We have been experimenting with prison privatization in the U.S. now for over twenty-five years. The privatization idea originated out of a notion that the private sector, with its competition-driven efficiency and innovation, could operate prisons of higher quality and lower cost than the public sector. Create a market for incarceration services, the argument ran, and the market will work its magic, improving prison conditions and rehabilitative outcomes while saving the taxpayers millions of dollars. That market has effectively been created over the past quarter century and we have now arrived at a place where prison privatization has been studied extensively and evaluated rigorously.

Although hyperbole continues to propel prison privatization policy along, research findings are incontrovertible: even in the best private prisons, quality of prisoner care is no better than in public prisons and the cost advantage of privatization, which initially accounted for minimal savings, is steadily eroding as the private prison industry matures.
The big promises of prison privatization – less cost, higher quality – have simply not materialized. Despite these disappointing results, prison privatization advocacy maintains traction in diverse jurisdictions as policymakers from Ohio to Florida and from Maine to California seek expedient solutions to budget shortfalls ...

In December 2010, California Inspector General David Shaw sent a letter to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), informing CDCR officials about concerns related to housing California prisoners in out-of-state privately-operated facilities.

The concerns arose when the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) visited five out-of-state facilities that house California prisoners. Those facilities included the Florence Correctional Center, La Palma Correctional Center and Red Rock Correctional Center in Arizona; the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi; and the North Fork Correctional Facility in Oklahoma – all operated by CCA.

The state has since contracted with GEO Group to house prisoners at the North Lake Correctional Facility in Michigan, effective May 1, 2011. Presently, the CDCR contracts for approximately 12,800 private prison beds outside of California.

The out-of-state program was initiated in 2006 in an effort to address the problem of California’s severely overcrowded prison system. With 33 adult facilities housing around 170,000 prisoners, roughly twice their design capacity, California’s prisons are so dangerously overcrowded that former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger deemed them a threat to the safety, security and well-being of both prisoners and guards.

Lawsuits were filed and the federal courts intervened, placing prisoner medical and mental health ...

A $3,000 campaign contribution from private prison firm GEO Group has put a spotlight on a county councilman in Pennsylvania. The contribution was made only days after Ron Angle, president of the Northampton County Council, urged his colleagues to explore a proposal from GEO in October 2010.

GEO Group proposed that Northampton County seek a contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to house immigration detainees. The detention contract would be farmed out to GEO.

Angle and other supporters of the project touted it as a way to bring jobs to the area and increase tax revenue for the Bangor Area School District without adding new students. GEO’s donation to Angle came after the County Council authorized County Executive John Stoffa to act quickly in exploring the company’s proposal.

“They didn’t buy any influence,” Angle said of the contribution from GEO’s political action committee. “They bought my disinfluence.” Angle said he spent $650 of GEO Group’s donation to poll residents about their opinion on building the detention center on a 128-acre site in their community.

Local residents did not see a GEO-run facility as being a good neighbor. Based on that response, Angle urged the County Council in ...

A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that alleged deficiencies in health care at the San Diego Correctional Facility (SDCF) in Otay Mesa, California has been settled, according to a December 16, 2010 press release issued by the ACLU.

The suit named as defendants the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), a branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as officials and employees of ICE and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the private company managing SDCF.

Originally filed in 2007 by the ACLU, the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, and the law firm of Cooley LLP, the lawsuit alleged that detainees at SDCF were routinely subjected to long delays before receiving treatment, denied necessary medication for chronic illnesses and refused essential referrals prescribed by medical staff.

According to the ACLU, “the lawsuit specifically cited the cases of 11 detainees, including several whose bipolar disorders and depression went untreated, a man who was forced to wait more than eight months for eye surgery and nearly suffered permanent disfigurement, and detainees who never received medical attention despite suffering from a variety of maladies including Type 2 diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, abscessed and broken teeth, and severe ...

Florida’s Department of Health (FDH) issued an emergency order in March 2011 that placed restrictions on a psychiatrist accused of sexual misconduct while treating female prisoners at the Hernando County Jail (HCJ). At the time of the alleged misconduct the jail was managed by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA); since August 2010, HCJ has been operated by the county.

In a March 22, 2011 order, the FDH found that the actions of Dr. James A. Yelton Rossello “regarding his patients were egregious and constitute a threat to the public health and safety.” The order restricted him from providing medical, mental health or psychiatric treatment to patients, specifying that he may treat female patients only under the supervision of a third-party licensed medical professional.

Each of the prisoners Rossello was accused of preying upon in his windowless office at the CCA-run jail were in their early to late 20s. While interviewing a 24-year-old patient identified as “C.A.,” he told her he had been married for about 24 years and was “faithful 98 percent of the time,” but that when confronted with women like her “he became a bad boy.”

In early 2009, Rossello asked C.A. to allow him to see her ...

