by Chuck Sharman

In just over seven years, changes in prison mail policies proliferating across the country have severely restricted mail privileges at lockups holding the majority of America’s nearly 1.2 million prisoners. According to research conducted by PLN in January 2026, at least 78% of these prisoners …

by Paul Wright

As long as there have been prisons, the people who run them have endeavored to keep prisoners as ignorant, ill informed and cut off from the outside world as possible. At the same time, those in charge aim to ensure that all the bad news, …

by Douglas Ankney

Horrendous conditions inside Los Angeles County Jails, described as “barbaric” in a recent law suit, continue to plague those facilities and at least 122 detainee deaths since January 2023 show these conditions are deadly. Those unfortunate enough to be confined in an LA County Jail …

Typically, the New Hampshire Department of Corrections (DOC) graduates two classes of prison guards from its training academy each year. But in August 2025, there were so few candidates that the DOC canceled the most recent class and, as a result, did not hire any new guards, as The …

by Chuck Sharman

Under a settlement with Washington’s Walla Walla County, a now-released state prisoner took a $300,000 payment to resolve claims that he was denied treatment for a kidney stone while in pretrial detention in the County jail. After he signed the agreement on January 28, 2025, …

by Chuck Sharman

In a decision that upheld a lower court ruling, the Michigan Court of Appeals said on December 22, 2025, that exonerated former state prisoner Desmond Ricks must use a $7.5 million settlement from a civil suit filed over his wrongful conviction to repay over $1.2 …

by Matt Clarke

On October 23, 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) denied certiorari in a federal civil rights action challenging Alabama’s use of nitrogen hypoxia for executions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a vivid and strongly worded dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji …

by Michael Thompson

President Donald Trump (R) signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025. The tax spending bill was passed along party lines and is so massive, that it is likely only a few lawmakers read it through before voting. Resting within the bill were …

On January 12, 2026, three prisoners were killed after a fight broke out at the Washington State Prison, a medium-security facility in Davisboro, Georgia, which is around 135 miles south of Atlanta. A guard and 12 other prisoners were also injured during the incident. While state Department of Corrections …

by Chuck Sharman

On September 30, 2025, the story of one woman’s long battle with drugs reached its conclusion, when the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ordered distribution of proceeds from a settlement it had previously approved between the City of Troy and the …

by Chuck Sharman

A settlement reached on September 15, 2025, moved the North Carolina Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission a step closer to finally realizing changes that it was ordered to make almost a decade ago in its parole review procedures for prisoners whose crime was committed when …

by Jo Ellen Knott

In escape from Georgia’s DeKalb County Jail concluded in Florida on December 23, 2025, following a multi-state manhunt, according to The Guardian. Stevenson Charles, 24, Yusuf Minor, 31, and Naod Yohannes, 25, fled the aging jail in Decatur on …

by Michael Thompson

As reported in PLN, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had postponed a 2024 rule poised to reduce the financial burden for incarcerated people throughout the country. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p. 19] The June 30, 2025 pause was followed …

The state’s carceral system is failing prisoners at record rates, with the 2025 annual report from the South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) revealing a 50% recidivism rate, the highest in eight years. The South Dakota Searchlight reported that the crisis unequally targets Native Americans, who represent 39 percent …

by Matt Clarke

On April 12, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied the government’s motion to dismiss with respect to due process and First Amendment claims made by a federal prison reform advocate whose access to communicate via electronic messaging with prisoners …

by Chuck Sharman

On September 26, 2025, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and Wayne County agreed to pay $2 million to settle claims brought by the mother of a former detainee at the County Juvenile Detention Facility (JDF) in Detroit, who alleged that officials …

This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter at themarshallproject.
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by Ivy Scott

The St. Louis …

by Anthony Accurso

On November 10, 2025, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) of the Commonwealth of Virginia released a report detailing the long wait prisoners can expect when trying to participate in educational programming in the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) and the impacts such …

by Douglas Ankney

With at least 42 people killed inside Mississippi’s prisons over the last decade, multiple families are wondering why the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC) cannot protect people in its custody or hold the killers accountable.

