Are We Really Witnessing the End of Mass Incarceration?

by James Kilgore

“This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration.” – Natasha Frost, associate dean of Northeastern University’s school of criminology and criminal justice

 

After more than three decades of “tough on crime,” the New Jim Crow, truth in sentencing and three strikes, the law-and-order ship looks adrift with no one rushing to bring it back on course. The bubble of prison construction is about to burst, if it hasn’t already. Pretty soon it may be difficult to find anyone who admits they once advocated serial prison building and trying fourteen-year-olds as adults. Crime figures are down while other distress meters rise into the danger zone – unemployment, homelessness and deteriorating public education. No longer can Directors of Corrections masquerade as first responders and lay claim to unlimited funding streams. Budgetary and social justice alarm bells are ringing loud and clear.

On top of this, as Soros Justice Fellow Tracy Huling notes, a “newfound political will” from state governors of both parties “to close prisons and, in some cases, to reduce the overall size of their incarceration systems” has emerged.At a local level, more than 40 municipalities and counties, ...

Florida Prisoner Awarded $1.2 Million for Burn Injuries

A Florida jury has awarded a prisoner $1.2 million in a negligence suit against the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, following a trial that was delayed more than a year after a juror said he was afraid to reach ...

The Untold Story Of What Happened At An Overcrowded West Virginia Jail After The Chemical Spill

By Christie Thompson

When roughly 10,000 gallons of chemicals leaked into a West Virginia watershed this January, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency. Officials shut down schools, deployed the National Guard, and rallied volunteers to bring water and support to the 300,000 people without potable water.

But in the state’s emergency response, there was one group that many forgot: the 429 prisoners locked in Charleston’s overcrowded jail, who were entirely dependent on the state to provide them clean water.

The only article that looked at the spill’s impact on inmates was a small, glowing report published two months later in the Charleston Daily Mail. Jail officials trumpeted their success at “protecting” inmates by providing a “plentiful supply of bottled water.”

Joe DeLong, executive director of the West Virginia Regional Jail Authority, told the paper inmates were given eight bottles of water a day and that they had “essentially no access to the contaminated water.” Before the jail returned to using tap water on January 18, DeLong said the jail went through a “very extensive” flushing process that lasted two to three ...

Seventh Circuit: Prisoner with Back Condition Stated Claim for Fall from Upper Bunk

 

by Michael Brodheim

 

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a prisoner who suffers from scoliosis stated a claim for deliberate indifference when he alleged that he fell and injured himself trying to climb into an upper bunk bed after specifically complaining that, due to back pain, he wasn’t able to access the upper bunk.

In January 2009, Illinois state prisoner Dorcus Withers filed suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that various healthcare professionals had been deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants.

On appeal, the Seventh Circuit noted that although Withers suffered from scoliosis (i.e., curvature of the spine) and “frequent flare-ups” of back pain, the evidence was “overwhelming” that he was also a malingerer and had no medical need for a back brace, a medical mattress or orthopedic shoes – some of the items he repeatedly requested.

The Court of Appeals was troubled, however, by an encounter between Withers and prison nurse Debra Miller. According to Withers, Miller had ...

Kansas: Prison Healthcare Officials Engaged in Continued Deliberate Indifference

 

by Robert Warlick

 

The Kansas Court of Appeals held that employees of Correct Care Solutions at the Lansing Correctional Facility (LCF) committed continuing Eighth Amendment violations by withholding a prisoner’s medical restrictions.

LCF prisoner Ernest Lee Thomas, Jr., 61, had broken his ankle prior to his incarceration in 1989, resulting in arthritis and a permanent deformity. Consequently, he was granted a number of medical restrictions by prison healthcare staff: He was not to climb stairs, had a lower bunk restriction and was allowed to wear tennis shoes rather than regular prison-issued footwear.

Those restrictions continued until January 27, 2011, when Lamont Lane, an LCF nurse, removed them after Thomas failed to attend a medical appointment. Thomas was subsequently moved to a different housing unit that required him to climb a steep hill to reach his cell.

Thomas filed a petition in Leavenworth District Court that alleged deliberate indifference to his “chronic and continuing medical conditions.” The court held his Eighth Amendment rights had been violated when Nurse Lane removed his restrictions without permission from a physician, and noted the punishment for missing a medical appointment evidenced a “total ‘disregard ...

G4S, which bills itself as “the world’s largest security company,” has encountered rough going in the carceral marketplace in recent weeks. The latest episode in the troubles of this British-Danish security giant came with its public admission on November 18 that the firm had overbilled the British government roughly $38 million dollars (£24 million) for electronic monitoring services in the criminal justice system. This admission came after authorities had begun an investigation of G4S and the UK’s other large scale monitoring provider, Serco, for alleged wrongdoing. The investigation was slated to come to a head this week with the release of a report by the National Auditing Office (NAO) as well as a public hearing before the powerful parliamentary public accounts committee.

