In February 2012, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) agreed to stop housing juveniles at a privately-run prison in Leake County, Mississippi and enact multiple reforms to protect both the juveniles and the adult prisoners who will remain behind from abuse by prison employees.

The Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility (WGYCF) was opened in 1999. It was designed to incarcerate prisoners who are 13 to 22 years of age. Initially, it was owned by a group of private investors. They sold it to GEO Group in August 2010. In February 2012, it housed 958 prisoners.

WGYCF was designed to house juvenile prisoners who had been convicted as adults. However, conditions at the prison were so abysmal that, in November 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (NPP) and Jackson civil-rights attorney Robert B. McDuff filed a class-action civil rights suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in federal court alleging violations of the prisoners' constitutional rights.

The suit alleged that WGYCF employees smuggled drugs into the prison, beat prisoners, sexually assaulted prisoners, placed prisoners in isolation for lengthy periods and denied prisoners medical care and educational programs. In the consent ...

On February 10, 2012, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice approved a $46.8 million contract with Huntsville Memorial Hospital to provide health care for the 13,900 state prisoners in the Huntsville, Texas area. This may be the first step toward the creation of a prisoner health care system based upon contracts with regional hospitals in a statewide network.

In 2011, the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, the health care provider for about two-thirds of Texas state prisoners, gave notice that it want out of its contract for prisoner health services due to escalating costs and mounting losses. In response, the Texas Legislature authorized the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to explore other ways to provide prisoner health care and to curb associated costs. The contract with Huntsville Memorial may be its first fruit. Prison officials claim that the contract may reduce their costs by up to 30% by eliminating the need to transport Huntsville-area prisoners to Galveston to receive medical care.

The contract will last for 3.5 years and obligates Huntsville Memorial to provide nine secure beds in a secure wing of the Walker County hospital, emergency-room services, medical imaging and outpatient surgery.

TDCJ executive director ...

In response to a scathing audit, the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) told state lawmakers in October 2005 that the Department is making the recommended changes.

Six private prisons scattered across Colorado's eastern plains hold over 4,000 of the state's prisoners. An audit conducted by the state found numerous problems, including inadequate staffing, unlicensed medical clinics, employees with criminal backgrounds, and poor food services. [PLN, April 2006, p. 18]

The principal change touted by CDOC Director of Prisons Nolan Renfrow was tough new contracts with the private prisons. Under the new contracts, private prisons may be fined if they are not up to CDOC standards. Chronic problems can lead to larger fines and, ultimately, to termination of the contracts. Some lawmakers were concerned that the new contracts are not tough enough. State Representative Fran Coleman said, "I'm not sure the liquidated damages have enough hammer to them." Indeed, the threat of pulling prisoners from private prisons rings hollow. Colorado is scrambling to find prison beds and, in January 2006, issued a request for proposals for a 2,250-bed private prison.

Director Renfrow told lawmakers that the CDOC's private prison monitoring unit, skewered in the audit, has been improved with new leadership ...

Beth A. Ours, 37, a Correctional Medical Care (CMC) nurse who worked at the Justice Center jail in Syracuse, New York, was arrested on December 4, 2012, and charged with third-degree felony sexual act for allegedly performing oral sex on a 39-year-old male prisoner in April 2012.

Ours met the man when he reported to the jail's medical unit due to health issues.

"When we first met we would smile at each other and she was very friendly," said the man's written statement. During subsequent encounters, Ours allegedly began rubbing her body close to him and even asked him to kiss her on one occasion. The relationship allegedly advanced to the point that Ours was regularly performing oral sex on him prior to his release on May 21, 2012.

Ours allegedly gave him her phone number, asking him to call her and visit her North Syracuse home. He told investigators that she lived with two other jail employees and he had visited her there and smoked crack with her "a few times." He also said that she asked him to sell one of her TVs one time when they were out of money and drugs. He allegedly sold the TV ...

Oklahoma County approved a $1 million settlement in a civil rights suit involving a prisoner who was first denied his anti-seizure medication then fatally beaten by guards when he had a seizure in an Oklahoma City jail. Correctional Healthcare Management of Oklahoma, Inc. (CHM), the jail's medical services provider, had ...

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has been criticized for the influence Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has upon her and her staff. She accepted $60,000 in campaign contributions from people associated with

CCA. Her senior policy advisor and campaign manager has a consulting firm that lobbies for CCA. His wife is a CCA lobbyist. CCA seemed to have a lock on Arizona's lucrative private prison market.