From 2015 through 2024, the homicide rate at Parchman …

by Michael Thompson

Jin Woo Park was a prisoner of the State of California at the Corcoran State Prison when he hired Michael L. Guisti to file his petition of habeas corpus in both state and, if necessary, federal courts. Despite accepting the $35,000 contract, Guisti failed to …

In a grim milestone that reflects Alaska’s neglect of prisoners, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) reported 18 deaths in 2025, tying the previous record set in 2022.

In its coverage of the concerning matter, the Alaska Beacon claimed the death toll is the result of a department …

by Michael Thompson

Amid a lawsuit from the California Attorney General’s office over inhumane conditions, including preventable deaths such as opioid overdoses, Los Angeles County has modified its policy and is scaling back access to opioid treatment. The announcement of the reduction in treatment came just a week …

by Michael Thompson

One of former Democratic President Joe Biden’s parting actions was to commute the death sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners on death row. In doing so, he stopped President Donald Trump (R) from initiating another execution spree as he had during his first …

by Matt Clarke

On December 1, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that jailers could not be held liable for the death of a Georgia pretrial detainee caused by lack of medical care. The Court’s rationale was that the jailers followed the …

In 2016, prison communications profiteer Securus Technologies offered to implement XJail, a jail management system, at the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland, Ohio. Despite the system’s promise to publicly display booking information, charges, bond amounts, and mugshots, Securus never installed XJail and the project was abandoned in 2021. For …

by Robert Haughn

On January 7, 2025, the Human Right Defense Center (HRDC), nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, accusing Commissioner Paul Schnell of the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC), Deputy Commissioner Safia Khan, …

by Matt Clarke

On December 17, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reinstated a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the guardian of a man who was severely injured when two prisoners with lengthy histories of assaulting other prisoners and jail staff severely …

by Douglas Ankney

The cover story of the June 2025 issue of PLN reported that “[d]espite years of litigation, injunctions, consent decrees, and contempt fines ranging into the hundreds of millions,” the State of Washington had “consistently failed to provide timely competency evaluations and restoration services to defendants …

by Chuck Sharman

In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama on January 26, 2026, state prisoner Joseph Allen Renney said that he had reached agreements with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) and its contracted medical provider, Wexford Health Services, settling …

by Matt Clarke

On November 20, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that an Alabama law making sheriffs responsible for jail prisoners’ health care did not excuse a county from liability for having a policy resulting in inadequate prisoner health care. The …

by Candace Norwood, The 19th

This article was originally published by The 19th, an independent nonprofit newsroom “reporting on gender, politics, policy, and power.”

The tampons were stacked and bound together with a rubber band. The prisoners at the Patrick O’Daniel Unit—a women’s prison in …

by Matt Clarke

On November 26, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the summary dismissal of a failure-to-train claim in a federal civil rights lawsuit over the suicide of an in-transit federal prisoner being held overnight in an Oklahoma jail.

In …

by Douglas Ankney

On September 2, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that 28 U.S.C. section 2107(a) requires that a notice of appeal of an order denying qualified immunity must be filed within 30 days after entry of the order and to the …

The record-setting winter storm in January 2026 that brought freezing temperatures and snowfall to large swathes of the Eastern half of the country left at least 17 people dead and nearly a million without power. Much like the deep freeze that devastated Texas in February 2021, the damage from …

by Chuck Sharman

Under a legal settlement approved on December 2, 2025, prisoners with learning disabilities held by the Delaware Department of Correction (DOC) moved several steps closer to receiving the educational instruction necessary to achieve a high school diploma or its equivalent. Though they are entitled by …

by Matt Clarke

The Rev. James Eliud Ngahu Mwangi, an Episcopal priest, was working as a prison guard in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) until federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) declared him a deportable alien and detained him as he returned home from work on …

by Jo Ellen Knott

According to WKTV in Utica, former New York state prison guard David Walters will remain free on bail while appealing his manslaughter conviction. Walters, 37, posted a $100,000 bond and was released from Elmira Correctional Facility in December 2025. Earlier that year, he had …

Since March 2025, when New York’s state prison agency began requiring visitors to pass through scanners before visiting their loved ones, attorneys, advocates, and lawmakers have heard stories of people getting turned away for things like piercings or tampons. The increased use of scanners was one of prison guards’ …

by Chuck Sharman

On January 16, 2025, a grand jury in Georgia’s Richmond County reported that its inspection of the County jail revealed serious overcrowding, with mattresses on the floor pressing many cells into double-occupancy. As if to underscore the problem’s seriousness, a detainee was violently assaulted and …

