by Matt Clarke
A $7 million settlement reached in April 2023 marked the latest chapter in a sordid tale of mismanagement at Bi-State Jail (BSJ) in Texarkana, Texas, by former private operator LaSalle Corrections. But the family-owned prison profiteer, based in Ruston, Louisiana—which ended its contract to run BSJ in ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 14, 2023, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin held that a state prisoner must be given jail time credit on his sentence when the charge resulting in jail time was read in at his sentencing on another charge.
Michael K. Fermanich stole three trucks in Langlade ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 13, 2023, the California Court of Appeal for the First Appellate District reinstated a putative class-action lawsuit brought by a prisoner at San Quentin State Prison alleging a problematic prisoner transfer led to a severe outbreak of COVID-19 early in the pandemic.
As PLN reported, ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 19, 2023, the federal court for the Southern District of Illinois denied a state prison warden’s motion for summary judgment in a federal civil rights lawsuit over cell mold that caused a prisoner to suffer an infection and pneumonia. But when the pro se prisoner ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 11, 2023, class-action status was granted to a suit filed the previous April against the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), accusing the prison agency of ignoring provisions of the Humane Alternatives to Long-term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act, Correctional Law § 137(6)(k)(ii).
HALT ...
by Matthew Clarke
The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, raises several barriers for prisoner litigants, not least being a “three strikes” provision that prevents indigent prisoners from having court fees waived by filing in forma pauperis if they have also had three prior cases dismissed because ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 18, 2023, Loyola University’s College of Law published a paper detailing the ways prisoners are often denied access to public records that those not incarcerated can easily obtain. Professor Andrea Armstrong and Distinguished Professor of Law Dr. Norman C. Francis described how various state statutes ...
by Matthew Clarke
On April 5, 2023, the federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri gave final approval to a $3.25 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit alleging the City of Maplewood improperly jailed defendants in a modern-day debtor’s prison simply because they were unable to pay fines, fees, ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 5, 2023, the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia refused a motion for judgment as a matter of law, or in the alternative a new trial, made by defendant prison officials and their private medical contractor, Armor Correctional Health Services, in a civil ...
by Matt Clarke
After the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) settled a lawsuit over life-threatening excessive heat at the Wallace Pack Unit in 2018, it realized it needed to apply the suit’s heat-sensitivity criteria systemwide – and found a quick solution.
For years, officials had been moving prisoners out of administrative segregation (ad seg) and super segregation (super seg) cells, slowly freeing thousands of beds in some of the prison system’s only air-conditioned cells. So TDCJ decided to begin moving all its heat sensitive prisoners – most of whom are elderly, infirm or taking psychotropic medications – into the former isolation cells.
But there is a cruelty baked into the architecture of ad seg and super seg, not to mention the attitudes of guards who work there. Those spaces were designed to hold very dangerous prisoners in extreme isolation; simply changing occupants does not change the fact that the isolation is much greater than it is for prisoners in general population, while also denying access to programs and activities such as education, library, recreation, law library and chapel services.
Simultaneously, housing elderly and infirm prisoners alongside young prisoners with mental illness – often in the same cells – is ...
