Laura Woolseys biggest fear was dying in jail. But thanks to the inept care provided her at New Yorks Schenectady County Jail, that fear was tragically realized.

Woolsey, 39, died at the jail on August 3, 2005, three hours after complaining of chest pain. She had been returned to the jail the day before, five days after undergoing surgery to replace a defective heart valve.

A report by Sheriff Harry Buffardi put the blame squarely on Schenectady Family Health Services (SFHS), the jails not-for-profit health care provider. According to the report, a guard notified the jails on-call nurse that Woolsey was complaining of chest pains at 7:45 a.m. Twenty minutes later the nurse was told that Woolseys condition appeared to be worsening. A second nurse then administered medication.

Woolsey was in total cardiac arrest by 10:20 a.m. When paramedics arrived, however, SFHS nurse Lorraine Walker told them not to administer CPR because of Woolseys recent open heart surgery. Walker falsely asserted the instructions had been issued by a doctor. The advice was contrary to sound medical procedure and common sense.

Buffardi said paramedics and several doctors told him that the need to stimulate blood flow far outweighed any risk of ...

A former social worker with the Baltimore public defenders office in Maryland, who said she was raped by a 15-year-old boy she was a visiting at the Charles H. Hickley, Jr. School settled a civil lawsuit on March 28, 2005, against the corporations that ran the juvenile detention center.
Amy Bibighaus, 29, went to the Hickley School on February 12, 2002, to evaluate juvenile delinquents and make recommendations about punishment. One of the juveniles she saw was a 15-year-old boy who was being housed in isolation after being found delinquent in an armed robbery case. According to the lawsuit, the teenager had proven to be an assaultive disturbance within the school and had demonstrated a propensity toward sexually aggressive behavior in the violence, including the sexual assault of a Hickley staff member.

After the teenager asked the attorney accompanying Bibighaus to leave the room so he could talk to the social worker, he propositioned Bibighaus. When she tried to leave the small office, a malfunctioning lock prevented her from being able to escape, and the absence of attentive Hickley staff members kept anyone from noticing the attack that turned into a rape.
Hickley staff members called state police after one ...

Prison Health Services (PHS) has, once again, entered into a pretrial settlement to pay the family of a prisoner who died from the negligent care provided by PHS at Floridas Leon County Detention Center (LCOC).
The parents of a Ruth Hubbs brought this action in Leon County Circuit Court, but ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

In June 2005, the Colorado State Auditor released its April 2005 report of the performance audit of private prisons contracted by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The report strongly criticized the private prisons performance and the lack of oversight by the DOCs monitors.

The DOC uses six private prisons. Three medium-security private prisons in Colorado are operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) as is one maximum-security prison in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. The CCA prisons all house male prisoners. One medium-security private prison for female prisoners, in Brush, Colorado, is owned and operated by Tennessee-based GRW Corporation. It was the site of recent sexual assault and drug scandals that caused Hawaii and Wyoming to withdraw their prisoners from the facility. One of the CCA prisons, Crowley County Correctional Facility (CCCF), recently experienced a riot that the DOC blamed on the lack of experience and poor training of CCA guards. [PLN, Jan. 2005, pp. 26, 31]. The auditors found the lowest staffing ratio at CCCF. The monitors failed to conduct a security or emergency activation audit at CCCF prior to the riot.

The method by which the private prisons are contracted is odd. The DOC contracts with ...

Fair Labor Standards Acts Minimum Wage Provision Not Applicable to Private Prisons

The Seventh Circuit Appeals Court affirmed a lower courts decision that held prisoners are not entitled to the minimum wage provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 201 (FLSA).

Jay R. Bennett and James W. Knipfer are prisoners at Whiteville Correctional Facility (WCF), a private prison in Tennessee owned by Corrections Corporation of America which is under contract to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. The prisoners filed suit claiming they were entitled, as employees, to the minimum wage provision of the FLSA.
The lower court held that they were not entitled to any of the benefits of the FLSA. Consequently, the prisoners appealed.

The Appeals Court held the FLSA is intended for the protection of employees, and the prisoners are not classified as employees of their prison, whether the prison is a public or private one.

The Act unhelpfully defines employee as any individual employed by an employer and defines employer as any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee and includes a public agency. The Court held, however, the prisoners are not a part of ...

On May 11, 2005, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (now known as Geo Group) agreed to settle for $125,000 a lawsuit arising from the suicide death of a prisoner in the Wackenhut-operated George W. Hill Correctional Facility, also known as the Delaware County prison.

