Privatizing more prisons will not save Louisiana money now or in the long run, according to the state’s Public Safety and Corrections Secretary, Jimmy LeBlanc. LeBlanc is opposed to House Concurrent Resolution 30, proposed by state Rep. Jack McFarland, which would require the prison system to report by the end of 2017 whether turning over the management of five additional prisons to for-profit companies would result in cost savings.

Much of the assumed savings would come from paying guards and other staff lower wages, LeBlanc said, which would make it harder to recruit and retain good employees. The state already struggles to retain staff due to low wages; the starting salary for a Louisiana prison guard is $24,300 per year. A privately-operated prison would likely reduce wages even more, he noted.

News of more privatization unnerved staff at some facilities. “It doesn’t help with the morale of the prison system,” LeBlanc said in a May 17, 2017 statement. Prison guards already have the highest turnover rate among state employees.

Private companies operate two Louisiana state prisons: the Allen Correctional Center, run by GEO Group, and the Winn Correctional Center, managed by LaSalle Corrections. McFarland’s bill would add another five for-profit ...

The GEO Group -- one of the nation's largest private prison firms, which is frequently the subject of scandal arising from repeated human rights violations at its for-profit facilities – has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought against the company in 2015 by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). ...

by Derek Gilna

In December 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a watchdog agency within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), issued an audit of the federal Bureau of Prisons’ contract with private prisoner company CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, to operate the Adams County Correctional Center.

That 2,232-bed facility, located in Natchez, Mississippi, gained notoriety in May 2012 following a major riot that left one prison employee dead. [See: PLN, June 2014, p.48]. A post-riot report recommended changes, which the OIG’s 2016 audit found still hadn’t been completed. Further, according to the audit, CoreCivic had not been held accountable by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The Inspector General wrote it was “deeply concerned” that the Adams facility remained “plagued by the same significant deficiencies” that had sparked the deadly riot.

The audit directly echoed the findings of a multi-part investigation released earlier this year by The Nation, in partnership with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, which uncovered serious problems at the Adams facility and 10 other privately-operated federal prisons used to incarcerate non-citizens convicted of crimes. The investigation found that CoreCivic had failed for years to correct inadequacies in the provision ...

by David Reutter

In prison after prison across the state, over a period of two years, Florida state Representative David Richardson found that toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste, pillows, sheets, shirts and soap were often withheld from prisoners, especially those in solitary confinement. Further, food had been denied as a form of punishment and medical conditions went untreated.

Richardson, a retired forensic auditor, has used his legislative authority to enter state prisons unannounced to view conditions without the “dog and pony show” typically provided to official guests. He presented his findings to his colleagues in the state House in April 2017 and urged them to require more accountability over Florida’s private prison contracts, offering a level of scrutiny not often seen on the floor of a legislative chamber.

“All nine contracts that I had audited had the numbers fudged,” Richardson declared moments before the House voted 89-26 for its draft of the 2017-2018 fiscal year budget.

Part of the problem, Richardson said, is that the agency in charge of monitoring private prison contracts – the Department of Management Services (DMS) – had no experience in corrections, making it susceptible to being “hoodwinked” by for-profit prison companies.

“I want one agency accountable, and ...

by Christopher Zoukis

In March 2015, 53-year-old Ralph Karl Ingrim suffered a seizure at a Dollar General store in Amarillo, Texas. A store clerk was kind enough to call the police to have him removed. When they arrived, Ingrim allegedly became argumentative, placed his hand on an officer’s chest and was promptly arrested on a misdemeanor trespass charge.

When Ingrim’s mother, Serena Kincanon, became aware of her son’s arrest, she immediately traveled to the Randall County Jail and alerted guard Nick Wright of Ingrim’s medication needs. While she provided a list of her son’s necessary medications, Wright allegedly wadded up and threw away the notes. According to Kincanon, Wright told her the only recourse was to post Ingrim’s bond.

Kincanon left to arrange for her son’s release. But before she returned to the jail a few hours later, Ingrim had suffered a seizure in his cell. During the seizure he fell, fractured his skull and suffered a brain bleed. According to a lawsuit filed on Ingrim’s behalf on March 24, 2017, the seizure and fall resulted in “permanent and extremely severe” impairments. After two years of therapy, Ingrim’s reading ability didn’t surpass the third-grade level; he was declared legally incompetent ...

by Lonnie Burton

On February 15, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decided that a lower court's dismissal of Illinois state prisoner's lawsuit against a private medical contractor and a prison dentist should be upheld. The appellate court agreed that the prisoner's deliberate indifference claims for inadequate dental treatment failed as a matter of law.

