Privatizing prison and jail services has become a popular avenue for correctional bureaucrats to utilize in the never-ending battle to cut costs to accommodate shrinking budgets and larger populations

Food service is an essential, daily service that has been subject to privatization. The two biggest players, Aramark Correctional Services and Trinity Services Group, have been all too happy to provide this service. They charge jails and prisons as little as 75 cents to $2 per meal.

For some jurisdictions, that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings a year. Some report their costs being cut in half. While privatizing food services may save some money in food costs, little attention is placed on the service actually provided and whether prisoners are being properly fed.

Georgia’s Gordon County Jail contracts with Trinity to provided meals for its residents. It houses about 278 persons daily; between July to November in 2014, the jail received 85 grievances about food. One prisoner filed several grievances with a single word: “Hungry”.

Several prisoners claimed they had lost 20 or more pounds in a few months. The grievances were deemed as unfounded. Trinity has little regard for what prisoners think about the meals they ...

by Alex Friedmann*

It sounds like such a simple question: do private prisons save money? The answer, however, is dependent on a number of factors – including how “saving money” is defined.

Consider that in 2013, the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), made $300.8 million in net profit on gross revenue of $1.69 billion. Thus, the company achieved $300.8 million in savings over operational expenses at its prisons, jails and other detention facilities. But how much of that $300.8 million went to taxpayers or reverted to state treasuries or county coffers?

None. Those “savings” went to CCA in the form of corporate profit.

Over the past three decades there have been dozens of studies and analyses of cost comparisons between public and privately-operated prisons – by academics, government agencies and independent organizations – all attempting to answer the elusive question of whether private prisons save money. This is not one of those attempts.

Instead, rather than trying to determine if prison privatization results in savings due to the shifting of costs from public agencies, this article takes an opposite approach by identifying costs that are shifted from privately-operated facilities to the public sector. An examination ...

Privately-operated federal prisons, also known as contract prisons, have more violence, use-of-force incidents and contraband seizures than facilities run by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), among other findings in an August 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

The 86-page report examined data from 14 private prisons that contract with the BOP; those CAR (Criminal Alien Requirement) facilities hold around 27,000 non-citizen federal prisoners who are subject to deportation after completing their prison terms. The data collected was compared to 14 BOP institutions with similar demographics.

The OIG also visited three of the private prisons – the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility and Eden Detention Center in Texas, and the Rivers Correctional Institution in North Carolina. All had been cited by the BOP for more than one safety and security problem, though “[n]one of the three prisons lost its ACA accreditation because of these security related deficiencies,” the report stated.

The facilities examined by the OIG were operated by a trio of for-profit companies: GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Management & Training Corp. (MTC). The BOP paid the companies $639 million to run all 14 contract prisons in fiscal ...

Coccidioidomycosis is the medical term for valley fever, an airborne fungal disease that led to more than 5,600 reported infections in Arizona in 2014; the disease is also prevalent in some areas of California. PLN has previously reported on valley fever cases among Hawaii prisoners housed at the privately-operated Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona. [See: PLN, Aug. 2016, p.56]. According to a recent investigation by Honolulu’s Civil Beat newspaper, numerous cases of the disease at Saguaro have gone unreported.

A provision of the Arizona Administrative Code requires correctional administrators to report to local health authorities “all cases or suspected cases” of communicable diseases. The Civil Beat’s review of Pinal County Public Health Services District records found that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) had not reported a single case of valley fever at the Saguaro facility since 2007. However, conflicting records from the Hawaii Department of Public Safety indicate that at least four prisoners have been infected with the disease – one case each in 2014 and 2015, and two cases in 2016. The department hasn’t tracked older cases.

CCA denied that it had violated any reporting requirements. According to spokesman Jonathan Burns, the company “always strives to fulfill applicable ...

Prisoner Transportation Services, also known as PTS of America, LLC, bills itself as the “largest prisoner extradition company and one of the largest national transporters of detainees” in the United States.

The firm, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, was recently advised by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), a federal regulatory agency, that its application to merge with U.S. Corrections, one of its competitors, had been delayed after the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) filed a detailed comment objecting to the merger. HRDC is the parent organization of Prison Legal News.

PLN has been a longtime critic of the prisoner transportation industry, citing numerous accidents resulting in deaths and injuries of both prisoners and guards as well as escapes, sexual abuse and other problems. PLN has also noted abysmal conditions during prisoner transports. [See: PLN, Dec. 2015, p.60; Sept. 2006, p.1].

According to HRDC’s August 8, 2016 comment filed with the STB, “Prisoners have reported that transport drivers sometimes refuse to stop for restroom breaks, causing them to urinate or defecate in transport vehicles; fail to provide water or adequate food; fail to respond to medical emergencies; fail to provide sanitary pads or tampons to female prisoners who are menstruating; drive ...

