Privately owned prison and jail healthcare provider PrimeCare Medical has managed to keep details secret of payouts to settle lawsuits filed over injuries or deaths of prisoners, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2022, p.1.] One of those agreements in Pennsylvania was revealed in July 2023, when a federal court ordered the case unsealed, and now two more settlements in other Pennsylvania suits involving PrimeCare have been unsealed, revealing an additional $1.2 million in payouts for prisoners’ wrongful deaths.

When Veronique A. Henry, 42, was booked into York County Prison in September 2016, intake staff recommended that she be placed on suicide watch. PrimeCare employees, however, felt that was unnecessary, so she was instead put in a regular cell. Henry wasn’t seen by a psychologist or psychiatrist before she hanged herself the next day using a bedsheet. Rich Reilly, the administrator of Henry’s Estate, filed suit in federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in September 2018 against the County and its jail medical contractor. York County settled its share of the claims for $5,000, while PrimeCare’s settlement agreement was placed under seal in April 2021.

Five months later, the County let its $7.4 million annual contract with the ...

On December 6, 2025, federal prosecutors dismissed their case against Jeffrey Scott Wells, 54, a former Vice President of private prison medical contractor Centurion Health caught colluding with a former Tennessee Department of Correction (DOC) official to rig bidding for the prison system’s healthcare contract in the firm’s favor.

The decision to drop Wells’ prosecution followed the death of his co-defendant, former DOC Deputy Commissioner and Chief Financial Officer Wesley O. Landers, 55, on September 30, 2024. Felony conspiracy and perjury charges against the two had been filed in federal court for the Middle District of Tennessee less than two weeks earlier, on September 17, 2024.

As PLN reported, the DOC rebid its contract for behavioral healthcare services in 2019, receiving offers from Corizon Health, Centurion Health and several other for-profit vendors. After Centurion won the five-year $123 million contract, Corizon—now known as YesCare—filed suit, alleging improprieties in the bidding process. [See: PLN, Oct. 2021, p.32.]

Landers left the DOC in March 2020 while that case was pending, and he was promptly hired by a Centurion affiliate in Georgia. The executive-level position was created just for him, and he reported to Wells. Meanwhile, Corizon attorneys presented evidence in their suit ...

by Sam Rutherford

As PLN reported, the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) has for many years outsourced its constitutional obligation to provide healthcare to those it confines, contracting the service from private, for-profit corporations. The terrible cost of this arrangement to prisoners’ health—not to mention $8 million in lawsuit settlement ...

by Douglas Ankney

On June 18, 2024, the United States Court for the Northern District of California approved a series of settlements totaling $1 million that resolved a civil rights suit brought by the survivors of Carlos Chavez, whose suicide at the Monterey County Jail (MCJ) they blamed on guard ...

Because incoming Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) vowed during his campaign to launch “the largest deportation operation in American history,” the stocks of private prison companies, including The GEO Group and CoreCivic, spiked after his election victory on November 5, 2024. Within 24 hours, GEO Group’s stock ticked up 42% and CoreCivic’s 29%—reaching their highest price levels in five years.

Hoping to capitalize on a second Trump presidency, GEO Group donated $5,000 to his 2024 campaign, the maximum legally allowed; but one of the company’s subsidiaries gave $500,000 to pro-Trump organizations, according to nonprofit watchdog Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility (CREW). Private prison firms “have not only been fueling Trump’s political aspirations, but they have been putting money directly in Trump’s pocket by using his businesses in a pretty conspicuous way,” stated CREW’s Lauren White.

The day after the election, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials issued a request for proposals to expand the agency’s surveillance infrastructure, anticipating a dramatic increase in the number of migrants monitored under its Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). Managed under a $2.2 billion contract by GEO Group subsidiary B.I. Inc., ISAP currently uses GPS trackers and biometric apps to track some 200,000 migrants ...

The commissary operated in San Diego County jails collected enough revenue from detainee purchases to pump up the balance in its Incarcerated Persons’ Welfare Fund (IPWF) to $11.1 million by June 30, 2024. But the office of Sheriff Kelly A. Martinez provided few details about fund spending, which state Penal Code § 4025e says “shall be used solely for the benefit and welfare of” those incarcerated.

