by David M. Reutter

Alaska is a small state with enormous natural resources. The native people, who largely subsist off the land, enrich its culture. The beauty of its landscape draws millions of tourists annually. Yet behind the sheen of natural and cultural richness lies a deadly and degrading ...

From the Editor

By Paul Wright

One of the realities of covering and reporting on prison systems is that, not surprisingly, the bigger systems with more prisoners tend to generate more news, especially the bad news. Generally speaking, the dearth of news by and about smaller prison systems does not ...

On December 19, 2023, the federal court for the Northern District of Alabama sentenced former state prison guard supervisor Mohammad Jenkins, 52, to seven years and three months in federal prison for assaulting two handcuffed prisoners at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. As PLN reported, Jenkins pleaded guilty in September ...

On December 3, 2023, Tiawana Brown became the first ex-prisoner sworn in to serve on the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina. In September 2023, the self-described “survivor of incarceration” won the Democratic primary in the city’s District 3, her life-long home, before going on to win the seat in ...

On January 31, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a Texas prisoner’s uncorroborated declaration outlining steps he took to exhaust administrative remedies through the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) grievance process was sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact, thereby surviving ...

A former guard supervisor at the U.S. Penitentiary in Big Sandy, Kentucky, was sentenced to five and a half years in federal prison on December 6, 2023, for covering up three prisoner assaults by fellow guards. The federal court for the Eastern District of Kentucky also ordered Kevin C. Pearce, ...

Former Kentucky Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Sgt. Eric L. Nantell, 48, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison on June 11, 2024, for beating a restrained prisoner at Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex. The federal court for the Eastern District of Kentucky also ordered him to serve two years ...

One month after the federal court for the Northern District of California made the first-ever appointment of a special master to oversee rulings to the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the agency announced on April 15, 2024, that it would close the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Dublin, California. Efforts ...

Writers are intimately familiar with the effort it takes to organize ideas and direct them through a keyboard into text. Most have the comfort of knowing their draft work waits for them to take the next step. But incarcerated writers do not have that comfort.

In November 2023, Christopher Blackwell ...

Calling it “one of the most blatant and outrageous uses of excessive force” he’s ever seen, Cleveland attorney Nick DeCello of Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP filed suit in federal court for the Northern District of Ohio on January 25, 2024, accusing a Lorain County Jail (LCJ) guard of assaulting ...

by Douglas Ankney

A New Jersey prisoner filed a putative class-action lawsuit on December 19, 2023, alleging that privileged telephone communications with his attorney were recorded by the jail where he was held, provided to prosecutors and used against him at trial. Disturbingly, this is not the first such ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

In November 2023, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published an audit of the $2.75 million contract awarded to the American Correctional Association (ACA) by DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to accredit and reaccredit its lockups. The ...

In a strange-but-true story—like a fox asking a hen to help raid the coop—the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced on October 20, 2023, that its Office of Legislative Affairs has a new attorney advisor: Molly Gill, a long-time official at sentencing reform nonprofit Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM).

Gill ...

According to a report on December 7, 2023, when Warden Jeremy Everett sounded the alarm two months earlier over insufficient reentry assistance at Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County Jail, the administration of County Executive Chris Ronayne demanded Everett resign.  

Reentry programs reduce the likelihood of repeat offending, and other Ohio counties have ...

Former New York prisoner Ricardo Jimenez, 55, filed suit in federal court for the Southern District of New York on August 2, 2023, accusing New York City and three former officers with its Police Department (NYPD), as well as the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office (DAO), of violating his civil ...

On November 28, 2023, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed a determination by the state Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision that denied a former state prisoner relief from registration as a sex offender without considering the time he had spent without recidivating.

When Dominique J. Sohappy was convicted in ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 6, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to defendant officials with Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg Police Department (HPD) and the contracted medical provider for Dauphin County Booking Center (DCBC), PrimeCare Medical, in a suit accusing ...

by David M. Reutter

In a decision issued on December 11, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that the claim of a federal prisoner in Washington allegedly denied treatment for Hepatitis C did not require an extension of the government’s financial liability for violating ...

David Carrillo, 49, was released from prison on January 31, 2024, a month after Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) commuted his sentence. Polis praised Carrillo for completing a GED, a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in business administration while in prison. Carillo is also one of the first professor-prisoners, teaching ...

Lawmakers on both coasts of the U.S. sponsored legislation in January 2024 to make telecommunications free to state prisoners and their families. This follows a national trend to ease the financial burden on families with incarcerated loved ones and reduce the associated risk of reoffending for those who can’t afford ...

