Florida Juvenile Justice: Check Private "Employee's" Records? What a Concept

By David M. Reutter

Guards employed by private contractors that operate Florida juvenile
justice programs earn some of the lowest wages in the nation. The result
is high turnover, which causes untrained and unqualified persons to be
hired. The biggest problem, however, is that private contractors often
hire persons who have been terminated by other juvenile programs for
abusing the Beery children they are hired to mentor and protect

Hiring Abusers

A Palm Beach Post Review of Records from Florida's Department of Juvenile
Justice (DJJ) and 40 of his contractors uncovered at least 200 employees
hired at juvenile justice centers in recent years after they were fired
from similar jobs for violence, misconduct, or incompetence.

The DJJ downgraded this finding by saying of these 200 employees are a
small percentage of the thousands who work in the system. DJJ, of course,
is the same agency that wishes to hide the 661 documented cases of child
abuse within its programs over the last nine years. Two-thirds of those
cases occurred since 2001.

Regularly, those who are fired by one DJJ program are hired within days by
another program.

Jimmy Haynes was ...

The old maxim, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," could
have been tailored to Wackenhut these days. Although Wackenhut Corrections
has spun off from its parent company, Wackenhut Corporation, there's no
indication that the political involvement which brought it this far will
change anytime soon.

Wackenhut Corrections was born as a subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corporation
in 1984 when George Zoley presented the idea of a separate prison
management company to Wackenhut founder George Wackenhut. Although
Wackenhut Corrections began trading its stock separately in 1994, it
remained a subsidiary of Wackenhut Corporation. In May 2002, the Danish
securities firm Group 4 Falck bought Wackenhut Corporation for its security
guard division. The sale included 57 percent of Wackenhut Corrections (43
percent was owned by investors). Group 4 immediately announced it would
sell the corrections division for $170 million [PLN, October 2002].
Since that time, Zoley, who is Wackenhut Corrections' Chairman and CEO',
has focused on buying Corrections back. He succeeded in July 2003,
purchasing Group 4's 57 percent stake (12 million shares) for $132 million.
The move boosted Corrections' bottom line by 70 cents per share.
However, even with the discounted buy back and the sale of ...

Private Prison Contractor Donates $10,000 to Governor's Fund; Gets $20
Million California Contract Two Months Later

With the appearance of a stunning return on investment, GEO Group, a
Florida-based private prison contractor, won a $20 million-sole-source
award from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
(CDCR) less than two months after GEO deposited a $10,000 check into
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiative campaign committee's
account.

According to public records, GEO has donated $68,000 to various
Schwarzenegger committees in the past two years. CDCR officials insist
there is no connection between the donations and contract, as did Marty
Wilson, the governor's chief fundraiser. Wilson's comments came days after
Schwarzenegger announced he will return a $50,000 check from a partner in a
Native American tribal casino project, after public outcry that he
negotiates with tribes for casino permits. The GEO contract is at arm's
length, Wilson distinguished, because GEO negotiates with a state agency,
not the governor. However, Kathy Feng, executive director of California
Common Cause, a citizens' finance reform watchdog group, called the timing
particularly troubling.

Ted Slosek, CDCR spokesman, reported that GEO was the only bidder for the
200 man McFarland (Fresno area) minimum-security community correctional
facility. GEO had operated ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

There are new troubles at several prisons in Colorado. At a 250-bed GRW-run private prison in Brush, a tiny town 91 miles northwest of Denver, the newly-resigned ex-warden and two guards have been indicted in relation to felony sexual contact with eight female prisoners. A guard lieutenant at a state prison has been arrested for sexually assaulting a male prisoner. Another nine people have been charged with smuggling contraband into the Brush Correctional Facility (BCF). Background checks also revealed that five of the guards at BCF had felony convictions and three others had questionable criminal backgrounds. The U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) stated in federal court that a high-ranking employee of Dominion Correctional Services of Edmond, Oklahoma, forced a female subordinate to engage in sexual activities at Crowley County Correctional Facility (CCCF) when that company was running that prison. The female guard filed suit in federal court alleging outrageous sexual conduct by the superior, retaliation and gender discrimination. Dominion settled the suit for an undisclosed sum. Meanwhile, a guard at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility (AVCF) has been arrested for allegedly raping a male state prisoner.

GRW Doing Good and
Doing Well at Brush? ...

by Silja J.A. Talvi

[Ed. note: Prison Legal News goes undercover at the American Correctional Association's 2005 winter conference in Phoenix, Arizona. It's just business," as one prison medical administrator puts it. And what a surreal business it is.]

There is no doubt that good work is done at the penitentiary & It only remains to go unto perfection," unnamed speaker at the 1874 Congress of the National Prison Association, later renamed the American Correctional Association.

[We] linger at the gates of correctional Valhallawith an abiding pride in the sense of a job superbly done! We may be proud, we may be satisfied, we may be content," Harold V. Langlois, American Correctional Association (ACA) President, 1966.

We'll have a hard time holding onto what we have now," Gwendolnn C. Chunn, ACA President, Winter ACA Conference, 2005. (Referencing the unprecedented prison expansion boom of the 1990s.)

January 10, 2005It was the third day of the American Correctional Association's winter fair in sunny Phoenix, Arizona. The spectacular southwestern sunrise and balmy outside temperatures aside, the inside of the Phoenix Civic Plaza didn't feel like a particularly pleasant place to be.

