By Beau Hodai

December 2009

The circus comes to town

Hardin: a sleepy town set in the rolling plains of southeastern Montana, 50 miles east of Billings, 15 miles north of the site of General George Armstrong Custer’s slaughter at the battle of Little Bighorn; population about 3,500; primary mode of economic production: agriculture. According to the City of Hardin website, the town was dubbed, the “City of Reason” sometime in the early twentieth century, due to its “potential for economic growth”—a prophetically ironic designation given recent events.

Not much happens in Hardin. The streets, set in a grid around simple ranch-style homes, run quiet and slow. At the heart of the city sits a large rectangular park—a few blocks from which sits the Broadway Flying J truck stop casino and bar, often home to long haulers playing electronic Keno and Poker, riding Interstate 90 from Chicago to Billings and all points west to its terminus in Seattle. The occasional crew of wrinkled Greyhound patrons file in looking to buy withered hot dogs and cigarettes.

Across the Flying J parking lot sits the Pizza Hut. A few miles east of the Pizza Hut, a short trip over a few frozen ...

by David M. Reutter

The systemic failure of medical care at California’s Sacramento County Main Jail (SCMJ) resulted in a prisoner’s avoidable death that has cost taxpayers $1.45 million. For years, SCMJ’s healthcare system has been severely deficient – yet jail officials continue to use the county’s Correctional Health Services ...

by David M. Reutter

Despite federal oversight of its prison medical care, Delaware “continues to have a great deal more to achieve before it comes into substantial compliance with all provisions of the MOA” (Memorandum of Agreement) the state entered into with the U.S. Department of Justice.

That was the conclusion drawn in the fifth semi-annual report by Joshua W. Martin III, the independent monitor who oversees healthcare in Delaware’s prison system. The report was released on September 29, 2009.

PLN previously reported on the inept medical treatment provided to Delaware prisoners by the state’s contractor, Correctional Medical Services (CMS). [See: PLN, Dec. 2005, p.1; Dec. 2006, p.24]. That coverage included details about an outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria and the case of prisoner Anthony Pierce, who had a massive brain tumor that led to his death (Pierce’s condition was so obvious that he was called “The Brother With Two Heads”).

PLN also reported on the MOA when it went into effect in December 2006, and on the monitor’s previous semi-annual reports. [See: PLN, July 2007, pp.8 and 10; Feb. 2008, p.24; Nov. 2008, p.10].

While Delaware has made progress in terms of complying with the MOA, it “still has a ...

Charles L. Overby is a man who leads dual lives; a man who has each foot planted firmly in two very different worlds. In one world he is a champion of the free press. In the other, he is one of a group at the helm of a corporation that has worked hard to limit freedom of information and the ability of the press to inform the public.

In one world he is chief executive officer of the Freedom Forum and the Newseum – located in Washington D.C., blocks from the Smithsonian and the Capitol Building – which literally has the First Amendment etched into its 75-foot marble edifice. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and reporter, former vice president of news and communications for Gannett Co. Inc., and former management committee member of both Gannett and the company’s flagship paper, USA Today.

Overby, according to his Freedom Forum biography, also serves on the board of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans and is a member of the foundation board at his alma mater, the University of Mississippi.

What Overby’s Freedom Forum biography fails to disclose is that in his other world he sits on the board of directors ...

by Matt Clarke

On December 12, 2008, a riot erupted at the GEO Group-run Reeves County Detention Center (RCDC) in Pecos, Texas, which houses federal immigration detainees. The uprising was triggered by the death of a prisoner who had received inadequate medical care. A second, more serious riot at the ...

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Larsen has recommended the denial of a motion to suppress audio recordings obtained by the United States from CCA that contained attorney-client communications.

While awaiting trial on federal charges, Gary Eye allegedly conspired to have several government witnesses murdered. Eye allegedly discussed the plot over the telephone at a CCA facility. The government obtained copies of Eye’s phone calls from CCA, but the recordings CCA turned over contained calls Eye made to his attorney, and these calls were not segregated on the disc.

Eye moved to suppress the recordings CCA produced, arguing that they violated his Sixth Amendment rights. Judge Larsen disagreed, finding that Eye “failed to satisfy his burden of proving a violation and resulting prejudice.”

