| 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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Treating Cancer with Ibuprofen Even as the Trump administration prepares to loosen oversight over immigrant detention facilities, medical care already can be so substandard that cancer is treated with ibuprofen, schizophrenia with Benadryl and serious mental illness with solitary confinement, two new reports found. Human Rights Watch, along with the nonprofit Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement, asked outside medical experts to review 18 deaths in immigration facilities between May 2012 and June 2015 - and found alleged medical neglect contributed to the early deaths of seven detainees, according to their joint report released Monday. The nonprofit organizations also interviewed 90 current and former detainees for the report. Their findings come on the heels of a survey of 83 detainees about conditions in two for-profit detention centers in Georgia, released last week by a separate group of nonprofit organizations. The detainees claimed, among other grievances, that their requests for medical care were often ignored and even landed some in segregation. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency will review the Human Rights Watch and CIVIC report to determine if any changes needed to be made. "ICE is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in the agency's custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate medical care," said spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea, who added that all detainees had access to licensed mental health providers. "At no time during detention will a detainee be denied emergent care." Read More |
Attention Nashville! TOMORROW, May 11, 2017 Protest CoreCivic at its annual shareholders' meeting CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) is the largest private, for-profit prison operator in the U.S. and is headquartered in Nashville, just outside of Green Hills. CCA's Annual Shareholders Meeting starts at 10am, but we want to be there an hour before that, so that stockholders can see our signs as they arrive. We'll be on the sidewalk in front of the building. There is adequate free parking on the street. Alex Friedmann, Managing Editor of Prison Legal News, will be attending the Annual Meeting as an activist shareholder. At the end of the shareholders' meeting, he will report back to us. Lisa Guenther, Prof. of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, and Rasheedat Rah Frizzy Fetuga of Gideon's Army will also speak. Location: 10 Burton Hills Blvd, Nashville, TN 37215. That's a few blocks south of the Green Hills shopping area. Visit the Facebook Event Page |
Justices Consider Decades-Old DC Murder Case - With Possible Effect On Prosecutors Everywhere On Oct. 1, 1984, Catherine Fuller was killed in an alley a few blocks from her home in northeast Washington, DC. More than a dozen people were indicted in connection with the murder, and - more than 30 years later - the US Supreme Court heard arguments over whether prosecutors withheld information from the defense that could have changed the outcome of the trial. Arguments on Wednesday focused on the facts of the Fuller case, with the justices delving into the finer points of the evidence, but the case could result in a decision with broader implications for how courts decide if prosecutors violated their obligation to turn over favorable information to defendants in criminal cases. Prosecutors must turn over information that could help a defendant. But it's up to prosecutors to decide what evidence falls under that umbrella. And when defendants later accuse prosecutors of failing to meet that obligation, they also have to show that the evidence could have changed the outcome of the case, which can be difficult to prove. A federal appeals judge wrote in an unrelated case in 2013 that there was an "epidemic" of prosecutors violating their disclosure obligations, which stem from the 1963 Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland. Fuller's murder in 1984 received extensive news coverage at the time. The prosecution's theory at trial was that a gang of young men and women forced the 48-year-old Fuller into an alley, fatally beating her and also sodomizing her with an object that police never recovered.
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The Feds Persuaded Oregon to Scrap Its Exploitive Prison Phone Contract-Until the State Decided It Needed the Money The Oregon Department of Corrections collects nearly $3.6 million a year from a contract so exploitive of prison inmates and their families that federal officials have pushed for the state to end it.
State corrections officials conceded in March that money from the program would dry up because of pressure from federal regulators.
