By Christopher Zoukis On November 2, 2016, the Eleventh Circuit upheld a district court’s denial of death row prisoner Thomas D. Arthur’s challenge to the use of the drug midazolam in the lethal injection protocol used by the State of Alabama. Arthur challenged midazolam as the first in a series of three drugs administered during
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district court’s order allowing across-the-board redactions by the government in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The American Immigration Lawyers Association submitted a FOIA request to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), seeking disclosure
STATISTICS SHOW THAT NONWHITE AND DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN ARE AT THE HIGHEST RISK OF GOING FROM SCHOOL TO JAIL. (PHOTO CREDIT: PHILIP LACONTE, FLICKR) The “school-to-prison pipeline” describes the unfortunate trend of kids graduating not out of school, but rather into the criminal justice system. The pipeline effect is especially evident where large segments of the population are
Suicides at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Chino have surged to alarming levels. Six prisoners have killed themselves within the past three years, according to Krissi Khokhobashvili, spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). In the same period, she added, there were 71 suicide attempts at CIW, one of two
A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, released on September 7, 2016, revealed that the number of accused and convicted offenders required to wear some kind of electronic monitoring device has increased by nearly 140 percent in the last decade. Electronic monitoring devices generally consist of GPS and radio-frequency (RF) units. GPS systems are used
In August 2015, the Nebraska Supreme Court denied a reporter’s attempt to obtain “graphic” drawings made by infamous executed child-killer John Joubert. Despite the efforts of state prison officials, however, the drawings were eventually obtained and published. The reporter, Mark Pettit, was an investigative journalist when Joubert abducted, tortured and killed two boys, Danny Joe
In its waning days, Obama administration officials announced plans to expand education efforts in federal prisons and to provide more direction and oversight to the programs previously run separately at each facility. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced in late November 2016 that for the first time, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had hired an
The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled on October 12, 2016, that a two-month delay in ordering a biopsy of a prisoner’s potentially cancerous masses did not constitute deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs. Calvin Whiting was incarcerated at the Shawnee Correctional Center in Vienna, Illinois, in October 2010 when he developed
A fact sheet compiled by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a public policy research organization, indicates that Corrections Corporation of America – CCA, now known as CoreCivic – and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison firms in the nation, have spent a combined $2.2 billion since 2005 acquiring other, smaller companies. That’s $2.2
The Fourth Circuit has reversed a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials on a prisoner’s claim that his Eighth Amendment rights were violated. Paul Scinto, Sr. was incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp in Butner, North Carolina, between June 2005 and March 2006. He suffered from a