Latest news with #MichiganDepartmentofCorrections
Miami Herald
5 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
EXCLUSIVE: Women Allegedly Filmed Nude By Guards While in Prison Speak Out
Women who were allegedly recorded during strip searches by prison guards' body cameras told Newsweek in exclusive interviews that the mental and emotional aftermath has led to fear, anger, and the feeling of being less than human. Six women in a Michigan correctional facility spoke for the first time with Newsweek, detailing the impact that purported nude strip searches beginning in January had on their psyche. They are among around 675 female inmates (as of June 3) of an approximate total prison population of 1,800 at Michigan's only women's prison, Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility (WHV) in Ypsilanti, suing Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) officials in a $500 million lawsuit alleging that prison guards recorded body camera footage of naked women at a detention facility. Attorneys from Detroit-based Flood Law are representing the plaintiffs, claiming that guards' actions constitute a felony as a violation of a Michigan law (MCL 750.539j) in addition to violating other fundamental constitutional rights. A policy directive was issued by MDOC on March 24 of this year, saying, "Employees issued a body-worn camera (BWC) as part of their job duties shall adhere to the guidelines set forth in this policy directive." Michigan is currently the only state that has a policy to videotape strip searches. Litigators point to language stated within the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which outlines MDOC's "zero-tolerance standard toward all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment involving prisoners." A clause within PREA alludes directly to voyeurism, which states: "An invasion of privacy of a prisoner by an employee for reasons unrelated to official duties, such as peering at a prisoner who is using a toilet in their cell to perform bodily functions; requiring a prisoner to expose their buttocks, genitals, or breasts; or taking images of all or part of a prisoner's naked body or of a prisoner performing bodily functions." The PREA policy also includes the following language, underlined within: "The Department has zero tolerance for sexual abuse and sexual harassment of prisoners." Newsweek did not receive responses to multiple inquiries sent to Whitmer's office and the Michigan Department of Corrections. A spokesperson for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told Newsweek that the department's involvement would only be to provide legal representation for the State of Michigan defendants named on the lawsuit, deferring comment to those individuals. Lori Towle, 58, has been incarcerated for 22 years and never quite experienced anything like she did with the body cam recordings. Towle, who is serving life for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, told Newsweek that the effect on her was "immediate." She reported asking guards, consisting of males and females, many questions and expressed her discomfort with the policy itself. Guards purportedly told her it was the department's policy and that if she had an issue, she had to take it up with the captain. "Oh, I grieved it," Towle said. "The first officer that stripped me on camera also told me that I was lucky that she wasn't making me spread my vagina apart and letting her look in there." Tashiena Combs-Holbrook, 49, is in her 26th year of incarceration. She's serving life for first-degree murder. Her conviction has been in the Oakland County Prosecutor's Conviction Integrity Unit for more than three years. Combs-Holbrook told Newsweek that she's done basically every job behind bars she could, from cleaning toilets to mentoring to working in the law library. She had heard rumors about strip searches being recorded but then experienced it herself in January. "For me, it just escalated the already problematic procedure of strip searches in general," she said. "The strip searches here are extremely humiliating and demeaning and horrifying, and the fact that they started recording them just made it even worse. "I think that actually the day that they told us that the cameras were actually going to be in use, I had a visit ,and I had it canceled because just the thought of having to be strip-searched is already horrific enough-and then to be recorded just took it over the top." That was a sentiment shared by LaToya Joplin, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. The 47-year-old has been in prison for 18 years, 17 of which have been spent as a chaplain. She's also been working as an observation aide for 12 years, helping individuals with suicidal ideations. "I felt degraded, I felt humiliated, and I felt embarrassed as a woman," Joplin told Newsweek of being recorded in the shower, the first such instance she's ever been recorded behind bars. The mental and emotional anguish have contributed towards a more defensive posture, she said, that includes not even wanting to go to work anymore because she's "scared of the unknown" and whether recordings of her and other women will reach the wrong hands. Recordings have made Paula Bennett, 35, wary of continuing to visit with family members-something she's taken advantage of to the fullest in