Sodexho-Marriot is a huge transnational corporation mainly consisting of hotel and food service operations. Marriott Dining Services, a subsidiary of Sodhexo- Marriott, operates the American University Tavern on the Washington D.C. campus of AU.

On February 15, 2000, a hip-hop concert was booked at the Tavern by AU Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). The show, "No More Prisons," was scheduled to coincide with many other events held around the country to protest the U.S. prison and jail population reaching two million, which had been estimated to occur on or about that date.

But a few minutes before the show was supposed to begin, AU SSDP vice president Dave Epstein announced from the stage that the management staff of the Tavern would not allow the show to happen.

Earlier that day AU and George Washington University's chapters of SSDP held an anti-drug war vigil in front of the U.S. Capitol. At the Tavern, several representatives from both AU's and GW's SSDP, as well as the Drug Reform Coordination Network, were distributing pamphlets outlining the increased cost of imprisonment and the decrease in spending on education.

"We had a hip-hop show planned," Epstein told a packed house from the stage of ...

On November 14, 1999, hundreds of prisoners housed at a privately operated prison in Taft, California, rioted in protest over conditions, according to The Bakersfield Californian. Prisoners at the Wackenhut Corrections run facility broke windows, televisions, and furniture causing some $60,000 in damage at the two year old prison in the state's Central Valley. The prison houses federal minimum and medium custody prisoners.

A special team of prison guards fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and sting grenades into a group of some 800 prisoners who refused to lock up in a protest about food and other conditions. Some 100 guards, including two 25-man special response teams, were called in to confront the prisoners. After the prisoners were gassed, they returned to their dorms. "That had the effect we intended," said Associate Warden Kevin Belt. Wackenhut downplayed the reasons for the protest, but prisoners had a different story.

Nathaniel Osuorji, responding to the one-sided newspaper coverage of the riot, wrote that Wackenhut's "prison for profit" at Taft was built only to make money, rather than providing basic services to prisoners. Osuoriji said prison management lacked the "basic concept or regards for [prisoner's] rights." He points out that the Taft private prison ...

On November 30, 1999, Wisconsin state prison officials were touring the Whiteville Correctional Facility (WCF) in Tennessee. The prison is operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and houses 1,500 Wisconsin prisoners.

Just minutes after WCF warden Percy Pitzer led an entourage headed by Wisconsin corrections chief Jon Litscher through the prison's dining hall, about 50 Wisconsin prisoners took 15 CCA kitchen workers hostage and seized control of the chow hall.

SORTs, Special Operations Response Teams, from two nearby CCA prisons joined the WCF SORT team in quelling the disturbance. Also involved were members of the Whiteville and Bolivar police departments, and Hardeman County Sheriff's deputies. Although not directly involved in retaking the prison, the Tennessee Highway Patrol had eight cars at the scene, and its Special operations Division was on standby. After a two-hour standoff, the police and SORT teams stormed and retook the prison using tear gas.

"We were hoping we could outwait them and get them to calm down," Whiteville Police Chief Billy Henson told the (Memphis) Commercial Appeal. "But then they started beating some of the staff."

Warden Pitzer downplayed the damage to the facility. But police chief Henson said the dining hall was badly damaged. ...

In 1992 Bureau of Prisons (BOP) em- ployee Steven McPeek quietly settled a sexual harassment complaint he leveled against then-BOP director J. Michael Quinlan, according to recently filed court papers. McPeek alleged in his 1992 complaint that Quinlan made sexual advances beginning in August 1990 while they traveled together on government business.

Quinlan resigned as director of the prisons bureau two months after McPeek's sexual harassment claim was settled, a move BOP officials attributed to "health problems." At the time, Quinlan was also being investigated on suspicion of trying to silence a federal prisoner who was about to go public with claims that the prisoner sold marijuana to then-vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle in the 1970's.

After retiring from the BOP, Quinlan joined the management team of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). McPeek was re-assigned to another job within the Department of Justice (DOJ).

But McPeek now alleges that the terms of the 1992 settlement, which required that the complaint remain confidential and that there would be no retaliation against him, were breached by DOJ officials who used the information in a subsequent "campaign of retaliation" against him. He now seeks $800,000 in damages, alleging that his DOJ supervisors and ...

On February 27, 1999, a Baldwin county superior court jury in Georgia awarded prisoner Stephanie Stitt $600,000 in damages in a medical neglect suit against Correctional Medical Systems (CMS). Stitt fell and injured her back while playing volleyball at the Baldwin State Prison. The Georgia Department of Corrections has contracted ...

