by Marie Gottschalk
For more than a decade now, politicians and policymakers — from Barack Obama to Donald Trump — have lauded Texas as a model for criminal justice reform. They have praised the Lone Star State for being “smart on crime” and for incubating Right on Crime, the criminal …
by Paul Wright
Welcome to the first issue of PLN for 2021. This month’s cover story dissects the myth of the “Texas Criminal Justice Reform Miracle.” One of the oddities of the American police state is that only in the U.S., which cages more of its citizens than any other …
by Matt Clarke
On October 26, 2020, federal prisoners aided by civil rights groups and a major international law firm, filed a class action lawsuit challenging the handling of a COVID-19 outbreak by the Bureau of Prison (BOP) at the Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) at Butner, North Carolina.
With 27 …
by David M. Reutter
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on August 10, 2020, reversed a Tennessee federal district court’s order denying defendant’s motion for summary judgment on a claim that a sheriff was deliberately indifferent to a pretrial detainee’s safety because his jail was overcrowded.
Zachery Beck was assaulted …
by Douglas Ankney
According to a June 2020 report from Medical News Today, the infection and mortality rates — and a lack of testing — for COVID-19 disproportionately affects Black and Latino populations within the United States based upon the available data. Because the government has been reluctant to …
by Derek Gilna
On July 3, 2020, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported prisoner John Dailey died of COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) in Butner, North Carolina. The 62-year-old cancer patient had been granted release the month before to home confinement. But BOP had fought the release, …
by Dale Chappell
Apparently, it’s easier to release someone from jail and dismiss the charges if their issues become too much trouble, according to a lawsuit filed by James Bagley in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Bagley was arrested in September 2017 for suspected driving …
by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
The pandemic was more widespread than ever in the United States, as PLN was going to press. Almost every day records were being set for the daily number of new cases (240,000), hospitalizations (over 100,000), and deaths (nearing 4,000). News articles say the two deadliest …
by Jayson Hawkins
When facing the harsh reality of incarceration, whether for a few years or several decades, one will soon confront a rather crucial question: “What am I going to do with all this time?”
For many, the answer is to distract themselves with dominoes and television. Others turn …
by Matt Clarke
On August 19, 2020, the parents of a prisoner who committed suicide a year earlier at a privately operated Tennessee prison filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Nashville-based CoreCivic, alleging the company’s employees ignored threats and attempts by the prisoner to kill himself as well as …
by Casey Bastian
Anyone who has any experience with a jail or prison knows that they are like small islands. Overcrowded, dysfunctional, and violent. Too frequently, prisoner rights violations, abusive behavior of guards and other related injustices occur daily.
These facts do not make it into the public sphere in …
by David M. Reutter
Prison journalism is on the comeback in California, and it’s being credited as a rehabilitative tool that is impacting prison reform advocacy in a positive way.
When The Prison Mirror was founded in 1887 at Stillwater Prison in Minnesota, newspapers were commonplace in prisons. The Prison …
While we live under “house arrest” amid the COVID-19 pandemic,
it’s a good time to revisit what the real thing is like.
by Eleanor Bader, The Indypendent
When most of us think about house arrest, ankle monitors or mandatory enrollment in drug or alcohol counseling in lieu of jail, it …
by Ed Lyon
One of the late great singer Karen Carpenter’s hit songs was Bless the Beasts and the Children, wherein she lamented that neither has choice nor voice. Such was the case with young Cyntoia Brown, who found herself being trafficked into a life of prostitution in Nashville …
by Keith Sanders
Back in August 2020, “things at Waseca were calm,” recalled Channing Lacy. Like many other women incarcerated in the low-security Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Waseca, Minnesota, the 33-year-old considered herself lucky that the prison had reported just five cases of COVID-19 through early August 2020 out …
by David M. Reutter
Shortly after the deadliest prison riot in 25 years, officials launched an investigation into the events surrounding the April 25, 2018, incident at South Carolina’s Lee Correctional Institution (LCI). After more than two and a half years and at least $190,000 spent on a special investigation, …
by Derek Gilna
Salt Lake County, Utah settled in March of 2020 a wrongful-death lawsuit stemming from the in-custody death in 2016 of Lisa Marie Ostler, who died when jail officials ignored her symptoms of serious Crohn’s disease.
