by David M. Reutter
Much has been made of the “food desert” where America’s poorest citizens live: inner-city ghettos and rural backwaters where no grocery store is found, forcing impoverished residents—most lacking a car—to shop for food in high-priced and poorly-stocked gas stations and convenience stores.
But prisons also house some of America’s poorest citizens, and they are also forced to shop for food in commissaries that are high-priced and poorly-stocked—especially those run by private contractors, who are many layers of bureaucracy removed from any need to respond to complaints from their “customers.”
The profiteers and politicians who advocate for privatization of prison services always tout this shift in responsibility as a way to save taxpayer money while also improving services through use of professional specialists. In reality, prison commissary and food services represent a cash cow, so states and localities shift onto prisoners and their families some of the expense of their incarceration while also rewarding for-profit companies contracted for these services with handsome profits.
Of course, every prison system is different. This article is focused on America’s third largest prison system, the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC). Imprisoning about 82,000 people as of October 2023, DOC demonstrates how ...
Loaded on
Feb. 1, 2024
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2024, page 23
Results of a yearlong investigation released on July 10, 2023, found that a state-funded rehabilitation program for California parolees started in 2014—Specialized Treatment for Optimized Programming (STOP)—has cost taxpayers $600 million, with little evidence to prove it is working.
STOP is part of a plan Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has put forward to “retool” the state prison system with an emphasis on rehabilitation. Yet it serves less than a quarter of the roughly 35,000 people released from prison each year. Moreover, the state does not collect data on whether program participants find jobs or return to prison for another crime.
The investigation, conducted by nonprofit news organization CalMatters, found that the program is poorly managed, and the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) rarely audits the four companies contracted to run it: GEO Group subsidiary GEO Reentry Services, Amity Foundation, HealthRight 360 and WestCare California. All but GEO are nonprofits, subcontracting to hundreds of other non-profit and for-profit entities to run STOP homes and treatment centers.
Former CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate, who left the agency in 2012, launched a firm that lobbied for Amity Foundation, HealthRight 360 and WestCare California in the 2021-2022 legislative session. A significant amount of ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 30, 2023, the federal court for the Eastern District of Arkansas gave final approval to a settlement agreement under which for-profit prisoner transport firm Inmate Services Corp. (ISC) agreed to pay a total of $949,379.48 to resolve claims that it violated the constitutional rights ...
by J.D. Schmidt
On November 14, 2022, the Florida arm of Centurion Health, one of the nation’s largest private prison and jail healthcare companies, filed a lawsuit in Putnam County against the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the nonprofit publisher of PLN and its sister publication, Criminal Legal News.
Centurion faces allegations of malfeasance of almost every possible type for a corporation of its kind, from bid rigging and fraud to substandard care and neglect, as well as colluding with guards and other officials in abusing prisoners in facilities across the U.S. The situation is so bad that a wide array of media and non-governmental organizations working on human rights, civil rights and civil liberties is monitoring, cataloging and speaking out about the suffering this company’s policies and practices continue to inflict on incarcerated people, their families and their communities.
The Marshall Project keeps a curated collection of links to stories about Centurion. The American Friends Service Committee investigated and published a series of articles on Centurion and Centene Corp., the healthcare mega-company that owned Centurion until January 2023. The Private Corrections Working Group maintains a “Centurion Rap Sheet” noting the company’s many alleged offenses against prisoners. Reason magazine published ...
Loaded on
Jan. 1, 2024
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2024, page 17
According to a report published by The Sentencing Project on June 15, 2023, the federal government and 27 states incarcerated 96,370 people in private prisons in 2021, amounting to 8% of America’s prison population.
Private prisons are not used to house prisoners in the other 23 states. But private prisons also hold nearly 79% of those detained for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nationwide, representing another 16,000 people. The largest private prison firms include GEO Group, Core Civic, LaSalle Corrections and Management and Training Corporation.
Among states that use them, private prisons hold the biggest share of state prisoners in Montana—about 50%. In Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee, between 21% and 45% of state prisoners are held in a for-profit prison.
Though the overall share of American prisoners in private lockups hasn’t changed much since 2000, it is down significantly from its 2012 peak. A big driver of this in recent years is the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), which ended use of private prisons to hold federal prisoners under an executive order issued by Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D), moving about 21,565 prisoners out of private lockups since 2021.
But even with the BOP ban on ...
by Matt Clarke
A $7 million settlement reached in April 2023 marked the latest chapter in a sordid tale of mismanagement at Bi-State Jail (BSJ) in Texarkana, Texas, by former private operator LaSalle Corrections. But the family-owned prison profiteer, based in Ruston, Louisiana—which ended its contract to run BSJ in ...
