by David Gambacorta, The Philadelphia Inquirer

The secret, dangerous world of private prisons

Something was wrong with Thomas Bryant.

He couldn't eat or sleep. His body was drenched in a cold sweat, and he trembled and shook like a radiator on its last legs. The simple life he once knew in Chichester — one where he worked at a steel mill and provided for his two kids — was a faded memory, a snapshot from a stranger's photo album.

After breaking his back in a work accident, he became addicted to opioids and began a downward spiral that led him here, to a cell inside the 1,883-bed George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornton, Delaware County. He'd been arrested on a bench warrant over unpaid child support, but all he could think about was the unrelenting pain from withdrawal. Bryant, 38, asked prison guards for medical attention for three days, scrawling his pleas on scraps of paper. He was ignored.

“We have copies of letters he wrote, begging for Advil or Motrin because he was in so much pain,” said Sue Taylor, his sister. “They did absolutely nothing to help him.”

When the agony became too much, Bryant hanged himself ...

by Derek Gilna

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), now known as CoreCivic, and GEO Group (GEO), the two largest private prison companies, are major profit-generators for six U.S. banks – Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo – according to a report issued by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a non-profit public policy organization. The report was sharply critical of the banks’ involvement in supporting the exploitive private prison industry.

ITPI stated that CCA and GEO Group “depend on debt financing in the form of credit, loans, and bonds to conduct their day-to-day business operations....” As of June 2016, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, CCA owed $1.5 billion to various banks while GEO owed $1.9 billion. In comparison, as of late July 2017, CCA had a stock market value of $3.39 billion and GEO was valued at $3.7 billion.

The debt amounts are significant because, as ITPI notes, for-profit prison companies “have a perverse incentive to make business decisions that lead to more people behind bars. Private prisons also are rife with human rights abuses, pay correctional officers less than they are paid at publicly managed prisons, and foster ...

by Christopher Zoukis

The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled on October 12, 2016 that a two-month delay in ordering a biopsy of a prisoner’s potentially cancerous masses did not constitute deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs.

Calvin Whiting was incarcerated at the Shawnee Correctional Center in Vienna, Illinois in October 2010 when he developed pain in his jaw, left ear and groin, as well as nodules in those areas. He sought treatment, was diagnosed with an ear infection and received antibiotics and Motrin.

A week later, Whiting reported worsening pain and a rash. He was given a different antibiotic by a nurse, X-rays were ordered and he was scheduled to see the institutional physician, Dr. Alfonso David.

Dr. David examined Whiting and ordered blood work. He also submitted a biopsy request to the “Collegial Review Committee,” which consisted of himself and one other doctor. The committee denied the biopsy request and decided on further treatment with antibiotics and, of course, more over-the-counter Motrin.

Two months after presenting with his concerning symptoms, the biopsy request was approved and the results were tragic. Whiting was suffering from Stage IV SLK positive anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare and ...

by Christopher Zoukis

A fact sheet compiled by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a public policy research organization, indicates that Corrections Corporation of America – CCA, now known as CoreCivic – and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison firms in the nation, have spent a combined $2.2 billion since 2005 acquiring other, smaller companies.

That’s $2.2 billion in taxpayer dollars, since almost all the revenue that private prison firms receive are from government contracts paid with public funds.

It’s not surprising that GEO Group and CCA make such acquisitions. They are for-profit corporations seeking to expand their revenue, after all. And therein lies the rub.

According to the ITPI fact sheet, “If government agencies insourced the services provided by these private prison companies, the tax dollars the companies spend acquiring other companies could be invested in programs to rehabilitate incarcerated people and keep at-risk people out of the criminal justice system.”

In the 10 years between 2005 and 2015, GEO Group spent $2 billion to acquire nine companies. Several of those businesses, such as Correctional Services Corporation, also operated private prisons, while others provided monitoring services. The monitoring firms included Soberlink, Inc. (alcohol monitoring), Protocol Criminal Justice, Inc. ...

by Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald

Yvonne McBride was a physically healthy 26-year-old woman when she entered Lowell Correctional Institution for women June 20, 2013.

The Florida Department of Corrections noted in its exam of McBride that, other than a bout of constipation and a history of depression, she was in good health. She had no fever, no cough, no chest pain or breathing problems. Her lungs and chest were clear, her heart was normal, her FDC medical records show.

But a month and four days later, McBride was dead.

The Miami Herald found that McBride is among untold numbers of Lowell inmates who have suffered serious misdiagnoses, delays in treatment and medical neglect over the past decade. The institution — the largest women’s prison in the nation — also has a long history, documented in reports and medical audits, of alarming and even life-threatening deficiencies, ranging from failing to provide routine medications to delaying treatment for inmates with potentially fatal illnesses.

