We looked at all fifty state departments of corrections to figure out which companies hold the contracts to provide money-transfer services and what the fees are to use these services.

by Stephen Raher and Tiana Herring, Prison Policy Initiative

As people in prison are increasingly expected to pay for everyday costs (food, hygiene items, correspondence, etc.), the mechanics of how people send money to incarcerated people assumes heightened importance. Family members used to mail a money order to a PO box, and a day or two later, the money would be in the recipient’s trust account. [The term “trust account” is a term of art in the correctional sector, referring to a pooled bank account that holds funds for incarcerated people whose individual balances are sometimes treated as subaccounts. The term “trust” is used because the correctional facility typically holds the account as trustee, for the benefit of the individual beneficiaries (or subaccount holders).]

In those days, the most common complaint from family members and incarcerated recipients used to be about delays in processing money orders. Quick to use consumer psychology to turn a buck, a whole industry arose to provide faster—but vastly more expensive—electronic money transfers to incarcerated people. ...

On October 19, 2021, auditors for Dallas County, Texas, reported to commissioners that lax oversight allowed an employee in the county Sheriff’s Department (DCSD) to use hundreds of damaged debit-release cards to draw almost $700,000 from a trust fund for prisoners at the county jail—leaving the account $85,000 in the red.

Prisoners and detainees have their cash confiscated at booking and placed in trust fund accounts, which they can then add to and use for commissary purchases. When leaving the jail, they are given a debit card with the balance of their trust account on it.

After the county received notice that the prisoner trust fund was $85,000 overdrawn, an investigation uncovered the scheme and traced it to an employee, DCSD clerk Umeka Myers. She had worked for the agency 26 years when she was arrested and fired in April 2021. She was charged with property theft and is awaiting trial.

She had apparently discovered that damaged cards, thought to be unusable, were actually functional. Using 306 of them, she created duplicates of cards given to released prisoners, double-billing the county for almost $700,000 before she was caught. There was no policy or procedure to dispose of damaged cards then. ...

Corizon Employee Charged with Falsifying Records

by Jayson Hawkins and Keith Sanders

On February 1, 2022, a 41-year-old Black man being held on a trespassing charge was found unresponsive in his cell at the jail in Arlington County, Virginia. His death later that day, which is still under investigation, came shortly after Virginia-based MEDIKO took over healthcare provision at the Arlington County Jail (ACJ) on November 15, 2021, when the county fired long-time contractor Corizon Health.

Corizon Health, a Tennessee-based firm with an estimated $800 million in 2020 revenues, had held the ACJ contract since 2006. It was awarded a five-year extension in late 2020, just before the in-custody death of Darryl Becton, 46, a pre-trial detainee being held on an alleged probation violation stemming from a 2019 felony conviction for “unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.” After finding Becton unresponsive in his cell, an Arlington Department of Human Services caseworker and a deputy sheriff tried for thirty minutes to resuscitate him before he died on October 1, 2020.

Exactly one year later, Antoine Smith was charged with falsifying records in the case on October 1, 2021. A local news outlet discovered a person by the name of Antoine Smith ...

by Jo Ellen Nott 

On January 21, 2022, Colorado lawmakers advanced plans to funnel $5.41 million in additional funds over the next two years to address staffing crises at the state’s only two private prisons, both operated for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) by private prison giant CoreCivic, whose revenues in 2021 reached $1.89 billion.

The two prisons in rural southeastern Colorado have been grappling with sky-high staff turnover rates: 107% at the Bent County Correctional Facility and 126% at the Crowley County Correctional Facility. The scratch-one’s-head moment: Even after the increase, DOC will still manage to pay its own staff $2 per hour more than CoreCivic’s staff earns at the prisons, yet the state agency maintains a significantly higher rate of employee retention, 77% to CoreCivic’s (less than) 0%.

“[M] ore people are starting and quitting than are employed there,” explained a memo to lawmakers on the state Joint Budget Committee (JBC) considering the request.

Apparently throwing money at the problem is what JBC wants to do, though, sending the request to the full General Assembly with a 5-0 vote. Rep. Leslie Herod (D-Denver), a vocal opponent of private prisons in the state, was excused. The measure is ...

Marshals Service Also Eyeing Work-around

by Keith Sanders

On September 21, 2021, a little over a week before the federal government contract was set to expire at the Western Region Detention Facility (WRDF) in San Diego, the facility’s private operator, Florida-based GEO Group, announced it had secured a six-month extension with the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) to hold detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS).

The announcement comes less than a year after incoming President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) signed an executive order in January 2021 prohibiting DOJ from renewing contracts for detention facilities with private prison operators. That order is being challenged in court by both Democratic and Republican officials in several states, including California. Plus a federal employee union, representing about 300 workers at WRDF, also lobbied to keep it open.

WRDF is the only unionized private prison in the country. Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, teamed up with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, part of the AFL-CIO, to pressure the Biden Administration to renew the USMS contract there.