her 17 years in prison. After hearing rumors around the facility of body cam recordings, she thought it was just hearsay. Then, one day prior to a scheduled visit, she was strip-searched by a female lieutenant who allegedly told Bennett that it was just a "passive recording" and that only certain people could access the footage. Bennett told Newsweek she began canceling visits due to not wanting to submit herself to the recorded searches. That included seeing her father, who has Alzheimer's and has visited her twice a week for the entire duration of her prison stint. "It was really hard to choose between not wanting to be recorded naked and seeing my father. ... I just came to the conclusion that I couldn't be giving up time that my dad needed," Bennett said. "So, I did go on a visit and was super upset as soon as I walked into the visiting room. I was crying to [my family] because I knew at the end what was going to happen. "And when I got to the end of the visit that day, the officer's body camera battery had died. So, I didn't get recorded. I remember feeling like I had just won the lottery." Bennett is serving life for first-degree murder after she aided and abetted her boyfriend, resulting in a mandatory life sentence. But she will be resentenced due to being a juvenile when the crime was committed. Another prisoner, 50, requested anonymity and will be referred to as Jane Doe. She's been imprisoned 31 years, serving life for first-degree murder; however, the Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that her sentence is unconstitutional. She will be going back for resentencing in Wayne County. Jane Doe initially asked guards if they could turn off their records, to which they declined due to policy. She wondered why inmates were even being recorded, who was going to observe the footage, and feared the footage being "hacked" and obtained by outside parties. The dental technician who makes dentures for inmates statewide has the highest clearance of any prison job, she said, and it requires walking through a metal detector before the searches take place. "I work four days a week, so we have to be strip-searched every day," she told Newsweek. "I would say [I've been recorded] about 75 to 90 times. You literally disassociate. That's the only way that I can be able to get through it because you end up breaking down in prison. One [search] is hard enough to take the abuse that we that we're subjected to." The experience for 21-year-old inmate Natalie Larson was a different type of traumatic: On March 6, she gave birth to a son in front of multiple guards who recorded the event. Larson has been in prison for about one year and is serving two to 15 years for creation/delivery of an analogue-controlled substance. She told Newsweek that she entered prison pregnant and understood it would be different than the births of her first two children. She just didn't realize that the entire delivery would be etched in footage handled by MDOC officers, one male and one female. "What was supposed to be one of the most sacred and happiest moments of my life was completely taken from me by a corrections officer and their body camera," Larson said. "I felt extremely humiliated and degraded. I was ashamed that I even had to experience that. ... It was just very inhumane to me. They had no decency or respect for the fact that I had just given birth to my child." The male officer was a bit further away from her, while the female officer "was literally within arm's length" and sitting near her mother. To add insult to injury, Larson said she received less than 48 hours with her new child. As someone who said she's experienced a lot of trauma in her life, she said this was arguably the worst incident to endure. Due to her delivery, which was one of three births in prison that were recorded, Larson said she doesn't really like to leave the housing unit anymore. She's also declined to look into higher-paying job opportunities due to the high frequency of strip searches. "I feel like they should take away the body cameras," she said. "There's cameras all over the prison that have audio, video. I don't really see the need for the body cameras. And it's not only like they're just recording strip searches; they're recording us in the bathroom, us in the shower. "We have very little privacy in this prison as it is, and for them to be recording us in a state of undress like that is just absurd to me." Of the women who spoke with Newsweek, the majority are victims of previous sexual violence. All expressed their concerns, one way or another, to different officials within the facility, all the way up to the warden. Some guards were receptive to their concerns and iterated it's just a requirement of their jobs, while others have been claimed to be more power-hungry and use the cameras to intimidate. "A lot of them were pretty cocky," Towle said. "They were like, 'Don't tell me about it, take it to the captain. Nothing I can do about it.' But I believe that everybody has a choice because there were some officers that turned to the side and the camera was not faced at us." Bennett, who has also been recorded multiple times, said she tried raising concerns to a female officer with whom she's developed a positive rapport. But when she tried to explain, from one woman to another how she felt, the officer "had