$2 Million Confidential Settlement In CCA Prisoner's 2004 Beating Death Revealed

by Alex Friedmann

PLN has previously reported on the death of Estelle Richardson, a mentally ill prisoner who died at the CCA-operated Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility in Nashville, Tennessee on July 5, 2004.

Richardson was found unresponsive in a ...

$3,175,000 Judgment against Private Health Contractor for Illinois Prisoner's Stroke

On January 26, 2007, an Illinois prisoner who claimed he suffered a stroke due to negligence on the part of Health Professionals, Ltd. a private company that contracts with the State to provide health care to prisoners' was awarded $3.175 ...

This exclusive article was first published on Alternet, at: www.alternet.org/rights/84388 and www.alternet.org/rights/84491

By Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet

Posted on May 5, 2008, Printed on May 7, 2008

Editor's Note: In 2004, Estelle Richardson's lifeless and battered body was found on the floor of a Corrections Corp. of America prison cell. Four years later, that unsolved homicide has come back to haunt Republican stalwart "Gus" Puryear, the nation's top private prison litigator and Bush nominee for U.S. District Court. This is Part I of an AlterNet exclusive, two-part investigative feature by Silja J.A. Talvi.

Part 1: Mr. Puryear, meet Ms. Richardson

It's hard to say what Estelle Ann Richardson would have thought if she would have had the chance to meet the man who authorized a hefty settlement check for her children.

Maybe she would have noticed that he moved in the world like someone who was used to things going his way, that he had a lot of money, or that he looked a lot younger and more relaxed than most of his corporate peers. It's hard to say, because she never had the chance to be introduced to the harmless-enough looking man possessed of a rather ostentatious name: Gustavus ...

by Matt Clarke

Last September produced a bumper crop of prison and jail escapes around the country, including a desperate escape by two Texas prisoners that resulted in the death of a guard, a car jacking and two shootouts. Plus a dead horse.

Jerry Duane Martin, 37, and John Ray Falk, Jr., 40, were just two Texas prisoners working oppressive field labor jobs at the Wynne Unit, a Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) facility, until they escaped and killed a guard in the process on September 24, 2007. Field labor is the TDCJ's equivalent of a chain gang. The "hoe squads" work outside the prison fence in agricultural fields, often literally with an eight-pound hoe in hand. They are supervised by armed guards on horseback.

The work is hard. Verbal and psychological abuse by the guards is plentiful. It is essentially a disciplinary detail without the benefit of any disciplinary process. Prisoners who have disciplinary problems are put to work in the field, as are new prisoners, who must "prove themselves worthy" of a non-paying job in industry or support services, and prisoners the administration simply doesn't like, such as "writ writers." In Martin's case, he was likely on ...

by David M. Reutter

A Report by the Vermont Protection and Advocacy System (VP & A) has found breakdowns by staff of the Vermont Department of Corrections (VDOC) in its furlough procedure and troubling care provided by VDOC's medical provider, Prison Health Services (PHS). The July 2007 report focuses on the treatment of VDOC prisoner Michael Estabrook.

The subject of the report has been unable to read it. That is because while in custody of VDOC, Estabrook died at Fletcher Allen Health Care (FAHC) on March 7, 2006. The report is based upon Estabrook's medical and classification file notes. At the time of his death, Estabrook was 37 years old, divorced with two children.

In May 2004, he entered VDOC a very sick man. He suffered from a disabling disease called severe dilated cardiomyopathy, which is a condition that decreases the heart's ability to pump blood because the heart's main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, is enlarged and weakened. He also had congestive heart failure.

Recognizing his condition was "terminal and debilitating," VDOC around July 21, 2005, granted Estabrook a medical furlough because he was physically incapable of presenting a danger to society. His furlough, however, was revoked on April ...

by John E. Dannenberg

The federal court-appointed Receiver for California?s prison healthcare system is investigating the deaths of four prisoners who were transferred to out-of-state facilities, but stopped short of declaring the deaths suspicious or negligent. His concern is heightened because the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is presently engaged in selectively shipping 8,500 foreign national prisoners to privately-run facilities around the country in order to meet federal court demands to reduce the state?s overcrowded prison system.

Court-appointed Receiver Robert Sillen, who has since been replaced, spoke at the Sacramento Press Club in July 2007 and called three of the four out-of-state prisoner deaths ?not quite natural.? He said his staff was reviewing the prisoners? medical files to determine if their deaths were preventable. The prisoners died in Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee and an undisclosed location under the federal witness protection program.