John William Focht, Jr. was arrested in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 2002, and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. Upon intake at the county prison, Focht, a 43-year-old father of four, indicated that he had a history of depression and had attempted suicide; that he had been drinking at least 20 beers per day and using cocaine; and that he had been taking the antidepressant drug Paxil.

Focht was subsequently interviewed by Doctor Victoria Gessner, who started him on 100 milligrams of lithium per day. Because Gessner also placed Focht in a detoxification program, he was housed in isolation where guards were supposed to check on him every 15 minutes.

Two days after he was admitted to the prison, Focht was dead. Guards found him hanging in his cell on February 5, 2002 at approximately 7:30 p.m. He had fashioned a noose from his boot laces, which he attached to a wall grating. ...

On August 27, 2005, a riot involving hundreds of prisoners broke out in a private prison run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in Mineral Wells, Texas, injuring a dozen prisoners and two guards. The sixteen-year-old, 2,100-bed facility holds prisoners with less than a year to serve before their expected parole date.

Around 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 27, 2005, fights broke out among two dozen of the over 500 prisoners on the prison's recreation yard. Guards quelled the fights and returned the prisoners to their housing units.
At approximately 9:30 p.m., prisoners from one building began to battle those from another building. The fights spilled out onto the recreation yard and involved around 200 prisoners, some of whom had armed themselves with broom handles, sticks and boards. About 10:15 p.m., the Parker County Sheriff's Department, Palo Pinto County Sheriff's Department, Mineral Wells Police Department, Texas Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers were notified of the riot and sent officers to secure the prison's perimeter. DPS also sent a searchlight-equipped helicopter.

A special operations team was deployed to quell the riot. They used tear gas, which quickly brought an end to the fighting. Two guards received scratches. Twelve prisoners ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

Arkansas paid Cornell Corporations of Houston, Texas, $9.5 million a year to manage the Alexander Youth Services Center in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. What they got for their money was a prison that killed by medical neglect a juvenile prisoner with a blood clot in her lungs whose requests for medical attention had been ignored for weeks. The prison also hired a guard the Arkansas Department of Corrections (DOC) had fired for having sex with a prisoner. What Cornell's mismanagement earned them was a recommendation for extension of their contract from the state legislature.

John Berry, 40, was a 16-year veteran of the Arkansas Department of Correction and a sergeant when he was accused of having sex with a prisoner. An internal affairs investigation concluded that Berry had sex with a prisoner at the Tucker maximum security prison. This finding, bolstered by his failing a lie detector test, led to his firing in October 2002.

No criminal charges were filed against Berry. Therefore, he passed a criminal history background check conducted by Cornell when they hired him. Berry also filed a federal civil rights suit against the DOC alleging the DOC violated his due process rights when ...

On February 3, 2005, Avalon Correctional Services, Inc., announced that it had filed Form 15 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to terminate the company's common stock pursuant to the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 (SEA). This allows Avalon to cease filing SEC-required reports, including forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q.

Avalon complained that the costs of complying with Section 404 of the SEA, as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, was making the business unprofitable. By terminating common stock, it will eliminate legal, auditing, accounting and printing expenses associated with compliance. These costs might otherwise cause Avalon to default on its loan obligations and prevent it from accessing sufficient funds to continue daily operations.

Avalon will no longer be listed on the NASDAQ. It may be traded over the counter on the Pink Sheets, a centralized stock quotation service that operates through a web site. Avalon will still be required to report to its stockholders under Nevada state law. Avalon also announced its intention to post its press releases, quarterly reports and annual financial results on its website.

Source: Avalon Company Press Released.

by Michael Rigby

Tennessee isn't known for its huge prison system, like Texas or California. Nor is the state's capital city, Nashville, recognized for massively overcrowded jails such as the ones in Los Angeles or New York City. But one thing is clear: Tennessee lockups are just as dangerous, the guards equally brutal and incompetent, and supervisory officials just as scandal-prone as those in more populous states.

At a prison in Nashville, a state prisoner was brutally murdered and set on fire after guards abandoned their post, leaving him with two other maximum-security prisoners; one of the guards was fired for violating prison policy and the other resigned. A national headline-making escape of a state prisoner from a courthouse parking lot resulted in the shooting death of a prison guard. Another guard smuggled a gun into a state facility for her imprisoned lover. And at the administrative level, the Commissioner of the Tennessee Dept. of Correction (TDOC) resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment and questions about his relationship with a subordinate.
The situation is no better in the state's county jails. At one Nashville facility a diabetic prisoner died after private contract medical personnel failed to dispense his insulin. At ...