“Deep-Seated Culture of Violence” and Abysmal Medical Care at Rikers Island

by Gary Hunter

Pressure is mounting to speed the progress of reforms at New York City’s infamous Rikers Island jail complex, as city and federal officials focus on two primary areas that have drawn the focus of public attention: violence that escalated to a record level in 2014 – much of it related to guards using force against prisoners – and grossly inadequate healthcare.

According to data obtained by the Associated Press, New York City jail guards reported using force against prisoners 4,074 times during 2014, an average of 11 incidents per day, ranging from pepper spray to punches. During September 2014 alone they reported 406 incidents – just one month after a federal report blasted Rikers Island guards for being too quick to resort to violence against youthful prisoners.

The increase in use-of-force incidents came as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) joined a class-action lawsuit to address what federal prosecutors have called a “deep-seated culture of violence” in New York City’s jail system.

“There has clearly not been a commitment to date to address officer violence on Rikers Island,” complained Dr. Bobby Cohen, who sits on the ...

Whether Private Actors Entitled to Qualified Immunity Bypassed Due to Factual Dispute

The First Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rule on a question of whether qualified immunity is categorically unavailable to private medical contractors because disputed issues of material fact remained in the case.

Before the appellate court was the interlocutory appeal of a Maine federal district court’s denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The First Circuit noted it had jurisdiction only to the extent the appeal rested on legal rather than factual grounds.

The defendants were employees of Corizon, a private contractor that provided medical services to prisoners at the Cumberland County Jail. The civil rights action was filed by the estate of Paul Victor Galambos III, who died on December 12, 2008 as a result of the defendants’ deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs after he injured himself and was placed in a restraint chair.

The defendants – psychiatric nurse practitioner Michael Trueworthy, Registered Nurse Barbara Walsh and Licensed Clinical Social Worker Linda Williams – argued their performance did not fall so far below the standard of care as to constitute deliberate indifference, and they were thus entitled to qualified immunity. The district court ...

Strip Searches of Female Visitors on Their Menstrual Period Addressed at CCA Shareholder Meeting

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, held its annual shareholder meeting in Nashville, Tennessee on May 14, 2015. It was likely the first time that the words “vagina,” “penises” and “menses” have been mentioned during a corporate shareholder meeting.

In January 2015, a federal lawsuit was filed against CCA by a woman who visited a prisoner at the company’s South Central Correctional Facility (SCCF) in Clifton, Tennessee. The visitor, identified only as Jane Doe, said guards had “forced her to expose her genitals to prove she was menstruating when she tried to take a sanitary napkin into the facility,” the Associated Press reported.

The suit was later amended to include another SCCF visitor who alleged she had to endure a similar search by CCA guards to prove she was on her period, while in the presence of her minor children.

Apparently it was CCA’s policy to require women visitors who were menstruating to provide evidence they were on their period. This was accomplished by making them remove or change their tampons or pads in the presence of a female guard, who ...

Peer-Review Reports Must be Disclosed in Philadelphia Jail Conditions Suit

by David Reutter

A Pennsylvania federal district court held on November 4, 2014 that medical care contractor Corizon Health has to produce mortality and sentinel event reviews in a class-action suit filed by prisoners in the Philadelphia Prison System (PPS) seeking equitable relief from unconstitutional conditions of confinement.

The lawsuit alleges that the PPS is overcrowded and triple-celled, and overcrowding results in danger to the health and safety of the prisoner population. Before the court was a discovery request filed by the plaintiffs that sought “mortality and sentinel event reviews for deaths that occurred in custody from January 2012 to December 1, 2013.”

The PPS defendants sought to obtain the discovery information from Corizon, a non-party to the suit, but the company objected, contending that the records were not discoverable because they were protected by Pennsylvania’s peer-review privilege law. The plaintiffs argued that federal courts do not recognize the state peer-review privilege.

The district court explained that where, as here, there are both federal and state law claims in a case, “the federal rule favoring admissibility, rather than any state law privilege, is the controlling rule.” Therefore, “the mere fact ...

Private Prison Corporation GEO Group Expands its Stable of Former Top Federal Officials

by Darwin Bond-Graham

On July 2, 2014, private prison corporation GEO Group added yet another former government official to its inner circle. GEO Group’s management voted unanimously to expand their board of directors to seven seats, adding Julie Myers Wood. From 2006 to 2008, Wood was the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Wood is now the second member of GEO Group’s inner circle to have been employed by ICE. GEO Group’s executive vice president for corporate development, David Venturella, was an executive within ICE for 22 years before joining GEO Group in 2012.

Of course ICE is a major customer of GEO Group. GEO Group’s federal prison contracting began in 1987 when ICE signed a deal with the company to build and operate an immigrant prison in Colorado called the Aurora ICE Processing Center. GEO Group recently opened a new 400-bed immigrant “transfer center” in Louisiana. ICE will pay GEO Group $8.5 million a year to hold detainees in this prison.

