On October 12, 1998, four prisoners escaped from the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) South Central Correctional Center in Wayne County, Tennessee [See: News In Brief, Feb. '99 PLN ]All of the escapees were eventually captured.

On January 15, 1992, CCA warden Kevin Myers appeared before the Tennessee state legislative Select Oversight Committee on Corrections to explain the escape. The committee was told the breakout resulted from a failure by South Central guards to follow proper procedures, and that a supervisor had been fired and two other employees suspended as a result of an investigation.

Myers cited two major procedural shortfalls. First, a supervisor delivered a mailed package (which contained bolt cutters) to a prisoner. The bolt cutters were later used by the escapees to cut through perimeter fences.

The second procedural failure occurred when a guard in the prison's control room shut off an alarm without checking to see what had caused it. The escape occurred during shift change. Myers blamed complacency and lack of attention to detail as a contributing factor to the escape. He also confirmed reports that CCA guards did not learn of the mid-afternoon breakout until they were later informed by a prisoner.

"Had I ...

Amajor prisoner uprising rolled through a for-profit prison at Olney Springs, Colorado, for six hours, causing extensive damage. State prison SWAT teams were called in from as far as 200 miles away to regain control of the prison.

The incident took place Friday, March 5, 1999, and was the second serious disturbance to occur at the prison, known as the Crowley County Correctional Facility, since it opened in October, 1998. The prison is operated by Correctional Services Corporation (CSC), based in Sarassota, Florida, which has contracts to operate 36 other local, state and federal lock-ups holding 9,910 prisoners in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

Two days earlier, about 250 Washington state prisoners were shackled and hauled by bus and plane to the Crowley County prison, about 35 miles east of Pueblo, Colorado. Washington Governor Gary Locke approved the out-of-state rent-a-cell plan, calling it an appropriate emergency solution to Washington's overcrowding problem.

The disturbance was sparked at about 1 p.m. in the dining hall, said Richard Marr, deputy warden of the 1,200-bed prison. Marr claimed a Washington prisoner argued with food service staff because he wasn't served a non-meat religious diet. Marr told media the prisoner hit the food service manager ...

[Editor's Note: The corporate media in Colorado and Washington alike reported on the uprising by Washington prisoners at the Olney Springs prison. They uniformly parroted the line by prison officials that the prisoners had revolted because they were unhappy at being unable to smoke. As usual, prisoners' grievances are trivialized. To PLN 's knowledge, no reporter attempted to contact any prisoners at the facility to confirm the claims made by prison officials. Also not commented upon by the corporate media is that Correctional Services Corporation used to be known as Esmor Corrections and was based in New Jersey. The company changed its name and moved to Florida after a riot at an INS detention facility it ran in Elizabeth, New Jersey, exposed chronic brutality, corruption and mismanagement by the company. This was reported in the November and August, 1994, issues of PLN and February, September, 1995 issues. See page 15 of this issue for more CSC news. As noted below, CSC seems to have changed its name but not its method of operation. Waldo Waldron Ramsey is a long time PLN subscriber and supporter.

He was among the Washington prisoners sent to the CSC prison in Colorado. CSC officials claim ...

A merger between Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) and Prison Realty Trust was approved by shareholders of both companies on Dec. 1, and Dec. 3, 1998, respectively. CCA had spun-off Prison Realty Trust in July 1997, then announced merger plans last April [See: CCA Sells Self; Wackenhut Creates REIT," PLN , Vol. 9 No. 8].

The CCA-Prison Realty merger was opposed by an organized labor group that safeguards pension funds of member unions. The AFL-CIO's Office of Investment sent seven-page mailings to CCA shareholders urging them to vote against the proposed merger because it unfairly favored CCA management and two major institutional investors, and transfered some of CCA's most valuable assets to companies that would not benefit shareholders.

"We are reaching out to CCA's shareholders to put forth our critique of the deal and get some dialogue going," said AFL-CIO representative Beth Young.

CCA spokesperson Peggy Lawrence said the union's complaints were out of context and outdated. The AFL-CIO and affiliated labor unions held an estimated .5% of CCA's stock prior to the merger.

Three of the nation's largest pension funds also opposed the merger. The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the New York City Pension Fund System, and the ...

The 1200-bed Lea County Correctional Facility (LCCF), a New Mexico state prison operated by Florida-based Wackenhut Corrections Corp., has been plagued by nine prisoner stabbings during its first six months of operation, including two that resulted in the deaths of two prisoners.

Jose Montoya, a 44-year-old LCCF prisoner, died December 10, 1998 after being stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen with a homemade shank. Montoya had been waiting in the prison barber shop for a haircut when the stabbing occurred. He died later at Columbia Lea Medical Center in Hobbs. No motive was given for the stabbing. However, one prisoner has been charged with capital murder with special circumstances, and a second one has been charged with tampering with evidence for allegedly throwing a shank in the trash to hide it from authorities.

