On November 26, 2001, more than 1,800 prisoners at the Taft Correctional Institution (TCI) refused to report to work in protest of shortcomings in the prison's food and medical care.

TCI, a privately run low-security federal prison operated by Wackenhut, remained on lock down since the first day of the work stoppage. Relatives of TCI prisoners say the work stoppage is just a culmination of several months of building frustration.

"It's rice and beans just about every day," said former prisoner David Salazar, who was released from TCI the day after the strike began. "Even if you like rice and beans, you don't want to eat it every day." Salazar said the meals only occasionally contain meat and then only processed meats.

TCI prisoners have long complained about the substandard food at the prison, but prison official insist the complaints are mere fabrications.

TCI spokesman Terry Craig said had the prisoners not been on lockdown due to the strike, they would be eating meals which include items like pie, cake and cookies. Because they are locked down, they are only receiving three sack lunches every day.

TCI officials also dispute that prisoners do not receive adequate medical care. "They get ...

by Matthew T. Clarke

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the district court's sanctions against the prisoners' lawyers in a suit against Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) after the lawyers revealed the terms of a secret settlement agreement.

Five young girls who were allegedly sexually, mentally, and physically ...

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has partly granted, and mostly denied, the defendants' motions for summary judgment on a District of Columbia (D.C.) prisoner's claims that he was racially discriminated against by the defendants' arbitrary handling of his religiously based request for a vegetarian diet and by the unsanitary way in which food was prepared and served.

Lawrence Caldwell is a white D.C. prisoner. He is a member of the Liberal Catholic Church and a strict vegetarian. Willie Caesar was the Chaplain at Lorton Reformatory's Maximum Security Facility (Maximum) while Caldwell was confined there. Aramark is a private company contracted by D.C. to prepare and serve food for Maximum.

While in Maximum, Caldwell repeatedly requested that he be given a vegetarian diet as part of his religious beliefs. Caesar had to approve the requests and notify Aramark. Although requests were supposed to be renewed every 90 days, Caesar made Caldwell renew his requests at arbitrarily shorter times, sometimes monthly. Aramark also repeatedly failed to serve Caldwell the vegetarian diet, and frequently prepared and served it in an unsanitary manner.

After repeated complaints, Caldwell sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming First Amendment and Religious Freedom ...

Franklin County (Ohio) prisoner Alva Campbell was escorted to court in April 1997 while in his wheelchair, unable to walk. He was not handcuffed or otherwise restrained and was being guarded only by then-Franklin County Deputy Sheriff M. Teresa Harrison. After all, there was no need for restraints or additional ...

The private-prison industry is in trouble. For close to a decade, its business boomed and its stock prices soared because state legislators across the country thought they could look both tough on crime and fiscally conservative if they contracted with private companies to handle the growing multitudes being sent to prison under the new, more severe sentencing laws. But then reality set in: accumulating press reports about gross deficiencies and abuses at private prisons; lawsuits; million-dollar fines. By 2000, not a single state was soliciting new private-prison contracts. Many existing contracts were rolled back or even rescinded. The companies' stock prices went through the floor.

Here was one experiment in the privatization of public services that might have limped to a well-deserved close. But instead, the federal government seems to be rushing to the industry's rescue.

Consider just the problems of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country's largest private-prison company, over a single 12 month period in 2000-2001:

Ø In August 2000, two prisoners escaped from a CCA prison in Bartlett, Texas. State investigators found that doors had been left unlocked at the facility. No one was watching the closed-circuit TV surveillance monitors. When the prisoners cut their ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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

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 ...