by Kevin Bliss
The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) concluded a two-year investigation April 12, 2020 of allegations of continued sexual abuse against prisoners at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women (EMCFW). A 29-page report was published that found the institution promoted a culture of acceptance, allowing multiple instances of abuse, violating the prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right from cruel and unusual punishment. The New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) was provided a list of 19 remedial measures to be implemented within the next 49 days to address the problems or be liable for civil action.
After years of allegations of sexual assault against prisoners, the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ and the USAO initiated an investigation April 26, 2018 under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA). The Act was designed to protect prisoners from facilities exhibiting a pattern or practice that resulted in violations of the prisoners’ civil rights. The report investigated 70 separate instances of alleged sexual abuse at EMCFW over several years, with many guards and employees being charged, suspended or fired. Between 2016 and 2019, seven EMCFW guards and “one civilian employee” had been convicted or pleaded guilty ...
by Kevin Bliss
Richard “Sam” Schneiter, a 65-year-old Wisconsin deputy prison warden in charge of 14 minimum-security prisons, was fired in November 2019 after posting offensive memes on his Facebook account.
Schneiter posted two memes on Facebook last July, which were reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. One compared a Muslim woman and child, both in black burkas, to bags of trash. The other equated the flying of the gay pride rainbow flag with the flying of the Confederate flag. After the newspaper story was published, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes tweeted that Schneiter should not have compared Muslims to garbage and that he was the one who had “to be taken out.”
Schneiter, represented by attorney Nate Cade, said the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not establish just cause to fire him. Its investigation into the incident was not thorough, objective or fair, he said, and the postings did not represent his personal views. He claimed he was simply stimulating discussion and debate on the topics. He pointed to his posting of the gay pride flag at the Kenosha Correctional Center in response to Governor Tony Ever’s declaration of June as Pride Month as evidence in support of ...
by Kevin Bliss
An article in the Harvard Political Review by Jenna Bao published March 9, 2020, reported that the movement to deinstitutionalize mental health facilities and save costs, which began in the 1950s, has resulted in a large over-representation of the mentally ill in U.S. prisons and loss of quality of treatment for them.
Bao said that although driven by noble ideas, governments failed to replace mental health institutions with an immediate effective alternative, resulting in conditions that contributed to higher incarceration rates. People with mental illness are 4.5 times more likely to be arrested than others and their proportional presence in prisons has exceeded the rate of the general population by a factor of somewhere between three and six. In addition, prisons and jails do not have the mental health facilities or personnel necessary to properly treat these individuals. Bao called this a pseudo-criminalization of illness.
The report stated that the system provoked great ethical concerns. The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights Director Scott Allen described it as counter-therapeutic. He said, “This is the wrong environment to try and treat people with mental illness. Very likely isolating people from their outside community and confining them to ...
by Kevin Bliss
Even before he was found guilty in New York on two counts of rape on February 24, 2020, Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein hired a prison consultant – Craig Rothfeld, CEO of Inside Outside Ltd. – to teach him how to survive incarceration.
Weinstein, 67, joins a ...
by Kevin Bliss
Fine Cell Work is a London-based prison art initiative aimed at the possible rehabilitative and therapeutic value of creating works of art by the incarcerated. It works with prisoners throughout the United Kingdom, training them in the art of fine needlepoint.
The charity and social enterprise has ...
by Kevin Bliss
According to the latest surveys, the national female prison population is increasing more rapidly than males — and Kansas is one of the leading contributors to this trend.
A report put out by the Prison Policy Initiative and the American Civil Liberties Campaign for Smart Justice in ...
by Kevin Bliss
On January 14, 2020, Judge Margaret Seymour of the Florence division of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina signed preliminary approval of a settlement order granting hepatitis-C (HCV) testing and treatment in the South Carolina prison system.
“This action today is going to save 1,184 lives,” ...
by Kevin Bliss
In March 2020, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced it would transfer guard Jermaine Darden to Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Fort Dix, where he will serve as the emergency preparedness officer for the low-security federal prison in Burlington County, New Jersey.
Darden, 48, was a jail captain ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
Sex offenders who had completed their criminal sentences in the state of New Jersey were being civilly committed to a facility that had a higher death rate due to COVID-19 than any prison in the United States as of early June.
The Sexually Violent Predator Act ...
by Kevin Bliss
Arkansas’ Cummins Unit prison facility had 11 confirmed deaths due to coronavirus as of June 9, 2020. Families were concerned over a lack of communication and delayed notification from the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADOC), often not knowing their loved ones lives were in danger until it ...
