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 …

by Chuck Sharman

In a decision issued on February 25, 2026, the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) affirmed dismissal of an appeal filed by prison profiteer The GEO Group, after a federal district court refused to grant the firm immunity from a suit challenging conditions at a Colorado lockup it runs for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

No court has yet reached the merits of the suit, even though it was filed in 2014. The Plaintiffs—Alejandro Menocal and group of fellow ICE detainees—accused GEO of violating state and federal law by forcing them to work for pay far below minimum wage while held at the firm’s Aurora Detention Facility in Colorado.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado greenlit two of Plaintiffs’ claims—that GEO violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), 18 U.S.C. §§ 1589, and that it was unjustly enriched by paying them just $1 a day to work in the prison. As PLN reported, the district court then certified two classes of Plaintiffs, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. [See: PLN, Apr. 16, 2018, online.]

After several years of discovery, GEO moved for summary …

by Michael Dean Thompson

The Davis Correctional Facility (DCF), a medium security prison in Holdenville, was described by The Oklahoman as little-known. Yet, over the last four years, 20 detainees and a prison guard have suffered violent deaths at the hands of prisoners. That contrasts with the better-known maximum-security prison, the Oklahoma State Prison in McAlester, which has had only nine murders, excluding executions.

A review by The Oklahoman of the homicides at DCF shows that for at least seven the perpetrators remain uncharged. Hughes County District Attorney Erik Johnson said about the prison, “It’s like gladiator academy.”

The death of one particular prisoner stands out as preventable as two different videos show guards behind a closed cell door watched the murder. According to The Oklahoman, “Dustin James Patterson didn’t have to die.”

The incident started as Connor Whitlock, a guard at Davis, was performing the 2 a.m. count and found Darren Padron with his cellmate in a chokehold. Whitlock described Patterson “clawing at Padron’s arms and head. Trying to get him off of him.” Over and over, he asked Padron to stop. Whitlock sprayed pepper spray into the cell before calling for help, but …

by Matt Clarke

Brentwood, Tennessee-based CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) operates the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), the state’s largest prison, and three other Tennessee prisons for the state Department of Corrections (DOC). But despite the company’s large footprint in Tennessee, its legacy is dismal at best as former prison guards and prisoners paint a picture of prisons severely understaffed, awash in drugs, virtually run by gangs, and overwhelmed by beatings, stabbings and rapes. Local prosecutors have complained of having insufficient staff to prosecute all the felony cases that they get from TTCC—which amount to more than 204 since 2021, including 26 prosecutions of CoreCivic employees.

Poor Performance

On August 20, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was opening an investigation into TTCC, which is located northeast of Nashville, due to alleged violations of the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1997-1997j. The DOJ pointed specifically to “reports of staff shortages, physical and sexual assaults, murders, and a 188% turnover rate among prison guards just last year.”

Former U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry C. Leventis, who helmed the office at the time and announced …

by Douglas Ankney

On November 20, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit revived the 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit of Juliana Swink, Administrator of the Estate of David Ray Gunter, that alleged, inter alia, claims of deliberate indifference under Monell v. Dept of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), and under the 14th Amendment to the federal constitution.

Pursuant to a bench warrant related to a charge of driving on a suspended license, Gunter was detained in the Davie County Detention Center (“DCDC”) from November 7, 2012, through November 15, 2012. On November 16, 2012, he was transferred to the Stokes County Detention Center (“SCDC”), where he remained until his release on November 21, 2012.

Approximately one week later, Gunter sought treatment for severe stomach pain at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (“Medical Center”) on November 29, 2012. Doctors at the Medical Center surgically removed a blood clot and Gunter was discharged from the Medical Center on December 11, 2012. However, further complications developed and on January 18, 2013, Gunter was diagnosed with a second blood clot that required surgeons to resect a portion of his bowel. On December 27, 2016, …

by Chuck Sharman

In a Facebook post on May 21, 2026, Albert Pugh reported hearing news from both prisoners and guards at Alabama’s Bullock Correctional Facility that Facility Administrator Jermaris Porter was arrested and walked off the job the day before by Law Enforcement Services Division (LESD) agents of the state Department of Corrections (DOC).

Pugh, 63, is the founder and Executive Director of Cullman Re-entry and Addiction Assistance, Inc., a nonprofit operator of halfway houses for those with “no place to go after completion of addiction-related programs.” Before his 2011 release from prison, he served 29 years for a robbery conviction that he was fully exonerated of in November 2024, according to the nonprofit Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, whose attorneys represented Pugh in that effort.

Porter had worked for the prison system just eight months, coming off a troubled tenure at Tennessee’s Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), which is operated for that state’s DOC by private prison profiteer CoreCivic. As reported elsewhere in this issue, Porter and his then-boss, former TTCC Warden Vince Vantell, are accused in a federal civil rights complaint of involvement in a widespread drug smuggling ring at the …

by Chuck Sharman

Under the terms of a settlement reached on April 16, 2026, Colorado’s La Plata County agreed to pay $5 million to the estate of Daniel Foard, 32, whose death in the County lockup was both “gruesome and preventable,” according to the complaint filed on his behalf. Claims that the agreement did not resolve against Tennessee-­based Southern Health Partners (SHP), a private firm that still holds the contract to provide medical care at the Durango jail, are still pending.

When Foard was booked into the jail on failure to appear warrants on August 11, 2023, he admitted to taking fentanyl pills. An SHP nurse had him placed in a detox unit. Five days later, on August 16, his associated vomiting and diarrhea had subsided, but his heart rate, breathing and blood pressure remained elevated. Nevertheless, he was given a body scan in preparation to rejoin the jail’s general population (GP), collapsing repeatedly during the process. Guards allegedly mouthed to one another that he was “faking,” and SHP nurse Ashley Box eventually cleared him for GP early the following morning.

Later that day, after vomiting several times, Foard asked to return to the medical unit. …

The Kansas Department of Corrections (DOC) announced on May 14, 2026 that it would drop its troubled healthcare contractor and replace it with a separate company. In a bidding process that included seven other prison healthcare profiteers, Kansas decided to replace its current contractor Centurion Health with VitalCore Health Strategies beginning on July 1 of this year.

Centurion, which does business with at least 11 other state prison systems and claims to provide services to 275,000 incarcerated people, has a long track record of abuse and neglect. In New Mexico, Centurion won a 40-­month contract with the state DOC; during that time, as PLN previously reported, the company paid out over $8,396,751.00 to settle 47 claims—including 13 cases where prisoners died. [See: PLN, Dec. 2024, p.1.] Centurion’s record in Kansas is much the same.

A 2022 investigation by The Capital-Journal and the Kansas News Service, for example, found that Centurion had been fined 5,000 times in a 16-­month period, for a total of nearly $1 million in fines. Later reporting from The Beacon, a nonprofit news source based in Kansas City, revealed that Centurion’s performance reports got worse in the years after 2022.

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