by Jo Ellen Nott

During testimony before Arizona’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee on July 14, 2022, state Department of Corrections (DOC) Director David Shinn admitted that communities in the Grand Canyon State would “collapse” without cheap labor from state prisoners.

Shinn’s comment came in answer to questions about a proposed contract for a private prison company to operate the Florence West state prison.

“There are services that this department provides to city, county, local jurisdictions, that simply can't be quantified at a rate that most jurisdictions could ever afford,” Shinn warned lawmakers, referring to prisoners who perform tasks such as maintenance for 50 cents to $1.50 per hour. “If you were to remove these folks from that equation, things would collapse in many of your counties, for your constituents.”

At the Florence West prison, the state’s new contract guidelines anticipate payment of a per diem rate for 675 prisoners, regardless of how many people are incarcerated there. As of mid-July 2022, only 457 prisoners were held in its 750 beds. 

State Rep. Kelli Butler (D-Scottsdale) asked Shinn why the state should agree to a contract that requires it to pay for so many empty beds, to the tune of $78 to $85 ...

by Harold Hempstead

A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit illustrates the importance of expert testimony in a prisoner’s claim he was denied constitutionally adequate medical care. In its ruling on September 17, 2021, the Court affirmed the decision of the federal court for the Western District of Kentucky, granting summary judgment to defendant employees of Correct Care Solutions, LLC (CCS), now known as Wellpath, the privately contracted health care provider for the state Department of Corrections (DOC).

The claim was brought by a DOC prisoner, Donald R. Phillips, who was incarcerated on a murder conviction in 1999. In May 2014, he injured his calf in an altercation with his cellmate, and after a lump then appeared and reached the size of a golf ball, he submitted a sick-call request to see medical staff. The lump was diagnosed as a hematoma (pool of blood), caused by a ruptured plantaris muscle.

Phillips was seen several times by different CCS/Wellpath providers, including Shastine Tangilag, M.D.; Lester Lewis, M.D.; Ted H. Jefferson, D.O.; and Angela Clifford, M.D. He underwent two ultrasounds, a CT scan, and an MRI. He was also “given pain medication and referred to physical ...

by Kevin Bliss

Though a state investigation concluded a Mississippi prisoner had inside help making a short-lived escape in September 2021, no charges have ever been announced for officials at East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF), the privately operated prison where he was held.

In fact, even as allegations of rampant gang activity and prisoner killings mount at EMCF and two other prisons operated for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) by Utah-based Management and Training Corp. (MTC), there have been no announced charges at all in the upper ranks of prison officials nine months later.

The escaped prisoner, Garnett Hughes, 33, was recaptured after a five-day manhunt on September 15, 2021. He had been granted leave to attend his mother’s funeral and broke free of two escorting police officers before fleeing with the help of his girlfriend to Akron, Ohio, where he was then found. The girlfriend, Yvette Mendoza, 51, was arrested on charges she abetted his escape. [See: PLN, Nov. 2021, p.62.]

Hughes was serving 15 separate life sentences for kidnapping, sexual battery, armed robbery, assault on a law enforcement officer, and escape. Yet despite that history—not to mention a DOC ban on prisoner leave during the COVID-19 ...

By Kaden Gicker

The academic testing program at Montana’s Crossroads Correctional Center (CCC) was “indefinitely suspended” after a test administrator was found helping prisoners cheat. The tests under suspicion were high school equivalency exams, and the allegations resulted in the wholesale shuttering of the program, HiSET, on April 13, 2022.

CCC, which hold 758 male prisoners, is operated for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) by private prison firm CoreCivic. The discovery, according to the state Office of Public Instruction (OPI), was made after a former prisoner at the facility reported witnessing test cheating, alleging administrators corrected answers to test questions and gave essay questions to prisoners to study in advance, along with other instances of cheating and plagiarism.

After the program was suspended, an investigation was opened by ETS, a private firm that administers the HiSET program for DOC. CoreCivic and its warden at CCC, Pete Bludworth, promised to cooperate in the inquiry. The company also said it would continue to provide educational programming to prisoners so that tests can resume once the program is restarted. But OPI said it was unclear whether the facility would be redesignated a testing site after the ETS investigation wraps up. OPI’s HiSET ...

by Matt Clarke

On January 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that an Arkansas prisoner had not failed to state an actionable claim against prison medical officials when he accused them of not maintaining his bilateral hearing aids. The decision reversed a ruling by a lower court, though affirming a companion ruling on the prisoner’s other claim that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs when they failed to diagnose and treat an alleged bacterial infection.

