The apparatus of repression provides frequent examples of the corruption endemic to late capitalism. It is hugely expensive, miniminaly accountable, and has no clear product by which to gauge its performance. Military fraud and waste are cliche. Endless police scandals regularly crop up around the country. The prisonindustrial complex is no exception. Why, for example, should a forprofit prison get an $8.1 million subsidy at the expense of impoverished city schools? Why should a jail cell cost $180,000? The jailing of Northeast Ohio's V Group, a cabal of companies owned by Paul Voinovich, brother of former Republican governor and now U. S. senator George Voinovich, suggests some answers.

The Dayton Daily News describes the V Group as "a Cleveland based architectural and construction management business". In August, 1995, the Group brought the City of Youngstown and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) together to build CA's 1500bed Northeast Ohio Correctional Facility. According to CCA vice president David Meyers, the V Group also negotiated a property tax abatement for the prison and oversaw construction. Philip Hamilton, a former V Group lobbyist with close ties to both Paul and George Voinovich, was hired as a CCA lobbyist to facilitate the deal. An agreement ...

Students from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, declared victory August 14, 2000 in a two month struggle to keep a catering company with ties to the forprofit prison industry from taking over the school's food service contract.

In July, school administrators announced that the college was in final negotiations with Sodexho Marriott Services over a 710 year contract. However, those negotiations broke down after a student group called "Not With Our Money" threatened to organize a boycott of school cafeterias.

Evergreen is the latest in a series of confrontations between SodexhoMarriott and college students, who say the company's violation of workers' rights and financial ties with scandalridden Corrections Corporation of America make it an unfit provider of campus dining services.

SodexhoMarriott's parent corporation, the Parisbased Sodexho Alliance, is a major stockholder in CCA, the worlds largest forprofit imprisonment corporation. Evergreen professor Peter Bohmer is convinced that student and faculty objections to the SodexhoCCA connection killed the contract."

"A large part of the Evergreen faculty, students and staff at this college find it morally reprehensible to buy food from a corporation so closely connected to the use of prisoners for profit. This victory is 100 percent due to student organizing, ...

Bowing to pressure from angry U.S. and Canadian student activists, Paris based Sodexho Alliance (SA) announced plans to sell its 8 percent stake in Corrections Corporation of America, as soon as CCA completes a corporate restructuring.

But in a statement released October 9, 2000. Not With Our Money! a coalition of student activists opposed to prison profiteering, expressed skepticism about the company's pledge and called on Sodexho to divest itself of all private prison holdings (including recently acquired U.K. Detention Services and Corrections Corporation of Australia) by April 1, 2001.

SA's North American subsidiary, SodexhoMarriott Services has been the target of protests on 50 of the 500 colleges and universities where the company operates dining hails and snack shops. At four campuses State University of NY at Albany, Evergreen State College (WA), Goucher College (MD) and James Madison University (VA) the protests have cost the company lucrative dining service contracts. SA's chairman, Pierre Bellon, acknowledge the student protests in a press release announcing the company's plans to sell off CCA stock.

"Today, we face a challenge in North America over the issue of forprofit prisons," Bellon said. "A handful of activists have called into question the integrity of Sodexho Alliance ...

Correctional Medical Services (CMS) contracts with the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) to provide medical care to some of its 30,000 prisoners. In a 13-month period starting in January 1999 the VDOC levied nearly $1 million in fines against CMS for failing to live up to its contract, according to a Virginia state auditor's report.

From July 1998 to December 1999, the state of Virginia paid CMS $28 million to provide medical services at six of the state's prisons. The fines were levied for violations such as poor record keeping, failing to triage prisoners correctly (i.e. denying medical treatment to some prisoners), failing to properly assess prisoners' medical conditions and failure to provide timely referrals.

The company was fined $162,471 during the four month period from October 1999 to January 2000 for deficiencies cited at just one "supermax" facility, Wallens Ridge State Prison. State auditor Walter J. Kucharski noted that CMS failed to provide Wallens Ridge prisoners with a dentist for three months and has never had an optometrist on duty there, resulting in more than 130 prisoners awaiting eye-care services.

In the report released in July 2000, Kucharski urged the state to increase its fines against CMS: "It tray ...

By Matthew T. Clarke

A federal district court in Illinois has dismissed the breach of medical care duty suit of a suicide prisoner's estate against Correctional Medical Services of Illinois (CMS), but encouraged the refilling of the suit in state court.

Ethel Hare was an Illinois prisoner at the Kane County Adult Correctional Center (the jail). When admitted to the jail, Hare was HIV positive and suffering from chronic liver disease, liver cirrhosis, and Hepatitis B and C. The sheriff had contracted with CMS to provide prisoner medical services at the jail.

Five months after being arrested, Hare complained of stomach ailments. She was seen by a jail doctor, who ordered her transferred to a hospital. She remained at the hospital for two days, suffering from abnormal coagulation, and was diagnosed with portal hypertension with ascites, jaundice, coagulopathy, HIV, and Hepatitis B and C. Upon release, the hospital physician noted that Hare should be closely monitored, continue her medications, receive a post-release follow up and have her chemistries monitored.

