By Justin Lewis Donohue There are a million clichés that come with graduation. Sayings that have been carried over the years through songs, cards, poems, and speeches. Every year, one or more people will stand before a graduating class and dispense upon them a set of words that, although they are meant to be advice,
By Mark Wilson On September 4, 2013, a New York federal district court held that a jail official was precluded from testifying in a prisoner’s lawsuit about what she supposedly witnessed on surveillance video footage that had been erased. The court also granted the prisoner’s request for an adverse inference jury instruction and attorney’s fees.
By Jane Lindholm, Ric Cengeri & Amanda Shepard In his budget address last month, Gov. Peter Shumlin announced that he plans to cut almost $2 million of funding from the Community High School of Vermont, a program that provides high school classes to those in Vermont’s prison system. There are 17 campuses in Vermont, according
By Mark Wilson The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held last September that prison officials are liable for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) committed by private employer contractors. Arizona law requires state prisoners to work 40 hours per week. Most are employed in the Arizona Department of Corrections Work Incentive Pay Program
By David M. Reutter The United States is billed as the world’s largest and greatest democracy. However, it is also “one of the world’s strictest nations when it comes to denying the right to vote to citizens convicted of crimes,” according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that promotes sentencing reforms, advocates for
This past Saturday, 53 inmates at Eastern Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, were awarded college diplomas as part of the Bard Prison Initiative, a program that enables convicted felons to take courses and earn degrees while incarcerated. Among the graduates were newly minted experts in advanced math, literature, and social studies
By Mark Wilson The Idaho Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of § 1983 claims stemming from the death of a detainee who committed suicide at the Ada County Jail (ACJ). On September 28, 2008, Bradley Munroe was arrested for robbery. He was hospitalized because he was intoxicated, uncooperative, and exhibiting odd behavior.
By Michael Brodheim In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s ruling in In Re Shaputis, 53 Cal. 4th 192 (Cal. 2011) [PLN, Aug. 2012, p.16], lower courts in California continue to struggle with the issue of whether a denial of parole predicated on “lack of insight” is supported, in any given case, by the