(January 9, 2023) In a thorough and sweeping order, U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver is requiring the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) to make “substantial” changes to staffing and conditions so that medical care and mental healthcare at Arizona prisons comes up to constitutional standards. 

Judge Silver’s remedial order brings Jensen v. Shinn — 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 — closer to a resolution. Both parties have 30 days to provide Judge Silver any comments on the remedial order before it becomes final. 

(December 20, 2022) The Court Expert in Armstrong v. Newsom, a class action lawsuit regarding disability accommodations in the California state prison system, released his report and recommendations following a year-long investigation of the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran (SATF). He found that people with disabilities are “living diminished and needlessly difficult lives” at SATF, and as a result “face harsher prison conditions, and thus greater punishment, than their peers.” People were denied accommodations needed to safely and independently perform a wide array of activities, including to eat, perform bodily functions, write, and participate in rehabilitative programs.

(June 30, 2022) U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver found on June 30 that the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) systematically violates the constitutional rights of persons 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 deprived conditions in solitary confinement units.   

(July 16, 2021) The Prison Law Office and our co-counsel ACLU National Prison Project, ACLU of Arizona, and Arizona Center for Disability Law are working to enforce the rights of people in Arizona state prisons in the federal class action lawsuit Parsons v. Shinn. On July 16, 2021, the Court reopened the case and ordered a trial, to start no later than November 1, 2021. The Court’s order found that “Defendants have in the past six years proffered erroneous and unreliable excuses for non-performance, asserted baseless legal arguments, and in essence resisted complying with the obligations they contractually knowingly and voluntarily assumed.”

(Oct. 1, 2020) – On behalf of the thousands of people incarcerated in Contra Costa County Jail now and in the future, the Prison Law Office reached a settlement with Contra Costa County in a class action lawsuit that seeks to end the dangerous and unconstitutional conditions at the jail.