no empathy whatsoever." "It deters us from even like having visits with our own families," she said. "It's something that affects us every single day. You're having non-confrontational regular encounters with staff and they're directing their bodies at you. ... It's like they're trying to create a hostile environment." Colmes-Holbrook said that from 2000 to 2009, she followed procedure because she wanted to be a model inmate. She said that in 2009, an MDOC officer asked her to scoot to the edge of a chair, put her legs in the air, and touch her heels together. She then had to place her hands around her buttocks and spread her labia for a search. Now, with the recordings and her own track record of never being accused or in possession of contraband, she feels the prison is in a new era of violation-even though she knows the resilience of her fellow inmates. "What it has done to my mental health, to the autonomy of my body, is something that I take very seriously," she said. "I've experienced not only sexual abuse; I've experienced various forms of domestic violence. I take it very seriously to be able to say 'yes' and 'no' when I mean 'yes' and when I mean 'no.' Jane Doe, who was sexually assaulted by two male guards at a previous facility also in Michigan, said she and the other plaintiffs who've signed onto this litigation are doing so because they know it's a violation of the department's own policies. "You can't commit voyeurism," she said. "If you're watching it and you're putting it on camera, that's the epitome of voyeurism. And so if you're violating your own policy, why would we not challenge it?" "To protect us, that's what they're supposed to do," she added. "And they weren't protecting us. We're all trying to help as much as we can [with the lawsuit] because we're trying to help ourselves." Towle felt oppressed and then depressed from her being recorded. She said it "triggered" her past history of being sexually abused. "We're still human beings, whether we're in prison or not," Towle said. "It seems like a lot of people don't consider us to be human beings. If you become incarcerated, but once you walk out the door, then you're a human being again. "It just doesn't make sense to me that we are not given the respect as other human beings, and what really gets me is that it was other females doing this to us. This was intentional. This is not professional. They planned this out and they did this to us." Related Articles Reddit Sues AI Provider for Breach of ContractSky High Cost of Prince Harry's Police Security Lawsuit RevealedWoman Suing Taylor Swift Asks Her Attorneys to Help Her in the CaseRas Baraka Sues Over ICE Facility Arrest as Campaign Heats Up 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
EXCLUSIVE: Women Allegedly Filmed Nude By Guards While in Prison Speak Out
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Women who were allegedly recorded during strip searches by prison guards' body cameras told Newsweek in exclusive interviews that the mental and emotional aftermath has led to fear, anger, and the feeling of being less than human. Six women in a Michigan correctional facility spoke for the first time with Newsweek, detailing the impact that purported nude strip searches beginning in January had on their psyche. They are among around 675 female inmates (as of June 3) of an approximate total prison population of 1,800 at Michigan's only women's prison, Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility (WHV) in Ypsilanti, suing Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) officials in a $500 million lawsuit alleging that prison guards recorded body camera footage of naked women at a detention facility. Attorneys from Detroit-based Flood Law are representing the plaintiffs, claiming that guards' actions constitute a felony as a violation of a Michigan law (MCL 750.539j) in addition to violating other fundamental constitutional rights. A policy directive was issued by MDOC on March 24 of this year, saying, "Employees issued a body-worn camera (BWC) as part of their job duties shall adhere to the guidelines set forth in this policy directive." Michigan is currently the only state that has a policy to videotape strip searches. Litigators point to language stated within the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which outlines MDOC's "zero-tolerance standard toward all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment involving prisoners." A clause within PREA alludes directly to voyeurism, which states: "An invasion of privacy of a prisoner by an employee for reasons unrelated to official duties, such as peering at a prisoner who is using a toilet in their cell to perform bodily functions; requiring a prisoner to expose their buttocks, genitals, or breasts; or taking images of all or part of a prisoner's naked body or of a prisoner performing bodily functions." The PREA policy also includes the following language, underlined within: "The Department has zero tolerance for sexual abuse and sexual harassment of prisoners." Newsweek did not receive responses to multiple inquiries sent to Whitmer's office and the Michigan Department of Corrections. A spokesperson for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told Newsweek that the department's involvement would only be to provide legal representation for the State of Michigan defendants named on the lawsuit, deferring comment to those individuals. Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva 'Humiliating And Demeaning' Lori Towle, 58, has been incarcerated for 22 years and never quite experienced anything like she did with the body cam recordings. Towle, who is serving life for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, told Newsweek that the effect on her was "immediate." She reported asking guards, consisting of males and females, many questions and expressed her discomfort with the policy itself. Guards purportedly told her it was the department's policy and that if she had an issue, she had to take it up with the captain. "Oh, I grieved it," Towle said. "The first officer that stripped me on camera also told me that I was lucky that she wasn't making me spread my vagina apart and letting her look in there." Tashiena Combs-Holbrook, 49, is in her 26th year of incarceration. She's serving life for first-degree murder. Her conviction has been in the Oakland County Prosecutor's Conviction Integrity Unit for more than three years. Combs-Holbrook told Newsweek that she's done basically every job behind bars she could, from cleaning toilets to mentoring to working in the law library. She had heard rumors about strip searches being recorded but then experienced it herself in January. "For me, it just escalated the already problematic procedure of strip searches in general," she said. "The strip searches here are extremely humiliating and demeaning and horrifying, and the fact that they started recording them just made it even worse. "I think that actually the day that they told us that the cameras were actually going to be in use, I had a visit ,and I had it canceled because just the thought of having to be strip-searched is already horrific enough—and then to be recorded just took it over the top." That was a sentiment shared by LaToya Joplin, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. The 47-year-old has been in prison for 18 years, 17 of which have been spent as a chaplain. She's also been working as an observation aide for 12 years, helping individuals with suicidal ideations. "I felt degraded, I felt humiliated, and I felt embarrassed as a woman," Joplin told Newsweek of being recorded in the shower, the first such instance she's ever been recorded behind bars. The mental and emotional anguish have contributed towards a more defensive posture, she said, that includes not even wanting to go to work anymore because she's "scared of the unknown" and whether recordings of her and other women will reach the wrong hands. Recordings have made Paula Bennett, 35, wary of continuing to visit with family members—something she's taken advantage of to the fullest in her 17 years in prison. After hearing rumors around the facility of body cam recordings, she thought it was just hearsay. Then, one day prior to a scheduled visit, she was strip-searched by a female lieutenant who allegedly told Bennett that it was just a "passive recording" and that only certain people could access the footage. Bennett told Newsweek she began canceling visits due to not wanting to submit herself to the recorded searches. That included seeing her father, who has Alzheimer's and has visited her twice a week for the entire duration of her prison stint. "It was really hard to choose between not wanting to be recorded naked and seeing my father. ... I just came to the conclusion that I couldn't be giving up time that my dad needed," Bennett said. "So, I did go on a visit and was super upset as soon as I walked into the visiting room. I was crying to [my family] because I knew at the end what was going to happen. "And when I got to the end of the visit that day, the officer's body camera battery had died. So, I didn't get recorded. I remember feeling like I had just won the lottery." Bennett is serving life for first-degree murder after she aided and abetted her boyfriend, resulting in a mandatory life sentence. But she will be resentenced due to being a juvenile when the crime was committed. Another prisoner, 50, requested anonymity and will be referred to as Jane Doe. She's been imprisoned 31 years, serving life for first-degree murder; however, the Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that her sentence is unconstitutional. She will be going back for resentencing in Wayne County. Jane Doe initially asked guards if they could turn off their records, to which they declined due to policy. She wondered why inmates were even being recorded, who was going to observe the footage, and feared the footage being "hacked" and obtained by outside parties. The dental technician who makes dentures for inmates statewide has the highest clearance of any prison job, she said, and it requires walking through a metal detector before the searches take place. "I work four days a week, so we have to be strip-searched every day," she told Newsweek. "I would say [I've been recorded] about 75 to 90 times. You literally disassociate. That's the only way that I can be able to get through it because you end up breaking down in prison. One [search] is hard enough to take the abuse that we that we're subjected to." Baby Born In Front of Cameras The experience for 21-year-old inmate Natalie Larson was a different type of traumatic: On March 6, she gave