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 Cannon Detention Center (ACDC). Additional claims survived the settlement and remain pending against the jail’s contracted medical provider at the time, Wellpath, Inc., as well as several employees of the now-bankrupt firm.

Brown, 28, was detained at the jail in August 2022 on suspicion of a home invasion in suburban West Ashley; the settlement included a $500,000 payment to resolve the homeowner’s claims filed against Brown’s Estate. A portion of the settlement funds was provided by the state Department of Mental Health (DMH) and Accountable Healthcare Staffing (AHS) to resolve claims filed by the Estate in yet another suit arising from Brown’s death.

ACDC guards found Brown unresponsive in his isolation cell on December 29, 2022, lying in his own bodily waste and vomit. He was transported to a hospital, where he died. Despite a documented history of mental illness, he received almost no care during his four-month …

by Matt Clarke

On February 19, 2026, an Arizona federal court issued an order that will result in medical care for prisoners in the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Re-entry (DCRR) being placed under a court-appointed receiver. This rare and drastic measure amounts to a takeover of that part of the DCRR.

The Court found that receivership was necessary because the DCRR had resisted all lesser measures aimed at correcting the unconstitutionally insufficient health care being provided to DCRR prisoners, which resulted in horrendous suffering and hundreds of premature deaths.

United States District Judge Roslyn O. Silver signed the order granting plaintiffs’ Motion for a Receiver in this class-action lawsuit that was first filed in 2012. The 128-page order detailed the herculean efforts by the Court and Court-appointed monitors in attempting to assist the DCRR in bringing its medical care up to minimal constitutional standards and how the DCRR frustrated every such attempt. The order gave the parties 30 days in which to file motions setting forth proposed duties, powers and authorities of the Receiver. It gave the parties and monitors 60 days to submit a list of up to five candidates each to serve …

by Jo Ellen Knott

The death toll within the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carceral system reached a sad milestone with the April 12, 2026, passing of Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, 27, at a detention center in Miami. Carbonell-Betancourt, a Cuban national, was found in his cell, with suicide announced as the probable cause of death, according to local station WTVJ. Carbonell-Betancourt was the 17th person to die in ICE custody so far this year (an average of one per week)—and the 48th since President Donald Trump (R) assumed office in 2025. This year has already reached half of 2025’s record-breaking body count.

Just one day prior to Carbonell-Betancourt’s death, a Mexican detainee was found dead at the Winn Correctional Center in rural Louisiana. Officials claim the detainee, Alejandro Cabrera Clemente, 49, was found “unresponsive,” but independent reviews of ICE deaths in custody frequently reveal that systemic delays in care are often the true culprits. It is perhaps unsurprising that Winn is operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison profiteer, and that it sits in a cluster of private facilities notorious for medical neglect and chronic understaffing.  

Sources: ABC News, WTVJ

by Chuck Sharman

Massachusetts prisons are not going to meet a December 2026 deadline to achieve substantial compliance with the terms of a 2022 settlement agreement covering the provision of mental healthcare to state prisoners. That was the key takeaway from the most recent progress report delivered on March 24, 2026, by the monitor overseeing the agreement between the state Department of Correction (DOC) and the federal Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOC agreed to the settlement after a 2020 DOJ report that summarized a two-year investigation. Among its findings: that prisoners on mental health watch were routinely isolated in restrictive housing for longer than the DOC’s four-day limit—up to six months in some cases, as PLN reported. The DOJ investigation also found that guards observed alarming instances of prisoner self-harm without attempting to intervene and, according to a least three prisoners, some guards offered them razors to encourage their suicide attempts. [See: PLN, July 2021, p.26.]

Problems weren’t limited to guards, though, as the latest compliance report recalled: “Suicide risk assessments were cursory, prisoners were almost universally shackled when interacting with mental health professionals (MHPs), and ‘treatment’ too often took the form of worksheets and …

by Chuck Sharman

After a spate of deaths at the Onondaga County Justice Center (OCJC), the New York Attorney General’s office found the jail’s private medical contractor, NaphCare, Inc., in violation of state medical licensing laws, leading to an $875,000 fine and a five-year ban on practicing in the state, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, May 2026, p.28.] A lawsuit filed after one of those deaths also resulted in a $750,000 settlement in February 2025, with the County paying $100,000 and the balance paid by NaphCare and its subsidiary, Proactive Healthcare Medicine PLLC.

Proactive held the contract to provide medical and mental health care at OCJC on September 1, 2021, when Angela P. Cheng, 27, was booked on a probation violation charge. As recalled in the complaint later filed on her behalf, Cheng was a “restaurant worker and recovering heroin and alcohol addict with a history of suicide attempts”—a history which was “well known” to Defendant jail and Proactive officials because supervision had been transferred to the County for her three-year probated DWI sentence. Yet Cheng never received any medical, mental health or suicide screening at the jail.

