County May Be Liable For Private Prison's Customs And Policies

by Bob Williams


The New Mexico federal district court has held that a county could potentially be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for the customs and policies of a private prison corporation to whom it had contracted the operation of its jail. Exhaustion of administrative remedies was also mandated.


Fernando Herrera, a temporary prisoner in the Santa Fe County Detention Center operated by Cornell Corrections, Inc., a private prison corporation, was threatened, shot three times in the head, side, and testicle with a pellet shotgun, then beaten and kicked by guards with one guard jumping on his head. Herrera had warned a county transport guard this would happen.


Herrera filed a § 1983 complaint against the County of Santa Fe, Cornell Corrections Inc., and several guards, raising Eighth Amendment use of excessive force and state law negligence claims. The district court denied the defendant's motion to dismiss but raised sua sponte the issue of exhausting administrative remedies.


In denying the defendant's motion to dismiss, the Court noted that only the warning to a transport guard could conceivably involve the county. The remaining claims were against Cornell and its employees. ...

The turbulent economy of the past decade has led many communities across America to foolishly seek prisons as a recession proof industry and rural welfare program for poor whites. But prisons can be a double edged sword, sometimes causing more problems than they solve. Private prisons can be especially duplicitous. Private prisons open and close at will as the need for bed space arises. While public prisons can do the same, powerful guard unions prevent that from occurring in all but the rarest of cases. Private prison guards are not unionized. Sayre, Oklahoma and Youngstown, Ohio are two towns that were lured by the seemingly easy money and extra jobs private prisons would bring. They ended up being burned by their own greed.


Sayre, Oklahoma


On April 23, 2000, a riot broke out at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Oklahoma, a private prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). One guard received 12 stitches to the head and spent six days in the hospital after seven prisoners allegedly beat and kicked him. The riot apparently began on the recreation yard and moved to the kitchen where another 15 prisoners caused roughly $12,000 in damage. All of the ...

It was not an earthshaking day when Cornell Corrections was founded in 1991. It was more like a pebble plummeting over a cliff, leading to a landslide of greed and corruption. Backed by Dillon Read Venture Capital, David Cornell's callous creation rose like cream to the top of the prison-building program.


Imprisoning citizens became popular business in the early 1990's. Companies like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) and Cornell were quick to take up the cause. CCA is the largest private prison company in the U.S. with fifty-nine facilities and nearly sixty-thousand prison and jail beds under its control. WCC maintains over forty-thousand prison and jail beds and employs about ten thousand people world wide. Cornell has fifty five prisons in twelve states and Washington D.C., holding around 13,000 prisoners.


Specializing in half-way houses and juvenile detention facilities, Cornell managed to corner close to seven percent of the private prison market. Only Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) rivaled Cornell in locking up adolescents.


For a while these merchants of human misery profited handsomely. But when the demand for prisons dwindled in the late 1990's their unscrupulous profits diminished like thirty pieces of silver in the hands of ...

by John E. Dannenberg


A Tarrant County, Texas jury awarded $35 million for negligence in the death of a boot camp prisoner, plus $5.1 million in punitive damages, against Florida-based Correctional Services Corp. (CSC) and their nurse Knyvett Reyes. The August 27, 2003 $40.1 million verdict was the largest known ...

Maybe it was cynical courtroom theatre, or maybe the attorney for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) believed it when he ridiculed the very idea that prison guards would retaliate against prisoners for conducting a hunger strike to protest their incarceration by the INS. In his closing for the defense ...

CCA Packs Positions With
High-Profile Politicians

by Michael Rigby


In an ongoing effort to make up for
what it lacks in prison management skills, Corrections Corporation of America continues to place high profile politicians with inside knowledge of state and federal prison systems in top positions within the company, sometimes even creating positions for them.


In December 2002, CCA announced the appointment of Thurgood Marshall Jr.son of late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshallto the company's Board of Directors and its newly created Nominating and Governance Committee. During the Clinton administration Marshall served as both Cabinet Secretary to the President and as Director of Legislative Affairs and Deputy Counsel to Vice President Al Gore. To accomodate the appointment, CCA expanded its Board of Directors from 10 to 11 positions.


CCA is also padding the company's ranks with state level politicians. In Tennessee, after the departure of Governor Sundquist's administration, CCA hired the state's former commissioner of Economic and Community Development, Tony Grande; commissioner of Human Services, Natasha Metcalf; and deputy to the governor for Health Policy, John Tighe. CCA, which is based in Nashville, placed all of them in vice-president level positions.