birth to a son in front of multiple guards who recorded the event. Larson has been in prison for about one year and is serving two to 15 years for creation/delivery of an analogue-controlled substance. She told Newsweek that she entered prison pregnant and understood it would be different than the births of her first two children. She just didn't realize that the entire delivery would be etched in footage handled by MDOC officers, one male and one female. Natalie Larson, inmate. Natalie Larson, inmate. Larson's mother "What was supposed to be one of the most sacred and happiest moments of my life was completely taken from me by a corrections officer and their body camera," Larson said. "I felt extremely humiliated and degraded. I was ashamed that I even had to experience that. ... It was just very inhumane to me. They had no decency or respect for the fact that I had just given birth to my child." The male officer was a bit further away from her, while the female officer "was literally within arm's length" and sitting near her mother. To add insult to injury, Larson said she received less than 48 hours with her new child. As someone who said she's experienced a lot of trauma in her life, she said this was arguably the worst incident to endure. Due to her delivery, which was one of three births in prison that were recorded, Larson said she doesn't really like to leave the housing unit anymore. She's also declined to look into higher-paying job opportunities due to the high frequency of strip searches. "I feel like they should take away the body cameras," she said. "There's cameras all over the prison that have audio, video. I don't really see the need for the body cameras. And it's not only like they're just recording strip searches; they're recording us in the bathroom, us in the shower. "We have very little privacy in this prison as it is, and for them to be recording us in a state of undress like that is just absurd to me." Fears of Retaliation Of the women who spoke with Newsweek, the majority are victims of previous sexual violence. All expressed their concerns, one way or another, to different officials within the facility, all the way up to the warden. Some guards were receptive to their concerns and iterated it's just a requirement of their jobs, while others have been claimed to be more power-hungry and use the cameras to intimidate. "A lot of them were pretty cocky," Towle said. "They were like, 'Don't tell me about it, take it to the captain. Nothing I can do about it.' But I believe that everybody has a choice because there were some officers that turned to the side and the camera was not faced at us." Bennett, who has also been recorded multiple times, said she tried raising concerns to a female officer with whom she's developed a positive rapport. But when she tried to explain, from one woman to another how she felt, the officer "had no empathy whatsoever." "It deters us from even like having visits with our own families," she said. "It's something that affects us every single day. You're having non-confrontational regular encounters with staff and they're directing their bodies at you. ... It's like they're trying to create a hostile environment." 'We're Still Human Beings' Colmes-Holbrook said that from 2000 to 2009, she followed procedure because she wanted to be a model inmate. She said that in 2009, an MDOC officer asked her to scoot to the edge of a chair, put her legs in the air, and touch her heels together. She then had to place her hands around her buttocks and spread her labia for a search. Now, with the recordings and her own track record of never being accused or in possession of contraband, she feels the prison is in a new era of violation—even though she knows the resilience of her fellow inmates. "What it has done to my mental health, to the autonomy of my body, is something that I take very seriously," she said. "I've experienced not only sexual abuse; I've experienced various forms of domestic violence. I take it very seriously to be able to say 'yes' and 'no' when I mean 'yes' and when I mean 'no.' Jane Doe, who was sexually assaulted by two male guards at a previous facility also in Michigan, said she and the other plaintiffs who've signed onto this litigation are doing so because they know it's a violation of the department's own policies. "You can't commit voyeurism," she said. "If you're watching it and you're putting it on camera, that's the epitome of voyeurism. And so if you're violating your own policy, why would we not challenge it?" "To protect us, that's what they're supposed to do," she added. "And they weren't protecting us. We're all trying to help as much as we can [with the lawsuit] because we're trying to help ourselves." Towle felt oppressed and then depressed from her being recorded. She said it "triggered" her past history of being sexually abused. "We're still human beings, whether we're in prison or not," Towle said. "It seems like a lot of people don't consider us to be human beings. If you become incarcerated, but once you walk out the door, then you're a human being again. "It just doesn't make sense to me that we are not given the respect as other human beings, and what really gets me is that it was other females doing this to us. This was intentional. This is not professional. They planned this out and they did this to us."
