Constitutional Amendment Effort Launched
to Bar Florida's Prison Privatization

by David M. Reutter


The Florida Police Benevolence As-sociation (PBA) has launched a petition drive to enact an amendment to Florida's constitution that would bar privatization of prisons, jails, and offender supervision. The PBA represents over 30,000 law enforcement, corrections, and probation officers.


The PBA launched the drive following Governor Jeb Bush's recent proposal for the state legislature to provide an emergency $65 million to build new prison beds. That proposal included a provision to set aside $75,000 to allow the Correctional Privatization Commission, Florida's private prison oversight group, to take bids to build an 1,800 bed prison in Northwest Florida.


"The PBA went ballistic" when it learned of the provision, said Senator Victor Crist, R-Temple Terrace, one of the bill's co-sponsors. While campaigning for re-election in July 2002, Bush pledged to the PBA that he would not seek more private prisons. That pledge may have been subject to fiscal lobbying. In 2002, private prison companies Wackenhut, Corrections Corporation of America, and Cornell Companies, Inc., donated $274,000 to Florida candidates and political parties.


Prison privatization has its critics in the Florida legislature. "The control of individuals who have had their rights ...

Permanent Injunction Requires Full HCV
Retreatment for Florida Prisoner

by John E. Dannenberg


The U.S. District Court (S.D. Fla.) is-sued a permanent injunction on July 24, 2003 ordering James Crosby, the Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections (FLADOC) and its contract health care provider Wexford Health Sources, Inc. (Wexford) ...

Court Questions Federal Assault Conviction
on Private Prison Guard


In a case applicable to all federal pris-oners incarcerated in private and state prisons the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held a federal prisoner who assaults a private person employed at a privately run prison may be convicted of assault of a federal officer with a dangerous weapon under 18 U.S.C. § 1141. Jesus Jacquez-Beltram appealed his conviction under § 1141 for acts committed while incarcerated at the Eden Correctional Center (ECC) in Texas, a prison operated by Corrections Corporation of American (CCA).


As the guard was a private employee of CCA rather than a federal employee, to be a covered victim under § 1141 he must have been assaulted either while assisting a federal officer or employee in the performance of his official duties in assisting federal officers. The Court found Beltram was read the indictment and voluntarily pled guilty. The indictment alleged the guard was assisting an officer or employee in the capacity of a guard for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) when Beltram hit him over the head with a two-way radio. The Court declined to add to the statutory elements by requiring that a federal agent be ...

Fighting For Fair Phone Rates

by Deborah M. Golden

In 2000, a group of prisoners, loved ones of prisoners, and attorneys filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the high cost of collect calls from private correctional facilities. The case is Wright, v. Corrections Corporation of America, USDC DC case no. 1:00CV00293 (GK), in front of Judge Kessler. This group is represented by attorneys at Seliger & Elkin, in Chicago; D.C. Prisoners' Legal Services Project, in Washington, DC; and the Center for Constitutional Rights, in New York. The lawsuit claims, among other things, that the high costs of the phone calls violate anti-trust laws, the Eighth Amendment, and the Federal Communications Act.

We asked the court to make the case a class action, but the judge did not rule on that motion. Instead, in August 2001, the judge ordered us to go to the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") because the case involves issues under its jurisdiction. However, the judge did not dismiss the case, but nothing will happen until FCC rules.

In front of the FCC, the process is being divided into two parts. The first part is a Petition for Rulemaking, in ...

County May Be Liable For Private Prison's Customs And Policies

by Bob Williams


The New Mexico federal district court has held that a county could potentially be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for the customs and policies of a private prison corporation to whom it had contracted the operation of its jail. Exhaustion of administrative remedies was also mandated.


Fernando Herrera, a temporary prisoner in the Santa Fe County Detention Center operated by Cornell Corrections, Inc., a private prison corporation, was threatened, shot three times in the head, side, and testicle with a pellet shotgun, then beaten and kicked by guards with one guard jumping on his head. Herrera had warned a county transport guard this would happen.


