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 ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

Cotulla, a south Texas town known or the illegal drug-sting convictions of a quarter of its African-American citizens, now has a new claim to infamy -- private prison scams. Cotulla, population 3,000, is the county seat of LaSalle County. In June, 2000, self-proclaimed and unlicensed prison consultant Rick Reyes talked the LaSalle County CommissionersRay Landrum, Albert Aguero, Domingo Martinez, Roberto Aldaco and former County Judge Jimmy P. Pattersoninto issuing a $2 million bond to renovate a 48-bed Cotulla jail before selling it to the private sector. The renovation contract went to Louisiana-based Emerald Correctional Management and Reyes pocketed 3%. Reyes then talked the commissioners into endorsing a plan to build a privately-run, 1,000-bed INS prison. Later, he proposed the issuing of $22 million in bonds for construction of a 500-bed, privately-run U.S. Marshals Service prison in Encinal.

To shield the county from liability, Reyes proposed creating a shell corporation, the LaSalle County Public Facilities Detention Corporation (LCPFDC), appointing the commissioners as directors and issuing the bonds. This allowed a poor county with a monthly budget of $180,000 to issue $22 million in bonds and spend the money it raised. The 10% - 12% interest rate bonds ...

District of Columbia May Be Liable
for Prisoner's Inadequate Medical Care

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, reversing and remanding the district court, held that a D.C. prisoner incarcerated in a Virginia state prison stated a claim for relief when he alleged that the district had a custom or policy of transferring its prisoners to corrections departments it knew provided substandard medical care.

Todd Emerson Baker is a prisoner serving a D.C. sentence. The district contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and various state corrections departments to house its prisoners. Baker was transferred to the Greenville Correctional Center (GCC), a prison of the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC), where Corrections Medical Service (CMS) provides health care under contract to VDOC.

Baker sued the District of Columbia, BOP officials, GCC officials, and six medical personnel, including some CMS doctors, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, state common law, and the Interstate Corrections Compact. He claimed that prison medical staff committed malpractice and violated his Eighth Amendment rights by deliberately ignoring, misdiagnosing, and failing to treat appropriately an infected facial cyst that ruptured and a leg injury that tore cartilage. He sued in federal district court in ...

The old maxim, the more things change, the more they stay the same," could have been tailored to Wackenhut these days. Although Wackenhut Corrections has spun off from its parent company, Wackenhut Corporation, there's no indication that the political involvement which brought it this far will change anytime soon.

Wackenhut Corrections was born as a subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corporation in 1984 when George Zoley presented the idea of a separate prison management company to Wackenhut founder George Wackenhut. Although Wackenhut Corrections began trading its stock separately in 1994, it remained a subsidiary of Wackenhut Corporation. In May 2002, the Danish securities firm Group 4 Falck bought Wackenhut Corporation for its security guard division. The sale included 57 percent of Wackenhut Corrections (43 percent was owned by investors). Group 4 immediately announced it would sell the corrections division for $170 million [PLN, October 2002].

Since that time, Zoley, who is Wackenhut Corrections' Chairman and CEO, has focused on buying Corrections back. He succeeded in July 2003, purchasing Group 4's 57 percent stake for $132 million. The move boosted Corrections' bottom line by 70 cents per share.

However, even with the discounted buy back and the sale of its 50 percent ...