Ultimately, G4S admitted to billing the government for monitors that didn’t exist. In some cases, the clients for whom the Ministry of Justice was charged included people who had returned to prison, those who had been taken off of the monitor, and even a few who had passed away. In one instance the justice ministry paid £3,000 ($4830) for 612 days monitoring of a man who had been sent to prison for two years 20 months earlier. G4S ...

by Matt Clarke

On October 24, 2012, a federal jury in Texas awarded $2.25 million to the estate and survivors of a prisoner who died at a facility operated by LCS Corrections Services (LCS), after finding the company was 100% at fault. The district court subsequently reversed its dismissal of § 1983 claims against LCS and granted a new trial as to those claims.

Mario A. Garcia was incarcerated at the Brooks County Detention Center (BCDC) in Falfurrias, Texas, owned and operated by LCS, when he died of a seizure on January 12, 2009. After Garcia was booked into BCDC, his wife delivered a supply of clonazepam, a prescription anti-anxiety medication he had been using for years, to the facility. BCDC officials received the medication but did not give it to Garcia because they allegedly had a policy of refusing to allow prisoners to take any controlled substances, even bona fide prescription medications.

Garcia began shaking badly later that day. He was taken to the emergency room, treated and returned to BCDC. The prison’s contract physician, Dr. Michael Pendleton, saw Garcia twice – the last time on January 8, 2009. After the second visit with Dr. Pendleton, Garcia’s condition deteriorated ...

On March 19, 2014, a state district court in Travis County, Texas held that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, is considered a “governmental body” for purposes of the state’s Public Information Act and therefore subject to the Act’s “obligations to disclose public information.”

The court entered its ruling on a motion for summary judgment filed by Prison Legal News, which had brought suit against CCA in May 2013 after the company refused to produce records related to the now-closed Dawson State Jail in Dallas – including reports, investigations and audits regarding CCA’s operation of the facility. [See: PLN, June 2013, p.46]. Such records would have been made public had the jail been operated by a government agency.

“This is one of the many failings of private prisons,” said PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann. “By contracting with private companies, corrections officials interfere with the public’s right to know what is happening in prisons and jails, even though the contracts are funded with taxpayer money. This lack of transparency contributes to abuses and misconduct by for-profit companies like CCA, which prefer secrecy over public accountability.”

CCA currently operates nine facilities in Texas, including four that house ...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals applied the harmless error test in finding that a district court’s late Rand summary judgment notice did not deprive a prisoner of substantial rights. Additionally, the appellate court held prison officials were not deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk of violence by placing two rival gang members in the same cell.

This case involved the appeal of a Hawaii federal district court’s grant of summary judgment to Corrections Corporation of America and CCA guards at the Saguaro Correctional Center (SCC) in Arizona. The suit was brought by Hawaii state prisoner Keone Labatad, who was housed at SCC and assaulted by another prisoner on July 23, 2009.

Three days earlier, Labatad, a member of the La Familia gang, got into a fight with Howard Giddeons, a member of the USO Family gang. Both told guards that the fight was not gang-related and they had shook hands afterwards. Following procedure, both were placed in administrative segregation.

Labatad was put in a cell with Shane Mara, a USO Family gang member. On the day of the assault, Mara waited until Labatad was in hand restraints in preparation for leaving the cell; he then hit Labatad in the ...

A former Oregon jail guard was sentenced to probation for sexually abusing a female prisoner after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge; his defense attorney blamed the incarcerated victim while the prosecutor defended the light sentence. The guard, Eddie James Miller, 60, was later accused of sexually harassing a co-worker.

As previously reported in PLN, Miller’s 21-year career at the Inverness Jail in Portland, Oregon came to an end when he was accused of walking in on a 34-year-old female prisoner as she was using the bathroom in the jail’s medical unit and forcing her to perform oral sex on him on January 9, 2012 [See: PLN, April 2012, p.1].

The distraught prisoner immediately reported the incident to detectives, according to Mike Schults, a chief deputy with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

Authorities said the woman’s DNA was found on Miller, and she testified before a grand jury. On February 29, 2012, Miller was indicted on charges of official misconduct in the first degree and custodial sexual misconduct in the first degree.

The latter offense is a felony when an Oregon corrections employee or contractor engages in sexual intercourse with a prisoner; all other sexual contact constitutes the misdemeanor offense ...