Prisoners caged in lockups where Aramark provides the food service rarely enthuse about great quality meals. So it may come as a surprise that an employee of the firm’s German subsidiary won a Next Chef Award on March 11, 2024. After tasting a dish that TV chef Johan Lauffer created, ...

by Paul Wright

This month’s cover story is the latest installment on the prison profiteering industry monetizing how prisoners are fed. Perhaps not surprisingly, the cost of feeding prisoners is one of the lowest operating costs involved in caging people, with staffing being 80% or more of prison and jail ...

The federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) announced on April 24, 2024, that a months-long California operation targeting the Mexican drug cartel once run by the man known as “el Chapo” had resulted in the arrests of 15 people allegedly involved in drug trafficking—including a former guard at the Riverside County ...

Families who lost loved ones to suicide in New Jersey’s Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) were still waiting in early March 2024 for payouts from settlements reached two years ago or more. The delay is blamed on their now-imprisoned attorney, Conrad J. Benedetto, who provided the federal court for the District ...

by David M. Reutter

On June 14, 2023, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $500,000 to resolve a state prisoner’s allegation that his Eighth Amendment guarantee of freedom from cruel and unusual punishment was violated when he was restrained and isolated in a “dry cell” without running ...

by Victoria Law

How the criminal legal system slammed two Black men for standing up to white supremacist guards in an Indiana prison.

This article was originally published by Truthout on March 12, 2023. It is reprinted here with permission. View the original at https://truthout.org/articles/these-men-fought-white-supremacists-and-got-sentenced-to-over-200-years/

To book a screening of ...

With the death of Elvin Craig Stacy, 63, on January 2, 2024, Alabama’s Mobile Metro Jail had racked up six detainee deaths in just over six months.

The spate of deaths began on June 26, 2023, when Ernest James Little, Jr., 38, was found unresponsive by cellmates around 1:30 a.m. ...

by Douglas Ankney

On June 27, 2023, the Office of U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz (OIG) released a report corroborating a New York City medical examiner’s conclusion that the death of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was a suicide but faulting the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for ...

by Douglas Ankney

In the nine months ending on June 30, 2023, there were 47,931 sentences for federal crime, driving more than 5,000 prisoners into custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons every month, according to data released by the U.S. Sentencing Commission on September 21, 2023.

Most of those ...

Among the worst places to put a pregnant woman, a jail cell ranks fairly high. Yet that’s exactly where Ashley Caswell found herself—jailed in Alabama’s Etowah County for “fetal endangerment.” Ultimately she was forced to give birth alone in a jail shower, according to a complaint she filed on October ...

When Illinois prisoner J. Le’Dell Pippins, 54, defied the odds to gain acceptance into the University of Iowa’s Ph.D. in Criminology program, it proved a key factor in the decision by Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) to commute Pippins’ 30-year murder sentence in May 2023.

Pippins, who goes by “Dell,” originally ...

In federal court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on October 6, 2023, state prisoner Carl F. Self stipulated to dismissal of his medical neglect claims against the state Department of Corrections (DOC), after he accepted a $32,000 settlement.

A diabetic, Self was incarcerated at Green Bay Correctional Institution when ...

Just 10 days after the federal court for the Middle District of Georgia denied them summary judgment on July 31, 2023, officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) settled a prisoner’s retaliation claim for $7,500.

The case dates to September 4, 2018, when prisoners staged a peaceful “sit-in” at ...

In a suit filed against Pittsburgh’s Alle­gheny County Jail on October 17, 2023, the survivors of a 57-year-old autistic detainee allege his death in custody was the preventable result of a jail “culture” that left him “punished instead of treated.” Anthony G. Talotta’s death on September 20, 2022, was also ...

On June 20, 2023, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) signed an agreement paying state prisoner Jared M. Staake $6,500 to settle his claims over denied public records requested under the state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 ILCS 140/1, et seq.

