Private prison companies, which presently house only 2,550 of California's 165,000 prisoners, have hired a former county lawmaker, former CDC employees and the former state Finance Director in an attempt to expand into the $7 billion California corrections market. However, the powerful prison guards union (CCPOA), which represents state-employed (but not private) guards, is using its considerable swagger to beat back this assault on union jobs.

In 2004, Maranatha Corrections Corp., a faith-based private prison operator, was on the verge of losing an $8.1 million CDC contract for the 660-bed Victor Valley Community Correctional facility in Adelanto, San Bernardino County, in a dispute over $1.6 million in kickbacks collected from prisoner phone calls. (See: PLN, Feb. 2005, p.39.) After meeting with Maranatha on November 17 and December 13, 2004, CDC set a January 31, 2005 deadline to settle or terminate the contract.

But Maranatha had another option. San Bernardino County houses 5,500 prisoners in its jails but has to release around 700 per month early due to a lack of space. Maranatha quietly negotiated a $3.8 million annual contract with the county to lease bed space, rendering CDC's threatened termination moot. CDC would now have to relocate the 500 state ...

In November 2005, GEO Group, the second-largest private prison company in the U.S., finalized its purchase of the Sarasota, Florida-based Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) for $6 a share -- a total of $62 million in cash -- and the assumption of $124 million of CSC's debt. GEO had previously announced a downward revision of its earnings forecast for the third and fourth quarters and 2005 overall. The closing price of CSC stock on July 14, 2005, the day CSC entered into an Agreement and Plan of merger with GEO, was $4.39 per share. Wall Street seemed undeterred by GEO's payment of a 37% premium for CSC stock, as the listed value of both corporations' stock rose significantly the day after the announcement of the buyout. GEO gained $0.62 to $25.93 a share while CSC gained $1.43 to $5.82 a share.

Under the buyout agreement, GEO will assume management of CSC's 15 adult correctional facilities with a total capacity of 7,500 beds. In a related transaction, CSC CEO James Slattery agreed to buy back the company's juvenile services division, Youth Services International (YSI), for $3.75 million and will continue to operate YSI's 17 juvenile facilities with a total of 1,300 beds. ...

by John E. Dannenberg

In July 2005, a New York federal jury awarded $150,000 in compensatory damages and $632,988 in punitive damages to a jail prisoner who suffered permanent disabilities when treatment for his heart attack was delayed for three critical days by indifferent guards and medical staff.

Byron Lake, ...

by David M. Reutter

Anthony Pierce was serving a 14 month sentence for parole violation of a burglary charge at Delaware's Sussex Correctional Institution when he discovered a marble-sized lump growing on the back of his head. A prison doctor employed by the Delaware Department of Corrections' (DDOC) medical contractor, Correctional Medical Services (CMS), said the lump was most likely a cyst or an ingrown hair.

Seven months later, the lump had become ten inches in diameter, or like a second head. The growth caused Pierce to be known by cellmates as the "brother with two heads." In August 2001, CMS' medical director, Dr. Keith Ivens, stabbed the bulging tumor five times with an 18-gauge needle, withdrawing a bloody fluid, which he emptied into a trash can rather than send to a lab for analysis.

"Despite the size and rapid growth of Pierce's lump," CMS medical staff ordered no tests or treatment. They just allowed it to grow unhampered. An autopsy report after the 21-year-old Pierce's death determined his lump was cancerous and he died from a brain tumor due to osteoscarcoma of the skull.

"That boy was growing another head," said Michell Thomas, a former CMS substance abuse counselor. ...

The Louisiana Supreme Court held that retroactive application of a 2002 law, requiring exhaustion of administrative remedies by prisoners before bringing a state tort action, would unconstitutionally deprive prisoners of a vested right. Therefore, the court held that the law has prospective application only when the prisoner was not required to comply with the unconstitutional procedure that existed before 2002.

In 1985, Louisiana enacted the Corrections Administrative Remedies Procedure (CARP), La.R.S. 15:1171--- 1179. Following CARP, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (the Department) adopted an administrative remedy procedure... La.R.S. 15:1171(B). As originally enacted, no state court could entertain an offender's grievance or complaint that fell under the purview of the administrative remedy procedure unless and until the offender had exhausted the remedies provided by the procedure. La.R.S. 15:1172(B)." Initially, Section 1171 of the CARP provisions" made no reference to tort actions. However, in 1989, the Legislature amended Section 1171 to expressly include personal injury in medical malpractice within the type of claims encompassed by CARP[.]
In 1997, Louisiana enacted the Louisiana Prison Litigation Reform Act (LPLRA), which, operating in conjunction with CARP, sought to curtail baseless or nuisance suits by prisoners." The LPLRA also provides that [n]o prisoner's ...

