Articles Tagged: Iowa prisons

The State Appeal Board has approved paying Newton Correctional Facility employees back pay for the time it took for them to take COVID tests during the height of the pandemic.

Eastern Iowa officials question whether the Department of Corrections should take over community-based corrections after missteps on parole decisions.

A prisoner and three staff members at the Anamosa State Penitentiary were taken to the hospital Saturday night after being exposed to an “unknown substance” at the prison.

Smith was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. Wednesday after being admitted earlier in the week “for an acute illness related to a chronic medical condition”

The state decided to outsource personal mail processing to Pigeonly Corrections after an increase in contraband, including drugs, coming into the state prisons through mail. State will pay about $275,000 a year.

The statewide training is an annual event started in 2017 but postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Iowa City man was sentenced last week to up to 50 years in prison for aiding and abetting others in a drug and money robbery that led to the death of Kejuan Winters, 21, of Iowa City, on April 20, 2020.

Kirkwood Community College is hosting a screening of “13th,” a 2016 documentary about the history of racial inequality in the U.S., on Feb. 23 at Paramount Theatre. There will be a Q&A session with Kevin Gannon, a Des Moines history professor who contributed to the film.

The Iowa Department of Corrections said the assault happened Friday evening at the Iowa State Penitentiary.

Although members of the Iowa Board of Parole had unanimously recommended that the governor consider granting the requests from five prison “lifers,” the governor did not approve the extraordinary remedy.

Michael A. Dutcher, 28, previously said he would plead the slayings were in self-defense or defense of others, but court filings this week show he plans to plead guilty to charges of first-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping and attempted murder.

An Iowa City mother said she felt numb when the Iowa Board of Parole announced its decision last Tuesday to give Lamar Wilson, 27, work release after serving only about three years of his 24-year sentence for killing her son, Kaleek Jones, 22, on the Ped Mall on Aug. 27, 2017.

The number of inmates held in Iowa prisons crept up last fiscal year but the population was down significantly from the record count of a decade ago as COVID-19 has forced changes.

An Anamosa prison inmate, charged with killing a prison officer and registered nurse, will not have a bench trial next week. He waived his speedy trial right Thursday and wants its reset to a later date.

The officer has returned to work