by Matthew T. Clarke

On October 12, 2004, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) issued an extensive, 179-page After Action Report on the July 20, 2004, riot at the Crowley County Correctional Facility (CCCF) which is run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The report places most of the blame on CCA, citing understaffing, inexperienced staff, lack of staff training, and a delayed response to the initial prisoner disturbance as the main reasons the relatively minor disturbance grew into a major riot.

The most important recommendations in the report for CCCF are improved emergency plans and increased emergency procedures training, clarification of lines of authority and command structure, additional authority for local administrators, improving relationships with local law enforcement, renovating cells using more resilient construction materials, improving staffing, and reporting staff shortages to the DOC. Also recommended was more private prison monitors and giving the DOC the ability to make private prisons comply with Colorado DOC standards.

There were only 33 guards at the prison the day of the riot. This represents only one guard for every 33 of the prison's 1,122 prisoners and contrasts strongly with the DOC's ratio of one guard for every five prisoners. But it is ...

The City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has agreed to settle its part in a federal lawsuit over the death of a Native American prisoner in the Tulsa Jail. According to the November 7, 2003 settlement, the city will pay the man's family $200,000 and improve its police training program.

Shane Spencer, 27, was arrested by Tulsa police on the evening of October 24, 2001. Sometime after midnight a surveillance camera recorded police as they dragged the inebriated man into the jail and deposited his limp body face-down on the lobby floor. Left unattended by jail staff, he soon died. The troubled jail is operated on contract by the for profit Corrections Corporation of America.

As part of the settlement, police will be trained in how to recognize alcohol poisoning, and how to restrain intoxicated prisoners without suffocating them, said attorney Chris Davis, who represented the family.

"This is the result that we wanted," he said. "This case was never about the money. It was about making sure that what happened to Shane Spencer will never happen to anybody else."

Corrections Corporation of America, which operates the jail, was not part the settlement and is still a defendant in the lawsuit of. ...

CMS Must Pay $1.75 Million In Illinois Jail Suicide


by John E. Dannenberg

Correctional Medical Services (CMS), a private contractor providing all medical and mental health services at the Lake County, Ill. Jail, was ordered by a federal appeals court to pay a federal district court jury award of $250,000 ...

by Ken Kopczynski, 111 pp. 2004, Authorhouse, softbound

Reviewed by David M. Reutter

As the prison industrial complex has expanded, the privatization of prisons has increased. The pages of PLN have chronicled the mental and physical abuse, as well as medical neglect, suffered by those warehoused in privatized prisons. Private Capitol Punishment: The Florida Model provides a view of the other side of the coin: It details the escapades of officials employed by the State of Florida to oversee and monitor the state's private prisons.

Private Capitol Punishment is the true story of Ken Kopczynski's experiences in exposing the corruption and politics of Florida's private prison industry. While the officials Kopczynski exposed oversaw Florida's private prisons, he uncovered that they were players profiting from the worldwide push to privatize prisons.

The author, Ken Kopczynski, is a Legislative and Political Affairs Assistant for the Florida Police Benevolent Association (FPBA), the union which represents guards working for the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC). He also is the Executive Director of the Private Corrections Institute (PCI), established to educate the public about the for-profit private prison industry (www.CorrectionsInstitute.org). All profits from Private Capitol Punishment go to PCI.

While acting as a lobbyist for ...

by David M. Reutter

The Keys to Success report issued by the Vermont State Auditor on May 26, 2004, concludes the Vermont Department of Corrections' (VDOC) "failure to monitor its contracts with private companies and individuals has resulted in significant financial impacts, services that were paid for and not received, and, in some cases, serious reports of poor living conditions, substandard medical and dental care, and inadequate programming" for prisoners.

The October 7, 2003, suicide death of PLN contributing writer James Quigley at Vermont's Northwest State Correctional Facility erupted a firestorm of criticism that has caused a torrent of attention to be beamed on all aspects of VDOC. In March 2004, two New England lawyers, at the State's behest, issued an investigative report into the deaths of seven Vermont prisoners. [PLN, Sep. 2004]. The Auditor's review of VDOC contracts was requested by a number of legislators, prisoners, prisoner rights advocates, and the Vermont State Employees Association.

Since 2000, VDOC has entered into more than 100 contracts at a cost of more than $50 million to provide a wide variety of services to prisoners, from substance abuse counseling and having medical and mental health treatment. This is not the first time ...

The nation's largest private prison corporation is joining forces with conservative faith-based ministries

by Bill Berkowitz

In an era where the Bush Administration touts faith-based organizations as engines of individual and social transformation, and is actively recruiting and funding religious organizations to deliver a bevy of social services, it isn't surprising that a high-powered politically-savvy corporation wants in on the action. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nations' largest owner and operator of private prisons, is trucking out a new product line with a little help from its fundamentalist friends: Prison Conversions to Christ.

Over the past few years, high-profile prison conversions to Christ _ like Carla Faye Tucker and David Berkowitz, also known as the "Son of Sam" _ captured the attention of fundamentalist Christian leaders and the mainstream media.*

While high-profile prison conversions may play well in the media, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is casting its lot with your everyday prisoner, entering into partnerships with several Christian fundamentalist evangelical organizations that are increasingly active inside America's prisons.

According to company records, the Nashville, Tennessee based company is the sixth largest corrections system in the nation, behind only the federal government and four states. CCA operates ...

by David M. Reutter

A federal class action has been filed in the Federal District Court in Ft. Myers by eight residents of the Florida Civil Commitment Center (FCCC), seeking to enforce their rights to mental health services and treatment under the United States Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act. FCCC is a state institution that indefinitely holds sex offenders who have completed their prison sentences, but purportedly require additional treatment to keep them from re-offending.

While it is deemed a civil treatment facility, FCCC is located inside the barbed wire fences of a former state prison in Arcadia, Florida. It is the only facility in Florida designated to house and provide treatment services for men confined under Florida's Sexually Violent Predator Act.

Florida Statute §§ 394-910-394.931 provides for Florida's Department of Children and Families (DCF) to involuntarily detain and civilly commit persons judicially determined to be a "sexually violent predator." To be confined under the Act, an individual must be found to have a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in acts of sexual violence if not confined to a secure facility for long-term control, care, and treatment.

Once committed to the ...

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 ...