On June 30, 2009, a former employee at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, a privately-operated jail near Providence, Rhode Island, pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials about sexual misconduct involving an immigration detainee, marking yet another embarrassing problem in a string of scandals to hit the facility.

Glenn Rivera-Barnes, formerly a medical technician at the 746-bed Wyatt jail, admitted he had lied to federal investi-gators, telling them that the male detainee had sexually assaulted him when in fact he had initiated the unwanted sexual encounter. Rivera-Barnes’ involvement in the incident was confirmed by DNA evidence.

Rivera-Barnes had been fired in January 2009; he was previously employed by Cornell Companies, which operated the Wyatt facility until 2007. It is now run by the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation. Rivera-Barnes was sentenced on December 21, 2009 to two years’ probation plus 480 hours of community service and participation in a mental health program. See: United States v. Rivera-Barnes, U.S.D.C. (D. RI), Case No. 1:09-cr-00106-S-LDA.

On February 11, 2010, Wyatt’s warden, Wayne T. Salisbury, Jr., and Chief Financial Officer, Tammy L. Novo, were fired following an eight-week audit of the facility’s operations. They had been suspended in December 2009. The 55-page ...

On April 28, 2003, Davont Pindle settled his negligence claim against Aramark Corporation and the District of Columbia for $2,000. Pindle claimed that on June 5, 2000, while eating in the dining hall at the Lorton Maximum Security Prison, he bit down on a piece of glass or other hard ...

Prison Health Services (PHS), a private for-profit company that provides medical care to prisoners, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to the family of a man who died at a Virginia jail, with the sheriff’s office paying another $100,000.

Joseph Combs, 57, a Vietnam veteran who suffered from bipolar disorder, ...

On June 7, 2010, Prison Legal News announced that it had settled a federal censorship suit against Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company.
PLN filed the lawsuit in September 2009, claiming that CCA’s Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona only allowed prisoners to order books ...

by Matt Clarke

On July 7, 2009, three private prison guards were convicted of charges involving the unjustified beating of a New York prisoner in 2007. [See: PLN, Sept. 2009, p.50; July 2009, p.50]. A fourth guard was convicted of related charges in January 2010.

Rex Egurido, 28, a Nigerian ...

by David M. Reutter

In February 2009, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of summary judgment to a Correctional Medical Services (CMS) nurse in a lawsuit that accused her of failing to properly treat a Michigan prisoner for heat sickness, which left him a quadriplegic.
On July ...

On May 21, 2010, the Private Corrections Institute, a non-profit citizen watchdog group that opposes prison privatization, issued a statement sharply criticizing a joint report by the Reason Foundation, a California-based libertarian think-tank that promotes the privatization of government services, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA). The HJTA advocates for the rights of California taxpayers.

The Reason-HJTA report, which recommends that California increase the number of prisoners sent to for-profit facili-ties and privatize other aspects of the state’s prison system, was released in April 2010 on the heels of Governor Schwar-zenegger’s comments in favor of private prisons in his State of the State address. California already contracts with for-profit companies to house up to 10,468 prisoners in out-of-state facilities, and is likely to increase its reliance on private prison contracts.

The Reason Foundation has long been a proponent of privatization and has received funding from private prison companies – although that apparent conflict of interest was not mentioned in the joint Reason-HJTA report. Further, the report provides political cover for gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who has expressed support for prison privatiza-tion. The HJTA has endorsed Whitman and produced commercials supporting her candidacy. Corrections Corp. of Amer-ica (CCA), the nation’s ...

by David M. Reutter

As the prison industrial complex has continued to grow, critics of privatization have adamantly warned that it would lead to financial incentives for for-profit companies to keep people ensnared in the criminal justice system. The privatized probation system in Georgia is the fulfillment of that warning.

When Georgia discontinued providing probation services for State Courts in 2001, many counties hired private com-panies to operate such programs. Richmond County currently contracts with Sentinel Offender Services.

Sentinel earns $35 a month in court-ordered payments for each probationer it supervises, $30 a month for probation-ers who owe money and are in a court-ordered program such as anger management, and a start-up fee and additional fees of $6 to $12 for those on a monitoring system. The company serves over 90 courts in Georgia and supervises more than 40,000 probationers each month statewide.

According to Crystal Page, Sentinel’s Augusta area manager, at any given time there are around 5,000 probationers in Richmond County. Approximately 3,000 are compliant with their payments, which would bring in more than $1 million annually based on the minimum supervision fee.

The case of Mariette Conner demonstrates that privatized probation services can result in probationers paying ...

by David M. Reutter

A Pennsylvania U.S. District Court has granted absolute judicial immunity to two former state court judges in a consolidated class-action civil rights suit. That immunity, however, only applied to judicial acts, allowing the case to proceed on the judges’ corrupt actions that were administrative in nature.

The lawsuit accuses Michael T. Conahan and Mark A. Ciavarella, Jr. of abusing their positions as judges of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas by accepting approximately $2.8 million in payoffs. The conspiracy involved the judges tak-ing bribes from the owners of the privately-operated Pennsylvania Child Care (PACC) and Western Pennsylvania Child Care (WPACC) detention facilities, and intentionally filling those facilities with juvenile offenders to generate profit.

The conspiracy also included Robert Powell, Robert Mericle, Mericle Construction, Pinacle Group of Jupiter LCC, Beverage Marketing of PA, and Vision Holdings.

Conahan used his judicial position to remove funding from the Luzerne Court detention facility, then “exerted influence to facilitate the construction, expansion and lease of the PACC facility.” On Luzerne County’s behalf, he signed a secret “Placement Guarantee Agreement” with PACC. He also granted an injunction to prevent the results of a Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare audit of PACC ...

In May 2010, Prison Legal News announced that it had prevailed in a public records lawsuit filed against Florida-based GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections), the nation’s second-largest private prison company.

PLN filed the suit in 2005 under Florida’s public records law after GEO failed to produce documents related to contractual ...