JPay Fined in Pennsylvania, Michigan for Operating without a License

As indicated in this issue’s cover story, JPay, a company incorporated in Delaware and based in Miami, Florida, and the industry leader in prison money transfer services, has been fined $408,500 for operating without a license in at least seven states – including Pennsylvania and Michigan.

JPay allows consumers to transfer money by using credit and debit cards through its website and by phone, through cash transfers with cash agent locations that contract with JPay, and by mailing money orders to the company. JPay charges consumers a fee for most money transfers.

The company’s contract with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections specifies it is the sole provider of electronic fund services for state prisoners.

In August 2011, the Pennsylvania Department of Banking (PDB) concluded an investigation that found JPay had not been licensed as a money transmitter as required by the state’s Money Transmitter Act, 7 P.S. §§ 6101-6018. Yet the company had been transferring money from Pennsylvania citizens to prisoners since December 2004.

The PDB found that JPay did not meet any of the Act’s exemptions; during the investigation, the company was cooperative and provided information and documents to ...

By Victoria Law, Truthout

When her daughter was first incarcerated in Arizona's Perryville State Prison, "Rae" sent her money orders bought at the local cash-checking place or from Walmart. But those took too long to clear, leaving her daughter without needed supplies, so she began driving to the post office to buy money orders. Throughout her daughter's four years in prison, Rae has sent her money twice a month - $100 on the first of the month and whatever she can afford (usually $50 or less) on the 15th of the month.

Inspection Finds Improvements at CCA-Owned Ohio Facility Following Rocky Start

A September 2013 re-inspection report cited improvements in conditions at a privately-owned prison near Cleveland, Ohio compared to an inspection performed a year earlier, when state auditors identified numerous areas of non-compliance with state standards and conditions so bad that prisoners were living in mold-infested housing units without running water or working toilets.

Inspectors with the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC), Ohio’s independent prison watchdog agency, said not all of the problems previously identified had been fixed at the 1,800-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution (LECI), operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) – but their September 2013 report indicated the prison was “heading in a positive direction.”

CCA had purchased LECI from the state in 2011 for $72.7 million, and Ohio pays the company an annual fee and per diem rate to house prisoners at the facility under a 20-year contract with a guaranteed 90% occupancy. [See: PLN, Nov. 2012, p.16].

“The CIIC inspection team’s overall sense is that conditions have improved,” the report stated. “CCA has poured significant resources into the prison, including removing or changing staff, hiring on former (Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction) staff, investing in ...

In July 2013, Armor Correctional Health Services agreed to settle a wrongful death suit by paying $800,000 to the family of Allen Daniel Hicks, Sr., who died after being denied medical care while incarcerated at a jail in Hillsborough County, Florida. The county paid another $200,000 to Hicks’ family.

On ...

Repackaging Mass Incarceration

by James Kilgore

Since my CounterPunch article in November 2013, which assessed the state of the movement against mass incarceration, the rumblings of change in the criminal justice system have steadily grown louder. Attorney General Eric Holder has continued to stream his mild-mannered critique by raising the issue of felony disenfranchisement;* the President has stepped forward with a proposal for clemency for people with drug offenses that could free hundreds. In the media, we’ve seen a scathing attack on America’s addiction to punishment in The New York Times and the American Academy of Sciences has released perhaps the most comprehensive critique of mass incarceration to date, the 464-page The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. 

In late May 2014, several dozen conservatives including Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist and former NRA president David Keene pulled together the first Right on Crime (ROC) Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. The ROC, an organization which boasts a coterie of members with impeccable right-wing credentials, reiterated the need for conservatives to drive the process of prison reform. The conference’s “call to action” argued: “In our earnest desire to have safer neighborhoods, policy responses to crime have too often neglected ...

Wells Fargo Bankrolls Private Prison Companies, Immigrant Detention

While Wells Fargo & Company has sold off much of the stock it once owned in private prison company GEO Group amid a divestment campaign targeting the multi-billion-dollar bank, it has concurrently increased its shares in Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

After initially selling off around 33% of its holdings in GEO Group stock in 2012, Wells Fargo continued to divest from GEO in the mutual funds it controlled. As of June 30, 2014, the bank owned 7,425 shares of GEO valued at over $272,000; previously, it had owned 4 million shares. However, Wells Fargo has steadily increased its stake in CCA and owned 1.08 million shares in the company valued at $36.6 million as of June 30, 2014.

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, executive director of Enlace, a non-profit organization that has convened a National Private Prison Divestment Campaign, congratulated the bank on “its well-advised decision to dump the private prison stock” in GEO Group. He called on the financial industry giant to “rid itself of the rest of its private prison holdings and to cease financing private prison companies.”

A divestment campaign protest outside a Wells Fargo branch in Nashville, Tennessee on July ...

Captive Customers: Outsourcing Prison Services is Ruining Lives and Bilking Taxpayers

By Donald Cohen

Introducing for-profit companies into America's criminal justice system has been a bad deal for governments across the country.

During the past several years, a movement opposed to profit incentives in our criminal justice system has grown. Private prison corporations such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group have come under increasing scrutiny and pressure for cutting corners, contracts that include "occupancy guarantees" of 80, 90 and even 100 percent and unsafe prison conditions.

California Exhaustion Requirement Extends to Independent Contractors

by Mark Wilson

On December 6, 2013, the California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, held that prisoners must exhaust administrative remedies before suing independent contractors employed by the prison system.

California prisoner Ira Don Parthemore was examined by Dr. Peter R. Col, an optometrist under contract at the Mule Creek State Prison.

Col diagnosed Parthemore with cataracts in both eyes and advised him that he would need surgery. Col later re-examined him and concluded surgery was not necessary. Col prepared a transfer request, incorrectly identifying Parthemore as being “legally blind.” He was then transferred to a medical facility.

A different optometrist examined Parthemore and found that he “never should have been diagnosed as legally blind or transferred to the medical facility.”

Parthemore fell while at the medical facility, breaking his right kneecap and several bones in his left shoulder. After he recovered, he was sent back to Mule Creek.

Parthemore sued Dr. Col in state court for negligence, alleging that the injuries from his fall were caused by Col’s refusal to issue a new eyeglasses prescription. He also alleged that Col intentionally falsified official medical records, resulting in his unnecessary transfer to ...

Class-Action Suit Claiming Inadequate Medical Care at Virginia Prison Set for Trial

A December 2014 trial date has been scheduled in a class-action federal lawsuit that could determine the future of health care for prisoners at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW) in Troy, Virginia.

The suit was filed in July 2012 on behalf of five women incarcerated at Fluvanna, and names as defendants the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC), Armor Correctional Health Services and both VDOC and Armor officials for failing to provide constitutionally adequate medical care at FCCW. The Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) in Charlottesville, Virginia; the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wiley Rein, LLP and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs are jointly representing the plaintiffs – Cynthia B. Scott, Bobinette D. Fearce, Patricia Knight, Marguerite Richardson and Rebecca L. Scott.

On July 15, 2013, the district court held that Corizon Health, Inc., of Brentwood, Tennessee, which was the contract provider for medical care in VDOC facilities prior to Armor, and which outbid Armor in May 2013 to resume its role as Virginia’s correctional health care provider, could be added as a defendant.

The suit does not seek monetary damages, but ...

Texas Court Finds CCA Subject to State’s Public Information Act, Awards Attorney Fees

On September 15, 2014, a Travis County District Court entered a final judgment that found Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, is a “governmental body” for purposes of the Texas Public Information ...