Another LCCF prisoner, 30-year-old Steven Edwards, was stabbed at least 92 times on Christmas Day December 25, 1998 with a shank made from a piece of chain link fence, officials said. Despite the numerous wounds, police said, Edwards was up and walking around several days later.

Robert Ortega, a 38-year-old LCCF prisoner, was found by a passing prison guard lying dead in his cell on January 13, 1999 ...

In 1998 Correctional Medical services (CMS) and the estate of Mark Murphy settled a wrongful death suit for $75,000. CMS is the largest provider of privatized medical care to prisoners and jail detainees.

Mark Murphy was imprisoned at the Delaware Correctional Center (DCC) in Smyrna, Delaware. In June, 1992, Murphy ...

According to a consultant hired by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the Pahokee Youth Development Center (Juvenile prison) operated by the Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) kept ten juvenile detainees beyond their release dates for no other reason than to beef up corporate profits.

Consultant David Bachman wrote in a November 1998 report to the state that the youths were detained beyond their release dates so they would be included in a quarterly head count used to determine the amount of funding that CSC receives. Bachman said he found a memo indicating the juveniles were to be held longer than necessary.

The Sarasota, Florida-based CSC has a three-year, $30 million contract to manage juvenile detention centers in Pahokee and Polk County. The company operates 15 other juvenile facilities nationwide and in Puerto Rico.

The state of Florida pays CSC an average of $68.40 per detainee/day at the 350 bed Pahokee lockup; the local school district pays the company an additional $2.5 million annually to provide educational services there.

The juveniles who were kept beyond their release dates were scheduled to go home a week before the quarterly school board head count. Delaying the release of the ten youths to include ...

Reviewed by Alex Friedmann

In 1997 Congress instructed the Attorney General's office to undertake a study of prison privatization, to include a review of legal issues and existing research regarding cost effectiveness. The study was conducted by Abt Associates, Inc. through a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Corrections, and the resulting report was released in October, 1998.

The report presents a comprehensive overview of prison privatization based on a survey of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and 48 states. Only Alaska and Maine did not respond; the report does not encompass local governments.

Previous studies of prison privatization conducted in Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Arizona are evaluated and critiqued. The report notes that methodological problems in the studies make it difficult to assess privately-operated facilities vis-a-vis public prisons. Other factors also preclude accurate comparisons - e.g., differences in the security classification of prisoner in public and private prisons. "Some of the more extravagant claims made on behalf of prison privatization can be traced to inappropriate handling of these issues," the authors of the report state.

The report concludes that there is insufficient data to assess the cost effectiveness and performance quality ...

In October, 1996, Wisconsin's legislature granted the Department of Corrections (WDOC) authorization to house 700 prisoners in Texas County Jails. WDOC Secretary Michael Sullivan overcame the opposition to that first prisoner-export proposal by assuring the public that the crossborder option was merely a stop-gap measure to address a temporary shortfall in prison capacity.

In December, 1998, the legislature voted to grant the WDOC funding to raise the number of prisoners Wisconsin houses in other states from 3000 to 3500. Wisconsin now leads the nation in the number of prisoners it houses in other jurisdictions.

The WDOC's prisoner-export business has not only exploded in size over two years, it's also picked up staying power. In a Joint Finance Committee hearing on the December funding request, Sullivan called the rental of prison cells in other states a "permanent fixture" of the Wisconsin Corrections system.

While the WDOC seems to think shipping prisoners to other states is a fine idea, many Wisconsinites disagree. Labor unions object because exporting prisoners also sends jobs out of state by spending part of the WDOC's budget on the salaries of construction workers and prison guards in other states. Friends and relatives of prisoners object because they don't ...

No one can imagine. What it's like. Not unless you've gone through it. Christina Foos has. While incarcerated in a for-profit prison in Arizona, Christina says she was accosted by a guard, Ernesto Rivas, as she stepped out of the shower in March of 1997. Christina told Prison Legal News that she was startled by the sight of him, standing there with his exposed erection in hand.

Before she could think of what to do, she says, Rivas ordered her to bend over the bed in her cell and proceeded to rape her. She says he returned less than two hours later to repeat the act.

Foos was among 78 women exiled in October of 1996 by the Oregon Department of Corrections. Because of overcrowding, the women were shipped to the Corrections Corporation of America's (CCA) Central Arizona Detention Center in Florence.

Predominantly a men's facility, CCA Florence lacked a separate disciplinary segregation unit for women. A medical quarantine room adjacent to the hospital area served as the improvised solution. According to a suit filed in Tuscon by five women against CCA and at least fifteen former or current CCA Florence employees, the all-male guard staff that watched over the ...