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 ...

By Paul Wright

As summer winds down our cover story reports on the impact of extreme heat on Texas prisons; in the next few months we will report more on what the heat did this summer in American prisons. For decades now Prison Legal News has been the only publication ...

by David M. Reutter

On January 17, 2023, the last of four former Hawaii prison guards convicted of beating a state prisoner was sentenced to federal prison. The sentences ranged from one to 12 years. Three of the guards – Jason Tagaloa, 31, Craig Pinkney, 38, and Jonathan Taum, 50 ...

by Hayden Betts

Members of five sheriff’s offices across the country were offered cruises from “Tampa Bay to the Caribbean” as part of jail telecommunications contracts with the vendor Smart Communications, according to documents obtained by The Appeal.

Smart Communications is a for-profit company that sells communications services including phone, ...

by David M. Reutter

In November 2022, a $1 million settlement was reached in a lawsuit filed by the estate of a 23-year-old indigenous woman who committed suicide at Washington’s Fork City Jail in 2019. Kimberly Bender took her own life following weeks of alleged sexual harassment by guard John ...

Professor Leo Hylton’s class is like almost every other at Colby College in Maine. Students form a circle with their chairs around their professor. His course on prison abolition – the movement to end incarceration – is offered through the school’s anthropology department. But there is one thing that sets ...

by David M. Reutter

On February 2, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas dismissed a state prisoner’s habeas corpus petition challenging denial of his parole because he did not have approved sex offender housing. While bad news for him, the decision is instructive for any ...

In a quest to exonerate Abel Soto, his family and friends hired Aaron Spolin, a Los Angeles lawyer who advertises himself as “California’s top-ranked habeas attorney.” Soto and his supporters believe he was wrongfully convicted of a 2003 murder, when he was 19 years old. By 2019, he had spent ...

Using detainees’ money to push forward with plans to replace Texas’ Nueces County Jail, Sheriff J.C. Hooper tapped a commissary fund in April 2023 to spend up to $220,770 for an outside consultant to prepare a study for a new lockup, after the current one failed its last two state ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

On June 8, 2023, the New York City Council passed legislation to ensure transgender, gender-nonconforming, non-binary and intersex (TGNCNBI) detainees and prisoners at city lockups are provided with services designed to make their reentry into society easier and more successful.

But nothing comes for free, including ...

by Matt Clarke

On October 4, 2022, a federal jury in Colorado awarded $8.25 million to a woman taken by a former sheriff to his home and sexually assaulted as he was transporting her to another jail.

Peatinna Biggs, 46, who is developmentally disabled, was in custody of Sedgwick County ...

On June 8, 2023, a judge in Alabama’s Lauderdale County handed a life sentence without parole to a state prisoner for escaping the county lockup with his jail-guard lover, who then committed suicide as pursuing police closed in. Casey White, 39, pleaded guilty to felony escape in a deal with ...

By January 7, 2023, after the second death in the county jail in just over 10 weeks, a grassroots nonprofit calling for civilian oversight of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department (SMSD) had rounded up support from the county Board of Supervisors as well as the councils of several cities ...

Though Brazil’s incarceration rate is just two-thirds that in the U.S., the South American country’s prisons offer plenty of misery to those incarcerated there. Which makes the boast of a Christian nonprofit running a few dozen Brazilian lockups all the more remarkable: Their prisoners don’t want to run away, they ...

by David M. Reutter

The Oregon Court of Appeals on November 23, 2022, held that the state Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision exceeded its statutory authority when it adopted a rule that excludes prisoners convicted of aggravated murder – including those for whom an initial parole release date has ...

After two detainees escaped from Virginia’s Piedmont Regional Jail (PRJ) on April 30, 2022, the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) announced it was relocating its detainees while the jail “works to improve security measures.” This is bad news for PRJ: It receives $50 per day for up to 200 federal detainees ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

In March 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its bi-annual “high-risk list” of federal programs or operations that are susceptible to waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement. Added to the list this year was the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), mainly due to its inability ...

On June 6, 2023, a federal grand jury in Virginia indicted two employees of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for allegedly showing deliberate indifference to a prisoner suffering a cardiac emergency that killed him in 2021.

Guard Lt. Shronda Covington, 47, and Registered Nurse Tonya Farley, 52, are accused ...

A Washington prisoner allegedly subjected to ruthless medical treatment by the state Department of Corrections (DOC) can take his claims to a jury, following a determination from the state Supreme Court on May 26, 2022, which invalidated a Washington law requiring a certificate of merit before his claims could proceed. ...

