| Prison Legal News, a monthly print publication that covers criminal justice issues, is a project of the Human Rights Defense Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. |
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Congress to investigate misconduct in largest government-run prison A House committee is launching an investigation into the federal Bureau of Prisons' handling of "egregious" misconduct at the largest government-run detention facility - where the warden and other officials were awarded thousands of dollars in bonuses despite female staffers' persistent allegations of sexual harassment. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, in letters to the BOP and the FBI this week, highlighted the case of Antwon Pitt, who while serving a 24-month sentence for robbery at the U.S. Penitentiary in Coleman, Fla., "repeatedly harassed and threatened staffers that he would rape and kill them.'' Pitt was never prosecuted for his actions against prison staffers. Yet following his release in 2015, Pitt was convicted of raping a Washington woman during a break-in at the victim's home. It is unclear, Chaffetz said in his letter late Wednesday, whether the BOP informed local Washington officials in charge of Pitt's post-release supervision were informed of Pitt's misconduct as an inmate. Chaffetz's letters cite reporting by The Washington Post, which highlighted Pitt's case last year, and by USA TODAY, which just last month reported that the BOP paid more than $2 million in bonuses to top administrators across the BOP during the past three years. That included including tens of thousands of dollars to four executives who held senior leadership posts at the Coleman prison where Pitt was serving time. Read More |
Sessions moves to lengthen drug sentences Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing one of the central elements of the Obama administration's criminal justice reform agenda: a Justice Department policy that led to prosecutors in drug cases often filing charges in a way that avoided triggering mandatory minimum sentences in federal law. Sessions is withdrawing a 2013 directive from Attorney General Eric Holder that instructed federal prosecutors not to specify the amount of drugs involved when charging low-level and nonviolent drug offenders. That policy effectively gave judges discretion to set sentences lower than the mandatory punishments ranging from five years to life in prison federal law dictates when someone is convicted of a crime involving a certain quantity of illegal drugs. In a memo distributed to federal prosecutors nationwide Thursday, Sessions said the department default in future cases will return to a previous policy of filing the most serious charge available against a defendant under the provable facts. "It is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense," Sessions said in the directive, dated Wednesday. The attorney general suggested that moves to lessen the impact of mandatory minimums should come from Congress, rather than being unilaterally implemented by the Executive Branch. "This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us," he wrote. Read More |
Imprisoned nearly 25 years for rape, Indiana man freed after tests show DNA not his A central Indiana man who spent nearly 25 years in prison left a courthouse a free man Wednesday after a judge set aside his 1992 rape conviction because DNA found on the victim was not his. Delaware Circuit Judge Kimberly Dowling freed William E. Barnhouse, acting on a joint motion filed by prosecutors and attorneys with the Innocence Project, after recent DNA tests showed another man's semen was on the pants and inside a 1992 Muncie sexual assault victim, The Star Press reported. "He has spent a quarter of a century incarcerated for a crime he did not commit," Innocence Project attorney Seema Saifee told the judge. "William has suffered from mental illness his entire life. ... He never gave up hope that the truth would come out." Barnhouse, now 60, was accused of attacking a woman in April 1992 behind a vacant Muncie building. The victim identified him as her attacker after he was arrested nearby. He was found guilty, but mentally ill, of rape and criminal deviate conduct, and sentenced to 80 years. Read More |
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California: Guards said they would let him out of jail. But first he had to hand over his teeth Gerald E. Nichols got some bad news the day he walked out of the Plumas County Jail last year. Before he could leave, a sergeant told him on his way out, he had to hand over his teeth. Either that, Nichols was told, or he had to pay the $2,688 it cost to provide him a full set of dentures during his two-year, eight-month stay following his arrest and conviction on drug charges. Nichols didn't have the money. "I told the sergeant I would not leave without my dentures and would rather stay in jail," he said in a sworn federal court declaration. His elderly parents, who drove the 117 miles from Susanville to Quincy to pick him up at the jail, wound up paying for the dentures. Now, following a judge's finding that the jail is "not in substantial compliance" with a 25-year-old consent decree, it is Plumas County that is feeling the bite. One of Nichols' lawyers on Thursday called the county's violation of the consent decree that governs the jail's conditions of confinement "as assault on the Constitution." Read More |
Michigan prison food woes drag on Food problems continue to plague Michigan prisons in 2017 after Gov. Rick Snyder replaced a previous private vendor over similar issues, state documents show. Inmates at the Upper Peninsula Kinross Correctional Facility picked through "maggot infested potatoes" to find still-intact spuds for prison meals, according to documents the Lansing-based liberal advocacy group Progress Michigan obtained from the Michigan Department of Corrections through an open records request. Prison staff noted an "overwhelming stench" from the rotten potatoes and "yellowish/white liquid seeping from the bags" as they attempted to unload the produce in preparation for prisoners' meals, the documents show. The report shows that the potatoes were discovered less than two months before a costly riot broke out amid prisoners' complaints about food quality. "We have had food issues or prisoner complaints at a variety of our prisons. Kinross doesn't stand out to me as being particularly worse off than any other facilities that have food service there," said Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections. Read More |
