After serving 12 years in the Texas Legislature state Representative Ray Allen resigned citing financial difficulties. ?I simply cannot afford to serve on a $600-a-month salary with no other source of income,? said Allen.
Allen has since overcome his financial woes working as a lobbyist for some of the same companies that solicited his support as a politician. These companies have boosted Allen?s income to somewhere between $230,000 and $484,000 a year.
Equally surprising are the alliances Allen has made in his transition form lawmaker to lobbyist. Jeff Heckler once served as treasurer for the Austin conservation group Save Our Springs (SOS). In 2003 Allen supported House Bill 2130 which would have undermined water quality controls for both the city of Austin and the nearby Sunset Valley community. SOS was instrumental in defeating the bill. The group pressed state lawmakers to oppose the move, by Chevron Corp., to transport gas, through an old pipeline, over the city?s watersheds. As a lawmaker Allen joined a losing effort to oppose SOS. Now Allen and Heckler have teamed up in a variety of causes and Sunset Valley employs both Heckler and Allen as lobbyists in their behalf.
Asked in an interview how he ...
Tennessee DOC's Double Standard
by Greg Bowers
The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) applies a double standard to ethical violations committed by its employees and those committed by prisoners. TDOC staff who commit ethical violations are typically reassigned. Even when fired, they have been rehired days later.
Prisoners, on the other hand, are fired from their institutional jobs and classified to higher security levels for minor lapses.
Daniel D. Erickson, 45, is an attorney serving an eight-year prison sentence for attempting to hire a hit man to kill his wife. On March 1, 2005, while in a work-release program, Erickson landed a job with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) as an administrative services assistant. His job was to determine whether policies were followed and he was one of several people to sign off on purchase orders. Erickson had an annual salary of $26,000 -- exceptional for that job classification.
TEMA is part of the Tennessee Military Department, headed by state National Guard Maj. Gen. Gus Hargett, Jr. On February 23, 2005, Gen. Hargett won an exemption to pay guidelines for Erickson by contacting Personnel Commissioner Randy Camp and extolling Erickson's Juris Doctorate degree, real estate law practice, job responsibilities ...
Loaded on
July 15, 2007
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2007, page 35
On January 11, 2006, a Montana state district court set aside two prisoners' convictions for escape and acquitted them after holding that no evidence had been presented that they were in the custody of a peace officer, a requirement for the crime of escape in Montana.
William Leonard Brown and Brian Joseph Holliday, Montana state prisoners, were being transported by employees of TransCor, Inc., a private company owned by Corrections Corporation of America that transports prisoners under contract with the Montana Department of Corrections, when they fled from the TransCor van. The TransCor employees were not peace officers.
A jury convicted Brown and Holliday of felony escape. They then filed a motion seeking to set aside the verdict and be declared not guilty by the court. The basis of the motion was that state law defined escape as knowingly or purposely eluding official detention. Section 45-7-306, MCA.
Official detention is in turn defined as "placement of a person in the legal custody of a municipality, a county, or the state as the result of the actual or constructive constraint or custody of a person by a peace officer pursuant to arrest, transport, or court order." Section 45-7-306(1)(a)(ii), MCA. The trial ...
By Tilda Sosaya
Prison construction is booming in the USA, and New Mexico has been the guinea pig for the largest of the private prison corporations like Corrections Corporation of America, Cornell, GEO Corp. (aka, Wackenhut, Group 4 Falk) and MTC. In New Mexico about 45% of our prisoners are in private, for-profit prisons and jails, while the national average is less than 10%. Wexford, and Aramark, medical and food service providers - have had their hands full of cash from our state coffers but have proven less than adequate in providing services, eventually losing their contracts. In a scandal-ridden expose in 2006, it was revealed that Joe Williams, NM Corrections Secretary had been engaged in an intimate relationship with their lobbyist, Ann Casey (moon-lighting from her regular job as an assistant warden in Indiana). Wexford and Aramark both denied that she worked for them, but she was listed as an official lobbyist in the Secretary of State's office. Joe Williams was placed on "administrative leave" in March of 2006 by the Governor, pending an investigation, but the scandal was buried after Richardson's office found "no grounds for further investigation." Prior to being appointed a cabinet post in the Richardson ...
Phoenix, Arizona Sheriff's Policy Delaying Prisoners' Elective Abortions Enjoined
by John E. Dannenberg
Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's policy that required a female prisoner seeking an elective abortion to first obtain a court order for this procedure was enjoined because it represented an exaggerated response to Arpaio's alleged penological concerns.
Jane Doe was sentenced to four months in county jail on March 18, 2004. Shortly before being committed, she discovered she was pregnant.
