CCA Guard is "Public Official" Under Bribery Statute

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a prison guard's bribery conviction, finding that he was a "public official" for purposes of the federal bribery statute.

Shannon Thomas was employed as a guard at a private prison in Texas, owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, (CCA). He performed the same duties and had the same responsibilities as a federal prison guard.

Charged with bringing cigarettes to detainees in exchange for money, Thomas was indicted for accepting a bribe in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(2). He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that he was not a "public official" under § 201(b)(2). The district court denied the motion and Thomas entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving the right to appeal the "public official" issue. He was sentenced to 60 months probation and fined $2,000.

On appeal, Thomas renewed his argument that he was not a § 201(b)(2) "public official". The Court observed that it had never addressed the scope of § 201(b)(2) "public officials" but that several other courts had concluded that persons with duties similar to Thomas' were "public officials." The Court found, for purposes of the federal bribery ...

On July 6, 2001, hundreds of Indiana state prisoners held at the Otter Creek Correctional Complex in Wheelwright, Kentucky, rioted. The prison is owned and operated by the private, for profit, Corrections Corporation of America. The riot lasted nine hours and involved prisoners throwing televisions, sinks and toilets out of windows and burning clothes, bedding and mattresses. No one was seriously injured but the remote mountain prison was extensively damaged.

Indiana prison officials said the riot, which began in a recreation area and then spread, was "under investigation" and three prisoners suspected of "prompting the disturbance" have been moved back to Indiana. No reason or motive for the uprising was given in media accounts.

On July 12, 2001, CCA announced the prison warden, William Wolford, had been fired and on July 14, Wolford's top assistant, David Carrol, was also fired. The reason for the firing were unspecified "various policy violations." The firings came shortly after Indiana prison officials met with CCA officials. During the uprising, 75 Kentucky state police troopers and 15 Floyd county sheriff's deputies surrounded the prison to prevent escapes.

Source: Lexington Herald Leader.

by Bill Trine, esq.

A§ 1983 civil rights lawsuit and medical/healthcare negligence lawsuit was brought by the mother of 54 year old Michael Lewis, who died on May 7, 1998, after being placed on a "restrainer board" while incarcerated as a pre-trial detainee at the El Paso County Criminal Justice ...

Across the nation, states are plagued by a shortage of prison guards. A decade of building prisons has created an industry that employs more people than General Electric, and costs taxpayers in excess of $40 billion a year. To fill the shortage Kansas recently lowered the age requirements for prison guards from 21 to 19. Alabama lowered its minimum age to 20, but is still short 412 guards. After losing 57 percent of last year's recruits, Oklahoma is considering lowering the minimum age from 21 to 18. Corrections spokesman John Hamm noted that while the state hired 180 guards last year 240 quit. Arkansas had a turnover rate of 42 percent.

Some experts question the wisdom of lowering age requirements. "You'd be hard pressed to find much support in the community for hiring 19-year-olds," says Kenny Wild, a state representative from Kansas. George Camp, co-president of the Criminal Justice Institute says, "Every state is really being affected in one way or another." He cites low wages and proximity to the workplace as two key factors responsible for the shortage.

Oklahoma is struggling against a 20 percent vacancy, and overtime pay has gone through the roof. But the $16,742 a year ...

Over 650 prisoners engaged in an apparently spontaneous protest at a Federal prison in New Mexico. On Monday, April 13, 2001, prisoners at the Cibola County Correctional Center congregated in the recreation yard and refused to leave. The assembly began as usual at 7:45 a.m., but at 8:00, when the call-out for work and school began, no one budged. They remained in the yard until 9:30 P.M. when they were forcibly removed. The Cibola facility is one of several federal prisons operated by the Correctional Corporation of America, a private prison conglomerate with facilities worldwide.

A special response team, composed of members from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the New Mexico Sheriff's department, was called to the scene. For 10 minutes, members of the combined task force bombarded unresisting prisoners with tear gas. After subduing them, guards proceeded to handcuff each of the prisoners.

No guards or prisoners were reported injured. Steve Owen, Director of Marketing for CCA, said the prisoners involved were peaceful and nonviolent. Captain Thomas of the State Police said, "The special response team tear gassed inmates because they were not complying with orders to lie down. & All day long they were not complying with ...

Hawaii officials found a prison "in turmoil" while inspecting a Florence, Arizona prison where about 560 Hawaii prisoners are being warehoused. The prison is operated by Nashville based Corrections Corporation of America.

An inspection of the prison conducted in April 2001 by a team of two men and two women was unable to access all areas of the prison because of the potential for violence, according to state reports obtained by the Honolulu Advertiser . The April report stated that tours of the prisoner housing units, recreational areas, prison industries facilities, prisoner work programs, library, visitation area, and chaplain's area were not conducted "due to the hostile environment in the prison."

