Tough Justice Leads To Quadriplegic's Death
In CCA-Operated D.C. Jail

by Michael Rigby

Washington D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith E. Retchin is known for being tough on crime. She's so tough, in fact, that when a quadriplegic man came before her for possessing a small amount of marijuanahis first offenseshe sentenced him to ten days in jail. It was a death sentence.

Jonathan Magbie, 27, spent nearly his entire life paralyzed from the neck down. Struck by a drunk driver at the age of 4, Magbie was confined to a motorized wheelchair that he controlled with his chin. He was barely five feet tall and weighed just 120 pounds. Magbie relied on others for virtually everything, whether scratching an itch or flushing accumulated fluid from his lungs. He could not even breath on his own.

"Jonathan was totally dependent," said his mother, Mary Scott. When asked how he was able to inhale marijuana, she said simply, "he learned to do a lot of things."

Ten days in jail for a first time marijuana possession offense is considered exceptionally punitive by D.C. Superior Court standards. In fact, even the U.S. Attorney's office had not objected when Magbie's attorney, Boniface Cobbina, and ...

by Robert H. Woodman

On January 9, 2004 the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri found that Correctional Medical Services (CMS) and one of its employees, Gary Campbell, D.O., were liable for fourteen (14) months of pain and suffering endured by a Missouri state prisoner whose hip ...

by David M. Reutter

The Eleventh Circuit court of Appeals has held that BOP administrative segregation policies create a liberty interest. The Court reversed a Georgia federal district court's order granting prison officials' motion to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.

The lawsuit at issue was filed by Salvador Magluta for events that occurred while he was a pre-trail detainee at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta (USP). Magluta was indicted by a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida in April 1991 on twenty-four drug trafficking and conspiracy charges. Magluta was arrested in October 1991 and placed in federal custody. Prior to his trial and eventual acquittal in 1996, Magluta was held in three different federal facilities _ first in Miami, then in Talladega, and later in USP.

Magluta filed his Bivens action while a pretrial detainee in 1994, alleging he was placed in "administrative segregation" _ the "hole" _ in conditions constituting solitary confinement for more than five hundred days in USP, and this lengthy and harsh pretrial detention was done at the direction of and with the knowledge of the four named defendants, F.P. Sam Samples ...

California Demands $1.6 Million In Diverted Telephone Revenues
From Private Prison Contractor

by John E. Dannenberg

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has charged private prison contractor Marantha Corrections LLC with "misappropriating" more than $1 million in telephone revenues at its 500 bed prison in Adelanto, California, and ordered CDC's contract with Marantha terminated "for cause," effective September 30, 2004.

CDC Director Jeanne Woodford stated in a June 29, 2004 letter to Marantha that Marantha was "either unwilling or unable" to account for the phone funds, and as a result, was in breach of its $8.1 million contract with CDC. CDC spokesperson Margot Bach noted the squabble was not over performance, safety or security issues, but solely with their contract. The disputed funds are the commissions from phone calls that are collected by Marantha which are supposed, to be turned over to the state's Inmate Telephone Revenue Fund.

According to CDC documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee , Marantha's Chief Executive Terry Moreland had blocked the state from auditing Marantha's phone fund account. Moreland argued that they were insulated from audit because the phone service had been provided by Marantha's "landlord." CDC found out that that "landlord" was just another ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

States strapped by tight budgets and pressed by a swell of prisoners are faced with the Hobson's choice of releasing prisoners early to ease overcrowding or building prisons they can ill afford to construct and staff. Private prison corporations seem to offer a third choice. They claim to be able to house the state's excess prisoners without the substantial outlay of capital required to build prisons and at a lower cost of incarceration than the government can manage.

How do private prison corporations achieve this miracle of modern capitalism? By running a much more efficient operation than is possible with moribund state bureaucracies say private prison proponents. Opponents of private prisons reply that the savings are achieved by locating prisons in distant states with distressed labor markets and cutting the number of employees, union busting, slashing employee salaries and benefits, and the quality and/or quantity of food, medical care, and programs offered prisoners, as well as by plain, old-fashioned cooking the books. Regardless of the quality of programs and services offered, relocating prisoners to prisons in distant states traumatizes them and their families, making communication and visitation difficult and expensive, if not impossible, and reducing one ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

On October 12, 2004, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) issued an extensive, 179-page After Action Report on the July 20, 2004, riot at the Crowley County Correctional Facility (CCCF) which is run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The report places most of the blame on CCA, citing understaffing, inexperienced staff, lack of staff training, and a delayed response to the initial prisoner disturbance as the main reasons the relatively minor disturbance grew into a major riot.