“These workers provide an invaluable public service to the community,” Erwin said in an August 2021 press conference. ...

On March 23, 2021, an agreement was executed paying $7,500 to settle three complaints a former pretrial detainee had brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging guards at Chester County Prison twice physically assaulted him when he was held there in 2018 and on three occasions also neglected to provide medical attention.

The former detainee, Mark Anthony Clark, filed his first suit pro se on March 25, 2019, alleging he was denied medical attention for chest pains he suffered on April 14, 2018, despite multiple evaluations for a heart condition since his incarceration at the prison the previous August. On the date in question, after informing guards Nicholas Thorburn and Sgt. Ricardo Ramos of chest pain, Clark was told to “stand by.” Two days later, having still not seen medical staff, he was found unresponsive in his cell. While in the medical department, he experienced dizziness and began to hear voices, yet staff gave him Motrin and released him. He then learned from another prisoner that the guard who found him, Dennis Feliciano, waited to finish serving lunch before calling for help.

Clark filed his second suit on May 22, ...

The Lawrenceville Correctional Center (LCC), Virginia’s only remaining for-profit prison, now also has the dubious distinction of reporting seven prisoner deaths in 2021. One of those deaths has been confirmed as a homicide. One is suspected to be a fatal stabbing. Two are reported or suspected to be drug overdoses. Three of the dead have not been publicly named.

The lack of details is striking.

What is known is that LCC was the second-largest prison holding people for the state Department of Corrections (DOC), according to the agency’s most recent report, with 1,411 of DOC’s 23,356 prisoners housed at LCC at the end of November 2021. The prison in rural Brunswick County is operated for DOC under a contract with the Florida-based GEO Group, the country’s largest private prison contractor, with 2020 revenues of $2.35 billion.

The year’s first death at LCC was a reported fatal overdose on February 3, 2021. The prisoner’s name and cause of death were not confirmed, however.

Then there was a reported brawl on May 9, 2021, which left an unidentified prisoner dead and another unnamed prisoner in the hospital with stab wounds.

The third death occurred on August 3, 2021, when Mark A. Grethen ...

by Harold Hempstead

On September 27, 2021, a three-count indictment was filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, accusing a former guard at Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Hartsville of violating a prisoner’s civil rights and obstructing justice by attempting to cover up his crime. The prison is operated by private, for-profit CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America.

The former guard, 42-year-old Kenan Lister, was a Supervising Officer and Security Threat Group Coordinator when he allegedly assaulted a prisoner who was not resisting on August 30, 2019. The prisoner, identified as R.V., was sitting in a holding cell when Lister allegedly punched him in the head, knocking him to the ground, where he proceeded to kick, punch, and strike R.V. multiple times in the head, chest, and torso.

After he finished assaulting R.V., Lister also allegedly refused to make necessary notifications for him to receive medical care, knowing that R.V. had serious medical needs stemming from injuries sustained during the assault.

Then, in an attempt to cover up his unlawful conduct, Lister submitted a false incident report omitting that he kicked, punched, and struck R.V. multiple times.

In counts one and two, Lister was ...

by Matt Clarke

After a trio of federal court rulings in 2021 regarding the labor of immigrant detainees, the first one remained the clearest victory so far for plaintiffs. That was a decision on January 20, 2021, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, holding that detainee work programs at federal immigration detention centers operated by private companies are subject to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).

Another decision that followed on March 5, 2021, presented the clearest loss, when a three-judge panel for the Fourth Circuit ruled that immigrant detainees were not “employees” of Tennessee-based CoreCivic covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA) at the New Mexico detention facility the firm operated for federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), so they were not owed minimum wage. [See: PLN, Dec. 2021, p.24.]

That was different from a verdict reached by a jury in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on October 27, 2021, which will be the biggest win of all if it survives appeal. In that case Florida-based GEO Group, a CoreCivic competitor that operated a detention center in Tacoma for ICE, was ordered to pay $17.3 million in back ...

by Jacob Barrett

A recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit highlights the importance of producing expert testimony to refute assertions made by defendant health care providers that their inaction—especially when it results in the loss of an eye—is deliberately indifferent.

The Court’s decision on December 1, 2020, affirmed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment to Wexford Health Sources, Inc., and its fellow defendants, Dr. Anthony Carter and Dr. Kurt Osmundson, on the basis that James A. Donald, an Illinois prisoner under their care, failed to produce evidence that showed that Wexford and other defendants acted with deliberate indifference toward an objectively serious medical condition.

When Donald was convicted of drug crimes and sentenced to a term at Illinois River Correctional Facility (IRCF), he had two eyes. Now he has one. Prior to his incarceration, Donald had been diagnosed with glaucoma and keratoconus, a thinning of the cornea that causes distorted vision. To treat his keratoconus, he had left-eye corneal transplant surgery.

After he was imprisoned a few years later, his eye problems started flaring up, causing redness and poor vision. Donald was seen by Dr. Carter, an IRFC medical provider, who referred the ...