But the combination of a dire state budget outlook and President Donald Trump's lighter federal regulatory approach has caused state leaders to scrap the planned reform in the budget they are now struggling to finalize. That's good news for the corrections budget, but bad news for the families of Oregon's prison inmates, who pay millions of dollars a year in artificially inflated phone charges. "States [like Oregon] have taken the position, if the state can get money out of prisoners' families, why not?" says Aleks Kajstura, legal director for the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative. Read More |
Supervisor suspended after Oklahoma prison videos posted to YouTube The head of the Oklahoma Corrections Department on Tuesday announced a supervisor has been suspended because of "unacceptable" comments depicted on YouTube videos recorded inside prison. In one video, an officer speaking about child molesters tells his colleagues to "let them die." Three separate videos depicting conversations inside an Oklahoma prison were posted to YouTube last month, and on Tuesday the Oklahoma Department of Corrections issued a statement from director Joe Allbaugh announcing an officer has been suspended pending an internal investigation. The department has acknowledged the videos were recorded at the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center, where every inmate first processes when entering the state prison system. "While much of the language on video was unprofessional, and crude by employees who were unaware they were being videotaped, there were comments on the videos that prompted an internal investigation by the ODOC," Allbaugh wrote in his statement. "I want to be very clear, this type of behavior and expression of opinion is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. After watching the video a LARC supervisor has been suspended pending further investigation." Read More |
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From the PLN in Print Archives U.S. Supreme Court Overturns Colorado's Attempt to Keep Funds from Exonerated Prisoners On April 19, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court struck a powerful blow for the rights of exonerated prisoners when it reversed a decision of the Colorado Supreme Court that would have allowed the state to retain funds collected from two prisoners before their convictions were set aside. In doing so, the high court sent a strong message that Colorado's policy of keeping the funds after the convictions were vacated violated basic concepts of due process. Shannon Nelson was convicted in 2006 of five counts of physical abuse, sentenced to 20 years to life and ordered to pay $8,192.50 in court costs, fees and restitution. She appealed, was granted a retrial and was acquitted of all charges. Louis Alonzo Madden, convicted in 2005 of patronizing a prostituted child, was sentenced to an indeterminate prison sentence plus costs, fees and restitution of $4,413. His judgment was reversed on direct appeal. At the time their convictions were set aside, Nelson had already paid $702.10 and Madden had paid $1,977.75 to the Colorado Department of Corrections. Both requested refunds of those payments after their release, which were refused. They filed separate lawsuits, and after mixed results from their sentencing courts, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in their favor. The Colorado Supreme Court reversed, however, saying the state could keep the money collected before their convictions were vacated, as neither Nelson nor Madden had filed claims under the state's Exoneration Act. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who delivered the opinion, framed the question before the Court as follows: "When a criminal conviction is invalidated by a reviewing court and no retrial will occur, is the State obligated to refund fees, court costs, and restitution exacted from the defendant upon and as a consequence of the conviction? Our answer is yes." The Supreme Court continued: "Absent conviction of a crime, one is presumed innocent. Under the Colorado law before us in these cases, however, the State retains conviction-related assessments unless and until the prevailing defendant instituted a discrete civil proceeding and proves her innocence by clear and convincing evidence. This scheme, we hold, offends the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process." 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. |
Illinois: Cook County mulls $380K settlement in alleged jail sex assault of Minnesota woman The Cook County Board on Wednesday is expected to approve paying $380,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a Minnesota woman who alleged that sheriff's correctional officers and supervisors ignored her repeated complaints about being sexually assaulted and badly beaten during a 27-day stint behind bars. According to the suit, filed by prominent attorney Kathleen Zellner, the then-26-year-old woman "experienced the full panoply of abuses that the well-established culture of sadism and violence (that the jail) had to offer." The woman was booked into the County Jail in November 2013 on local drug charges and was awaiting extradition to another state on separate drug charges, the suit states. She was targeted by other detainees who labeled her with terms like "snow bunny, cracker and Pocahontas" after making "comments about her being cute and white," the lawsuit alleged. After refusing to exchange sexual favors for commissary items, another female detainee charged with murder sexually assaulted the woman in a shower while two other detainees stood guard, according to the suit, which preserved the woman's anonymity by identifying her as "Jane Doe." The woman repeatedly was kicked after that incident and later attacked twice because she was deemed a "snitch" for reporting the initial assault, the lawsuit states. She suffered a broken nose, busted tooth and a deep cut to her thigh from a sharp object during the last two attacks, the suit adds. Read More |
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Tablets coming for South Dakota inmates They won't have access to Facebook or Twitter, but every inmate in South Dakota's prison system will soon have their own tablet computer. The touchscreen devices, connected to a closed network, will be offered for free to the Department of Corrections by telephone provider Global Tel Link. The tablets mean longer phone calls with family and friends, and text messages - without photos or attachments - and will allow inmates to pay for access to games, music and e-books through monthly subscriptions. Phone calls and text messages will be charged per minute or per message. Female inmates in Pierre already have the tablets, and distribution to men's prisons in Rapid City, Yankton, Springfield and Sioux Falls should be complete by mid-June, DOC Secretary Denny Kaemingk said. South Dakota will join states like Colorado, Georgia and Indiana in its embrace of tablets for inmates, which are becoming more common through inmate telecom providers. Read More |
South Carolina: Anderson County sheriff requests SLED investigation of inmate labor Anderson County Sheriff Chad McBride has asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to investigate allegations that certain inmates lack jail supervision and that their labor has been used for inappropriate projects. Capt. Garry Bryant, who has overseen the Anderson County Detention Center for more than 10 years, was no longer employed there Monday afternoon, according to another captain who answered his county-issued cellphone number. McBride said Monday the jail investigation request was made Friday in a phone call to the state's top law enforcement agency. McBride, who took office in January, said he asked for SLED to step in after a two-month, internal-affairs investigation at the Anderson County Sheriff's Office revealed "practices that made us all uncomfortable." McBride declined to discuss specifics, except to say he was concerned about the work and supervision of Anderson County Detention Center trustees. Trustees are inmates who have either pleaded guilty or have been found guilty of crimes and sentenced to state prison. Generally, trustees are serving time for low-level, nonviolent crimes and are near the end of their state sentences. When they are found to exhibit good behavior, they can be allowed to serve the remainder of their sentences at county jails, often with responsibilities that allow them to spend part of their days out from behind bars. |
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