Juvenile Crime Still Pays – But at What Cost?

by Alex Friedmann

[Last February, PLN published a cover article, "Juvenile Crime Pays," concerning the proliferation of for-profit juvenile justice services. This month we revisit the topic following recent reports of abuse and mis- management at privately operated juvenile prisons.]

The National Juvenile Detention Association estimates that 5 percent of the nation's juvenile detention facilities are privately operated, and the construction of for-profit prisons, jails and boot camps for youthful offenders is a rapidly expanding industry. By slashing operating costs and providing subsistence level services, companies can reap handsome profits from the millions of dollars they receive through largely unregulated government contracts.

As a result of this profit-margin mentality, however, an increasing number of privately operated juvenile detention facilities are being cited for abusive conditionsincluding recent reports of misconduct and mismanagement at for-profit juvenile facilities in Louisiana, Arkansas and Colorado.

Fear and Loathing in Louisiana

The Justice Department filed suit November 5, 1998, against the state of Louisiana for failing to protect juvenile prisoners from brutality and providing inadequate education, medical and mental health care.

"It's incredibly unusual," said David Utter, director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, which has ...

Peaceful efforts, by Alaskan prisoners, on August 30, 1998, to address grievances and concerns repeatedly ignored at the Central Arizona Detention Center, in Florence, Arizona, were mercilessly squashed following a sit down demonstration in the prison exercise yard.

What was initially a peaceful, sit-down demonstration turned ugly when prison officials at this private prison (a for profit business owned by Corrections Corporation of America) assaulted prisoners with rubber bullets, smoke tear gas, and percussion grenades. Further assault was inflicted by club wielding CCA personnel in protective riot gear, armed with hi-tech shock/stun shields. CCA officials over-reacted using unauthorized force to inflict punitive retribution rather than listen to prisoner concerns.

Initially, 50 prisoners refused to leave the exercise yard until the warden heard their complaints. However, Assistant Warden Luna met with prisoners and issued an ultimatum to disperse. When two dozen prisoners opted to remain, they were sealed off and assaulted with potentially lethal force. No violence was initiated by prisoners in their efforts to draw attention to conditions at this private facility.

Alaska has been warehousing prisoners with CCA in Arizona since February 1995 to ease overcrowding in Alaska's prison. Prisoner issues were related to food quality, health care, yard ...

When Timothy Stanley, 32, was in the Marion County (FL) Jail in January, 1997, facing drug charges, he needed some dental work done. According to the jail's medical log, Sheriff Ken Ergle's "dentist", Illya Fitzgerald Hathorn, pulled one of Stanley's teeth. Now Stanley is suing the jail because Hathorn was not a licensed dentist.

Carrie Proctor, the sheriff's senior staff attorney, said Hathorn had attended dental school but didn't graduate. She said the quality of his work was never questioned. "This guy was a good dentist," she said.

Gainesville lawyer Horace Moore Sr. is representing Stanley, who is asking for $15,000 in damages. Moore said 37 other former jail detainees are prepared to join the suit if a judge certified it as a class action.

"A criminal background check would have shown that [Hathorn] had been convicted of doing this before," said Moore.

Hathorn, 30, began working at the jail on September 27, 1996, as an employee of Correctional Medical Services (CMS), which had a contract to provide medical services to the jail.

Sheriff Ergle cancelled the CMS contract on January 1, 1997, and began hiring his own medical staff, including Hathorn.

Medical logs show that Hathorn treated 115 prisoners ...

Afederal district court in New York held that a jail prisoner had stated a claim for violation of his Eighth Amendment rights when he was denied medical care as a part of the county's effort to cut medical costs by contracting the jail's medical care to a private business. Raymond Llanes was imprisoned in the Westchester County jail in New York. He repeatedly sought medical care after experiencing intense abdominal pain but none was provided. Eventually Llanes was admitted to the jail infirmary and after a cursory examination a doctor told him he had "caught a draft."

Llanes was later readmitted to the infirmary and examined by a different physician who had him taken immediately to a local hospital where he had surgery for a peptic ulcer. Llanes was hospitalized for a month. The treating physician ordered that Llanes be provided with a "soft" diet which the jail refused to provide. Llanes refused to eat many of the meals he was served, until his release from jail, because they were not consistent with what the doctor had prescribed. As a result, he became weak, dizzy, fell and fractured 12 ribs and his head. Llanes filed suit claiming that jail officials, ...

The warden of a private prison in New Mexico said that prison staff may have delayed notifying state police about a disturbance that sent five guards to a hospital August 7, 1998.

"It may be my fault we didn't respond quickly enough," said Donald A. Dorsey, warden of the Torrance County Detention Center, operated by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

Darren White, head of the state police, was critical of the delay in calling state police. "We're a little disappointed that our (public information officer) was first informed of any situation at the prison by a local media person," White said. "Until then, we were unaware of the situation."

Details of the "situation" are sketchy. Prison officials said only that some unarmed prisoners from Washington D.C. jumped the guards while being returned from a recreation area. Officials said the attack was unprovoked.