During the spring 2023, a troubling number of mysterious deaths took place in the State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Rockview, Pennsylvania. Richard Woods, 46, was found unresponsive in his cell on April 20, 2023. He was rushed to Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College, where he was declared dead ...

by Casey J. Bastian

A coroner’s report on March 14, 2023, confirmed that an undocumented worker was fatally shot by a Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department (SCSD) deputy after a foot chase the previous summer. Sebastopol attorney Izaak Schwaiger, who is representing the estate of the dead man, David Pelaez-Chavez, 35, ...

by Mark Wilson

“Broken prison camera systems are enabling corruption, misconduct and abuse” within America’s 122 federal prisons, declared U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), when Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) signed Ossoff’s bipartisan Prison Camera Reform Act of 2021 into law on January 10, 2023.

When he introduced the ...

by Eike Blohm, MD

Various medications are available to prisoners for purchase in commissaries and can be taken without instructions from medical staff. Yet taken incorrectly, these medications may have significant adverse effects or result in false positive drug tests, leading to loss of good time and potentially solitary confinement. ...

by David M. Reutter

The County of San Diego agreed on September 14, 2022, to pay $4.35 million to settle a lawsuit alleging a guard at the county lockup stood by and failed to stop a detainee high on meth from clawing her eyes out.

Tanya Suarez was taken into ...

On July 19, 2022, the New York Court of Claims found the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) partially liable for failing to protect a prisoner from being assaulted by another prisoner.

Jeremy Sanchez was incarcerated at Great Meadow Correctional Facility (GMCF) when he was viciously attacked by ...

Unshackled Hearts is a central Indiana prison ministry that says its mission is to bring spiritual “restoration and freedom” to incarcerated Hoosiers through bible study, positive communication, and heart healing. But it hit a wall at the Howard County Jail (HCJ) in Kokomo on January 1, 2023, when a new ...

by Matt Clarke

On December 5, 2022, federal prosecutors moved to dismiss insider trading charges against JPay founder Ryan Shapiro, 45. For a hefty fee, the firm provides financial and communications services to people incarcerated in jail and prisons. JPay was acquired by Securus Technologies in April 2015. Both are ...

As reported by the Harrisburg Patriot News on April 21, 2023, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) implemented a solution to the drug problem in state prisons in September 2018 that has proved cruel and ultimately ineffective. That year, a rash of illnesses befell prison staff, which DOC blamed on ...

In October 2022, the FBI released its 2021 report titled Crime in the U.S. Published annually for a century, it is considered the gold standard for data on criminal activity in the U.S. However, the new report – which covered 2021 – lost much of its value because a change ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

In an article published on March 3, 2023, ABS-CBN News said that conditions at the Philippines’ New Bilibid Prison (NBP) – one of the largest prisons in the world – were simply deplorable. Overcrowding and insufficient resources have resulted in abundant contraband, establishing a power hierarchy ...

PBS News Hour reported on March 7, 2023, that people with cancer who have been incarcerated are more likely to die than patients who were never in prison. The reporting was based on research from the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice at the Yale University School of Medicine published ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 31, 2023, the federal court for the District of Maryland granted dismissal to a suit by a former detainee at the Prince George’s County lockup, after he and co-Plaintiffs accepted a settlement resolving their claims that the county Department of Corrections (DOC) operated under ...

by Mark Wilson

On October 6, 2022, the Oregon Supreme Court denied a petition for review from prosecutors seeking to stop the Governor and Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision (BPPS) from granting early release hearings to 73 prisoners who were sentenced to life for offenses committed as juveniles. See: ...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report in early May 2023, finding “four foundational, enterprise-wide challenges” confronting the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

The first involves “weaknesses in the BOP’s internal audit function,” deficiencies “that undermine confidence in reports and ratings of institutional ...

by Mark Wilson

“I was sentenced and put in prison for choices I made,” said Briane Moore. “I was not sentenced to prison to be raped and abused.”

She was testifying at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on December 9, 2022, about being repeatedly raped ...

by Mark Wilson

On February 1, 2023, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that civilly committed sex offenders have a clearly established right to transfer to Community Preparation Services (CPS) within a reasonable time. What is reasonable under any given circumstances, however, is a fact issue to be determined in the ...

On July 10, 2023, a sentence of 12-months plus one day was handed to a former guard at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Danvers, Massachusetts, for brutally assaulting a mentally ill prisoner who was restrained. Seth M. Bourget, 43, was also ordered to serve two years of supervised release ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

On July 18, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed an earlier ruling for the federal court for the Southern District of New York by Judge Cathy Seibel, who decided that punitive damages awarded to state prisoner Nicolas Magalios for an unwarranted ...

by Douglas Ankney

On May 22, 2023, a $30,000 settlement was reached between officials with a Virginia jail and a Muslim prisoner who objected to its broadcasts of Christian religious programming, which he claimed violated the First Amendment prohibition against any government action “respecting establishment of religion.”

