by Matt Clarke

Former New Mexico Corrections Secretary Joe R. Williams did not pursue contractual penalties against Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) or GEO Group despite chronic understaffing by the two private prison companies, which operate four facilities in New Mexico.

GEO and CCA manage prisons for the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) in Hobbs, Grants, Clayton and Santa Rosa. The original decision to allow private firms to operate state prisons was controversial, and recent revelations that the privately-run facilities are chronically understaffed have reignited the debate over privatization.

The NMCD’s contracts call for penalties when staffing vacancies reach 10% for 30 consecutive days. In 2007, the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC), the budget arm of the state legislature, reported 37% understaffing at the Lea County Correctional Facility in Hobbs, angering lawmakers. The staff vacancy rate for July 2010 was 22% at Hobbs and 17%, 14% and 13% at the other privately-operated facilities.

However, Williams declined to seek fines for such contractual noncompliance, instead making excuses for GEO and CCA.

Williams said the private prisons were located in rural areas or small towns where recruiting and retaining staff is difficult. He also claimed the companies were offsetting the vacancies by having ...

On June 7, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Richard Lee Pollard, a prisoner in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Taft Correctional Institution (TCI) in California, could assert a Bivens claim against employees of a private prison company.

Pollard overcame various procedural challenges before winning the right to pursue his claim. He had alleged that while incarcerated at TCI, he slipped on a cart left in a doorway and suffered possible fractures of both elbows. Employees of GEO Group, Inc., under contract with the BOP to operate TCI, transferred him to an orthopedic clinic outside the prison. Despite Pollard’s complaints, GEO employees forced him to put his arms through his jumpsuit and to wear a “black box” restraint device on his wrists.

After diagnosing serious injuries to both of his elbows, the outside orthopedists recommend that Pollard’s left elbow be placed in a posterior splint for approximately two weeks. Pollard claimed that his elbow was not put in the proper splint by prison medical staff and that he was unable to feed or bathe himself. He also said he was forced to return to work before his injuries ...

A new “green paper” released on July 19, 2010, entitled Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande, takes a look at the impact of Operation Streamline on the private prison industry.

Operation Streamline, initiated in 2005 in Del Rio and expanded to much of the Texas and Arizona border, mandates that immigrants apprehended at the border must be detained, prosecuted and incarcerated in the criminal justice system in addition to the civil immigration system. This is a departure from previous policy in which most immigrants were only dealt with in the civil immigration system.

The result has been a mess. In Texas alone, 135,000 immigrants now have criminal records and many have done prison time under Operation Streamline before being deported (far from streamlining the process, the policy adds another layer of incarceration on top of the existing civil detention system). 

While most researchers believe the program hasn’t deterred unauthorized immigration, it has affected the judicial system in serious ways. The federal courts are horrendously over-booked. Fifty-four percent of 2009’s federal prosecutions across the country were for immigration violations. In the Southern District of Texas, a district that includes Houston, a full 84% of prosecutions in ...

The California Court of Appeal has held that the State may be vicariously liable for the acts or omissions of its employees in failing to provide needed medical care for an infant living with its mother in a private, community-based correctional facility operating under a contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

In a complaint filed on behalf of herself and her daughter Esperanza, Denisha Lawson alleged that, while she was housed at Family Foundations - San Diego, a 40-bed residential facility run by Center Point, Inc., Esperanza sustained serious and permanent physical injury as a result of a delay in receiving medical treatment for a respiratory infection.

According to the complaint, Lawson was pregnant in November 2006 when she was placed at the Center Point facility under an alternative sentencing program for women prisoners with young children. She gave birth to Esperanza prematurely in March 2007.
When she was barely five weeks old, Esperanza developed severe respiratory problems.
Lawson allegedly asked facility personnel, over the course of more than a week, to obtain medical treatment for her daughter, who had stopped breathing on at least three occasions. Her requests were repeatedly denied; ultimately, however, one of the ...

On December 21, 2010, just days before recessing for the holidays, the U.S. Senate confirmed Stacia Hylton as director of the U.S. Marshals Service in spite of opposition by a coalition of human rights, citizens’ advocacy and criminal justice-related organizations that argued she had a conflict of interest based on her close connections with private prison firms.

Hylton, a former Acting Deputy Director of the U.S. Marshals with a lengthy career in law enforcement, was employed from June 2004 to February 2010 as the Federal Detention Trustee. Following her retirement she was nominated by President Obama to head the Marshals Service, which handles security for federal courthouses, apprehends federal fugitives and oversees the detention of federal prisoners awaiting trial or immigration proceedings.

