The warden of a private prison in New Mexico said that prison staff may have delayed notifying state police about a disturbance that sent five guards to a hospital August 7, 1998.

"It may be my fault we didn't respond quickly enough," said Donald A. Dorsey, warden of the Torrance County Detention Center, operated by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

Darren White, head of the state police, was critical of the delay in calling state police. "We're a little disappointed that our (public information officer) was first informed of any situation at the prison by a local media person," White said. "Until then, we were unaware of the situation."

Details of the "situation" are sketchy. Prison officials said only that some unarmed prisoners from Washington D.C. jumped the guards while being returned from a recreation area. Officials said the attack was unprovoked.

Apparently CCA officials did contact the New Mexico Corrections Department, which dispatched a 15-man tactical team to the CCA prison. But White said that his department should have been notified so that state police could have been dispatched to secure the prison's perimeter.

"The down time it takes to bring in additional resources for something like a ...

On July 25, 1998 a half-dozen prisoners, including four convicted murderers, cut through two fences and escaped from the CCA-operated Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio. According to Warden Jimmy Turner the successful break-out was due to errors by prison employees -- including guards leaving their posts, not watching their designated areas and not promptly responding to motion sensor alarms.

The escape was the latest in a series of embarrassing incidents at the problem-plagued facility, which houses approximately 1,500 prisoners from Washington, D.C. [see PLN , Oct. 1997; June 1998]. CCA previously had been under a court order to remove maximum-security prisoners from the medium-security prison. Michael Quinlan, the company's director of planning, promised that CCA would learn from its mistakes and would improve staff training at the facility.

Ohio lawmakers, however, weren't interested in apologies or excuses. State Senator Jeff Johnson observed that the escape highlighted a major distinction between privately-operated and public prisons. "I've been to Ohio prisons, and we have some problems," he said. "The difference is if the manager screws up and lets six people escape in broad daylight, we have the authority to get him out of there."

Also of concern was CCA's response ...

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) continues to experience problems at a privately -operated detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In June 1995 detainees rioted at the facility, which was then run by Esmore Correctional Services. The detainees mostly asylum-seekers who had not been charged with any crime complained of severe abuse and human rights violations by the poorly-paid and under-trained Esmore staff. [ PLN , Sept. 1995]. The company lost its contract to operate the center, changed its name to Correctional Services Corporation and relocated to Florida.

The INS facility reopened in 1997 under the management of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and was soon lauded as a national model for privately-operated detention services. But now the former assistant warden at the center, Steve Townsend, has filed suit claiming he was fired by CCA after informing the INS that detainees were forcibly sedated and improperly restrained. Townsend said that both his supervisor and CCA corporate office ordered him to "illegally cover up and conceal such actions."

Initially the INS denied that detainees had been involuntarily sedated, but later admitted the allegations were true after reviewing medical records from the facility. The agency then decided the failure to report the ...

Afederal district court in Florida denied qualified immunity to a private provider of health care services to a county jail. Health care personnel failed to give a prisoner with a history of heart attacks her heart medication and ignored her complaints of chest pains until she suffered a fatal heart attack.

Diane Nelson was arrested around 11:00 p.m. on March 6, 1994. Having suffered a heart attack the previous October, she was prescribed twice daily Procardia XL and given nitroglycerine. However, when arrested, she was unable to locate her medications which she had last taken at 6 p.m.

When booked into the jail, Nelson informed medical personnel of her heart condition and the medications needed. The nurse noted this and that the medications needed to be continued if verified; however, it was too late at night to verify them. Over the next thirty hours, Nelson repeatedly attempted to get medication from multiple nurses. Her condition deteriorated. Her skin became pasty and she began sweating profusely. She complained of difficulty breathing, chest pains and shooting pain in the arm. The nurse refused to interrupt her breakfast at a nearby diner to check Nelson. An hour later, she collapsed while being brought ...

According to a report by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, by July 2003 the state will have just 42,000 prison beds for a projected 55,000 state prisoners. This imbalance is primarily due to a "two strikes" law that took effect on January 1, 1995 and a new parole policy requiring felons convicted of any of 20 specific crimes to serve at least 90% of their sentences.

The parole board estimated the state will need to spend $1 billion to address the bed space shortage, and urged the Department of Corrections to include 13 new prisons in its next budget request.

Georgia Corrections Commissioner Wayne Garner disputed the board's findings, stating they were politically motivated. Garner claimed the report was a "scare tactic to try to convince people that if they do anything further to restrict the Board of Pardons and Paroles through mandatory sentences or abolishing the board, it's only going to cause them to spend billions and billions of dollars."

Georgia's prison population has more than doubled from 18,000 in 1989 to 38,000 in 1998; the state spends $700 million a year on its corrections system.

To increase the amount of available bed space the Georgia DOC ...

On Sunday June 28, 1998, prisoners at the Fox Lake Correctional Institution staged a protest against the scheduled transfer of 160 Wisconsin prisoners to a private prison in Oklahoma.

According to eye-witnesses, about 155 prisoners refused orders to return to their cells from a recreation area. Emergency response [goon] units were brought in and the prisoners were again ordered to clear the yard. All but about 25 complied. The remaining prisoners complied after yet another order.

