by Dale Chappell

A whistleblower at a privately operated federal detention center in Georgia prompted a joint complaint filed in September 2020 with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleging inadequate and even suspicious medical care for the immigrants being held there.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) added her voice to the chorus calling for OIG to thoroughly investigate the allegations of the whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, a full-time nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Ocilla, Georgia.

In the main part of her statement, Wooten alleged that medical staff at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility had responded maliciously to the coronavirus pandemic, refusing to test or treat immigrants showing signs of COVID-19, ignoring and shredding medical request forms and even falsifying medical records.

But she also made another startling allegation: Hysterectomies were performed on several female detainees without their informed consent. She said she and other employees were concerned that an outside doctor contracted by the facility “takes everybody’s stuff out.”

“That’s his specialty,” she said, referring to the doctor, an obstetrician and gynecologist later identified as Dr. Mahendra Amin. “He’s the uterus collector.”

If detainees complained, ...

by David M. Reutter

In March 2020, Florida-based GEO Group formally asked the government of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, to terminate a five-year, $264 million contract, which it signed in 2018 to manage the county’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility (GWH). The firm’s request to be relieved of its obligations by year’s-end followed a February 2020 vote by the County Council to study assuming control of the 1,883-bed prison.

Since it was built in 1996 – by Wackenhut Corrections Corp., which became GEO Group in 2004 – GWH has been privately managed. Providing the first private prison in Pennsylvania, the firm bragged of saving taxpayers $30 million in construction costs while providing services on par with those in publicly operated prisons. Instead, problems and scandal have plagued GWH.

During a six-year stretch under GEO Group’s management from 2002 to 2008, 12 prisoners died, spawning a number of wrongful death lawsuits that claimed rampant understaffing had created a dangerous environment for prisoners and guards. In 2008, Community Education Centers (CEC) took over the GWH contract.

“CEC was OK,” said a guard who requested anonymity out of fear of losing his job if he spoke openly. “They didn’t want to pay overtime, so ...

by Mark Wilson

"We said since day one, prisons, especially private prisons shielded from transparency and oversight, are a hot spot for COVID-19 transmission.”

That’s what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada said in a July 2020 statement criticizing the “outrageous and disturbing” infection of 69.7 percent of Nevada prisoners confined within an Arizona prison operated by Tennessee-based CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison firms in the country.

The novel coronavirus that causes the disease ravaged Arizona like a wildfire in the summer of 2020, with one in five Arizonans testing positive. On a single day, July 18, 2020, the state reported 147 new deaths to COVID-19, versus just nine deaths in Nevada the same day. Arizona has no statewide mask mandate like Nevada’s to combat the pandemic.

Thanks, in part, to a comprehensive testing initiative, just 18 (less than 0.15%) of Nevada’s 12,000-plus state prisoners, as well as 54 guards, had tested positive for COVID-19 by July 2020. But a group of 99 prisoners that the Nevada Department of Corrections (NOOC) sent to CoreCivic’s 1,926-bed Saguaro Correctional Center, in Eloy, Arizona, was not so lucky.

As of July 16, 2020, four CoreCivic staff members and 69 ...

by Derek Gilna

The volatile 2020 presidential election campaign led private prison operators, dominated by CoreCivic and GEO Group, to open their wallets, with a vast percentage of their approximately $2 million in combined contributions going to the Republicans, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

With a sitting president who has campaigned against illegal immigration and in favor of strict enforcement of immigration laws, the industry clearly wants to maintain its profit stream from facilities holding immigration detainees.

However, whether or not President Donald Trump is reelected, or his Democratic challenger Joe Biden prevails [Editor’s note: This story is being written shortly before the election], the private prison concerns will not likely be going out of business any time soon, for a reason that transcends party politics: There is insufficient space in federal prisons or immigration-holding facilities to house all detainees. There also is no support in Congress for increasing bed space.

In a little-reported development, the Department of Justice quietly transferred the last immigration detainees from its prisons in 2018.