When the Iowa Department of Corrections (DOC) reported a drop in the recidivism rate for its state prisoners on December 15, 2023, it joined prison systems in Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia that have also celebrated lower recidivism rates.

But while tracking new criminal activities by convicted offenders after ...

Under contract provisions that went into effect on January 1, 2024, prison telecom giant Pay Tel secured a monopoly on video visitation services at Georgia’s Glynn County Jail. A contract addendum inked in June 2023 says that the firm paid for the privilege with a $160,000 “technology grant” made to ...

by Daryl Waters

A candid portrait of the experience of obtaining clemency in Louisiana—a route to freedom now severely threatened by a new carceral governor.

When the team of filmmakers behind the Visiting Room Project approached Daryl Waters about making a short profile of him, he had already been incarcerated ...

The Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury’s Division of State Audit released a performance audit of the state Department of Correction (DOC) on December 12, 2023. Covering a four-year period ending the previous July 31, 2023, the audit found significant deficiencies at the DOC’s 10 state prisons, plus four more operated ...

A $4.8 million embezzlement scheme involving his wife and daughter. A collection of cars and cigars purchased with the ill-gotten gains. More of the money diverted to a former county councilwoman for child support payments after their affair resulted in an out-of-wedlock birth. Commissary funds from the county jail plundered ...

by David Reutter

On April 26, 2024, a long legal battle over his delayed Hepatitis C (HCV) treatment netted Georgia prisoner Ricky Johnson just over $15,000 from Defendant state prison officials and medical personnel. As PLN has reported, many prison systems have delayed HCV care due to the high ...

Before food service in West Virginia’s prison system was taken over by Aramark Correctional Services, the nation’s largest for-profit food service provider in prisons and jails, all meals were prepared by prisoners, often using fresh vegetables grown in gardens and greenhouses as part of a culinary arts program.

But according ...

by David M. Reutter

In a suit filed in Kansas state court on July 31, 2023, former detainee Joshua Braddy accused private prison profiteer CoreCivic of negligence that resulted in his stabbing at Leavenworth Detention Center (LDC), a now-shuttered lockup formerly operated for the federal government.

Before it closed ...

According to final judgment entered in federal court for the Southern District of Texas on December 18, 2023, Brazos County paid $500,000 to a former detainee assaulted at the county jail in October 2022. The victim, identified as “A.R.,” was a minor at the time of the attack, during which ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 18, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment to Defendant officials of Cook County in a civil rights action alleging that surveillance cameras aimed at toilet areas in county courthouse holding cells violated detainees’ ...

Just days before he was set to retire from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC), Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI) Warden Randall Hepp was arrested on June 5, 2024, along with eight other staffers charged in the deaths of two state prisoners. Hepp and six of the other employees were charged ...

Marina Bueno, an incarcerated writer, hopes to attend college but faces a harsh reality—no college classes are offered at her Florida women’s prison in Homestead. In fact, only 326 out of 80,000 state prisoners were enrolled in a college class as of January 2024.

Just three out of 28 state ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 13, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado denied summary judgment to a jail guard who allegedly failed to protect a pretrial detainee from assault by another detainee. But the Court dismissed a municipal liability claim against Colorado’s Chaffee County, ...

Seven years after Michigan lawmakers adopted the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act (WICA)—and 17 years after state Sen. Steve Beida (D-Warren) began working to get it passed by a legislature then dominated by Republicans and signed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder (R)—a group of state lawmakers introduced legislation to close gaps in ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 2, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois denied relief to Wexford Health Sources, Inc., the private healthcare contractor for the state Department of Corrections (DOC), from a $750,000 jury verdict for delayed surgery that left a state prisoner to ...

Arriving at the Hennepin County Jail in July 2022, Lucas Bellamy, 41, warned staffers at the Minneapolis lockup that he had ingested a bag of drugs. Yet when he died three days later of a perforated bowel, he had been given nothing more than anti-acid medication. Why? Because jailers assumed ...

On January 17, 2024, the federal court for the District of Massachusetts issued a ruling in a long-running case brought by hearing-impaired state prisoners, finding that the state Department of Correction (DOC) had violated their rights under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 126 ...

