The February 8, 2015 suicide of a woman held at the Washington, D.C. Jail and a recent report that blasted the facility for “non-compliance with basic standards established by national corrections authorities” have once again focused a spotlight on conditions at the main jail in the nation’s capital, where more than 2,000 prisoners await trial or are serving misdemeanor sentences.

According to a press release issued by the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC), Tawana Johnson, 46, was booked into the jail the day before she died on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of property, for allegedly breaking a window at her daughter’s apartment.

“I was angry about my window being kicked in,” said Johnson’s daughter, Erica. “I really didn’t want to have to call the police, but I had no choice.”

D.C. Corrections Director Thomas Faust stated Johnson had displayed no suicidal tendencies or bizarre behavior, but family members said they believed more could have been done for the woman, who had been treated for intoxication at the jail following a previous arrest.

“Some help. Some kind words. Some apologies, I mean anything – anything,” said Maria Johnson, another daughter.

While Johnson’s suicide was the first at the D.C. Jail ...

A Vermont Superior Court held the policy of the Vermont Department of Corrections (VDOC) to send hundreds of male prisoners to out-of-state facilities, regardless of whether they have close bonds with their young children, while keeping all women prisoners at in-state facilities, violates the equal protection clause and common benefits clause of the state constitution.

VDOC prisoner Michael Carpenter was transferred to the Lee Adjustment Center in Kentucky, operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), under a policy that was purportedly created to alleviate overcrowding in Vermont prisons. Carpenter is the father of twin boys who were four-and-a-half years old at the time he was transferred.

From their birth, Carpenter was with his sons every day caring for their needs. He was described as a “natural parent” by the boys’ mother, who said, “they wanted him more than me.” When he was first incarcerated the children were brought to visit Carpenter each week.

After he was sent to the CCA facility in Kentucky to serve his sentence, however, it was impossible for him to see his children. Carpenter filed suit, asking the court to issue declaratory relief and order the VDOC to return him to Vermont.

The Vermont Superior Court ...

by Joe Watson and Derek Gilna

Civil rights organizations hailed the settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed against the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) in the wake of scores of prisoner deaths and preventable injuries stemming from medical treatment so poor that one private prison healthcare company withdrew from its contract. A federal court in Phoenix approved the settlement on February 18, 2015, bringing an end to the suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Prison Law Office, Arizona Center for Disability Law and others on behalf of more than 33,000 Arizona state prisoners. [See: PLN, Sept. 2012, p.34].

“The Arizona Department of Corrections has agreed to changes that will save lives,” Prison Law Office director Don Specter said after the settlement agreement was first announced. “This settlement will bring more humane treatment for prisoners with serious healthcare needs, and the potential for their conditions to improve rather than worsen.”

“At last, the Arizona Department of Corrections will provide its prisoners with adequate medical, mental health, and dental care,” he continued. “This is what the Constitution and our consciences demand.”

However, ADC Director Charles L. Ryan issued a statement that seemed, on its face, to contradict allegations contained ...

Florida, with the nation’s third-largest prison system, has a long and sordid history of abusing, neglecting and even killing its prisoners. Because most state prisons are in insular rural areas, the general public, aside from those with incarcerated loved ones or friends, has minimal awareness of what really occurs within facilities operated by the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) or its private contractors.

The FDOC has historically strived to preserve this lack of transparency by obfuscating the actual happenings in its prisons. The department’s modus operandi is to portray itself as a professional state agency that protects citizens from dangerous criminals, which requires an ever-increasing share of taxpayer dollars to keep society safe from a growing prison population.

Keeping its dirty laundry in-house is an administrative priority. Occasionally, however, particularly egregious incidents belie the FDOC’s carefully crafted vision statement of “changing lives to ensure a safer Florida,” and the public gets a glimpse of the reality behind prison walls.

For months after death row prisoner Frank Valdes died at the Florida State Prison on July 17, 1999, FDOC officials maintained that he committed suicide by diving head-first off his bunk, striking the bars in his cell. An autopsy, however, clearly ...

Florida’s prisons have become notorious for their abuse and neglect of the people in their care. Now, as per an agreement between the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) and Disability Rights Florida, the state will be overhauling its system of treatment for people with mental illness at the Dade Correctional Institution (Dade CI), located just south of Homestead, which houses the prison system’s largest mental health facility.

Disability Rights Florida filed a lawsuit against the DOC following a series of articles published by the Miami Herald during their in-depth investigation over the past year. According to the Herald, individuals in the Transitional Care Unit (TCU) at Dade CI were subjected to various abusive forms of punishment by guards, such as being locked into showers rigged to reach a temperature of 180 degrees, being forced to fight one another for the staff’s entertainment, and being given food that contained laxatives and even urine. A group nicknamed “The Diet Shift” allegedly gave out empty trays on a routine basis, in order to starve the people in their custody.

Perhaps the most notable case of abuse is Darren Rainey. On June 23, 2012, Rainey, who was serving two years for cocaine possession and suffered from ...

