In October 2000, the Ohio prison system decided to abandon its controversial two-year pilot project to privatize the food service at the Nobel Correctional Institution (NCI).

In October, 1998, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DORC) awarded a two-year contract to ARAMARK Correctional Services, a private company in Oakbrook, Illinois, to prepare and serve meals to NCI's 2,500 captive consumers. The contract was plagued with problems from the outset [See: "Ohio Prison Food Contract Sparks Controversy," PLN, Oct. '00]. The meals served by ARAMARK were of such poor quality and small portion sizes DORC officials feared a riot at NCI.

In February, 1999, state officials met behind closed doors with ARAMARK executives and secretly amended the contract to allow the company to charge more than 60 percent higher rates in exchange for providing more and better food, resulting in cost overruns of nearly $2 million over the original contract.

When the state solicited bids for a new contract in 2000, ARAMARK and two other private food service companies submitted proposals. Another bid was submitted by Local 11 of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association; AFSCME, the union representing state workers. Each bidder the union and the three companies submitted ...

A report published by the Western Prison Project and the Western States Center. The report concludes that private prison corporations exert increasing political influence at the state level. Private Prisons are also playing a key role in the Grafting of harsh criminal justice legislation that is designed to improve their long-term business prospects by increasing the number of Americans incarcerated. To get a copy send $15 to:


Westren Prison Project

PO Box 40085

Porland, Oregon 97240-0085

(or) 503-335-8449

North Carolina, Georgia, Utah and Louisiana are among states that experimented with private prisons and because of problems encountered have eliminated them altogether or scaled back plans for future privatization.

North Carolina officials converted both of the state's private prisons to public operation, and banned future "spec" prison development and the importation of prisoners from other states.

Two private prisons were built in North Carolina by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in 1998 under five-year contracts with the state to house prisoners on a "pilot" basis. But the Pamlico and Mountain View Correctional Facilities were beset with problems from the day they opened. CCA was repeatedly cited by state monitors for chronic understaffing and inadequate service delivery in many vital areas: prison security and safety; prisoner work assignments; medical and mental health care; education programs; and substance abuse treatment. As a consequence of CCA's failure to live up to contract specifications, the DOC withheld $1 million in payments to the company. And on June 23, 2000, DOC Secretary Theotis Beck announced the state would terminate the CCA contracts and resume operational control of both prisons. CCA will continue to own the prisons, leasing them back to the state.

A week ...

Five weeks after it opened, the Idaho Correctional Center (ICC), went on lockdown following a non-violent protest by prisoners there. Corrections Corporation of America operates the $50 million 1,250-bed prison.

In early July 2000, CCA began moving Idaho prisoners from its New Mexico facilities. According to prison officials, the prisoners objected to more stringent rules at the new CCA prison south of Boise, including a prohibition on beards and higher telephone call charges.

The work-stoppage prompted an immediate response from state prison officials, who issued an "open letter" to ICC prisoners reminding them that, "refusing to work will not be tolerated.. and could result in placement in Administrative Segregation for an extended period of time."

PLN doesn't know how long the protest and lockdown lasted.


Source: The Associated Press

Two hundred prisoners filed a class action suit against the New Jersey Department of Corrections (NJDOC) in 1996. A court order issued as a result of that suit mandated an investigation to "assess the mental health services in the... NJDOC with emphasis on those institutions and housing units where the mentally ill were congregated." Inspections were conducted in 1996 and 1997 in Northern State Prison, New Jersey State Prison, and the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women and East Jersey State Prison. Dr. Dennis F. Koson, who conducted the investigation and prepared the report, also visited the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital where mentally ill prisoners in crisis are held.

The report was issued in 1998 and the court case was settled in July 1999. See: D.M. v. Terhune, 67 F.Supp. 2d 401 (DNJ 1999) [PLN, Nov., 2000]. When no information appeared subsequently indicating changes had been made, Human Rights Watch sued to have Koson's report released. When the state still refused to indicate what changes had been made, HRW issued a copy of the report. With this they hoped to pressure the NJDOC and then Governor Christine Whitman to show that conditions had improved. Following are some of the highlights of ...

The state of Louisiana agreed to a settlement in federal court September 7, 2000 designed to radically alter the way it operates its juvenile prisons. The agreement was intended to settle several lawsuits against the state, including one by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, which charged that teenage detainees were routinely brutalized by guards and deprived of food, clothing and medical care.





Former mayor of Houston, Fred Hofheinz, faces charges of conspiracy, extortion and bribery... Brown is alleged to have funneled $845,000 from Hofheinz to Gov. Edwards to serve the lucrative contract.





