by Daniel A. Rosen

My most vivid memory of Aramark’s food service inside jails and prisons came early on in my incarceration: I watched a man at the D.C. Jail dig into the entrée on his evening meal tray and uncover half a dead mouse. Those of us around him struggled with our own gag reflexes while he lost his composure, yelling about the lawsuit he was going to file, and for a guard to come document the evidence. It was traumatic, for him and for everyone close enough to see it happen. That incident was the single most disturbing episode from my time eating inside—but probably had less long-term health impact than the cumulative effect of years of eating inedible, unnutritious, poor-quality meals.

I spent about six years eating both Aramark-prepared meals in jails and state-prepared trays in prisons. If there’s one thing both systems taught me, it’s that “self-operated” and “privatized” food service are really just two different flavors of contempt. There’s a difference though between neglect funded by the public payroll and the for-profit variety that comes with a shareholder base and C-suite salaries. A new report released this spring finally puts details and …

The federal immigration jail in Aurora, Colorado came under scrutiny in recent weeks due to both its unsanitary conditions that led to a tuberculosis outbreak as well as an incident in which a guard shot a protester at the facility’s entrance.

The tuberculosis outbreak at the Aurora jail has caused at least 12 detainees to contract the bacterial disease. According to The Guardian, in addition to the tuberculosis cases, dozens of other detainees were placed in quarantine. All of those held at the facility were forced to endure the isolation without air conditioning.

It is not currently known exactly how many people are locked up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the jail, which has a capacity of 1,532 and is operated by the GEO Group, a private prison profiteer whose profits have grown substantially since President Donald Trump (R) returned to office last year. Conditions at the lockup have faced criticism before, such as when an alleged previous tuberculosis outbreak occurred there in April 2025.

A detainee in Aurora interviewed by The Guardian said that, after 88 people in the same pod were tested for tuberculosis, guards refused to separate those who …

by Jo Ellen Knott

The Jersey Vindicator reported thatthe GEO Group-operated Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Newark, New Jersey, is facing severe infrastructure failures and exposing detainees to dangerous conditions.

In early July 2026, as the worst heat wave in New Jersey in 15 years brought temperatures past 100 degrees, the lockup’s air conditioning failed in one unit, leaving roughly 150 immigrant detainees struggling to breathe in stagnant, humid air. Advocates reported detainees stripped naked to cope with the extreme heat and had to drink discolored, metallic-tasting water.

While ICE claims portable cooling units were deployed, activists dispute this, claiming that neither the agency nor GEO Group provided the units. Some detainees received fans, but these offered little relief and only moved hot air around the area. Without an official explanation, around 120 detainees were bussed out of Delaney Hall for transfers or removals over the Fourth of July weekend, and three detainees were hospitalized for “various medical concerns.”

Delaney Hall has come under intense scrutiny in recent months, with detainees holding a recent hunger strike in protest of the squalid conditions. Beyond broken airconditioning, detainees have raised complaints of …

by Douglas Ankney

Corizon Health, Inc. (“Corizon”) was a private profiteer that, in 2019, contracted with 149 prisons to provide medical care to incarcerated persons. While Corizon’s business shrank to serving just 52 prisons by May 2022, its decadence expanded from cheating prisoners and their families out of damages awarded based on Corizon’s substandard medical care to stiffing attorneys on their fees when representing Corizon.

As repeatedly reported in PLN, Corizon has been named as a defendant in scores of lawsuits filed by prisoners, pretrial detainees and/or their families that alleged it failed to provide constitutionally adequate medical care. In many of these cases, the horrid lack of even basic medical care resulted in lifelong permanent injury or death. And damages, including compensatory and punitive, were awarded as a remedy.

In a recent case, non-economic damages of $7.5 million were awarded jointly and severally against Corizon and one other defendant—with another whopping $300 million in punitive damages awarded against Corizon only. See: Jackson v. Corizon Health, Inc., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80656 (E.D. Mich. April 13, 2026). But, as also reported in PLN, Corizon filed for bankruptcy in Texas in 2023 and reemerged as two separate …

by Chuck Sharman

New York’s Onondaga County agreed to pay a former detainee in the County jail $100,000 on March 3, 2026, resolving her claim for denial of medical care during a gruesome 30-hour labor while giving birth to an infant daughter who was then transported to a Syracuse hospital and died. An earlier settlement for an undisclosed amount was reached with private jail healthcare contractor NaphCare, LLC, Advance Media New York reported.

Cheree Byrd, then 35, was released from the Onondaga County Justice Center (OCJC) on August 2, 2022, the day after her baby died. When she was booked into the lockup a month earlier—on a misdemeanor petit larceny charge that Syracuse Police later dropped—she was just three months pregnant. Within a few weeks, she began complaining to jailers that she was in pain and suspected she was in premature labor. They gave her Tylenol and tampons, but nothing else, according to the complaint later filed on her behalf.

