Wexford Health Sources and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have agreed to pay $2.15 million to the family of an asthmatic prisoner who died after her medication was denied at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) in Muncy.
Erin Finley, 26, was transferred to SCI-Muncy on July 2, 2002, to serve out ...

During its six years of operation, the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility has been criticized over abuse, suicide attempts, and a policy of filling beds at the maximum-security prison with low level offenders. But even after its closure, the privately run prison continues to poison the community and divide the government.

When the Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut) opened the 480-bed prison in 1999, it was seen as an economic panacea for one of the states poorest areas. State and local officials had banked their hopes on a wave of young, violent superpredators. But the wave never materialized. Now local taxpayers are stuck paying for capital improvements, like new water and sewer systems, that were made to accommodate the hulking prison.

Tracy Huling, a New York consultant who has researched the economies of communities around prisons, says the situation in Baldwin, where the prison is located, is the result of short-sighted planning. States have been creating penal colonies for years and there are consequences, Huling said. Its understandable to see how folks get into this situation, but someone has to take the leadership role and say theres got to be a better way.

To fill beds meant for the elusive superpredators, the ...

Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) has settled a $38 million judgment that held the company responsible for the 2000 death of Bryan Dale Alexander, an 18 year old prisoner at a Texas boot camp. The terms are confidential, but according to an online article accessed February 6, 2006, CSC paid $2.7 ...

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released April 29, 2005, criticized the militarys poor management of private contractors in Iraq and put partial blame for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal on private contractors and their poor management. The report had been requested in a letter by Rep. David Price, D-NC, that was cosigned by over 100 members of congress. The GAO is an investigative agency of Congress that audits the federal government.

They have confirmed our concerns, said Price. There is confusion about the tasks assigned to contractors, a lack of oversight to ensure their safety, question as to their chain of command and inadequate information on their cost and effectiveness.

The report also criticized the misuse of Department of Interior contracts for information technology to pay for private interrogators and screeners used at the Abu Ghraib military prison complex. This practice was part of what is termed interagency contracting, using workers from a pre-existing contract to another federal agency to meet interrogation and other military support requirements urgently needed in Iraq.

David Cooper of the GAO said that Abu Ghraib was a good example of the total mishandling of private contractors. The private contractors often were responsible for their ...

Wilkes County, Georgia and Integrative Detention Health Services, Inc. (IDHS) paid $500,000.00 for settlement of a wrongful death suit alleging negligent medical care, deliberate indifference to serious medical needs, and wrongly allowing a paramedic to practice medicine.

Wilkes County is a small, rural Georgia community of 4,000 citizens. The average ...

America Service Group, the parent company of Prison Health Services, has fired two high level employees in connection with billing improprieties by its prison pharmacy division.

ASG fired Trey Hartman, president and chief operating officer of Prison Health Services, on December 7, 2005. Grant Bryson, president and CEO of Secure Pharmacy Plus (SPP), was fired on December 9. Hartman formerly ran SPP, which provides pharmaceuticals to prisons and jails. The two men were fired for cause, according to the company.

In October 2004, ASG launched an investigation to determine whether SPP overcharged its clients for drugs and ignored generally accepted accounting principles. The audit was expected to cover all periods since ASG acquired SPP in September 2000. A recently resigned SPP controller had identified the issues under investigation, according to the company.

In November 2005 the NASDAQ stock exchange warned ASG it was subject to delisting because it had not made timely financial filings with the Securities Exchange Commission. ASG delayed its third quarter reports pending conclusion of the SPP audit. In a January 10, 2006, letter the stock exchange notified the company it would continue to be listed if its third quarter report was filed by March 15. ASG ...

