Search Results for: solitary confinement

The American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) filed a lawsuit on Friday against the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) in connection with poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in immigrant detention centers. The lawsuit relies on the  Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. Section [...]

The Abolitionist Law Center (ALC), the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project (PILP), and Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for discrimination against inmates with psychiatric disabilities. In the complaint, the groups allege that the jail lacks a functional mental health care system despite having hundreds [...]

Advocates for prison reform commemorated the Sunday, September 13 anniversary of the Attica prison uprising with protests in New York City and Albany, calling for improved treatment of incarcerated people. Forty-nine years ago, inmates at Attica Correctional Facility in New York, who described the conditions of their confinement as little short of torture, led an [...]

Iranian authorities committed widespread human rights violations during the 2019 protests, according to a report published Wednesday by Amnesty International. The protests followed a hike in fuel prices. In response to protests, the government reportedly caused hundreds of deaths with deliberate use of lethal force, in addition to 7,000 arrests. The report found widespread human [...]

“All people…who dare not defend themselves when they know they are in the right, who submit to punishment not because of what they have done but because of who they are, are already dead by their own decision; and whether or not they survive physically depends on chance. If circumstances are not favorable, they end [...]

A US federal judge Thursday ordered Michael Cohen, the longtime personal attorney for Donald Trump, to be released back to home confinement after finding that Cohen was being detained in retaliation for writing a book about the President. The order comes just days after his attorney and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a petition [...]

A Canadian Federal Court judge ruled Wednesday that the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is unconstitutional under Canadian law, as certain provisions of the Act violate the “right to life, liberty, and security of the person” guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The STCA governs Canada’s asylum relationship with the United States, and requires that [...]

The US Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion Monday finding that the petitioner was prejudiced at trial by constitutionally deficient counsel. The case, Andrus v. Texas, involved an attempted carjacking, which resulted in two deaths, and for which the petitioner, Terence Andrus, eventually received the death penalty. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that, [...]

COVID-19 patients are frequently constrained to solitary confinement in order to curb the continuing spread of the contamination. The race for medicine or a vaccine to treat COVID-19 is on. The pharmaceutical industries are being asked to donate the intellectual property (IP) of the relevant medicinal equipment or medicines by officials advocating for public health [...]

The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. –Bryan Stevenson “This book is important. But it is a candle in a hurricane.” This is a statement from one of the participants in the prison reading group I lead each month. In the [...]