CCA's political posturing continues to be paying off. In ...

Two female prisoners were raped by
Santa Fe jail guards within a ninety-day period. Santa Fe guards have been implicated in at least eight sexual assaults since 1999. Two of the victims were-minors.


In April 2003, John Robertson, 39, was charged with two counts of second degree criminal sexual penetration of a 16-year-old female prisoner at the Santa Fe County Youth Detention Center. Jail officials from the juvenile facility declined to comment about the incident.


Most recently, an unnamed 39-year-old guard was accused of raping a female prisoner in the Santa Fe County Jail on June 13, 2003. Sheriff Greg Solano would say only that the case was "still under investigation..."


The victim was taken to St. Vincent Hospital but "due to circumstances surrounding the case, a rape kit was not done." As of June 17, 2003 no administrative action had been taken against the guard.


Substandard medical conditions at the Santa Fe County Detention Center (SFCDC) prompted federal investigators to declare that facility unconstitutional. Sanitary conditions caused such concern that Warden Cody Graham and Major Greg Lee were removed from their jobs. It was under these inhumane and insensitive conditions that Jimmy Villanueva died.


SFCDC is run by Utah ...

Private Transport Company Settles
Female Prisoner's Sexual Assault Suit


Extraditions International, Inc., now
defunct, and its successor company, American Extraditions, Inc., settled with a female prisoner who claimed she had been sexually harassed and sexually assaulted by a company guard during transport.


Robin Darbyshire, a 43 year-old female resident of Nevada was extradited to Routt County Jail in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Extraditions International handled the transport under contract to Routt County Jail. Darbyshire was in transit from May 13, 2001, through May 16, 2001, under supervision of guards Richard Almendarez and Darryl Hudnall. The trip passed through parts of five states. At the time of the trip, according to the complaint, the company lacked legally-required insurance and carrier permits. Further, Almendarez, who was armed, had been previously fired from a Texas prison for assaulting a prisoner and not reporting it


Darbyshire claimed that she was cuffed and shackled too tightly almost all of the trip by Almendarez. Her hands were numb from the cuffs. Her boots were cut by the shackles, and her abdomen was chafed raw by the belly chain. She also claims that Almendarez drove the van erratically at high speeds, hitting bumps so hard that prisoners were ...

Sentences Upheld for TransCor Driver
Who Raped and Terrorized Prisoners

by Matthew T. Clarke


A Texas court of appeals has upheld
a TransCor driver's two-year sentence for having sex with a prisoner and ten-year sentence for sexual assault of a female prisoner while terrorizing the other prisoners in the van.


Michael Jerome Edwards was a driver for TransCor America, a private prisoner transport company owned by Corrections Corporation of America. The victim was arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, on an outstanding warrant from Harris County, in Houston, Texas. On October 19, 1999, Edwards and David Jackson, another TransCor driver, were assigned to transport the victim to Harris County in a van. The van was divided into three screened off areas with 8" x 8" portholes for feeding the prisoners.


All of the prisoners in the van were handcuffed and shackled with a chain running from the handcuffs to the shackles. Three prisoners and the victim of the sexual assault were in the van. During the trip, Edwards inserted a gun in the victim's vagina. Together with Jackson, Edwards (1) pulled to the side of the road and threatened to shoot all the prisoners in a mock escape; (2) performed "screen ...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a part-time
contract physician was not acting under color of state law for purposes of
§ 1983 when treating a prisoner. Plaintiff Quincy West, a North Carolina
state prisoner, brought § 1983 action against the Governor, the prison
director and Samuel Atkins, M.D. who, acting under contract with the
state, treated a tear to West's left achilles tendon. West alleged the
treatment was inadequate and that this violated his Eighth Amendment right
to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. A U.S. district court
granted defendants' motion for summary judgment. On prisoner's appeal, the
Fourth Circuit affirmed in part and remanded in part, West v. Atkins, 799
F.2d 923 (4th Cir. 1986). On subsequent appeal, the Fourth Circuit held:
1) According to prior case law, prison physician working under contract
with the state could not be acting under color of state law for purposes
of § 1983. 2) With respect to the other two defendants, their "personal
involvement" had no relevance without assertion of facts showing that they
were authorized to overrule the physicians treatment decisions. [This case
eventually went to the U.S Supreme Court]. See: West v. Atkins, ...