Oklahoma County approved a $1 million settlement in a civil rights suit involving a prisoner who was first denied his anti-seizure medication then fatally beaten by guards when he had a seizure in an Oklahoma City jail. Correctional Healthcare Management of Oklahoma, Inc. (CHM), the jail's medical services provider, had ...

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has been criticized for the influence Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has upon her and her staff. She accepted $60,000 in campaign contributions from people associated with

CCA. Her senior policy advisor and campaign manager has a consulting firm that lobbies for CCA. His wife is a CCA lobbyist. CCA seemed to have a lock on Arizona's lucrative private prison market.

Florida-based Geo Group, CCA's main competitor and one of the bidders for a state contract to build private prisons in Arizona and manage those prisons' 5,000 private prison beds, has taken a page from CCA's playbook. Since the governor was already spoken for, Geo Group decided to try to influence the distribution of state money to private prisons at the money distribution level.

Lobbyists associated with Geo Group gave at least six campaign contributions to state Rep. John Kavanaugh (R-8), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and outgoing Chairman of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. The contributions came from people associated with the Arizona-based consulting firm Public Policy Partners (PPP). PPP has several Arizona clients, but only two national clients -- Geo Group and Ron Sachs Communications, a Florida-based public relations firm promoting prison privatization. ...

The City of Littlefield, Texas sold the Bill Clayton Detention Center (BCDC) at an auction, but the deal fell through. The BCDC is a 363-bed prison private prison developers talked city officials into building in this 6,500 person community. Mesmerized by the promise of prisoners from other jurisdictions whose incarceration would create hundreds of jobs, Littlefield issued $11 million in bonds to finance prison construction.

GEO Group ran the prison for about eight years, locking up prisoners from Idaho and Wyoming. But poor prison conditions sparked riots and a suicide while guards helped prisoners escape. That led Idaho to withdraw its prisoners in 2009 and GEO to cancel its contract soon thereafter. Littlefield was stuck $9 million in remaining debt costing $65,000 a month to service and a prison that it had to pay to maintain.

Littlefield City Manager Danny Davis had hoped to cut the city's losses by getting bid of at least $5 million at a real estate auction in July, 2011. So a telephone call with a bid of $6 million seemed to solve all of Littlefield's problems. Within a month the buyer backed out and the deal fell through. Now Littlefield is trying to work out ...

A June 2011 report by the Justice Policy Institute entitled "Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies reveals how private prison companies (PPCs) use political campaign donations, political lobbyists and relationships with government officials to increase their profits by promoting policies that result in more people being incarcerated. Even in tight budgetary times when many policymakers want to reform the criminal and juvenile justice systems to safely reduce the prison population, PPCs create and fund political opposition seeking to preserve the status quo in policies and increase the incarceration rate. Since PPCs receive their revenue almost exclusively from the government, the taxpayers are indirectly funding a group that opposes the policies most favorable to the taxpaying public.

As of December 31, 2009, there were about 120,000 prisoners being held in U.S. private prisons. They comprised 16.4% of the federal and 6.8% of the state prison populations. This represented an increase in the use of private prisons since 2000 of 120% for the federal government and 33% for the states. During the same time frame, overall U.S. prison populations increased by less than 16%.

Corrections spending increased 72% between 1997 and 2007. Total ...

On November 10, 2011, Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps announced the closure of the privately-operated 1,172-bed Delta Correctional Facility in Leflore County scheduled for January 15, 2012. He said it was a mutual decision of Mississippi and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), noting that, under state law, CCA was being paid only $31.15 per prisoner per day when it had daily costs of $34.15 for each medium custody prisoner.

Epps said that the prisoners would be moved into existing capacity in state-run facilities. This will save the state money since the only additional expenses will be for the prisoners' food, clothing and health care. With over 4,000 empty bunks in the state-run system, it was impossible to justify the additional expense of the private prison.

Epps has been pushing alternatives to incarceration as a cost-cutting measure. With 21,500 prisoners, Mississippi has the second highest rate of incarceration in the country, creating a huge drain on the state budget.

Epps specified that 800 of the Delta prisoners would be transferred to regional jails. Mississippi has 15 regional jails with a combined total of about 1,000 empty bunks. The remaining prisoners would be transferred to other state facilities.

Under Governor Ronnie Musgrove, ...

