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Articles by Matthew Clarke

Multitudes Caged for Failure to Pay Child Support, Driving Mass Incarceration

by Matt Clarke

On August 22, 2024, the federal court for the Eastern District of Kentucky sentenced Jesse Kipf to 81 months in federal prison for hacking into the Hawai’i Death Registry the year before. It was a strange crime; in his guilty plea, Kipf, 39, admitted to using the ...

Los Angeles County Pays $24 Million to Two Former Prisoners Wrongly Convicted as Teens of 1997 Murder

by Matt Clarke

On May 7, 2024, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $24 million settlement for two California men who were wrongly convicted as teenagers of a 1997 murder, based on an unreliable jailhouse snitch’s testimony and falsified evidence.

On June 28, 1997, John Klene and ...

Federal Watchdog Calls Out BOP for Spiking Suicide Risk at Pennsylvania Lockup

by Matt Clarke

On September 26, 2024, United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz released findings from an unannounced inspection of the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Numerous violations of federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policy were found at the 1,128-bed medium-security prison, which ...

Eighth Circuit: Arkansas Prisoner Who Had Consensual Sex With Guard Cannot Sustain Eighth Amendment Claim

by Matt Clarke

On September 20, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that a prisoner’s consensual sexual encounters with a guard cannot, as a matter of law, constitute the pain required to sustain a claim under the Eighth Amendment. Though a blow to Arkansas ...

TDCJ to Run Out of Beds in 2025

by Matt Clarke

The Sunset Advisory Commission, an oversight body for Texas government agencies, published a 189-page report in September 2024 that found persistent critical staffing shortages are making Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) prisons unsafe for staff and prisoners alike. In fact, some guards and parole officers find ...

“Happy Mother’s Day”: $1,353,000 Settlement Approved for Migrant Parents Separated from Minor Kids at Border

by Matthew Thomas Clarke

On July 2, 2024, the federal court for the District of Arizona approved settlement of a lawsuit brought against the United States by former immigration detainees under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b)(1), 2671, et seq., for separating them from their minor children ...

DOJ Finds “Horrific and Inhumane” Conditions in Georgia Prisons

by Matt Clarke

"People are assaulted, stabbed, raped and killed or left to languish inside facilities that are woefully understaffed,” lockups where “[i]nmates are maimed, tortured, relegated to an existence of fear, filth and not-so-benign neglect.”

So began a scathing 93-page report published by the Civil Rights Division (CRD) of ...

Sixth Circuit Upholds $6.4 Million Jury Award Against Corizon Nurses For Michigan Jail Prisoner’s Fatal Alcohol Withdrawal

by Matt Clarke

On August 16, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the verdict and jury award of $6.4 million in compensatory damages against three nurses who worked for Corizon Health when it held the contract to provide healthcare at Michigan’s Kent County Correctional ...

En Banc Fifth Circuit Reverses Panel, Holds Mississippi Felon Disenfranchisement Does Not Violate Eighth Amendment

by Matt Clarke

On July 18, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed an earlier holding by a three-judge panel of the Court, which found that § 241 of the Mississippi Constitution was unconstitutional. That’s the portion of the state’s Constitution that disenfranchises those convicted of ...

USDC (D. Oregon), Case No. 6:22-cv-00451

by Matt Clarke

On June 5, 2024, the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) filed a notice of settlement in court indicating that it paid $135,000 to settle a prisoner’s lawsuit accusing a guard of intentionally allowing other prisoners into his cell so they could assault him.

In October 2020, Kevin ...