Rather, county commissioners received a one-page report announcing that $5.7 million was spent from the fund in the previous fiscal year. An accompanying pie chart noted that 75% went to educational programs, without providing any specifics. Bus passes and other goods and services for indigent detainees consumed another 11% of that total. About $700,000 more went to cover supplies, operations, equipment and other services. In years past, this included vehicle fuel and maintenance, as well as employee cellphones and even out-of-county travel. But again, no detail was provided. The report showed that the lion’s share of IPWF spending—75%—went to “educational services,” which the law allows the Sheriff to use for salaries of employees who provide them. But again, no details were provided.

County resident Paul Henkin complained in an email, “To call an annotated pie ...

Pre-trial detainees found not criminally responsible in Maine are being quietly transferred from the state’s Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta to Columbia Regional Care Center, a South Carolina psychiatric lockup owned by Wellpath, Inc. Wellpath has filed for federal bankruptcy court protection, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.1.]

In the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2024, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) spent $53.8 million to run Riverview and another $1.2 million on six treatment beds at Columbia. Just a month earlier, 29 of 92 licensed beds at Riverview were empty.

DHHS spokesperson Lindsay Hammes said that those sent south had “demonstrated a high level of violence” or assaulted other staff and patients. But transferees reported harsher conditions at Columbia than at Riverview: more isolation and less privacy from omnipresent guards, as well as increased use of restraints and limited access to treatment and activities.

Anthony Reed, the first Maine defendant sent to the South Carolina lockup in 2015, died there in December 2023; DHHS has released no information about the death, except that Reed was 48. His transfer had already raised the eyebrows of an Augusta judge, as well as ...

On May 20, 2024, a federal jury in Alabama returned a verdict against a doctor employed by Wexford Health Sources, Inc., the private medical provider contracted by the state Department of Corrections (DOC). It was part of a civil rights action brought by a prisoner who suffered medical neglect that eventually led to the amputation of his toes.

When Canyon Duff Moye arrived at Kilby Correctional Facility in August 2019, he had an injury to his left foot. But the foot’s condition was “stable, with no open sores or need for medical treatment,” as recalled in the complaint he later filed. Less than a week later, however, he had developed blisters due to the low-quality shoes he was issued.

Moye received a “no-work” slip from the medical department, but prison officials required him to continue working anyway. He was transferred to Fountain Correctional Facility a few months later, and the blisters on his foot worsened and developed into open sores. By late 2019, “there was a stench from the wounds on [his] foot” and “holes in the pad of [his] foot below the big toe and below the middle toe area,” all of which was documented in a photo taken ...

On November 11, 2024, Wellpath Holdings, Inc., and its affiliated corporate entities filed for bankruptcy protection in United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. Wellpath is a private, for-profit medical and mental health care provider at approximately 420 detention facilities in 39 states; as PLN readers know, the company is also often sued for providing substandard and even fatal care to prisoner-patients. [See, e.g.: PLN, July 2024, p.53.]

Wellpath’s filing cites “escalating operating and labor costs, a transitory increase in professional liability insurance expenses, and underperformance on several significant contracts” as the primary reasons for seeking bankruptcy protection. The company asked the bankruptcy court for protection while it restructures its debt so it may remain in business.

In the way a typical bankruptcy case unfolds, creditors form a committee and provide the court an estimate of the bankrupt company’s outstanding obligations. The court then orders the company to set aside funds to partially settle some—or more often, just a part—of these obligations and then enters an order discharging the unpaid balance. Any litigation pending against the company is typically stayed pending final resolution of the bankruptcy proceeding.

So how does this impact prisoners with cases involving Wellpath? ...

On June 18, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the conviction of a private prison transport driver for violating the civil rights of detainees. Anthony Buntyn, 56, a former driver for private prison transport firm Prisoner Transportation Services (PTS) of America, was convicted by a jury in federal court for the District of New Mexico in September 2022 and sentenced the following February to two years in federal prison for debasing and degrading detainees in a van that he drove through the state in March 2017.

The jury agreed that Buntyn violated the detainees’ Fourteenth Amendment due-process rights when he retaliated against those who complained by chaining them inside a van segregation cage for hours without breaks for food or water. Cranking up the heat in the already hot van when they protested, he refused to stop for bathroom breaks—leaving them to make do with empty plastic bottles.

Officials at the jail in Shawnee County, Kansas, alerted federal authorities in Topeka to the abuse, leading to an FBI investigation and charges against Buntyn. After his trial and conviction, he appealed to the Tenth Circuit arguing that the evidence against him was insufficient; that the ...