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 ...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC) Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of a prisoner’s lawsuit for failure to exhaust administrative remedies and for conceding summary judgment by failing to respond to the defendants’ summary judgment motion.

The District of Columbia contracted with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to house DC prisoners at CCA fa-cilities in Ohio and Arizona. TransCor, a CCA subsidiary, was responsible for transporting prisoners to and from those facilities.

DC prisoner Ismail Malik was confined at a CCA prison in Youngstown, Ohio until he and other prisoners were trans-ported by TransCor on July 2-4, 2001 on a forty-hour bus ride to CCA’s Arizona facility. According to transport officers, the transfer was punishment for the prisoners’ membership in a class-action lawsuit against CCA and DC officials. [See: PLN, Aug. 1999, p.14]

During the bus ride the prisoners were handcuffed at the waist with a belly chain that was attached to another prisoner’s chain, and they all wore leg shackles. It was impossible for the prisoners to use the restroom due to the restraints, forcing them to urinate and defecate on themselves. The restraints also prevented Malik from using his asthma inhaler, and ...

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Larsen has recommended the denial of a motion to suppress phone recordings of a plot to harm a federal witness obtained by the government through a Rule 17 subpoena without a court order.

While awaiting trial on various federal charges, Gary Eye in concert with his wife, Stephanie Eye, allegedly plotted to harm a federal witness. The alleged plot was uncovered by an informant at a CCA facility who notified the FBI.

The grand jury issued a subpoena to CCA for phone conversations made by Eye. CCA turned the conversations over to the government, but the discs also contained recordings of calls between Eye and his lawyer. The attorney calls were not segregated.

Prior to trial, the government sent a Rule 17 subpoena to CCA for additional phone conversations made by Eye. CCA complied with the subpoena, turning over additional recordings on disc.

Eye moved to suppress the burden of recordings obtained via the Rule 17 subpoena, arguing that the government had failed to obtain a court order for the subpoena. The court found that the government had failed to comply with Rule 17, but Eye suffered no prejudice from the government’s error.

See: United ...