Jailhouse Medicine - A Private Contractor Flourishes Despite Controversy Over Prisoner Deaths

by Brian Joseph, FairWarning

In July 2011, a jailhouse nurse in Imperial County, California found prisoner Marsha Dau lying naked and dazed on the concrete floor. Charged with illegally transporting aliens, Dau, 58, recently had been exhibiting strange and aggressive behavior. For her own safety, the jail put her in an empty, beige cell with no clothes. Now, three days later, she was on her back, semi-conscious and pale.

The nurse who found her was Elisa Pacheco, an employee of the California Forensic Medical Group, a private company that provides correctional medical services to rural counties like Imperial, near the Mexico border. Pacheco later would testify Dau looked dehydrated. But she didn’t treat it as an emergency.

Rather than call an ambulance – which the company said would have cost several hundred dollars – Pacheco, in her testimony, acknowledged that she instructed guards to get Dau to a hospital in 30 to 40 minutes. Two guards dressed Dau in orange shorts, a yellow shirt and a yellow jumpsuit, then chained her to a wheelchair. As they wheeled her to a van, Dau’s head slumped forward. One of the guards later remembered her ...

A federal lawsuit alleges that officials at the Schuylkill County Prison in Pennsylvania were negligent in the 2013 death of a prisoner from an accidental drug overdose. The suit, filed on March 24, 2015, came almost a year after the findings of a coroner’s inquest which determined that negligence did, in fact, play a role in the death of Matthew Konscler, five days after his 21st birthday and four days after he reported to the facility to begin serving a three-to-18 month sentence for possession with intent to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Konscler’s mother, Sherry Konscler, filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Middle District against Schuylkill County, the county prison board and warden Eugene Berdanier, as well as the prison’s private healthcare provider, PrimeCare Medical, nine medical assistants and nurses, three unidentified prison guards and guard Robert Murton, who discovered Konscler unresponsive in his cell. The suit seeks at least $150,000 in compensatory damages plus punitive damages, attorney fees and costs.

Konscler had reported to the county prison on March 27, 2013 to begin serving his sentence. During the intake screening, he admitted to prison medical personnel that he was a heavy user of alcohol ...

Despite years of controversy that included sitting vacant for months after it was built and staff members being arrested for smuggling contraband and having sexual relationships with prisoners, the Jack Harwell Detention Center in Waco, Texas has rebounded. It now houses more prisoners, obtained a lower interest rate on the bonds floated to build the jail, and has a recently-extended contract with private prison operator LaSalle Corrections, Inc.

McLennan County commissioners voted on June 2, 2015 to extend LaSalle’s contract for three years. The company’s prior agreement had been scheduled to expire at the end of June 2015.

“We’re glad to extend it with LaSalle because we trust them and they’re good business people,” said County Judge Scott Felton, a member of the McLennan County Public Facility Corporation’s board of directors. “They pay the note payment on the bonds to pay for the jail and they’ve never missed a payment, even without making money.”

Felton said the jail has been losing money steadily since it was built because the prisoner population has not met expectations. The facility has capacity for 816 prisoners, but has housed fewer than 700 at any one time. During November and December of 2014, the average ...

A federal jury awarded a former Jefferson County Detention Center prisoner more than $11 million against the sheriff and the jail’s privately-contracted medical provider, Correctional Healthcare Companies (CHC) – now Correct Care Solutions – after he was denied medical treatment for at least 16 hours despite obvious signs of a ...

On March 1, 2016, the Private Corrections Institute (PCI), a non-profit citizen watchdog organization, announced its 2015 awardees for individual activism, organizational advocacy and excellence in news reporting related to the private prison industry. PCI opposes the privatization of correctional services, including the operation of prisons, jails and other detention facilities by for-profit companies such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and The GEO Group, both of which trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

PCI’s 2015 award for excellence in news reporting on the private prison industry went to Jerry Mitchell, a reporter with The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, for multiple articles regarding conditions, violence and abuses at for-profit prisons in Mississippi. He also covered the indictments filed against former MS DOC Commissioner Christopher Epps, who took bribes from private prison firms and their consultants. The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” Jerry previously broke stories that resulted in the prosecution of Civil Rights era murders; he has received numerous other honors and was a Pulitzer finalist.

