Overcrowded Washington DOC's Solution: Ship ?Em Out of State

by David M. Reutter

Overcrowding is pinching the Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC). To alleviate that problem, the department ordered less than 100 community supervision violators released without a hearing -- but the resulting public outcry has the WDOC looking for additional beds, which will result in more prisoners being sent to out-of-state, for profit facilities.

To ease its burgeoning overcrowding problem, the WDOC has transferred over 1,000 prisoners out-of-state since 2003. The state is in the process of adding 2,900 prison beds by 2009; it is projected that an additional 4,455 beds will be needed.

The state's community supervision program, known as parole in other states, is causing the WDOC the greatest amount of criticism and directly impacts the need for more prison bed space. In 2006, more than 28,000 people were under active supervision by the WDOC. On average, 1,200 of those prisoners were returned to jail or prison for breaking their release rules. That number is expected to rise to 1,600 over the next two years. Some offenders are violated for committing new crimes; most, however, have technical violations such as failing to attend required meetings or flunking ...

Prison Health Services (PHS), nearing the end of its three-year $359.6 million contract to provide medical, dental, mental health and pharmaceutical services to ten of the eleven New York City jails, was audited by the State Comptroller's Office in June 2007. The 26 page audit report revealed that over 27% of the contract's performance benchmarks were not being met, leaving the 14,000 prisoners underserved. Oversight of the contract is performed daily by the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). In 2005, DOHMH fined PHS $250,000 under the contract's liquidated damages provision, which amounted to about 5% of PHS's $4.75 million administrative fee on $102 million in services for that year.

While DOHMH reviews prisoner medical files daily, it reports on PHS's performance only quarterly. These reports are in reference to contract benchmarks for delivery care. The auditors found that over 27% of such benchmarks were not met in two consecutive evaluation periods, suggesting a failure to "get it" when dinged with the initial bad report. Overall, fifteen benchmarks were "not substantially met" in either the first quarter, second quarter or both, in 2005. These included intake examinations, mental health documentation, HIV treatment, medical records, specialized housing, diabetic care, ...

Inadequate Medical Care Alleged at Alameda County, CA Jail - Four Prisoners Dead

Family members of prisoners who became sick or died at the Santa Rita jail in Alameda County, California have alleged inadequate health care following two deaths within a one-week period in 2006. There have been two other medically-related deaths at the facility this year, most recently in August 2007. Santa Rita has logged at least 21 prisoner deaths since 2003, not including nine suicides.

Jail officials note that the Santa Rita facility, which is the sixth largest county jail in the nation, is certified by the American Correctional Association. Despite this assurance, prisoners continue to die. The jail's private medical provider, Prison Health Services, has been the subject of numerous previous reports in PLN. [See, e.g.: PLN, Nov. 2006, p.1].

On September 4, 2006, three days after reporting to jail to serve a 26-day misdemeanor battery sentence, 18-year-old Tony Rounds died of a heart attack while doing pushups in the yard. His family alleged that jail staff did not use a defibrillator that was present for just that purpose, but only gave CPR. Strangely, one day after Rounds was taken to the hospital and put on life ...

More details have surfaced in a conflict-of-interest scandal involving two California gubernatorial appointees involved in a $26 million no-bid contract awarded by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for medical scheduling services. PLN previously reported that the chief of CDCR's Division of Health Care Services, Dr. Peter Farber-Szekrenyi, was forced to resign after the federally-appointed healthcare receiver, Robert Sillen, learned of the questionable contract. [See: PLN, July 2007, p.33].

The contract involved a three-year pilot program at two Southern California prisons to schedule health care specialists for priority medical visits. The contract was awarded to Medical Development International (MDI), a Florida-based firm that provides similar services to 27 federal Bureau of Prisons facilities.

MDI's scheduling efforts reportedly reduced CDCR's medical specialist backlog at the two prisons from 500 to zero. But it did so, in part, by not scheduling any such visits when the estimated cost of treatment would exceed $5,000. This amounted to making "medical decisions," which required a medical license, something MDI lacked. Accordingly, federal court Special Master John Hagar stopped all work by and payments to MDI, and Robert Sillen vowed to ban MDI from operating in California prisons. [See: PLN, Sept. 2007, p. 26]. ...

Val Verde County, Texas and its contract Del Rio jail operator, GEO Group, Inc., agreed in March 2007 to pay $200,000 to the surviving family of a 23-year-old woman prisoner who, upon becoming depressed after being raped in the jail, hung herself with her bed sheet in July 2004.

