To obtain needed surgery, a prisoner escaped from Tennessee’s Trousdale County Jail (TCJ).

Prior to being booked into TCJ to serve a probation violation sentence, Don R. White, Jr. 31, was scheduled for hernia surgery.

“When I walked in, I had my papers showing I had to have surgery, and nobody ever helped me”, he said.

White submitted three or four medical requests and was in such apparent destress that guards also submitted a couple.  Yet he was not seen by a doctor.  “I lost 10 or 11 pounds in a week, just puking”, he said.

With no help coming from TCJ’s medical contractor, Quality Correctional Healthcare, Whit took matters into his own hands by escaping during a recreational period.

“I should never have done it, but I got two kids, and I wasn’t going to lie back there and die”, he said.

After freeing himself from custody, White walked to a friend’s house and was taken to a hospital and admitted for surgery.  “They asked me why did I wait so long to come because they knew I was in a lot of pain, but I couldn’t tell them the real reason”, said White.

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Dozens of men have died in disturbing circumstances in privatized, immigrant-only prisons.
The Bureau of Prisons itself says there’s a problem. And yet the privatization scheme continues.

by Seth Freed Wessler, The Nation

Where Claudio Fagardo-Saucedo grew up, on the colonial streets of the Mexican city of Durango, migrating to the United States was almost a rite of passage. It was following the stream of departures from Durango in the 1980s that the lanky young man left his family and traveled north. His mother, Julieta Saucedo Salazar, heard that he’d found jobs working as a laborer in Los Angeles. But they soon lost touch. “We did not know much about him, really,” his younger sister told me.

Fagardo-Saucedo worked, his jobs sometimes taking him out of California, and occasionally he got into trouble – once for “possession for sale” of cocaine, another time for stealing jewelry. Every seven or eight years, his mother recalled, he’d return to her house – but never by choice. “They caught him all the time for being illegal,” Julieta said. She always hoped her wandering son might stay, get to know the family again, but he never did. “He would be here a month, and ...

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an insurance company is not required to defend or indemnify a private prison contractor in the death of a pretrial detainee at a Texas jail.

Mario Garcia was confined at the Brooks County Detention Center, operated by LCS Corrections Services, Inc. (LCS). He was taking high doses of benzodiazepine prescribed by his personal physician when he was booked into the jail, and it was alleged he died because LCS staff refused to provide him with additional doses of that medication.

Garcia’s estate filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint alleging constitutional violations and state law medical malpractice claims. The federal district court allowed only the medical malpractice claims to go to trial, which resulted in a $2.25 million verdict. [See: PLN, April 2014, p.16]. Following that verdict, the district court allowed the § 1983 claim to proceed, which alleged “LCS’s policy of refusing to administer certain medications to inmates constituted deliberate indifference to Garcia’s serious medical needs.”

LCS then initiated a separate action in another district court seeking a declaration that Lexington Insurance Company was required to defend and indemnify LCS in the underlying § 1983 lawsuit. At issue were two insurance ...

Elberto Esquiel Bravo, 55, the former warden at the East Hidalgo County Detention Center, was arrested in January 2015 and charged with acting as an accessory after the fact in a conspiracy to bribe Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Jose Ismael “Melo” Ochoa to reduce the bond of a Mexican drug trafficker.

The detention center, operated by LCS Corrections Services at the time, holds prisoners for the U.S. Marshals as well as overflow prisoners from the Hidalgo County Jail. The facility has been the subject of past complaints over inadequate health care, lack of water and lack of recreation.

In February 2010, agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration asked the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a traffic stop on Luis Martinez-Gallegos pursuant to an investigation into a major cocaine smuggling operation. Almost 90 kilos of cocaine were discovered in his car, and Ochoa set his bond at $2.45 million.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Bravo, three people who later cooperated with federal authorities conspired with others, including Bravo, to bribe Ochoa to reduce the bond so Martinez-Gallegos, who was in the U.S. illegally, could post bail and be deported to Mexico. They paid $100,000 in ...

Christopher Wallace, 30, was arrested on February 12, 2015 on charges of robbing two banks. According to his attorney, Wallace committed the crimes in a desperate attempt to secure funds to pay for feeding tubes he required because his esophagus had been severed from his stomach in a shooting incident three years earlier. Hospital records indicated that Wallace, who is 6’4”, weighed only 77 pounds at the time of his arrest.

A lawsuit filed in federal court on October 13, 2016 alleges a hospital released Wallace to the Allegheny County Jail with instructions for medical staff to administer five tube feedings each day. The complaint contends that Corizon Health and its employee, Dr. Abimbola Talabi, failed to feed Wallace properly, providing him with less than half of the required feedings and, on some days, not feeding him at all. The lawsuit further claims that the “deliberate indifference” of medical and jail staff resulted in Wallace suffering malnourishment and related health problems, including a heart attack.

A 2014 audit of the Allegheny County Jail following the deaths of seven prisoners found that Corizon had failed to maintain mandatory staffing levels, did not maintain accurate medical records and failed to provide appropriate ...