Scandal, Suicides, Corruption and Abuse Abound at New York Citys Rikers Island Jail

by Gary Hunter

When Rikers Island was purchased in 1884 it was only 87 acres. The city of New York made it a landfill and expanded it for the citys Department of Correction a fact that has piled as much garbage above the ground as beneath. Corruption on Rikers Island reaches from bottom to top and has resulted in the abuse, brutalization and deaths of countless prisoners. Rikers Island is the jail complex for New York City which holds pretrial detainees and those serving sentences of less than one year and sentenced felons awaiting transport to the state prison system. Currently holding around 14,000 prisoners, Rikers Island has held as many as 20,000 prisoners. It is one of the largest jails in the country.

Corrupt Chiefs

Dominick Labruzzi, a captain at Rikers Island juvenile jail, was charged, on January 31, 2006, with sexually assaulting several teenage boys under his custody. Several young boys, who had no contact with each other, told strikingly similar stories to investigators. Each boy described a basement to where Labruzzi would take them then fondle their genitals as he pretended to search them. ...

In an attempt to recoup millions of dollars, private prison operator Cornell Companies, Inc., has filed lawsuits against lawyers entrusted to oversee the companys funds for land deals.

Cornell, based in Huston filed the latest suit on August 26, 2005, in Houstons 333rd District Court against Locke Liddell & Sapp and David Montgomery, a partner in the firm, alleging malpractice, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud.

The complaint alleges the defendants gave Cornell the green light to place $13 million into an account that was supposedly an escrow account. There was no escrow agent; there was no escrow account, contends Scott Hershman, a Cornell attorney. That money was placed in the account with the intention to buy land for developing a prison in Colorado.

Cornell says $5 million was improperly taken from the account, and it incurred millions of dollars in fees, expenses, and transaction costs to pursue the missing money and finalize the land deal with another attorney.
The lawsuit comes as a surprise to Locke Liddell, who was representing Cornell on other matters when the suit was filed. They just filed this thing without any notice to us, said John McElhaney, Locke Liddells spokesman.

Cornell ...

Four guards have been indicted for reckless homicide and aggravated assault in the July 2004 murder of a female prisoner at the Metro Detention Facility in Nashville, Tennessee, previously reported in PLN. [see PLN, Apr. 2005, p. 14]. The Metro facility is run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Americas largest private prison company, which is based in Nashville.

Estelle Richardson, 34, was incarcerated at the Metro Detention Facility. On July 5, 2004, at 5:37 a.m., she was found unresponsive on the floor of her solitary confinement cell. CCA claims Richardson had fought with other prisoners. However, other prisoners could not have been responsible for the severe injuries that caused her death because she was alone in her cell at the time. Thus, only CCA employees could have killed her.

An autopsy revealed a fatal skull fracture, four broken ribs and liver injuries. The medical examiner said the injuries were consistent with blunt force trauma caused by Richardsons body being slammed against a hard surface, and could not have been self-inflicted. Her death was ruled a homicide.

In September 2005, CCA guards William Woods, 26; Keith Andre Hendricks, 35; Jeremy Neese, 24; and Joshua D. Schockman, 23, were indicted ...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a grant of summary judgment to a physician employed by EMSA Correctional Care, Inc (EMSA) in an Ohio pretrial detainees inadequate medical care claim.

On October 5th or 6th, 1998, James Johnson II severely cut his hand after tripping on a concrete stoop and falling &through a glass door& [B]oth an ambulance and a police car were dispatched to the scene & while the medical personnel were caring for him, the police discovered that there was an outstanding [domestic violence] warrant for Johnsons arrest.

Johnson was taken to a hospital emergency room where a physician told him that his tendons had been completely severed, that he was to return for surgery in [7-10] days (because the tendons needed some time to harden before surgery was performed), and that if he did not return in the appropriate time period, he would probably & lose the use of [his] hand permanently.

Johnson was then held in the Franklin County, Ohio jail on the outstanding warrant. All the time & medical services at the jail were contracted out to EMSA. Dr. [Vincent Anthony] Spagna, [M.D.] an EMSA employee, served as medical director of the Franklin ...