Articles

ACLU report highlights Indiana’s prison problem

While acknowledging Indiana’s efforts to reform its criminal justice system has slowed the growth of the state’s prison population, a new report by the ACLU of Indiana asserts that additional reforms, including expanded access to treatment for mental health and substance abuse, could reduce the number of incarcerated by 50 percent and save Hoosier taxpayers more than $541 million by 2025.

Read More

State lawmakers pad DCS budget, hike school funding only slightly

State lawmakers are poised to increase school funding by 2.5 percent each year in a $34 billion final budget plan — just slightly more than the amount proposed last week by the Indiana Senate. Meanwhile, the Indiana Department of Child Services’ budget will jump by more than a half-billion dollars over the next two fiscal years.

Read More

Reversal: Inmate denied DOC manual gets new trial

An inmate’s claims he was denied a fair trial can move forward now that the Indiana Court of Appeals has concluded the state’s failure to provide him with an Indiana Department of Corrections professional conduct manual left him unable to prepare a proper defense against an officer who shoved him.

Read More
solitary-450bp.jpg

Indiana case shines spotlight on solitary confinement

No one denies that Aaron Isby-Israel made bad, even criminal, choices that landed him in the Indiana Department of Correction. What is disputed is whether Isby should have remained in solitary confinement for a total of 28 years.

Read More

Rush, Goff publish dissent on poverty as probation violation

A split Indiana Supreme Court denied a petition to transfer a homeless man’s probation violation appeal, with two justices writing in a published dissent that the litigant was an indigent man incarcerated for probation violations that resulted from his poverty, not his intentions.

Read More