by Matthew Clarke

On August 24, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed an $800,000 jury award against a contract doctor at an Arkansas jail, in a suit brought on behalf of a detainee who died of sepsis after her appendix ruptured while incarcerated.

Linda S. ...

On September 26, 2023, the federal court for the Northern District of California found “clear and convincing evidence” that private for-profit prison and jail healthcare provider Wellpath, Inc., had violated the terms of a settlement agreement in a long-running case challenging its provision of healthcare to prisoners and detainees at California’s Monterey County Jail.

As previously reported in PLN, the suit was filed in 2013 alleging deficient medical, mental health and dental care at the jail by Wellpath, then known as California Forensic Medical Group. [See: PLN, June 2014, p.1.] A preliminary injunction issued in April 2015 was formalized four months later by the settlement agreement, imposing numerous requirements on Wellpath. Monitors were appointed to ensure compliance with settlement terms.

But more detainee deaths have followed—at least 25—pushing the jail’s annual mortality rate over two times higher than the national average. The Court entered orders in May 2020 and June 2022 directing Wellpath to develop “corrective action plans” to remedy deficiencies reported by the monitors, including insufficient staffing and inadequate medical and mental health care. However, the company failed to comply.

In May 2023 Plaintiffs moved to enforce the settlement terms, declaring that “[f]or more than seven and a half ...

Utah-based Management & Training Corporation (MTC) announced on September 18, 2023, that it returned $5.125 million to the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC), after a state investigation found the private prison operator understaffed lockups operated for DOC.

As PLN reported, Mississippi Auditor Shad White submitted a civil demand in November 2022 for $1.9 million that he said MTC owed for shortstaffing Marshall County Correctional Facility (MCCF) from 2017 to 2020, leaving some 12,000 shifts filled with “ghost workers.” Meanwhile an analysis by the nonprofit Marshall Project found the firm owed as much as $7 million it had collected for more “ghost workers” at both MCCF and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility (WCCF). [See: PLN, Jan. 2023, p.58.]

MTC then launched an internal audit at WCCF and the other prison the firm operated in the state, East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF), according to Communications Director Emily Lawhead, leading to the refund. DOC took over operation of EMCF in September 2021 from MTC, which was having trouble hiring and maintaining employees at the prison near Memphis because it was unable to bump pay rates above those in its other two more rural lockups, according to DOC Commissioner Burl Cain. He then raised the ...

Having recorded eight deaths in eight years, Virginia’s Arlington County Jail was likely desperate for good news when it reported in mid-November 2023 that detainees competed in the lockup’s first pickleball tournament.

The densely populated county adjacent to Washington, D.C., saw six jail deaths in as many years before cutting ties with former healthcare provider Corizon Health in November 2021, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2022, p.52.] The jail hired a new healthcare contractor, MEDIKO, and installed biometric sensors to scan detainees for signs of a medical emergency or overdose. But there have been two more deaths since then.

A man unable to post bail after his trespassing arrest, Paul Thompson, 41, died on February 1, 2022. Abonesh Woldegeorges, 73, a homeless woman also arrested for trespassing—on the subway—died on August 27, 2023.

All but one of the eight victims were Black, including Darryl Becton, 46; for his September 2020 death, a jail nurse was charged with negligence, only to be acquitted in October 2022. The county then settled a suit filed by his estate for $1.325 million in January 2023, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, July 2023, p.61.]

Meanwhile, the idea to bring pickleball to the jail ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...