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This site contains over 2,000 news articles, legal briefs and publications related to for-profit companies that provide correctional services. Most of the content under the "Articles" tab below is from our Prison Legal News site. PLN, a monthly print publication, has been reporting on criminal justice-related issues, including prison privatization, since 1990. If you are seeking pleadings or court rulings in lawsuits and other legal proceedings involving private prison companies, search under the "Legal Briefs" tab. For reports, audits and other publications related to the private prison industry, search using the "Publications" tab.

For any type of search, click on the magnifying glass icon to enter one or more keywords, and you can refine your search criteria using "More search options." Note that searches for "CCA" and "Corrections Corporation of America" will return different results. 


 

Articles about Private Prisons

Court Questions Federal Assault Conviction on Private Prison Guard

Court Questions Federal Assault Conviction
on Private Prison Guard


In a case applicable to all federal pris-oners incarcerated in private and state prisons the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held a federal prisoner who assaults a private person employed at a privately run prison may be convicted of assault of a federal officer with a dangerous weapon under 18 U.S.C. § 1141. Jesus Jacquez-Beltram appealed his conviction under § 1141 for acts committed while incarcerated at the Eden Correctional Center (ECC) in Texas, a prison operated by Corrections Corporation of American (CCA).


As the guard was a private employee of CCA rather than a federal employee, to be a covered victim under § 1141 he must have been assaulted either while assisting a federal officer or employee in the performance of his official duties in assisting federal officers. The Court found Beltram was read the indictment and voluntarily pled guilty. The indictment alleged the guard was assisting an officer or employee in the capacity of a guard for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) when Beltram hit him over the head with a two-way radio. The Court declined to add to the statutory elements by requiring that a federal agent be ...

Fighting for Fair Phone Rates

Fighting For Fair Phone Rates

by Deborah M. Golden

In 2000, a group of prisoners, loved ones of prisoners, and attorneys filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the high cost of collect calls from private correctional facilities. The case is Wright, v. Corrections Corporation of America, USDC DC case no. 1:00CV00293 (GK), in front of Judge Kessler. This group is represented by attorneys at Seliger & Elkin, in Chicago; D.C. Prisoners' Legal Services Project, in Washington, DC; and the Center for Constitutional Rights, in New York. The lawsuit claims, among other things, that the high costs of the phone calls violate anti-trust laws, the Eighth Amendment, and the Federal Communications Act.

We asked the court to make the case a class action, but the judge did not rule on that motion. Instead, in August 2001, the judge ordered us to go to the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") because the case involves issues under its jurisdiction. However, the judge did not dismiss the case, but nothing will happen until FCC rules.

In front of the FCC, the process is being divided into two parts. The first part is a Petition for Rulemaking, in ...

County May Be Liable for Private Prison's Customs and Policies

County May Be Liable For Private Prison's Customs And Policies

by Bob Williams


The New Mexico federal district court has held that a county could potentially be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for the customs and policies of a private prison corporation to whom it had contracted the operation of its jail. Exhaustion of administrative remedies was also mandated.


Fernando Herrera, a temporary prisoner in the Santa Fe County Detention Center operated by Cornell Corrections, Inc., a private prison corporation, was threatened, shot three times in the head, side, and testicle with a pellet shotgun, then beaten and kicked by guards with one guard jumping on his head. Herrera had warned a county transport guard this would happen.


Herrera filed a § 1983 complaint against the County of Santa Fe, Cornell Corrections Inc., and several guards, raising Eighth Amendment use of excessive force and state law negligence claims. The district court denied the defendant's motion to dismiss but raised sua sponte the issue of exhausting administrative remedies.


In denying the defendant's motion to dismiss, the Court noted that only the warning to a transport guard could conceivably involve the county. The remaining claims were against Cornell and its employees. ...

CCA Closes Oklahoma Prison, Settles Tax Lawsuit Over Ohio Prison

The turbulent economy of the past decade has led many communities across America to foolishly seek prisons as a recession proof industry and rural welfare program for poor whites. But prisons can be a double edged sword, sometimes causing more problems than they solve. Private prisons can be especially duplicitous. Private prisons open and close at will as the need for bed space arises. While public prisons can do the same, powerful guard unions prevent that from occurring in all but the rarest of cases. Private prison guards are not unionized. Sayre, Oklahoma and Youngstown, Ohio are two towns that were lured by the seemingly easy money and extra jobs private prisons would bring. They ended up being burned by their own greed.


Sayre, Oklahoma


On April 23, 2000, a riot broke out at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Oklahoma, a private prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). One guard received 12 stitches to the head and spent six days in the hospital after seven prisoners allegedly beat and kicked him. The riot apparently began on the recreation yard and moved to the kitchen where another 15 prisoners caused roughly $12,000 in damage. All of the ...

Cornell Company - The Prison Industry's Enron

It was not an earthshaking day when Cornell Corrections was founded in 1991. It was more like a pebble plummeting over a cliff, leading to a landslide of greed and corruption. Backed by Dillon Read Venture Capital, David Cornell's callous creation rose like cream to the top of the prison-building program.