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From the PLN in Print Archives Quickest Path to Reducing Pretrial Incarceration? Eliminate Money Bail According to the non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), the fastest way to reduce the number of pretrial detainees held in local jails is simple: Eliminate or reduce the use of money bail. In a money bail system, defendants unable to come up with the required funds to pay their bond amount (or 10% of the bond if they use a bail bondsman) remain in custody until their case reaches its conclusion or is dismissed. Proponents of limiting the use of money bail point to both the unfairness of the current system and its cost. In a May 2016 report titled "Detaining the Poor: How money bail perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time," PPI noted there are 646,000 people held in over 3,000 local jails throughout the U.S. Around 70 percent of those individuals are pretrial detainees who have not been convicted, and therefore are presumed innocent. Holding those people - many of whom are indigent - in custody until they are able to post bail has doubled the jail population in the past two decades. "We find that most people who are unable to meet bail fall within the poorest third of society," PPI wrote. Indeed, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), "people in jail had a median annual income of $15,109 prior to their incarceration, which is less than half (48%) of the median for non-incarcerated people of similar ages." Bernadette Rabuy, who published a report on the pre-incarceration demographics of state prisoners, said, "I kept hearing that 80% of defendants are indigent, but I was curious if people in local jails are even poorer than people in prison." BJS data supports that theory. "The typical detained defendant would need to spend eight months' income to cover $10,000 in money bail," stated Dan Kopf, who relied on a BJS dataset when he coauthored a 2015 report, "Prisons of Poverty." The Federal Reserve has determined that most people cannot muster $400 if needed in an emergency. According to Rabuy, "If the average American cannot easily come up with $400, it is clear that a system that requires (on average) $10,000 from the poorest members of our society for pretrial release is a system set up to fail." Read More |
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Stop Prison Profiteering: Seeking Debit Card Plaintiffs Notice: The Human Rights Defense Center is currently suing NUMI in US District Court in Portland, Oregon over its release debit card practices in that state. We are interested in litigating other cases against NUMI and the other debit card companies that exploit prisoners and arrestees in this manner. If you have had your money taken by any of these companies and been charged fees to access your funds on a debit card after being released from prison or jail we want to hear from you. Please contact Carrie Wilkinson at cwilk...@humanrightsdefensecenter.org, or call (206) 257-1355, or write: HRDC, SPP Debit Cards, P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460. |
Protest at CoreCivic Annual Shareholder's meeting Yesterday, around two dozen protesters gathered outside the corporate headquarters of CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) as it held its annual shareholders' meeting. A handful of activist shareholders attended the meeting, including Alex Friedmann, Managing Editor of Prison Legal News, and Monte McCoin, PLN's Social Media Director. |
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Illinois: Cook County Settles Hundreds of Lawsuits Over Jail Conditions Duante Browner was booked into the Cook County Jail for aggravated domestic battery in March 2015. Seven months later - while serving time at a state prison - he filed a lawsuit against the Cook County sheriff. Browner, who is serving a three-year sentence in the Vandalia Correctional Center in south-central Illinois, wanted $20,000 for pain and suffering. He ended up settling in April for a fraction of that - just $750. His was one of hundreds of low-dollar settlements Cook County has approved regarding jail conditions over the last two years. During each month's County Board meeting, commissioners routinely sign off on these settlements, often with little or no discussion. As part of the deals, the county admits no wrongdoing. Browner, of south suburban Matteson, said he was held in a section of the county jail in Chicago with no television, no hot water, mold in the showers, and a host of pests, according to court documents. "Rats and rodents crawling all over the place, in my [food], also eating my [food]. Rats and mice on me while I'm sleep [sic], which messed me up mentally," Browner stated in a federal civil rights lawsuit he filed in October 2015 against Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who runs the massive jail at 26th Street and California Avenue. Read More |
New York: Joseph Ponte to Resign as New York City Jails Chief Joseph Ponte, who was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio three years ago to end the chaos at Rikers Island, is expected to step down as correction commissioner on Friday, according to people with knowledge of his plans. The decision came amid a swirl of revelations about mismanagement and dysfunction at the highest levels of New York City's jail agency. He has chosen to leave even though Mr. de Blasio has repeatedly defended him in recent weeks in the face of calls for his resignation over a series of apparent ethical lapses. Two recent city investigations accused him of misusing his city vehicle, spending extended periods out of state away from his job overseeing the jails and failing to notify city officials about an effort by his internal affairs staff to spy on city investigators. Mr. Ponte, 70, had planned to retire in the next several months, one of the people said, but decided to leave sooner because the growing scandals had become a distraction. Read More |
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