After the three-hour standoff ended, state prison chief Michael Sullivan said only 12 of the prisoners involved were scheduled for transfer. "The rest just wanted to demonstrate," he said.

As of late July, the state of Wisconsin had exiled about 1,600 prisoners to Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Minnesota; another 3,000 are expected to be shipped to other states.

Families and prison rights activists staged a protest outside the state capitol July 13. Many criticized the policy, saying it severs family ties. During the protest, state Rep. Scott Walker (R) held an impromptu news conference.

"I wish some of these family members had shown the same level of interest in their loved ones before they were sent to prison," Walker pontificated. "If they had, maybe ...

FBI agents arrested three current and former Brazoria County jailers indicted July 29, 1998, on charges stemming from the infamous videotaped shakedown of Missouri prisoners in the Brazoria County "Rent-A-Jail." The three, Lester Arnold, David Cisneros and Robert Percival, along with former Capital Correctional Resources Inc. (CCRI) guard Wilton Wallace, are charged with one count of aiding and abetting the assault of Missouri prisoner Toby Hawthorne.

Hawthorne was kicked, shocked with a stun gun and bitten by a police dog. The abuse was graphically portrayed in a 30-minute CCRI "training video" recorded September 18, 1996. The tape later surfaced (as a result of discovery conducted in litigation initiated pro se by a Missouri prisoner) and was nationally televised in August, 1997. [ PLN , Nov. 1997]

Wallace was previously arrested June 8, 1998, and charged with another attack not caught on tape. In that indictment, Wallace is accused of slamming jail prisoner Clarence Fisher's face into a wall on November 7, 1996.

Wallace had been hired by CCRI despite a criminal record for beating prisoners while employed by the Texas prison system. [See: U.S. v. Wallace , 673 F.Supp 205 (S.D. Tex. 1987)]

On August 4, 1998, Wallace and two ...

Afederal district court in Alabama held that private party doctors and health care providers are not entitled to qualified immunity when sued by prisoners for Eight Amendment violations. The court further held that the existence of an on-going class action involving similar claims did not preclude the plaintiff's individual claim.

Correctional Medical Services (CMS) provides mental health care for Alabama state prisoners. In order to cut costs, in other words to boost profits, CMS initiated a policy to get as many prisoners as possible off psychotropic drugs, to eliminate transfers to state psychiatric hospitals, and to underuse psychiatric care units.

Billy Roberts was a state prisoner in the custody of the Alabama DOC since 1978. Roberts suffered severe and recurrent psychiatric illness, including profound suicidal tendencies. In September 1995, Roberts was taking massive doses of Thorazine, plus other psychotropic medications. On September 19, 1995, CMS abruptly stopped Roberts' medications. Five days later he hung himself.

The following year, Roberts' son filed suit against the Alabama DOC, its commissioner, CMS, and three CMS employees. The CMS defendants subsequently moved for summary judgment claiming, inter alia, that they were entitled to qualified immunity, and that Roberts' claim was barred by res judicata. ...

Adramatic confrontation between the private corrections industry and opponents of prison privatization played out in Tennessee earlier this year, ending in an embarrassing defeat for the prison profiteers. Similar struggles can be expected in other states as privatization continues to expand across the nation's corrections systems -- and the Tennessee scenario provides valuable insight into how advances by private prison companies can be successfully challenged.

In April 1997 Tennessee Rep. Matt Kisber announced that the legislature was taking a hard look at privatizing the state's entire prison system, and that lawmakers had been holding closed-door meetings attended by lobbyists for the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Kisber, the influential chairman of the House Finance Committee, joined L.t. Governor John Wilder in sponsoring a system-wide prison privatization bill.

The legislation was drafted by a CCA lobbyist, and CCA cited potential budget savings of up to $100 million a year. As a not-so-subtle incentive the company offered to pay an additional $100 million "franchise fee" for the privilege of operating all of Tennessee's prisons. Republican Governor Don Sundquist, a privatization proponent, endorsed the bill; he previously had stretched state law to the breaking point so CCA could operate a 2,000 bed ...

In July 1997 the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) spun off a related company, the Prison Reality Trust, which was formed to purchase CCA's prisons under a lease-back arrangement [ PLN Dec. 97]. Prison Realty is a real estate investment trust, or REIT, which offers certain corporate tax advantages. Nine months later, on April 20. 1998, CCA stunned investors by announcing it planned to sell itself to Prison Realty Trust in a $3 billion stock swap that would create a combined "super REIT."

There had already been controversy regarding the inter-connected corporate directorships of CCA and Prison Realty Trust: Doctor R. Crants, CCA's C.E.O., is also chairman of Prison Realty: his son is Prison Realty's president, former CCA officers sit on Prison Realty's corporate board, and both companies share the same Nashville office. Crants & company deny there is a conflict of interest.

The proposed merger would split CCA into three companies, all under the CCA name, with two managing prisons and jails not owned by the REIT and the third handling contracts for REIT-owned facilities. This convoluted arrangement is necessary to squeeze the CCA Prison Realty merger into IRS regulatory guidelines, which limit the types of revenue that REITs ...