At the beginning of the 1980s there were no privately-operated adult correctional facilities in the United States. As of 2009, more than 129,300 state and federal prisoners were housed in for-profit lock-ups. Prison privatization has become an acceptable practice and the private prison industry is now a multi-billion dollar business. How did this drastic expansion of incarceration-for-profit occur, and more importantly how has it rearranged the criminal justice landscape?

The prison and jail population in the United States has increased exponentially over the past several decades, from 648,000 in 1983 to more than 2.3 million as of 2010. That doesn’t include another 5 million people on parole and probation, plus millions more who were formerly incarcerated and are no longer under correctional supervision. Spending on prisons has outstripped expenditures on higher education in at least five states, including Michigan, Connecticut and California, as lawmakers engage in one-upmanship to prove who’s tougher on crime.

Why has our nation’s prison population grown to epic proportions, until the U.S. – with only 5 percent of the world’s population – now has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners?

The succinct answer is because imprisonment has become enormously profitable as a result of politically-influenced decisions ...

Correctional Medical Services (CMS) has agreed to pay $275,000 to settle a lawsuit related to a prisoner’s death. The suit, which was filed in New York’s Monroe County Supreme Court and then removed to federal court, alleged negligence, medical malpractice and deliberate indifference.

Orlando Samuels was booked into the Monroe ...

On December 1, 2011, Chancellor Claudia C. Bonnyman of the Chancery Court of Davidson County, Tennessee issued a bench ruling directing Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison firm, to produce records in a long-standing public records lawsuit filed against the company.

The suit was brought by PLN associate editor Alex Friedmann. In 2007, CCA denied Friedmann’s request for records related to litigation filed against CCA and for reports or audits that found contract violations by the company, among other documents. The Chancery Court ruled in Friedmann’s favor in July 2008, finding that CCA was the “functional equivalent” of a state agency and ordering CCA to produce the requested records. [See: PLN, Oct. 2008, p.24].

On appeal, the Tennessee Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s finding that CCA was the functional equivalent of a government agency, noting, “With all due respect to CCA, this Court is at a loss as to how operating a prison could be considered anything less than a governmental function.”

The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the Chancery Court in September 2009 to determine whether some of the requested records did not fall within the definition of the public records ...

According to an analysis of incidents involving assaults and disturbances at government-run and privately-managed prisons in Tennessee from January 2009 to June 2011, incident rates were consistently higher at the state’s three private prisons. Those were the findings released on October 18, 2011 by the Private Corrections Institute (PCI), a non-profit citizen watchdog group that opposes the privatization of correctional services.

Data obtained from the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) recorded incidents in 11 categories related to prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, prisoner-on-staff assaults and institutional disturbances. Data was reported for the state’s 11 prisons operated by the TDOC as well as three facilities that house state prisoners managed by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison firm.

The three CCA facilities (South Central Correctional Facility, Hardeman County Correctional Facility and Whiteville Correctional Facility) held between 25 and 27 percent of Tennessee’s prison population between January 2009 and June 2011 – slightly over 5,000 prisoners.

While the average number of incidents per month per facility was 17.29 at the state-run prisons in 2009, the average number per month was 31.56 at each CCA facility. In 2010, the average number of incidents per month at each state prison was 19.58 and ...

In April 2011 the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio (ACLU) released an expansive report entitled Prisons for Profit: A Look at Prison Privatization, which draws strongly on the experiences of other states with heavily-privatized prison systems. The report concludes that privately-operated prisons result in little or no savings and may in fact end up costing more than state-run correctional facilities.

Ohio Governor John Kasich is a proponent of prison privatization, as are some of his close associates. For example, Donald Thibaut, Kasich’s former congressional chief of staff whom he acknowledges as his closest friend, founded a lobbying firm, The Credo Company, in March 2010. Among Credo’s clients is Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company with $1.6 billion in gross revenue in 2010.

Robert F. Klaffky and Douglas J. Preisse worked on formulating strategy and policy in Kasich’s gubernatorial campaign. They are partners in the lobbying firm of Van Meter, Ashbrook & Associates, which represents the GEO Group – the second-largest private prison company in the U.S. Further, Kasich appointed Gary C. Mohr as director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. Before his appointment, Mohr spent five years working as a ...

U.S. Magistrate Judge Janice M. Stewart has denied summary judgment to the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in a suit filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) seeking copies of contracts between the BOP and private prison companies for the detention of non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes.

In 2008, Stephen Raher, former co-coordinator of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, submitted a FOIA request for the contracts as part of a law school project. The BOP turned over several thousand pages of documents but many were heavily redacted. The BOP refused to release numerous other records.