Prolonged Sitting on Steel Stools Claim Survives Summary Judgment

Gabriel B. Nock, a prisoner at the Dover Community Correctional Center (DCC) in Dover, Delaware, filed suit in federal district court against Correctional Medical Services (CMS), the health services provider at DCC, and Spectrum Behavior Sciences, the provider of counseling services at DCC.
Nock’s pro se § 1983 suit alleged that the defendants subjected him to physical and mental abuse. The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment alleging that the misconduct occurred after their contracts had expired and Nock had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. Nock was ordered to file an answering brief but failed to do so. Thus, the motion was ruled on without an answer.
Most of the specific instances of abuse alleged by Nock occurred after the state’s contract with CMS had expired. The only incident that occurred prior to the expiration of the contract was when Nock “was humiliated by having a ‘Listen-up’ (which is when an inmate calls the attention of the entire program to stop, look and listen) called on him while “he was in the shower naked.” Because that misconduct was not medical in nature, the motion was granted with respect to ...

Oklahoma County Jail Responsible for Initial Cost of Treating Prisoners’ Pre-Existing Conditions

by David Reutter

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has held that a county’s liability for prisoners’ medical care includes pre-arrest health conditions. The Court further held that a county must pay the initial cost of such treatment, but may seek reimbursement from the prisoner via means of a civil judgment.
The matter was before the Supreme Court after the Oklahoma County district court entered summary judgment to HCA Health Services of Oklahoma, Inc. (HCA). The controversy was created by the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s office, which refused to pay HCA $2,250,575.58 for medical services rendered to prisoners between February 2003 and September 2006.
Over that period, OCS had brought prisoners in need of medical care to HCA for treatment. OCS determined that much of the expense charged was for treatment of conditions that pre-existed the prisoners’ arrests, and refused payment. After the district court entered judgment in favor of HCA, OCS sought an interlocutory appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court found OCS had a federal constitutional and state statutory duty to provide medical treatment for prisoners in custody. It found that two Oklahoma statutes pertained to this duty. ...

by John E. Dannenberg

When a private prison corporation sued Director Jeanne Woodford of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for alleged defamatory statements made against the corporation's performance on a CDCR contract, which were made in the proper discharge of Woodford's official duties, she was held absolutely immune from suit by the privilege granted in California Civil Code § 47.

Maranatha Corrections, LLC is a private prison company with which CDCR had contracted to operate a community correctional facility in southern California. To fulfill its obligation to provide telephone services for the prisoners, Maranatha had contracted with Global Tel*Link (Global), the same contractor that CDCR uses in its prisons. As in its prison contract, Global paid a hefty kickback from excess profits built into its prisoner-only telephone rate. CDCR transfers its Global kickback funds into the Inmate Welfare Fund (IWF), allegedly to be used for prisoner programs. [The benefit to prisoners is questionable, however, since all IWF revenues first flow into the state's General Fund, from which the Legislature then appropriates prisoner-friendly expenditures in its annual budget. To the extent that IWF fund contributions exceed IWF appropriations, the excess remains in the General Fund, amounting to a ...

by Matt Clarke

On March 15, 2007, a federal court in Louisiana held that the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) may be liable for the sexual assault of a prisoner by a CCA captain at a CCA-run prison in Louisiana.

Brian B. Mitchell, a Louisiana state prisoner, was incarcerated at the Winn Correctional Facility in Winnfield, Louisiana--a CCA-run private prison--when he was twice sexually assaulted by Charlie Roberts, a CCA employee. Following the first sexual assault, which occurred while Roberts was a lieutenant shortly before his promotion to captain, Mitchell complained to the warden. Instead of investigating the complaint, the warden told Mitchell that if he ever lied about one of his captains again, he would be receive a transfer to a worse prison. The second sexual assault occurred four months later. In that sexual assault, Mitchell was forced to perform oral sex on Roberts following a urine drug test.
Even though the urine test was clean, Roberts threatened to lock up Mitchell for having a dirty urine test if Mitchell refused to perform oral sex on him. Mitchell complied, but spat the semen out onto his t-shirt and contacted the FBI.

DNA testing showed that the semen belonged to ...

Five years of staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse, inadequate medical care, security lapses and other problems finally forced Kentucky and Hawaiian officials to remove about 600 female prisoners from a privately-operated prison.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private-prison company, runs the Otter Creek Correctional Center (OCCC) in Wheelwright, Kentucky. The facility was a medium-security men’s prison until Indiana removed its male prisoners in 2005 following a riot several years earlier.

When CCA threatened to close OCCC in the fall of 2005, which would have resulted in the loss of local jobs, the Kentucky Department of Corrections (KDOC) sent 400 female prisoners to the facility. More than 160 female prisoners from Hawaii soon joined them.

Inadequate Medical Care, 
Deaths, Resignations

Problems at OCCC began almost immediately. OCCC prisoners regularly complained about inadequate medical care, including denial of access to treatment and medication shortages. Also, the number of grievances filed at OCCC was almost twice as high as at the state-run Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women, and the CCA prison had a higher number of staff vacancies.

The Community Alliance on Prisons, a Hawaii-based organization that advocates for prisoners and their families, reported receiving numerous complaints from OCCC prisoners regarding inadequate ...