The desert prison, located 45 miles southeast of Phoenix, was described in the April 30, 2001, report as a "facility in turmoil" with lax security conditions, widespread drug use, and domination by members of a prison gang known as the United Samoan Organization (USO). The USO was described in reports as Hawaii's first bona fide prison gang in nearly 20 years. Gang members were allegedly involved in attacks on prisoners and guards, drug trafficking, and having sex with female INS detainees held at the Florence prison.

Two Hawaii prisoners ...

Ten Washington, D.C., prison guards were charged with conspiracy to smuggle cash and twoway pagers to prisoners in federal indictments unsealed April 31, 2001. The guards, nine of whom work for Corrections Corporation of America, a private company operating the Correctional Treatment Facility in Southeast Washington, were caught in an FBI sting, according to the Washington Post .

The indictments signaled the end of a twoyear federal investigation into corruption at the private prison. Federal prosecutors said the guards accepted hundreds of dollars from an undercover FBI agent posing as a friend of several prisoners. The guards then smuggled the cash and twoway pagers into CTF and delivered them to prisoners.

Unlike previous scandals involving D.C. corrections, these smuggling charges did not involve drugs. When the guards handed over the contraband to certain prisoners, who cooperated in the government sting, the FBI confiscated it. Prisoners are allowed neither cash nor unrestricted electronic communication devices at the facility.

Those charged were Donald Edwards, 44, of Southeast Washington; Henry Hayes, 43, of Temple Hills; Aric Mack, 29, of Capitol Heights; Jonathan Mason, 31, of Oxon Hill; Anthony McLeod, 42, of Temple Hills; Cornelius Minor, 43, of Suitland; Ken Moore, 43, of Southeast ...

Mississippi Taxpayers Fund Welfare Payments To Private Prisons

by Ronald A. Young

Mississippi taxpayers will pay about $6 million a year to private and regional prisons for "ghost inmates" under a bill the legislature approved on March 26, 2001. The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) funding bill includes a provision to subsidize the regional and private facilities despite the absence of need of such facilities.

The provision will raise the number of prisoners at ten regional prisons from 200 to a new contracted amount of 230 and provides for 900 prisoners at the Delta Correctional Facility in Greenwood and the Marshall County Correctional Facility, both private prisons. The Delta prison is owned and operated by Nashvillebased Corrections Corporation of America, while Floridabased Wackenhut Corrections Corporation operates the Marshall County prison.

The state doesn't have the prisoners to fulfill the obligations under the bill, Corrections Commissioner Robert Johnson said. Taxpayers will pay about $2 million a year to private prisons and $4 million to regional prisons for what have been termed "ghost inmates," according to Johnson. "I guess that's where the old saying `politics makes strange bedfellows' comes from," he said. "Anytime you find a group of Mississippi legislators agreeing to ...

A federal district court in Oklahoma has denied summary judgment against a pretrial detainee's failure to protect and deliberate indifference to medical needs claims.

On September 5, 1995, John Winton was booked into the Tulsa County Jail on shooting charges that were later dismissed. Twelve days later he complained about the jail's feeding procedures which often resulted in food being stolen by other prisoners. He was told by guards to file a grievance which he did that same day. That evening, dinner was served in a different manner due to the filing of the grievance.

Several hours later, Winton, who is Caucasian, was pulled from his top bunk by several black prisoners and landed on his head. From there he was beaten and kicked. Later, Winton was removed and taken to a medical cell where he was seen the following day by a nurse contracted from Wexford Regional Medical Center. He was diagnosed with multiple abrasions and contusions, a cerebral contusion, a subdural hematoma, a basilar skull fracture with conductive hearing loss, a wrist fracture that required surgery, and a dislocated shoulder.

Winton and his wife filed a §1983 suit against the Board of Commissions of Tulsa County (the County), ...

by Brigette Sarabi and Edwin Bender

The popularity of the term "prison-industrial complex" in recent years, and especially since the groundbreaking Critical Resistance conference in Berkeley in September 1998, has produced a few critics who wonder if "prison-industrial complex" is an accurate description of today's prison/policing/judicial apparatuses.

The debate centers on whether analogies to the military-industrial complex are useful. Some argue that the MIC is so much larger, both in real dollars and as a percentage of the GDP, that the PIC pales in comparison. Others point out that those MIC expenditures paid for a standing army, bases around the world, a huge research and development budget which allowed for the post-WWII expansion of U.S. higher education and spun off hundreds of non-military industries, and industries for aircraft and computers which employed tens of thousands of high-paid engineers and unionized assembly workers. The PIC, in comparison, generates relatively little economic activity outside the prisons themselves.

But for all those differences, it appears that the MIC and PIC do have at least one thing in common: a breakneck expansion fueled by private corporations and public bureaucracies intent on growth. And growth for the PIC has meant more felonies, longer sentences and ...