Historically, prisons and jails have been loathe to give prisoners access to technology. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) didn’t even allow prisoners regular access to telephone calls until 2009. Access to internet-based services, which the non-incarcerated take for granted, is also forbidden by prison officials who cite vaguely-expressed “security concerns.” In recent years, however, electronic tablets that include a variety of programs and ­services have proliferated behind bars.

What has caused this shift in the Luddite mentality of prison officials? Money, mainly. Corrections agencies almost always receive “commission” kickbacks from the revenue generated by fee-based content offered by tablet providers, which ranges from e-messaging and video calls to music downloads and games. The two primary tablet vendors are GTL/ViaPath Technologies, headquartered in Virginia, and Dallas-based Securus Technologies. They are also the nation’s leading prison and jail phone service providers.

Both are owned by private equity firms and have long histories of price-gouging prisoners and their families. Other companies that supply tablets and e-content include Edovo, Inmate Calling Solutions (ICSolutions) and Keefe Commissary Network.

In the business model they all use, corrections officials can select the programs and features available on tablets that are usually provided to prisoners at ...

Transgender Idaho state prisoner Adree Edmo filed suit in 2017 seeking gender-confirming surgery. She suffered from an extreme case of gender dysphoria—a recognized medical condition—and had repeatedly attempted self-castration. As PLN reported, the litigation was successful, and Edmo received the surgery shortly before her release in July 2020. The federal court for the District of Idaho later awarded $2.63 million in attorney fees and costs. [See: PLN, Mar. 2023, p.56.]

Edmo alleged violations of the Affordable Care Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment civil rights violations and a state-law negligence claim. Following an evidentiary hearing, the district court granted a preliminary injunction that required Defendants—state prison officials and their private medical contractor, Corizon Health—to provide her adequate healthcare, including gender-affirming surgery.

Defendants appealed and the case was remanded by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On remand, the district court again ordered the surgery for Edmo, and the decision was then affirmed by the appellate court, which also refused to hold a rehearing of the case before the entire Ninth Circuit en banc. The Supreme Court of the U.S. declined to issue a writ of certiorari to review ...

Pointing to “reports of staffing shortages, physical and sexual assaults, murders and a 188% turnover rate among prison guards just last year,” the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on August 20, 2024, that it was launching a civil rights investigation into Tennessee’s troubled Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), which is operated for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) under contract by private prison profiteer CoreCivic, Inc.

“Publicly available information suggests that Trousdale Turner has been plagued by serious problems since it first opened its doors” in 2016, declared U.S. Attorney Henry C. Leventis—something PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2018, p.46.] DOC temporarily suspended prisoner transfers shortly after the opening, forcing CoreCivic to import employees from other prisons and hire another private firm, G4S, to provide rent-a-guards.

Prisoners held at the lockup today confirmed to PLN that it is largely run by gangs and rife with violence, resulting in frequent lockdowns. Yet the state showed no signs it was ready to part ways with the firm, even after wrapping up a five-year $276 million contract in August 2024. The facility, which is owned by a Trousdale County agency that contracts separately with CoreCivic, houses the prisoners.

The DOJ’s investigation, ...

Hours after taking office on January 20, 2025, Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) issued an executive order reversing one from his predecessor that barred the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) from contracting with private prisons.

That order from former Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) affected only people detained by DOJ, including about 14,000 of nearly 150,000 prisoners then held by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). It did not extend to the United States Department of Homeland Security, leaving most of nearly 40,000 people detained by its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in private lockups, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2023, p.16.]

Biden also granted numerous extensions to the ban to the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS)—which also developed workarounds by contracting to place detainees with counties which then contracted detention space from private prison firms, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2022, p.48.]

All of which means that two presidents have now issued bans and reversals of bans on private prisons with much fanfare, without meaningfully affecting the use of privately contracted detention in the country. Indeed, GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two largest private prison firms, saw their stock prices soar in the hours after Trump’s ...

A former West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) guard supervisor was found guilty on January 27, 2025, on charges related to the fatal beating of pretrial detainee Quantez Burks, 37, at Southern Regional Jail in March 2022. Former Lt. Chad Lester, 35, was convicted by a jury in federal court for the Southern District of West Virginia of making false statements to investigators, tampering with a witness and conspiracy to violate the witness tampering statue.

As PLN reported, fellow guards Andrew Fleshman, 21, and Steven Nicholas Wimmer, 24, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to charges that they conspired to violate Burks’ civil rights. Lester and three other guards were indicted that same month. The other three—former guards Mark Holdren, 39; Cory Snyder, 29; and Johnathan Walters, 35—pleaded guilty in November 2024 to the same charge, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, May 2024, p.22; and Jan. 2025, p.62.]

Charges were filed against two more guards, Jacob Boothe and Ashley Toney, who agreed to plead guilty in July 2024. But they apparently cut a deal with federal prosecutors to testify against Lester and the other three guards who were still facing charges; charges against Boothe and Toney were dismissed ...