Joshua Butler—a prisoner serving a life sentence who escaped from the Okfuskee County Jail in Okemah, Oklahoma—was shot and killed by state troopers during a traffic stop on December 31, 2025. Butler had escaped on December 20, but none of the guards at the jail realized he was missing …

by Matt Clarke

On December 19, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a wheelchair-bound Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner who was forcibly placed on a standard prison transport bus instead of a special …

by Katie Rose Quandt

This article was originally published by Truthout.

Grainy footage, filmed with contraband cell phones, forms the backbone of The Alabama Solution, a 2025 Oscar-nominated documentary that exposes the horrifying realities of life inside Alabama’s prisons. Throughout the film, shocking videos from incarcerated …

by Beth Schwartzapfel

This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter at themarshallproject.org/subscribe and follow them on instagram.com/marshallproj, tiktok.com/@marshallproj, reddit.com/user/marshall_project, and facebook.com/TheMarshallProject.org.

The federal prison system has …

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, claims that it received a complaint from a community member in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, that the local sheriff’s office was promoting religion in the County jail and attempting to convert detainees to Christianity. If accurate, …

by Chuck Sharman

On January 22, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found the state’s felony disenfranchisement law ran afoul of the power granted by Congress when the state was readmitted to the Union after the Civil War. Though the ruling does not …

by Jo Ellen Knott

In a move that further isolates prisoners from the outside world, the Arkansas Board of Corrections (BOC) voted unanimously on December 19, 2025, to ban all externally purchased books, magazines, and newspapers sent directly to prisoners. The new policy—one of the strictest in the …

by Michael Thompson

According to Daniel F. Martuscello III, commissioner of New York state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), “Individuals are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment, and there is an expectation of safety and opportunities for rehabilitation.” The guards within New York’s prison …

On January 13, 2026, the Nevada Board of Examiners designated two rural prisons as experiencing a “critical labor shortage,” according to The Nevada Independent. The decision from the Board, a body that includes Nevada’s governor, attorney general, and secretary of state, allows the prisons—Ely State Prison in Pine …

On December 30, 2025, Pennsylvania’s Centre County renewed its contract with PrimeCare Medical—a prison and jail healthcare profiteer—despite the dozens of lawsuits over substandard care that have been filed against it. The five-year contract will cost the County $8 million in total, or about $1.6 million per year, amounting …

A report released by the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) on December 4, 2025 details dire conditions at a jail in downtown Baltimore. While all of the detainees locked up at the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic, and Classification Center (MRDCC), as the jail is officially known, …

by Laura Guido

This article was originally published in the Idaho Capital Sun.

Idaho’s rising rates of incarcerating state prisoners in county jails and out of state have led to skyrocketing costs. The price for operating the state’s 10 prisons are also on …

In 2024, California created the In-Custody Death Review (ICDR) Division within the Board of State and Community Corrections (BSCC). The division was intended to scrutinize investigations into jail deaths across the state; with more than 150 people dying in custody in the last year and a half, it seemed …

As the record-breaking winter storm blew through Missouri on the weekend of January 23, 2026, some prisoners were forced to go outside to clear snow from walkways, according to the Missouri Independent. As the storm brought heavy snowfall and wind chills of down to minus 30 degrees, Dena …

by Jo Ellen Knott

In a calculated effort to evade liability for systemic custodial sexual violence, lawyers for New York State plan to ask judges to dismiss approximately 500 prison sexual assault lawsuits based on minor clerical technicalities, according to New York Focus.

These cases, filed …

On December 24, 2025, the United States Postal Service (USPS) rolled out a new practice regarding how mail is tracked and dated. While for more than 70 years a postmark has been a reliable way of proving when an individual met a deadline for filing items such as a …

California: In a ruling that highlights the complexities of holding corrupt staff financially accountable, the California Court of Appeal recently restored the pension of former San Francisco jail guard April Myres, 61, on December 26, 2025. Bloomberg Law reported that federal prosecutors charged Myres in 2017 with mail …