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that private prison-management corporations and their employees may be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

“Billy Rosborough is a prisoner of the Bradford State Jail, a Texas prison owned and operated by…Management and Training Corporation (MTC), a private prison-management corporation.”

Rosborough brought a § 1983 action against MTC and guard Chris Shirley, alleging that “Shirley maliciously slammed a door on Rosborough’s fingers, severing two fingertips” and that MTC failed to properly train and supervise Shirley.

“The district court sua sponte dismissed Rosborough’s action on the grounds that Shirley was an employee of MTC rather than…the State of Texas and, therefore, was not acting under color of state law for purposes of suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.” The court “did not address MTC’s potential liability for failing to train Shirley.”

The Fifth Circuit reversed, observing that “[t]he Supreme Court…has held that ‘to act “under color” of law does not require that the accused by an officer of the state.’ Addickes v. S.H. Kness & Co., 398 U.S. 144,152…90 S. Ct. 1598 (1970)…Under the Supreme Court’s ‘public function’ test, a private entity acts under color of state law ‘when that entity performs a ...

The Geo Group, Inc., Florida Correctional Finance Corporation, South Bay Correctional Facilities Financing Corporation and the Florida Department of Corrections paid $35,000 to settle a prisoner’s negligence claim. The settlement came in a lawsuit filed by prisoner Edward Milner.

In his amended complaint, Milner alleged that the Defendants created a ...

In the latest controversy surrounding the beleaguered Texas Office of Violent Sex Offender Management (OVSOM), the agency that oversees the approximately 300 civilly committed sex offenders in Texas, Avalon Correctional Services sent OVSOM a letter telling it to remove the 67 civilly committed sex offenders (CCSOs) residing in its halfway houses in Dallas, El Paso and Ft. Worth. That represents about half of the 140 CCSOs who reside outside of prison. Over half the CCSOs have been returned to prison for violating stringent civil commitment rules and none has ever been released from the program, prompting criticism that the program, which is supposed to provide treatment for sex offenders suffering from "a behavior abnormality," might not withstand a court challenge to its constitutionality.

Avalon contracts with OVSOM to house CCSOs for $44 per CCSO per day. It recently requested an increase to $61.81 per CCSO per day. As justification for the increased rate, Avalon cited increased litigation by CCSOs requiring its employees to travel from El Paso to the Texas court designated by statute to handle the CCSO cases in Montgomery County near Houston. The letter also complained of the agency’s "lack of communication, [lack of] support and secretiveness." The ...

The second death in six months of a pre-trial detainee at Pennsylvania’s Buck County prison has raised questions about its detox procedures. The scrutiny of such procedures should be a focal point for jail administrators throughout the nation because such deaths are occurring with increasing frequency.

In October 2013, Valene Karaharisis, 29, was found dead in her Buck County cell. She was going through a heroin detox for the month of her incarceration for credit card fraud charges. The day of her death, she had common withdrawal symptoms of a running fever. Her cause of death was “undetermined”.

Then, on March 22, 2014, Marlene Yarnall, 49, was found dead in her Bucks County cell. Just three hours before her death, she had been given the scheduled doses of medication to ease her withdrawal symptoms. Yet, no one checked her vital signs. An autopsy concluded she had a cardiac arrest during detox.

Bucks County illustrates a growing issue for jail officials from July 2013 to April 2014; about 6,700 people were booked into the Bucks County prison. Of them, nearly one-quarter, or 1,703, required detox, said Todd Haskins, vice president for operations of Prime Care, the prison’s private medical vendor.

The ...

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed a bill that would have expanded the powers of private probation companies and shrouded their activities in secrecy.

House Bill 837 was introduced shortly after lawsuits were filed in Richmond and counties to challenge the constitutionality of private companies carrying out judicial processes. It also sought to end relief in a 2013 ruling that prohibited private companies from extending probationary sentences without court action, which also meant they must pay back thousands of dollars to probationers they illegally extended.

According to Sarah Geraghty, an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights HB 837 was “a gift to the private probation industry.” Gifts, however, come without an expectation of a return. This bill was sponsored by legislators who received campaign contributions and support for other offices.

Geraghty, nonetheless, has strong support for her position that HB 837 would have been a boon to private probation companies operating in Georgia. When state lawmakers turned the supervision of misdemeanor probationers over to local government in 2000, they created an industry. Local governments were ill-equipped to handle the task, and they were glad to hand the supervision over the companies who charged the government nothing in return for ...