The settlement concluded a federal civil rights lawsuit, which had alleged that, …
by David M. Reutter
An Alabama federal district court allowed portions of a lawsuit to move forward that sought damages from the City of Montgomery (the City) and Judicial Correction Services, Inc. (JCS). The suit alleged due process and equal protection violations that stemmed from a privatized probation system that …
by David M. Reutter
A Nebraska Federal district court denied class certification in a lawsuit alleging systematic deficiencies in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NCDS) health-care system. Individual claims of some of the lead incarcerated plaintiffs were allowed to proceed.
The court’s June 8, 2020, order resolved 11 pending …
by Kevin Bliss
Developers in Fairfax County, Virginia, are remaking the Lorton Reformatory historical landmark into a suburban village. County officials are using the prime real estate just off I-95 with good roads to D.C. and a growing tech industry in northern Virginia to create a suburb utilizing much of …
by David M. Reutter
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a summary judgment grant to defendants in a New York prisoner’s lawsuit that alleged he was denied due process. The court’s July 23, 2020, order was issued in an appeal brought by prisoner Jarvis Elder. While incarcerated at Attica …
by David M. Reutter
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held on July 23, 2020 that a prisoner acting pro se persuaded it that a factual issue remained as to whether a nurse was deliberately indifferent to his pain and suffering. The court reversed a grant of summary judgment as …
by Daniel A. Rosen
A captain with the St. Louis County Justice Center is under investigation for potentially inappropriate use of a Taser in several recent cases. In May 2020, he employed a Taser to subdue a woman in crisis with a history of mental illness. In June, the same …
by Saraana Jamraj
As the coronavirus pandemic has continued to devastate people, especially the vulnerable and marginalized, the COVID-19 Hotline for Incarcerated People (CHIP) has brought to light the dangerously insufficient response and deeply inhumane neglect present in Broward County, Florida, jails.
Founded on April 5, 2020, the prison abolitionist …
by Dale Chappell
Former prisoners who have turned to the nonprofit organization The Doe Fund in New York City for work and job training have found themselves making less than minimum wage, once the Doe Fund takes its fees out of their paychecks. Some say this is exploitation of those …
by David M. Reutter
Rapper Kodak Black filed a lawsuit on September 21, 2020, alleging he “is suffering torture and religious persecution” at the hands of Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guards and officials.
Kodak Black, whose real name is Bill Kapri, was arrested on May 11, 2019, while en route …
by Matt Clarke
On September 15, 2020, the Montana Supreme Court reversed the granting of summary judgment in a case challenging a jail’s blanket strip search policy on constitutional and statutory grounds. The court held that the policy was not unconstitutional but did violate the clear language of § 46-5-105, …
by Mark Wilson
We are not indifferent to the serious dangers faced by petitioners and other inmates at heightened risk of contracting COVID-19 in Washington’s correctional facilities.”
That was a claim by a Majority of the en banc Washington state Supreme Court on July 23, 2020, in a 5-4 decision …
by Matt Clarke
Questions are currently being raised about the historic figures in whose honor statues were erected and schools and streets were named. Names include those of segregationists, slave owners and racists. Now, attention is being directed to the individuals who prisons are named after, some of whom were …
by Matt Clarke
On December 8, 2020, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) announced that 655 of the 1,066 prisoners held at the La Paz unit in the state prison complex in Yuma had tested positive for COVID-19. It is ADCRR’s largest outbreak of the disease since …
by Ed Lyon
Anyone who has done time in a jail or prison has seen that one lone person, or sometimes two, who sits at a dayroom table for hours on end with pencil and paper. A few have colored pencils and some ink pens. They produce beautiful greeting cards …
by Ed Lyon
On June 5, 2020, as Louisiana entered the second phase of its reopening program following shutdowns ordered to counteract the COVID-19 pandemic, the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DOC) suspended a panel it had appointed less than two months earlier to consider state prisoners for …
by Kevin Bliss
An outbreak of COVID-19 began September 29, 2020, at the Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) in Fairfax County, Virginia, with eight staff and six juveniles testing positive over the next 10 days for the novel coronavirus that causes the disease. It was the worst outbreak in a juvenile …
by Matt Clarke
On August 11, 2020, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that prisoners retain Fourth Amendment rights to bodily privacy requiring that physical and visual strip searches be reasonable. In doing so, it overruled two circuit precedents to the contrary.
