On January 23, 2025 the ACLU of Delaware filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court of Delaware on behalf of six incarcerated individuals at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center (Vaughn) in response to severe constitutional violations during a September 2024 raid by prison officials, including members of the Delaware Department of Corrections’ (DOC) Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT).
Read the Full Press Release
Correctional officers and prison officials have a legal duty to refrain from using excessive force and to protect prisoners from assault. The Eighth Amendement grants freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and it's imperative that incarcerated people are guaranteed that civil right and that individuals in positions of power do not abuse or disregard them. The DOC's own Use of Force policy dictates that force is not allowed to be used as a punishment. Officers are obligated to de-escalate any potential conflicts in order to avoid using force altogether.
Yet unconstitutional abuses of power in Delaware prisons continue, compromising the safety and well-being of those incarcerated. Back in 2017, the well-publicized riot at Vaughn led to then-Governor Carney commissioning an independent review of Vaughan's security issues. The Final Report on the 2017 Vaughn Riot found that the facility's staff had actively contributed to making the environment more dangerous and was overusing CERT in everyday prison operations, rather than relying on the team for actual emergencies as intended. Since then, DOC has failed to implement the recommended solutions for safer prison facilities, instead continuing malicious patterns of abuse.
The ACLU-DE is fighting on behalf of plaintiffs incarcerated at Vaughn who, in last year's CERT raid, experienced abhorrent and unconstitutional treatment at the hands of prison officials, including beatings, pepper spraying, sexual assault, degradation and intimidation — all without warning or provocation. No one deserves to be treated this way. We're committed to making sure DOC is held accountable and ends this horrendously unconstitutional treatment of the people within its care.