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Ionia judge dismisses felony charges against former officers charged in prison beating
A judge has dismissed felony charges against four former corrections officers at an Ionia prison in connection with the 2024 beating of an inmate who was left with a broken back and other injuries. Misdemeanor charges of aggravated assault remain pending against the defendants, who worked at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility, a state prison operated by the Michigan Department of Corrections. Ionia District Judge Raymond Voet dismissed felony charges of misconduct in office against Ray Thomas Rubley, 33; Andrew Ray Carr, 39; Al-Ani Mustafa, 44, and Jordan Thomas Csernyik, 23, following a daylong preliminary hearing held May 23, according to both the county prosecutor and a defense attorney. Voet rejected the prosecution's request to send the charges to Ionia County Circuit Court and said from the bench that the prosecution failed to show the officers had corrupt intent when they beat inmate John Paul Callaghan, 27, on July 7, 2024, according to Jeffrey Foldie, a Bay City attorney representing Carr and Csernyik. The officers reacted immediately after Callaghan assaulted Csernyik by striking him with a tray of food the prosecution and defense agreed. Court records show Callaghan was sentenced to another 18 months to five years in prison in December, on top of the time he was already serving, after pleading guilty to assaulting Csernyik that same day. Ionia County Prosecutor Kyle Butler told the Free Press in March that the beating left Callaghan with a broken back, a broken hand, and broken facial bones. "Uncontroverted testimony from the MDOC expert supported that each defendant violated MDOC policy and the use of force policy in various ways and degrees when handling the inmate," Butler said in a May 26 email to the Free Press. Foldie said in March that the beating, which included punches, knee strikes, and deployment of a Taser, lasted less than 30 seconds. Callaghan was preventing handcuffs from being applied and the officers responded according to their training, he said. 'Today was a good day for the defense, the law enforcement community, and the community of Ionia," Foldie said at the conclusion of the hearing in 64A District Court in Ionia. Prosecution witnesses included Callaghan, three MDOC employees, and a Michigan State Police sergeant, Butler said. The prosecution also showed a video of the incident, he said. More: 4 Michigan corrections officers charged in severe 2024 beating of inmate The judge instructed Butler to set a date for a pretrial conference on the remaining misdemeanor charges, or dismiss them, Foldie said. He said he hoped the charges would be dismissed because the question of criminal intent is relevant to both charges. Butler did not immediately respond when asked whether he was considering an appeal of the dismissals and whether he planned to proceed to trial on the misdemeanor charges. All four officers, who had been free on bond and suspended from their jobs without pay, were fired by the department this month, following a disciplinary conference, Foldie said. The Michigan Corrections Organization union is filing grievances on behalf of the officers on May 27 and taking the issue to arbitration in an effort to have the officers reinstated, he said. More: Detroit man says he needed mental health treatment as an inmate, but was punished instead Butler earlier confirmed that according to a report from the MSP, which investigated the incident, Callaghan told investigators that on the day of the assaults, Callaghan's cellmate said he planned to rape Callaghan. The inmate told investigators the motivation to assault an officer was to get sent to segregation and be safe from the cellmate, Butler said. Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ionia judge dismisses felonies against officers in prison beating
The Intercept
06-05-2025
- Politics
- The Intercept
Michigan Prison Films Women in Showers — and Caught Guards Saying Lewd Things, Lawsuit Says
