Before food service in West Virginia’s prison system was taken over by Aramark Correctional Services, the nation’s largest for-profit food service provider in prisons and jails, all meals were prepared by prisoners, often using fresh vegetables grown in gardens and greenhouses as part of a culinary arts program.

But according to a report released by the state Center on Budget & Policy (CBP) on September 12, 2023, the institutional gardens were discontinued and fresh fruit and vegetables mostly disappeared from prison menus after Aramark assumed kitchen operations. At the Mt. Olive Corr. Center, for example, a 2022 menu included bread or pasta for “[n]early every meal.” There was a “rotation of sugary desserts, but no fruit.” Of 70 lunches and dinners in a five-week menu cycle, only 26 included a salad, and one-third of those weren’t “from fresh greens but potato salad, coleslaw, and pasta salad.”

State Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) Commissioner William Marshall testified before a legislative committee in April 2023 about “the poor quality food being served in DCR facilities” that house juveniles. As repeatedly reported in PLN, the problems with sub-par food from services like Aramark have been well-documented in numerous other prison systems and ...

by David M. Reutter

In a suit filed in Kansas state court on July 31, 2023, former detainee Joshua Braddy accused private prison profiteer CoreCivic of negligence that resulted in his stabbing at Leavenworth Detention Center (LDC), a now-shuttered lockup formerly operated for the federal government.

Before it closed in December 2021, LDC was a hotbed for drugs and violence, the suit notes; change came only after the U.S. Marshals Service pulled out its detainees to comply with an executive order from Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) that barred its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), from renewing contracts with private prison operators like CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corp. of America (CCA).

A 2017 DOJ-issued report found understaffing at LDC affected its safety and security with closures of security posts, many in areas of the prison that CCA deemed “mandatory,” needing staff every shift to maintain secure operations. In those that didn’t close, guard vacancies left managerial staff in the posts.

Braddy’s complaint lodged claims against the detainees who stabbed him on July 25, 2021: Alan Sells, Stephan Lundemo and Joseph Uman. Sells and Uman are now held at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Leavenworth, ...

by Douglas Ankney

On April 2, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois denied relief to Wexford Health Sources, Inc., the private healthcare contractor for the state Department of Corrections (DOC), from a $750,000 jury verdict for delayed surgery that left a state prisoner to ...

by David M. Reutter

On May 1, 2023, following an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that reversed a grant of summary judgment to a guard at Colorado’s Mesa County Detention Facility (MCDF), a $2 million settlement was reached in a suit filed by ...

by David M. Reutter

West Virginia Division of Corrections (WVDC) officials agreed to pay $4 million on November 8, 2023, to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging unconstitutional conditions at the Southern Regional Jail (SRJ) in Raleigh County. The settlement provided for a cash payment to current and former detainee ...

Five days after the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) took over a state prison from private operator CoreCivic on October 1, 2023, a ceremony was held to rename the former Davis Correctional Facility. On the same day, October 6, 2023, a prisoner stabbed a guard at the medium-security facility now known as Allen Gamble Correctional Center (AGCC)—in memory of another guard fatally stabbed at another DOC lockup—underscoring violence that continues to plague the prison and the 1,600 men incarcerated there.

CoreCivic failed to maintain sufficient guard staff, which dwindled to just 161 before the takeover. Since then, staffing is down even more to just 106 guards, DOC said. Some couldn’t pass the state background check, according to DOC spokeswoman Kay Thompson. But 28% of the prison’s staff opted to stay with CoreCivic and transfer to another of its lockups. CoreCivic’s hourly pay for guards starts at $22.10, significantly higher than the $20.46 rate offered by DOC.

Oklahoma Corrections Professionals director Bobby Cleveland called low staffing a “big mess” for his union members, with a dangerously low ratio of one guard for every 15 prisoners. By comparison, the Arkansas DOC’s ratio is just 1:8. DOC boosted guard pay 30% in 2022, ...

On April 11, 2024, a Texas bankruptcy court rejected a proposed $54 million settlement that would have paid just a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars owed to prisoners who won judgments or secured settlement agreements from Corizon Health. Citing concerns about timely access to court documents for incarcerated claimants—many proceeding pro se—Judge Christopher M. Lopez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas chastised lawyers at both tables before his bench for not knowing whether affected prisoners were “even aware that there is a settlement.”

As PLN reported, Corizon Health executed a “Texas two-step”: It first spun off its profitable ongoing prison and jail healthcare contracts into a new firm called YesCare, and it then shunted its liabilities onto a separate company called Tehum Care Services, Inc., which promptly filed for bankruptcy protection. The ploy almost worked, too, before an inappropriate relationship was revealed between the settlement mediator and a lawyer working for Corizon Health. [See: PLN, Jan. 2024, p.29.]

One Arizona prisoner claimant who objected to the proposed settlement, Anant Kumar Tripati, 69, sent copies of prison mail logs showing that there was no way he could have attended at least ...

by Douglas Ankney

Two former guards with Inmate Services Corporation (ISC), a private contractor that provided prisoner transports across the U.S., have been sentenced to federal prison for raping detainees in their charge. Marquet Johnson, 45, was sentenced on April 16, 2024, to 30 years in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release; he must also register as a sex offender. Fellow ISC guard Rogeric Hankins, then 37, was sentenced on July 11, 2023, to nine years in prison and three years of supervised release.

ISC provided transport for individuals arrested on out-of-state warrants. Hankins drove his ISC van to the jail in Olympia, Washington, on March 31, 2020, to transport detainee Jennifer Seelig to another lockup in St. Paul, Minnesota. En route, he parked at a Missouri rest stop on April 3, 2020, to let the detainee use the restroom. When she finished, Hankins took Seelig into the men’s restroom and began forcing her shirt up. The detainee tried to resist, but Hankins forced her to “perform a sexual act on him,” according to his plea agreement, before he “bent the victim over a toilet and raped her.”

Johnson admitted raping other detainees he bent over ...

by Matt Clarke

On November 7, 2023, a Vermont court ruled in favor of the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, in its request for records from Centurion of Vermont related to its contract to provide medical, dental and mental health care to prisoners of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) between 2015 and 2020.

Pursuant to the Vermont Public Records Act (PRA), 1 V.S.A. subchapter 3, HRDC requested that Centurion disclose records related to any legal claims that resulted in expenditures of $1,000 or more. Centurion responded that it was not subject to the PRA. Aided by Burlington attorney Robert Appeal and in-house counsel, HRDC sued Centurion for disclosure.

The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. Centurion alleged it was not subject to PRA, and if it was, the records were not public records, and, if they were, the records were exempt from disclosure pursuant to 1 V.S.A. § 317(c).

But the Court found controlling the decision in Hum. Rights Def. Ctr. v. Correct Care Sols., LLC, 263 A.3d 1260 (Vt. 2021), agreeing with the nonprofit that Centurion’s contract with DOC made it an “instrumentality” of the state and subject to ...

by Matt Clarke

In a settlement agreement effective October 23, 2023, California’sAlameda County agreed to pay $7 million to the estate and progeny of a detainee who died while incarcerated at the county’s jail in Santa Rita. The large settlement amount reflected the egregious neglect that allegedly contributed to ...