The most important recommendations in the report for CCCF are improved emergency plans and increased emergency procedures training, clarification of lines of authority and command structure, additional authority for local administrators, improving relationships with local law enforcement, renovating cells using more resilient construction materials, improving staffing, and reporting staff shortages to the DOC. Also recommended was more private prison monitors and giving the DOC the ability to make private prisons comply with Colorado DOC standards.

There were only 33 guards at the prison the day of the riot. This represents only one guard for every 33 of the prison's 1,122 prisoners and contrasts strongly with the DOC's ratio of one guard for every five prisoners. But it is ...

The City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has agreed to settle its part in a federal lawsuit over the death of a Native American prisoner in the Tulsa Jail. According to the November 7, 2003 settlement, the city will pay the man's family $200,000 and improve its police training program.

Shane Spencer, 27, was arrested by Tulsa police on the evening of October 24, 2001. Sometime after midnight a surveillance camera recorded police as they dragged the inebriated man into the jail and deposited his limp body face-down on the lobby floor. Left unattended by jail staff, he soon died. The troubled jail is operated on contract by the for profit Corrections Corporation of America.

As part of the settlement, police will be trained in how to recognize alcohol poisoning, and how to restrain intoxicated prisoners without suffocating them, said attorney Chris Davis, who represented the family.

"This is the result that we wanted," he said. "This case was never about the money. It was about making sure that what happened to Shane Spencer will never happen to anybody else."

Corrections Corporation of America, which operates the jail, was not part the settlement and is still a defendant in the lawsuit of. ...

CMS Must Pay $1.75 Million In Illinois Jail Suicide


by John E. Dannenberg

Correctional Medical Services (CMS), a private contractor providing all medical and mental health services at the Lake County, Ill. Jail, was ordered by a federal appeals court to pay a federal district court jury award of $250,000 ...

by Ken Kopczynski, 111 pp. 2004, Authorhouse, softbound

Reviewed by David M. Reutter

As the prison industrial complex has expanded, the privatization of prisons has increased. The pages of PLN have chronicled the mental and physical abuse, as well as medical neglect, suffered by those warehoused in privatized prisons. Private Capitol Punishment: The Florida Model provides a view of the other side of the coin: It details the escapades of officials employed by the State of Florida to oversee and monitor the state's private prisons.

Private Capitol Punishment is the true story of Ken Kopczynski's experiences in exposing the corruption and politics of Florida's private prison industry. While the officials Kopczynski exposed oversaw Florida's private prisons, he uncovered that they were players profiting from the worldwide push to privatize prisons.

The author, Ken Kopczynski, is a Legislative and Political Affairs Assistant for the Florida Police Benevolent Association (FPBA), the union which represents guards working for the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC). He also is the Executive Director of the Private Corrections Institute (PCI), established to educate the public about the for-profit private prison industry (www.CorrectionsInstitute.org). All profits from Private Capitol Punishment go to PCI.

While acting as a lobbyist for ...

by David M. Reutter

The Keys to Success report issued by the Vermont State Auditor on May 26, 2004, concludes the Vermont Department of Corrections' (VDOC) "failure to monitor its contracts with private companies and individuals has resulted in significant financial impacts, services that were paid for and not received, and, in some cases, serious reports of poor living conditions, substandard medical and dental care, and inadequate programming" for prisoners.

The October 7, 2003, suicide death of PLN contributing writer James Quigley at Vermont's Northwest State Correctional Facility erupted a firestorm of criticism that has caused a torrent of attention to be beamed on all aspects of VDOC. In March 2004, two New England lawyers, at the State's behest, issued an investigative report into the deaths of seven Vermont prisoners. [PLN, Sep. 2004]. The Auditor's review of VDOC contracts was requested by a number of legislators, prisoners, prisoner rights advocates, and the Vermont State Employees Association.

Since 2000, VDOC has entered into more than 100 contracts at a cost of more than $50 million to provide a wide variety of services to prisoners, from substance abuse counseling and having medical and mental health treatment. This is not the first time ...