by Chuck Sharman
On April 14, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana granted the latest in a series of extensions that have added more than 17 years to a settlement agreement in which the Monroe County Sheriff promised to alleviate overcrowding causing unsafe …
by Paul Wright
Welcome to our 36th anniversary issue of Prison Legal News. In May 1990, we published the first issue of PLN. In an industry where publications rarely make it into the double digits, it is amazing we have lasted 36 years and continuously published, reaching …
Loaded on
May 1, 2026
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2026, page 11
On April 24, 2026, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson (D) fired the head of the state’s independent prison watchdog, the Office of the Corrections Ombuds (OCO). The office’s director Jeremiah Bourgeois was notified of an investigation into alleged ethical misconduct on April 20 of this year, after being ordered in …
by Chuck Sharman
The Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) announced new procedures on March 18, 2026, to “strengthen suicide prevention, clinical coordination, and safety operations across the correctional system.” The changes came in response to an audit ordered after a spate of six prisoner suicides in 2025; the …
Loaded on
May 1, 2026
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2026, page 13
If the stipulations of a 2025 law proceed according to plan, Idaho will switch to using firing squads as its primary method of performing executions by July 1 of this year. Governor Brad Little (R) signed HB 37 into law in March 2025, cementing executions by firing squad as …
by Chuck Sharman
After more than two decades of wrongful incarceration, Texas state prisoner Carmen Mejia, 54, was exonerated and released from the Travis County Correctional Complex by the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) on March 11, 2026. Two days earlier, Travis County District Court Judge P. …
by Chuck Sharman
In a report issued on February 20, 2026, Geogia’s Fulton County and Sheriff Pat Labatt touted improvements made at the County lockup in Atlanta since entering a consent decree a year earlier with the federal Department of Justice (DOJ). The claims were issued in response …
by Chuck Sharman
On February 17, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned a lower court’s grant of qualified immunity (QI) to three North Carolina prison guards who allegedly failed to keep a prison door closed—because they found doing so too inconvenient—thereby allowing a …
Loaded on
May 1, 2026
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2026, page 17
On August 16, 2023, detainee Daniel Foard, 32, died on the floor of his cell at the La Plata County Jail. Foard died from a perforated duodenal ulcer that, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by his family in 2025, was “highly treatable.” The lawsuit—which listed defendants including …
Loaded on
May 1, 2026
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2026, page 17
In 2025, Paul Scot Kunch was working as a full-time dentist at the Iowa State Penitentiary in the town of Fort Madison. His salary at the time, according to the Iowa Capitol Dispatch, was $95,694. Now, Kunch is facing disciplinary action based on charges of improper, lewd or …
by Douglas Ankney
"The value of human life in prison and jail is worth less—including for these children, because of who their parents are. They are born with a stigma or they are not even born at all because they are viewed as not worthy of life,” said …
by Chuck Sharman
On March 23, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina approved a $3.8 settlement paid by Richland County for the death of Lason Butler, during his incarceration in the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center (ASGDC). Despite evident symptoms of a mental …
by Chuck Sharman
Incarcerated in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex to await sentencing, 19-year-old Christopher M. recalled that he was not mistreated, with “regular access to daily schooling, religious services, organized recreational outlets, including a basketball team, unrestricted bathroom access, and liberal access to telephones,” …
by Douglas Ankney
Evidence uncovered by InvestigateWest released in an exposé entitled “Guarded by Predators” revealed rampant sexual abuse of prisoners by staff at three women’s prisons—a condition denied by Idaho Department of Corrections (DOC) Director Bree Derrick.
As previously reported by PLN, the DOC paid former …
by Michael Thompson
The River North Center had been on lockdown for three months as of February 2026 due to the murder of a guard. Following the murder, John Holomon Russell was charged with aggravated murder, as well as the attempted murder of two other prison guards, and …
by Laura A. Bischoff, USA Today Network, and Doug Livingston, The Marshall Project
This article was originally published in The Marshall Project.
Jayson Murphy lit the speck of paper and inhaled, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as he could.
His cellmate, …
by Chuck Sharman
In an agreement signed on March 26, 2026, private prison and jail medical contractor NaphCare paid an $875,000 fine to the state of New York to settle charges that the company violated state licensing laws and was operating illegally. As part of the settlement, the …
by Douglas Ankney
In a settlement agreement that took 15 months for PLN to obtain, Illinois’ Will County Adult Detention Facility (WCADF) agreed to reverse policies challenged in a suit by a group of pretrial detainees at the jail, which prohibited them from receiving copies of materials printed …
Loaded on
May 1, 2026
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2026, page 30
Conditions at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord have been deteriorating for years. During a recent tour of the facility, Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill found rats in the kitchen, a reception area covered in tarps to cover up leaks, and maggots falling from the ceiling. …
by Chuck Sharman
During a trial in the federal court hearing a challenge to excessive heat in state prisons on March 31, 2026, new Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) Director Bobby Lumpkin testified that the cost to fully air condition every cell for all 132,250 state prisoners …
by Chuck Sharman
The South Carolina Court of Common Pleas for Charleston County approved a settlement on February 26, 2026, paying $2,135,000 to the Estate of D’Angelo Dontrel Brown, a schizophrenic detainee who died in December 2022 after being found unresponsive in his cell at the County’s Al …
