by Sam Rutherford

The New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) has long outsourced its constitutional obligation to provide prisoners adequate medical care to private, for-profit corporations with little incentive to do so. Before November 2019, a $41 million annual contract was held by Centurion Correctional Healthcare of New Mexico, LLC, which lost a battle to withhold documentation of legal settlements when PLN’s publisher prevailed in a suit for the records on September 16, 2024, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Dec. 2024, p.19.]

Quickly growing since its 2011 founding, Centurion and related companies contract with local, state and federal governments in 15 states at 325 lockups. When Centurion took over healthcare for NMCD in June 2016, predecessor Corizon Health had been sued by state prisoners more than 150 times during its nine-year tenure. Another 24 suits were filed during Centurion’s first year, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2018, p.60.]

As PLN also reported, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, filed a request pursuant to the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act in August 2020 that Centurion disclose all complaints and settlement agreements for cases in which the company paid ...

by David M. Reutter

Jails face a monumental task in the provision of medical care. Those who’ve just been arrested are often experiencing withdrawal from drugs or alcohol. Other pre-existing medical conditions are routine and routinely severe. Then there are the mentally ill, who land in jail because communities lack resources to treat their conditions—even though jails and guards also lack training and expertise to provide adequate care. Into the breach step privately contracted providers, promising to fill the need. But their results belie that promise, demonstrating only that profit comes before service.

How else to explain the marketing materials distributed to prospective customers by jail healthcare contractor Turn Key Health Clinics LLC? In those, the firm bragged that after taking over healthcare at Oklahoma’s Tulsa County Jail in 2016, emergency transfers to hospitals fell by an eyepopping 77% in just a few months. The number of days detainees spent hospitalized also cratered by 35%. Did they suddenly get healthier? Or were they simply denied care?

The answer seems obvious, yet jails continue to turn to private providers like Turn Key. For one, it comes with a staff of credentialed personnel already employed, so sheriffs don’t have to vet and ...

On August 2, 2024, after losing a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Jeffrey Simms-­Belaire, a former detainee at Oregon’s Washington County Jail (WCJ), private jail medical contractor NaphCare, Inc. secured an agreement with a settlement of $78,325.50 to drop his civil rights claims against a nurse practitioner (NP) employed by the firm. The move came just months after the company advised the federal court for the District of Oregon on March 28, 2024, that it had settled claims in another suit filed by Tammy Thomsen over the death of her husband at WCJ.
In both cases, no settlement details were docketed with the Court, but PLN has requested documentation, since NaphCare was acting as a public instrumentality. Meanwhile remaining claims are proceeding against the firm and the County that were filed by Simms-­Belaire, a paraplegic with no feeling in his legs and feet who is now an Oregon state prisoner.
After an October 2017 arrest in Kansas, Simms-­Belaire was extradited to Oregon and booked into WCJ to await trial. The detainee used a wheelchair and medical shoes issued at the Kansas jail to protect his feet from rubbing against it, since he suffers from a condition that ...

When he was picked to chair the Tennessee Republican Party’s annual Statemen’s Dinner on June 15, 2024—billed as “the largest political event of the year” in the Republican-­dominated state—Damon Hininger, CEO of private prison operator CoreCivic, brought his firm into the spotlight at the GOP fundraising gala, tickets for which were priced at $300 each.
But the company is already among the state’s top political spenders, lavishing $3.6 million since 2019 on lobbying and political donations to state lawmakers—mostly Republicans, who enjoy trifecta control of the state House, Senate and governor’s office. They hold power over lucrative government contracts that are key to CoreCivic’s business—operating prisons, jails and other detention facilities that brought in revenues of $1.9 billion in 2023. A hefty chunk of that gets invested back into the political process in order to secure more contracts and revenues.
Critics call this cycle anything but virtuous because it drives mass incarceration. Though CoreCivic counters that it merely provides prison cells the state would otherwise have to build, Hininger let the truth slip in an earnings call with investors on May 9, 2024, when he said that “adjustments to sentencing reform” by state lawmakers are expected to drive “pretty significant ...

On July 1, 2024, Virginia’s Department of Corrections (DOC) closed four prisons and was set to terminate its contract with private prison giant GEO Group, Inc. just over a month later, taking back operational control of its only privately operated prison, Lawrenceville Correctional Center (LCC), on August 4, 2024.

The medium-­security prison in Brunswick County has been managed by the Florida-­based firm since 2003. It was unclear how its loss would affect the company, which reported 2023 revenues of $2.41 billion and net income of $113.8 million. DOC spokesperson Kyle Gibson said the measure was taken to “enhance public safety in the commonwealth.” As PLN reported, LCC had DOC’s second-­largest prisoner population when it reported seven deaths in 2021. [See: PLN, Feb. 2022, p. 44.] Another 12 deaths were reported in 2022.

Brunswick County Sheriff Brian K. Roberts began his law enforcement career in 1998, the year that LCC opened. He had called it an asset to the rural county, until September 2022, when he said the lockup had become a liability. That was after the county’s Office of Emergency Communication received 204 calls from the prison between January 2021and May 2022, including 39 drug overdoses and 21 prisoners found unresponsive. ...

