Court orders have forced Alabama to reduce the number of prisoners in its county jails and send half of its prison population to two other states. Until recently the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) had crammed 28,000 prisoners into cell-space designed to hold half that many.

On June 27, 2003 the Birmingham News reported that overcrowding in county jails had become so intolerable that Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Sashy ordered officials to cut their populations. The Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women was placed under preliminary injunction after being cited for Eighth Amendment violations by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. (PLN Sept. 2003) Violations, according to Judge Myron Thompson, showed that Tutwiler was overcrowded, understaffed, inadequately ventilated and a generally dangerous place to live.

Meanwhile at the capitol, lawmakers scurried to approve an emergency package for the survival of the state's prison system after being threatened with a special session by Governor Bob Riley. The $25 million package was literally an eleventh-hour deal, approved minutes before midnight, at the end of the regular session, on June 18, 2003.

Politicians pouted and grumbled but Prison Commissioner Donal Campbell insists that funding was vital. Without the ...

Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft claimed private probation companies have "created a nightmare" in the Memphis, Tennessee probation system. Judge Craft, who is also chairman of the Private Probation Services Council, said that probation companies currently charge probationers fees "that frankly are not justified" and use probationers for "pet projects that benefit the companies." His assessment concludes that the current system is a hotbed for fraud, conflicts of interest, extortion and accuses operators of basically accepting bribes for not revoking probation.

"Drug addicts need to be turned around but instead are being hit up for money," Craft says. He also presented a 13-page proposal to the Legislature's Corrections Oversight Committee which cited other questionable practices including: a court clerk who used his position to supply clients to a spouse's private prison company; a Memphis private probation company where 2 employees oversee 1,100 probationers; and probation companies owned by convicted felons.

Some of the private companies charged probationers $35 for drug tests that only cost $15. They would then charge $100 for a second test. Some companies would charge a $25 "non-reporting fee" which allowed probationers to call in periodically rather than report.

Craft fears that judges are placed in a ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

Cotulla, a south Texas town known or the illegal drug-sting convictions of a quarter of its African-American citizens, now has a new claim to infamy -- private prison scams. Cotulla, population 3,000, is the county seat of LaSalle County. In June, 2000, self-proclaimed and unlicensed prison consultant Rick Reyes talked the LaSalle County CommissionersRay Landrum, Albert Aguero, Domingo Martinez, Roberto Aldaco and former County Judge Jimmy P. Pattersoninto issuing a $2 million bond to renovate a 48-bed Cotulla jail before selling it to the private sector. The renovation contract went to Louisiana-based Emerald Correctional Management and Reyes pocketed 3%. Reyes then talked the commissioners into endorsing a plan to build a privately-run, 1,000-bed INS prison. Later, he proposed the issuing of $22 million in bonds for construction of a 500-bed, privately-run U.S. Marshals Service prison in Encinal.

To shield the county from liability, Reyes proposed creating a shell corporation, the LaSalle County Public Facilities Detention Corporation (LCPFDC), appointing the commissioners as directors and issuing the bonds. This allowed a poor county with a monthly budget of $180,000 to issue $22 million in bonds and spend the money it raised. The 10% - 12% interest rate bonds ...

District of Columbia May Be Liable
for Prisoner's Inadequate Medical Care

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reversing and remanding the district court, held that a D.C. prisoner incarcerated in a Virginia state prison stated a claim for relief when he alleged that the district had a custom or policy of transferring its prisoners to corrections departments it knew provided substandard medical care.

Todd Emerson Baker is a prisoner serving a D.C. sentence. The district contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and various state corrections departments to house its prisoners. Baker was transferred to the Greenville Correctional Center (GCC), a prison of the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC), where Corrections Medical Service (CMS) provides health care under contract to VDOC.

Baker sued the District of Columbia, BOP officials, GCC officials, and six medical personnel, including some CMS doctors, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, state common law, and the Interstate Corrections Compact. He claimed that prison medical staff committed malpractice and violated his Eighth Amendment rights by deliberately ignoring, misdiagnosing, and failing to treat appropriately an infected facial cyst that ruptured and a leg injury that tore cartilage. He sued in federal district court in ...

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 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 its 50 percent ...

A groundswell of prisoner litigation is taking aim at states to force them to comprehensively and meaningfully address HCV in prison. These suits, often brought as class actions, seek to mandate a protocol for HCV detection and treatment that satisfies Eighth Amendment guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment.


