by David M. Reutter
As early as 1980, drugstore mogul Jack Eckerd was convinced a private company could provide higher profits to Florida if it ran the state's Prison Industries. After Eckerd's lobbying of the Florida Legislature, that Legislature enacted laws to create Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE) ...
by Madeline Severin, 25 Cardozo Law Review 1469, March, 2004
Review by John E. Dannenberg
We all know about how prisons and jails conspire with telephone companies to bilk recipients of prisoner phone calls via exorbitant chargesswollen by kickbacks approaching 60%but how does one legally challenge this scheme?
Yeshiva University ...
Did you know the first prison needle exchange program was started in Switzerland in 1992? Would you guess that the five other countries maintaining needle exchange programs in their criminal justice systems are Germany, Spain, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus? In the United States, where Los Angeles television stations recently refused ...
In first-ever interviews, representatives of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) gang in Tegucigalpa, Honduras this May described how security forces were to blame for the May 17, 2004 prison fire that killed 105 of those they call their homeboys. In addition to starting the fire, police and prison guards allegedly kept ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 11
On June 17, 2004, top Texas prison administrator Salvador "Sammy" Buentello was indicted on felony charges that he sexually assaulted three female employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). A week earlier Buentello had been indicted on four misdemeanor charges of official oppression for alleged sexual harassment.
In ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 12
Anthony Serra, formerly the second in command at the New York City Department of Corrections (DOC), has been indicted for felony grand larceny and 145 counts of misdemeanor violations of the Conflict of Interest Law. He faces up to 15 years in prison for the theft and a $5,000 fine ...
Welcome to the first issue of 2005. The year is starting pretty much the way it ended in terms of political progress for prisoners' rights: not very good at all. The ongoing, simmering outrage of the abuse of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners by the US military in those countries and ...
Massachusetts Court Enjoins Sheriff from
Charging Jail Prisoners Assorted Fees
by Michael Rigby
The sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts, has been enjoined from gouging prisoners and their families on jail service fees in accordance with his Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP).
Under the program, prisoners in the Bristol County Jail ...
Don't Build it Here - The Hype Versus the Reality of Prisons and Local Employment
by Clayton Mosher, Gregory Hooks, and Peter Wood
Fueled by the war on drugs, Draconian sentencing policies, and more general get tough on crime policies, the United States has experienced phenomenal growth in prison populations ...
On October 12, 2004, Jefferson County, Washington, agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle a lawsuit arising from the wrongful death of Kevin Bledsoe in the Jefferson County Jail. The settlement is one of the largest ever for excessive use of force by a county in the Pacific Northwest, according ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 18
California Initiative To Soften "3-Strikes" Law Defeated;
DNA Collection From Arrestees Approved
Proposition 66 (Prop. 66), a voter Initiative Act placed on the ballot by prisoners' families to soften California's unforgiving "3-Strikes" law by qualifying an offense as a third strike only if it is an enumerated "serious" or "violent" ...
On August 20, 2004, fecal coliform and E. coli were found in the water system at the McNeil Island Correction Center (MICC) near Steilacoom, Washington. E. coli was also found in about 6,000 pounds of ground beef produced at a meat processing plant on the Island prison. Both types of ...
by David M. Reutter
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a state driver's license examiner who exercised supervisory control over a prisoner acted as a state actor and can be held liable for raping her. Pamela Smith, a former prisoner of Oklahoma's Tulsa Community Correction Center (TCCC), ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 20
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district court's grant of summary judgment to guards in a prisoner's retaliation suit. This action was filed by New York prisoner Anthony Bennett, alleging he was retaliated against for successfully prosecuting a previous lawsuit and filing grievances.
In 1995, Bennett filed ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 21
HIV is Occupational Disease for Connecticut Prison Guards
The Connecticut Supreme Court held that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is an occupational disease for prison guards who are members of prison emergency response units. The court also held that the estate of a deceased guard filed a timely claim for ...
DNA Profiling Of Conditionally Released Federal Offenders Upheld
by John E. Dannenberg
A sharply divided en banc Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that the United States does not violate the Fourth Amendment when it requires "DNA profiling", a practice compelling the submission of DNA samples from certain conditionally ...
by John E. Dannenberg
Los Angeles, California voters, in a November 2004 campaign marred by scare tactics, rejected a 1/2 cent sales tax measure (Measure A) that would have raised $560 million per year to pay for 5,000 added cops. At the same time, the voters approved a $500 million ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 24
Washington ISRB Departure from Standard Sentencing Range Upheld
The Washington Supreme Court has affirmed the State Indeterminate Sentence Review Board's (ISRB) extension of a sex offender's sentence beyond the standard range under the state's Sentencing Reform Act (SRA). Chapter 9.94A RCW.
