Posts Tagged ‘prisoners’

Great moments in public employment: correctional officers’ rights

“Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan blamed the state’s largest employee’s union for not being able to remove corrections employees who face charges that range from driving under the influence to assault….Since 2013, more than 200 Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services employees have been charged with crimes that include DUI, assault and having sexual relations with an inmate, yet they remain on the job.” Union officials, however, say the governor is in error, and that it’s state law, rather than AFSCME contract terms, that restrict dismissals. So no problem! [WBAL, auto-plays; earlier on Maryland’s Correctional Officers Bill of Rights law, a younger sibling to its Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights (LEOBR) law for police]

More background on police bill of rights laws, and their origin in the wake of the Kerner commission report on 1960s civil unrest [Scott Greenfield] Veteran police lawyer Herbert Weiner, general counsel to Maryland State FOP Lodge, defends the state’s LEOBR [Al-Jazeera] And commenter Daniel Martin at Popehat on some curious implications of Maryland’s LEOBR, which prohibits investigating cops for some types of misconduct “until the victim, their immediate family, or a direct witness swears out a complaint.”

Yet more: In Pennsylvania, “members of the Fraternal Order of Police are rallying behind legislation to shield the identities of officers who use force.” It’s backed in Harrisburg by Rep. Martina White (R-Philadelphia) and Sen. John Sabatina, D-Philadelphia. [Watchdog] And with respect to our post of the other day, a commenter writes that the city of Tucson’s two-tiered informational release — withholding the names of police in a prostitution investigation while releasing those of civilians — was not done at city authorities’ discretion but in compliance with a newspaper’s public records request, in conjunction with a state law shielding police privacy.

Filed under: Arizona, Maryland, Pennsylvania, police bill of rights laws, prisoners, public employment

Crime and punishment roundup

“Regulatory Crimes and the Mistake of Law Defense” [Paul Larkin, Heritage]
Victims of sex offender registry laws, cont’d [Lenore Skenazy]
James Forman, Jr.: case against mass incarceration can stand on its own without flawed Jim Crow analogy [Boston Review and N.Y.U. Law Review, 2011-12]
“For-profit immigration jails, where the inmates — convicted of nothing — work for less than peanuts.” [@dangillmor on Los Angeles Times]
“The New Science of Sentencing: Should prison sentences be based on crimes that haven’t been committed yet?” [Marshall Project on statistically derived risk assessments in sentencing]
Group of 600 New England United Methodist churches issues resolution calling for an end to Drug War [Alex Tabarrok, who was also profiled the other day]
Prison guard in Florida speaks up about witnessing abuse of inmate, and pays a price [disturbing content, Miami Herald]

Filed under: crime and punishment, Florida, illegal drugs, immigration law, prisoners, sex offender registries, whistleblowers

Law enforcement for profit roundup

One Oklahoma official used asset forfeiture to pay back his student loans, another lived rent-free in a confiscated house [Robby Soave, Reason]
Per ACLU, Arizona has a one-way legal fee rule in forfeiture cases, with prevailing police allowed to collect from property owner but not vice versa [Jacob Sullum]
From Michael Greve, some thoughts on prosecution for profit and where money from public fines should go [Liberty and Law]
About the Benjamins: Philadelphia mayor-to-be cites revenue as reason to let parking officers ticket sidewalk users [Ed Krayewski, Reason]
Captive market: with wardens’ and sheriffs’ connivance, prison phone companies squeeze hapless families [Eric Markowitz, IB Times]
Former red light camera CEO pleads guilty to bribery, fraud in Ohio [Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica]
Taxpayers lose as Maine counties jail indigents over unpaid fines [Portland Press-Herald]
“St. Louis County towns continue to treat residents like ATMs” [Radley Balko]

Filed under: Arizona, attorneys' fees, forfeiture, law enforcement for profit, Maine, Oklahoma, Philadelphia, prisoners, red light cameras

“More than 3/4 of the civil cases filed in Tucson’s federal court last year…

“…originated with one person: a state prisoner upset about his health care behind bars.” Dale Maisano, whose 3,000 lawsuits last year were mostly handwritten, has served much of a 15-year sentence for aggravated assault. “He alone is responsible for a nearly fourfold increase in civil cases since 2012.” [Curt Prendergast, Arizona Daily Star]

Filed under: Arizona, prisoners, serial litigants

Private prison lobbying — and the public kind

If you worry about the potential harm of lobbying and influence by private prison operators — and that’s a reasonable worry, given past scandals — you ought to be all the more worried about lobbying and influence by guards’ unions and other public prison interests. Because that’s much bigger. [Ed Krayewski, Reason; earlier]