Herrera filed a § 1983 complaint against the County of Santa Fe, Cornell Corrections Inc., and several guards, raising Eighth Amendment use of excessive force and state law negligence claims. The district court denied the defendant's motion to dismiss but raised sua sponte the issue of exhausting administrative remedies.


In denying the defendant's motion to dismiss, the Court noted that only the warning to a transport guard could conceivably involve the county. The remaining claims were against Cornell and its employees. ...

The turbulent economy of the past decade has led many communities across America to foolishly seek prisons as a recession proof industry and rural welfare program for poor whites. But prisons can be a double edged sword, sometimes causing more problems than they solve. Private prisons can be especially duplicitous. Private prisons open and close at will as the need for bed space arises. While public prisons can do the same, powerful guard unions prevent that from occurring in all but the rarest of cases. Private prison guards are not unionized. Sayre, Oklahoma and Youngstown, Ohio are two towns that were lured by the seemingly easy money and extra jobs private prisons would bring. They ended up being burned by their own greed.


Sayre, Oklahoma


On April 23, 2000, a riot broke out at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Oklahoma, a private prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). One guard received 12 stitches to the head and spent six days in the hospital after seven prisoners allegedly beat and kicked him. The riot apparently began on the recreation yard and moved to the kitchen where another 15 prisoners caused roughly $12,000 in damage. All of the ...

It was not an earthshaking day when Cornell Corrections was founded in 1991. It was more like a pebble plummeting over a cliff, leading to a landslide of greed and corruption. Backed by Dillon Read Venture Capital, David Cornell's callous creation rose like cream to the top of the prison-building program.


Imprisoning citizens became popular business in the early 1990's. Companies like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) and Cornell were quick to take up the cause. CCA is the largest private prison company in the U.S. with fifty-nine facilities and nearly sixty-thousand prison and jail beds under its control. WCC maintains over forty-thousand prison and jail beds and employs about ten thousand people world wide. Cornell has fifty five prisons in twelve states and Washington D.C., holding around 13,000 prisoners.


Specializing in half-way houses and juvenile detention facilities, Cornell managed to corner close to seven percent of the private prison market. Only Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) rivaled Cornell in locking up adolescents.


For a while these merchants of human misery profited handsomely. But when the demand for prisons dwindled in the late 1990's their unscrupulous profits diminished like thirty pieces of silver in the hands of ...

by John E. Dannenberg


A Tarrant County, Texas jury awarded $35 million for negligence in the death of a boot camp prisoner, plus $5.1 million in punitive damages, against Florida-based Correctional Services Corp. (CSC) and their nurse Knyvett Reyes. The August 27, 2003 $40.1 million verdict was the largest known ...

Maybe it was cynical courtroom theatre, or maybe the attorney for the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) believed it when he ridiculed the very idea that prison guards would retaliate against prisoners for conducting a hunger strike to protest their incarceration by the INS. In his closing for the defense ...

CCA Packs Positions With
High-Profile Politicians

by Michael Rigby


In an ongoing effort to make up for
what it lacks in prison management skills, Corrections Corporation of America continues to place high profile politicians with inside knowledge of state and federal prison systems in top positions within the company, sometimes even creating positions for them.


In December 2002, CCA announced the appointment of Thurgood Marshall Jr.son of late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshallto the company's Board of Directors and its newly created Nominating and Governance Committee. During the Clinton administration Marshall served as both Cabinet Secretary to the President and as Director of Legislative Affairs and Deputy Counsel to Vice President Al Gore. To accomodate the appointment, CCA expanded its Board of Directors from 10 to 11 positions.


CCA is also padding the company's ranks with state level politicians. In Tennessee, after the departure of Governor Sundquist's administration, CCA hired the state's former commissioner of Economic and Community Development, Tony Grande; commissioner of Human Services, Natasha Metcalf; and deputy to the governor for Health Policy, John Tighe. CCA, which is based in Nashville, placed all of them in vice-president level positions.


CCA's political posturing continues to be paying off. In ...