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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

Hawaiian Women Prisoners File Suit Over Sex Abuse, Torture in Oklahoma Private Prison

When the State of Hawaii opted in 1998 to send its female prisoners to a privately run Oklahoma prison, it had no idea what was in store for these women. What ensued over the next three years, according to a lawsuit filed by four Hawaiian women, was a "widespread pattern of inmate sexual assaults" by prison guards, including rape, unwanted sexual advances and torture.

The women are suing the Hawaii Department of Public Safety as well as the Dominion Group, the company that operates the Central Oklahoma Correctional Facility in McCloud. The suit alleges that more than a dozen women were raped or suffered other physical or mental abuse at the facility, where Hawaii continues to send female prisoners. Some of the details of the women's complaints are quite disturbing.

One Kauai woman tells how she was raped by a guard, became pregnant and then was forced to undergo an abortion at a prison medical facility.

Another Kauai woman was subjected to "repeated unwanted sexual contact," which included intercourse with a prison staff member throughout her entire stay at the facility.

Another women reports that she had a sexual relationship with a lieutenant at the prison, but that she was ...

Suicides, Staff Negligence Plague Private Arkansas Juvenile Prison

In October 2001, a just-completed state investigation concluded that Houston-based Cornell Company, the private firm that runs Arkansas's Alexander Youth Services Center, was negligent for failing to monitor an at-risk youth who committed suicide. The suicide was the second in less than four months at the facility, and the third since 1997.

The latest suicide occurred on September 15, 2001, when 15 year old Kenneth McClain hanged himself in his cellthe very same cell in which a 16 year old boy hanged himself only months earlier. Both boys were "at-risk" prisoners, meaning a guard was supposed to have been watching them at least every 15 minutes.

But in the most recent case, investigators learned that McClain was left unsupervised for over two hours while staff had a meeting.

"We are tremendously frustrated that we are once again discussing an issue like this with Cornell," Arkansas Department of Human Services spokesman Joe Quinn said. "There is no excuse at all for juveniles not being checked in an appropriate time frame." Quinn labeled the staff's negligence "inexcusable."

As part of the probe, DHS investigator Barabara Ausbrooks viewed several surveillance tapes from the facility. Her report found that not only were dormitories inadequately ...

$377,500 Awarded in Tennessee Jail Death

In September 2001, a federal jury in Memphis, Tennessee, awarded $377,500 in damages to the estate of a mentally ill jail prisoner killed by guards. In November 1996, Calvin Shaw, a paranoid schizophrenic, was arrested on sexual assault charges and imprisoned at the Davidson county jail. Three days later, Shaw ...

Former CCA Captain and Texas Probation Officer Pleads Guilty

On October 25, 2001, Jason Driskell, 27, a former captain at the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) operated Whiteville Correctional Facility (WCF) in Tennessee, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges in federal court. Driskell admitted that in 1999 he struck and injured prisoner Sammy Everett at the prison, and then persuaded a guard to write a report claiming the attack was in self-defense.

CCA, the largest private prison company, operates the WCF, which houses mostly prisoners from Wisconsin.

After the attack, Driskell moved to Lovelady, Texas, where he became a probation officer. He was scheduled for sentencing on January 18, 2002.

Source: The Commercial Appeal

Wisconsin Medical Care Substandard, Even for Prisoners

Michelle Greer had asthma, the operative word being had past tense. Her asthma no longer exists because Michelle Greer is dead. On February 29, 2000, at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution, she died of an asthma attack, suffocated by the apathy and neglect of the Wisconsin prison system.

Greer had complained over and over that her inhaler was ineffective but her repeated pleas for help went unheeded by medical services. Twice prison guards contacted the infirmary on her behalf, but nurses said that because Greer could talk there was no medical emergency. Michelle's last minutes of life were spent sprawled on the floor of a Wisconsin prison chow hall, her hand desperately clutching an impotent inhaler. [See: Feb. 2001, PLN .]

Greer's death sparked an investigation of prison medical practices, and what the investigation found is unsettling. Wisconsin prisons fail to meet more than half of prison healthcare benchmark standards. Compared to other states with comparable populations, Wisconsin prisons have been found to be deficient in several areas.

For instance, in many Wisconsin prisons CPR-certified staff are virtually non-existent, and 24-hour health care is far below the standards of other states. Of greatest concern, however, is the huge disparity in medical ...

23 Escape from Wackenhut Prison in Caribbean

23 Escape From Wackenhut Prison in Caribbean

by Gary Hunter

A rash of escapes have fueled investigations into negligence and possible corruption at a Wackenhut prison. In less than two months, 23 prisoners have escaped from Curacao's Koraal Specht prison in Netherlands Antilles. On March 24, 2001, six prisoners escaped from a newly constructed housing unit. Less than three weeks later, on April 9th, five more prisoners sawed their way to freedom through cellblock shutter vents. Then, exactly one month to the day, a dozen more prisoners escaped.