Apparently CCA officials did contact the New Mexico Corrections Department, which dispatched a 15-man tactical team to the CCA prison. But White said that his department should have been notified so that state police could have been dispatched to secure the prison's perimeter.

"The down time it takes to bring in additional resources for something like a ...

On July 25, 1998 a half-dozen prisoners, including four convicted murderers, cut through two fences and escaped from the CCA-operated Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio. According to Warden Jimmy Turner the successful break-out was due to errors by prison employees -- including guards leaving their posts, not watching their designated areas and not promptly responding to motion sensor alarms.

The escape was the latest in a series of embarrassing incidents at the problem-plagued facility, which houses approximately 1,500 prisoners from Washington, D.C. [see PLN , Oct. 1997; June 1998]. CCA previously had been under a court order to remove maximum-security prisoners from the medium-security prison. Michael Quinlan, the company's director of planning, promised that CCA would learn from its mistakes and would improve staff training at the facility.

Ohio lawmakers, however, weren't interested in apologies or excuses. State Senator Jeff Johnson observed that the escape highlighted a major distinction between privately-operated and public prisons. "I've been to Ohio prisons, and we have some problems," he said. "The difference is if the manager screws up and lets six people escape in broad daylight, we have the authority to get him out of there."

Also of concern was CCA's response ...

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) continues to experience problems at a privately -operated detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In June 1995 detainees rioted at the facility, which was then run by Esmore Correctional Services. The detainees mostly asylum-seekers who had not been charged with any crime complained of severe abuse and human rights violations by the poorly-paid and under-trained Esmore staff. [ PLN , Sept. 1995]. The company lost its contract to operate the center, changed its name to Correctional Services Corporation and relocated to Florida.

The INS facility reopened in 1997 under the management of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and was soon lauded as a national model for privately-operated detention services. But now the former assistant warden at the center, Steve Townsend, has filed suit claiming he was fired by CCA after informing the INS that detainees were forcibly sedated and improperly restrained. Townsend said that both his supervisor and CCA corporate office ordered him to "illegally cover up and conceal such actions."

Initially the INS denied that detainees had been involuntarily sedated, but later admitted the allegations were true after reviewing medical records from the facility. The agency then decided the failure to report the ...

Afederal district court in Florida denied qualified immunity to a private provider of health care services to a county jail. Health care personnel failed to give a prisoner with a history of heart attacks her heart medication and ignored her complaints of chest pains until she suffered a fatal heart attack.

Diane Nelson was arrested around 11:00 p.m. on March 6, 1994. Having suffered a heart attack the previous October, she was prescribed twice daily Procardia XL and given nitroglycerine. However, when arrested, she was unable to locate her medications which she had last taken at 6 p.m.

When booked into the jail, Nelson informed medical personnel of her heart condition and the medications needed. The nurse noted this and that the medications needed to be continued if verified; however, it was too late at night to verify them. Over the next thirty hours, Nelson repeatedly attempted to get medication from multiple nurses. Her condition deteriorated. Her skin became pasty and she began sweating profusely. She complained of difficulty breathing, chest pains and shooting pain in the arm. The nurse refused to interrupt her breakfast at a nearby diner to check Nelson. An hour later, she collapsed while being brought ...

According to a report by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, by July 2003 the state will have just 42,000 prison beds for a projected 55,000 state prisoners. This imbalance is primarily due to a "two strikes" law that took effect on January 1, 1995 and a new parole policy requiring felons convicted of any of 20 specific crimes to serve at least 90% of their sentences.

The parole board estimated the state will need to spend $1 billion to address the bed space shortage, and urged the Department of Corrections to include 13 new prisons in its next budget request.

Georgia Corrections Commissioner Wayne Garner disputed the board's findings, stating they were politically motivated. Garner claimed the report was a "scare tactic to try to convince people that if they do anything further to restrict the Board of Pardons and Paroles through mandatory sentences or abolishing the board, it's only going to cause them to spend billions and billions of dollars."

Georgia's prison population has more than doubled from 18,000 in 1989 to 38,000 in 1998; the state spends $700 million a year on its corrections system.

To increase the amount of available bed space the Georgia DOC ...

On Sunday June 28, 1998, prisoners at the Fox Lake Correctional Institution staged a protest against the scheduled transfer of 160 Wisconsin prisoners to a private prison in Oklahoma.

According to eye-witnesses, about 155 prisoners refused orders to return to their cells from a recreation area. Emergency response [goon] units were brought in and the prisoners were again ordered to clear the yard. All but about 25 complied. The remaining prisoners complied after yet another order.

After the three-hour standoff ended, state prison chief Michael Sullivan said only 12 of the prisoners involved were scheduled for transfer. "The rest just wanted to demonstrate," he said.

As of late July, the state of Wisconsin had exiled about 1,600 prisoners to Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Minnesota; another 3,000 are expected to be shipped to other states.

Families and prison rights activists staged a protest outside the state capitol July 13. Many criticized the policy, saying it severs family ties. During the protest, state Rep. Scott Walker (R) held an impromptu news conference.

"I wish some of these family members had shown the same level of interest in their loved ones before they were sent to prison," Walker pontificated. "If they had, maybe ...