In 2002 Lincoln Addleman had served 23 years of ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 24
The Washington State Supreme Court has held jail personnel have a duty to take steps to promptly release a detainee once they know or should know, based on information provided to them that the person they are holding is not the person named in an arrest warrant.
This matter was ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 25
Texas Supreme Court Clarifies Procedures For Civil Court Prisoner Appearances
by Matthew T. Clarke
The Supreme Court of Texas recently clarified the procedures a prisoner must follow to secure the right to personally appear in a civil court proceeding. In doing so, it partially overruled most of the case law ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 26
by Matthew T. Clarke
States strapped by tight budgets and pressed by a swell of prisoners are faced with the Hobson's choice of releasing prisoners early to ease overcrowding or building prisons they can ill afford to construct and staff. Private prison corporations seem to offer a third choice. They ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 31
by Matthew T. Clarke
On October 12, 2004, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) issued an extensive, 179-page After Action Report on the July 20, 2004, riot at the Crowley County Correctional Facility (CCCF) which is run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The report places most of the blame ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 32
The City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has agreed to settle its part in a federal lawsuit over the death of a Native American prisoner in the Tulsa Jail. According to the November 7, 2003 settlement, the city will pay the man's family $200,000 and improve its police training program.
Shane Spencer, ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 33
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the Kansas Department of Corrections' (KDOC) rule IMPP 11-101, which prohibits prisoners from receiving gift subscriptions to magazines and newspapers, does not violate the prisoners' constitutional rights under the First Amendment.
Reversing the Kansas Court of Appeals' decision contra in Rice v. Kansas, 76 ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 34
The Pennsylvania Court of Appeals held that a convicted sex offender confined at the State Correctional Institution at Waymart (SCI-Waymart) did not have a right to contact visits with minor children.
Jeffrey Garber, a prisoner of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PDOC) filed a Petition for Review, challenging the constitutionality ...
Total Confinement: Madness and Reason
in the Maximum Security Prison
by Lorna A. Rhodes, University of California Press, 2004 (329 pages, $19.95).
Reviewed by David C. Fathi
Like chain gangs and boot camps before them, "supermax" prisons were a raging fad in the 1990syet another round in the perpetual "tough ...
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that a state prisoner stated a valid claim under the First Amendment when he claimed that in retaliation for his having filed several grievances, prison officials revisited previously rejected gang affiliation insinuations and now branded him a gang member.
California prisoner Vincent ...
Section 1983 May Be Used To Challenge Disciplinary Hearings Not Affecting Total Length of Confinement
by John E. Dannenberg
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals joined four other circuits in holding that when challenging the procedure or result of a prison disciplinary hearing, one may utilize 42 U.S.C. § ...
by John K Dannenberg
Resolving two distinct complaints of an Illinois state prisoner, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that (1) where injury from ETS [second-hand cigarette smoke] was alleged at one prison, transfer to another prison with the same problem did not provide the state with a ...
by David M. Reutter
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the public and press enjoy a qualified First Amendment right of access to court docket sheets. This case was filed by the Hartford Courant and The Connecticut Law Tribune, challenging the Connecticut state court system's practice of ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 40
Prisoner Stated Deliberate Indifference Claim, but Summary Judgment Denial Reversed
In a case with a long, unusual procedural history, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a federal district court's denial of prison officials' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim in a prisoner's civil rights complaint ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 40
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held a warden may be found to be deliberately indifferent to a male-to-female transsexual prisoner's safety where the prisoner was housed in the Protective Custody Unit (PCU) with a predatory prisoner. Traci Greene, a prisoner at Ohio's Warren Correctional Institution, was preoperative, but still ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 42
News in Brief:
Afghanistan: On December 17, 2004, troops of the American puppet regime stormed the Pul-e Charkhi jail in Kabul where four prisoners, three Pakistanis and an Iraqi, had attempted to escape by killing and disarming a jail guard and using his automatic rifle to escape the prison. The ...
Loaded on
Jan. 15, 2005
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2005, page 44
The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that a cause of action accrues for attorney malpractice on the date the case is finalized in favor of the defendant because of the attorney's ineffective assistance. This rule is called the favorable termination rule, and is employed by many states.
James R. Glaze, ...