Suspicious circumstances surrounded the escapes from the beginning. The first escape was clearly accomplished with outside assistance. Using temporary stairs built for use on the construction site, intruders covertly entered the prison grounds from the outside and forced open an emergency exit with a crowbar. To give the door the appearance of being secure the intruders wedged the door shut with concrete blocks. The ruse was successful. The intruders entered and left the grounds unnoticed and the open door escaped detection by patrolling guards. During the next shift, when prisoners were allowed to leave their cells, six of those prisoners successfully escaped through the door.

This blatant lapse in security has prompted ...

Wackenhut Searches for New Business

Wackenhut Searches For New Business

In the 1990s, states couldn't build prisons fast enough. To keep up with the ever-increasing number of prisoners, many states turned to private prison companies like Wackenhut Corrections, Corrections Corporation of America, and Cornell Corrections. But the prison-building boom of the 1990s has now evolved into a pattern where private, for-profit, prisons search for new ways to fill their existing beds.

In 1994, 40 states were under court order to ease overcrowding. In fact, the overcrowding problem got so bad that 30,000 prisoners were released that year without spending a day in jail. The problem turned into profits for Wackenhut, who embarked on a six-year prison-building spree.

In the second half of 2000, state prison populations fell by over 6,200 _ the first drop since 1972. Now, many states are facing a surplus of prison beds after embarking on massive prison-building programs, and Wackenhut has had to rethink its business strategy to cope with this change in circumstances.

In Florida, where Wackenhut has two privately run prisons, authorities report that the state prisons are running at only 81 percent capacity, while Wackenhut's two Florida prisons are 95 percent filled. Wackenhut's situation in Florida appears stable, ...

U.S. Supreme Court Holds Private Prison Corporations Immune from Bivens Suit

by John E. Dannenberg

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly construed Bivens actions suing private federal prison contractors to be available only against their individual prison employees, and not the parent corporations.

Reversing the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals in Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp. [CSC], 229 F.3d 374 (2 nd Cir. 2000) [ PLN, July 2001, "Private Prison Corp. Can Be Sued In Bivens Action"], the high court declined to extend Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999 (1971) to include a "private corporation" within its definition of "individual officers".

John E. Malesko was convicted of federal securities fraud in 1992 and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment under supervision of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). While in their custody and care, he was diagnosed with and treated for a heart condition. In 1994, he was transferred to Le Marquis Community Correctional Center, a halfway house operated on behalf of BOP by CSC.

He had use of an elevator to reach his fifth floor room there until CSC changed their elevator policy to only permit use for residents on the sixth and higher floors. Although ...

Pubic Hair Search by Medical Personnel Constitutional

The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has overturned a district court's order that held as unconstitutional a Sheriff's policy of searching a prisoner's pubic hair prior to release. PLN previously reported the district court's order. (See: Skurstenis v. Jones , 817 Supp.2d 1228 (ND AL 1999) [ PLN , Jan. 2001]. On remand, the district court allowed the plaintiff to re-file her state law claims in state court.

Sandy Skurstenis was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. At the time of the arrest Skurstenis had a .38 Special handgun, for which she had an expired permit, in the floorboard of her car. After being booked in the Shelby County jail, she was strip searched by a female deputy.

The Eleventh Circuit held that Jail policy that each detainee be strip searched without reasonable suspicion does not comport with the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. However, the Court held that possession of a weapon by a detainee provides reasonable suspicion necessary to authorize a strip search. Thus, as Skurstenis' strip search was done in the-least intrusive manner possible, her constitutional rights were not violated.

The Court then turned to the strip search prior to Skurstenis' release the ...

Idaho's Prison Labor Scandal

by Silja J.A. Talvi

Over the past decade, Idaho's state prison system has been rocked by a steady stream of scandals ranging from the sexual abuse of prisoners to the violation of prisoners' First Amendment rights.

But nothing has shaken the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) as hard as a recent investigation by the state's Office of the Attorney General, focused on a wide-scale prison labor scandal that involved furniture theft, drug and tobacco smuggling, and the firings or forced resignations of IDOC employees who questioned ongoing practices in the state's for-profit prisoner work program, Correctional Industries.

Idaho's Correctional Industries (CI) puts over 400 prisoners to work in printing, metalwork, furniture and license plate manufacture. Like most prison labor programs across the nation, Idaho's CI claims to be self-sustaining and runs on profits from sales of prisoner-produced goods and services to other state agencies and private businesses.

The extensive 22-month investigation by the state's Attorney General's office, which was made public last March, looked into widespread mismanagement and corruption in the Correctional Industries (CI) program. The investigation prompted the resignations of IDOC Director James Spalding as well as the head administrator of CI, Jung Ho "Mike" Yae.

Both Yae and ...