Almost $4.4 Million for Illinois Prisoner’s Failure to Protect Claim by David Reutter On April 11, 2025, amended judgment was entered in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois, awarding $4,384,216.16 to state prisoner Timothy Kyles, who successfully prosecuted his claim that state Department of Corrections (DOC) officials were …
News in Brief by Alabama: A Jefferson County Jail guard was briefly abducted and assaulted by detainee Reontay Harley, 33, on January 13, 2025. WBMA in Birmingham said that after Harley took the unnamed guard hostage inside a cell, responding jail Extraction Unit guards rescued their fellow guard and restrained …
News in Brief by 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 …
Illinois Pretrial Incarceration Becomes Less Random A Year After Elimination of Cash Bail by David Reutter 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 …
Seventh Circuit Reverses Denial of Class Certification in Suit Over Inadequate Dental Care at Chicago Jail by In 2018, former pretrial detainee Quintin Scott joined a lawsuit alleging unconstitutional dental care at the Cook County Jail in Chicago because it failed to employ an oral surgeon. For over a decade …
Illinois Lawmaker Asks State Prison Guards to Report Immigrant Prisoners Nearing Release—to Her by The Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) has directed its employees to follow the law, specifically 2017’s TRUST Act, which requires them to notify federal authorities that an immigrant is about to be released from a state …
News in Brief by Australia: Brisbane Correctional Center prisoner Jack James Peterson, 29, was sentenced to an additional 18 months in January 2023 for assaulting a guard with a squash racket, the Courier reported. Peterson struck the unnamed 34-year-old during a confrontation involving a riot response team, leaving him with …
Illinois Sheriff Resigns After Deputy Fatally Shoots 911 Caller by Sheriff Jack Campbell (R) retired from his duties for Illinois’ Sangamon County on August 31, 2024, following pressure from Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) over a fatal shooting involving Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson, 30, who was charged with murder for killing …
Blood in the Water Author Wins Censorship Challenges Against Illinois, New York Prison Systems by Douglas Ankney by Douglas Ankney In 2016, University of Michigan Professor Heather Ann Thompson published Blood in the Water, a book about the 1971 uprising at New York’s Attica State Prison that claimed the lives …
Illinois Shutters Decrepit Prison by As of September 30, 2024, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) had transferred most of the 558 prisoners held at Stateville Correctional Center a month before. The move followed a preliminary injunction (PI) issued by the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois on …
Seventh Circuit Lets BOP Restrict Access to Federal Register from Prison in Illinois by The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held on July 30, 2024, that the First Amendment does not require the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide full, daily access to the Federal Register …
Former Warden at Troubled Illinois Lockup Promoted to Run BOP Training Academy by Overlooking a troubling record of overseeing abusive conditions, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) promoted Andrew Ciolli in July 2024 to serve as director of the agency’s Management and Specialty Training Center (MSTC) in Aurora, Colorado. Ciolli …
Illinois Prisoners Stage Hunger Strikes Over DOC Failure to Implement New Sentence Reduction Law by Two Illinois prisoners staged hunger strikes in June 2024 to protest the state’s foot-­dragging in granting sentence credits provided a year earlier under a new law. With promises from Robinson Correctional Facility officials to expedite …
$1.5 Million Settlement Approved in Chicago Jail Suicide Case by On July 12, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved a $1.5 million settlement in a case involving the suicide of detainee Areon Marion in Chicago’s Cook County Jail. The order directed how the funds …
Illinois Pays $3 Million for Subjecting Prisoners to Degrading Mass Strip Search by Anthony Accurso by Anthony W. Accurso After a dozen years of fighting over a mass strip-search conducted during a training exercise in an Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) prison for women, the federal court for the Central …
News in Brief by Arizona: State prisoner Brigido Montoya made the briefest of escapes from the State Prison Complex in Eyman on August 10, 2024, before he was recaptured 48 minutes later by Florence Police, the Florence Reminder & Blade-Tribune reported. The state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR) …
Chicago Jailers Publicly Call Detainee Death a Medical Emergency, Privately Admit Guard Brutality by After Corey Ulmer, 41, died at Chicago’s Cook County Jail on June 21, 2024, deputies of Sheriff Tom Dart informed the detainee’s survivors that “he went to the hospital, and unfortunately he didn’t make it,” recalled …
Illinois Parole Board Member Resigns After Violator Turns Deadly by Illinois parolee Crosetti Brand, 37, is back in prison after stabbing his former girlfriend and her son on March 13, 2024. Laterria Smith, 33, survived, but 11-­year-­old Jayden Perkins died. State Prisoner Review Board (PRB) member LeeAnn Miller, 63, who …
Illinois Prisoner Succumbs to Heat Wave by The death of Illinois prisoner Michael Broadway, 51, during a heatwave on June 19, 2024, has focused attention on squalid conditions at Stateville Correctional Center. Windows remained unopened and no working fan was provided at the un-­air-­conditioned lockup, according to family attorney Terah …
Amor v. Gomez, IL, Order, Wrongful Conviction, 2024 Case: 1:18-cv-02523 Document #: 385 Filed: 08/05/24 Page 1 of 1 PageID #:36828 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS EASTERN DIVISION JEANNE OLSON, as successor plaintiff for WILLIAM E. AMOR, Plaintiff(s), Case No. 1:18-cv-02523 Judge John …
