by Michael Rigby


Prison Health Services (PHS) has killed another patient. According to a highly critical 10-page report released by the New York State Commission of Correction on June 23, 2004, the 2001 death of Brian Tetrault, a prisoner in the custody of the Schenectady County Jail, was the result of grossly inadequate and incompetent treatment of his Parkinson's disease. Health care at the jail was provided by PHS, a private, for-profit company based in Tennessee.

Tetrault, a long time sufferer of Parkinson's, was arrested for burglary, larceny, and harassment on November 10, 2001, and placed in the Schenectady County Jail. At the time of his imprisonment, Tetrault, 44, was taking a total of seven drugs to control the psychiatric and physical symptoms associated with the disease. Under the care of the Albany Medical College Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center (AMCH), the drugs had kept Tetrault alive for a decade.

But when Tetrault arrived at the jail, his medication regimen was drastically altered. Dr. W. Duke DeFresne, a PHS physician, discontinued all but one of Tetrault's medications, and even that was reduced. (Notably, none of the discontinued medications were found in the jail's pharmaceutical formulary.) Unthinkably, DeFresne made these ...

In a detailed 98 page report to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature, the California State Auditor criticized the California Department of Corrections' (CDC) lax management of contract outside-hospital medical services for CDC prisoners. The July 27, 2004 report observed that CDC's costs rose at a rate of 21% per year between 1999 and 2003, versus the national average hospital services consumer price index growth of 8% per year. The growth in in-patient hospital costs was attributed to the need for more expensive services, while the growth in out-patient costs was driven by both more expensive and more numerous hospital visits.

It should be noted that this report pre-dates any effect from the recent Plata v. Schwarzenegger settlement agreement to remedy CDC's constitutionally inadequate health care services statewide. Plata requires implementing more stringent (and expansive, e.g., HCV treatment ) standards for prisoner health care estimated to add hundreds of millions of dollars exposure per year. The report concludes with twelve recommendations to CDC [and reports CDC's invited response] on how better to manage procedures in contracting with outside healthcare facilities. But it does not even address the overriding cost driver: a rapidly aging population of over 30,000 condemned, lifer ...

PHS Medical Care At Rikers Fails In Evaluation

by Paul Von Zielbauer

A recent evaluation of the company in charge of prisoner health care at Rikers Island, coming months after it was awarded a new $300 million contract, has found that it has failed to meet a number of the most basic treatment goals. City records showed that the company, Prison Health Services Inc., did not meet standards on practices ranging from H.I.V. and diabetes therapy to the timely distribution of medication to adequately conducting mental health evaluations.

The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees the company’s work at Rikers Island and at a jail in Lower Manhattan, found that during the first quarter of 2005, Prison Health failed to earn a passing grade on 12 of 39 performance standards the city sets for treating jail prisoners. Some of the problems, like incomplete medical records or slipshod evaluations of mentally ill prisoners, have been evident since 2004 but have not been corrected, according to health department reports.

Other problems identified in the department’s review, involving things as serious as the oversight of prisoners who have been placed on suicide watch, are more recent or had not been ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

It is well know that large corporationsespecially those that are prone to feast at the government troughmake donations to political parties and candidates. Most companies like to hedge their bets, donating to both major political parties. Nationwide, Fortune 500 companies gave between 62 and 75 percent of the donations from their political action committees (PACs) to Republicans. Most of the rest went to Democrats. However Corrections Corporation of America's (CCA's) PAC gave over 96 percent of its $149,500 in political donations to Republicans according to Federal Elections Commission filings through August 2004.

The less than 4% Democratic donations included a total of $5,000 given to Tennessee Representatives Jim Cooper, Lincoln Davis, John Tanner and Harold Ford, Jr. Tennessee is CCA's home state. Most of the donations were made in states, such as Tennessee, Colorado, Georgia and Florida, where CCA runs private prisons.

Another nationally-known Tennessee-based company, FedEx, says that it gives about sixty percent of its donations to whichever party is in power. The other 40 percent is given to the opposition.

One exception to CCA's fund the Republicans" rule came in the closely-contested Washington state gubernatorial election. There CCA gave $1,350 each to Republican candidate ...

Four Guards Suspended By CCA Following Their
Murder of Prisoner in Tennessee Jail

by Matthew T. Clarke

Four male CCA Guards have been placed on paid administrative leave following their murder of a female prisoner at the CCA-run Metro-Davidson County Detention Center (MDCD) in Nashville, Tennessee.

Estelle Richardson, 34, a prisoner in MDCD, was found on the floor of her cell by emergency personnel responding to a call placed at 5:37 a.m. on July 5, 2004, saying that a female prisoner was injured and needed medical help. Richardson had been in an altercation with a guard or guards in her isolation cell the previous morning. Richardson's death was ruled a homicide after an autopsy revealed that she died from blunt trauma" to the head which caused a skull fracture and had also suffered internal injuries. Richardson had been indicted for the non-violent offense of food stamp fraud and was charged with probation violation.

CCA placed guards Joshua D. Stockman, 23; Keith Andre Hendricks, 35; William Wood, 26; and Jeremy Nesse, 24, on paid administrative leave after the ruling. Stockman, who had been with CCA a little more than a year, has studied martial arts and had previous employment as a ...