However, it is not clear whether prisoners transferred out-of-state due to overcrowding, who are typically housed at private facilities, are covered under the protections of the Plata v. Schwarzenegger prison healthcare receivership. If they are, that might create a conflicting two-tier program for healthcare delivery: the profit-driven substandard care typical of private prisons and the federal constitution-dictated ...

On June 1, 2007, forty-six prisoners at the Tri-County Justice and Detention Center in Ullin, Illinois were involved in an hour-long riot. The 226-bed jail is owned by Pulaski County but operated by Florida-based GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut.

The disturbance began around 8:00 p.m. when prisoners barricaded themselves into one section of the jail and began burning mattresses and books. About half an hour later, police ended the uprising by firing tear gas into the barricaded area. No reason was given for the disturbance.
?We?re investigating why it happened, how it happened and we?re going to get down to the who needs to be charged,? said Pulaski County Sheriff Randy Kern, who is also the jail?s warden.

The incident occurred about five weeks after a riot at a GEO-run Illinois prison, the New Castle Correctional Facility, which resulted in nine injuries. [See: PLN, Nov. 2007, p.16]. The Illinois Department of Corrections blamed understaffing and poor staff training for that incident.

?If you get over the moral issue of incarcerating people for profit, I think you can see they don?t do a good job,? said Ken Kopczynski of the Private Corrections Institute, which opposes prison privatization. He added that ...

Audit Reveals Problems with Maryland's New Prisoner Health Care System

by Michael Rigby

Maryland's new prisoner health care program remained understaffed in 2006, and the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) has yet to implement promised drug treatment programs or an electronic database meant to better track prisoner records, an audit of the state's new system has revealed.

In the report, released on April 30, 2007, auditors from the Office of Legislative Audits noted "several significant areas of noncompliance" affecting prisoner medical care.

"We found a number of areas in which inadequate monitoring (by the state) appeared to lead to potential lapses in required medical coverage and certain required medical treatments," auditors wrote.

The audit was state's first independent investigation of the new system, which the DPSCS implemented in 2005 [see PLN, February 2006, pg. 14].

Under the previous system, for-profit prison medical providers were offered fixed-priced contracts for their services. With rising medical costs, however, these contractors balked at signing new contracts, claiming they weren't as profitable as they once were.

Prisoner activists also disliked the fixed-price system because it gave medical contractors an incentive to skimp on prisoner health care services in order to boost ...

by Matt Clarke

In August 2007, Bexar County, Texas Sheriff Ralph Lopez, 71, was indicted on three felony counts involving corruption. Lopez tendered his resignation on September 1, 2007, and two days later pleaded no contest to three misdemeanor charges in a deal that spared him from going to prison on state charges. He was fined $10,000; the plea bargain also required him to cooperate with state and federal authorities.

The resignation was part of the plea, as was the District Attorney?s agreement not to prosecute Lopez?s wife, Nancy, who was under investigation for helping to launder campaign contributions. On September 4, 2007, Bexar County Commissioners accepted the sheriff?s resignation.

The charges against Lopez resulted from his accepting an all-expense-paid golf vacation in Costa Rica from Louisiana-based Premier Management Enterprises in exchange for helping Premier get the lucrative Bexar County Jail commissary contract. He failed to report the trip and $600 in unrelated campaign donations.

On September 25, 2007, Lopez?s long-time campaign manager, John Reynolds, pleaded guilty to one count of third-degree felony theft related to his diversion of $32,000 in Premier money into his own accounts. Former Premier CEO Ian Williamson testified that Reynolds had demanded ?charitable donations? and ...

Who's Monitoring Prison Medical Contract Requirements in New Jersey? No One

by David Reutter

PLN subscribers often read reports about the effects of privatized prisoner health care and the spread of privatization to prison and jail systems throughout the nation. These real-life stories of prisoner deaths, maimings and suffering occur even when the corrections agency has a contract that describes the services to be performed and, often, ways to determine performance standards and impose penalties for failure to meet those standards. In the face of grossly deficient health care despite such oversight, one is led to ask: Who is overseeing the provision of privatized prison medical services?

That question was recently answered as it relates to the contract between the New Jersey Department of Corrections (NJDOC) and Correctional Medical Services (CMS) for prison dental care. The New Jersey Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the NJDOC's Assistant Commissioner of Administration (ACA) was responsible for overseeing CMS's compliance with its contract.

The OIG found that despite the ACA's knowledge that CMS had missed contract deadlines for provision of services, the NJDOC did not impose penalties on the company. In other words, no one took any remedial action.

The NJDOC contracted ...