Timothy Strayer in his hospital bed in Dearborn County ICU after spending just one month behind bars at the county jail.

by Brian Sonenstein, Shadowproof

Timothy Strayer was approaching 70 years of age and suffering from multiple chronic illnesses in the summer of 2011 when he was arrested for marijuana possession with the intent to sell. One year later, his family launched a federal civil rights lawsuit that is still in progress to this day, alleging the sheriff, guards and the private healthcare company contracted to provide medical care at the jail, Advanced Correctional Healthcare (ACH), failed to provide for his obvious and critical medical needs, allowing his health to deteriorate to the point that he would need to be hospitalized for nearly 200 days.

Shadowproof conducted a three month investigation of ACH and the Strayer family’s story. Through multiple interviews, analysis of several active federal civil rights lawsuits, hundreds of pages of medical board records, corporate documents and county meeting minutes, we uncovered shockingly similar allegations of abuse and misconduct involving ACH and the doctors who were responsible for Strayer’s care, as well as a valuable glimpse into the mindset of a little-known but highly-profitable industry thriving in jails and ...

A performance audit of the Michigan Department of Corrections’ (MDOC) contract with Corizon Health for the provision of prison medical, dental and optical services uncovered a number of deficiencies.

Among other issues, the Michigan Office of the Auditor General’s findings, detailed in a July 2015 report, found the MDOC had “inappropriately paid $1.7 million for care of 349 prisoners” after they were released from prison or paroled. The audit also found failures in chronic care assessments, which “may have jeopardized [MDOC’s] ability to manage and treat potentially serious medical conditions before they became more severe and costly.”

The report analyzed the performance of the MDOC’s medical contractor, Corizon Health, which has a long and sordid history of operational problems. [See: PLN, March 2014, p.1]. The first finding concerned chronic care assessments, which involved 39.3% of MDOC’s 45,000 prisoners between October 1, 2013 and April 30, 2014.

“Improvements are needed to timely complete and consistently document chronic care condition medical assessments,” the audit stated. The MDOC was unable to provide auditors with a facility-specific listing of all prisoners who had at least one chronic care condition.

The report found that “22% of the chronic care condition medical assessments are not ...

A Georgia Court of Appeals held in March 2016 that two employees of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office could be held liable in the suicide of a pre-trial detainee.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the estate of Richard W. Hill, Jr., who was arrested on May 21, 2010. Due to overcrowding at the Fulton County Jail (FCJ), Hill was transferred to a jail in Hall County, which had a contract with FCJ.

The Fulton County Superior Court entered an order on September 7, 2010 that directed jail officials to place Hill on suicide watch and house him in protective custody.

Hill was scheduled to appear in court on September 16, 2010, and was returned to Fulton County for the hearing. Hall County guard Stephanie Bennett said she spoke to FCJ jailer Milton Weaver and showed him the suicide watch order. Weaver disputed that, claiming Bennett only told him that Hill should be separated from other prisoners.

Weaver placed Hill in an attorney’s booth, removed his handcuffs and shackles, then left him and went to another part of the facility. Later, another guard looked into the attorney’s booth and noticed Hill was not wearing pants. When jail staff ...

The Georgia Supreme Court held on March 25, 2016 that common law allows for tolling of privately-supervised misdemeanor probation sentences, and that such common law was not abrogated when lawmakers passed the State-Wide Probation Act.

The case was before the state Supreme Court to answer two certified questions posed by a federal district court in a lawsuit brought by Richard L. Anderson against Sentinel Offender Services, LLC, a company that provides for-profit probation services. Anderson filed suit “seeking relief for false arrest, malicious arrest, malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false arrest stemming from his arrests for violation of probation, which had been tolled.”

As previously reported in PLN, the Georgia Supreme Court held in Sentinel Offender Services v. Glover, 296 Ga. 315, 766 S.E.2d 456 (Ga. 2014) that, “with respect to a misdemeanor conviction, sentences are fixed at one year, and once a sentence has been served, jurisdiction over the defendant ceases.” [See: PLN, July 2015, p.40].

With the outcome of Anderson’s civil rights action hinging on the question of common law tolling, the federal district court first asked: Is tolling authorized for privately-supervised misdemeanor probated sentences? The Georgia Supreme Court answered that question in ...

In May 2016, private prison firm The GEO Group, which operates the maximum-security Louis Kutama Sinthumule Correctional Centre in Louis Trichard, South Africa, lost a lawsuit that alleged the company’s guards beat a prisoner while he was restrained in handcuffs and shackles. Prisoner Takalani Neluheni claimed that in February 2011 at least nine guards forced him to undress before he was searched anally, and that a guard struck him and another jumped on his genitals.

He then stated that while still restrained he was dragged down some stairs, hitting his head, and placed in solitary confinement for 42 days. Neluheni argued that he was “not a violent person,” and said he suffered serious injuries to his genitals, was given poisoned tea and did not receive medical care from the prison doctor.

Neluheni was awarded R200,000 (around $14,290) by Judge Nomsa Khumal, who rejected the GEO guards’ assertions that he was a violent person and had assaulted them, though the judge said Neluheni did tend to exaggerate. In the final analysis, Khumal rejected prison officials’ version of the facts, noting that they clearly disliked Neluheni and had fabricated a story in an attempt to cover up the assault.