Correctional Health Services (CHS), the jail's contract medical provider, confirmed the pregnancy but declined Doe's immediate and repeated request to be transported to a hospital for an elective abortion within the first trimester of her pregnancy. Per jail regulations, she offered to pay for both the procedure and the guarding costs. Only on May 12, 2004 did CHS transport her for the procedure, after Doe obtained the court order.
Doe complained that the jail's policy requiring a court order before providing this type of elective treatment was unconstitutional. She sued in state court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming Fourteenth Amendment violation of the right to privacy and Eighth Amendment violation of the right to adequate medical care. She sought a permanent injunction against the county ...
by David M. Reutter
From its inception, privatization of Florida prisons has been touted as a way to save taxpayers money. Yet, a 2005 audit by Florida's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) revealed that private prison vendors bilked taxpayers for $13 million. To add insult to injury, Florida's Department of Management Services (DMS) entered into a settlement with one of the companies to receive only pennies on the dollar in return.
Two private companies operate five Florida prisons. The GEO Group operates prisons in South Bay and Moorehaven while Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) runs prisons in Lake City, Panama City, and Quincy. GEO also has a contract to run the Graceville prison, which is under construction.
OPPAGA's audit revealed that over an eight-year period the companies received $4.5 million for unfilled jobs. GEO received an additional $5 million in cost-of-living salary adjustments that were never paid to employees. At its Quincy prison, CCA received $2.9 million more for facility maintenance than it spent.
The bulk of the blame for the overpayments has been laid at the feet of the Correctional Privatization Commission (CPC). From its inception, CPC was infiltrated by persons that were cozy with ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The death of a Youngstown, Ohio arrestee who was severely beaten by police and negligently treated by Prison Health Services? (PHS) contract jail medical staff resulted in a settlement totaling $450,000.
African-American Booker Mitchell, 72, was summoned to the scene of an automobile accident involving his wife, Mattie. He brought Mattie?s driver?s license and proof of financial responsibility. Youngstown Police Officer Michael Walker refused Booker?s offer to use his AAA membership to have Mattie?s car towed, and Booker walked away.
Inexplicably, Walker next grabbed Booker from behind, knocked him head-first into a parked van, denting the van. Walker then landed on the unarmed Booker, whereupon he maced and handcuffed him. Walker arrested Booker for obstructing official business, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. One hour later, he was transported to Mahoning County Justice Center.
At booking, PHS, who conducts medical intake interviews, noted Booker suffered from high blood pressure. PHS nurse Wilson reported that Booker could not remember what medication he took, that he had been pepper-sprayed, but regretted the incident at his wife?s accident and was not in ?acute distress.? Booker constantly complained that his head hurt. When PHS staff examined him, he also complained that ...
by David M. Reutter
Another state prison system that subjected itself to the experiment of privatized medical services has learned the same hard lesson suffered by other states: a trail of inadequate care that leaves prisoners dead or maimed. This time the Michigan prison system is under pressure by the mainstream media and the Governor's office to examine the health care provided to prisoners by Correctional Medical Services (CMS).
CMS is no stranger to PLN readers. In our December 2005 issue we detailed the inept and non-existent care provided to Delaware prisoners. While Delaware's experiment with privatized prison health care goes back 20 years, Michigan opened its prisons to HMO-style for-profit medical services in 1997, when it contracted with United Correctional Managed Care. CMS assumed the contract the following year; in 2004 the company's contract was renewed for three more years through April 2007.
Michigan's experiment is mainly isolated to what are known as the "Hadix prisons," so named after a lawsuit that has put prisons in the Jackson area under federal oversight for more than a decade (Hadix v. Caruso, USDC WD MI, Case No. 4:92-CV-00110-RAE). That lawsuit sought to improve medical care and other prison conditions.
Because of ...
The court of appeals for the Eleventh circuit upheld a jury verdict against the Escambia county Road Prison in Florida for $500,000 in favor of a prisoner denied medical care. The plaintiff fractured his hip ball socket and was repeatedly denied medical treatment. The court held that the county was properly held liable for the denial of medical treatment due to its delegated system of medical decision making. See: Mandell v. Doe, 888 F.2d 783 (11th Cir. 1989).
The court of appeals for the Eleventh circuit held that Georgia prison officials were liable for a prisoner's death from asthma. The prison officials were deliberately indifferent to the prisoner's health and the prison lacked adequate medical facilities. That the Georgia DOC had contracted out its medical care to Correctional Medical Services was immaterial. CMS and the prison doctor were granted qualified immunity from damages and the company could not be held liable due to inaction on the part of prison officials. Court discusses difference between deliberate indifference and medical malpractice in prison medical neglect cases. Case was remanded for further proceedings. See: Howell v. Evans, 922 F.2d 712 (11th Cir. 1991).
