Loaded on April 1, 2024 by Douglas Ankney published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 29 Filed under: Religious Discrimination, Mail, Publications/Books, Banned Book Lists, Censorship, Prison Mail. Location: Kansas. by Douglas Ankney On September 27, 2023, the Kansas Department of Corrections (DOC) appeared to back down from a fight over providing state prisoners materials from a Wiccan shop—though it maintained a ban on correspondence from the shop owner and an associated coven. For at least 20 years, MoonShadow Coven ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 by David Reutter published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 26 Filed under: Commentary/Reviews, Statistics/Trends, Probation, Parole & Supervised Release, Conditions of. Location: United States of America. David M. Reutter One alternative to incarceration that criminal justice reformers clamor for is probation or parole. A May 2023 report by Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) counted nearly 3.7 million people in the U.S. under some form of community supervision, nearly twice the number held in prisons and jails. The ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 by Douglas Ankney published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 28 Filed under: Systemic Medical Neglect, Overcrowding, Sanitation, Jail Specific, Consent Decrees, Suicides, Grand Jury, Contempt. Location: California. by Douglas Ankney Delays in improvements mandated in a 2020 consent decree resulted in at least six preventable detainee deaths at Sacramento County jails, according to a grand jury investigative report on June 2, 2023. As PLN reported, the County’s two lockups were the subject of Mays v. Cty. of ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 24 Filed under: Education, Art, Tapes/Music. Location: New York. When a new production of “Dead Man Walking,” the opera based on the 1993 memoir of Louisiana death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean, opened at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera in September 2023, there was a rare offsite performance—at the state’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, with lead singers ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 34 Filed under: Guard Misconduct, Jail Specific, DOJ CRIPA Actions. Location: South Carolina. In just a month in early 2024, nine employees were arrested at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, the lockup run by South Carolina’s Richland County. The state Department of Corrections (DOC) opened an investigation at the jail in Columbia in July 2023, prompted by a series of stabbings, escapes ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 by Paul Wright published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 9 Filed under: Editorials. Location: United States of America. By Paul Wright Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce. Sadly, the history of prison privatization in America is anything but farcical. Through much of the 19th century many prisons and jails in the US were privately operated or run with the prisoners being ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 15 Filed under: Guard Misconduct, Criminal Prosecution, Statistics/Trends. Location: Georgia. On February 28, 2024, prisoner advocates held a press conference outside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, demanding that state lawmakers address twin afflictions in the state’s beleaguered Department of Corrections (DOC), whose 51,000 prisoners now represent its highest population in 15 years, even as the number of prison guards ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 16 Filed under: Systemic Medical Neglect, Overcrowding, Jail Specific, Wrongful Death, Medical Neglect/Malpractice, Failure to Treat (Mental Illness), Class Actions. Location: California. As of December 31, 2023, Los Angeles County jails had recorded 34 detainee deaths in seven months—over one every week, far more than New York City’s notorious Rikers Island complex, which recorded seven deaths during the same period. Overcrowding is blamed for the spate of dying. The jail system averaged ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 13 Filed under: Prison Labor, Disciplinary Hearings. Location: Colorado. Although Colorado voters amended the state constitution in 2018 to ban slave labor inside state prisons, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) has continued to discipline prisoners for refusing to work—14,000 times just since 2019, according to a November NPR News report. That bolsters the claims of two state prisoners ... Read more ..read more

Loaded on April 1, 2024 published in Prison Legal News April, 2024, page 14 Filed under: Staff-Staff Assault, Guard Misconduct, Jail Specific, Wrongful Death. Location: Kentucky. On September 26, 2023, Louisville Metro Corrections Department (LMCD) suspended guard Terry Henderson after he crashed his car into a vehicle driven by fellow guard Andrew Young. Responding Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers reportedly suspected Henderson was drunk, but no charges were filed. Young was treated at a hospital ... Read more ..read more