Memphis, the largest city in Tennessee’s Shelby County, is known for several things. Elvis Presley’s former residence, Graceland, is a popular tourist attraction, as are bars and nightlife attractions on Beale Street, the epicenter of world-renowned jazz and blues music. The city also has a well-earned reputation for tasty barbecue. ...

On March 26, 2025, a New Jersey appellate court ruled against former state Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Joseph DeMarco in an appeal to his firing for taking part in a crude counter-protest to Black Lives Matter demonstrations, which erupted after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd at the ...

by Paul Wright

After reporting on prisons and jails for 35 years now, I have learned that these are the least transparent of American institutions. It is not much exaggeration to say that among American news consumers, they know more about what is happening in North Korea or the Middle ...

Under a deal reached at the end of February 2025 with striking state Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) guards, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) agreed to a 90-day suspension of a law limiting use of solitary confinement in state prisons. The governor also agreed to reverse disciplinary ...

On July 16, 2024, the Human & Civil Rights Coalition (HCRC) of Georgia posted screenshots to its Facebook page from pornographic videos produced inside Wilcox State Prison and posted online by state prisoners. As the post noted, the videos ran up to 45 minutes, yet at no point did a ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

An Oklahoma prisoner who was exonerated after nearly 50 years in prison has received over $7 million in compensation so far. Glynn Ray Simmons, 71, now holds the dubious distinction of serving more time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit than anyone else in ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

A prisoner, who said that he was inspired by what he read in PLN, fought for over three years to obtain compensation from North Carolina for property lost when prison officials failed to secure it while he was transferred for extradition to another state.

Robert E. ...

A news report by nonprofit media organization InvestigateWest on October 12, 2024, revealed something startling about Idaho: “Unlike most states,” the report said, there is no regulatory oversight of local jails—meaning “[s]heriffs and jail commanders set their own standards.”

“Annual inspections are voluntary, scheduled months ahead of time,” the report ...

A report published by the Ocala Gazette on January 22, 2025, counted 23 deaths since 2020 of people in the custody of Florida’s Marion County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). Yet the state Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) had recorded just seven of those deaths, according to data that it reported to ...

Texas has an estimated 455,000 current and former felons. But no one knows if any of them voted in the November 2024 elections, nor even if any knew that they could. That is thanks to a little-known provision of state law that allows those appealing their first criminal conviction to ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

Randall Morris was held in Arkansas’ Miller County Detention Center (MCDC) from January 20, 2020, until he was transferred to Saline County Detention Center (SCDC) on March 24, 2021. During this time, the 55-year-old disabled veteran allegedly suffered 17 violations of his constitutional rights, including: a ...

On March 4, 2025, the City and County of San Francisco approved an $825,000 settlement with Vincent Bell, a one-legged city jail detainee who sued over an outrageous 2018 incident in which a guard supervisor forced him to hop until he collapsed.

It was the second payout to Bell that ...

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) reprieved three condemned state prisoners on February 13, 2025, pushing their execution dates years down the road to give the state time to fix its broken supply chain of lethal injections drug. But Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) apparently gave up on that method of ...

by Sam Rutherford

Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution has been plagued by prisoner deaths and suicides, the most of recent of which are reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.33.] One of those who survived a suicide attempt at the lockup, Tyler Milton, wrote to PLN on June ...

Of 2,500 nonviolent drug convictions commuted just before the end of his term by Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) on January 17, 2025, two went to Virginia prisoners Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne, who spent decades behind bars for a murder of which they were acquitted. But that fact ...

Former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard Lt. Terry L. Melvin was not the first to admit brutalizing a prisoner at the United States Penitentiary (USP) in Big Sandy, Kentucky. But with his guilty plea on January 24, 2025, Melvin also made a startling claim: That assaulting prisoners was a ...

Two detainees overdosed at the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix on February 18, 2025, joining another dozen who overdosed the week before—one of whom later died. Deputies of newly elected Sheriff Jerry Sheridan suspected that one or more detainees at the jail, all of whom are women, smuggled the contraband ...

Reports surfaced in October 2024 that low-level medical professionals in multiple Washington jails were making decisions about detainee healthcare that they were not trained or licensed to make. That was due to an absence of higher-level medical staffers, which was in turn attributed to cost-saving measures by their privately contracted ...

Writing to the Board of Supervisors of Arizona’s Pima County on November 7, 2024, County Administrator Jan Lesher reported striking results from first-year operations of its Transition Center in Tucson: Since it opened in September 2023, the share of those held at the County Adult Detention Center (ADC) on misdemeanor ...

by Douglas Ankney

In a maddening decision issued on July 16, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit managed to dismiss the excessive-force claim of a Colorado prisoner shot by a guard despite being shackled. Conveniently avoiding the merits of Brian Estrada’s suit, the Court decided ...