GEO Group, one ...

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held a prisoner’s previous lawsuit settlements did not preclude a complaint for the same type of injury occurring at a later time. It also held the district court had improperly concluded a claim against a medical director was brought in the director’s official capacity, making it a suit against the state.

Illinois prisoner Delbert Heard has suffered for over 20 years from inguinal hernias, i.e., hernias of the groin. [See: PLN, March 2003, p.24]. He was diagnosed with one in 1995 upon beginning his prison sentence. A second hernia on his other side was diagnosed in 2000, but Wexford Health Sources, the medical contractor for the Illinois DOC, “stalled until May 2007 after both hernias had become incarcerated” – which is when the intestines protrude through a weak spot in the abdominal wall and become trapped, “prompting emergency surgery.”

Heard sued prison officials, Wexford and a Wexford physician in 2006 and 2009. A jury entered a verdict against the doctor, resulting in Wexford settling both lawsuits in September 2012 for $273,250. See: Heard v. Illinois DOC, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:06-cv-00644 and Heard v. Wexford Health Sources, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Ill.), ...

The family of a prisoner who died from drug withdrawal symptoms at Michigan’s Macomb County Jail (MCJ) filed a lawsuit against the facility and its private medical contractor, Correct Care Solutions, in March 2015.

On June 11, 2014, David Stojcevski, 32, was ordered by a court to serve 30 days for failing to pay a $772 traffic ticket. Stojcevski, a drug addict, was taking methadone, Xanax and Klonopin to treat his addiction when he was booked into MCJ. He was denied access to those medications and went into withdrawal, which caused him to act irrationally.

His symptoms were improperly diagnosed and he was placed naked in an observation cell for prisoners with mental health problems. The cell was lit 24/7 and monitored by a video camera. Another prisoner was in the cell with Stojcevski, and they eventually began fighting.

After the other prisoner was removed, Stojcevski could be seen on video reenacting the fight, indicating he was hallucinating. Over the 17 days of his imprisonment at MCJ, Stojcevski lost 50 pounds and suffered convulsions.

During the last two days of his life he laid on the floor of his cell and shook in clear distress, yet no jail staff checked ...

Despite the fact that the Obama administration has deported more people than any other president in U.S. history, in 2015 the number of deportations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reached a low not seen in many years. Some believe the drop was the result of more targeted ICE priorities, while others contend the decrease in deportations had a more organic cause – namely, lower numbers of undocumented immigrants attempting to enter the United States.

ICE set a record high for deportations in fiscal year 2012, according to then-agency director John T. Morton, who said 409,849 undocumented immigrants had been removed that year. The number highlighted the emphasis that the federal government had placed on illegal immigration since the 9/11 attacks. Deportations dropped to 368,644 in 2013, then declined further to 315,943 the following year.

As reported by ICE, in fiscal year 2015 the agency deported 235,413 people – a marked decrease from prior years, but still much higher than during previous decades. By way of comparison, the number of deportations in the 1990s rarely topped 20,000 annually.

More people are detained each year by immigration officials than are incarcerated by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The combined budgets ...

Just two months ago, PLN reported on Corrections Corporation of America’s tacit admission of failure, evidenced by the firm rebranding itself as “CoreCivic.” PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann said of the name change, “If nothing else this rebranding effort indicates the company knows its CCA brand – which it developed over more than 30 years – had become a liability due to its connection with higher levels of violence, sexual abuse, corruption and questionable cost savings at CCA-run prisons and jails. The company may now be called CoreCivic but it will always be remembered as CCA and can’t escape its past.” [See: PLN, Nov. 2016, p.51].

In a new development reported on December 13, 2016, Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC), a national non-profit organization that works on issues related to U.S. immigration detention, announced that CoreCivic had violated its common-law trademark rights. In fact, CIVIC opposes the use of privately-operated detention facilities and had previously raised concerns about the sexual abuse of detainees at a CCA facility in San Diego. The organization has retained attorney Jonathan Kirsch and the law office of Kendall Brill & Kelly to address the trademark violation.

“It is shocking that CCA ...

When PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann received a letter from a prisoner at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility in Nashville, Tennessee, a jail operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, which recently changed its name to CoreCivic), he knew something was wrong.

The letter described how prisoners were made to work in a building trades vocational program, creating items such as wooden sports team plaques and cornhole boards (a type of bean bag game). CCA employees would then sell the items online and at flea markets and pocket the proceeds – in violation of a state statute, TCA § 41-2-148, that makes it a crime for jailers to personally profit from prisoners’ labor.

TCA § 41-2-148(a) states: “No sheriff, jailer or other person responsible for the care and custody of inmates housed in a county or municipal jail or workhouse may employ, require or otherwise use any inmate housed in the jail or workhouse to perform labor that will or may result directly or indirectly in the sheriff’s, jailer’s or other person’s personal gain, profit or benefit or in gain, profit or benefit to a business partially or wholly owned by the sheriff, jailer or other person.”

In his April ...