Oneida County Correctional Facility in New York was accused of discrimination against the women who are housed there. Two months prior to that, all the women were moved from pods that offered the same privileges as men to two wings of a unit ...