Arkansas Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner Christopher De Rossitte filed suit pro se in federal court for the Western District of Arkansas in 2017, accusing DOC and its privately contracted health care provider, Correct Care Solutions (CCS)—now known as Wellpath—of inadequate medical care, in violation of his rights under the Eighth Amendment and the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. ch. 126, §12101 et seq., as well as making state-law medical malpractice claims.

Prior to that, De Rossitte filed multiple grievances alleging CCS staff failed to diagnose and treat a “likely” bacterial infection, his complaint recalled, listing symptoms that included pain in his face and head, headaches, excessive thirst, difficulty swallowing, boils and bumps on ...

by Kevin W. Bliss

On January 14, 2022, Judge Jennifer Dorsey ruled for the federal court for the District of Nevada that it has jurisdiction over a nationwide potential class of defendants in a suit by attorney Kathleen Bliss, who alleged her rights were violated when private prison operator CoreCivic recorded privileged conversations with her clients at a state prison the firm manages.

Bliss’ suit was sent back to the district court after a key ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that found the case was not time-barred by the statute of limitations. [See: PLN, Mar. 2021, p.47.]

In the Court’s latest ruling, Judge Dorsey stated Bliss alleged a plausible claim that CoreCivic intentionally recorded conversations with clients in which she had “a reasonable expectation of privacy,” in violation of federal and state wiretap acts. The Court then denied CoreCivic’s motion to dismiss and allowed the case to move forward.

Represented by attorneys from the Minneapolis firm Nichols Kaster, PLLP, Bliss filed her complaint on June 27, 2018, on behalf of herself and a proposed nationwide class of attorneys whose conversations with their clients in prisons and detention centers were recorded by CoreCivic, as ...

by Matt Clarke

On March 8, 2022, PLN finally obtained documents revealing that private prison operator GEO Group, Inc., formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., paid $10 million to settle two lawsuits brought by the family of a prisoner who was murdered at a Texas jail the firm operated. The ...

by Anthony W. Accurso

A man disabled in a Louisiana jail privately operated by LaSalle Corrections has settled claims of neglect and mistreatment he suffered there and at another lockup the firm ran, accepting $405,000 for the months he allegedly spent in debilitating pain without treatment for his condition, further ...

David M. Reutter

For prison officials and healthcare providers who refused to grant an Illinois prisoner an exemption from wearing “black box restraints” during medical transport, a federal district court in the state also refused to find an Eighth Amendment violation, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed that decision on October 1, 2021.

The prisoner, Lavertis Stewart, “suffers from several medical ailments including carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists, Hepatitis C, Grade III cirrhosis of the liver, neutropoenia, lateral epicndylitis (tennis elbow), arthritis, shoulder impingement, shoulder capulitis/arthritis and bursitis, and arthritis bone spurs,” the Court recalled. In addition to the care he was receiving at Dixon Correctional Institution (DCC), Stewart also made visits to doctors outside the prison with some frequency.

Under prison policy, prisoners transported outside the facility were required to wear a “black box” restraint, a hard plastic box that encloses the chain and keyhole portions of the handcuffs the prisoner is wearing. A metal slide clamps the box shut, and a metal fixture attached to the prisoner’s waist then slides through the box and clamp. Once that is in place, a chain is wrapped snuggly around the prisoner’s waist and looped through ...

by Jo Ellen Nott

Laeddie Coleman was the second prisoner brutally stabbed at Tennessee’s Hardeman County Correctional Facility (HCCF) on September 7, 2021. The first, Devin Jamison, was allegedly stabbed 15 times with a homemade knife in the jail day room by fellow detainee Nicholas Tipton, who ran and hid in his cell, while three other prisoners carried Jamison to get treatment for his wounds.

When they returned, the three erstwhile Good Samaritans— Brian Gallegly, Kellum Williams and David Tackett—allegedly launched the fatal attack on Coleman, taking turns stabbing him multiple times. With his blood squirting in all directions, Coleman tried to escape and ran for the door, where surveillance video showed he fell to the floor and died before guards arrived. Meanwhile Jamison was taken to a local hospital and survived. 

​Coleman’s family learned of his death thanks to another prisoner with a cellphone inside HCCF who called a relative. Coleman’s father and sister then called the prison warden, who transferred the call to a chaplain, who then hesitated to confirm Coleman’s death but agreed to check his computer. He finally confirmed the family’s fears, offering his condolences for their loss but refusing to give any details.

​Eight months ...