Prison guards' use of force is rarely deemed excessive by federal courts and judges, analysis shows

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

52% : In the intervening period, a series of new laws and legal standards changed the landscape for incarcerated plaintiffs.
49% : "I pray you please take action cause my life is endangered," he wrote in one letter.
43% : The allegations contained in the legal complaints, together with evidence from state oversight reports and criminal cases against former officers there, hint at a corrections culture in which casual violence prevails and retaliatory cruelty often goes unchecked.
36% : Government oversight reports and journalistic investigations over the years have documented systemic abuse in multiple state prison systems: guards brutalizing incarcerated people in New York state, a pattern of sexual assault committed by prison staff in California, and a culture in Alabama prisons in which "unlawful uses of force" were common, including two beating deaths by staff in 2019 alone.
34% : One of the most infamous campaigns of state violence against incarcerated people in US history did not, in the eyes of the court, constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.