An Illinois prisoner was awarded $11 million by a federal jury in a lawsuit alleging doctors with Wexford Health Sources, Inc. (Wexford), were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs by failing to treat his kidney cancer. The Court also awarded $667,201.45 in attorney fees and costs.

The award was ...

An Arizona federal court dismissed a civil rights complaint brought in June 2020 by the Arizona State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) under the novel theory that, by commodifying people for profit, the state’s contract with private prison companies created a form of slavery prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment as well as more conventional challenges based on alleged Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment violations.

Jeffey Nielsen, Larry Hilgendorf, Terry Browness, Joseph Bulen, and Brian Boudreaux are Arizona state prisoners being held in privately-operated prisons pursuant to contracts between various private prison companies and the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry (ADCRR). They and the NAACP filed a class action complaint for themselves and other ADCRR prisoners held in private prisons, alleging the use of prisoners as fungible assets and commodities for profit created of a form of prohibited slavery, constituted cruel and unusual punishment, and violated due process and equal protection rights.

In an order filed March 8, 2021, the court held that the plaintiffs had not alleged any facts showing that those held in private prisons are forced to perform labor in keeping with traditional notions of slavery or involuntary servitude. It ...

Charles Talbert settled with Correctional Dental Associates (CDA) and Dental Practitioner Dr. Schneider for $23,000 in a lawsuit brought by him for inadequate dental treatment while housed in the Philadelphia Department of Prisons (PDP).

While being held in the PDP, Talbert requested extensive dental work to repair his damaged and ...

by Matt Clarke

On July 16, 2021, an Arizona federal court issued an order rescinding its 2015 approval of the settlement agreement (“Stipulation”) in a class action civil rights lawsuit challenging the adequacy of medical, dental, and mental health care in the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) as well as conditions of confinement in the DOC’s maximum custody units, including claims of inadequate nutrition, lack of opportunities for physical exercise, and extreme social isolation and environmental deprivation.

The lawsuit was filed in 2012 and is formerly known as Parsons v. Ryan. After two and a half years of litigation, the court approved the Stipulation put forth by the parties. In it, the DOC agreed to changes in health care and maximum custody. Implementation was monitored and assessed against specific performance measures. The monitoring would end if the DOC achieved 75% compliance the first year, 80% compliance the second year, and 85% compliance thereafter. The health care performance measures were the National Commission of Correctional Health Care standards, which were also used in DOC contracts, first with Corizon and later with Centurion.

“Over the past six years, Defendants have consistently failed to meet many of the Stipulation’s critical benchmarks. Beyond ...

A lawsuit filed in a California federal court on September 15, 2021, accuses private prison financier JPay, Inc. of violating both U.S. law and the constitutional rights of prisoners by returning money owed at their release in debit cards that eat up much of the balance in fees.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Adam Cain, is represented by the Seattle law firm of Sirianni Youtz, California civil rights attorney John Burton and the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), which has published Prison Legal News since 1990 and Criminal Legal News since 2017. The suit seeks national class action status to represent any and all prisoners harmed by receiving funds due at release paid with a JPay release debit card.

Release debit cards are used by jails and prisons in many states to return prisoners funds they are owed at release. Instead of cash or a check, these prisoners received a debit card pre-loaded with the amount they are due.

Cain received his JPay release debit card when he left Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Riverside County, California. It was loaded with $213.50, which included all the cash he had left in his prisoner account plus $200 in “gate money” ...

by Matt Clarke

On May 10, 2021, the Tennessee Department of Corrections (DOC) announced that it would rebid the $123 million contract it had awarded to Centurion to provide behavioral health services—including psychiatric and addiction services—to prisoners in DOC prisons. The move came after Corizon accused the DOC and Missouri-based Centurion of bid rigging in a federal court filing.

In April 2021, Corizon filed an amended complaint in federal court alleging former DOC chief financial officer Wesley Landers sent internal DOC emails related to the contract to a home Gmail account, then forwarded them to Centurion Vice President Jeffery Wells. Landers used a program that automatically scrubbed the emails from his computer. Wells and Landers also allegedly communicated using the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp.