In 2014, Staake, then 22, was incarcerated by ...

by Douglas Ankney

In June 2023, Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) reviewed data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics on HIV and people in America’s prisons, finding that infection rates for the virus—which has no cure—remain stubbornly higher behind bars, running three times the overall rate for all those living ...

Six guards at West Virginia’s Southern Regional Jail were charged on November 30, 2023, in the fatal beating of pretrial detainee Quantez Burks, 27, less than a month after two fellow guards pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges in his death.

Burks had been held just one day on ...

A two-day manhunt ended on March 21, 2024, with the capture of escaped Idaho prisoner Skylar Meade, 31. Three alleged accomplices have also been arrested, including fellow Aryan Knights gang member Nicholas Umphenour, 28, who was held before his January 2024 release with Meade at Idaho Maximum Security Institution.

Meade ...

For years, prisoners at the Bradley County jail in Tennessee received poor medical care or none at all. Former prisoner Darrell Eden, who was denied treatment for pre-arrest injuries sustained during a car accident, including seven broken ribs, filed a class-action lawsuit in 2018 challenging inadequate medical treatment under the ...

One California prisoner was killed, another wounded and three others charged in two separate prisoner-on-prisoner assaults—one of them fatal—at Kern Valley State Prison, most recently on October 6, 2023.

That’s when the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said that prisoner Richard A. Aguirre, 46, died after sustaining “multiple ...

by David M. Reutter

On October 19, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to officials at St. Louis’ “Workhouse” jail in a suit over a detainee’s fatal overdose, finding the lower court “tilted the scales too far in the plaintiff’s ...

Since Mark Lamb became Sheriff of Arizona’s Pinal County in 2017, at least $217,000 from a jail commissary fund intended for the benefit of detainees has been diverted to buy weaponry and ammunition, in apparent violation of state law. But at a public hearing on October 18, 2023, Lamb insisted ...

On December 19, 2023, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas provided details about a sealed indictment filed in federal court there the previous month, naming three defendants accused of abusing their positions as prison guards with the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) in a smuggling scheme. ...

by Matt Clarke

On December 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a group of North Carolina prisoners can be treated like adherents of a religion even if the group denies the “religion” label. The case is one of three in which the state ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 17, 2023, Judge Kevin S. Naught of Washington’s Yakima County Superior Court ruled that Kittitas County Corrections Center (KCCC) was in violation of state law when it held detainees responsible for repaying the costs of their medical care while confined without a judicial determination of ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

On August 22, 2023, the federal court for the Middle District of Alabama declined to dismiss all but a few claims against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) that were made by a prisoner who was abducted at knifepoint, repeatedly sexually assaulted and held ...

On June 4, 2023, a request for a rehearing en banc before the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was denied in a suit accusing prison telecom providers Securus Technologies and Global Tel*Link (GTL)—now known as ViaPath Technologies—of illegal price-fixing. That left to stand the Court’s earlier ...

by Matt Clarke

On October 11, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined it was illegal to collect court filing fees from a prisoner denied indigent status to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) unless he decides to go forward and pay them on his own. Once ...

Warden Dave Gallagher of Pennsylvania’s Clearfield County Jail was fired and escorted off the job on December 7, 2023, just over a month after Deputy Warden Eric Bush resigned on October 28, 2023. Their departures follow an alleged assault on an unnamed and handcuffed 65-year-old detainee by a jail guard ...

by Douglas Ankney

Jeff Burkett resigned as Sheriff of Missouri’s Iron County on January 31, 2024, saying if he stayed to defend a civil suit filed to remove him from office, his testimony might undermine his defense to pending criminal charges.

As PLN reported, the now-former Sheriff was arrested in ...

