by Matthew T. Clarke

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit legal center, helped Iraqi prisoners file a class-action lawsuit against private "interrogation services" contractors Titan Corporation and CACI International Incorporated alleging that Iraqi citizens being held without charges were horrifically abused and murdered while falsely imprisoned by the U.S. in Iraq. See: Saleh v. Titan Corp., USDC SD CA, Case No. 04-CV-1143R (NLS). The suit was primarily filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. It reveals a troubling trend toward privatizing the extraction of information from people being detained by the U.S. government at overseas prisons.


Privatizing Interrogation


Since 2001, the government has increasingly privatized the collection of intelligence. Previously the domain of a few high-technology companies that aided in the collection of information using sophisticated electronic and space-based technology, the private information gathering industry has ballooned into a multi-billion dollar a year monster in which a few huge companies have devoured most of the smaller firms and expanded their contracts to include interrogation of prisoners and the provision of interpreters for government interrogators. Two of these firms are at the heart of the suit.

Between January 1, ...

Just a year ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft pointed to the Iraqi prison system as a shining example of the freedoms that the U.S. would bring to Iraq. He said, "Now, all Iraqis can taste liberty in their native land, and we will help make that freedom permanent by assisting them to establish an equitable criminal justice system, based on the rule of law and standards of basic human rights."

The rhetoric of law and justice was in full force after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but now in the wake of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the dicourse surrounding Iraqi prisons has become far removed from the self-congratulatory statements of Ashcroft. As U.S. credibility disentigrates in Iraq there is a public outcry to assign blame to those responsible for torture, rape and murder.

There are the obvious culprits: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his initiation of a special access program that encouraged harsher interrogations at Abu Ghraib, the government officials who pestered lawyers with questions on the legality of torture and the U.S. prison guards turned soldiers who let the dogs loose, literally and figuratively. But as the military continues to shift the blame up and down the ...

by David M. Reutter

The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) agreed on January 15, 2004, to settle a lawsuit brought by diabetic prisoners by upgrading their medical care. The agreement sets a precedent for management and care of diabetic prisoners that is a first in the nation.

An investigation in 2003 by the Southern Poverty Law Center's legal team revealed a shocking lack of basic care for diabetic prisoners within the ADOC. One diabetic had a series of seizure-like convulsions, but had never been evaluated by a prison doctor to determine the best way to control his blood sugar.

Prior to the lawsuit, an ADOC medical contractor failed to promptly diagnose prisoner with diabetes, adequately monitor blood sugar levels, treat injuries or infections, or administer necessary tests to evaluate whether the disease was causing other problems. That medical contractor, NaphCare, Inc., has since had its contract terminated. NaphCare's shameful history and treatment of ADOC prisoners was the subject of a PLN cover story. [PLN October 2003].

Due to this lack of care, some prisoners had toes amputated and experienced loss of vision and other serious injuries. They were also at a greater risk for kidney failure, heart attack, stroke, nerve ...

Interracial prison riots occurred on October 27 and December 3, 2003 in two southern California privately-contracted minimum security prisons. Because California private prison contractors have no weapons not even pepper spray the riots continued for up to 90 minutes until armed peace officers could arrive to restore order. In one prison, two prisoners were killed and 50 injured; in the other, 16 were injured.

At the desert Eagle Mountain Community Correctional Facility (CCF), Rodman Wallace, 39, serving two years for burglary, and Master Hampton, 34, doing 16 months for a drug offense, were stabbed and bludgeoned to death by other prisoners on the evening of October 27, 2003 in a recreation room while watching the World Series. What began as an altercation between whites and Hispanics erupted into an attack on black prisoners involving about 150 prisoners. Injuries to four prisoners required helicopter transfer to regional hospitals. Response teams of Riverside County Sheriff's deputies and California Department of Corrections (CDC) prison guards from two state prisons in Blythe (60 miles away) were called in to restore order.

Lt. Warren Montgomery of Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe said prisoners used knives and meat cleavers from the kitchen, along with table ...

Human Rights Watch, 2003, 215 pp.

Reviewed by Tara Herivel

[In the interests of full disclosure, the author of this review contributed to the following Human Rights Watch Report as a source, and this magazine contributed to the gathering of testimonials for the report.]


It is deplorable that this state's prisons appear to have become a repository for a great number of its mentally ill citizens. Persons who, with psychiatric care, could fit well into society, are instead locked away, to become wards of the state's penal system. Then, in a tragically ironic twist, they may be confined in conditions that nurture, rather than abate, their psychoses."


Judge William Wayne Justice, Ruiz v. Johnson, 37 F. Supp.2d 855 (S.D. Texas, 1999).


Regardless of one's experience or
perspective concerning mental illness in the prison setting, Ill-Equipped, the 2003 report on this topic from Human Rights Watch will outrage and shock. As a one of a kind study (there is scant data on this issue), Ill-Equipped meshes the testimony of prisoners with reports from mental health workers and prison staff, drawing the sobering conclusion that the U.S. presently maintains a de facto policy of warehousing the mentally ill in its prisons with ...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated an injunction holding a contract between Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and a private doctor; Dr. Robert B. Coble, was unconstitutional. The contract at issue required Dr. Coble to, among other things, "determine the existence of medical emergencies" and reduce CCA's medical costs at Tennessee's South Central Correctional Center (SCCC). If Dr. Coble reduced medical costs, he received monetary incentives.


