by Matt Clarke
In July 2021, the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) settled state and federal lawsuits brought by a prisoner kept in solitary confinement for 22 months without seeing any evidence of a disciplinary violation. DOC agreed to reform its solitary confinement policies, including a 30-day cap on stays ...
by Matt Clarke
Medical parole has always been rare, but new policies in California and Massachusetts are causing medical parolees to be reincarcerated and further limiting those eligible for medical parole.
California has approved 210 medical paroles since 2014, far more than most other states. But its new policy announced ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 3, 2021, a federal court in Illinois granted a state prisoner’s motion for sanctions against Wexford Health Sources for responding to a specific discovery request by providing 272,000 pages of documents it had converted into a nearly useless format.
With the assistance of Oakbrook attorney ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 13, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California awarded a former Santa Clara County pretrial detainee $11,000 in damages for injuries received when he was assaulted by a guard at the county jail. The Court then charged the defendant another $188,340.08 ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 26, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court’s decision not to expand a preliminary injunction issued on behalf of California jail detainees to include a requirement of access to outdoor recreation and direct sunlight for convicted prisoners.
The ...
Wisconsin DOC Ordered to Provide the Surgery, Too
by Matt Clarke and Chuck Sharman
In a federal court filing on January 31, 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) indicated that a transgender prisoner in Texas could be cleared for gender conforming surgery (GCS) as early as March 2022. If ...
by Matt Clarke
When actor Peter Robbins died by suicide in California on January 18, 2022, the news saddened fans of Charlie Brown, whose voice he provided for animated Peanuts specials in the 1960s. But Robbins, 65, also struggled with mental illness behind bars, spending four years in a San ...
State’s “scorched-earth” strategy runs up $3 million legal tab
by Matt Clarke
A bench trial opened at a federal court in Louisiana on January 10, 2022, with dramatic testimony from a former state prisoner, who said he witnessed guards at the David Wade Correctional Center (DWCC) order a mentally ill ...
by Matt Clarke
A recent ruling by a California courtunderlines the importance for a prisoner to zealously guard his prison record, even after a challenge seems moot, for the impact it may yet hold in the future.
The decision on September 3, 2021, by the state Court of Appeal, held ...
Follows a half-million state prisoners released in 2008
by Matt Clarke
From 2016 through 2019, the last years for which reliable data are available, about 10.5 million arrests were made in the U.S. annually. Averaged over a decade, that’s less than one arrest for every three people. But a new ...
