PHS Wins Quadriplegic Prisoner’s Negligence Suit, Jail Settles for $100,000

On February 14, 2008, a Florida jury found that Prison Health Services (PHS) was not negligent in misdiagnosing a jail prisoner’s broken neck, which left him a permanent quadriplegic. The series of events that led to this tragic result for ...

“The house always wins,” Warden Don Cabana proclaimed to the Sun Herald, a Mississippi newspaper, in July 2007. However, Harrison County, home of the Harrison County Adult Detention Center (ADC), has agreed to pay $3.5 million to the family of Jessie Lee Williams, Jr., who was brutally murdered at the ...

by David M. Reutter

Since 1984, the GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections) has focused on operating private prisons as its business model. It is now finding a more lucrative niche in privatizing mental health facilities and civil commitment centers for sexual predators. The company has been able to procure multiple contracts in Florida to develop and refine its expanded, and lucrative, business model.

This evolution in the type of services provided by GEO is a major transformation from the private investigation firm founded in 1954 by former FBI agent George R. Wackenhut. By 1958, Wackenhut was providing security guard services. With a nationwide need for more prison beds in the 1980s due to tough on crime rhetoric and harsh sentencing laws, the company saw an opportunity for increased profits when it entered into prison and jail operations in 1984.

That expansion resulted in Wackenhut Corrections – renamed as the GEO Group, Inc. in 2003 – becoming the self-proclaimed “world leader” in providing prison design, construction, financing and operations to state and national governments. The company does business in the United States, Australia, South Africa and the U.K. It manages or owns 67 prisons or residential treatment facilities with a total ...

by Matt Clarke

The Bush administration’s hard-nosed approach to immigration enforcement has caused an explosion in the immigrant detainee population, which has grown from a daily average of 19,600 in 2005 to 29,700 in 2007. This increase parallels a rise in deportations, from around 186,600 in FY 2005 to 276,900 in FY 2007. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reacted to this increasing number of detainees by contracting with local jails and private prison firms for additional bed space.

The expanded use of imprisonment for immigration violators stems from the “deport them at any cost” philosophy of the current administration, which resulted in the elimination of ICE’s “catch and release” policy and a decrease in the use of alternatives such as release on bond and electronic monitoring. The justification for this approach is that less than a third of non-incarcerated immigration detainees voluntarily leave the country when ordered to do so, even if they are being supervised or monitored.Increasing the number of ICE detainees comes at a cost for both taxpayers and prisoners. The budget for ICE detentions grew from $864 million in FY 2005 to $1.6 million in FY 2008. A large portion of that budget was paid to ...

A federal jury has awarded a former detainee $100,001 against a private company that operated a New Jersey detention center for the U.S. government. The jury found for the plaintiff on her negligent supervision and Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) claims, but rejected her Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) claim. ...

Prison Legal News Attends CCA Shareholder Meeting

by Alex Friedmann

From 1992 to 1998, I served time at the South Central Correctional Center in Wayne County, Tennessee, which is operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison firm. On May 16, 2008 I attended CCA’s annual shareholder meeting at the company’s corporate office in Nashville ... as an investor. I’ve been to several other CCA shareholder meetings over the years, usually in the company of Harmon Wray – a tireless advocate for criminal justice reform through his work with the United Methodist Church and Vanderbilt Program in Faith and Criminal Justice. Harmon died unexpectedly in July 2007, so this year I went alone.

All of CCA’s board members were present plus most of the corporate officers, including general counsel Gustavus A. Puryear IV. Gus and I don’t have much in common. He’s a multi-millionaire and I’m not. He’s a member of the exclusive, notoriously discriminatory Belle Meade Country Club; I’m not. He’s been nominated for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench in Middle Tennessee, the same jurisdiction where CCA is headquartered. I’m trying to derail his nomination (for details, visit www.againstpuryear.org).

We didn’t exchange pleasantries. ...

The defendants were not deliberately indifferent in providing the plaintiff a wheelchair that collapsed under him. The court notes that they always recognized his medical needs by providing him a wheelchair, he signed two forms reflecting that the wheelchair issued to him was in good working order and he filed no grievances about it, there was some indication that he sometimes used medical equipment in a rough manner, supporting a discretionary decision to give him an older wheelchair, and he got medical care immediately when he fell.

The plaintiff had no ADA or Rehabilitation Act claim because there was no evidence that he had been excluded from programs or denied other benefits afforded to others. See: Moore v. Prison Health Services, 24 F.Supp.2d 1164 (D.Kan. 1998).

The plaintiff alleged that he was sexually assaulted by his roommate in a privately operated juvenile facility.

The corporation is entitled to summary judgment in the absence of evidence of a corporate policy supporting liability. Its policy was to require a legitimate reason for a room change and evidence of "detrimental behavior" by the roommate before authorizing the room change. When the unit manager was provided with this information, he made the change the same day. (Of course, when the plaintiff complained the previous night to a staff person, nothing was done, and he was raped later that night.)

The court denies the motion to amend to add a training claim because the plaintiff waited until after the discovery deadline even though the absence of such a claim was raised during discovery. See: Burton v. Youth Services International, 176 F.R.D. 517 (D.Md. 1997).

Washington State residents Nancy and Daniel Wright challenged a court order preventing ex parte communication with Group Health Hospital (GHH) personnel regarding their injury lawsuit. The ruling was reversed as to communication with non party employees not having managerial authority.

The Wrights brought suit on behalf of their son Jeffrey who was injured at GHH during birth. Their attorney was given GHH nurse contact information but warned not to contact them without GHH legal staff present. Their attorney petitioned to allow ex parte communication with the nurses which was denied due to provisions of Washington Rev. Code § 5.50.060(2) for attorney client protections.

On appeal, the Supreme Court of Washington held that the attorney client privilege did not bar communication with non party personnel as long as they did not possess managerial authority "to speak for and bind" the hospital. See: Wright v. Health Group Hospital, 103 Wn. 192, 691 P.2d 564 (Wash. 1984).

The City of Delta Junction (City) and Alaska corporations Allvest, Inc., and Delta Corrections Group, LLC (DCG), settled a lawsuit after House Bill 149 threatened to halt private prison construction underway at Ft. Greely.

Allvest/DCG and the City commenced the building of a private prison at Ft. Greely. The House ...