Opponents of mass incarceration have notched several small but significant victories by successfully pressuring backers of the private prison industry to divest almost $60 million from Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies in the United States. Both firms trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Online civil rights organization Color of Change announced in April 2014 that a year-long campaign to push 150 companies to divest from private prisons had persuaded Scopia Capital Management, DSM North America and Amica Mutual Insurance to sell off their private prison stock in the final quarter of 2013.

“Companies that continue to stay with their investments in CCA and GEO Group are making a real decision about where they want their money and the ethical obligations they have to the greater society,” said Rashad Robinson, Color of Change’s executive director.

Scopia Capital, an asset management giant, dropped 1.5 million GEO Group shares, effectively decreasing its private prison stock by more than 25%. Scopia has shed 59% of its private prison holdings since December 2012 and, according to Color of Change, has committed to full divestment.

DSM, a Dutch chemical company, sold off all 73,000 of ...

GEO Group and Accurate Background, Inc. have been sued in federal court in New York for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) when conducting criminal background checks on GEO job applicants. The suit, filed on October 30, 2015, seeks class-action status.

The FCRA requires employers taking an “adverse action” against a job applicant based on a background check to provide the applicant with a “pre-adverse action” notice that includes a copy of the report and a summary of their rights under the FCRA.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Eric Keels, who was later joined by co-plaintiff Sandra Inman, alleged GEO Group and Accurate Background failed to comply with the FCRA’s requirements before denying employment to prospective GEO job applicants. Accurate Background also allegedly failed to notify applicants it was providing GEO with background screening reports and did not follow procedures to ensure the accuracy and completeness of those reports.

Keels had a job offer from GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, but the offer was rescinded following a background screening. “I’m hoping to help ensure that GEO Group and Accurate Background, Inc., follow the law so that people who want to come work for GEO Group ...

The Kansas Federal Public Defenders’ Office has challenged a scheme whereby officials at a detention center in Leavenworth, Kansas operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) secretly video-recorded confidential attorney-client meetings. As a result, on August 10, 2016 a Kansas federal district court ordered the practice to “cease and desist” immediately. U.S. District Court Judge Julie A. Robinson also ordered that all originals and copies of such recordings be surrendered immediately to the court.

The previously-undisclosed surveillance practice came to light when a private attorney, Jacqueline Rokusek, was advised by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas that she had a conflict of interest in representing a client. She was allowed to inspect video recordings made at the CCA detention center and discovered that dozens of supposedly confidential meetings between other attorneys and their clients were on the same disks. She then alerted the Public Defenders’ Office and defense bar, igniting a firestorm of protest from criminal defense attorneys.

Experts noted that although the recordings of the meetings apparently did not include sound, the faces of the participants, documents and exhibits discussed were clearly visible. The words spoken could also be gleaned by lip-reading experts, they said. The ...

The Kentucky Court of Appeals held that a trial court improperly granted summary judgment to the defendants in a civil action alleging a prisoner received negligent medical care at the Hardin County Detention Center (HCDC).

HCDC contracts with Southern Health Partners, Inc. (SHP), a for-profit company, to provide medical care to its prisoners. SHP provides nursing and medical services to almost 200 jails nationwide. To fulfill its contract at HCDC, the company contracted with Dr. John Adams, who employed Elizabeth Walkup, an advanced registered nurse practitioner, to assist him. SHP employed nurses and other medical personnel at HCDC.

Mark Sietsema was booked into the jail in the fall of 2009. He advised medical staff that he suffered from diverticulitis and previously had 16 inches of his colon removed due to the disease.

On April 24, 2010, Sietsema filed a medical request indicating he had been vomiting and feverish for the last two days. The next day, a nurse documented abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, fever and constipation; she gave him nausea medication and prescribed a liquid diet. Nurse Heather Kennedy examined Sietsema on May 8, recording complaints of nausea and vomiting. Kennedy and Nurse Brenda Brown had him placed in observation ...

The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office’s (OPSO) administration of New Orleans’ Electronic Monitoring Program (EMP) was an almost “total failure,” according to the city’s Inspector General, Ed Quatrevaux, who found deficiencies in the program compromised public safety and wasted money.

OPSO Sheriff Marlin Gusman took control of the EMP in 2010 despite having submitted a higher bid during a competitive bidding process. Prior to OPSO’s administration of the program, from 2007 to 2009 defendants subject to electronic monitoring were overseen by a private contractor, Total Sentencing Alternatives Program (T-SAP). T-SAP lost its contract following criticism that it failed to timely respond to violations.

OPSO’s management of the monitoring program came under scrutiny in September 2014 following the murder of Richard “Chris” Yeager, a Domino’s Pizza driver. Authorities put two teens with ankle monitors at the scene; one had missed curfew the night before by 90 minutes, and during that time committed a carjacking. A deputy never followed up on the curfew violation.

The Inspector General’s Office examined the EMP and issued its report in two parts. The first determined that “neither the City nor OPSD implemented effective financial controls or ensured the program’s fiscal accountability.” Specifically, the report found that OPSO ...