When Tennessee lawmakers adopted a new $52.8 billion state budget on April 18, 2024, it hiked outlays for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to $233 million, a $9.8 million increase that mostly went to private prison giant CoreCivic, which operates four of the state’s 15 prisons. Yet just months earlier, both CoreCivic and DOC were called out in a performance audit released by the state Comptroller of the Treasury on December 12, 2023.

The report, which covered a four-­year period ending July 31, 2023, found significant deficiencies at the state lockups, the most serious related to understaffing, lack of sufficient rehabilitative programs and violations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

With regard to staffing, auditors found both DOC and CoreCivic faced “an ongoing and deeply rooted challenge of attrition” that left DOC with 30% of guard positions vacant—42% in CoreCivic prisons. In fact, state officials assessed $10.8 million in liquidated damages against CoreCivic from July 2020 to June 2022 for failing to meet required staffing levels.

Along with high staff vacancies, the turnover rate for DOC guards averaged 37%. At CoreCivic lockups, the rate was an astounding 146%—including the state’s highest rate, 188%, at the firm’s Trousdale Turner ...

On February 21, 2024, a riot broke out between rival groups of detainees held for the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) at a GEO Group lockup in El Centro, California. Injuries were reported to detainees and staff of the private prison giant, but the number and extent were unclear. The prison was immediately placed on lockdown, which wasn’t completely lifted until February 29, 2024.

Detainee Malik Washington reported that violence erupted between two normally cordial groups of migrant detainees known as the Sureños and Pesos while they were playing soccer on the prison recreation yard. As GEO Group guards attempted to quell the disturbance, Washington said, their walkie-­talkies erupted with frantic calls of “code yellow” from two other areas in the prison, the Mike Unit and the Nancy Unit. That’s when he said it “became apparent that these were not just random incidents, but part of a well-­orchestrated and timed attack meant to send a clear message.”

The violence appeared to be a thumb of the nose to USMS officials, who claimed they had conducted a “thorough inspection” shortly before of areas where migrant detainees are held. Despite a three-­year-­old executive order signed by Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) in ...

The leading cause of death among people held in local jails is suicide. The family of Christopher Lapp, 62, learned that the hard way when he killed himself at Virginia’s Alexandria Adult Detention Center in 2021, while being held on federal bank robbery and armed carjacking charges. Almost three years later, on January 22, 2024, they reached a $1.75 million settlement with the jail’s contracted psychiatrist.

According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by Lapp’s ex-­wife, Lisa Lapp, both as executor of his estate and on behalf of their 16-­year-­old daughter, he had a history of mental illness that included bipolar and delusional disorders. Though Lapp had a Ph.D. in nuclear science and worked as a nuclear physicist, he suffered a “severe psychiatric decline” and psychotic break in 2018, culminating with an armed robbery of a Wells Fargo bank branch, after which he also stole a getaway car from the teller at gunpoint.

While in pretrial detention at the jail, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; but due to this same condition, he denied being mentally ill and discounted the need for treatment. He was found incompetent to stand trial, however, and ...

by David M. Reutter

On August 30, 2023, a Florida court entered final judgment awarding $6 million to the estate of a detainee who died at Santa Rosa County Jail (SRCJ) from pneumonia left untreated by employees of the jail’s medical contractor, Armor Correctional Health Services. The jury that made the award had added $10 million in punitive damages for the estate of Misty Michelle Williamson, but Judge Clifton A. Drake of the First Judicial Circuit Court struck that before issuing final judgment.

After her arrest for unauthorized use of her son’s credit card, Williamson, 44, entered SRCJ in good health on October 31, 2016. But by the morning of December 9, 2016, she was complaining of chest pains, sinus congestion, shortness of breath, elevated pulse, and non-­productive cough. However, no action was taken by Armor employees then or later that evening, when Williamson made a second trip to the infirmary.

Her condition continued to worsen over the next three days. Finally, on December 14, 2016, Williamson was sent to an outside hospital. Staff there diagnosed her severe sepsis, severe pneumonia, respiratory failure and hypertension, a condition also known as Systematic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. Recognizing that she was in respiratory ...

On February 8, 2024, the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of California declined to dismiss all the claims brought by the family of a San Diego Jail detainee who died in custody of drug withdrawal while under the care of the lockup’s contracted medical provider, Correctional Healthcare Partners (CHP).

In the early morning hours of March 10, 2022, William Hayden Schuck, 22, was arrested for DUI after he wrecked his car in Ocean Beach and responding cops found drugs inside. At booking into San Diego Central Jail, an intake nurse noted that Schuck was incoherent and making nonsensical statements. Schuck stated that he had been awake for the past 44 hours. Although 6’2” tall, he weighed only 131 pounds.

Jail guards transported Schuck to a local hospital for an evaluation, where he refused treatment. Hospital staff gave guards medical records indicating that he needed follow up care because he had a family history of ischemic heart disease, a condition which can cause arrythmia and heart failure. But CHP medical staff at the jail did not review these records or provide follow up care. Nor did they test him for drugs or recommend that he be placed in an ...