In 2011, over 200 female prisoners at …
by Derek Gilna
A federal class action lawsuit filed in December of 2017 alleging numerous humanitarian violations at Santa Barbara County Adult Detention Facilities (County Jail) settled on July 17, 2020. Both parties hope that it will bring an end to substandard medical, mental health treatment, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions …
by David M. Reutter
Nearly half the population at North Dakota’s Grand Forks County Correctional Center (GFCCC) tested positive for COVID-19 on November 17, 2020. Of the jail’s 20 housing units, there were positive cases in 16 units.
The Grand Forks facility has a population of 195 detainees. There were …
by David M. Reutter
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that a former Pennsylvania prisoner’s civil rights action was not barred for failing to exhaust administrative remedies. The court found the prison’s grievance policy for a prisoner dealing with an emergency or urgent situation is not bound by the …
by Ed Lyon
In precolonial days, U.S. jails and prisons were nothing like today’s in concept, practical use or design. Lengthy sentences and pretrial detentions for those pending trial were the exception rather than the rule. Back then, they were a place where debtors were confined until they paid what …
by Kevin Bliss
Claire Bodkin, Matthew Bonn and Sheila Wildeman wrote an article in March 2020 for The Conversation addressing the need for more comprehensive opioid testing and treatment programs in Canada’s prisons and jails. The crisis has killed 14,000 Canadians since 2016.
They point out that Canadian and international …
by Jayson Hawkins
A violent disturbance was reported inside Georgia’s Ware State Prison in early August 2020. A prisoner reporting from inside the prison on an illegal cellphone cited health issues, three meals a day consisting only of cheese and peanut butter sandwiches, and a lack of electricity as reasons …
by Douglas Ankney
On July 31, 2020, a motion was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri revealing that CoreCivic and Securus Technologies (Defendants) had agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging illegal recording of attorney-client conversations at the Leavenworth Detention Center …
by Matt Clarke
On August 10, 2020, the U.S. signed off on a settlement of $2 million, including up to 25% in attorney fees, in a lawsuit brought by a federal prisoner who was denied necessary emergency eye surgery for closed-angle glaucoma for months. By the time she received the …
by Kevin Bliss
Lockdowns instituted because of the coronavirus pandemic have had a benefit for Scottish prisoners. The Scottish Prison Services (SPS) spent over 160,000 pounds on mobile phones for prisoners to stay in touch with their families.
The SPS introduced mobile phones into its prison system as a means …
by Kevin Bliss
An analysis published on October 26, 2020 by Reuters showed U.S. jails that contracted with private health care companies had higher death rates on average among prisoners and detainees than those with government-run health-care programs. Reuters reviewed over 500 jails and found that of the five leading …
by Matt Clarke
On June 23, 2020, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an Ohio prisoner could be executed despite a previous botched attempt. Romell Broom was taken to the Ohio execution chamber on September 15, 2009, to be put to death by lethal injection. For two hours, …
by Matt Clarke
On July 12, 2020, the Second Circuit court of appeals held that a federal court did not commit error when it denied a New York parolee’s motion to order parole officials to allow him to attend the trial of a prison conditions civil rights lawsuit when he …
by Daniel A. Rosen
On Election Day in November 2020, Washington State attorney and former prisoner Tarra Simmons became the first person convicted of a felony elected to the state’s legislature.
Prior to the election, she said she was running to help give people “a first chance so they won’t …
by Ed Lyon
Anyone even vaguely familiar with prison operations know how quick prison officials are to allege any contraband found inside a prison had to have been brought in by a visitor.
Investigators with the Tennessee Department of Corrections’ (TDOC) Office of Investigation & Conduct and Internal Affairs, working …
by Mark Wilson
As millions of Americans suffer economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic, it’s business as usual for fat cat lawmakers who continue to reveal how out of touch and indifferent they are to the lives of their constituents.
The irony was apparently lost on Senator Jerry Moran, (R-Kansas), …
by Kevin Bliss
Christopher Hampton and Cortney Rolley, represented by Eric Artrip of Mastando & Artrip, LLC, filed a class-action suit against a group of guards at Elmore Correctional Facility (ECF) located near Montgomery, Alabama. They say the guards, who accused them of trying to obtain contraband during a visit, …
Loaded on
Jan. 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2021, page 62
Alabama: On August 21, 2020, Sylvester Hartley became the seventh prisoner to die of complications from COVID-19 at Alabama’s St. Clair Correctional Facility, according to a report in the St. Clair News-Aegis. The 60-year-old, who was serving a life-without-parole sentence for three counts of first-degree kidnapping, was a named …
