When Dorothy Dian Palinchik was booked into Florida’s Pinellas County Jail (PCJ) on February 13, 2008 for stealing a $9.00 Philly cheesesteak sandwich from a grocery store, she was seemingly healthy. Two weeks later she died of pneumonia and an antibiotic-resistant staph infection.

Palinchik’s family suspects she caught Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) shortly after arriving at the jail. Within a week after being booked, Palinchik, 42, was placed in PCJ’s medical wing.

Her family claims that she repeatedly asked for medical care. Although Palinchik had a fever of 101.5 that raged for five days, she was only given one Motrin and one Sudafed. While some may wonder at such inadequate treatment, this is only one of numerous failures perpetuated by Correctional Medical Service (CMS), the jail’s private health care provider. [See, e.g., PLN, Aug. 2002, p.1; May 2007, p.1].

After ten days at PCJ, Palinchik was sent to a local hospital. Doctors determined she had pneumonia and MRSA, and put her in a drug-induced coma in an attempt to save her life. The aggressive MRSA infection had already blackened her hands and feet; the doctors were considering amputating all her limbs. Just six days after she arrived at the hospital, ...

Former PHS Doctor Arrested on Drug Charges

In July 2008, former Prison Health Services (PHS) employee John N. Mubang, 57, was arrested by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for prescribing drugs for monetary gain and trafficking in controlled substances.

The six-month investigation that led to the four felony counts against Mubang stemmed from citizen complaints. Mubang had previously served as the medical director of the Hillsborough County Jail, where PHS was the jail’s medical provider. He had also worked for PHS’s competitor, Correctional Medical Services.

Mubang had a private practice of 1,000 patients in internal and ambulatory medicine. Since 2006, four of his patients have died from overdoses or interactions between drugs that he prescribed, which included oxycodone, hydrocodone and Xanax.

Mubang was asked to resign or be fired by PHS in 2006, according to depositions taken in a lawsuit against PHS filed by a prisoner whose newborn baby died in the Hillsborough County Jail. PHS settled that suit for $1.25 million. [See: PLN, Oct. 2007, p.32].
More recently, for the past two years Mubang had been contracted to provide medical services at the CCA-operated Citrus County Jail in Lecanto, Florida.

Sources: Tampa Tribune, www.baynews9.com

$885,437.24 Award for CMS Massachusetts Jail Nurse Barred for Reporting Prisoner Abuse

A Massachusetts federal court awarded $885,437.24 in compensatory damages, punitive damages, costs, attorney fees and electronic litigation support fees to a Correctional Medical Services (CMS) nurse who was barred from the Suffolk County jail because she reported allegations ...

Florida Sheriff Sued for Awarding No-Bid ?Health Care Contract, Receiving Gifts

Prison Health Services (PHS) has sued the sheriff of Sarasota County, Florida for awarding the jail’s health care contract to rival Armor Correctional Health Services without taking competitive bids. The lawsuit also alleges that Sheriff Bill Balkwill received gifts from Armor in the time period leading up to the no-bid contract award.

One of those gifts had a specific correlation to the contract negotiations. Doyle Moore, Armor’s chief executive officer, took Sheriff Balkwill on a fishing trip on Lake Okeechobee. He rented two boats with guides and plenty of bait. Balkwill caught a one-and-a-half pound bass, and Moore footed the $748 bill with a credit card.

When Balkwill returned to his office the following Monday he e-mailed Moore, stating, “Had a great time! Give a call when you’re ready to talk about the contract and what you can do.” Between 2006 and 2007, Armor also treated Balkwill to hundreds of dollars in meals and other perks, according to records discovered by PHS lawyers. Moore is no longer an Armor executive; he stepped down after it was revealed that he had a criminal record for tax evasion.

Under Florida law, ...

by John E. Dannenberg

Prison Health Services, Inc. (PHS) was granted a three-year, $366 million no-bid contract renewal to provide medical and mental health care services for New York City’s Rikers Island Jail, notwithstanding the company’s checkered record during its last three-year contract, which resulted in $793,000 in fines for non-performance. The contract renewal amounted to a 10% raise for PHS when adjusted for inflation.

As a result, the 100,000 prisoners admitted to Rikers Island each year can expect more of the same substandard medical care, since PHS has a long history of exacting its profits at the expense of prisoners’ health. [See, e.g.: PLN, Nov. 2006, p.1].

Quarterly audits of PHS’s performance, which revealed an average 15% non-compliance rate, were made by New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) based on a review of 9,000 case files. Principal areas that were reviewed included HIV, asthma, sexually transmitted diseases and women’s healthcare issues.