Imprisoning citizens became popular business in the early 1990's. Companies like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) and Cornell were quick to take up the cause. CCA is the largest private prison company in the U.S. with fifty-nine facilities and nearly sixty-thousand prison and jail beds under its control. WCC maintains over forty-thousand prison and jail beds and employs about ten thousand people world wide. Cornell has fifty five prisons in twelve states and Washington D.C., holding around 13,000 prisoners.


Specializing in half-way houses and juvenile detention facilities, Cornell managed to corner close to seven percent of the private prison market. Only Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) rivaled Cornell in locking up adolescents.


For a while these merchants of human misery profited handsomely. But when the demand for prisons dwindled in the late 1990's their unscrupulous profits diminished like thirty pieces of silver in the hands of ...

$40.1 Million Verdict Against CSC in Texas Prisoner's Medical Neglect Death

by John E. Dannenberg


A Tarrant County, Texas jury awarded $35 million for negligence in the death of a boot camp prisoner, plus $5.1 million in punitive damages, against Florida-based Correctional Services Corp. (CSC) and their nurse Knyvett Reyes. The August 27, 2003 $40.1 million verdict was the largest known ...

CCA Abuse Goes Unpunished at New Jersey INS Detention Center

Maybe it was cynical courtroom theatre, or maybe the attorney for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) believed it when he ridiculed the very idea that prison guards would retaliate against prisoners for conducting a hunger strike to protest their incarceration by the INS. In his closing for the defense ...

CCA Packs Positions With High-Profile Politicians

CCA Packs Positions With
High-Profile Politicians

by Michael Rigby


In an ongoing effort to make up for
what it lacks in prison management skills, Corrections Corporation of America continues to place high profile politicians with inside knowledge of state and federal prison systems in top positions within the company, sometimes even creating positions for them.


In December 2002, CCA announced the appointment of Thurgood Marshall Jr.son of late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshallto the company's Board of Directors and its newly created Nominating and Governance Committee. During the Clinton administration Marshall served as both Cabinet Secretary to the President and as Director of Legislative Affairs and Deputy Counsel to Vice President Al Gore. To accomodate the appointment, CCA expanded its Board of Directors from 10 to 11 positions.


CCA is also padding the company's ranks with state level politicians. In Tennessee, after the departure of Governor Sundquist's administration, CCA hired the state's former commissioner of Economic and Community Development, Tony Grande; commissioner of Human Services, Natasha Metcalf; and deputy to the governor for Health Policy, John Tighe. CCA, which is based in Nashville, placed all of them in vice-president level positions.


CCA's political posturing continues to be paying off. In ...

Santa Fe Guards Rape Prisoners, Neglect Kills Another

Two female prisoners were raped by
Santa Fe jail guards within a ninety-day period. Santa Fe guards have been implicated in at least eight sexual assaults since 1999. Two of the victims were-minors.


In April 2003, John Robertson, 39, was charged with two counts of second degree criminal sexual penetration of a 16-year-old female prisoner at the Santa Fe County Youth Detention Center. Jail officials from the juvenile facility declined to comment about the incident.


Most recently, an unnamed 39-year-old guard was accused of raping a female prisoner in the Santa Fe County Jail on June 13, 2003. Sheriff Greg Solano would say only that the case was "still under investigation..."


The victim was taken to St. Vincent Hospital but "due to circumstances surrounding the case, a rape kit was not done." As of June 17, 2003 no administrative action had been taken against the guard.


Substandard medical conditions at the Santa Fe County Detention Center (SFCDC) prompted federal investigators to declare that facility unconstitutional. Sanitary conditions caused such concern that Warden Cody Graham and Major Greg Lee were removed from their jobs. It was under these inhumane and insensitive conditions that Jimmy Villanueva died.


SFCDC is run by Utah ...

Private Transport Company Settles Female Prisoner's Sexual Assault Suit

Private Transport Company Settles
Female Prisoner's Sexual Assault Suit


Extraditions International, Inc., now
defunct, and its successor company, American Extraditions, Inc., settled with a female prisoner who claimed she had been sexually harassed and sexually assaulted by a company guard during transport.


Robin Darbyshire, a 43 year-old female resident of Nevada was extradited to Routt County Jail in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Extraditions International handled the transport under contract to Routt County Jail. Darbyshire was in transit from May 13, 2001, through May 16, 2001, under supervision of guards Richard Almendarez and Darryl Hudnall. The trip passed through parts of five states. At the time of the trip, according to the complaint, the company lacked legally-required insurance and carrier permits. Further, Almendarez, who was armed, had been previously fired from a Texas prison for assaulting a prisoner and not reporting it


Darbyshire claimed that she was cuffed and shackled too tightly almost all of the trip by Almendarez. Her hands were numb from the cuffs. Her boots were cut by the shackles, and her abdomen was chafed raw by the belly chain. She also claims that Almendarez drove the van erratically at high speeds, hitting bumps so hard that prisoners were ...