The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry (DCRR) has faced bitter criticism for the healthcare provided to state prisoners, which a federal judge in 2022 called “plainly, grossly inadequate,” as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2022, p.1.] So it wasn’t surprising when its early response to the COVID-19 pandemic drew a 2020 warning from prisoner advocates in 11 faith groups that DCRR officials were sleepwalking through the pandemic and “not recognizing this reality nor addressing the asymptomatic nature of this virus.”

Yet the magnitude of the prison system’s failure—which, unlike the virus, was entirely within its own control—is only now coming to light. In a series of reports published on October 1, 2024, the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said that prisoners reported being given “fake” health checks—where no vital signs were taken—along with “do not resuscitate” orders that they never requested and were powerless to rescind.

Predictably, the DCRR’s response to criticism during the pandemic was to point the finger at private healthcare contractor Centurion Health, to which it paid $4,028,900 for COVID-19 tests in December 2020. But it was prison officials who then failed to strictly follow quarantine policies—signing off on transfers of ...

In a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on February 3, 2025, Salvadoran Pres. Nayib Bukele offered to house American prisoners in his country’s lockups “for a very small fee.” A week later, with much less fanfare, El Salvador admitted there was more to the bargain: Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco announced a cooperation agreement that would bring U.S. nuclear power technology to the Central American nation.

As PLN reported, Bukele championed construction of the world’s largest prison, which now holds 40,000 people arrested in a crackdown on gangs, including MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. [See: PLN, July 2023, p.62.] As a result, El Salvador has one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet, with one of every 100 residents behind bars. The $115 million cost of the lockup represented almost 1.2% of the country’s annual budget, though this is the first time El Salvador has broached the subject of renting out any of the prison’s massive 65-man cells.

The U.S. constitution prohibits imprisoning citizens outside the country, a point not completely lost on Rubio; he admitted there were “legalities involved” in sending anyone other than immigration detainees. He further limited that group to “violent criminals”—though a ...

by Matt Clarke

On August 16, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the verdict and jury award of $6.4 million in compensatory damages against three nurses who worked for Corizon Health when it held the contract to provide healthcare at Michigan’s Kent County Correctional Facility (KCCF) in Grand Rapids

In April 2018, Wade Jones, 40, was caught trying to rob a store of $94.50 worth of merchandise that included golf balls, a whole chicken, bread, macaroni and cheese, plus four 1.75-liter bottles of alcohol. He was charged with third-degree misdemeanor retail theft.

Jones pleaded guilty at his arraignment. That’s also when the 59th Judicial District Court became aware of his drinking problem because Jones tested at .159 and .145 when given two breath tests by a probation officer during the proceedings. This concerned Judge Peter V. Versluis because Jones did not seem drunk, showing a high tolerance for alcohol. The judge then sentenced him to five days in the jail.

When booked into KCCF, Jones denied being drunk but admitted to drinking vodka “occasionally.” About five hours later, he reported experiencing symptoms consistent with Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome (AWS), a serious and potentially fatal medical ...

Privately owned prison and jail healthcare provider PrimeCare Medical has managed to keep details secret of payouts to settle lawsuits filed over injuries or deaths of prisoners, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2022, p.1.] One of those agreements in Pennsylvania was revealed in July 2023, when a federal court ordered the case unsealed, and now two more settlements in other Pennsylvania suits involving PrimeCare have been unsealed, revealing an additional $1.2 million in payouts for prisoners’ wrongful deaths.

When Veronique A. Henry, 42, was booked into York County Prison in September 2016, intake staff recommended that she be placed on suicide watch. PrimeCare employees, however, felt that was unnecessary, so she was instead put in a regular cell. Henry wasn’t seen by a psychologist or psychiatrist before she hanged herself the next day using a bedsheet. Rich Reilly, the administrator of Henry’s Estate, filed suit in federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in September 2018 against the County and its jail medical contractor. York County settled its share of the claims for $5,000, while PrimeCare’s settlement agreement was placed under seal in April 2021.

Five months later, the County let its $7.4 million annual contract with the ...

On December 6, 2025, federal prosecutors dismissed their case against Jeffrey Scott Wells, 54, a former Vice President of private prison medical contractor Centurion Health caught colluding with a former Tennessee Department of Correction (DOC) official to rig bidding for the prison system’s healthcare contract in the firm’s favor.

The decision to drop Wells’ prosecution followed the death of his co-defendant, former DOC Deputy Commissioner and Chief Financial Officer Wesley O. Landers, 55, on September 30, 2024. Felony conspiracy and perjury charges against the two had been filed in federal court for the Middle District of Tennessee less than two weeks earlier, on September 17, 2024.

As PLN reported, the DOC rebid its contract for behavioral healthcare services in 2019, receiving offers from Corizon Health, Centurion Health and several other for-profit vendors. After Centurion won the five-year $123 million contract, Corizon—now known as YesCare—filed suit, alleging improprieties in the bidding process. [See: PLN, Oct. 2021, p.32.]

Landers left the DOC in March 2020 while that case was pending, and he was promptly hired by a Centurion affiliate in Georgia. The executive-level position was created just for him, and he reported to Wells. Meanwhile, Corizon attorneys presented evidence in their suit ...