LeTisha ...

The Superior Court of Sacramento County has granted a writ of mandate prohibiting the transfer of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) prisoners to out-of-state facilities to alleviate the prison system's chronic overcrowding crisis.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the union that represents state prison guards, had sued in Superior Court challenging Governor Schwarzenegger's declared "state of emergency" as an improper use of power to overcome the normal illegality of such transfers. Prior to the writ's issuance, on February 20, 2007, some 354 "volunteer" prisoners had already been transferred to a Corrections Corporation of America facility in Tennessee.

In a rare case that put the guard union on the same side as prisoner advocates, the CCPOA fought to stem the flow of involuntary transfers to out-of-state lockups. The union argued that their members' safety was at issue, stating that guards could be injured when they had to extract and ship 8,000 angry prisoners for forced transfers. More likely, the union was (correctly) worried that this was a bargaining tactic by Gov.
Schwarzenegger in their contested labor contract negotiations: knuckle under or kiss your jobs goodbye. Out-of-state private prisons charge California less than one-half of in-state prison costs, ...

"Please Rip Us Off" Florida Officials Tell Private Prison Companies

by David M. Reutter

Despite having ordered a criminal investigation into its private prison contractors, the Florida Legislature and Governor Charlie Crist have enacted legislation that specifies those same companies are the only ones that can bid on expanding current prisons or building new correctional facilities.

The criminal investigation, conducted by the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement (FDLE), resulted after two state audits found that Florida had overpaid the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) more than $4.5 million for vacant job positions and maintenance that was never performed. GEO settled with the state for $402,541, literally pennies on the dollar, while as of September, 2007 the state was still negotiating with CCA over $3.6 million in payments. [See: PLN, June 2007, p.32]. The FDLE investigation found no criminal wrongdoing.

To address its continually burgeoning prison population, Florida is planning to build more beds. The state's 2007 budget calls for 384 new beds at a medium-security prison, which is estimated to cost between $15 and $20 million. The budget limits the prison expansion to companies that currently contract with the state, which are GEO and CCA.

The state ...

Little State, Big Problems: Maine?s Prison Crisis Continues Unabated

by Lance Tapley

Only big prison systems mistreat prisoners, right?

Only prison systems where racism, right-wing tough-on-crime attitudes, or prison-industrial-complex power have full reign, like in California or Texas, are failures, right?

Only prisons where gang-oriented, city-bred prisoners are divided by race are ugly, right?

Only big prison systems arrogantly try to hide what they're doing from the public, right?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Maine is the little (1.3-million people), lily-white (the least diverse state in the nation), liberal (it went overwhelmingly for Kerry in 2004) "Vacationland" squeezed up into Canada at the top of the Northeast. It has one of the lowest crime rates and the rock-bottom-lowest incarceration rate in the country.

But Maine's Department of Corrections has presided over extensive prisoner abuse and neglect that it has worked hard to hide.

I began reporting about Maine's prisons in November 2005, when Torture in Maine's Prison, an exposé of the brutality in the Maine State Prison's Special Management ("Supermax") Unit, appeared in the Portland Phoenix, an alternative newsweekly. In two subsequent articles, I detailed the fallout from the torture article, the state's promises of reform, and the inadequacy of reform ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

The methods used for psychological evaluation and housing of prisoners at the Washington, D.C. Jail are being questioned after two prisoners committed suicide within a three-month period.

Alicia Edwards, 32, had a history of mental illness when she hung herself in her D.C. Jail cell on March 31, 2007. Jail officials initially released a false statement claiming she was housed in the facility?s mental health unit and was under observation every 15 minutes. This led The Washington Post and The Examiner to publish articles repeating the false information.

However, D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) spokesperson Beverly Young later admitted that Edwards was neither in the mental health unit nor under increased observation, but rather was locked in a single-bunk intake unit cell isolated from other prisoners and was suffering from bipolar disorder when she killed herself.

The initial incorrect information was an apparent attempt to conceal the fact that, despite having a long history of mental illness and having been flagged for mental health problems during her intake screening, Edwards? required mental health evaluation had not been completed following her arrest two days prior to her death.

According to Vincent Keane, president of Unity Health Care, ...

by Michael Rigby

The daughters of a mentally ill man who was raped and beaten to death by another prisoner in New Jersey's Camden County Correctional Facility (CCCF) will receive a combined $4 million from the state and the jail's mental health care provider, Steininger Behavioral Care Services.

Joel Seidel, ...