Eye had consented to the calls’ monitoring, Larsen concluded, because the phones clearly indicated all calls were monitored. Furthermore, because the government never listened to any attorney-client communications, Eye could not show prejudice. See: United States v. Eye, USDC, W.D. Mo., No. 05-00344-01-CR-W-ODS (2008).

by Clayton Mosher and Gregory Hooks

Despite widespread popular beliefs that prison construction offers substantial economic benefits to local areas, empirical research has suggested otherwise. In an article published in Social Science Quarterly in 2004, Hooks et al. collected data on all existing and new prisons constructed in the United States since 1960, and examined the impact of prisons on employment growth in the approximately 3,100 counties in the contiguous United States. Their analyses compared metropolitan with nonmetropolitan counties with respect to income per capita, total earnings, and total employment growth and statistically controlled for other potential influences on employment growth (including population size, economic infrastructure, and the educational level of the workforce, among others). Hooks et al. did not find a significant relationship between the presence of prisons and employment growth in metropolitan counties, suggesting that any impact of prisons is probably drowned out in these larger, diverse urban economies.

Additional analyses compared nonmetropolitan counties experiencing slow employment growth during the previous decade with those experiencing more rapid growth. These analyses showed that among the faster-growing counties, there was no evidence that prisons made a substantial contribution to change in total employment. Among the slower-growing counties, prisons actually impeded ...

Last October, PLN reported that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison firm, had settled a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Kansas that raised claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) on behalf of current and former CCA employees. The settlement agreement, which included a maximum payout of $7 million, was confidential until PLN filed a successful motion to intervene that unsealed the settlement and related court documents. [See: PLN, Oct. 2009, p.31].

After the class-action settlement was made public, some CCA employees who had been excluded from the agreement raised complaints. Under the original settlement, potential class members were CCA employees who worked in almost thirty specified job positions from Dec. 9, 2005 through February 12, 2009. Those job positions included correctional officer, correctional counselor, case manager, safety officer and a number of other job titles. Absent from the list was “detention officer,” a job category used by CCA primarily at immigration detention facilities, such as the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey.

Current and former CCA detention officers who tried to join the class-action settlement were rejected, even though they performed the same job duties as correctional officers and had been ...

by David M. Reutter

Businesses seeking to profit from the exponential expansion of our nation’s prison population are now turning to visitation. Florida-based JPay is implementing its “video-conference visitation” in Indiana’s prison system, while other companies, such as einmate.com, are developing similar prison-based video visitation programs.

The use of technology for prison visits has its benefits. For prisoners, the latest generation of video conferencing puts them right into their family or friends’ homes, allowing them to see things they could never view in the sterile, drab atmosphere of a prison visiting room.

“I feel like I’m at home, kind of,” said Indiana prisoner Candace McCann. “It’s good to see that kind of stuff.” Video visitation allows McCann to see her seven-year-old daughter, Kashmir, every Sunday morning. In addition to saving her family a three-hour drive and the costs associated with such lengthy trips, McCann is able to watch her daughter model new clothes and show off her toys through live streaming video.

Prison officials prefer video visitation due to its security features. Video visits allow monitoring in real-time or via re-cording while eliminating the possibility of contraband entering the facility. The video visitation service being developed by einmate.com, for example, ...

The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled that a state prisoner can bring a third-party beneficiary claim to enforce a settlement agreement between the South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) and another prisoner.

Charles E. Sisney, a DOC prisoner, filed a pro se complaint in state circuit court seeking to enforce a settlement agreement between the DOC and another prisoner, Philip Heftel. Heftel had filed a civil rights suit against the DOC in 1998, alleging that he was deprived of his First Amendment right to free exercise of his Jewish religion because the DOC refused to provide him with kosher meals. Heftel and the DOC settled, with the DOC agreeing “to provide a kosher diet to all Jewish inmates who request it,” consisting of “prepackaged meals which are certified kosher for noon and evening meals.”

In February 2007, the prison’s food service provider stopped serving prepackaged kosher meals and began serving a new kosher diet that included beans and rice prepared in the prison kitchen. Meals not prepared in a kosher kitchen are not considered kosher regardless of the food used for the meal. Sisney filed a grievance alleging that the new kosher diet violated both his religious beliefs and ...