by Matt Clarke
On November 3, 2020, the GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the nation, revealed that it had suffered a ransomware attack in August of that year that exposed sensitive personal information of employees, immigrant detainees and prisoners.
GEO said it was sending data-breach ...
by Matt Clarke
No Republican senator voted to pass the very popular third pandemic economic impact relief bill that sent most Americans a $1,400 relief payment. Initially, they said that the economy was already recovering and did not need to be stimulated and that the $1.9 trillion bill would add ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 5, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal criminal convictions of two former New York prison guards for their assault of an unresisting prisoner and subsequent cover up.
When prisoners Kevin Moore and Tyron Hollmond arrived at New York’s Downstate Correctional Facility, ...
by Matt Clarke
A 63-year-old grandmother filed a lawsuit on October 8, 2020 after she was arrested and jailed while having a mental health crisis. While jailed, she was forced into a restraint chair and then placed in a cell without access to water for days, forcing her to drink ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 14, 2020, a federal judge approved a $3 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by the family of a Pennsylvania jail prisoner who died after being held in a restraint chair with his face covered by a “spit mask” because guards mistook a seizure for ...
by Matt Clarke
In a timely report published on September 10, 2020, the Brennan Center for Justice examined the impact of video proceedings on fairness and access to justice in court. It recommended caution in the expansion or long-term adoption of video proceedings initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 24, 2020, a federal judge rejected reducing the sentence of a former Pennsylvania judge who became infamous for taking bribes to keep a private juvenile prison full of children. He became known as the “kids-for-cash” judge.
Former Luzerne County juvenile court president Judge Mark Ciavarella, ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 9, 2020, the Supreme Court of Arizona held that a lower court could not appoint a special master to review the recordings of jail phone calls between a prisoner and an attorney that were allegedly privileged.
Christopher Matthew Clements was an Arizona county jail prisoner ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of Ohio granted a state prisoner’s petition for a writ of mandamus and ordered the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) to recalculate his sentence.
DRC prisoner Charles Fraley pleaded guilty to multiple aggravated robberies. In Cause No. 11CR-403, ...
by Matt Clarke
During the summer of 2020, Indiana Women’s Prison in Indianapolis went weeks without reporting a single case of COVID-19. That changed in September, when the number of cases at the over 600-bed prison exploded.
Between late September and mid-October, prison officials reported 28 new cases and, by ...