Virginia’s General Assembly tabled a pair of bills that would have provided a path to early release for state prisoners after serving at least 15 years with good behavior, with Senators continuing S.B. 427 to next year’s session on February 28, 2024, and the House of Representatives leaving H.B. 834 ...

by David M. Reutter

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) marked a critical step in condemning and curbing sexual assault and harassment in jails and prisons. Sadly, rape, groping and sexual harassment still occur regularly in America’s gulags, with guards often the perpetrators. Now a new provision in U.S. ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 19, 2023, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled for a prisoner who claimed that the state Department of Corrections (DOC) violated his civil rights by upping the rate at which it docked his prison pay “without pre-deprivation notice and an opportunity to be ...

by Matt Clarke

On November 28, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit declined to let a federal prisoner sue officials with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) who allegedly put him in harm’s way at an Illinois lockup. The decision was predictable, given the adamant ...

by David M. Reutter

On February 13, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York gave final approval to a settlement paying $8.9 million from the state to the family of Terry L. Cooper, Jr. a prisoner who died after a violent clash with state ...

A suit removed to federal court for the District of South Carolina on December 15, 2023, accuses Bamberg County and its jailers of Tasering a 51-year-old mentally ill detainee and starving him to death the year before. The jail medical contractor, Southern Healthcare Partners (SHP), was also named as a ...

by David M. Reutter

There’s something rotten with bail decisions in Prince George’s County, but as of March 29, 2024, the federal court for the District of Maryland isn’t going to do anything about it. That was the date it granted Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings and ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 26, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit largely reversed a lower court and restored qualified immunity (QI) to guards at Minnesota’s Washington County Jail (WCJ) in a prisoner’s claim that they either used excessive force against him or failed ...

As PLN has reported, prison and jail employees have been identified in racist or extremist groups. [See: PLN, Feb. 2022, p.40.] The problem was manifested in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when participating members of the Oathkeepers and other white supremacist organizations included law ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 1, 2023, following an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that reversed a grant of summary judgment to a guard at Colorado’s Mesa County Detention Facility (MCDF), a $2 million settlement was reached in a suit filed by ...

Two detainees were back in custody a week after breaking out of W.C. “Dub” Brassell Adult Detention Center in Arkansas’ Jefferson County on January 22, 2024. Noah Roush, 22, and Jatonia Bryant, 23, cut a hole in the ceiling of a shower, another in the roof above that, and then ...

Alabama is notoriously stingy with parole grants to eligible prisoners, but it also leaves many to languish in work-release centers, where the unemployment rate in January 2024 hit 26%—far above the state’s overall rate of just 2.9%

Though numbering just 350 of the state’s 20,469 prisoners, the unemployed highlight the ...

by Matt Clarke

On November 22, 2023, the Supreme Court of Ohio reiterated that a prisoner’s “kite”—his communication with staff—is a public record subject to disclosure upon request. Moreover, the Court added, a prisoner may bring a petition for a writ of mandamus to enforce his right to a ...

by David M. Reutter

On September 29, 2023, Maryland’s Baltimore Board of Estimates approved a $48 million settlement for former state prisoners Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, Jr. and Ransom Watkins, all 56, who were released from prison on November 25, 2019, after serving 36 years for a murder they ...

by Doug Ankney

On December 14, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri granted only part of a motion by defendant state prison officials to dismiss a complaint filed by Muslim state prisoners, who accused guards of beating and pepper-spraying them while they were praying ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed dismissal of an Equal Protection Clause claim by Ohio prisoner Lyle Heyward that officials frustrated his attempts to celebrate Ramadan. However, dismissal was affirmed for companion claims that they also violated ...

by David M. Reutter

West Virginia Division of Corrections (WVDC) officials agreed to pay $4 million on November 8, 2023, to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging unconstitutional conditions at the Southern Regional Jail (SRJ) in Raleigh County. The settlement provided for a cash payment to current and former detainee ...

On October 2, 2023, transgender Maryland prisoner Dmitry Pronin, known now as Leyleen Lillith Aquino, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, alleging that she was raped in a state prison shower area by a guard.

            Pronin, 39, was incarcerated by ...

by David M. Reutter

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals resentenced death row prisoner Tomas Raul Gallo, 49, to life imprisonment on April 5, 2024, approving an agreement by prosecutors that Gallo’s intellectual disability (ID) prohibits his execution. The agreement further acknowledges that Gallo’s death sentence violated his due ...

Alabama: Tyree Lynette Hoyle, 36, resigned from her guard job with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) after her arrest for contraband smuggling on April 24, 2024. The Birmingham News reported that Hoyle allegedly met an unnamed fellow guard in November 2023 at the Montgomery Zoo, where she accepted three ...