DOJ Investigates CMS Health Care At Missouri Prison

by Michael Rigby


Allegations of improper medical treat-ment, lack of medical treatment, and several suspicious deaths at the Women's Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, a state women's prison in Vandalia, Missouri, has prompted an investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Health care services at the prison are provided by Correctional Medical Services (CMS).


Death is no stranger at the Vandalia prison. On March 23, 2003, Crystal Smith was found unresponsive in her cell. She was later pronounced dead. Her sister, Angela Smith Hynes, voiced concerns that Smith may have been denied needed medications.


On July 2, 2003, Vandalia prisoner Al'Deana Simmons, 33, was pronounced dead after she was discovered unconscious. Prison officials told her mother, Virginia Terry, that she had choked on her breakfast; however, the death certificate listed the cause of death as a ruptured aneurysm. Terry said that her daughter had been complaining about poor health care at the prison in her letters and phone calls home. Simmons called home the day before she died. "She said her head was sizzling and that she was going blind," said Terry. "The prison doctor ...

Two separate state court class action lawsuits have challenged the excessive phone rates charged to people who accept collect calls from New Mexico state prisoners. The first lawsuit, Valdez v. Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, was filed on December 30, 1999, in Rio Arriba district court. The plaintiffs have family members imprisoned in private prisons or jails run by Wackenhut, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Cornell Corrections and Correctional Services Corporation (CSC). Private prisons hold about 30% of all state prisoners in New Mexico and numerous jail detainees. The defendants in the suit include the private prison companies and their employees. The phone service provider defendants are Evercom Systems, Inc. and PCS America, Inc.

The plaintiffs claim that the private prison companies have exclusive contracts whereby prisoners can only place collect calls using the services of the phone service provider defendants, who in turn pay hefty kickbacks to the prison companies in exchange for the contracts. This arrangement prevents the use of competitive services or lower rates by either the prisoner or the people who accept collect calls from them.

The plaintiffs claim that these exclusive contracts and the resulting kickbacks violate the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, NMSA 1978, § 57-12-1, ...

Two suits were filed against Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) in less than a week. On April 15, 2003 the family of Iulai Amani sued CCA and the state of Hawaii for "wrongful conduct" resulting in Amani's death. The lawsuit came exactly two years from the date Amani died in the Florence Correctional Center (FCC) in Arizona.


A week earlier Victoriano Ortiz also sued CCA and the state of Hawaii for a severe beating he received at the hands of gang members in FCC. Both incidents occurred less than a week apart; both men were transfer prisoners from Hawaii, being housed in the private prison.


Amani, then 24, died of a heart attack induced by a drug overdose when packets of methamphetamine he had swallowed burst open in his stomach. Amani was a member of the United Samoan Organization (USO) which, at the time of his death, had complete control of the CCA prison.


USO took over the Florence prison on September 12, 2000 "during a riot for power," investigators said. Since that time, gang members openly and actively controlled "the trafficking, use, sale of illicit drugs, the making and use of swipe [a prison-made alcoholic beverage] ... and violent ...

The U.S. district court for the southern district of Ohio held that a genuine issue of material fact precluded summary judgement against an arrestee who was denied needed AIDS medication during his eight-day jail incarceration.

Devin Karl Murphy brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against defendants Deborah L. Bray, R.N.; Dr. Jean-Claude Loiseau, Correctional Medical Systems, Inc.; Hamilton County Sheriff Simon L. Leis, Jr., in his official capacity; and several other personnel at the Hamilton County Justice Center.

At the time of his arrest, Murphy was taking prophylactics for thrush, meningitis, herpes, medicine for depression, and a drug cocktail to inhibit the growth of the AIDS virus. Murphy did not receive his medications during his entire incarceration of eight days, even though he told jail personnel of his need for them when he was processed into the jail. And despite the delivery of the medications from Murphy's home two days later under Dr. Loiseau's orders and the complete medical profile provided by Murphy's home health care nurse, he was still denied the needed medications.

In response to Sheriff Leis's Motion for Summary Judgement, the court stated that under §1983, Murphy must prove (1) that the challenged conduct was committed ...

As the number of prisoners in private lock-ups continue to increase, lawsuits filed by them, not unexpectedly, are also on the rise. While that is no surprise to corrections professionals and litigators, what is new are some of the legal theories being pressed and the entities named as defendants. This ...