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 ...

Arizona DOC Cancels 5,000 Bed Private Prison Contract

by Matt Clarke

Since January 2009, the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) has been working on a contract for private prison corporations to build and operate prisons with a capacity of 5,000 minimum and medium security beds in Arizona. The contract suffered several delays and was finally cancelled in December 2011, when the DOC announced that it would cut the number of requested beds in half and change the configuration to 500 beds in state-run prisons and 2,000 in privately-operated prisons. No time frame for proposals for the revised contract was announced.

What led to the contract's cancellation were statistics showing that the prison population in Arizona has ceased growing. The DOC presented statistics showing a growth of only 65 prisoners in FY 2010 and a decline of 296 prisoners in FY 2011. The Arizona prisoner population peaked at 40,544 in 2009 and had declined to 40,038 by December 22, 2011. The prison system's design capacity is 36,658 with another 5,216 temporary beds available. Thus, the prisoner population is well within that total capacity.

DOC statistics also show that private prisons fail to result in any significant savings ...

Auditors Find Deficiencies in Tennessee Prison Operations

by David M. Reutter

A performance audit of the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) was released in September 2012 by the state’s Comptroller of the Treasury. It made five findings related to security, information protection, weaknesses in monitoring contractors, abnormalities in reporting incidents, and minor noncompliance with prisoner trust fund policies.

The audit focused on TDOC operations for fiscal years 2010 through 2012. It examined all aspects of TDOC 12 prisons, which as of July 12, 2012, held 19,829 prisoners; 18,622 males and 1,207 females. Three of those prisons are operated by Corrections Corporation of America.

The report found potentially serious security risks with inadequate proof of staff exiting prisons and the training academy returning state-issued property. The audit found that four prisons and the Tennessee Correction Academy failed to document the return of uniforms, picture IDs, and TDOC badges by personnel leaving TDOC employment.

TDOC has in place a policy and form to document the issuance of state property to TDOC employees. The policy requires certain items to be returned within 72 hours of leaving TDOC’s employ. Failure to do so is supposed to result in a ...

Another Failed Experiment: Minnesota’s Private Prison Health Care Saves Money but Costs Lives

by David M. Reutter

Minnesota privatized its prison health care system in 1998 to achieve cost savings. While it has saved taxpayers money, it has exacted a toll of human suffering from prisoners subject to the profit-first motive of the private contractor. Since 2000, nine prisoners have died and another 21 have suffered serious or critical injury from the denial or delay of necessary medical care.

State officials have the ultimate responsibility for assuring prisoners receive medical care, but private contractors who deliver care make the day-to-day decision on who or if care is rendered. Minnesota has contracted with Corizon, the nation’s largest prison health care company. It has contracts with state prisons and local jails in 31 states. [See: PLN, March 2014, p.1].

Such contracts are for a fixed rate annually. The Minnesota contract pays Corizon $28 million each year, providing it with a strict incentive to cut costs. Cutting costs typically entail paying staff less and reducing the staff to the leanest levels possible.           

Corizon’s prison doctors end their shift at 4 P.M., and they do not work ...

Utah Democrat Defeated for Party Post Defeated After "Outing" as Private Prison Official

By Derek Gilna

Her position as Vice-Chairman of Management and Training Corporation (MTC), third largest private prison operator in the United States, proved to be the undoing of Jane Marquardt, who was seeking the vice-chair of the Utah Democratic Party's Central Committee. Despite her political record showing support for the organization "Human Rights Campaign and Equality Utah," and public support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) causes, the documented abuses at MTC facilities derailed any chance she might have had to win that party position.

According to Counterpunch.org, "her company profits from the disproportionate caging and abuse of LGBT people, especially transgender women," citing studies that show that LGBT youth are more likely to be homeless, and therefore more likely to come onto law enforcement's radar. "Transgender people have their risk of incarceration further exacerbated by being profiled for prostitution charges and sometimes even locked up for using public restrooms," the organization stated.

It is well known that wherever private prisons make large donations to public officials, legislation to open new for-profit prisons generally soon follow. The recent debate surrounding Arizona's bill ...

Private Probation Firms Costing Georgia Taxpayers

After several probation companies operating in Georgia were sued last year, a TV news investigation on private probation yielded some persuasive perspectives.

Some probationers explained to WSB-TV that private probation firms–which account for about 40% of all probation services in Georgia–are causing more people to end up in jail for minor offenses like shoplifting, or running stop signs or driving on a suspended license because of exorbitant supervision fees.

Tomoria Wells spent 18 days in a Ware County Jail after stealing an outfit from JC Penney that cost $20. After her release, the bill from the private probation company contracted to supervise her was more than $1,300–much of it solely for supervision fees.

"It was horrible," she said.

Hills McGee, a disabled veteran who was arrested four years ago for public intoxication, spent 13 days in jail after he couldn't pay a $180 fee to a private probation company. McGee's attorney, John Bell, said his client is like so many who go to jail because they can't pay a debt.

"The only focus appears to be how can we make him pay some money, even if it means locking ...

Medical Neglect Killing Prisoners at CCA-Run Texas Prison?

by Matthew Clarke

Family members and former Dawson State Jail prisoners are alleging medical neglect led to the recent deaths of two prisoners at the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) run prison in Dallas, Texas.

The 10-story high rise Jesse R. Dawson State Jail was built near the Trinity River in downtown Dallas in 1997. CCA was to run the medium-security, co-gender facility, which was designed to house nonviolent prisoners with short sentences close to their homes. But many Dawson prisoners never saw the end of their sentences. Instead, they died at the facility which, with five prisoner deaths in 2008 alone, had the greatest number of prisoner deaths of any state facility in Texas.

Pam Weatherby, 45, was serving a one-year sentence for drug possession when she died at Dawson on July 14, 2012. Anne Roderick, who was serving a sentence at Dawson at the time and was housed in the same dormitory as her, said Weatherby was very ill, but prison staff refused to move her from her cell to the prison infirmary for medical treatment. She and the other prisoners on the dorm desperately tried ...