Some of the emails were recovered from Centurion. One was a draft of the request for proposals sent to Wells nearly two months before it was made public. The suit alleges Landers received a “cushy” job with a Centurion affiliate in Georgia in exchange for the information. The suit also alleges that the performance bond for the contract was changed from $1 million to $118 million, putting the contract out of reach for Corizon, which is ...

Prison Legal News (PLN) is encouraging our readers to file complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) if you feel you are being made to pay expensive rates to transfer money to your loved one in jail or prison or, if you are a prisoner, to receive money transfers from people outside of prison or jail. 

The CFPB is a U.S. government agency that makes sure banks, lenders, and other financial companies treat consumers fairly. They are concerned with the issues facing imprisoned consumers and their families.

As PLN has reported, private companies like Jpay, GTL and others charge exorbitant fees for transferring money to prisoners. Services that used to be free when performed by the government are now available through monopoly contracts where private hedge fund owned companies charge obscene fees to do the same thing the government used to do at no cost.

In order to send $50 to a prisoner, a person may be charged an additional $6.95. Fees can be as high as 35 to 45 percent of the amount sent. In the aggregate, the amount of money sent to prisoners nationally each year is in the billions of dollars with these companies ...

On July 6, 2021, Veronica Ortega, 45, a former medical assistant at the GEO-owned and -operated East Hidalgo Detention Center pleaded guilty to bribery after admitting she received cash to smuggle marijuana into the jail. She was the seventh GEO employee to plead guilty to the charges presented in federal indictments following a joint U.S. Marshals Service, FBI, and U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General investigation into bribery and drug smuggling at the jail.

The 1,300-bed jail is used to hold people in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Marshals, and other federal agencies. Notably, it held Erick Alan “Cachorro” Torres Davila, who was arrested along with his stepfather, Guillermo “Don Gio” Morales, as part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation targeting the Gulf Cartel. Although they pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in 2018, they were held in the jail awaiting sentencing for three years.

Former GEO guard Erasmo Loya confessed to providing Torres Davila cocaine between November 2016 and June 2019, before pleading guilty. Former GEO guard Jhaziel Loredo and former GEO commissary officer Jayson Catlan also pleaded guilty to the federal charges.

Former GEO guard Domingo Gonzalez Hernandez admitted ...

by David M. Reutter

Private prison operator CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), paid $56 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it violated securities laws that resulted in a loss to stock holders.

The lawsuit was filed August 23, 2016, on behalf of the class of stock holders of CoreCivic, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CXW.” The class consisted of persons who held CCA stock between February 27, 2012 and August 17, 2016. The class specifically excluded CCA and CoreCivic officers named as defendants.

At issue were allegedly materially false and misleading statements issued during the class period. The civil complaint cited statements made in Annual Reports CCA filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A 2012 report noted that 40-43% of CCA’s revenue was derived from contracts with the federal government through operation of prisons and detention centers.

CCA also boasted that, as of December 10, 2010, the American Correctional Association (ACA), “an independent organization of corrections industry professionals that establishes standards by which a correctional facility may gain accreditation,” had accredited 85% of its facilities. “We believe that this percentage compares favorably to the percentage of ...

by Dan Christensen, Florida Bulldog, September 20, 2021

In a ruling that undermines an 81-year-old anti-corruption law prohibiting pay-to-play political contributions by federal contractors, an impotent Federal Election Commission in September 2021, disclosed that it allowed Boca Raton private prison contractor The GEO Group to get away with making hundreds of thousands of dollars of otherwise illegal contributions to Super PACs.

The Federal Election Campaign Act, passed in 1940, bars any person or firm negotiating or performing a federal contract from contributing “directly or indirectly” to any political party, committee, federal candidate or any person for any political purpose or use. The idea: to prevent undue influence in the awarding of taxpayer-funded contracts.

Super PACs, technically known as independent expenditure-only committees, are allowed to raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals. They can spend that money to overtly advocate for or against political candidates. They are not allowed to donate money directly to political candidates, and their spending cannot be coordinated with the candidates they benefit.

In 2016, Washington, D.C.’s Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC against Rebuilding America Now, the primary pro-Trump Super PAC founded that year by then-Trump campaign manager Paul ...