The Obama administration’s “Clemency Initiative 2014,” a highly-touted program designed to grant clemency to nonviolent offenders and other federal prisoners, has yet to make a substantial impact on the exploding federal prison population. While some 16 percent of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ 218,000 prisoners have applied for clemency, less than three dozen prisoners have
By Christopher Zoukis
A federal appeals court panel in San Francisco on August 26 issued an opinion rejecting an attempt by a kidnap victim to sue federal parole officials for negligently supervising her kidnapper, who was out on federal parole.
By Christopher Zoukis The Department of Education has announced a Second Chance Pell Pilot Program as part of the Obama administration’s goals to have a fairer criminal justice system, reduce recidivism, and reduce the impact of the effects of incarceration on communities. The Second Chance Pell Program will allow incarcerated individuals to receive Pell Grants
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision to dismiss the appeal of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records request on June 28, 2016. Florent Bayala sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after it failed to properly respond to his FOIA request. Bayala, a
By Christopher Zoukis Three Massachusetts state prisoners have been placed in segregation in apparent retaliation for their prison reform activism. Timothy Muise, Shawn Fisher and Steven James, all incarcerated at the medium-security prison MCI Shirley, were taken from their cells late at night on March 23, 2016 and transferred to three different Massachusetts facilities, where
Part II: How the Policy Came About and Will It Last? Read Part I: What DOJ and the Bureau of Prisons Have Planned In a blog last week, I summarized the Department of Justice’s August 18 announcement it plans to stop sending federal inmates to privately-owned prisons. Now, let’s look at the background leading up
Unfortunately, the school to prison pipeline has become all too familiar, particularly for those students who may be people of colour, impoverished, or otherwise disadvantaged by the current system. LGBTQ students, and particularly transgender students, are also more likely to be disciplined at school, including suspensions and expulsions. As in other cases, these disciplinary actions
On at least 601 occasions in the first three months of 2014, men who appeared at the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to register as sex offenders were turned away because police were too busy to register them. On numerous occasions, the would-be registrants were later arrested for failing to comply with the state sex offender
By Chris Zoukis Arkansas’ Benton County Jail has, for years, served its prisoners three cold meals a day. It has been doing so despite several lawsuits and renewed requests that it serve hot meals, from the community. The jail had no plans to serve its prisoners hot food, especially since the jail has been told
Nearly a decade after the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) began operating its notorious “Communications Management Units” (or CMU’s), the Department of Justice (DOJ) has formally issued a final rule approving the BOP’s restrictive policies already in place at those facilities. In 2006, the BOP opened its first CMU at its Terre Haute, Indiana prison