Raher filed suit, arguing that the BOP had improperly withheld many of the requested documents. For example, the BOP claimed a “High 2” exemption – which applies to records about purely internal matters – for the redaction of portions of contract proposals submitted by various private prison firms, including CCA and GEO Group.

In a September 2, 2010 order, however, Judge Stewart found that the BOP had inadequately justified the use of the High 2 exemption. The “descriptions by BOP do not contain sufficient detail or information for the court to determine whether the information is used predominantly for internal purposes by ...

In January 2011, the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board called for a cease and desist order to prevent the City of Adelanto, California from establishing any new sewer connections. The board said that Adelanto’s water utility authority had created a significant health risk by exceeding the capacity of its wastewater plant, resulting in “constant unauthorized discharges” of untreated sewage.

Adelanto officials worked to stop the sewer connection ban, claiming it would slow the area’s already lagging economic growth and take away the very resources needed to correct the problem. Especially in danger would be the plans of GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison company, to build a 650-bed facility in Adelanto that would create 170 jobs. Another company, D.R. Horton, was also planning to build 83 houses in the city – presumably to market to prison employees.

“I recognize that a connection ban can have adverse economic effects. But the fact is that they currently don’t have a capacity to treat the water that they currently receive,” said Chuck Curtis, the board’s supervising engineer. “By continuing to add additional connections and additional discharge to the sewer system, the threat of additional disinfected waste discharges off of their property ...

The Kentucky Board of Nursing has disciplined two nurses who were on duty when a prisoner died one day after he was booked into the Fayette County Jail. Prisoner Dean Ferguson, 54, died of a pulmonary embolism on July 10, 2010 after complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath.

The nurses, Karen J. Newton Hodge and Stephanie Denise Slaughter Travis, were employed by the jail’s medical contractor, Correctional Medical Services, Inc. (CMS).
They failed to provide medical care for Ferguson despite observing him in distress. The nurses reportedly thought he was “faking” an illness.

After a complaint was filed by Ferguson’s family, the Board of Nursing issued a subpoena for “copies of any facility investigation regarding the death of inmate Dean Ferguson on July 10.” Two days later, CMS employee Jonathan Bowen, who served as the medical director at the jail, left his job. No reason was given for his departure and CMS refused to comply with a public records request for documents related to Bowen’s termination of employment.

Hodge and Travis agreed on March 28, 2011 to have their licenses suspended for three years, according to the Board of Nursing’s Executive Director, Charlotte Beason. The suspensions, however, were ...

A guard at a privately-run immigration detention facility in Texas has pleaded guilty to sexually molesting numerous female immigration detainees while they were being transported to the bus station or airport for release. The facility, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, located near Austin, is operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

CCA guard Donald Charles Dunn, 30, was tasked with transporting immigration detainees who were being released. On May 11, 2010, a newly-released detainee complained to airport officials that she had been groped by Dunn. Austin police were summoned. They notified the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) and sheriff’s deputies interviewed Dunn, who admitted groping several women when transporting them late at night.

Dunn said he would stop at several locations in Williamson and Travis Counties on the way to Austin. He then “told the women he was going to frisk them and inappropriately touched their breasts, crotch and buttocks,” according to a WCSO press release. “Mr. Dunn advised that he didn’t do this for safety concerns but as self gratification. Mr. Dunn indicated that he had done this to numerous other women while performing his duties as transport officer.”

WCSO began a “large scale investigation” following Dunn’s interview, ...

On November 16, 2010, the First Circuit court of appeals upheld the ruling of a Puerto Rico federal court that an physician who was an independent contractor providing medical services in Puerto Rico prisons was not an employee of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DOCR) or Correctional Health Services Corporation (CHSC), with which DOCR contracts for medical services.

Enrique Cortés-Rivera, a physician who provided medical services at the Guayama Correctional Facility from 2002 until 2007, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that his termination constituted discrimination and retaliation against him in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Rehabilitation Act (RA) and Puerto Rico law.

During the course of his employment, Cortes-Rivera had been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome which led to paralysis of his left leg and foot. In his suit, Cortes-Rivera complained that his seeking accommodation for his disability and filing complaints with the EEOC led to his dismissal, notwithstanding the fact that he was one of several low-seniority doctors whose contracts were not renewed. Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on the grounds that Cortes-Rivera was not an employee of CHS or DOCR for RA and ADA purposes. Cortes-Rivera failed to file a timely opposition and ...