Ashley Ellis’ misdemeanor arrest turned into a death sentence. Her crime was careless and negligent operation of a motor vehicle. On Aug. 16, 2009, less than two days after she began a 30-day sentence at Vermont’s only prison for women, she died from the careless and negligent operation of a privatized, for-profit prison health care system.

“It is a pretty blatant and obvious and extreme case of gross negligence,” said Seth Lipschutz, supervising attorney at the Vermont Defender General’s office. “We figured out in a day that they killed her.”

In January 2010, when Tennessee-based Prison Health Services (PHS) left Vermont under a cloud, the state hired the fifth private company in 14 years to run its prison health care system. The contract was expanded to absorb mental health functions.

Vermont’s serial contracts with for-profit corporations follow a nationwide pattern: Oversight is flawed, prisoner care is stingy, contractors are indifferent to or insulated from lawsuits, and states switch providers when trouble hits. Meanwhile, a fundamental conflict remains: A for-profit system thrives by cutting costs and services, while sound prisoner and public health care principles demand that careful medicine comes first.

Ashley Ellis’ tragic death throws the nature of this conflict …

Ninth Circuit: 42 U.S.C. § 233(a) Does Not Immunize Public Health Service Employees from Bivens Constitutional Tort Claims

by John E. Dannenberg

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has held that 42 U.S.C. § 233(a), which at first blush seems to exempt officers and employees of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) from exposure to Bivens civil rights suits, in fact does not – so long as the suit involves a constitutional tort.

This complex question arose in the damages phase of a lawsuit involving the outrageously cruel denial of medical care to Francisco Castaneda, an illegal immigrant detainee who was held in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). [See: PLN, Sept. 2008, p.32]. PHS was implicated because medical care for ICE detainees falls under the aegis of PHS.

The issue raised in the U.S. District Court, Castaneda v. United States, 538 F.Supp.2d 1279 (C.D. Cal. 2008), was whether the ability of Castaneda’s survivors to bring suit under Bivens v. Six Unknown Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971) – a federal civil rights claim – was foreclosed due to language in 42 U.S.C. § 233(a) that immunizes employees of PHS from suit. The district court held that § …

In June 2009, the District Attorney’s office in Santa Barbara, California filed charges against Roland Ygelsias and Miguel Jacobo, former employees of U.S. Extradition Services, a company that contracts with law enforcement agencies to transport prisoners to and from prisons and jails.

Ygelsias and Jacobo were accused of engaging in illegal sexual activity in October 2008 with a female prisoner they were transporting from Chowchilla State Prison to the Santa Barbara County Jail. Ygelsias, 29, was charged with one count of forcible oral copulation, which is classified as both a violent and serious felony under California law, and a misdemeanor count of sexual activity with a prisoner in a detention facility. Jacobo, 28, was accused of only the misdemeanor violation.

Ygelsias was terminated after being charged, while Jacobo resigned. They had worked for the company for less than six months.

The few details that emerged were sordid. Ygelsias reportedly received oral sex from a female prisoner he had picked up at Chowchilla; the sex act occurred in a van that was transporting seven offenders, some male and some female. The victim alleged that Ygelsias sat next to her in the front bench seat of the van. He then unzipped his …

On September 13, 2009, the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) reached a settlement with the parents of an Idaho state prisoner who was driven to suicide by squalid conditions at a GEO Group-run private prison in Texas, where he had been transferred. The IDOC agreed to pay the prisoner’s estate …

A $750,000 settlement was paid to the mother of an Alabama mentally ill prisoner who died as the result of exposure to extreme heat while on psychotropic medication.

Just four days after his admission to Kilby Correctional Facility (KCF), prisoner Farron Barksdale, 32, was found unconscious in his segregation cell. …

In a July 2009 report funded by the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States, author Christine S. Scott-Hayward examines how shrinking budgets are impacting state corrections policies and practices.

The story is in the numbers, and the numbers are staggering. More than one out of every 100 adults in the United States is in prison or jail – 2.3 million in all. One out of every 31 adults is under correctional supervision of some kind – a total of 7.3 million people, including more than five million on probation and parole.

Between 1988 and 2008, state spending on corrections increased four-fold. With total corrections system expenditures exceeding $50 billion nationally, one in every 15 state general fund dollars is now spent on corrections. However, with 43 states facing a combined budget shortfall of more than $100 billion in fiscal year 2009, many are doing the un-thinkable: making cuts to their corrections budgets.

Indeed, of the 33 states that responded to the Pew Center survey, at least 22 had made such cuts. The Pew Center report examined the nature of those budget reductions and divided them into three categories – decreases in operational costs, strategies for …

Geo Group, Inc., one of the country’s largest private prison and detention operators, has agreed to acquire Just Care. Just Care operates a 354-bed medical and mental health care unit in Columbia, South Carolina.

In announcing the acquisition, GEO Group said it expected an additional $30 million in annual revenue from the purchase, along with a four cent increase in its profit per share. The company said the acquisition is being financed with free cash flow and borrowings; GEO completed the acquisition of Just Care in October 2009.

Geo Group, like most other private prison operators, has been plagued with problems at its facilities. Inadequate medical care at a west Texas immigration facility led to riots by prisoners in 2008, for instance. But with profits as the bottom line, instead of the general welfare of prisoners, these kinds of problems are to be expected. Such a history does not bode well for the fate of Geo Group’s most recent acquisition.

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 …