In November 2024, a federal jury in Virginia awarded $42 million to three former prisoners held and tortured at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. The case, filed in 2008, had been the subject of protracted litigation for over 15 years.

Two years after the ...

When Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) returned to office on January 20, 2025, he pardoned some 1,500 prisoners convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol to keep him in office in January 2021, after his loss to former Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Two days later, about 20 of them remained ...

For the second time in less than a month, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) cited the Harris County Jail in Houston on January 13, 2025, this time for failing to conduct state-mandated “face to face observations” before a detainee’s in-custody death. The Commission had earlier cited the jail ...

He shot the cop. Or his co-defendant did. Or he did it, but with another uncharged codefendant.

Alabama prosecutors used all three theories to try Toforest Johnson and co-defendant Ardargus Ford for the 1995 murder of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Dep. William Hardy at a Birmingham motel. Ford was acquitted at ...

Three former Virginia Beach Sheriff’s Department (VBSD) deputies were indicted on January 3, 2025, in the death of Rolin Hill, who suffocated in a “WRAP” restraint device at the city jail in June 2024. Charged with second-degree murder were Eric G. Baptiste, 39; Michael C. Kidd, 39; and Kevin B. ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

On August 27, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a $500,000 jury award for a Los Angeles Lakers basketball fan shot with a rubber bullet by city cops attempting to “manage” a boisterous crowd after a championship win. Though not ...

Since the 1996 passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, federal courts have struggled to interpret and apply its various provisions. That struggle continues today with a recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit related to the PLRA’s “three-strikes” rule, ...

In a suit challenging excessive fees charged on debit cards issued to those released from Washington’s Pierce County Jail, former detainee Plaintiffs secured nationwide class certification on February 13, 2025. But first they had to defeat a motion by Defendant Central Bank of Kansas City (CBKC) to compel arbitration.

This ...

On February 14, 2025, an Indiana judge dismissed charges against a former guard at the Clark County Jail who was accused of selling keys to male detainees who then unlocked cells holding female detainees and raped them. The county had previously paid $328,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the ...

On March 5, 2025, private prison operator CoreCivic, Inc. announced a new contract with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reopen its South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley.

The massive 2,400-bed prison was used to detain migrant families with children during the first administration of Pres. Donald ...

At Wisconsin’s Waupun Correctional Institution, 11 staffers have now been fired or resigned in the wake of a federal probe sparked by a spate of prisoner deaths that has now reached a total of seven in just two years at the troubled maximum-security lockup. The most recent prisoner to die ...

by Leah Wang

Our analysis of Jail Data Initiative data confirms the troubling practice of shuffling unhoused people into jails, at enormous moral and fiscal cost.

Local jails, which hold one out of every three people behind bars, have become America’s misguided answer to problems faced by the most vulnerable ...

n October 31, 2024, preliminary approval was granted to a settlement reached with the second of three prison telecom giants accused of illegal price-fixing. The suit was filed in June 2020 in United States District Court for the District of Maryland by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the ...

The Hawai’i Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) announced in September 2024 that it would purchase nine machines to scan inbound prisoner mail—including legal mail—for drugs. The new scanners claim to detect letters soaked with drugs without opening envelopes. The DCR purchased one for its administrative office and each of ...

On February 26, 2025, then-acting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Caleb Vitello announced a 15-year contract with The GEO Group, Inc. to reopen and expand its Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey, which will house up to 1,000 migrants that ICE expects to detain while awaiting ...

The Fulton County Jail in Atlanta has long been known for high levels of violence and abysmal conditions, concerns that were validated on November 14, 2024. That’s when a 105-page investigative report was issued by the United States Dept. of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, in conjunction with the U.S. ...

For only the second time in over 25 years, an Alabama governor commuted a state prisoner’s death sentence on February 28, 2025. Gov. Kay Ivey (R) took Robin “Rocky” Dion Myers, 63, off death row at Holman Correctional Facility, so he will now spend the rest of his life in ...

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) filed manslaughter charges on March 7, 2025, against a former nurse at the Beltrami County Jail in the 2018 death of detainee Hardel Sherrell. His mother previously collected a $2.6 million settlement from a suit filed over the death. She also successfully advocated for ...

On December 10, 2024, the federal court for the District of Oregon issued final approval of a $4 million settlement resolving claims by a former Portland jail detainee that money confiscated from her upon booking was eaten up by fees associated with the debit card returned to her at release. ...