New Jersey and Michigan contract their state prison medical program to for-profit Correctional Medical Services, Inc. (CMS), based in St. Louis, Missouri. The tension of this arrangement is obvious: states seek to fix costs of prisoner healthcare by making it a per-body commodity like food, thereby distancing themselves from day-to-day responsibility of providing constitutionally adequate medical care, while CMS hopes to maximize its profits by providing the least healthcare it can get away with. The result is that unless prisoners sue CMS, they and the community they return to with their untreated diseases become powerless victims.


Accordingly, two suits were filed in New Jersey and Michigan, sounding in 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131 et seq., seeking injunctive relief to provide constitutionally responsible care and damages where it has been denied. Walter Bennett and three other named New Jersey prisoner plaintiffs sued CMS ...

Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization & Human Rights

Edited by Andrew Coyle, Allison Campbell, & Rodney Neufeld,Clarity Press, Inc;

Zed Books (2003) 234 pp. Softback

Review by Mark Wilson


Proponents of prison privatization argue that for-profit prisons make good sense, "promis[ing] reduced costs to governments, better and more cost-effective services to prisoners and increased security for people living in communities where prisons are located." Capitalist Punishment, however, paints a starkly different picture, providing overwhelming evidence that "[p]rison corporations have not lived up to their promises. They have not saved governments substantial amounts of money, nor have they proven to be more secure. Instead, they have contributed to an unacceptable level of neglect and violence against [prisoners] and detainees, diminished rights for the guards and other employees, a risk to the community, and are set to be a heavy burden for the public purse over many years in those countries which have experimented with them."


Capitalist Punishment's diverse and impressive array of contributors leave no stone unturned in their exploration of the flaws and failures of for-profit prisons and jails. They address the history, politics, and economics of massive prison expansion and private sector involvement in America and abroad, discussing privatization experiments ...

Prisons Nationwide Fail To Treat HCV Epidemic

by John E. Dannenberg


The JeopardyTM answer is: "The national average treatment rate for HCV-infected prisoners." The winning question is: "What is approximately 1%?"


With HCV [Hepatitis-C] infection rates in state prisons nationwide estimated at between 16 and 41%, state prisoners account for almost one-third of the 4.5 million total people in the United States infected with this often fatal disease. But because the annual treatment cost per prisoner runs $25-$35,000, and states are loathe to pump money into prison health care, HCV is transformed from a dirty little secret inside the walls into a national epidemic, as 1.3 million contagious and untreated prisoners are unceremoniously dumped back into the communities each year. Worse yet, because HCV testing is not mandatory, many carry the virus outside unknowingly only to infect others from blood contamination during injuries, body piercing, tattooing, sharing needles and unprotected sex.


HCV, a blood borne virus that often runs its fatal course in 10-20 years, can infect a person without showing outward symptoms for much of this period. It is frequently only detected during routine blood tests when liver enzymes appear abnormal. Yet throughout the entire time of infection, one ...

Florida Work Release Prisoners Ripped Off
by Private Transport Company

by David M. Reutter


In response to a new law, effective Oc-tober 1, 2003, that prohibited state prisoners from driving state vehicles, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) hurriedly entered into a no bid contract with Sunshine Transportation to transport its work release prisoners to and from their employment.


FDOC's work release programs allow prisoners to work up to twelve months in the community before they are released. While in the program, prisoners live in minimum security dormitories in the community. In turn, they contribute 45% of their income to pay the FDOC for their housing costs and ten percent goes to a personal savings account to be given to them upon their release. The transportation costs charged by Sunshine Transportation were automatically deducted from whatever wages were left.


Sunshine Transportation refused to take the contract unless it was guaranteed a minimum number of prisoner passengers. The company was chosen because it was the only company that agreed to provide van service statewide. To facilitate the contract, FDOC officials sent letters to all local work release programs "encouraging" them to sign the agreement with Sunshine Transportation. Local officials then told ...

The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the U.S. District Court (New Jersey) on its dismissal of a pretrial detainee's state law medical malpractice claims and summary judgment for jail defendants of the detainee's claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and 1983.


Daniel Natale was arrested by Gloucester Township police on November 23, 1997. Natale, an insulin-dependent diabetic, was taken to an area hospital for medical evaluation. A hospital physician gave Natale insulin and noted that he "must have insulin" while incarcerated.


During booking at the Camden County Correctional Facility (CCCF), Natale was seen by employees of Prison Health Services (PHS), a private company providing health care services at CCCF. Natale informed PHS employees that he was insulin-dependant. A PHS nurse noted this on Natale's chart, but no one investigated how much insulin Natale needed or at what frequency.


Natale received no more insulin until twenty-one hours later, on November 25, 2003. He was released from CCCF later that day. Two days later he suffered a stroke. Natale and his wife sued PHS and CCCF in state court under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and 1983, and under New Jersey state medical malpractice law. The defendants removed the case to ...