Numerous accounts of lack of showers, overflowing toilets, and inability to meet with lawyers are emerging from the detention center in the middle of the Everglades.
Judge James C. Ho recently described a troubling phenomenon on the 5th Circuit and the government abuse it enables.
Criminal justice reform advocates are still hopeful the office can secure outside funding and bring much-needed transparency to Arizona's prisons.
The ruling tells an interesting story about how the very body that created a cause of action for victims of federal abuse has since worked to undermine that right.
A federal judge finally acknowledged that New York City won't fix the constitutional crisis at Rikers on its own, but the problem goes far beyond New York City.
The order directs the attorney general to ensure that states have the drug cocktails to carry out lethal injections.
Plus, a look at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Tina Smith's plan to resurrect public housing in America.
Last year, one prison's temperatures stayed above 100 degrees for 11 days.
"In short, 'cruel and unusual' is not the same as 'harmful and unfair,'" the court wrote.
Homeless advocates say the court's decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson gives local governments a blank check to "to arrest or fine those with no choice but to sleep outdoors."
One man’s overgrown yard became a six-year struggle against overzealous code enforcement.
Columbia law professor David Pozen recalls the controversy provoked by early anti-drug laws and the hope inspired by subsequent legal assaults on prohibition.
The Eighth Amendment provides little, if any, protection for the homeless. But courts can help them by striking down exclusionary zoning, which is the major cause of housing shortages that lead to homelessness.
At least one inmate claims that the shower stalls, which were just 3 feet by 3 feet, were covered in human feces.
Michael Garrett and other Texas inmates get less than four hours of sleep a night. He argues it's cruel and unusual punishment.
Mississippi's prisons are falling apart, run by gangs, and riddled with sexual assaults, a Justice Department report says.
Plus: the Supreme Court weighs housing fees and homelessness, YIMBYs bet on smaller, more focused reforms, and a new paper finds legalizing more housing does in fact bring costs down.
A broad coalition of civil rights groups and think tanks, including Reason Foundation, say that Mississippi's "mandatory, permanent, and effectively irrevocable" voting ban for certain offenders violates the Constitution.
Reason reported in 2021 how prisons use cheap field kits to test mail for contraband—and use the faulty, unconfirmed results to severely punish inmates.
How Florida prison officials let a man's prostate cancer progress until he was paralyzed and terminally ill.
A federal judge ruled in favor of an Idaho death-row inmate who says that the state is "psychologically torturing" him.
The records confirm medical neglect in a federal women's prison that Reason first reported on in 2020.
Florida will now only require an 8–4 majority for a jury to recommend a death sentence. Alabama is the only other state that allows split juries to recommend death sentences.
Reason reported in 2020 on allegations of fatal medical neglect inside two federal women's prisons. The Bureau of Prisons heavily redacted reports that would show if women died of inadequate care.
The state's "arbitrary requirement to house all male death row prisoners in permanent solitary confinement does not promote safety and security, is inconsistent with correctional best practices, and serves no penological purpose," the lawsuit claims.
Should an elderly grandmother be forced to hand over millions of dollars to the government for failing to file a particular form?
The U.S. Sentencing Commission might make medical neglect a qualifying condition for compassionate release.
Defendants say this practice violates the state’s own laws. The attorney general is pushing onward anyway.
Long delays and management failures "allowed serious, repeated sexual abuse in at least four facilities to go undetected."
The court says a 51-year "life" sentence for a 2015 murder violated the Eighth Amendment.
The Supreme Court's 2018 ruling in Timbs v. Indiana revived the Excessive Fines Clause. Now state courts have to come up with tests to determine what's excessive.
A federal judge wrote that the Bureau of Prisons should be "deeply ashamed" of medical delays that resulted in a man dying from treatable cancer.
The report says the inaccuracies "deprived Congress and the American public of information about who is dying in custody and why."
She’s asking the Supreme Court to consider whether this seizure is an excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment.
More than 900 had been held in isolation for more than a decade.
A court monitor's report found evidence of neglect and abuse of dementia patients, including signing "do not resuscitate" orders that they could not understand.
"No legitimate humane system would operate in this manner," the judge concluded.
The lawsuit says there have been multiple deaths from neglect and poor suicide prevention policies at the Louisiana prison where Javon Kennerson died.
A New York state judge found video of guards ceding control of Rikers to gang leaders more than enough evidence to order the release of a pretrial inmate.
"A system that allows this level of sustained incompetence and cruelty... is morally bankrupt," a doctor wrote after investigating medical neglect in Arizona prisons.
A 2016 Reason story detailed the D.C. Jail's long history of failure. Now the federal government is finally paying attention.
John Marion Grant convulsed and vomited as he was put to death.
Residents say their cars were improperly ticketed, then impounded and scrapped after they couldn't pay off their debts soon enough.
A homeless man’s truck was impounded in Seattle and he couldn’t afford the costs to get it back. That’s unconstitutional, justices rule.
The officers might receive qualified immunity, however.
The question of proportionality assumes that punishment is appropriate for peaceful conduct that violates no one's rights.
They need not wait for the Supreme Court or Congress to restrict or abolish qualified immunity.
The warden at the center of the case was originally given qualified immunity.
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