The agreement between ...

By Mark Wilson

Approximately 40 Nevada prisoners at a maximum-security lockup near Reno started a hunger strike on December 1, 2022, that lasted at least nine days. Top officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) claimed the strike at Ely State Prison was due to skimpy portions served by ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 31, 2023, the federal court for the Western District of Arkansas concluded that a “postcard-only” policy at the Baxter County Correctional Center (BCCC) constituted a de facto blanket ban on publications, in violation of the First Amendment rights of the Human Rights Defense Center ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 30, 2023, a jury sitting in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois awarded $50,002 in damages to state prisoner Larry ‘Rocky’ Harris on his claim that prison officials punished and transferred him to a less desirable lockup because of what ...

by David M. Reutter

Historically, prisoners have been largely left out of the technology wave changing the way the rest of the world communicates and does business. It wasn’t until March 2009 that the first phones for prisoner use were installed by the Texas Department Criminal Justice (TDCJ). Before then, ...

A former guard at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla was arrested on May 24, 2023, and charged with raping 22 prisoners since 2014. The 96 counts handed Greg Rodriguez, 55, include sodomy, sexual battery and rape with threat to use authority, according to the office of Madera County District ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

On April 5, 2023, the Sheriff of Maryland’s Frederick County was charged with using his office to order machine guns from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) that were supposed to be used for demonstration and evaluation – but which were later rented ...

by David M. Reutter

On March 6, 2023, the Nevada Department of Corrections (DOC) reached an agreement with a group of state prisoners to settle claims that a change in chapel schedule substantially burdened the exercise of their religion, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal ...

On May 31, 2023, the Supreme Court of California vacated and remanded to the Court of Appeal a decision handed down in August 2022, overturning the second-degree murder convictions of three guards who fatally beat a mentally ill detainee in the Santa Clara County Jail. 

Home to Silicon Valley, the ...

According to an analysis published by the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice on April 19, 2023, the cost of locking up America’s two million prisoners and detainees exceeds government agencies’ ability to afford it. With the help of tough-on-crime lawmakers, that has created a financial hell for prisoners and their ...

According to an AP News report on January 18, 2023, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole (BOPP) denied parole in fiscal year 2022 to 90% of eligible prisoners — the highest rate of denial in state history. Leola Harris, 71, received one of those denials. In 2001 she was ...

by Keith Sanders

Over nine days in December 2015, during transport from Maryland to South Carolina to face charges he skipped child support payments, William Karn endured a grueling trek stretching more than 2,000 miles while shackled to a metal bench in a van owned and operated by Prisoner Transport ...

by Matt Clarke

A North Carolina prisoner who alleged his constitutional rights were violated during his arrest and pretrial detention eventually filed five federal lawsuits. Three were dismissed by the federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. One is still pending. Another was settled on August 12, 2021, ...

by David M. Reutter

Finding that changes in pretrial release procedures of Prince George’s County “may or may not be ameliorative,” the federal court for the District of Maryland on June 7, 2023, refused to dismiss a complaint filed by a group of pretrial detainees who claim the county’s bond ...

A collection of graphic videos reported by the Los Angeles Times on June 24, 2023, pulled back the curtain on rampant violence and chaos inside Los Angeles County jails. The footage, saved on a discarded thumb drive, portrays a shocking lack of supervision from jailers, as well as incidents of ...

by Mark Wilson

“I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life, and the state should not be in the business of executing people – even if a terrible crime placed them in prison,” said outgoing Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) on December 14, 2022, in ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

In a letter to Virginia lawmakers on March 22, 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) took executive action to roll back voting rights restoration to ex-felons. It is the fourth time since 2013 that a governor has modified procedures. State Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Mount Vernon) said the ...

Responding to an open-records request, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) revealed on April 11, 2023, that 1.7% of the state’s prison population was in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day or more.

A mentally ill woman held for DOC at the Delta County Jail (DCJ) was in that ...

One of the more notorious prisoners at a federal lockup in Florida was stabbed by a fellow prisoner on July 9, 2023. Larry Nassar, 59, survived and was recovering from the assault by 49-year-old Shane McMillan. The incident was reportedly provoked by a comment Nassar made about the Wimbledon Women’s ...

by Matt Clarke

On April 7, 2023, a visibly annoyed U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver issued a highly-detailed permanent injunction (PI) specifying what must be done by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (DCRR) to meet minimum constitutional standards in providing prisoner healthcare and mental health care, as ...

Alabama: According to WSFA in Montgomery, a guard at the Montgomery County Detention Center was charged on July 18, 2023, with conspiracy to provide contraband to a prisoner as well as bribing a public official. Timothy Bernard Summerlin, 33, had worked at the lockup for roughly three and a half ...