After SCCC prisoner Anthony Bowman died of complications from sickle cell anemia on January 5, 1996, his mother, Patricia Bowman, sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging the contract constituted deliberate indifference to Anthony's serious medical needs. The evidence showed that despite SCCC's prison population increasing by 200 prisoners, Dr. Coble reduced CCA's medical cost per prisoner per day from above $3.07 to as little as $1.46. A jury entered a verdict for the defendants. The Tennessee district court, however, held the contract was unconstitutional, entered injunctive relief to prevent carrying out the contract, and awarded Bowman attorney fees for prevailing on this issue. See: Bowman v. Corrections Corp. of America, 188 F. Supp. 2d 870 [PLN July 2001, pg. 10]. Both parties appealed.


The Sixth Circuit found that sufficient evidence was ...

An outbreak of staph infection, the delayed treatment of a brain tumor, and a preventable heart attack are just a few of the problems Tennessee prisoners have faced while in the care of private contractors.


In September 2003, three unidentified prisoners were infected with the Staphylococcus bacteria at the Silverdale Workhouse, operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The outbreak prompted prison officials to relocate 200 prisoners to other housing areas and to institute a number of new hygeine measures.


County Mayor Claude Ramsey told commissioners on September 17, 2003, that the prison was being scrubbed and that protective measures had been put in place. These measures included requiring prisoners who lived in the same dorms as the infected prisoners to turn in all clothes, bed sheets, towels and personal hygiene items, including razors and soap.


Other prisoners were ordered to wash their hands frequently, store open food items in sealed plastic containers, have laundry and bedding sanitized, and to immediately report any skin lesions to prison officials. Readers should note that the Silverdale staph outbreak is part of a national epidemic. [See the November 2003 PLN].


Prisoners in the Lois DeBerry Special Needs Facility, a Tennessee prison hospital under ...

A Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) performance audit for the years 1997-2002, released by the state comptroller's office in September 2003, reveals problems with prison staffing, pre-release preparation, and numerous instances of contract violations by private prison contractors.

A major problem revealed by the audit is the retention of prison guards. The average guard turnover rate in 2002 was 28%, up 1% from 2001. The rates were much higher in some instances. The Tennessee Prison for Women had a whopping 69% turnover rate in 2002. Two prisons in West Tennessee, where industries such as Goodyear and Caterpillar are located, also had higher than average turnover rates. One reason for low retention rates, an employee exit survey revealed, is comparatively low pay. For instance, all four prisons in Davidson County, where the average salary for jail guards was $3,500 higher than that of TDOC, suffered higher than average turnover rates. The warden of one TDOC prison in Davidson County was cited as saying "the department is basically a training facility for local jails because an individual can be trained by Corrections, receive work experience, and then leave for more money by working at county sheriffs' offices." The exit surveys for 2000-2002 ...

Court orders have forced Alabama to reduce the number of prisoners in its county jails and send half of its prison population to two other states. Until recently the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) had crammed 28,000 prisoners into cell-space designed to hold half that many.

On June 27, 2003 the Birmingham News reported that overcrowding in county jails had become so intolerable that Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Sashy ordered officials to cut their populations. The Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women was placed under preliminary injunction after being cited for Eighth Amendment violations by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. (PLN Sept. 2003) Violations, according to Judge Myron Thompson, showed that Tutwiler was overcrowded, understaffed, inadequately ventilated and a generally dangerous place to live.

Meanwhile at the capitol, lawmakers scurried to approve an emergency package for the survival of the state's prison system after being threatened with a special session by Governor Bob Riley. The $25 million package was literally an eleventh-hour deal, approved minutes before midnight, at the end of the regular session, on June 18, 2003.

Politicians pouted and grumbled but Prison Commissioner Donal Campbell insists that funding was vital. Without the ...

Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft claimed private probation companies have "created a nightmare" in the Memphis, Tennessee probation system. Judge Craft, who is also chairman of the Private Probation Services Council, said that probation companies currently charge probationers fees "that frankly are not justified" and use probationers for "pet projects that benefit the companies." His assessment concludes that the current system is a hotbed for fraud, conflicts of interest, extortion and accuses operators of basically accepting bribes for not revoking probation.

"Drug addicts need to be turned around but instead are being hit up for money," Craft says. He also presented a 13-page proposal to the Legislature's Corrections Oversight Committee which cited other questionable practices including: a court clerk who used his position to supply clients to a spouse's private prison company; a Memphis private probation company where 2 employees oversee 1,100 probationers; and probation companies owned by convicted felons.

Some of the private companies charged probationers $35 for drug tests that only cost $15. They would then charge $100 for a second test. Some companies would charge a $25 "non-reporting fee" which allowed probationers to call in periodically rather than report.

Craft fears that judges are placed in a ...