by Matt Clarke
At the vast majority of the nation’s jails, when someone is arrested their money is confiscated during the booking process. Those funds are placed in a trust account, where prisoners’ families and friends can also deposit money to be used to purchase food and hygiene items from ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 3, 2019, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court did not err when it failed to consider a prisoner’s request for substitute appointed counsel after the attorney initially appointed by the court said the prisoner’s lawsuit was without ...
by Matt Clarke
Thanks to the activism of Colorado prisoner Tiffany McCoy, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) has rescinded its prohibition against prisoners receiving greeting cards, postcards and drawings.
In 2018, the DOC implemented a policy whereby prisoners only received black-and-white photocopies of greeting cards, postcards ...
by Matt Clarke
It may have seemed like an April Fool’s joke to many Pennsylvanians when, on April 1, 2019, former prisoner Brandon Flood became the new secretary of the state’s Board of Pardons (BOP). In fact, it was part of a multi-prong strategy by Lt. Governor John Fetterman, who ...
by Matt Clarke
The “Feeling Cute” social media challenge went viral in the spring of 2019, with photos tagged #FeelingCuteChallenge showing people in their work clothes, declaring they are “feeling cute” as they make a joke about their jobs. The statements were a variation of an online meme known ...
by Matt Clarke
In June 2019, the Arizona legislature’s Joint Committee on Capital Review approved $16.5 million in special funding for the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) to repair faulty cell door locks at ASPC-Lewis, after a June 2018 surveillance video aired by a Phoenix TV station showed prisoners leaving ...
by Matt Clarke
With the passage of House Bill 650, which Governor Greg Abbott has already signed into law, Texas took a first step toward protecting the dignity of women held in state prisons.
There are more women prisoners in Texas than in any other state. The number of women ...
by Matt Clarke and Mark Wilson
The Spokane County jail in Washington State recently marked its ninth prisoner death since June 2017. But it was hardly unique. A study released in May 2019 by Columbia Legal Services (CLS), a nonprofit law firm, counted 210 prisoner deaths in local jails across ...
by Matt Clarke
Undocumented immigrants in the United States often face wage theft when their employers underpay or refuse to pay them for their labor. A federal class-action lawsuit filed by the Attorney General for the State of Washington has highlighted how such workers continue to face wage theft even ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 20, 2019, Tulsa County, Oklahoma agreed to pay $350,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the estate of a man who committed suicide while incarcerated in the county’s jail. The suit accused jail staff of ignoring both the prisoner’s known history of mental illness ...