In February 2012, a federal jury in New Mexico awarded $3.38 million to three female prisoners who were raped by Anthony Townes, a guard at the Camino Nuevo Women’s Correctional Facility, which was operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Townes, who had previously pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the women, was sentenced to 16 years in prison. [See: PLN, April 2012, p.1; Jan. 2010, p.50].

The verdict was entered in a lawsuit brought by prisoners Heather Spurlock, Nina Carrera and Sophia Carrasco against CCA, Townes and former warden Barbara Wagner. The suit was filed in 2009, one year after the Camino Nuevo prison closed.

Evidence presented by the plaintiffs highlighted the egregious nature of Townes’ misconduct; he would remove prisoners from their cells and take them to an area of the facility where he knew he “would not be recorded or observed by surveillance cameras,” then raped and sexually assaulted them repeatedly.

The district court had ruled before trial that Townes was liable for violating the plaintiffs’ Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and it was up to the jury to determine damages as well as liability for ...

Corizon Health and for-profit prison firm Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) have settled a lawsuit over the solitary confinement of a then-70-year-old prisoner following an alleged false positive drug test caused by Zantac, a heartburn medication.

Carol Lester, a former New Mexico state prisoner and a grandmother, filed a federal civil rights action after she was placed in solitary confinement for over a month at the New Mexico Woman’s Correctional Facility operated by CCA (now known as CoreCivic). Medical care at the prison was provided by Corizon.

Lester suffered from several serious ailments, including bipolar disorder, thyroid cancer and hypertension. While incarcerated she received several medications, including Zantac. After she lost consciousness in a sally port, prison medical staff told her she might have a life-threatening heart condition; however, she was not taken to a hospital or scheduled to see a cardiologist.

Lester and her family became concerned and began to advocate for better medical treatment for her and other prisoners. Lester also encouraged other prisoners to complain about inadequate health care, which allegedly angered prison officials.

As a result of those advocacy efforts, a delegation of state lawmakers visited the facility and spoke with Lester and other prisoners regarding ...

On February 20, 2015, an uprising occurred at the Willacy County Correctional Center (WCCC), a private prison located in Raymondville, Texas that was operated by Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC). The facility primarily housed criminal immigrant prisoners for the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The riot lasted two days, during which at least three of the ten Kevlar dome tents that comprised the prison suffered fire damage, resulting in the closure of the facility. It was one of the most significant prison riots in recent years.

WCCC was one of an archipelago of 13 privately-operated “Criminal Alien Requirement” (CAR) prisons scattered across the U.S. that hold non-citizens convicted of federal crimes such as illegal entry or re-entry into the country and, in some cases, drug offenses. [See this issue’s cover story.]

CAR prisons were built because “Operation Streamline,” a program designed to speed up the prosecution of undocumented immigrants, introduced by the federal government in the mid-2000s, resulted in over 90,000 immigration prosecutions in 2013 alone, overwhelming the BOP’s capacity. Approximately 24,000 prisoners are held in CAR facilities nationwide; the 2,834 who were housed at WCCC were so tightly packed in the Kevlar tents that their feet could touch ...

The 2016 elections are only a few weeks old and many people seem surprised that Donald Trump was elected president. What this means for prisoners at this point is a bit early to say, more so when juxtaposed against what might have happened had Hillary Clinton been elected.

In any event, the repressive apparatus of the modern American police state has long been in place. Obama’s administration has deported more immigrants than any other in U.S. history – around 2.5 million between 2009 and 2015. We already have over 800 miles of border wall separating the U.S. and Mexico, so presumably Trump will merely build upon the wall built by his predecessors; he isn’t starting anything new. With approximately 2.3 million prisoners held in abysmal and barbaric conditions nationally, we will see if Trump will reduce or boost those numbers. But neither candidate said anything about improving conditions for prisoners.

Clinton stated she would work to eliminate for-profit prisons, despite taking campaign donations from private prison firms and her husband’s bail-out that saved the private prison industry in 1999. The stock of private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic (previously Corrections Corporation of America) had plummeted in August after the ...

The former medical director of Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County Prison (LCP) was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to numerous schemes to defraud the government.

Dennis Erik Fluck Von Kiel was employed as LCP’s medical director from March 1989 until August 2013. He was working for private contractor PrimeCare Medical, Inc. at the time of his termination.

On January 12, 2015, Von Kiel pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, five counts of failure to file tax returns, one count of wire fraud and aiding and abetting wire fraud, one count of perjury in a bankruptcy proceeding, one count of financial aid fraud and aiding and abetting financial aid fraud, and two counts of mail fraud.

Beginning in 2001, Von Kiel had engaged in a series of illegal schemes designed to help him evade creditors, including those for federal student loans. He proclaimed to be under a “vow of poverty” and a “minister” of a church called the International Academy of Lymphology. He claimed he had no taxable income, as his employer deposited his payroll checks into bank accounts for the church.

Von Kiel also lied at a bankruptcy proceeding, filed a fraudulent ...