PHS Redux: Sued In A Dozen States, Contract Losses, Stock Plummets, Business Continues by by John E. Dannenberg Prison Health Services (PHS), a subsidiary of America Service Group, Inc. (ASG), continues to face lawsuits and lose contracts for its deplorable record of prisoner health care gaffes in a dozen states. …
Fired, Tattooed, Nude-Posing Guard Settles with Maryland DOC for $10,000 by by Matthew T. Clarke Maryland has agreed to pay an ex-guard who appeared nude on a website and in a tattoo magazine $10,000 to get her to drop her wrongful discharge claim after an administrative law judge sided with …
YSI: Another Death, Another Settlement by Youth Services International (YSI), a company already under fire for a multitude of problems, including contract violations, financial mismanagement, prisoner mistreatment and prisoner deaths, was again in the news this past September. YSI, a subsidiary of Corrections Services Corporation, operates juvenile prisons, including boot-camp-style …
Rehabilitation Act, Title II of ADA, Held Unconstitutional by In two separate rulings the courts of appeal for the Fourth and Fifth Circuits have held that section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (RA), 29 U.S.C. §794(a), and, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §12312, do …
Maryland Pays $700,000 to Settle Suit Over Murder Committed by Parolee in Colorado by In May 2002, the State of Maryland agreed to pay $700,000 to a Denver woman whose daughter was murdered by a parolee released from a Maryland prison and sent to a drug treatment center in Colorado. …
Court Orders Hospitalization for Federal Pretrial Detainee by A federal court in Maryland held that a federal pretrial detainee was entitled to be transferred to a hospital or infirmary for the duration of his pretrial detention due to inadequate medical care while in custody of U.S. Marshals. Trevor Wallen, a …
Unnamed Class Members Can Object to Settlement by Robert Devlin, a pensioner and unnamed class member in a class action suit involving his company pension, attempted to intervene to block a proposed class settlement. The Maryland Federal District Court barred intervention as untimely and accepted the settlement. Devlin appealed, and …
Boot Camp or Boot Hill? Troubled Teens Suffer From Too Much Tough Love by Roger Hummel Boot Camp Or Boot Hill? Troubled Teens Suffer From Too Much Tough Love by Roger Hummel On February 15, 2002, Charles Long II was arrested on murder and child abuse charges growing from the …
Duvall v. Glendening, MD, Consent Order, Excessive Heat, 2002 08 122 102 .. 15:55 FA.X J10 J66 7838 A C L t: ~016 ., IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND ) JEROME DUVALL, et al., ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) ) Civil Action No. JFM-94-2541 …
News in Brief by Roger Hummel Alaska: On April 11, 2002, Cynthia Cooper, the head prosecutor in the state attorney general's office, resigned after being judicially admonished for pursuing felony charges against a public defender who crashed his car into a light pole. Anchorage prosecutors had agreed to a misdemeanor …
Mistakenly Released Prisoners Have No Due Process Rights by The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has held that prisoners who were released on mandatory supervision then arrested as escaped prisoners and reincarcerated without a hearing had no right to due process. Vincent Henderson, Daryelle Rexrode, and John Calella, …
Maryland Court Ruling on Tobacco Smoke Prompts Settlement by A Maryland federal district court's ruling denying summary judgment in an "environmental tobacco smoke" (ETS) case has prompted the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DOPSACS) to ban tobacco, matches, and lighters at all Maryland state prisons, effective June, …
Deadly Nostalgia: The Politics of Boot Camps by Christian Parenti The short, stout eighth grader Gina Score, was never much of an athlete. But that didn't matter to the staff at South Dakota's Plankinton boot camp for girls, where militarystyle discipline and calisthenics were the modus operandi and, as staff …
Prison Psychologist Pleads Guilty to Aiding Escape by Elizabeth Feil, 43, a former psychologist at the Patuxent Institution in Baltimore, MD has pled guilty to accessory to escape for her role in helping her lover, Byron Smoot, 29, escape from a medium security prison in Jessup, Maryland. Smoot had been …
Constitutionality of ADA Upheld by Fourth Circuit by In the September, 1998, issue of PLN we reported Amos v. Maryland Department of Public Safety, 126 F.3d 589 (4th Cir. 1997) in which the court held that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12131-12165 and the Rehabilitation Act …
US Supreme Court Holds Media Ride-Alongs Unconstitutional by A unanimous United States Supreme Court held that police violate the Fourth amendment of the U.S. constitution when they allow members of the news media to ride along with them while executing search and arrest warrants. The court also held police were …
Prisoner Can Attend His Civil Trial at Government Expense by A federal district court in Maryland held that it would permit a federal prisoner, confined in Pennsylvania, to personally attend his three-day civil rights trial in Greenbelt, Maryland, at government expense. In separate incidents in 1993 and 1994, Anthony Hawks …
BOP Exceeds Statutory Authority in Denying Sentence Reductions by Afederal district court in the District of Columbia held that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had exceeded its statutory authority by defining "violent" offenses to preclude a sentence reduction for convictions the courts have consistently defined as "non-violent." In 1994 congress …
Open Society Institute Funds College Classes in Maryland Prisons by When the Clinton Crime Bill gutted federal Pell Grants for prisoners, some states' prison education programs were hit harder than others. Many states funded post-secondary education entirely with state money. Maryland prisoners, though, were the hardest hit. Virtually all of …
Maryland Indigent Court Cost Suit Settled by On July 1, 1997, U.S. district court judge Marvin Garbis approved the settlement of a class action suit involving the collection of previously waived indigent court costs. In 1991 the Maryland legislature enacted a Budget Reconciliation Act, 1991 Md. Laws, Ch. 3, § …