In six of the eight most recent quarters, PHS continuously failed to meet some health care standards, most notably follow-up on HIV treatment and testing. For five of the quarters, PHS failed to meet standards for taking intake prisoners’ medical histories; the compliance rate ...

$1,100,000 Settlement in Juvenile Prisoner Suicide in Union County, New Jersey

On November 15, 2007, Union County settled a lawsuit over the suicide death of a juvenile prisoner at the 42-year-old Union County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The county agreed to pay $780,000 in damages plus ...

CMS Insurer Must Pay Wyoming Suicide Settlement

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that an insurer is required to indemnify Correctional Medical Services (CMS) for an incident that occurred prior to CMS obtaining the insurance policy. The Court’s ruling came in a legal battle over the meaning of “other notice” under the policy.

The dispute between CMS and North American Specialty Insurance Company (NAS) centered around who was responsible for payment of a settlement involving a prisoner’s medical treatment. CMS had a contract to provide health care to prisoners at the Wyoming State Penitentiary. On July 3, 2000, when CMS was insured by PHICO Insurance Company, prisoner Orlando Patrick Roan Eagle committed suicide while under the care of a CMS doctor.

On July 20, 2000, Lawyers and Advocates for Wyoming (LAW), a not-for-profit public interest law firm, sent a letter to the Wyoming Department of Corrections requesting all medical and investigative records pertaining to Roan Eagle’s death. A copy of that letter was sent to CMS attorneys, who advised CMS Medical Claims Management Group of a possible future claim.

CMS obtained an insurance policy from NAS on October 31, 2000. That policy barred coverage for any claim against ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a civil action that alleges a consultant for private prisoner operator the GEO Group used information obtained through his contracts to engage in insider trading.

Zachariah P. Zachariah, a prominent cardiologist and Republican fund raiser from Broward County, Florida, has been a long time friend of GEO’s chairman and chief executive officer, George Zoley. That contact no doubt led to Zachriah obtaining consulting contracts with Geo through his two companies, the Zachariah Consulting Group, Inc., and ZPZ, Inc. Zechariah also leased a private airplane in which he had a beneficial interest to GEO for charter flights.

In addition to those inside contacts, Zachariah’s son, Reggie, was employed as a financial analyst for GEO’s mergers and acquisitions group. It is through these sources that Zachariah learned that GEO was about to acquire Correctional Services Corp., (CSC) a Florida company involved in the prison industry.

On May 11, 2005, Zachariah spoke to Reggie via telephone. The next day, Zachariah purchased 3,500 shares of CSC stock for about $9,700. He bought another 2,300 shares for approximately $6,000 on May 16. The best information, however, seemed to come from Zoley during a conversation on May 18, ...

Tenth Circuit: Procedural Defense to Federal Prisoner’s ETS Suit Fails on Inadequate Grievance Record-Keeping

by John E. Dannenberg

The Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a summary judgment order in a federal prisoner’s pro se Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) suit against private prison contractor Cornell Corrections, Inc., because Cornell’s grievance record-keeping was so inadequate that the question of administrative exhaustion could not be resolved.

In reversing the lower court, the Tenth Circuit noted that the intervening U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jones v. Bock, 127 S.Ct. 910 (2007) [PLN, May 2007, p.36] made the burden of proving exhaustion an affirmative defense, which overruled prior Tenth Circuit precedent.

Federal prisoner Ethan Roberts was housed in Cornell Corrections’ Santa Fe [New Mexico] County Adult Detention Center from April 1999 to June 8, 2000. He sued Cornell on June 9, 2003 in U.S. District Court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for irreparable lung damage caused by his exposure to saturated ETS 14-20 hours per day. Cornell defended on two grounds: That the statute of limitations had expired and Roberts had not exhausted administrative remedies. The district court dismissed the case on Cornell’s motion for summary judgment.

The Tenth Circuit found Roberts’ 3-year-and-one-day ...

Much public attention has been devoted in recent years to the “industrial” side of the prison boom, from the fortunes of private prison operators to the profits generated by telecommunications companies from lucrative phone contracts. Less attention has been paid to the sector of the prison industry that gets paid each time a prison is financed or built. Unlike those who make their money from operations, firms that get paid on the front end may have little stake in the ultimate use or financial viability of a new prison or detention project. They profit whether the beds are empty or full.

Declining public enthusiasm for costly prison expansion plans has closed off traditional options for financing new prison construction. But this trend has created new opportunities for a cottage industry of investment bankers, architects, building contractors, and consultants to reap large rewards with “back-door” financing schemes. A review of recent prison, jail, and detention expansion initiatives shows that federal, state, and local governments are using back-door financing mechanisms to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to build facilities that the public does not want and cannot afford.

Paying For Prisons—?Corrections Takes The “Public” ?Out of Public Finance

Until the mid-1980s, ...