by Lonnie Burton

On October 17, 2016, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the warden and a private health care provider in a case where a prisoner suffered an asthma attack and later died. The prisoner’s estate alleged that his death occurred because the cell where he was housed did not have an emergency call button and the facility lacked a medical director, among other claims.

On May 26, 2010, prisoner Marvin T. McDonald was housed in a segregation unit at the Pinckneyville Correctional Center (PCC) in Illinois. At about 5:00 p.m. that day, he began to suffer an asthma attack. McDonald, however, did not receive any treatment until 12:15 a.m., in part because there were no emergency call buttons in the segregation cells, forcing his cellmate to bang on the door to get the guards’ attention.

Once in the health care unit – run by private contractor Wexford Health Sources – there was no on-call doctor. Although the unit was supposed to be overseen by a permanent medical director, that post had been vacant for over a year. After a nurse contacted a doctor by phone, the doctor ...

by David Reutter

As mass incarceration in the United States grew between 1990 and 2005, many lawmakers decided to ride the wave of “tough on crime” rhetoric by building new correctional facilities to house the increasing number of people being arrested, convicted and incarcerated. During that period, 544 detention centers were built in the U.S. – one every ten days for 15 years.

But a current trend to reduce incarceration levels rather than impose long sentences is causing the wave to recede, leaving fewer people to fill prison and jail beds which nonetheless continue to consume tax dollars for their debt service and maintenance costs.

Mississippi is a case in point. With its prison system bursting at the seams in the late 1990s, state officials often refused to accept prisoners from county jails, even when they were sentenced to prison terms. One sheriff went so far as to drive prisoners to a state facility and leave them handcuffed to the fence.

To address the problem, lawmakers offered local municipalities a deal: Build county-operated regional correctional facilities, and the state would promise to keep them at 80% capacity, paying $29.74 per prisoner per day. Local officials took out bonds and built ...

by Derek Gilna

In a July 2016 report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that 16 of the 18 immigrant detainees who died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody from 2012 to 2015 received substandard medical care, and that in 7 of those cases, inadequate care likely contributed to their deaths. According to HRW, two independent medical experts reached that conclusion after reviewing treatment notes, death reviews and other details of the medical care that was provided – or sometimes not provided.

“The records also show evidence of the misuse of isolation for people with mental disabilities, inadequate mental health evaluation and treatment, and broader medical care failure,” the report stated. Clara Long, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, added, “these death reviews show that system-wide problems remain, including a failure to prevent or fix substandard medical care that literally kills.”

Responding to similar complaints regarding ICE medical care in 2009, the Obama administration had promised improvements by providing more centralized oversight and better medical treatment. However, the HRW study indicates there have not been significant improvements since that time.

Even more troublesome was what the 18 deaths examined in the report say about medical care in ICE’s detention system. ...

by Christopher Zoukis

An infectious outbreak at an immigration detention facility in Pinal County, Arizona operated by CoreCivic (formerly known as CCA) resulted in over 20 people contracting measles.

The outbreak was discovered in May 2016 when one detainee and an employee at the Eloy Detention Center tested positive for measles. Within two weeks, 16 cases of the highly-contagious disease had been confirmed. By the time it was officially over in August 2016 – 21 days after the last reported infection – 22 people had become ill.

“Measles is ... highly contagious yet vaccine-preventable,” said Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services. “It is spread through the air and through coughing, sneezing, and contact with mucous or saliva from the nose, mouth, or throat of an infected person.”

Symptoms include fever, red and watery eyes, coughing and a runny nose, but patients may also develop a rash that begins at the hairline of the head and moves down the body. The rash can appear up to 21 days after exposure, according to Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, medical director and disease control administrator for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.

“A person with measles is considered to ...

by Derek Gilna

New Mexico District Court Judge Raymond Z. Ortiz ruled in August 2016 that Corizon Health, a for-profit medical services provider, must release its settlement agreements in lawsuits filed against the company by New Mexico prisoners.

Until last year, Corizon provided medical care at 10 state correctional facilities. ...

Private prisons cost the state of Oklahoma $92.7 million in 2015 alone, and almost $1 billion since 2004. With its prison system currently operating at 122 percent of capacity, the Oklahoma Board of Corrections (OBOC) will need even more private prison bed space, according to Joe M. Allbaugh, Director of the state’s Department of Corrections.

“Given the current prison population, I don’t see any long-term scenario where we won’t rely on private prisons,” he said.

