by Doran Larson
The Texas state death house in Huntsville is a squat brick building fronted by a few square yards of struggling grass and knee-high shrubs. Gleaming chain link fencing surrounds a concrete ramp that rises to the door to accommodate shackled ankles. Most death row dwellers …
by Paul Wright
In the course of publishing PLN we file a lot of public records requests with local jails, state prisons and federal law enforcement agencies—hundreds every year. These requests result in the news coverage you are reading now as well as reports, audits, misconduct reports and …
Loaded on
Oct. 1, 2025
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2025, page 8
The Louisiana State Penitentiary, the notorious maximum-security prison known as Angola, is now also holding immigrants who have been detained as part of Pres. Donald Trump’s crackdown. The detention center was established in a previously-closed area of the prison called Camp J, where prisoners were locked in solitary confinement …
by Chuck Sharman
Prisoners released from terms for violent sexual offenses may find that Florida is not “the free state” that it claims to be. In an en banc ruling on August 15, 2025, the state Court of Appeal (COA) for the Fifth District reversed an earlier panel …
by Chuck Sharman
With just a week to go before his scheduled execution by firing squad, attorneys for Utah prisoner Ralph Menzies, 67, won a stay from the state Supreme Court on August 29, 2025, after they successfully argued that his worsening vascular dementia may have robbed him …
Loaded on
Oct. 1, 2025
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2025, page 11
The New Jersey State Prison is the oldest operating prison in the country, with some of its buildings constructed nearly 200 years ago. Many prisoners at the facility’s West Compound are jammed in cells measuring as little as 28 square feet, with a low ceiling and only enough floor …
by Anthony Accurso
The Martuscello family, a practical dynasty within New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), manipulated the system to take power and avoid accountability while overseeing a system that perpetuated physical and sexual abuse of prisoners.
The killing of Robert Brooks occurred on …
by Chuck Sharman
Making good on a 30-year-old threat, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California placed the mental health care system for state prisoners in receivership on August 27, 2025. The Court-appointed Receiver is former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Collette Peters, who …
by Chuck Sharman
No more waiting on someone to pick up the phone at Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Jail. As of June 23, 2025, to find out if someone is incarcerated in the Cleveland lockup, you can consult an online jail roster that is refreshed hourly with new booking …
by Chuck Sharman
In Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22, WWII airmen faced a conundrum: They could be relieved from duty for insanity, but any request to be relieved was treated as evidence that they were sane. The book’s title entered the language as a humorous synonym for contradictory …
by Douglas Ankney
On December 24, 2025, the Nevada Court of Appeals reversed the state district court’s dismissal of pretrial detainee David North’s claim that CoreCivic, the private prison operator, violated his due process rights under the Nevada Constitution by failing to protect him from violence at the …
by Chuck Sharman
On January 13, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of a former New York prisoner whose prostate cancer should have been diagnosed by medical personnel while in custody of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), …
by Anthony W. Accurso
A study analyzing the effects of a new jail-based rehabilitation program shows significant reductions in recidivism, and is upending the previous correctional mindset of “nothing works.”
Nearly 600,000 people are incarcerated in jails in the United States on any given day. Most are …
by Douglas Ankney
On September 16, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (“Court” or “Seventh Circuit”) revived former prisoner Carl Joseph McDaniel’s suit against the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) alleging violations of his rights under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act …