California prisoners will benefit from a policy change announced by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) on December 4, 2024. Bowing to pressure from politicians, as well as a class action lawsuit, the CDCR will no longer garnish gate money paid to prisoners upon release for related items ...

On February 11, 2025, Megan Johnson, a former guard at Alabama’s Walker County Jail, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the civil rights of detainee Anthony “Tony” Mitchell when she failed to keep him from freezing to death at the lockup in January 2023. Hers was the tenth confession by ...

A fair amount of ink has been spilled about the high cost of items sold in prison commissaries. From honeybuns to deodorant, it’s all exorbitantly expensive, especially in light of the low wages prisoners are paid. But one often overlooked aspect of commissary pricing is the disparate cost that Muslim ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Alabama Department of Finance issued a $250,000 payment on behalf of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) on August 16, 2024, settling a suit filed by the survivors of state prisoner Steven Davis, who was beaten to death by guards in October 2019 in the ...

In Washington, newly elected state Sen. Leonard Christian (R-Spokane Valley) wasted little time in introducing a bill in February 2025 to save a building slated for demolition at the state Capitol in Olympia and turn it into a work-release center for state prisoners. The state senator explained that he wants ...

Like many jurisdictions, Arizona’s Maricopa County maintained a website where mugshots were posted of those arrested and booked into the county jail. The photos were accompanied by personal identifying information, including names and birthdates. But after a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the ...

ore than seven years after Hawai’i lawmakers adopted a 2017 measure requiring the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) to help prisoners obtain identification documents at release, over half of those released in the year ending October 2024 had none. For those leaving jails in the state during ...

After a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found for Georgia prison officials in a suit brought by a prison visitor they subjected to a strip-search, the decision was vacated on October 3, 2024; the case was reheard by the full Eleventh Circuit en ...

The election of Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) has thrown the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) into turmoil. As PLN reported, former Director Collette Peters resigned just hours after the inauguration on January 20, 2025. [See: PLN, Feb. 2025, p.10.] Then, on February 25, 2025, the BOP’s 23,000 employees learned ...

On June 6, 2024, an undocketed settlement was reached between a Kentucky jail’s private medical contractor and the administrator of the estate of a detainee who died of methamphetamine toxicity in 2019. The agreement followed a disappointing decision for survivors of Bradley Grote from the United States Court of Appeals ...

by Matt Clarke

On September 26, 2024, United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz released findings from an unannounced inspection of the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Numerous violations of federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policy were found at the 1,128-bed medium-security prison, which ...

On September 25, 2024, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) entered into a pre-litigation settlement agreement with the federal Department of Justice (DOJ), promising to improve services provided to deaf and hard of hearing prisoners, in compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

A settlement filed in federal court for the District of South Carolina on September 3, 2024, brought a resolution to a lawsuit filed by the survivors of a Greenville jail detainee who lost over two pounds a day and died.

After he allegedly fired gunshots into ...

by Douglas Ankney

In what was otherwise a disappointing ruling for a Maryland prisoner, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held on June 14, 2024, that a prisoner need not exhaust administrative remedies before filing suit accusing officials of sexual misconduct that is not specified in ...

New York prisoner Messiah Nantwi, 22, was fatally beaten by guards at the Mid-State Correctional Facility on March 1, 2025, in plain view of at least nine prisoners as well as National Guard troops deployed during a wildcat guard strike. That strike began weeks earlier, coinciding with discipline of 16 ...

by Matt Clarke

On September 20, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that a prisoner’s consensual sexual encounters with a guard cannot, as a matter of law, constitute the pain required to sustain a claim under the Eighth Amendment. Though a blow to Arkansas ...

by David M. Reutter

One year after Illinois eliminated cash bail, state courts are not only remanding fewer people to jail to await trial but also engaging in more deliberation about pretrial detention. Those results are part of the findings in a report published by the Loyola Chicago Center for ...

In a ruling on October 18, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revived a case filed by federal prisoner Michael S. Owlfeather-Gorbey. A “prolific litigator” housed at the U.S. Penitentiary in Thompson, Illinois, he sued federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials in 2022 ...

by Matt Clarke

The Sunset Advisory Commission, an oversight body for Texas government agencies, published a 189-page report in September 2024 that found persistent critical staffing shortages are making Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) prisons unsafe for staff and prisoners alike. In fact, some guards and parole officers find ...

Alabama: State Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Arianna Kimberly Slater faces life in prison after she was arrested while attempting to smuggle contraband into Ventress Correctional Facility on February 24, 2025. According to the Birmingham News, a routine employee screening of Slater’s food container found unspecified contraband that triggered a ...