The Alabama House of Representatives this week passed House Bill 380 (HB 380), which would give the governor more control over the state parole board and set minimum sentences that incarcerated people must serve before they can be released on parole.
The SPLC and its allies filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging Florida’s use of solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The lawsuit...
Admire Harvard has spent nearly 10 years locked up in solitary confinement in the Florida prison system.
Nearly two years after a federal judge deemed mental health care for Alabama’s prisoners “horrendously inadequate,” the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is again the subject of a scathing court order in the SPLC’s long-running Eighth Amendment case against the department.
Louisiana once again has the highest incarceration rate, imprisoning 719 of every 100,000 residents, according to a report released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
We’ve been locked in a legal battle with the state of Alabama for the past five years over the sickening mistreatment of people in its prisons who have medical and mental health needs.
Solitary confinement is a wasteful and destructive practice that does not improve public safety, and harms the mental health of those subjected to it.
The Alabama prison system is already fighting a years-long SPLC lawsuit over the neglect of prisoners with medical and mental health needs. Now, the U.S. Justice Department is threatening to sue the state because its prisons are beset by “rampant violence,” “unchecked extortion,” and “severe and widespread sexual abuse.”
If all children in Florida’s adult criminal justice system were returned to the juvenile justice system, the added economic value would outweigh the costs, according to a study that was released today.
Representing a Louisiana public defender, the SPLC and the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana today filed suit against the City of New Orleans over its refusal to provide a map of the city’s 400 real-time surveillance cameras.