That is, unless you happened to be in the business of profiting ...

Sexual abuse by a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) guard has spurred three lawsuits against CCA and resulted in the guard's arrest.
The legal activity resulted from incidents at CCA's prisons at the Marion Adjustment Center (MAC) and St. Mary's Kentucky. MAC was home to Vermont prisoners that relocated to another state to ease overcrowding. PLN reported the September 2004 riot at MAC. [PLN March 2005].

The matter came to a crescendo on January 26, 2005, after 26-year-old Joel Becks, a former MAC guard, was arrested on charges of sexual abuse and official misconduct for sexually a abusing two prisoners by Kentucky's Nelson County Sheriff's Department.

Becks' charges stem from two incidents occurring in April 2004. Becks stayed over" from his shift ending at 3 p.m. on April 12. Around suppertime, Becks entered cell D205, finding prisoners John Doe and John Roe violating rules by smoking. Becks closed the cell door. He ordered Doe to the back of the cell and Roe to watch for guards.

Becks dropped to his knees, pulled Doe's sweats down, fondled him and commenced to performing fellatio. Doe neither became erect or ejaculated. Frustrated by Doe's lack of response, Becks said I want the kid ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

Tony Fabelo was the head of the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council for two decades. He survived multiple changes of administration by doing a great job as the state's top number-cruncher on prison issues. Legislators of both parties say the Cuban-born Ph.D., a nationally-known authority on prisons and prison construction, served the state well during its dramatic build up of the prison system. However, Tony Fabelo no longer has a job.
O.K., technically Fabelo wasn't fired. No, Governor Rick Perry simply signed a line-item veto eliminating the council's $1 million biannual appropriation from the state budget. Fabelo, who recognized the irony of being the head of an unfunded government entity, then resigned and became a nationwide consultant on prison issues.

Why was Fabelo's council, which was doing such a good job, eliminated? Perry says that the council's job was done and he wanted to save the money. Neither aspect of that rationalization makes sense. The state still has one of the largest prison systems in the world and will still need advice on how to manage it. During its existence, the council collected twice as much money in federal grants as it received from the general ...

As we predicted, Washington's sentencing reform" has sharply increased the state's prison population to approximately 17,6001,400 prisoner's overcapacityadding 2,100 prisoners within the last two years alone.
Worse yet, nothing, including slashing sentences by up to 50 percent for a few hundred prisoners, has stemmed the flow and there is no end in sight.
As prison officials scrambled to find beds for this influx of new prisoners, they have resorted to shipping prisoners to rental beds in other states. In May 2003, 100 prisoners were sent to Nevada prisons, followed by 140 more later that summer. Still the problem persisted.
The 2004 Washington Legislature then attempted to put a $320 million, 2,400 beds, prison expansion Band-Aid over the emblem. Only, that prison building boom won't be complete until 2008, doing nothing to ease current overcrowding.

Despite the abysmal track record of private prisonsextensively reported in PLNprison officials opted to send 290 prisoners to private prisons operated by Corrections Corporation of America, (CCA), the nation's largest private jailer, in 2004.

In true CCA form, problems soon followed. On July 24, 2004, dozens of Washington and Wyoming prisoners gathered on the yard at the CCA-run prison in Onley Springs, Colorado. They had a ...

A New Jersey state appellate court issued an unpublished opinion reversing a lower court's grant of summary judgment to Correctional Medical Services (CMS) and the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC).

On November 7, 1996, Craig Szemple, a prisoner at the New Jersey State Prison, under went two surgeries to correct carpal tunnel syndrome and ulner nerve entrapment. The treating physician ordered physical therapy to begin as soon as possible and continue for three months. This order was noted in Szemple's prison medical file on November 21, 1996.

Nevertheless, it was not until December 9, 1996 that Dr. Acheloe, the Group Medical Director of the Central Region of CMS, reviewed [this] recommendation and authorized physical therapy. CMS policy required that Acheloe's recommendation also be approved by his supervisor, the statewide medical director for CMS.

Acheloe again recommended physical therapy on January 27, 1997 and February 25, 1997, because it had not yet begun. Szemple did not receive his first physical therapy evaluation on March 17, 1997 and did not begin receiving physical therapy until approximately April 1, 1997.

Szemple brought suit in state court against CMS and DOC alleging that they negligently delayed his physical therapy. Pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2A:52A-27, ...

In an unpublished decision, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a grant of summary judgment to a prison doctor, holding that the doctor manifested a substantial departure from accepted professional judgment in the treatment of a prisoner's cluster headache condition.

Illinois prisoner James Edens suffers from cluster headaches, which are a rare and intensely painful form of vascular headache that, although individually of relatively short duration, usually occur several times a day over the course of weeks or even months before going into remission." If left untreated, cluster headaches are severely painful, even to the point of disability.

While at the Logan Correctional Center ... [Edens] was taking ... Elavil (a tricyclic anti-depressant), which ... brought his headaches under control." In February 1999, however, Edens was transferred to the Pinckneyville Correctional Center and his Elavil prescription was discontinued.

Dr. Dennis Larson suggested meditation and relaxation' after Edens speculated that the attacks might be stress-related." Larson did not prescribe any medication at that time. Subsequently, another physical prescribed Fioricet which also controlled Edens' headaches and remained his primary treatment until mid-autumn 1999, when the physician left Pinckneyville.

On November 8, 1999, Larson discontinued Edens' Fioricet prescription, replacing it with Tylenol. ...