by David Reutter

On March 13, 2023, the federal court for the Southern District of Georgia denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a guard for private prison giant CoreCivic, alleging she was unconstitutionally strip-searched at Wheeler Correctional Facility (WCF).

“Though Defendants attempt to parse the definition of ‘strip search,’” the Court said that “exposure of a person’s genital area while her shirt is on certainly falls within the realm” of one.

When Ariel Curtis reported for duty on October 4, 2020, she passed through a metal detector, and it went off. Pursuant to policy, Sgt. Sharon Creamer conducted a pat-down search of Curtis, but she did not find any metal. Creamer then called Cpt. Cassandra Boney to the screening area. Together they led Curtis to the parking lot, where Bony told Curtis to pull her pants down. Though not wearing underpants, Curtis complied. The strip search uncovered no metal or contraband. Bony then searched Curtis’ vehicle but found nothing there.

Boney then demanded and took possession of Curtis’ car keys, instructing her to walk back through the metal detector. This time, it did not go off. The city of Alamo Police Department was contacted, and officer ...

by David M. Reutter

A lawsuit filed in federal court for the Western District of Arkansas on January 13, 2023, makes a stunning claim: That a man was left to starve to death in jail because he couldn’t afford bail.

Larry Eugene Price, Jr.,50, was suffering an acute mental health crisis when he walked into Fort Smith Police Department (FSPD) and was arrested on August 19, 2020. Unable to make his $1,000 bail on a charge of “terroristic threatening,” he was confined at the Sebastian County Jail (SCJ). There, just over a year later, Price was found dead in his cell on August 29, 2021. The cause of death: acute dehydration and malnutrition.

When the 6’2” Price was arrested, he was a slender but well-nourished 185 pounds. He walked into FSPD “almost every day – often several times a day,” according to the complaint filed on his behalf, which added: “It was not unusual for him to be agitated and irrational or to engage in bizarre behavior during the visits.”

On the day of his arrest, efforts to calm Price down failed. “He yelled and cursed at officers and shouted incoherently,” the complaint alleged. “At some point, he held out ...

by Chuck Sharman

Data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University reveal that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to struggle with accurate reporting of the number of migrants it tracks through its Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. In just one week in late May 2023, TRAC found, the agency reported the number tracked with ankle monitors exploded by 3,760%.

It’s nearly impossible to believe that ICE somehow managed to get monitors on the ankles of 183,000 migrants in just one week – especially when the same week saw a nearly 85% decline in the number of migrants monitored with phone app. Together, the two technologies were used to track 228,876 migrants on May 18, 2023, versus 223,510 on May 26, 2023 – a miniscule variation of less than 2.5%.

What’s less hard to believe is that ICE simply regurgitated data fed to it by its private contractor for the program, GEO Group subsidiary BI, Inc. Least hard of all to believe is that BI and GEO Group have a big interest in the apparent obfuscation: Ankle monitors generate $2.74 in income per migrant per day, while the firm’s SMARTlink phone app generates just 96 ...

by David M. Reutter

A settlement approved by the federal court for the Eastern District of California on January 16, 2024, recalls an all-­too familiar jail story. A wheelchair-­bound detainee named Gregory Cantu was denied anti-­seizure medication after arriving at Kings County Jail in Hanford on a probation violation. Despite ...

On October 17, 2023, a month after a Topeka Correctional Facility prisoner fell and had to crawl back to her cell because guards refused to help her, the Kansas Department of Corrections (DOC) fired two high-­ranking guards at the prison and disciplined six others for neglecting her medical needs. No one disciplined was named.

The incident unfolded on September 7, 2023, when Elizabeth Wince fell on the sidewalk before 9 p.m. headcount, according to a fellow prisoner, who mentioned three guards by their last names—White, Crone, and Williams—and said they mocked Wince, calling her fat and lazy. Watching Wince crawl back to her cell, a journey which took a painful two hours, one guard allegedly patted her own knee and called out, “Come on, you can do it.”

Between her fall and that crawl, Wince had been denied treatment in the medical clinic. The following day, on September 8, 2023, she was hospitalized after her foot turned black. She then spent several weeks recovering from multiple broken bones in her foot. Meanwhile the guards reportedly attempted to justify their behavior by saying they thought Wince was faking her symptoms. After DOC fired or disciplined those involved, it characterized the guards’ ...