The term “geriatric” can apply to a prisoner as young as 50 in some prison systems, and it describes the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. incarcerated population. As Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) reported on August 2, 2023, the number has quintupled over the past 30 years, totaling 186,000 prisoners 55 ...

by Douglas Ankney

In an 1829 letter, Pres. Andrew Jackson (D) told the Creek Nation of Indigenous Americans that he was speaking “straight, and not with a forked tongue” when he promised those who evacuated from Alabama would enjoy new lands in Mississippi “forever.” Almost two centuries later, another Democratic ...

by David M. Reutter

In September 2023, just two months into a program to rebate fines and fees for vacated drug convictions, Washington state courts had paid out more than $9.4 million. That’s nearly 20% of a $50 million fund created by state lawmakers after the state Supreme Court found ...

by Matt Clarke

On January 12, 2024, the federal court for the Western District of Texas refused a motion by Williamson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) officials, which argued for dismissal of claims by former detainee Rodney A. Hurdsman, 55, that jailers recorded his privileged calls with his attorney and shared ...

by Douglas Ankney

When raw sewage flooded two cell blocks at New Mexico’s Torrance County Detention Facility (TCDF) on November 14, 2023, guards working for its private operator, CoreCivic, ordered some 40 affected migrant detainees being held for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to clean it up—and gave the ...

by David M. Reutter

On October 26, 2023, the Supreme Court of Wyoming held that the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act shielded the state from liability in a lawsuit alleging a nurse negligently injected three prisoners with a COVID-19 vaccine other than the one listed on the ...

by Douglas Ankney

On February 24, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its final order requiring prison calling-service provider Global Tel*Link (GTL) “to change its security practices and offer free credit monitoring and identity protection” to some 650,000 customers whose personal information was stolen and made available on the ...

On November 28, 2023, a federal judge in Virginia sentenced a former lieutenant with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to a three-year term for failing to intervene in a prisoner’s preventable death at the Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg.

As PLN reported, Michael Anderson, 52, pleaded guilty on July ...

by Ed Lyon

Charles B. Lemon, the former Sheriff of South Carolina’s Marlboro County, pleaded not guilty on February 6, 2024, to federal civil rights charges laid out in an indictment unsealed two weeks earlier. Lemon and former Deputy Dep. David A. Cook were both accused in a brutal assault ...

by David M. Reutter

On December 11, 2023, the Supreme Court of the U.S. declined to issue a writ of certiorari to hear a Florida prisoner’s appeal to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, finding no constitutional violation by exposure to urine and feces ...

On October 6, 2023, the federal court for the District of New Mexico stood fast in its refusal to grant qualified immunity (QI) to a defendant warden with the state Corrections Department (NMCD) in a prisoner’s suit alleging sexual abuse by a guard.

Dawn Green was incarcerated at Springer Correctional ...

On March 27, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina granted in part and denied in part the Human Rights Defense Center’s (HRDC) motion for summary judgment in a civil rights action it filed against the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction (DAC) and several ...

Almost four months after escaping Blair County Prison, jail detainee Isaiah Tilghman, 33, was arrested on March 22, 2024, while headed into a Planet Fitness gym near Philadelphia, over 200 miles from the western Pennsylvania lockup he fled on December 3, 2023.

Meeting on March 12, 2024, Blair County commissioners ...

On February 11, 2024, a San Diego jury deadlocked on involuntary manslaughter charges against Dr. Friederike Von Lintig over a 2019 death at the county’s Las Colinas Detention Facility. Nurse Danalee Pascua, 38, was acquitted of the same charge in the incident.

As PLN reported, both were accused in the ...

On October 10, 2023, a former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan was sentenced for her role in a contraband-smuggling conspiracy. Prosecutors had already gotten guilty pleas from three former co-workers at the lockup, which was shut down due to deteriorating ...

by Douglas Ankney

On October 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s denial of qualified immunity (QI) to officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in two suits filed over a botched prisoner transfer during the COVID-19 pandemic that ...

by Douglas Ankney

To paraphrase Job 1:21, the Supreme Court of Virginia did not giveth but taketh away on October 12, 2023, with a ruling on prisoner sentence credits that were extended by a 2020 law only to have a budget amendment make hash of them two years later.

Before ...

by David M. Reutter

On November 7, 2023, the Supreme Court of Ohio rebuffed a request from the office of state Attorney General Dave Yost (R) to reconsider a grant of a state prisoner’s mandamus action. That left to stand the Court’s earlier order issued on August 31, 2023, requiring ...