Florida-based Geo Group, CCA's main competitor and one of the bidders for a state contract to build private prisons in Arizona and manage those prisons' 5,000 private prison beds, has taken a page from CCA's playbook. Since the governor was already spoken for, Geo Group decided to try to influence the distribution of state money to private prisons at the money distribution level.

Lobbyists associated with Geo Group gave at least six campaign contributions to state Rep. John Kavanaugh (R-8), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and outgoing Chairman of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. The contributions came from people associated with the Arizona-based consulting firm Public Policy Partners (PPP). PPP has several Arizona clients, but only two national clients -- Geo Group and Ron Sachs Communications, a Florida-based public relations firm promoting prison privatization. ...

The City of Littlefield, Texas sold the Bill Clayton Detention Center (BCDC) at an auction, but the deal fell through. The BCDC is a 363-bed prison private prison developers talked city officials into building in this 6,500 person community. Mesmerized by the promise of prisoners from other jurisdictions whose incarceration would create hundreds of jobs, Littlefield issued $11 million in bonds to finance prison construction.

GEO Group ran the prison for about eight years, locking up prisoners from Idaho and Wyoming. But poor prison conditions sparked riots and a suicide while guards helped prisoners escape. That led Idaho to withdraw its prisoners in 2009 and GEO to cancel its contract soon thereafter. Littlefield was stuck $9 million in remaining debt costing $65,000 a month to service and a prison that it had to pay to maintain.

Littlefield City Manager Danny Davis had hoped to cut the city's losses by getting bid of at least $5 million at a real estate auction in July, 2011. So a telephone call with a bid of $6 million seemed to solve all of Littlefield's problems. Within a month the buyer backed out and the deal fell through. Now Littlefield is trying to work out ...

A June 2011 report by the Justice Policy Institute entitled "Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies reveals how private prison companies (PPCs) use political campaign donations, political lobbyists and relationships with government officials to increase their profits by promoting policies that result in more people being incarcerated. Even in tight budgetary times when many policymakers want to reform the criminal and juvenile justice systems to safely reduce the prison population, PPCs create and fund political opposition seeking to preserve the status quo in policies and increase the incarceration rate. Since PPCs receive their revenue almost exclusively from the government, the taxpayers are indirectly funding a group that opposes the policies most favorable to the taxpaying public.

As of December 31, 2009, there were about 120,000 prisoners being held in U.S. private prisons. They comprised 16.4% of the federal and 6.8% of the state prison populations. This represented an increase in the use of private prisons since 2000 of 120% for the federal government and 33% for the states. During the same time frame, overall U.S. prison populations increased by less than 16%.

Corrections spending increased 72% between 1997 and 2007. Total ...

On November 10, 2011, Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps announced the closure of the privately-operated 1,172-bed Delta Correctional Facility in Leflore County scheduled for January 15, 2012. He said it was a mutual decision of Mississippi and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), noting that, under state law, CCA was being paid only $31.15 per prisoner per day when it had daily costs of $34.15 for each medium custody prisoner.

Epps said that the prisoners would be moved into existing capacity in state-run facilities. This will save the state money since the only additional expenses will be for the prisoners' food, clothing and health care. With over 4,000 empty bunks in the state-run system, it was impossible to justify the additional expense of the private prison.

Epps has been pushing alternatives to incarceration as a cost-cutting measure. With 21,500 prisoners, Mississippi has the second highest rate of incarceration in the country, creating a huge drain on the state budget.

Epps specified that 800 of the Delta prisoners would be transferred to regional jails. Mississippi has 15 regional jails with a combined total of about 1,000 empty bunks. The remaining prisoners would be transferred to other state facilities.

Under Governor Ronnie Musgrove, ...

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that private prison-management corporations and their employees may be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

“Billy Rosborough is a prisoner of the Bradford State Jail, a Texas prison owned and operated by…Management and Training Corporation (MTC), a private prison-management corporation.”

Rosborough brought a § 1983 action against MTC and guard Chris Shirley, alleging that “Shirley maliciously slammed a door on Rosborough’s fingers, severing two fingertips” and that MTC failed to properly train and supervise Shirley.

“The district court sua sponte dismissed Rosborough’s action on the grounds that Shirley was an employee of MTC rather than…the State of Texas and, therefore, was not acting under color of state law for purposes of suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.” The court “did not address MTC’s potential liability for failing to train Shirley.”

The Fifth Circuit reversed, observing that “[t]he Supreme Court…has held that ‘to act “under color” of law does not require that the accused by an officer of the state.’ Addickes v. S.H. Kness & Co., 398 U.S. 144,152…90 S. Ct. 1598 (1970)…Under the Supreme Court’s ‘public function’ test, a private entity acts under color of state law ‘when that entity performs a ...