by Scott Grammer
Mario Ramirez is disabled, more so now than when he was incarcerated at the Graham Correctional Center in Illinois. The facility contracted with Wexford Health Sources, owned by The Bantry Group Corp., to provide medical care to prisoners, and Wexford employed Dr. Francis Kayira.
A lawsuit ...
by Matt Clarke
In a report published on March 24, 2019, researchers from Columbia University and UCLA found that “the opening of a private prison increases the length of sentences relative to what the crime’s and defendant’s characteristics predict.” Private prisons did not increase the chances of defendants being incarcerated, as opposed to receiving probation or some other form of alternative sentence, but did increase the prison terms of defendants who would have been sent to prison anyway.
The core finding was that a doubling of private prison capacity led to an increase in average sentence length of 23 days, or 1.3 percent. The findings were statistically significant.
The report – titled “Do Private Prisons Affect Criminal Sentencing?” – involved 13 states that straddle 16 state borders, and focused on trial courts in adjacent across-border counties. This allowed the study to control for local trends in crime and other local effects while comparing different private prison circumstances. It focused on their effect on the sentencing practices of state judges.
A comparison of sentencing during election years and non-election years showed no private prison influence on sentence length. Sentences increased as elections approached, but that was attributed to ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 26, 2019, a federal district court in Tennessee granted class-action certification in a shareholder lawsuit brought against CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, that alleged the company made statements misrepresenting the quality and value of its services, resulting in losses to stockholders.
The suit was filed in August 2016 against defendants CoreCivic and four of its executives – CEO Damon T. Hininger, CFO David M. Garfinkle, Todd J. Mullenger and board member and former federal Bureau of Prisons director Harley G. Lappin.
Amalgamated Bank, as Trustee for the LongView Collective Investment Fund, sought to represent a class of investors who bought and sold CoreCivic stock between February 27, 2012 and August 17, 2016, including “at least 783 major institutions” and numerous minor institutions and private parties who owned the company’s stock during that period.
Amalgamated alleged it alone lost $1.2 million when CoreCivic’s stock price fell sharply after an August 18, 2016 memorandum by then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Q. Yates directed the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to phase out private prison contracts – a directive later reversed by the Trump administration. [See: PLN, Oct. 2018, p.30; Oct. 2016, p.22].
The bank’s lawsuit ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
The police department in Clayton, New Mexico and the state police are investigating a September 23, 2017 incident at the Northeast New Mexico Correctional Facility (NENMCF), which grew into the state’s most dangerous prison uprising in the past 20 years.
“What happened that evening was unacceptable,” admitted the state’s Corrections Secretary, David Jablonski. “There were major security breaches. It wasn’t safe.”
Matt Shriner was a guard at NENMCF employed by the GEO Group, the Florida-based private prison company that runs the 625-bed medium-security facility, when serial killer Clifton Bloomfield talked the inexperienced 22-year-old into opening his cell door in the Restrictive Housing Unit, used to hold prisoners who pose the greatest security risk.
“When you’re dealing with violent inmates you always have a two-man escort,” Jablonski said.
But Shriner was the only guard on duty. He did not restrain Bloomfield, who is serving sentences totaling 195 years for five murders. Shriner also had no backup, nor a radio, and when Bloomfield attacked the guard with a shank, he took possession of keys to every cell in the unit. Shriner got away, but Bloomfield began releasing the other prisoners who then took over the cell block. [See: ...
by Christopher Zoukis, MBA
The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the parent organization of Prison Legal News, prevailed in a lawsuit seeking to force private prison contractor GEO Group to comply with Vermont’s public records law.
The complaint, filed in a Vermont Superior Court, sought to obtain records related to lawsuits brought against GEO in connection with the company’s contract with the Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) that resulted in monetary payouts. The lawsuit alleged that GEO Group stood in the shoes of the Vermont DOC and therefore was required, as the equivalent of a public agency, to produce the requested documents. [See: PLN, June 2019, p.18].
PLN readers know this is not the first time that HRDC has resorted to litigation to obtain public documents maintained by private prison companies. In fact, it settled a similar Vermont case against CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) in 2015. [See: PLN, July 2013, p.42]. One would think that GEO would recognize its duty under Vermont’s public records statute and provide the documents requested by HRDC, based on the outcome in the prior suit involving CoreCivic. But one would be wrong.