Loaded on
Jan. 1, 2024
published in Prison Legal News
February, 2024, page 28
How “Big Capital” Learned to Love Mass Incarceration
“Who is accountable for the imposition of punishment in our carceral system?” asked Laura I. Appleman, Professor of Law at Willamette University, in an article published on April 13, 2023. An answer is no longer simple, she notes, since responsibility for U.S. incarceration has increasingly been farmed out to private companies—some publicly held, others owned by private equity firms—all seeking to profit off those swept up in the U.S. criminal justice system.
“Where there is a flow of public money, there is always a rush of capital in to drink,” Appleman observes, using the term “Big Capital” to describe the interconnected web of companies exploiting the explosive growth of what are known as “correctional services.” The professor decries the involvement of Big Capital, saying it distorts American values regarding punishment and rehabilitation, creates conflicts of interest and corrupts administration of justice.
Such involvement includes operating prisons, jails, juvenile facilities and other detention centers; providing medical care, mental health care, food services, commissary services and transportation services for prisoners; as well as supplying correctional telecommunications, video visitation, electronic tablets and money transfer services.
While some private-sector involvement has long been a feature of ...
Loaded on
Jan. 1, 2024
published in Prison Legal News
January, 2024, page 29
On November 14, 2023, the federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas approved a new mediator to oversee the dissolution of Corizon Health successor Tehum Care Services, Inc. Retired bankruptcy judge Christopher Sontchi replaced former Judge David Jones, who resigned after it was revealed that he shares a home with Liz Freeman, an attorney representing the other Corizon Health successor, YesCare, in settlement talks.
As PLN reported, Corizon Health moved its headquarters to Texas to take advantage of state law permitting a “divisional merger” that put most of the company’s liabilities into a new firm, Tehum, while its on-going—and profitable—business was transferred to another new firm called YesCare. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.35.] Tehum promptly filed for bankruptcy in the Court, threatening nearly $1.2 billion in outstanding obligations inherited from Corizon Health, including $88 million in settlement payouts in 475 lawsuits alleging medical neglect and mistreatment.
Of those payments, 200 were owed by Corizon Health to prisoners and former prisoners before the company executed the “Texas Two-Step.” After that, Jones oversaw negotiations that were about to result in a settlement of just $8.5 million for all 200 claims, netting each prisoner as little as $5,000 after legal costs ...
by David M. Reutter
In June 8, 2023, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held that the Medical Professional Liability Act (MPLA), W. Va. Code §§ 55-7B-1 to 12, does not apply to the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR).
Before the court was a motion by DCR to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of state prisoner Deanna R. McDonald. That complaint, filed in Circuit Court for Cabell County, named DCR and its employees, as well as healthcare contractors PrimeCare Medical of West Virginia and PSIMed.
McDonald was diagnosed as suicidal and suffering from seizures upon intake as a pretrial detainee on August 20, 2017. She also exhibited fevers and vomiting, plus she admitted abusing opiates. McDonald disclosed that she had recent psychiatric issues and treatment. She was placed on “special management” status in a holding cell under full suicide watch and “detox” precautions “until cleared by a psychologist or psychiatrist.”
But follow up care or evaluation was never provided, not even a psychological or psychiatric referral. Wellness checks also were not conducted on McDonald after she was placed in a holding cell at 2:07 a.m. A fellow detainee, Heather Adkins, heard McDonald making ...
Loaded on
Dec. 1, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2023, page 15
A “Provider Handbook” for “Physicians, Psychiatrists, Dentists, Nurse Practitioners, and Physician Assistants” employed in Illinois state prisons by Wexford Health Sources warns that “[i]nmates can be very manipulative,” so healthcare workers are advised to “[n]ever take anything from or bring anything to an inmate.”
“Do not authorize special privileges,” the handbook continues. “Anything that raises a question about inmate relationships should be discussed with your healthcare unit administrator, or the responsible assistant warden.”
The handbook would have remained hidden from public view if Wexford had its way, but the firm lost a 2021 motion to seal the handbook after it was admitted in evidence as part of a prisoner’s lawsuit filed in federal court for the Southern District of Illinois. See: Russell v. Wexford Health Sources, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6340 (S.D. Ill.).
Wexford holds the contract to provide healthcare to the state Department of Corrections (DOC) and the 29,245 people it held at the end of June 2023. After collecting over $1 billion in payments, the firm’s 10-year contract expired in 2021, but DOC continues to extend it, despite a federal class-action that led to a 2019 consent decree—amended in June 2022—mandating improvements in prisoner healthcare. [See: PLN, Jan. ...