The settlement agreement effectively ends Louisiana's experiment with privately run juvenile prisons, where the worst abuses had occurred. The state had tried to privatize its juvenile lockups to cut costs, but the effort raised questions about whether for-profit corporations could operate prisons more efficiently than the government without skimping on essential services and training. Richard Sthadler, the secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, said the state had been forced to expand juvenile prisons but that its "efforts to provide some of these services through privately operated facilities were a disappointment."

Under the settlement, the state is prohibited from placing any more juveniles in a prison ...

The apparatus of repression provides frequent examples of the corruption endemic to late capitalism. It is hugely expensive, miniminaly accountable, and has no clear product by which to gauge its performance. Military fraud and waste are cliche. Endless police scandals regularly crop up around the country. The prisonindustrial complex is no exception. Why, for example, should a forprofit prison get an $8.1 million subsidy at the expense of impoverished city schools? Why should a jail cell cost $180,000? The jailing of Northeast Ohio's V Group, a cabal of companies owned by Paul Voinovich, brother of former Republican governor and now U. S. senator George Voinovich, suggests some answers.

The Dayton Daily News describes the V Group as "a Cleveland based architectural and construction management business". In August, 1995, the Group brought the City of Youngstown and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) together to build CA's 1500bed Northeast Ohio Correctional Facility. According to CCA vice president David Meyers, the V Group also negotiated a property tax abatement for the prison and oversaw construction. Philip Hamilton, a former V Group lobbyist with close ties to both Paul and George Voinovich, was hired as a CCA lobbyist to facilitate the deal. An agreement ...

Students from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, declared victory August 14, 2000 in a two month struggle to keep a catering company with ties to the forprofit prison industry from taking over the school's food service contract.

In July, school administrators announced that the college was in final negotiations with Sodexho Marriott Services over a 710 year contract. However, those negotiations broke down after a student group called "Not With Our Money" threatened to organize a boycott of school cafeterias.

Evergreen is the latest in a series of confrontations between SodexhoMarriott and college students, who say the company's violation of workers' rights and financial ties with scandalridden Corrections Corporation of America make it an unfit provider of campus dining services.

SodexhoMarriott's parent corporation, the Parisbased Sodexho Alliance, is a major stockholder in CCA, the worlds largest forprofit imprisonment corporation. Evergreen professor Peter Bohmer is convinced that student and faculty objections to the SodexhoCCA connection killed the contract."

"A large part of the Evergreen faculty, students and staff at this college find it morally reprehensible to buy food from a corporation so closely connected to the use of prisoners for profit. This victory is 100 percent due to student organizing, ...

Bowing to pressure from angry U.S. and Canadian student activists, Paris based Sodexho Alliance (SA) announced plans to sell its 8 percent stake in Corrections Corporation of America, as soon as CCA completes a corporate restructuring.

But in a statement released October 9, 2000. Not With Our Money! a coalition of student activists opposed to prison profiteering, expressed skepticism about the company's pledge and called on Sodexho to divest itself of all private prison holdings (including recently acquired U.K. Detention Services and Corrections Corporation of Australia) by April 1, 2001.

SA's North American subsidiary, SodexhoMarriott Services has been the target of protests on 50 of the 500 colleges and universities where the company operates dining hails and snack shops. At four campuses State University of NY at Albany, Evergreen State College (WA), Goucher College (MD) and James Madison University (VA) the protests have cost the company lucrative dining service contracts. SA's chairman, Pierre Bellon, acknowledge the student protests in a press release announcing the company's plans to sell off CCA stock.

"Today, we face a challenge in North America over the issue of forprofit prisons," Bellon said. "A handful of activists have called into question the integrity of Sodexho Alliance ...

Correctional Medical Services (CMS) contracts with the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) to provide medical care to some of its 30,000 prisoners. In a 13-month period starting in January 1999 the VDOC levied nearly $1 million in fines against CMS for failing to live up to its contract, according to a Virginia state auditor's report.

From July 1998 to December 1999, the state of Virginia paid CMS $28 million to provide medical services at six of the state's prisons. The fines were levied for violations such as poor record keeping, failing to triage prisoners correctly (i.e. denying medical treatment to some prisoners), failing to properly assess prisoners' medical conditions and failure to provide timely referrals.

The company was fined $162,471 during the four month period from October 1999 to January 2000 for deficiencies cited at just one "supermax" facility, Wallens Ridge State Prison. State auditor Walter J. Kucharski noted that CMS failed to provide Wallens Ridge prisoners with a dentist for three months and has never had an optometrist on duty there, resulting in more than 130 prisoners awaiting eye-care services.

In the report released in July 2000, Kucharski urged the state to increase its fines against CMS: "It tray ...