During Hylton’s tenure as Federal Detention Trustee, GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison company, was awarded a number of lucrative contracts to house federal prisoners. Those included a ten-year contract at GEO’s Western Region Detention Facility in San Diego, generating approximately $34 million in annual revenue; a 20-year contract to operate the 1,500-bed Rio Grande Detention Center in Laredo, Texas with an estimated $34 million in annual revenue; and a 20-year sole-source contract to manage the Robert ...

In June 2010, the advocacy group Disability Rights Vermont (DRV) released a report faulting the staff of the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (CRCF) in South Burlington, Vermont in connection with the death of a disabled prisoner.

Michael Crosby, 49, was arrested after he turned himself in on charges of selling prescription drugs. Crosby, who was on parole at the time, had a lengthy history of minor criminal misconduct that was mostly related to drug abuse and misbehavior while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He also had a documented history of accidentally overdosing on his prescription medications and at least two serious suicide attempts. At the time of his arrest he was receiving outpatient mental health, psychopharmacological and substance abuse services. He was also obese, sedentary and receiving Social Security benefits for his disabilities.

Crosby was taken to CRCF, a minimum-medium security facility in the Vermont Department of Corrections’ (VDOC) integrated jail/prison system. One of the guards who transported Crosby to CRCF noticed that he was sweating profusely. When asked about the sweating, Crosby allegedly replied that he was a “big guy” and “not in very good shape.” It was undocumented whether the arresting and transporting guards adequately conveyed ...

A troubling investigative report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri (ACLU-EM) has exposed a culture of abuse, corruption and cover-ups at the City Justice Center and the Medium Security Institution in St. Louis (CJC/MSI).

The most damning evidence came from six current and former guards whose identities were not revealed “because of the atmosphere of intimidation and retaliation” at the two jails. The guards, including a Captain and a longtime, nationally-certified training officer, are referred to as CO1 through CO6 in the report, which was released in March 2009 following a two-year investigation.

“The accounts and descriptions of conditions provided” by guards and prisoners at the jails “lead to the conclusion that there is endemic abuse ... and a pattern of policy violations at the CJC/MSI,” the ACLU-EM found. “Without an intervention there is no reason to think that any of these conditions are going to change.”

Culture of Abuse, Corruption & Cover-Ups

The ACLU-EM described a profoundly broken, out-of-control system where guards routinely subject prisoners to vicious, unwarranted beatings and other abuse. The report also found elaborate cover-up schemes. While the abuse is clearly systemic, one particular clique of high-ranking guards was cited as the most ...

The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) and several of its contractors violated state law, according to two audit reports issued by the Comptroller of the Treasury’s Division of State Audit.

According to an April 2009 financial and compliance audit, the TDOC failed to generate employee separation notices within 24 hours of separation as required by state law.
Auditors found that 53 percent of the reviewed notices were filed an average of 10 to 18 days late, and as many as 23 days late in some cases. Such delays could negatively impact former employees’ unemployment benefits.

TDOC management also failed to assess and mitigate “the risks associated with information systems security, which increases the risk of fraudulent activity,” auditors found. While not revealing the “specific vulnerability identified,” auditors determined that TDOC staff “did not always follow the department’s Management Information Services Procedure Manual in order to maintain proper information systems security.” TDOC officials claimed they had “been closely monitoring these issues ... for over two years.”

Tennessee’s Financial Integrity Act requires agency heads to “submit a letter acknowledging responsibility for maintaining the internal control system of the agency” to the Comptroller of the Treasury by June 30 of each year. In ...

On August 21, 2008, a Louisiana appellate court affirmed class certification in a lawsuit involving prisoners and guards who were exposed to toxic chemicals following a train derailment.

The train derailed near Eunice, Louisiana on May 27, 2000, and seventeen of the derailed cars contained hazardous chemicals. Seven were torn open and two exploded. Two other cars were intentionally breached during the clean-up process.

Sixty-nine cars that were not derailed were moved to a siding about a mile from the South Louisiana Correctional Center (SLCC) in Basil, a private prison operated by LCS Corrections Services, Inc. (LCS). One of those train cars, owned by Union Tank Car Company (UTC) and leased to Dow Chemical, began to leak, releasing ethylene oxide for several days. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that inspection procedures by Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) failed to detect defective track joint bars, leading to the train accident.

Anthony Crooks and John Spellman were Louisiana state prisoners housed at SLCC at the time of the derailment. They filed separate lawsuits against LCS, UTC, Phillips Petroleum, Huntsman Petrochemicals, UPR, Dow and the State of Louisiana in state district court, alleging among other claims that LCS neither evacuated them nor allowed ...

Wexford Health Services paid $300,000 last year to settle a lawsuit regarding the wrongful death of an Illinois prisoner who died in June 2003 after suffering an asthma attack.

The complaint alleged Wexford failed to properly train and supervise its medical staff and failed to ensure its medical equipment was ...