Following an evidentiary hearing on November 15, 2013, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Haynes, Jr. ordered Tennessee prison officials to provide medication to a prisoner with a severe case of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) until he could be seen by a specialist.

Robert Z. Whipple III, a state prisoner housed at the Turney Center Industrial Complex, filed a pro se lawsuit in September 2013 against Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) Commissioner Derrick Schofield and eight other prison officials and private medical contractors, alleging failure to provide adequate medical care.

Whipple stated he was receiving treatment for GERD until May 2013 when the TDOC’s Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee removed his prescribed medication, Prilosec, from the state’s formulary – a list of approved drugs that prison doctors can prescribe. The removal from the formulary prevented medical staff from renewing prescriptions for that medication for all prisoners, regardless of their medical needs. Instead, Prilosec, an over-the-counter medication, was placed on the institutional commissary list for prisoners to purchase. Whipple could not afford to buy the Prilosec he needed from the commissary, and accused TDOC officials and Corizon, a private prison medical contractor, of deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs in violation ...

Ownership of a privately-operated Oklahoma Department of Corrections (ODOC) halfway house near Tulsa has changed hands in the midst of at least two lawsuits and possible criminal charges stemming from allegations that the owner of a sandwich shop routinely subjected female work release prisoners to sexual harassment and abuse.

The complaints allege that employees with Avalon Correctional Services, which operates the Turley Residential Center, knew about the sexual misconduct but continued to send women to the business in return for kickbacks from the owner. [See: PLN, Jan. 2015, p.1].

Sub shop owner Abbas Kazemi Kia fled “to avoid prosecution” after Tulsa police conducted an investigation and raided the shop, according to a negligence lawsuit filed on November 18, 2014 by former work release prisoner Cassie Chambers. The suit names Avalon, the ODOC, Kia and three other businesses. [See: PLN, July 2015, p.63]. The sub shop abruptly closed after the police raid, according to the complaint.

Chambers alleged that Avalon knew as early as November 2011 “that Kia had sexually battered a program participant,” but kept sending women to his business because the private prison company “earned a kickback on wages paid to women in the work release program.” Kia ...

On March 25, 2015, state corrections officials conducted a shakedown at the privately-operated Marshall County Correctional Facility and seized weapons, cell phones and other contraband. Mississippi DOC Commissioner Marshall Fisher said it was believed that some staff members were complicit in bringing in contraband and that he expected criminal prosecutions to follow.

Recent shakedowns at five Mississippi prisons, both public and private, have resulted in the confiscation of nearly 200 weapons. Former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott said the numbers so far suggest that the problem of weapons is more prevalent in private prisons. He also indicated that private prisons are using money “which could have gone into hiring enough guards to find and remove knives from prisoners, and they are sending those tax dollars instead to their corporate headquarters.”

For-profit prison company Management and Training Corporation (MTC), which operates three of the prisons involved in the shakedowns, including the Marshall County Correctional Facility, responded to the criticism by saying contraband is a problem at all prisons both public and private. Company spokesman Issa Arnita noted the company has created a K9 team that conducts unannounced contraband sweeps, and has installed a body scanner and anti-contraband netting.

According to Arnita, MTC ...

The February 8, 2015 suicide of a woman held at the Washington, D.C. Jail and a recent report that blasted the facility for “non-compliance with basic standards established by national corrections authorities” have once again focused a spotlight on conditions at the main jail in the nation’s capital, where more than 2,000 prisoners await trial or are serving misdemeanor sentences.

According to a press release issued by the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC), Tawana Johnson, 46, was booked into the jail the day before she died on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of property, for allegedly breaking a window at her daughter’s apartment.

“I was angry about my window being kicked in,” said Johnson’s daughter, Erica. “I really didn’t want to have to call the police, but I had no choice.”

D.C. Corrections Director Thomas Faust stated Johnson had displayed no suicidal tendencies or bizarre behavior, but family members said they believed more could have been done for the woman, who had been treated for intoxication at the jail following a previous arrest.

“Some help. Some kind words. Some apologies, I mean anything – anything,” said Maria Johnson, another daughter.

While Johnson’s suicide was the first at the D.C. Jail ...

A Vermont Superior Court held the policy of the Vermont Department of Corrections (VDOC) to send hundreds of male prisoners to out-of-state facilities, regardless of whether they have close bonds with their young children, while keeping all women prisoners at in-state facilities, violates the equal protection clause and common benefits clause of the state constitution.

VDOC prisoner Michael Carpenter was transferred to the Lee Adjustment Center in Kentucky, operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), under a policy that was purportedly created to alleviate overcrowding in Vermont prisons. Carpenter is the father of twin boys who were four-and-a-half years old at the time he was transferred.

From their birth, Carpenter was with his sons every day caring for their needs. He was described as a “natural parent” by the boys’ mother, who said, “they wanted him more than me.” When he was first incarcerated the children were brought to visit Carpenter each week.

After he was sent to the CCA facility in Kentucky to serve his sentence, however, it was impossible for him to see his children. Carpenter filed suit, asking the court to issue declaratory relief and order the VDOC to return him to Vermont.