As a result, DOJ and immigration officials were left with no other option but to use private facilities to house them. Both major companies made ...

by Matt Clarke

On June 30, 2020, Flacks Group, a Miami-based global investment firm, announced that it had purchased Brentwood, Tennessee-based Corizon Health, one of the nation’s largest private providers·of health care services in prisons and jails. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Flacks Group specializes in “operational-turn-around of under-utilized companies.”

In other words, it purchases companies that have good prospects, but are performing poorly and improves their performance. It has over 7,500 employees and manages in excess of $2.5 billion in assets. It had recently announced that it was looking for bargain-price purchases of companies that had been stressed by the pandemic.

Corizon employees number more than 5,000 and the company’s annual revenue is around $800 million. A Corizon spokesperson said the transaction was not related to the pandemic but caused by Corizon’s maturing debt. Corizon’s debt had reached $300 million before Blue Mountain Capital Management became its majority owner in 2017. In November 2018, Blue Mountain injected another $100 million into the company, reducing its debt load to less than $90 million.

Unmentioned in the press releases were Corizon’s numerous litigation issues and the collapse of its business. In 2018, Corizon contracted with 534 facilities in 27 states ...

by David M. Reutter

Corizon Health, Inc. agreed to pay $70,000 to settle a civil rights action alleging it failed to properly treat an Arizona prisoner’s wrist injury.

Eric Kevin Pesqueira incurred a wrist injury on October 17, 2013. He alleged it “was not promptly treated with medical devices or ...

Corizon Health, Inc. paid $75,000 to settle a claim that it failed to provide proper medical care to a pretrial detainee who was suffering from a psychiatric emergency.

Mariangela Woycenko suffered a psychotic episode at St. Lucie Hospital on April 11, 2010. Based on the hospital report, officers from the Port Saint Lucie, Florida, Police Department went to her home to question Woycenko, as well as her son, and her boyfriend. They made a decision to involuntarily commit her via Baker Act to New Horizons of the Treasure Coast.

The next day, she was evaluated and discharged. The discharge diagnosis noted “that the goal of improvement in paranoid thoughts was not achieved.” Woycenko’s son gave into her requests to drive. Minutes later, she became “irrational and combative, yelling that people were trying to kill her, and she accelerated the car to excessive speeds and ran traffic lights,” the complaint says. Her son was able to wrestle control and stop the car.

Woycenko fled the vehicle and her son caught and restrained her. Saint Lucie County Sheriff’s deputies arrived in response to a 911 call.

A decision was made to return Woycenko to New Horizons. On the way, Woycenko was able ...

Corizon Health, Inc., agreed to pay $21,000 to settle a federal lawsuit alleging it violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA).

The November 1, 2012, settlement was reached in a lawsuit filed by Makayla Wright. She was employed by Corizon from August 2010 until her termination on June 29, 2011, at which time she was over eight months’ pregnant.

In early June 2011, Wright asked her human resource representative about taking some time off for doctor-requested bed-rest as she neared her due date of July 16, 2011.

Because she was not yet eligible for leave because she had not been employed for 12 months or had not worked at least 1,250 hours, she inquired about taking FMLA leave after her baby was born. She was informed she could use two accrued “PTO/sick days” and that she had 60 hours of extended time that could be used to cover the time she was on bed rest.

To further assist her, Wright was placed on a four-day per-pay period schedule until her leave accrued in July 12, 2011. It was advised that she use her short-term disability to cover her absence up to August 9, ...

PrimeCare Medical agreed to an $850,000 settlement in a civil rights action alleging it failed to provide care for a prisoner at Pennsylvania’s Berks County Prison (BCP). The prisoner suffered amputation of her left leg below the knee.

Alice J. Neuen was sentenced on April 18, 2008, from 364 days ...

Corizon Health agreed to pay $37,500 to a former employee who alleged she was discriminated against based on race and was subjected to a hostile work environment.

Laurie Astern was hired by Corizon on August 11, 2014, to work as a physician assistant at the Union Correctional Institution medical clinic ...