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) signed H. 1796 on November 15, 2023, making hers the fifth state in the nation to eliminate fees for prison and jail phone calls. When the law took effect on December 1, 2023, the state joined Connecticut, California, Minnesota and Colorado in providing no-cost communications for ...

by David M. Reutter

A unanimous vote by Connecticut’s House Committee on Judiciary on March 1, 2024, all but assured state lawmakers would approve an agreement made in August 2023 by state Attorney General William Tong (D) to pay a total of $25.2 million to Ralph “Ricky” Birch, 67, and ...

by Douglas Ankney

On October 10, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued an opinion offering guidance to judges deciding whether to grant a prisoner’s motions to waive court filing fees and proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) on appeal.

Illinois prisoner Jordan Whitaker sought to waive ...

On October 5, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed key parts of a lower court’s ruling instructing the Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) to revise its system for revoking parole in order to protect prisoners’ due-process rights.

In 2017, several Missouri parolees filed suit challenging ...

In an article published by the Vanguard at Berkeley on October 15, 2023, a new program was reported at the Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, Texas: A dorm exclusively for prisoners who are veterans of the U.S. military.

Federal prisoner Randall Morris, 57, said the program was announced in April ...

by David M. Reutter

On October 12, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment to Defendant officials with New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) in a state prisoner’s civil rights action. The Court recognized that Steven Bangs had ...

Promising a “return to normal operations status as soon as possible” at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, the federal Bureau of Prisons insisted on March 28, 2024, that the 1,837 prisoners held there still have access to food, water and medical care since “modified operations” began four weeks earlier. ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

On December 14, 2023, the state of Virginia confirmed that it had agreed to pay $15,000 to settle a state prisoner’s lawsuit alleging retaliation and excessive use of force by officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) who deployed a K-9 dog that bit and ...

For years, California has struggled with a growing homeless population, reaching 171,000 in late 2023. Though that’s less than one-half of 1% of state residents, lawmakers responded with reforms to the state’s mental health system in SB 43, which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law on October 10, 2023. ...

Perhaps Timothy Raye “Timbo” Heefner was confused over his role in life. On one hand he was an elected Pennsylvania State Constable—part of the law enforcement community. He was also a self-described pimp and “sugar daddy,” and according to criminal charges filed against him in Franklin County on September 19, ...

by David M. Reutter

On October 16, 2023, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia reversed denial of mandamus relief to a prisoner and compelled the Commissioner of the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) to “develop a policy directive and/or operational procedure that is in compliance” with ...

On December 14, 2023, over a decade of pre-trial detention finally came to an end for a Charlotte murder suspect. Devalos Perkins, 37, pleaded guilty in Mecklenburg County District Court to voluntary manslaughter in the 2005 slaying of Justin Ervin—almost 11 years after his 2012 arrest for the crime.

It ...

In a report published on October 11, 2023, the nonprofit Sentencing Project noted that the lifetime risk of incarceration for Black men in the U.S. fell from one in three in 1981 to one in five in 2021. However, all races benefitted from the decline in total U.S. incarceration from ...

by David M. Reutter

On October 6, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a consent decree in a class-action lawsuit filed over solitary confinement of mentally ill detainees at the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, California.

As PLN reported, the suit accused jailers of ...

by David M. Reutter

On October 24, 2023, the Alabama Personnel Board (APB) reinstated Capt. Timothy McCorvey, a guard dismissed by the warden at Ventress Correctional Facility in 2023 for using excessive force against a prisoner who later died of blunt force trauma.

Around 2:20 a.m. on January 21, 2023, ...

Alabama: Kilby Correctional Facility (CF) guard Mario Grant resigned from the state Department of Corrections (DOC) after his arrest on February 27, 2024, for allegedly taking bribes by CashApp to smuggle drugs to an unnamed prisoner between July and September 2023. WSFA in Montgomery reported that his wife, Carole ...