The Vermont Superior Court ...

by Joe Watson and Derek Gilna

Civil rights organizations hailed the settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed against the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) in the wake of scores of prisoner deaths and preventable injuries stemming from medical treatment so poor that one private prison healthcare company withdrew from its contract. A federal court in Phoenix approved the settlement on February 18, 2015, bringing an end to the suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Prison Law Office, Arizona Center for Disability Law and others on behalf of more than 33,000 Arizona state prisoners. [See: PLN, Sept. 2012, p.34].

“The Arizona Department of Corrections has agreed to changes that will save lives,” Prison Law Office director Don Specter said after the settlement agreement was first announced. “This settlement will bring more humane treatment for prisoners with serious healthcare needs, and the potential for their conditions to improve rather than worsen.”

“At last, the Arizona Department of Corrections will provide its prisoners with adequate medical, mental health, and dental care,” he continued. “This is what the Constitution and our consciences demand.”

However, ADC Director Charles L. Ryan issued a statement that seemed, on its face, to contradict allegations contained ...

Florida, with the nation’s third-largest prison system, has a long and sordid history of abusing, neglecting and even killing its prisoners. Because most state prisons are in insular rural areas, the general public, aside from those with incarcerated loved ones or friends, has minimal awareness of what really occurs within facilities operated by the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) or its private contractors.

The FDOC has historically strived to preserve this lack of transparency by obfuscating the actual happenings in its prisons. The department’s modus operandi is to portray itself as a professional state agency that protects citizens from dangerous criminals, which requires an ever-increasing share of taxpayer dollars to keep society safe from a growing prison population.

Keeping its dirty laundry in-house is an administrative priority. Occasionally, however, particularly egregious incidents belie the FDOC’s carefully crafted vision statement of “changing lives to ensure a safer Florida,” and the public gets a glimpse of the reality behind prison walls.

For months after death row prisoner Frank Valdes died at the Florida State Prison on July 17, 1999, FDOC officials maintained that he committed suicide by diving head-first off his bunk, striking the bars in his cell. An autopsy, however, clearly ...

Florida’s prisons have become notorious for their abuse and neglect of the people in their care. Now, as per an agreement between the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) and Disability Rights Florida, the state will be overhauling its system of treatment for people with mental illness at the Dade Correctional Institution (Dade CI), located just south of Homestead, which houses the prison system’s largest mental health facility.

Disability Rights Florida filed a lawsuit against the DOC following a series of articles published by the Miami Herald during their in-depth investigation over the past year. According to the Herald, individuals in the Transitional Care Unit (TCU) at Dade CI were subjected to various abusive forms of punishment by guards, such as being locked into showers rigged to reach a temperature of 180 degrees, being forced to fight one another for the staff’s entertainment, and being given food that contained laxatives and even urine. A group nicknamed “The Diet Shift” allegedly gave out empty trays on a routine basis, in order to starve the people in their custody.

Perhaps the most notable case of abuse is Darren Rainey. On June 23, 2012, Rainey, who was serving two years for cocaine possession and suffered from ...

In December 2013, Alameda County, California, and Tennessee-based Corizon Health, Inc. agreed to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a minor son of a Santa Rita Jail prisoner who died of a heart attack after a being shocked with a Taser and struck by deputies.

Martin Harrison, 50, was a chronic alcohol user, but otherwise healthy when Oakland police arrested him for driving while intoxicated and booked him into the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. He began acting erratically while at the jail, possibly due to acute alcohol withdrawal. On August 16, 2010, he had broken a food tray, made a mess in his cell and flooded his cell when deputies arrived to try to remove him from the cell so it could be cleaned. They found him cowering behind a mattress, screaming that someone was trying to kill him.

When they moved in on him, he charged them. According to court documents, they responded by striking him, kicking him, repeatedly shocking him with Tasers and improperly restraining him. He was transferred to the jail infirmary, which was operated by Prison Health Services. Eventually he was taken to a hospital where he died two days after the confrontation. ...

By Matt Clarke

It was a bad deal for Texas cities and counties when, prison-construction entrepreneurs talked them into building publicly-financed prisons, for private corporations to operate; housing a surplus of prisoners at a profit. The counties went deep into debt, issuing bonds to pay for prison construction. Now, the surplus has vanished, but the debt remains. Not only do the cities and counties have to service the debt, they have to pay for utilities and maintenance for empty prisons. As previously reported, this has driven some Texas counties into near or actual default [PLN, Mar. 2011, P. 34].

This dire situation has led Littlefield, Texas, not-so-proud owner of an empty 372-bed prison, to try a number of ways to make the $10 million boondoggle turn a profit, or at least break even. This included seeking prisoners from other states and federal immigration authorities, and even auctioning off the facility. All of those attempts failed.

Curry County may be the latest prospective white knight riding to Littlefield's rescue. The 260-bed Curry County jail in Clovis, about an hour's drive from Littlefield, is poorly designed and too small for the county's 300 prisoners. This has the county spending about $700,000 a ...