The litigation records produced by GEO Group ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
Private prison medical care firm Wexford Health Sources, Inc. filed a motion in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, asking for judgment as a matter of law after being found liable for policies that created an atmosphere of deliberate indifference to the medical ...
by Ed Lyon
Regular readers of Prison Legal News are well aware of the abysmal reputations that private, for-profit prisons have earned. Apparently word travels and people on the outside eventually listen and pay attention to such matters, as the citizens of Lancaster, Pennsylvania demonstrated when they decided to say no to GEO Group.
For over a decade, post-release reentry programs in Lancaster County have been provided by a group of nonprofit organizations. Recidivism rates were low, and parolees received job and housing assistance through the Community Action Partnership and Reentry Management Organization. The YWCA offered support groups and counseling for prisoners who were sexually assaulted while incarcerated. Compass Mark worked with the children left behind whenever a parent was arrested, until he or she was released.
All of these services were funded via a month-to-month allocation by the county with a total annual expenditure of around $100,000.
In 2018, county commissioners Josh Parsons and Dennis Stuckey decided to put an end to the ad hoc manner of contracting for and funding the successful work by nonprofits in these areas. The county wanted to cap parolee housing costs at $1,000 for the 90-day program period and begin helping ...
by Matt Clarke
A lawsuit over the 2015 death of Adams County, Colorado jail detainee Tyler Tabor was secretly settled for $3.9 million in August 2018. The settlement only became public after court documents were filed complaining that Corizon Health had met only $1 million of its $3.7 million settlement obligation, with the company citing a “cash flow problem.”
Tabor, 25, was booked into the Adams County jail on two misdemeanor warrants on May 14, 2015. He told jail officials that he was addicted to opiates, and quickly began to suffer from withdrawal, including frequent vomiting. Corizon employees treated him with Gatorade and various medications, which were ineffective because he could not keep them down.
Over the next three days, Tabor became critically dehydrated, collapsed and died on May 17, 2015. Guards and nurses observed him as he had difficulty standing or walking, and fell and had to be assisted with a wheelchair. He also showed other symptoms of extreme medical distress yet the nurses refused to use a saline IV, which would have saved his life. [See: PLN, Jan. 2018, p.38; Sept. 2017, p.32; Nov. 2016, p.63].
With the assistance of attorney David Lane, the Tabor family ...
by David M. Reutter
A class-action lawsuit accuses the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) of confiscating prisoners’ “lawfully purchased property without compensation” so the department and its vendor, JPay, could realize profit through a new contract.
The suit concerns prisoners’ loss of music files accessible only via their MP3 and MP4 players, in order to allow a new tablet program to go into effect.
In 2011, the FDOC entered into a contract with Access Corrections that let prisoners purchase music players and digital songs. The players cost $99.95 for 4MB storage capacity or $119.95 for an 8MB player. The songs cost $1.70 each, and prisoners were required to buy them in lots of five. The contract with Access ended in April 2017, netting the FDOC around $1.4 million in commissions from 6.7 million digital song purchases.
A “widely-distributed advertisement” promised prisoners who bought the MP3 and MP4 players that, “Once music is purchased, you’ll always own it!” They were told they could buy as many songs as they wanted and store them on a “cloud-based library” by deleting or adding songs to their player by connecting to a kiosk.
Then, in April 2017, the FDOC terminated its contract with ...
by Derek Gilna
A federal civil rights complaint brought by the estate of deceased Monroe County, New York pre-trial detainee Pedro Sanchez, Jr. has survived a motion to dismiss filed by the county jail’s medical provider, Correct Care Solutions (now known as Wellpath), and several of the company’s medical staff, according to a December 2018 ruling. The district court’s rejection of the defendants’ motion means that discovery can continue preparatory to a jury trial.
According to the court’s order, Sanchez was admitted to the Monroe County Jail around January 20, 2015, where he remained until he was taken to a hospital in an unresponsive state less than two weeks later.
“On the morning of February 1, 2015, at or about 7:30 AM,” the court wrote, “Mr. Sanchez was assaulted by two inmates at the Monroe County Jail who repeatedly punched him, including in the abdominal region ... [and] he was discharged back to the jail at or around 12:00 PM with his arm in a sling.
“On February 2, 2015, Mr. Sanchez died after bleeding internally from a lacerated spleen,” the court continued. “In the twenty-seven (27) hours preceding his death, and with increasing frequency in the hours leading ...