Hare's condition was initially stable. She saw a jail doctor who noted she was still slightly jaundiced and had been scratching her abdomen. Two days later, she began vomiting. She was ...

The U.S. court of appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a privately employed prison physician was ineligible to claim qualified immunity. Disputed material facts surrounding his response to a prisoner's serious medical condition also precluded summary judgment on the merits.

In June 1995, Fitzgerald Hinson was a prisoner in the DeKalb County (GA) jail when he blew out an Achilles tendon playing basketball. On January 11,1996, he had surgery to repair the injury, but seven months later he was still in a wheelchair and wearing a hospital gown. By then, atrophy had set in.

At time, Roderick Edmond was the jail medical director. He was employed by Wexford Health Service, a for-profit entity that had contracted with the county to provide medical services to jail prisoners. Edmond was in charge of overseeing and implementing health care at the jail, and Wexford had sole responsibility in all matters of medical judgment.

After surgery, Hinson received little or no follow-up care, leading to the atrophy. Even after he was examined by Edmond on August 26, 1996, the first documented consult for therapy was not written until November 7th. Although Hinson began a program of rehabilitation at a local hospital the following ...

In 1998 senior officials of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DORC) were convinced that outsourcing prison food service would be the next great leap forward for Ohio penology. So they bid out a contract for private firms to provide food service at the Noble Correctional Institution. Of the two bids submitted, from ARAMARK Correctional Services of Oakbrook, Ill., and Canteen Corp. of Chicago, ARAMARK's was the lowest.

Commencing October 1, 1998, ARAMARC purchased, cooked, and dished out the food served to Noble's 2,500 captive consumers. The contract specified that ARAMARC was to be paid from $1.24 to $1.27 for each meal it served. That number was to be calculated from an exact count of convicts who ate at each breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Almost immediately problems with the contract began. The profit-conscious ARAMARC served precisely measured food portions that were "substantially smaller' than those received by convicts of other state prisons, admitted Gary C. Mohr, DORC's deputy director for administration.

Within weeks Noble's then-warden Thomas Haskins and other Noble employees began complaining to officials at DORC headquarters that ARAMARK's small portions presented a big problem. Grumbling by prisoners could escalate into a riot, they warned.

Senior DORC officials ...

On February 22, 2000, Tarrant County, Texas agreed to pay a $100,000 settlement to the estate of James Livingston, 30, to settle a wrongful death suit. On July 6, 1999, Livingston was arrested on a trespassing warrant. He was allegedly abusive while being booked into the Tarrant county jail. As ...

By W. Wisely

Racial brawling broke out between black and Latino prisoners at Victor Valley Community Correctional Facility March 1, 2000. Six prisoners were sent to hospitals near the Adelanto, California, medium security private prison operated by Marantha Private Corrections LLC.

Fighting began at 7:00 P.M. and allegedly ended a few minutes later, Angela Valles, Assistant Facility Director, told the Associated Press. However, the Adelanto Police Department reported rioting continued at 9:30 P.M. An hour and a half later, heavily armed guards from another prison nearby arrived as reinforcements.

The 500 man for-profit prison houses mostly non-violent parole violators. Emphasis there is on rehabilitation, and spokespersons deny any serious problems. Yet, in October, 1998, racial violence broke out between some 50 prisoners, injuring three.

Five of the 10 to 15 men involved in the latest incident were expected to be transferred to Lancaster prison, according to Valles. The facility was locked-down pending an investigation. "So they can't talk to each other. That way we can investigate the incident," said Larry Kositsin, director of counseling.

Trying to downplay the situation, Valles said she wasn't sure what started the fighting, adding it may have been racial tension. "There was no riot," she ...

Gordon Flud's April 12, 2000, escape from a Hinton, Oklahoma rent-a-jail didn't end well for him--or for his prison. Flud, 44, jumped fences, avoided razor wire and climbed down the Great Plains Correctional Facility administration building's rainspout in his bid for freedom. But that freedom lasted only seconds, as guards nabbed him in the parking lot.

Call it the $300,000 escape. That's what the Oklahoma Department of Corrections did when it slapped the private prison's operators with a $304,375 penalty for alleged security breaches that allowed the escape to occur.

The 812-bed lockup is owned by The Hinton Economic Development Authority and operated by Cornell Corrections Inc. The penalty for Flud's escape, which DOC officials plan to withhold from Great Plains' state contract, is the largest assessed against an Oklahoma private prison.

The second largest was a $168,750 forfeiture levied against the same prison in March 2000 for not meeting medical service obligations [see related article below]. The $300,000-plus penalty amounts to roughly nine or ten days of free rent for the state, which pays Great Plains $43.95 a day for each of the approximately 715 prisoners housed in the for-profit lockup.

"It's very exorbitant and unreasonable and, for the ...