McBride’s prison medical records show that she was seen in the prison infirmary July 23 for a fall. The nurse noted that McBride told her she had been ill for six days, coughing up mucus and feeling weak ...

by Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald

Patrick Quercioli was big and burly, and with pumped muscles and an elaborate Indian tattoo on his arm, he looked more like a bodybuilder than a corrections officer.

Though he’d been arrested twice — once for allegedly dealing steroids and again, on charges of beating a motorist in a fit of road rage — Quercioli managed to persuade the Florida Department of Corrections to hire him in 2004.

Prisoners say Sgt. Q, as he was known, was among the most menacing officers at Lowell Correctional Institution for women, a man whose patience was not to be tested. But on Sept. 21, 2014, one inmate dared to do just that, after seeing something she wasn’t supposed to see: Quercioli allegedly having sex with an inmate in C Dorm, in a rear bathroom behind the officers’ station.

Disgusted, the inmate — Latandra Ellington — vowed to report it, even though, according to her, Quercioli threatened to kill her if she didn’t keep her mouth shut.

Ten days later, after telling her family and prison authorities about the threat, Ellington was found dead in a confinement cell at Lowell.

The death of Ellington, a mother of four ...

by Derek Gilna

In July 2016, Pathways community Corrections, a private probation company, announced that it had voluntarily ceased operations in Tennessee following a series of complaints, a federal lawsuit and an investigation by state officials that uncovered evidence the company had unfairly extracted money from poor probationers. According to Kevin Walter, communications director for the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, which filed a complaint against Pathways in 2015, “They no longer provide any private probationary services in Tennessee.”

Things started going bad for Pathways – formerly known as Providence Community Corrections – after a federal lawsuit exposed a scheme in which probationers were held in jail for lack of funds to post bail while wealthier offenders were allowed to bond out. A federal class-action filed by affected probationers in Rutherford County, Tennessee resulted in an injunction that prevented the company from issuing arrest warrants with a bond requirement when people couldn’t afford to pay. [See: PLN, Nov. 2016, p.42].

According to the lawsuit, Pathways engaged in a conspiracy “to funnel misdemeanor probation cases in which court debts are owed to a private company, which then extorts money out of individuals who have no ability to pay court ...

by Matt Clarke

When police were notified about the death of Terry Cameron, 58, in March 2016, they quickly arrested her husband, Melvin Stubbs, 65. Stubbs was a diabetic amputee who used a wheelchair. Nonetheless, police said there were signs of a struggle, Stubbs and Cameron both had defensive wounds, Cameron’s face was covered with a pillow and the answers that Stubbs gave during police questioning were inadequate – sufficient evidence to justify his arrest, they claimed. But ninety minutes after Stubbs was booked into jail he was dead.

The Alameda County Coroner’s Office later determined the cause of Cameron’s death was not homicide but rather acute bacterial meningitis.

“What they did to him was horrible,” stated Manuel Primas, Stubbs’ former brother-in-law. “His last thought must’ve been, ‘My wife just died and I’m in here for murder.’ And then he died. That’s a hell of a way to go.”

Oakland police said Stubbs had not been answering questions about Cameron’s death very well, “due to what looks like a medical condition.” The symptoms of meningitis, a contagious disease, include mental confusion. But it wasn’t until they received the coroner’s report on Cameron’s death that Stubbs’ behavior began to “make sense,” ...

On May 31, 2017, the Philadelphia Ethics Board levied a $2,000 fine against former Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla for violating conflict of interest rules that prohibit city employees from benefitting from any of their official actions for two years after leaving city employment. According to a settlement agreement between Giorla and the Ethics Board, once he left his position with the city he became a consultant for Corizon Health – a company he had contracted with to provide prisoner medical care while serving as Prisons Commissioner.

“We want to make sure the city’s getting the best deals when they enter into contracts, and that vendors aren’t being approved who have made some kind of side agreement with city officials to hire them in the future and to benefit from that contract financially,” said Ethics Board executive director Shane Creamer. He added the Board found no evidence that Giorla had prearranged his $4,000-a-month consulting job with Corizon while still employed with the city, though a photo published by the company showed Giorla posing with three top-level Corizon officials at his 2015 retirement luncheon.

As part of the settlement agreement with the Ethics Board, Giorla agreed to end his consulting work with ...

by Derek Gilna

In July 2016, New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman filed a lawsuit against Armor Correctional Health Services, the medical provider for the jail in Nassau County. The suit alleged a dozen prisoners had died at the facility, in large part due to substandard medical care ...