Some might remember Julie Myers Wood for presiding over an infamous Halloween costume party at ICE’s Washington, ...

Georgia’s Privatized Probation Statute Facially Constitutional, but Problems with Administration

by David M. Reutter

While declining to rule on the constitutionality of a state law authorizing privatized probation services, on November 24, 2014 the Georgia Supreme Court issued a 41-page decision that alters the administration of that statute.

The Court ruled in an appeal in consolidated cases filed by 13 misdemeanor probationers in Columbia and Richmond counties. The first issue the Court addressed was the statute’s constitutionality. As the trial court had not distinctly ruled on that claim, the Court said it could not consider arguments related to the issue; it did find the statute was not unconstitutional on its face, though.

The probationers also argued that their due process rights had been violated because the financial interests of private probation officers denied them fair and impartial tribunals, as the officers encouraged courts to impose excessive and improper terms of probation. The Supreme Court held the state was required to continue to provide due process to individuals under its supervision; however, due process does not prohibit it from contracting with private companies. The probationers conceded their claims arose from employees of the contractor, Sentinel Offender Services, failing “to abide by ...

$400,000 Settlement in Suit Over Minnesota Prisoner’s Death Due to Medical Neglect

by Matt Clarke

On May 1, 2013, the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay a $400,000 settlement in a federal lawsuit after a prisoner suffered multiple seizures and died, having received virtually no medical care.

Xavius ...

32 Deaths at CCA-operated Immigration Detention Facilities Include at Least 7 Suicides

by Alex Friedmann

On June 17, 2015, U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, requesting an investigation into recent deaths at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. The facility, which houses detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is operated by Corrections Corporation of America – the nation’s largest for-profit prison company.

One of the deaths, that of José de Jesús Deniz-Sahagún, 31, a Mexican national, was ruled a suicide by the Pinal County Medical Examiner’s Office. Deniz-Sahagún died on May 20, 2015 due to asphyxiation; a sock was found lodged in his throat. The day before his death he was reportedly examined by mental health staff at the CCA facility for “delusional thoughts and behaviors,” according to the autopsy report.

“Eloy Detention Center is in the business of detaining people for profit, but that does not exempt them from upholding the law,” Rep. Grijalva said in a statement. “Where transgressions occur, accountability must follow.”

Approximately 200 detainees at the Eloy facility staged a hunger strike over the weekend of June 13-14, 2015. According to Puente Movement, an immigrant advocacy organization, the ...

GEO Group’s Gulags Grasping for Green Approval

by Panagioti Tsolkas

All the environmentally-conscious “green” certifications in the world can’t cover up the steady flow of atrocities associated with for-profit prisons, but that’s not going to stop them from trying.

In March 2015, the GEO Group – the nation’s second-largest private prison company – was called out by the “Greenwashing the Gulags” social media campaign for announcing that they had taken advantage of a publicly-funded program to promote water conservation by installing a native landscape plan at the Desert View Modified Community Correctional Facility.

GEO operates the prison in drought-stricken Adelanto, California, and the company received $4,207 to remove over 8,400 square feet of grass at the entrance of the facility. The labor for the project was provided by prisoners, of course, and the grass was replaced with gravel, a few native plants and well-arranged rocks. Some of the rocks were painted blue to spell out “GEO.”

Despite the new landscaping, GEO Group still draws massive quantities of water each day to operate the 700-bed facility. While GEO did not return calls from Prison Legal News inquiring about the facility’s water use, estimates indicate it uses over 140,000 gallons a day. ...

Corizon Abandons Kentucky Jail Contract in Wake of Death and Lawsuits

By David Reutter

In the wake of seven prisoner deaths and subsequent lawsuits, prison healthcare provider Corizon has decided to not seek renewal of its contract at Kentucky’s Metro Corrections in Louisville.

For much of the last two decades, Corizon has been Metro Corrections’ provider of prisoner healthcare. Its decision to walk away from its $5.5 million annual contract comes on the heels of the deaths of seven sick prisoners in the last year.

Three lawsuits have been filed in recent months, contending Corizon staff ignored or dismissed prisoners’ complaints and doctors were slow to review the prisoners’ conditions or to send them to a hospital.

A lawsuit filed in August on behalf of the family of Samantha George alleges that when she was taken to Metro Corrections on a charge of buying a stolen computer, she informed a nurse that she was a severe diabetic, needed insulin, and was feverish and in pain from a MRSA infection. She was so ill she was unable to keep water down.

The nurse contacted Corizon’s on-call doctor to suggest George be sent to a hospital. To avoid that expense, the doctor ...