On July 29, staffers with NaphCare, the OCJC’s then-healthcare contractor, finally placed her on medical watch, owing to her history of premature labor. But when she reported that her water had broken, guards disbelieved it, chalking …

by Michael Dean Thompson

Wexford Health Services, Inc. is a private healthcare profiteer that contracts with prison systems and jails across the country, offering “comprehensive” medical services to incarcerated persons. However, Wexford provides opioid withdrawal treatment only as an optional service at additional cost to the prison or jail systems that choose it.

Three formerly incarcerated people sued over this practice and pushed to have their lawsuit certified as a class action. The district court certified two distinct classes—a Damages class and an Injunctive Relief class. On appeal, a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the Damages class and remanded the Injunctive Relief class for more fact finding in April of this year.

Lauren Spurlock, Heather Smith and Shawn Zmudzinski have all suffered from Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) for years. They also landed in institutions where Wexford provides “comprehensive” medical care. For Spurlck and Smith, those were in West Virginia, while Zmudzinski was in New Mexico. Wexford offers Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD), but only as an option for the contracting prison or jail as a cost-saving measure.

Furthermore, systems can choose to exclude MOUD even …

by David Reutter

On March 26, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of qualified immunity under Michigan law in a gross negligence claim related to a scabies infestation at a women’s prison. The Court also affirmed the grant of qualified immunity to upper echelon officials on an Eighth Amendment claim.

Starting in November 2016, as PLN reported, the Huron Valley Correctional Facility for Women (Huron Valley) became infested with scabies. The infestation manifested in over 200 prisoners, which is 10% of Huron Valley’s incarcerated population. Scabies infections existed in eight of the prison’s fifteen units. [See: PLN, Apr. 2019, p.58.]

Scabies occurs when parasitic mites burrow under a person’s outer layer of skin and lay eggs. Affected prisoners developed red bumps and lesions on their wrists, fingers, armpits, waists and genitals. The “rentless” itching and “perpetual discomfort” left many prisoners unable to sleep and drove others to contemplate suicide. The prisoners pleaded for help from the Michigan Department of Corrections’ (DOC) private healthcare vendor, Corizon Healthcare.

For years, Corizon misdiagnosed the infestation as being caused by prisoners who washed their own clothes instead of sending them to …

by Nichole Manna

For 30 minutes, Brian Tracey lay naked and unable to breathe on the floor of the medical ward at the St. Johns County Detention Center, a low-roofed building south of Jacksonville, Florida. It was Dec. 15, 2023, the day Tracey was supposed to be released from jail.

By the time deputies noticed him, it was too late. His girlfriend, who’d posted bond for Tracey after nine days, waited outside for him but was instead greeted by a deputy and chaplain, who told her Tracey was dead.

Medical staff working for the jail’s health provider, Armor Health of St. Johns County LLC, an affiliate of Miami-based Armor Health, said Tracey, 62, was showing flu-like symptoms and suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung condition that makes it difficult to breathe. In the days and hours before his death, Tracey had passed out and appeared confused, according to a police report from the county sheriff’s office, which investigated the death. Much of what is known about how he died comes from this report, which includes Tracey’s autopsy, interviews with deputies and medical staff, and a description of a video of Tracey in the medical …

by Chuck Sharman

On June 24, 2026, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York awarded $3.25 million in damages to former jail detainee Thomas Donohue against Armor Correctional Health, which held the contract at the time of his 2014 incarceration to provide medical care at the Nassau County Correctional Center (NCCC) on Long Island. The firm has since gone through a bankruptcy reorganization that left it with a new name, Armor Health, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, July 2026, p.1.]

The state’s then-Attorney General, Eric Scheiderman (D), sued the firm in 2016, blaming a spate of NCCC deaths in part on shoddy medical care. As PLN reported, Armor settled the suit the following year with a $350,000 payment and a promise not to bid for business in the state for three years. Similar complaints across the country dogged the firm into bankruptcy, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, July 2017, p.30; and July 2026, p.1.]

County cops arrested Donohue, then 48, in September 2014 on suspicion of a pair of bank robberies in West Hempstead and East Meadow, according to a report at the …

by Chuck Sharman

In March 2026, after what was likely the first-ever civil sanction against a private prison company for spoliation of evidence, CoreCivic settled a suit filed over the suicide of a Brazilian migrant at the company’s Torrance County Detention Facility (TCDF), a lockup operated under contract for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Estancia, New Mexico.

According to the complaint filed on his behalf, Kelsey Vial, 23, presented himself to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol upon arrival in the country in April 2022 and asked for asylum. He was turned over to ICE and held at TCDF to await an immigration court hearing on his asylum request. Though he confessed to experiencing suicidal ideation as a 14-year-old during an interview with a CoreCivic mental health practitioner, Vial was placed in the prison’s general population.

His asylum request was quickly denied, and a final order for his removal from the country was issued on June 13. Two days later, in a follow-up interview with the same CoreCivic Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Reev Pierce, the detainee said “that he was crying a lot, he was having trouble sleeping, and he was engaged in self-harm—he had …