By Matthew T. Clarke

In August, 2004, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) gave House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, (R) Sugar Land, Texas, a check for $100,000 for his DeLay Foundation for Kids during a Lexington, Kentucky, political fund raiser for DeLay’s defense fund organized by Representative Hal Rogers, senior congressman from Kentucky. The event also raised $113,000 in donations to the defense fund.

DeLay has been under fire for questionable fund raising since three of his political aides were indicted for money laundering and illegally using corporate money to influence elections in Texas. The September 21, 2004, indictments resulted in large legal expenses for DeLay, who is seeking to avoid indictment himself. Thus far, DeLay has spent tens of thousands of dollars on defense lawyers with no end in sight. That may not be a problem since DeLay’s defense fund raised over $400,000 between July and December, 2004.

CCA donated nearly $180,000 to politicians for federal elections during 2004. DeLay received $4,500 for political contributions from CCA in 2004, while Rogers received $6,000. CCA is the largest, for profit, private prison company in the world with more than 65,000 prisoners under its control. Despite a long history of scandal, deaths ...

A New York State Assemblyman has been sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay $5,000 in fines and restitution for unlawfully billing the state for rides he got for free from Correctional Services Corporation (CSC). The sentence was imposed after Roger Green, a veteran Brooklyn Democrat, pleaded guilty to two counts of petty larceny and one count of offering a false instrument.

Green's legal problems resulted from an investigation of free transportation provided to lawmakers by the scandal-plagued CSC. According to Albany County prosecutors, Green, 54, billed the state for travel expenses he never incurred while being chauffeured from Brooklyn to Albany in CSC vans. Green filed fake claims for about 30 trips, they said.

Green, along with many other current and former state legislators, also wrote letters to New York officials advocating extensions of CSC's state contracts for halfway house services. Between 1992 and 2000, the state, paid CSC $25.4 million for those services.

Green was nearly jailed in April 2004 for not paying a $2,000 fine in the case. Green had claimed he was too tapped to pay, but finally coughed up the money on April 29, two days after an Albany Judge issued an arrest ...

by Robert H. Woodman

The Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, partly affirming a New Jersey prisoner's estate's suit, held that the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) could be held liable for the negligence of Correctional Medical Services (CMS) in treating a prisoner's medical condition, resulting in the prisoner's death.

Tyrone Neal was a DOC prisoner in February 1997 at the East Jersey State Prison when he was diagnosed with a medical condition known as Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria with hemolytic episode" (PNH). The illness is a breakdown of the red blood cells. Treatment requires prednisone. The only known cure is a bone marrow transplant. After discharge from the hospital, the DOC administered prednisone until May 1997, then quit. In June 1997, Neal transferred to the Middlesex County Adult Corrections Center (MCACC) for sentencing on an unrelated charge. While there, he repeatedly completed medical request forms for treatment, but MCACC physicians refused to administer prednisone to Neal. On August 1, 1997, Neal died of PNH.

Neal's estate and his daughter, Tymirah Scott-Neal sued the DOC, MCACC, and CMS, but none of the individuals involved, under New Jersey state law claims and 42 U.S.C. §1983. The case was dismissed on ...

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the failure to exhaust administrative remedies may be excused in limited circumstances and should be excused in this case. This civil rights action arose from events that occurred while Ivan Rodriguez was incarcerated in New York's Westchester County Jail (WCJ) from July 1997 to November 1998. Rodriguez's complaint alleged he was beat by jail personnel and that EMSA Correctional Care denied him proper medical treatment for his injuries.

The defendants moved for summary judgment based on Rodriguez's failure to exhaust administrative remedies as required by 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (2000). Rodriguez admitted he did not exhaust administrative remedies, but sought to excuse his omission primarily for two reasons. First, he contended that he did not think exhaustion was required for a single episode of prisoner mistreatment, as distinguished from continuing prison conditions. Second, he contended that by time the Supreme Court ruled in Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516 (2002) [PLN June 2002, pg. 17], that all prisoner complaints required exhaustion, he had been transferred from WCJ, and administrative remedies were no longer available to him.

The district court granted the defendant's judgment, and Rodriguez appealed. The Second Circuit said it ...

by Matthew T. Clarke


On September 14, 2004, a prisoner uprising rocked the 816-bed, 88-acre Lee Adjustment Center (LAC), a private prison owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in Lee County, Kentucky.


The Prison


LAC was built in 1990 as a 400-bed, minimum-security prison by a private company under contract with the Kentucky Department of Corrections (KDOC). In 1999 CCA bought the prison and converted it into an 816-bed medium security prison used to house both KDOC and out-of-state prisoners. Apparently CCA cut costs during the conversion because during the uprising prisoners were able to move freely about the prison by pulling up the interior fences. At the time of the rebellion, it held 376 Kentucky DOC prisoners and 427 prisoners from the Vermont Department of Corrections (VDOC). Kentucky pays CCA $38.44 per prisoner per day while Vermont paid $42.50 per prisoner per day under a 29-month contract involving up to 700 prisoners and up to $29.5 million.


The Uprising


The rebellion began when nine prisoners, five from Kentucky and four from Vermont, attacked a round wooden guard tower in the center of the recreation yard after about 150 prisoners were let out on the yard for ...