“This award belongs to the staff of The Clarion-Ledger and especially my boss, Assistant Managing Editor Debbie Skipper, who worked not only with our staff, but with freelancers as well, in producing ...

After four prisoners committed suicide in the Salinas branch of the Monterey County, California jail system within a five-year period, a class-action lawsuit was filed in 2013 against both the jail and California Forensic Medical Group, alleging substandard intake procedures, medical care and mental health treatment.

Shortly after an injunction ...

Recent decades have seen the rise of not only private, for-profit prisons but also the privatization of other aspects of corrections systems, most notably the provision of medical care. As with prison privatization, the only people who have benefited are the owners of and investors in the companies. Everyone else – prisoners, taxpayers and the government itself – has received short shrift with little to show for privatization except empty, unrealized promises of cost savings.

The prison medical industry is dominated by a few large corporations such as Corizon, Centurion and Wexford Health Sources, which are the core oligopoly companies. There are smaller players, too, though most will likely eventually be bought out by one of the larger ones. These smaller firms typically operate at the regional and local levels, and rarely make national news or headlines. Their business model is the same: to provide as few services as possible while billing the government as much as possible. This month’s cover story examines the California Forensic Medical Group, one of those small regional companies whose body count and track record of inadequate care, negligence, incompetence and greed puts it in the running with the larger corporations in the prison medical ...

On October 24, 2014, a Montana state jury found Missoula County liable in the wrongful death of a jail prisoner and assessed an award of $565,500 against the county. The county agreed not to appeal and to pay within two weeks. A private health care provider settled confidentially prior to ...

A private medical vendor’s discontinuation of a pre-trial detainee’s psychotropic medication in the middle of a double-homicide trial was being called government misconduct that merited dismissal of the charges.

Michael John Pierce, 39, suffers from schizophrenia. He was charged in the murders of two people in their Quilcene, Washington residence in 2009. Pierce, who has heard voices since age 8 and has been diagnosed with a host of severe mental illnesses on the schizophrenic spectrum, was convicted in 2010 of the murders.

His conviction was reversed based upon a violation of his right to an attorney, and prosecutorial misconduct. When it was uncovered that a seated juror may have been a witness after revealing she saw someone matching Pierce’s description near the murder scene, the second trial was halted.

The case was moved from Jefferson County to Kitsap County to assure a fair trial. Upon arrival at the Kitsap County Jail (KCJ) on February 21, 2014, Jefferson County corrections officials hand delivered Pierce’s medications, which included two anti-psychotic and several non-psychotropic medications.

He then went into the care of KCJ’s medical contractor, Conmed. It had a “bridge” policy that allowed continuation of psychotropic medications for 14 days and other medications ...

The City of San Francisco negotiated a new contract with its food vendor, Aramark Correction Services, to provide a “heart-healthy menu” for prisoners at the San Francisco County Jail (SFCJ). The new fare, hopefully, will diminish the need for prisoners to prepare meals from the snack food laden jail commissary.

Aramark has been providing meals for those incarcerated at SFCJ since 1996. The new five-year contract is worth $19.7 million. On average, 5,743 meals are served at SFCJ daily, which amounts to about 3.8 meals per prisoner daily. Some prisoners receive “double rations” for performing clean-up or maintenance tasks.

Under the new contract, each meal will cost an average $1.56 or $3.3 million annually for prisoners. Staff meals, by contrast, cost $3.24 each on average, totaling $622,388 annually.

The new menu is aimed at following San Francisco’s penchant for healthy foods and locally grown foods. “We implemented a healthy-heart menu to help combat some of the inmate obesity issues that we’ve been seeing due to an overly caloric meal combined with a sedentary lifestyle,” said Bree Mawhorter, chief financial officer of the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Office (SFCSO).

Jail officials and prisoners agree that “jail food sucks.” Prisoners call the ...