On Dec. 2, 2005, Prison Legal News filed a civil suit against The Geo Group, Inc. (formerly Wackenhut Corrections) in the Circuit Court for Palm Beach, Florida, demanding access to public records held by the company.
The Geo Group is a for-profit company that operates privatized prisons, including two Florida prisons, and its contract-based fees are paid with public (taxpayer) funds. Pursuant to Florida's public records law, The Geo Group is required to produce requested public records pursuant to Public Records Law, F.S. 119.01(1).

Prison Legal News's editor, Paul Wright, submitted written public record requests to The Geo Group in April, 2005, requesting information related to lawsuits that resulted in settlements or verdicts against the company, as well as contract audits, violations and court-ordered injunctions. While The Geo Group provided a limited amount of information related to one category of the requested records, it ignored the other requests and never responded to a second record request submitted in September.

In its lawsuit, Prison Legal News alleges The Geo Group's failure to provide the requested public records is illegal, malicious and willful, and is designed to delay Prison Legal News from obtaining the records because they are critical of The Geo ...

The Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) has awarded three contracts for Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite monitoring of sex offenders. The contracts come on the heels on legislation that allocated $3.9 million over a three-year period to put certain sex offenders on lifetime GPS supervision, even if their sentences or parole terms have expired.
Two of the contracts will keep constant watch over child sexual predators as part of the Jessica Lunsford Act, which was named for a 9-year-old girl who was kidnapped and killed by a registered sex offender in February 2005. The Lundsford Act was passed unanimously by the Florida legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush on May 2, 2005. It requires a minimum 25-year sentence for offenders convicted of sexually assaulting a child 12 or younger plus lifetime electronic monitoring upon release, and expanded monitoring of sex offenders who commit crimes against older children. The act only applies prospectively; i.e., to crimes committed from the date of the legislation forward, but could apply to released sex offenders currently under state supervision.

The GPS monitoring contracts were initially awarded to Satellite Tracking of People (STOP) for northern Florida, and G4S Justice Services, a division of ...

Lane McCotter, once the director of the Utah Department of Corrections, has been appointed to a justice of the peace bench in Utah. The McCotter era remains a high-point of prison violence in Utah's history cumulating in the death of a prisoner who had spent 16 hours strapped naked to a restraining chair in 1997. Forced out of office two months after the restraining chair incident, McCotter became a prison consultant and an executive for Management Training Corporation, a Utah-based private prison company. Meanwhile, Utah ceased using restraint chairs in its prisons and settled the civil rights lawsuits against McCotter and the prison system for $200,000.

McCotter started his first job as prison system director in the Texas prison system in 1985. By 1987, he was forced out of that position by allegations that he intentionally erased portions of a videotape showing the beating of a handcuffed, shackled prisoner. McCotter claimed the erasure was an accident. From there, McCotter went to work as director of the New Mexico prison system, where he stayed until 1991. In 1992, he took over as head of the Utah prison system.

McCotter was hired by the federal government in 2003. He and three other ...

by Bob Williams

The United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has reversed the dismissal of a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 prisoner complaint against the CCA facility at Youngstown, Ohio, finding the complaint did state a claim of municipal liability against the District of Columbia who contracted with the Ohio-based private prison.

Morris J. Warren was a District of Columbia (the District) prisoner incarcerated at the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) prison in Youngstown, Ohio, pursuant to a contract between the CCA and the District. While there, Warren alleges he was subject to inhumane treatment including being forced to lie on a cold floor naked between 15 to 20 hours" every day; denied cell running water or toilet water [for] over 72 hours, weeks at a time;" tear gas sprayed in cells and pods daily; deprived of medication for a month; forced to endure a blood draw with others in his pod using common needles; and destruction of property. As a result, Warren claims he caught pneumonia, suffered a stroke, and was infected by yellow jaundice.

Warren claimed the District knew or should have known" about his treatment and did nothing to stop it. In support of this, ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

2005 has turned out to be a violent year in Oklahoma prisons. Between January and July, 2005, the prisons in Oklahoma suffered multiple riots, multiple murders of prisoners, and extensive probes of drug running.
The stage for 2005 was set in 2004. In 2002 and 2003, 274 state prisoners were given disciplinary write ups for possession of a weapon. In 2004 alone, 351 prisoners were given disciplinary writ ups for weapons possession. This prevalence of armed prisoners, combined with an acute shortage of guards in Oklahoma's state prisons, set the stage for an increase in prison violence. Thus, it was no surprise when in 2005 violence exploded in Oklahoma prisons with three state prisoners murdered by mid-July and several riots having occurred in that same time period.
Sometime in the night of January 29th to 30th, 2005, Ronald Stiles, 48, a prisoner at the Lawton Correctional Facility (LCF) was strangled to death. LCF is a private prison run by GEO Group, Inc. Stiles was serving 10 years for possession of contraband. His cell partner, Robert M. Cooper, 32, who is serving life without parole for a first-degree murder, is the main suspect.

On March 22, 2005, ...