On September 2, jailers found …

by Robert Haughn

A federal jury awarded a $307.6 million verdict to a former Michigan prisoner who said he suffered for two years in prison because Corizon Health Inc., the prison’s private the healthcare contractor, refused to give him an essential surgery to reverse his colostomy. It is the largest verdict against a prison or jail healthcare contractor in U.S. history, according to lead attorney Jonathan F. Marko of Marko Law PLLC in Detroit. However, it was unclear how much might be recovered from Corizon, which has now reorganized and put such liabilities in a new firm, Tehum Care Services, that has declared bankruptcy, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2024, p.29.]

Former prisoner Kohchise Jackson originally filed the suit against Corizon in 2019. In the suit, Jackson alleged that his Fourteenth and Eighteenth Amendment rights were violated while he was in custody at St. Clair County Correctional Facility from May 2016 to March 23, 2017 and a prisoner held by the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) from March 23, 2017 to May 16, 2019.

In the suit, Jackson said that, in 2016, he developed a colovesical fistula, a hole in the tissue that separates the …

In late April of this year, the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) announced it had terminated its 5-year, $1 billion contract with prison healthcare profiteer YesCare. According to reporting by the Alabama Reflector, the contract was axed because the company could not meet payroll to pay its employees. The DOC also announced that it would replace YesCare with another for-profit healthcare provider, NaphCare, under an emergency contract that began on May 3.

The DOC made its decision days after several YesCare staffers refused to show up for work due to delayed paychecks. Given the history of YesCare, which spun off from Corizon Health in 2022 as part of a strategy to avoid paying creditors amid bankruptcy proceedings, this turn of events shouldn’t come as a surprise. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.36.]

More recently, in March 2026, YesCare lost its protection from Chapter 11 bankruptcy by failing to make a scheduled $2 million installment payment; as a result, the firm lost its shield from lawsuits launched by hundreds of prisoners claiming medical malpractice, negligence, and other issues. “Who knew that a company that started off bankrupt, who took this deal so it can pay creditors, ended up bankrupt?” …

On March 18, 2026, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) told state lawmakers that the state must immediately move to open a new new prison to account for a projected growth in prisoner numbers, according to The Colorado Sun.

Gov. Polis’ demand came as Colorado grapples with a $1 billion budget shortfall that the state legislature has cut social services to address. And, as one of Gov. Polis’ staff warned the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, a single prison—which would cost $200 million—may not be enough to account for the estimated influx. “We may even need two prisons,” the staff member said, despite Colorado adopting policies in recent years to decrease its prison population such as reclassifying crimes and changing sentencing structures.

Advocates blame the state Department of Corrections’ adoption of stricter parole policies that keep people in prison for longer time periods. As Kyle Giddings, deputy director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, told The Colorado Sun, the state’s parole board has been less likely to grant parole and far more aggressive in its enforcement of parole violations. “There is no piece of legislation that did this,” Giddings added. “These are just independent choices of …

by Chuck Sharman

A $950,000 settlement received approval from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on January 28, 2026, resolving claims against the City of Norfolk by the Estate of Philemon S. Vinson, alleging that his suicide in the city lockup should have been prevented by guards working for Sheriff Joe Baron.

The agreement does not include claims against Wellpath, which was the jail’s contracted healthcare and mental healthcare provider at the time; those claims are proceeding in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, which is overseeing Wellpath’s Chapter 11 reorganization, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2025, p.56.]

Vinson, 24, was picked up in August 2022 on a failure to appear warrant. He was denied bond and placed in the Norfolk jail. At intake screening, Wellpath Nurse Practitioner Sharon Rice asked whether he had “feelings that there is nothing to look forward to or [felt] hopelessness/helplessness.” Vinson responded that both statements were true for him. But he was not placed on suicide watch. In fact, Wellpath Director of Mental Health Services Anne Purkeson released him into the jail’s general population. He was found fatally hanged in his …

by Jo Ellen Knott

The New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) confirmed a third measles case at the Doña Ana County jail, bringing the state’s total to 13 so far this year, all occurring within Southern New Mexico carceral facilities. According to Searchlight New Mexico, the second case was confirmed in late March of this year, which also prompted a public health warning regarding potential exposure at the U.S. District Court in Las Cruces on February 24 of this year. Adding to the two cases reported at Doña Ana, two cases are in the Hidalgo County Jail and eight at the Luna County Detention Center.

While NMDOH officials believe the federal detainees were exposed out-of-state via Border Patrol custody, the highly infectious airborne virus poses a severe threat in crowded, congregate settings where social distancing is almost impossible. Despite official claims of prioritized safety, the outbreak follows a 2025 surge that saw 2,200 national cases and one death in New Mexico. Advocacy groups, including the New Mexico Prison and Jail Project, noted the terrifying speed of transmission in jails, echoing the failure to keep the detained safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Similarly, in Texas, …