However, an OBOC plan to spend more than $35 million over five years to lease a vacant 2,600-bed private prison raised the ire of state lawmakers, since the plan also included closing 15 regional work centers, shutting off a supply of cheap prisoner labor to local municipalities.

In May 2016, the OBOC unanimously approved leasing the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, about 130 miles west of Oklahoma City. The facility is owned by Nashville, Tennessee-based CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and will be one of the most up-to-date state-operated prisons, offering more programs like education and vocational training.

“Part of our job is to reintegrate these men back into society by giving them the programming they need to find a ...

by Christopher Zoukis

In 2016, questions were raised in at least three states about the amount of taxpayer money flowing into the coffers of private, for-profit prison companies.

Take Colorado, for example. When lawmakers were considering an almost $26 billion state budget last year, they noticed it included a curious last-minute addition: $3 million for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, now known as CoreCivic).

The Denver Post reported that the $3 million payment to CCA was drawn from money earmarked for the Department of Corrections that was set aside “in case the prison population increases faster than current forecasts.” According to Colorado budget writers, the payment was needed to keep the CCA-operated Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colorado from closing its doors. If the prison shut down, the state would need to relocate the 400 prisoners who were housed at the facility as of April 2016.

While the Kit Carson prison has a capacity of about 1,450 beds, the fewer number of prisoners held at the facility meant it was not profitable for CCA. Yet even though the state Senate approved the $3 million payment to ensure the prison stayed open, CCA decided to close it anyway at the ...

by Derek Gilna

As public and legislative pressure builds to reduce the number of prisoners held in state and federal correctional facilities, the private prison industry has changed gears to offer rehabilitative and treatment services – a shift criticized in a February 2016 report titled “Incorrect Care: A Prison Profiteer Turns Care into Confinement.” The report, published by Grassroots Leadership, a non-profit organization, claims that this latest venture is part of the “treatment industrial complex” – a nod to the confluence of political, social and business interests known as the prison industrial complex.

As an increasing number of states have taken modest steps to rein in mass incarceration, the nation’s prison population leveled off in 2010 and has declined very slightly in recent years. As a result, private prison companies such as CoreCivic (formerly CCA) and the GEO Group have begun diversifying their business practices, including expanding into such areas as community corrections, reentry facilities and GPS monitoring for people on community supervision.

For example, CoreCivic has acquired Correctional Alternatives, Inc., Correctional Management, Inc. and Avalon Correctional Services – all community corrections providers, while in February 2017 the GEO Group announced its purchase of Community Education Centers (CEC), which operates ...

by Leah Carter, James Benedict, Madison Hogan and Paige Ferguson

On paper, Indiana has a strict cap on campaign contributions from corporations. But in practice, it’s easy for businesses to turn on the flow of money and get around the spending limits.

Contributions from executives, political action committees and subsidiary companies allow corporations to increase their impact well beyond the statutory limits.

GEO Group, Inc., the Boca Raton, Florida-based private prison firm, is a good exemplar of the issues surrounding the regulation and reporting of corporate campaign contributions in Indiana.

The company, which is the largest private prison operator in the world, has contracts to run two Indiana Department of Correction facilities (a total of more than 4,000 beds in New Castle and Plainfield) and was pushing to open an immigration detention center in Gary until the city council rejected the idea in May 2016.

GEO began contributing to top state officials, including former Governor Mitch Daniels and House Speaker Brian Bosma, in 2004. It received its first Indiana contract the following year, and as its business here grew, its campaign contributions increased as well. From 2011 to 2015 (the most recent full year of data), GEO and its various ...

President Donald Trump has restored consumer confidence in private prisons—but they were never in danger of failing to begin with.

by Rick Paulas

For the country's largest private prison corporation, the last six months at the stock market have been wilder than the prison fight scene in Face/Off.

Last year, on August 17th, stock prices in CoreCivic—previously known as the Corrections Corporation of America—were steady at 27.22 a share. The next day, after former president Barack Obama's attorney general issued a memo directing the Department of Justice to phase out its use of private prisons, stocks plummeted 10 points. When Donald Trump won the presidency, stocks jumped six points and continued an upward trajectory, topping out at 35.03 on February 24th, the day after new Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the 2016 directive.

Consumers' new confidence in private prisons' finances shouldn't come as a surprise: Trump has broadly hinted since his candidacy that he intends to use plenty of prison space with promises to bring back "law and order" and also deport three million people—who would first need to be detained. Though crime rates have largely declined since 1992, Americans' concern about crime and violence rose 14 percent between 2014 ...