On September 19, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit revived a claim by Brian Davis, a Jamaican national held for four years at Pennsylvania’s Moshannon Valley Correctional Center (MVCC). The prison is privately operated by the Florida-­based GEO Group, Inc., primarily housing low security noncitizens for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

While there, Davis requested to wed his fiancée, Fredricka Beckford. But his requests were denied, although he had complied with MVCC’s marriage policy—one he contended was more restrictive than BOP’s; in fact, no prisoners had been allowed to marry there since GEO Group assumed operational control.

In 2016, after Davis was released and deported, he and Beckford filed suit against GEO Group, former MVCC Warden George C. Wigen, former BOP administrator Donna Mellendick and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Field Director David O’Neill, blaming them for preventing the marriage. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the couple raised claims under the Equal Protection Clause, as well as a federal tort claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, asking for a damage award against the federal government under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, (1971). They later ...

After banning state prisoners from receiving physical mail the year before, the Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) extended the ban on September 25, 2023, to include books sent to prisoners from family or friends.

The rule change means the only way to send a book to a state prisoner is by depositing money in his trust account, which the prisoner can then use to purchase a book directly from an approved vendor. Dylan Pyles, who runs a book-­distributing nonprofit called Liberation Lit, said the idea that prisoners have enough money to buy books is “pretty ridiculous.”

Also ridiculous is this: Before the rule change, those outside prison ordered the same books to be shipped from the same vendors. Noted Missouri Prison Reform Executive Director Lori Curry, “[C]iting drugs as the reason for this new policy…makes no sense unless they’re accusing Amazon of, you know, doing drugs and books.”

DOC Communications Director Karen Pojmann defended the change, saying prisoners were receiving illegal drugs soaked into the pages of books smuggled inside packages cleverly mimicking those from legitimate vendors. But Curry pointed out that since DOC banned physical mail in July 2022, “overdoses have increased, [and] deaths from overdoses have increased,” as ...

by Matt Clarke

On October 11, 2023, the Supreme Court of Arizona reversed a grant of partial summary judgment to Corizon Health, the former private medical contractor for the state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR), in a suit filed over a state prisoner’s death from allegedly untreated diabetes.

In its ruling, the Court agreed that Plaintiffs’ medical experts did not satisfy requirements for those testifying against a licensed health professional; under state law, ARS § 12-­2604, such testimony can be offered only by experts whose credentials and experience align with those of the provider being sued for malpractice. However, the Court said that “an institution cannot be a licensed health professional because an institution is not a natural person,” so those heightened requirements did not apply to Plaintiffs’ experts when testifying against Corizon Health.

Importantly, the Court also beat back a craven attempt by Corizon Health to say on the one hand that it was forced to let underqualified nurses provide care in the absence of more qualified doctors and then on the other hand argue that Plaintiffs’ expert was underqualified to critique the higher level of care that they tried to provide.

The case was filed on behalf ...

by David M. Reutter

On July 12, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania unsealed the settlement agreement between PrimeCare Medical and the Estate of Charles Freitag.

As PLN reported, Freitag, 57, committed suicide on August 25, 2018, at the Bucks County Correctional Facility (BCCF), one ...

it would prefer not to run a new Hawaiian lockup, private prison giant CoreCivic is pushing instead to build and lease it—and the firm has a high-placed ally in state Budget and Finance Director Luis Salaveria: Until the end of 2022 he was a registered CoreCivic lobbyist.

In a meeting with the state Senate Ways and Means Committee on September 15, 2023, Salaveria outlined three proposals to finance a $900 million replacement for the aging Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC). Two of those plans involve a “P3” public-private partnership, which CoreCivic has been pushing.

For his lobbying efforts, CoreCivic paid Salaveria $43,100 from 2019 to 2022. He denied consulting with the firm about OCCC financing alternatives—though after years on the other side of the table, he no doubt already knows what CoreCivic wants, as Common Cause Hawaii program manager Camron Hurt pointed out.

“[W]hen citizens say there is a corruption issue, and they say there is a transparency issue, and they say they do not trust the state government, you need not look any further than what you have right here,” he said.

Salaveria said his lobbying efforts focused on the state’s $33.6 million annual contract to hold 872 prisoners ...