A $500 million lawsuit filed Monday in Washtenaw County Circuit Court is taking aim at the Michigan Department of Corrections, alleging that prison officials subjected hundreds of incarcerated women to illegal surveillance by recording them during strip searches, while showering, and even as they used the toilet. The suit describes the violations as a profound breach of privacy and basic human rights. At the heart of the case is a deeply controversial and, according to experts, unprecedented policy implemented at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility, the only women's prison in Michigan. Under the Michigan Department of Corrections policy directive, prison guards were instructed to wear activated body cameras while conducting routine strip searches, capturing video of women in states of complete undress. The suit, brought by the firm Flood Law, alleges a range of abuses, including lewd comments from prison guards during recorded searches, and long-term psychological trauma inflicted on women, many of whom are survivors of sexual violence. 'What these women continue to endure is nothing short of horrific.' 'What these women continue to endure is nothing short of horrific. This case exposes a grotesque abuse of power that directly retraumatizes survivors of sexual assault,' Todd Flood said in a Tuesday press release ahead of announcing the suit. 'Despite multiple warnings about the policy's illegality from advocacy organizations and state legislatures, MDOC officials have failed to fully halt these privacy violations.' Attorneys for the 500 plaintiffs — 20 named women, with hundreds more expected to join — argued that this practice not only deprived women of their dignity, but also violated widely accepted detention standards. No other state in the country permits such recordings; many have explicit prohibitions against filming individuals during unclothed searches, recognizing the inherent risk of abuse and the acute vulnerability of the people being searched. Michigan, the attorneys said, stands alone. The plaintiffs are suing the Michigan Department of Corrections, Department of Corrections head Heidi Washington, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and more than a dozen other high-ranking officials. Neither the Department of Corrections nor Whitmer's office immediately responded to requests for comment. The lawsuit lays out a sweeping series of alleged legal violations, accusing state officials of crossing constitutional and moral lines. It claims the officials are ultimately responsible for a blatant invasion of privacy through the unauthorized recording of women in vulnerable states; the deliberate infliction of emotional trauma through policies that retraumatized sexual assault survivors; and systemic sex-based discrimination in violation of Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. The Elliott-Larsen law, which protects against sex-based discrimination, was meant to protect against precisely this kind of gendered abuse. The suit says the policy suggests that women in state custody are being surveilled in ways no male prisoner would be. The complaint also asserts that the policy and its continued enforcement stand in direct conflict with multiple protections enshrined in the Michigan Constitution, suggesting a failure at every level of oversight and accountability. According to the complaint, the body camera policy began in January 2025 and was only partially rolled back in March after public pressure. Although the Department of Corrections changed its policy to stop recording strip searches, the suit alleges that officers continue to film women in showers, bathrooms, and other private settings — actions that the complaint says amount to felonies under Michigan law. [/newsetter] The trauma has taken a measurable toll. Women have reported acute anxiety, disrupted sleep, digestive problems, and worsening of chronic health conditions. The psychological impact has led many to isolate themselves, quit their work assignments, and disengage from educational programs. One woman, who had served as a Prisoner Observation Aide for 11 years, resigned from the role due to repeated exposure to recorded searches. The plaintiffs are seeking not just financial damages, but also an injunction to halt any remaining recordings, destruction of existing footage, and mandatory staff training to prevent further abuse. 'This isn't just about privacy,' Flood said in the statement. 'It's about dignity, trauma, and the state's responsibility to uphold the basic rights of every person in its custody.'
