by Sam Rutherford

As PLN reported, the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) has for many years outsourced its constitutional obligation to provide healthcare to those it confines, contracting the service from private, for-profit corporations. The terrible cost of this arrangement to prisoners’ health—not to mention $8 million in lawsuit settlement ...

by David M. Reutter

The City of Philadelphia agreed on November 3, 2023, to pay $9.1 million to settle a wrongful conviction lawsuit brought by Walter Ogrod, 59, a former state prisoner exonerated of murder and released after more than 28 years of wrongful incarceration—including 23 years on death row. ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

With signing of a settlement agreement on September 11, 2024, Ohio’s Richland County was on the hook for $220,000 to the estate of detainee Maggie Copeland, who died while experiencing withdrawal symptoms at the County lockup on Mother’s Day in May 2022. Under a separate agreement ...

by Douglas Ankney

On June 18, 2024, the United States Court for the Northern District of California approved a series of settlements totaling $1 million that resolved a civil rights suit brought by the survivors of Carlos Chavez, whose suicide at the Monterey County Jail (MCJ) they blamed on guard ...

On January 31, 2024, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay a former prisoner and her family $9.9 million for failing to diagnose and treat her uterine cancer, leaving the disease to spread and become terminal. Unfortunately, while the settlement amount is unique, the agency’s failure to properly ...

On July 12, 2024, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held the City of Philadelphia in contempt of a 2022 settlement in which its Department of Prisons (PDP) agreed to improve conditions for city detainees and prisoners. The Court also ordered the city to deposit ...

In March 2024, the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to settle a retaliation lawsuit filed by PLN contributing writer Mark Wilson, paying him $50,000 and vacating a prior prison disciplinary finding. Less than a year later, on January 9, 2025, Wilson, 55, was released from prison serving nearly 36 ...

by Matt Clarke

On June 20, 2024, the Wayne County Commission in Detroit approved a $5 million payment on top of $2 million paid by the County’s insurer to settle a lawsuit brought by the estate of a County jail detainee beaten to death by a cellmate, who had a ...

Families who lost loved ones to suicide in New Jersey’s Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) were still waiting in early March 2024 for payouts from settlements reached two years ago or more. The delay is blamed on their now-imprisoned attorney, Conrad J. Benedetto, who provided the federal court for the District ...

On September 12, 2022, the state of Indiana reached a $4,500 settlement to resolve a state prisoner’s claim that guards confiscated his property without following prison procedure and then threatened retaliation when he filed grievances.

Victor Karp was held at Correctional Industrial Facility in Pendleton on June 16, 2020, when ...