Date: 07-10-2022
After almost a decade of broken promises by Arizona state prison officials, Judge ruled the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) systematically violates the constitutional rights of people incarcerated in the state's prisons |
From The ACLU:
A prison sentence should not mean people lose fundamental human rights such as access to health care or humane conditions of confinement. Yet in Arizona prisons, despite a settlement promising to improve conditions, this problem persisted for years. Finally, after almost a decade of broken promises by Arizona state prison officials, U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver ruled on June 30 that the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) systematically violates the constitutional rights of people incarcerated in the state’s prisons by failing to provide them minimally adequate medical and mental health care, and by subjecting them to harsh and degrading conditions in solitary confinement units.
The lawsuit, Jensen v. Shinn, is part of a decade-long struggle to ensure that the nearly 30,000 adults and children in Arizona’s prisons receive the basic health care and minimally adequate conditions to which they are entitled under the Constitution and the law. Plaintiffs in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, the ACLU of Arizona, Prison Law Office, Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firm of Perkins Coie LLP.
Our lawsuit was originally filed in 2012, and in 2014, prison officials settled the case, promising to improve health care and conditions in isolation. But in the seven years between settling the case and going to trial, we repeatedly detailed in court filings that preventable suffering and deaths, including deaths by suicide in solitary confinement, were occurring in Arizona’s prisons. Continue reading >>>
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