In December 2013, Alameda County, California, and Tennessee-based Corizon Health, Inc. agreed to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a minor son of a Santa Rita Jail prisoner who died of a heart attack after a being shocked with a Taser and struck by deputies.

Martin Harrison, 50, was a chronic alcohol user, but otherwise healthy when Oakland police arrested him for driving while intoxicated and booked him into the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. He began acting erratically while at the jail, possibly due to acute alcohol withdrawal. On August 16, 2010, he had broken a food tray, made a mess in his cell and flooded his cell when deputies arrived to try to remove him from the cell so it could be cleaned. They found him cowering behind a mattress, screaming that someone was trying to kill him.

When they moved in on him, he charged them. According to court documents, they responded by striking him, kicking him, repeatedly shocking him with Tasers and improperly restraining him. He was transferred to the jail infirmary, which was operated by Prison Health Services. Eventually he was taken to a hospital where he died two days after the confrontation. ...

By Matt Clarke

It was a bad deal for Texas cities and counties when, prison-construction entrepreneurs talked them into building publicly-financed prisons, for private corporations to operate; housing a surplus of prisoners at a profit. The counties went deep into debt, issuing bonds to pay for prison construction. Now, the surplus has vanished, but the debt remains. Not only do the cities and counties have to service the debt, they have to pay for utilities and maintenance for empty prisons. As previously reported, this has driven some Texas counties into near or actual default [PLN, Mar. 2011, P. 34].

This dire situation has led Littlefield, Texas, not-so-proud owner of an empty 372-bed prison, to try a number of ways to make the $10 million boondoggle turn a profit, or at least break even. This included seeking prisoners from other states and federal immigration authorities, and even auctioning off the facility. All of those attempts failed.

Curry County may be the latest prospective white knight riding to Littlefield's rescue. The 260-bed Curry County jail in Clovis, about an hour's drive from Littlefield, is poorly designed and too small for the county's 300 prisoners. This has the county spending about $700,000 a ...

When Vermont's Department of Corrections hired a for-profit healthcare provider in 2010 to treat the state's 2,000 prisoners, it also hired an independent third-party to keep tabs on the private contractor.

And yet, Correct Care Solutions (CCS) has still committed gross negligence, medical malpractice, and cruel and unusual punishment in its treatment of prisoners, according to a pair of lawsuits filed against DOC in 2014.

Equally confounding is that reports by the independent monitor—Vermont Program for Quality in Healthcare (VPQHC)—are being shielded from public scrutiny and are immune from discovery in court proceedings thanks to a state law that promotes secrecy over honesty and accountability.

A lawsuit filed by the family of Robert Mossey, a prisoner at Vermont's Northern State Correctional Facility when he hanged himself there in August 2013, alleges that his mental healthcare was inadequate and his death preventable if only CCS doctors had followed up with Mossey after prescribing new psychiatric medication.

Another lawsuit filed on behalf of an unnamed mentally ill prisoner alleges that he was left untreated in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day, even though CCS knew he needed mental healthcare.

Reports by VPQHC—which audited all eight of the state's correctional facilities and ...

Officials in Delaware County, Pennsylvania have been tight-lipped about the recent suicides of two prisoners at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility, fearing wrongful death lawsuits.

On May 26, 2015, Janene Wallace, 35, hung herself using her bra while serving time for a probation violation. Just weeks later, 46-year-old Richard Dandrea committed suicide by hanging himself with the rope from a laundry bag. Both prisoners had histories of mental illness.

Philadelphia-based attorney David Inscho said on July 17, 2015 that he had been retained by both families to review and investigate the cases for potential legal action. “A serious investigation is warranted to determine whether or not those [suicide prevention] guidelines in place are adequate and the training of their personnel is adequate,” he said.

The George W. Hill Correctional Facility is operated by Community Education Centers (CEC), a private company that took over operation of the prison after the sudden departure of the previous contractor, The GEO Group, in 2008. Following the suicides, CEC issued a statement saying that it took the matter “very seriously” and that “appropriate actions” were taken after an investigation.

Records from the Delaware County medical examiner’s office indicate that at least six suicides have ...

PLN’s intervention in a federal lawsuit alleging Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) had improperly classified supervisors at two Kentucky prisons as being exempt from overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and Kentucky’s Wage and Hour Act resulted in the court unsealing the settlement in the case.

The lawsuit included allegations that CCA had misclassified and wrongfully withheld overtime pay from current and former supervisory employees at the Otter Creek Correctional Center and Marion Adjustment Center, both of which have since closed. The parties reached a settlement agreement on November 21, 2013. In approving the settlement, the district court also granted the parties’ joint motion to seal two exhibits that contained “information concerning the amount that will be paid to each plaintiff if the settlement is approved” and “information pertaining to the plaintiff’s counsel’s attorney fees and costs.”

Prison Legal News moved to intervene on February 4, 2014 for the purpose of unsealing the exhibits related to the settlement. The court found that PLN met the conditions to intervene, as its motion was timely, its challenge to the order sealing the settlement exhibits presented “a question of law or fact in common” with the underlying action, and there ...