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Senate panel OKs $15M to fix Michigan prison railings after 5 fatal falls
LANSING — A Senate panel on April 24 recommended spending $15 million to improve the safety of railings at Michigan prisons, following a series of Free Press articles about five fatal plunges at two Jackson-area prisons. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections and Judiciary, chaired by state Sen. Sue Shink, D-Northfield Township, included the plan in a nearly $2.3 billion proposed budget for the Michigan Department of Corrections, approved in a 3-1 party-line vote. The plan now moves to the full Senate Appropriations Committee as the next step in the protracted budget-setting process for the 2026 fiscal year. The proposed expenditure was initially listed as $31 million in a Senate Fiscal Agency analysis of the budget bill, but that was an error and the correct figure is $15 million, agency director Kathryn Summers said. In the latest in a series of articles, the Free Press reported April 16 that 42-year-old Ervin Robinson II died April 12 after falling from an upper gallery at the Charles Egeler Reception & Guidance Center near Jackson. The Department of Corrections described Robinson's fall as accidental, but the Free Press has documented four other fatal falls from the fourth levels at Egeler and nearby Parnall Correctional Facility since 2020. The department listed all four of those deaths as suicides. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, a Democratic activist, former state lawmaker, and current Detroit school board member, said she lobbied lawmakers and community justice groups to take action after reading the most recent Free Press article and said April 25 she is pleased by the legislative action. "It's heartening to see that Sen. Shink has prioritized righting this terrible atrocity that has persisted for far too long," Gay-Dagnogo said. "This is the type of decisive action needed to ensure that no one else loses their loved ones due to years of state neglect." Egeler and Parnall each have a similar tiered structure with four levels of cells that are accessed by walkways protected by railings that are 38 inches high, which is lower than Michigan workplace safety standards, according to state records obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act. In August 2023, a prison employee complained to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's office that gallery railings at the two prisons were too low, putting workers at risk of falling or being pushed to their deaths, records the Free Press obtained under FOIA show. Whitmer's office referred the complaint, which also cited concerns about prisoner safety, to the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But nothing changed. "No hazard exists," a Michigan Department of Corrections official said in a Sept. 20, 2023, letter to a manager at MIOSHA. The agency closed its investigation less than three weeks later, without physically inspecting the two prisons, despite concerns raised by one MIOSHA official that improvements were needed, records show. Since then, three men have died by jumping or falling over or under the railings. Michael Snyder, the father of 37-year-old Wesley Snyder, who died in what was ruled a suicide after jumping from the fourth level at Parnall in December, told the Free Press the state has been negligent. "If they have one death — let alone four or five, it just doesn't make sense they wouldn't have done something," Snyder said in December. Shink said details are still being finalized but she wants to make prison as safe as possible for both prisoners and employees and she feels that addressing the railing safety issue is a priority. Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization union representing corrections officers, said ahead of the subcommittee vote that many officers feel at risk walking on the narrow gangplanks outside prisoner cells, protected only by a low railing from a steep fall to concrete below. One time, a prisoner dropped a heavy duffel bag full of his property from an upper gallery and it thudded to the ground just a few feet from where an officer was standing, Osborn said. There's always a risk of an officer falling or being pushed over the railing while breaking up a fight, he said. The risk exists not only at Egeler and Parnall, which each have four gallery levels, but at Marquette Branch Prison, which has three, Osborn said. "We would certainly support having some kind of additional barrier," Osborn said. "There's some danger there." MDOC Director Heidi Washington, through her spokeswoman Jenni Riehle, has repeatedly refused to comment on what, if anything, the department plans to do to address the hazard. Riehle confirmed April 18 that there was another incident at Egeler this month in which a prisoner suffered a broken leg after falling from the first-floor gallery, following an altercation with two other prisoners. As long ago as 2012, a Michigan prisoner was charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to push two corrections officers over an upper railing, Michigan Court of Appeals records show. The prisoner was acquitted on those charges but convicted on lesser assault charges, records show. Gay-Dagnogo said she still wants a state investigation into how the situation has been able to persist as long as it has. This story and headlines have been updated to add more information and to reflect a correction to a Senate Fiscal Agency analysis. Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: After 5 fatal falls, Senate panel wants $15M fix for prison railings