The case concerns Wexford Health Sources Inc., a private medical provider contracted to provide medical and dental services to state prisoners in Illinois. Lamont Lake was a prisoner at the Hill Correctional Center, and sued Wexford and prison dentist Carol Jackson for pain and suffering as the result of substandard dental care. Defendants moved for, and were granted summary judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, and Lake appealed.

The Seventh Circuit first noted that Wexford has a reputation of "withholding medical care to save money," and that it's a "common criticism" of Wexford.

Turning to the facts of this case, the appellate court accepted Lake's contention that one of Lake's teeth had to be removed, and, because he didn't respond well to the local anesthetics used in prior dental procedures he underwent at Hill, Lake ...

by Lonnie Burton

In a Memorandum and Order dated November 7, 2016, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Williams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, granted in part and denied in part summary judgment to a prison medical provider for alleged medical indifference for failing to treat a prisoner's tooth pain.

Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, plaintiff Aaron Marshall sued Kenneth Brooks, who works as a health care provider at the Stateville prison where Marshall was incarcerated, and Wexford Health Sources, Inc., the company contracted by the Illinois DOC to provide health care to prisoners. Marshall claimed that Brooks and Wexford committed medical malpractice and deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs when he was "rushed through" the medical intake screening process at Stateville, and for failing to have ready access to his past medical records. As a result, Marshall claimed that he was denied needed dental treatment and suffered months of excruciating pain because of it.

Defendants moved for summary judgment, which Marshall obviously opposed. The court granted summary judgment to Wexford as to Marshall's claims regarding lack of proper training and access to medical records. The court said it found no evidence of ...

by Lonnie Burton

On December 10, 2014, the United States Circuit Court for the Seventh Circuit upheld a district court order dismissing a lawsuit brought by a former Indiana prison substance abuse counselor who claimed she was let go due to age and gender discrimination, and retaliation for her participation in another high-profile lawsuit. The circuit court said the record in the case revealed little evidence supporting the plaintiff's claims.

Diana Ripberger began working for the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) as a substance abuse counselor in 1991. Ripberger is a licensed social worker in the State of Indiana with a bachelor's degree in sociology. She worked with the Level 4 prisoners (those serving lengthy sentences) at the Pendleton Correctional facility near her home in Anderson, Indiana.

Ripberger lost her job in 2010 when the IDOC contracted out its substance abuse counseling program to a private company, Corizon, Incorporated. Ripberger sued Corizon alleging she lost her job because of her support for Connie Orton-Bell, a fellow counselor who lost her job after it was discovered she was caught having an affair with the Major in charge of custody, and after she (Orton-Bell) had filed a complaint that other employees were ...

Citing budgetary cuts, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) finally closed the troubled, privately-operated Walnut Grove Correctional Facility (WGCF) on September 15, 2016.

As previously reported in PLN, Walnut Grove had been under a federal consent decree since 2012 over allegations of guards smuggling drugs and having sex with youthful offenders, denial of medical care and educational services, and grossly unsafe conditions.

The federal judge over the case wrote that WGCF, managed by GEO Group at the time, had “allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate, the sum of which places the offenders at substantial ongoing risk,” and that the prison “paint[ed] a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.”

Juveniles were removed from Walnut Grove under the consent decree; the facility subsequently housed adult prisoners.

In 2015, the district court overseeing the litigation denied a motion to dissolve the decree, citing gang activity, cell doors that did not lock properly and continued problems with untrained, inexperienced guards. The prison had also experienced two major riots the year before. [See: PLN, Sept. 2016, p.60; Nov. 2013, p.30].

The 2016 fiscal year resulted in a 5% – or $16.8 ...

A surprise predawn shakedown on March 3, 2017 yielded an “excessive amount of contraband” at one of Mississippi’s three privately-operated prisons, according to Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) Interim Commissioner Pelicia Hall. The search at the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility was the start of “Operation Zero Tolerance,” which includes surprise searches at prisons statewide.

Shakedowns were performed at the state’s two other private prisons – the East Mississippi Correctional Facility and Marshall County Correctional Facility – in March 2017, resulting in less contraband than that found at Wilkinson but still an “unacceptable” amount, Hall said in a press release.

The MDOC released photos of tables covered with shanks, drugs and cell phones that had been discovered. All three private prisons in the state are run by Management and Training Corp. (MTC).

On June 6, 2017, Operation Zero Tolerance netted 54 packages of tobacco, 47 cell phones, 83 cell phone chargers, pills, marijuana and shanks, among other contraband, at the MDOC’s Bolivar County Regional Correctional Facility in Cleveland during a surprise search. Hall said the contraband was “disturbing,” especially after the prison had recently conducted its own shakedown.

“I expect all facilities in the MDOC system to have zero tolerance for ...