Filed under: police unions, prisoners

“Inmates file claims for $18 million after Seahawks TV privilege revoked”

A sudden wave of claims by inmates of the Yakima County, Wash., jail demanded a cumulative $18 million in damages over a variety of alleged problems from clogged sinks to “denial of outside yard time. The claims, 15 in all, were filed by inmates housed in the same unit of the jail’s annex. … The claims began a day after the entire unit lost its television privileges for misbehavior, preventing inmates from watching the Jan. 10 Seattle Seahawks playoff game against the Carolina Panthers, which the Seahawks won 31-17. Despite the unusual nature and impractical monetary demands of the claims, they still had to be addressed by county legal staff and jail officials, [county paralegal Cindy] Erwin said.” [Yakima Herald-Republic]

Filed under: prisoners, Washington state

Great moments in blame: prisoner cellphone access

Prison inmate orders attack on guard at guard’s home in Bishopville, South Carolina. Surviving guard Robert Johnson and wife “did not, however, sue the typical defendants – i.e., the shooter or any prison inmate or employee. Rather, the Johnsons sued several cellular phone service providers and owners of cell phone towers. According to the Johnsons, these defendants are liable for Mr. Johnson’s injuries because they were aware that their services facilitated the illegal use of cellphones by prison inmates and yet failed to take steps to curb that use.” [Fourth Circuit opinion in Johnson v. American Towers LLC, et al., affirming district court’s dismissal of claim on the merits]

Filed under: cellphones, prisoners, shotgun defendant selection, third party liability for crime

Crime and punishment roundup

“Felony murder: why a teenager who didn’t kill anyone faces 55 years in jail” [Ed Pilkington, Guardian]
Crime largely missing from urbanist discussion but might actually be more important than streetcars [Urbanophile]
“So when you read ‘she pioneered the use of John Doe indictments to stop clock on statutes of limitation’, think about your alibi for 1983.” [@ClarkHat on Twitter]
“Kern County, a jurisdiction with a long unfortunate history of putting the wrong people in prison” [Radley Balko, Glenn Reynolds/USA Today on People v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios]
What did prisoners do to get locked up? [Robert VerBruggen/Real Clear Policy] Role of sentencing policy in growth of prison population [Dara Lind, Vox]
In the United Kingdom, claims of mass ritual child abuse are back [Matthew Scott, Barrister Blog; Barbara Hewson, The Justice Gap]
New York City bus drivers have a point: not every traffic injury implies a legal wrong [Scott Greenfield]

Filed under: child abuse, crime and punishment, NYC, prisoners, statutes of limitations, traffic laws, United Kingdom

Great moments in brutality claims

“A California man, who claimed detectives assaulted him during an interview in a holding cell in the Lane County Courthouse last month, has been found guilty of attempted coercion and initiating a false report after surveillance video in the holding cell showed the man punching himself in the face numerous times. … When Tomaszewski was told the self-beating incident had been captured on camera, he allegedly confessed to making up the story with hopes of winning early release from jail, deputies said.” [Eugene, Ore. Register-Guard]

Filed under: Oregon, prisoners

Rikers Island and the correctional officers’ union

It isn’t just in California (here, here, here, here, here, here) that the political power of guard unions makes prisons hard to reform. In December the New York Times investigated the head of the guards’ union in New York City, Norman Seabrook, seen as “the biggest obstacle to efforts to curb brutality and malfeasance” at the city’s notorious Rikers Island, and noted that most elected officials are reluctant to be quoted discussing him by name, sometimes due to “fears about their safety while visiting Rikers” if they get on his wrong side. Seabrook has derailed investigators, reformers, and oversight officials for years:

Perhaps the most naked display of Mr. Seabrook’s power came on Nov. 18, 2013, when a Rikers inmate, Dapree Peterson, was scheduled to testify against two correction officers in a brutality case. Mr. Seabrook essentially shut down the city’s courts by sidelining the buses that ferry inmates to and from court, interviews and documents show. As a result, hundreds of inmates missed court dates, including Mr. Peterson, whose beating had been investigated and referred for prosecution by [deputy commissioner for investigation Florence] Finkle.

The blockage also caused 49 inmates to miss scheduled medical appointments at Bellevue Hospital Center.

Full story here. More: John McGinnis (despite personal tone of Times’s criticism of Seabrook, his actions respond to the predictable incentives of a union leader), Daniel DiSalvo, Washington Examiner (unions can win popularity by preventing discipline of misbehaving workers), Ed Krayewski, Kevin Williamson. See also our coverage of correctional officers “bill of rights” laws in Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc. here, here, here, and here.

Filed under: NYC, police unions, prisoners