Rockwall County, Texas, and Lake Pointe Medical Center will pay $100,000 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the mother of a prisoner who died after being turned away from the hospital twice in 2004.

Sharon Mann claimed in her state lawsuit that jailers and hospital medical staff had ...

This month's cover story is on what goes in and comes out of prisons in the way of water and sewage. While a lot of attention is paid to the more dramatic effects of prison overcrowding, such as violence, inadequate medical care, prisoners sleeping in gyms and store rooms, etc.; ...

by Matt Clarke

On May 15, 2007, legislation took effect that brought Texas into the fold of the other 49 states that have prisoner telephones in state prisons.
State Senator Letica Van de Putte filed SD 1580, authorizing the phones, which took effect Nay 15, 2007. State Representatives Terri Hodge ...

This column is intended to provide "Habeas Hints" to prisoners who are considering or handling habeas corpus petitions as their own attorneys ("in pro per"). The focus of the column is on habeas corpus practice under AEDPA, the 1996 habeas corpus law which now governs habeas corpus practice throughout the ...

Just over two years ago, the jail in Dallas County, Texas (DCJ) failed state certification inspections and came under fire for numerous high profile cases of prisoner deaths and neglect. A U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report, issued on December 8, 2006, found that the facility was still deficient in ...

by Matt Clarke

On April 24, 2007, about 500 Arizona and Illinois prisoners at a privately-run facility owned by the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) participated in an uprising. The prison is operated by the Boca Raton, Florida-based GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections), a NYSE-listed company that manages 68 prisons ...

An Indiana federal jury awarded Larry Mayes $9 million for actions taken by police officers of Indiana's City of Hammond, which resulted in Mayes being convicted of a rape he did not commit. As a result of those actions, Mayes served almost 21 years in prison.

Mayes was arrested in ...

by Matt Clarke

On April 12, 2007, eleven guards at the federal Bureau of Prison's Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York " including a captain and three lieutenants" were indicted for abusing prisoners. At the same time, another scandal at the MDC involved a staff psychologist allegedly having ...

The District Court for Oklahoma County, Oklahoma has ordered the County's Sheriff to transfer all prisoners awaiting transportation to the Department of Corrections (DOC) within 30 days and any prisoners sentenced after the Court's order are to be so transferred within 45 days of sentencing.

The Court's order came in ...

Prison Health Services (PHS), nearing the end of its three-year $359.6 million contract to provide medical, dental, mental health and pharmaceutical services to ten of the eleven New York City jails, was audited by the State Comptroller's Office in June 2007. The 26 page audit report revealed that over 27% ...

The Indiana Department of Corrections (IDC) settled a class action lawsuit brought by mentally ill prisoners whose Eighth Amendment rights had been trampled since 1993 by IDC policy that placed them in long-term disciplinary housing instead of treating their mental illnesses. The settlement comes ten years after a Human Rights ...

The recent convictions and sentences given to several Japanese prison guards reveals the phenomena of allowing guards to walk even when they seriously injure kill prisoners is not limited to the United States.

In total, seven guards have been convicted by the Nagoya District Court of assaults on three prisoners ...

by Matt Clarke

March 2007 was an unusually bloody month in Georgia prisons, with three murders of prisoners by other prisoners and one severe beating of a mentally ill, handcuffed prisoner by guards.

Since 2005 there have been five homicides in the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC). Three of them ...

by Michael Rigby

Elderly prisoners are more than twice as likely to die behind bars as those who are not in prison, a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) on prison mortality rates reveals. White and Hispanic prisoners were also slightly more likely to die than their non-incarcerated ...

Prison officials in New York City have been charged in a lawsuit filed upon behalf of four mentally ill prisoners with depriving those prisoners of their basic human rights and placing them in diapers while in isolated segregation.

The prisoners, who were identified by their first names only, say they ...

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) will hire dozens of dental health care providers, revise policies and procedures governing prisoner dental care, and implement oral health care education programs as part of a settlement agreed to in a larger class action lawsuit that alleged constitutionally inadequate health care ...

It?s beginning to sound a bit repetitive, but the nation?s prison population continues to grow exponentially. At midyear 2006, U.S. prisons and jails held 2,245,189 persons?a 2.8% increase over the previous year, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report released in June 2007.

Put another way, on June ...

In a March 2007 Letter Report to California's Governor and Legislature, State Auditor Elaine Howell reported that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had failed to make meaningful progress in devising accurate prisoner population projections for California. Such projections are of paramount importance because they seriously impact CDCR's ...

More details have surfaced in a conflict-of-interest scandal involving two California gubernatorial appointees involved in a $26 million no-bid contract awarded by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for medical scheduling services. PLN previously reported that the chief of CDCR's Division of Health Care Services, Dr. Peter Farber-Szekrenyi, ...

Val Verde County, Texas and its contract Del Rio jail operator, GEO Group, Inc., agreed in March 2007 to pay $200,000 to the surviving family of a 23-year-old woman prisoner who, upon becoming depressed after being raped in the jail, hung herself with her bed sheet in July 2004.

LeTisha ...

The Superior Court of Sacramento County has granted a writ of mandate prohibiting the transfer of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) prisoners to out-of-state facilities to alleviate the prison system's chronic overcrowding crisis.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the union that represents state prison guards, had ...

California's State Auditor has found that a pharmacist, who was contracted by three state prisons to select other pharmacists from a state-approved registry to perform services at the facilities, directed 93% of such referrals worth $1.1 million to pharmacists on his own firm's registry. Fees and costs gained from these ...

by John E. Dannenberg

A December 2006 state audit of the Utah Department of Corrections (UDC) found that entrenched upper management personnel lacked vision and innovation, while they selectively allowed punishable staff "indiscretions" to be swept under the rug without consequences. This self-perpetuating chronic situation left UDC staff morale in ...

by Matt Clarke

On May 3, 2007, a federal court in Pennsylvania found unconstitutional the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) mail policy allowing legal mail to be opened outside the presence of prisoners if the pail does not display a prison-issued control number.

Derrick Dale Fontroy, Theodore B. Savage and ...

On March 12, 2007, a federal district court awarded $350,000 to a prisoner who was beaten by about 40 other prisoners on the recreation yard of a federal prison in Texas.

Plaintiff Luis Garza claimed that while on the recreation yard at the Bureau of Prison's Federal Correctional Institution in ...

by John E. Dannenberg

"Good care is less costly than bad care." This maxim, from prison healthcare Receiver Robert Sillen, set the tone when he announced his master plan on May 10, 2007 to constitutionally repair the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's (CDCR) ailing healthcare system. In the 50 ...