Local governments in Texas and across the nation are bearing high costs for building private prisons that are now unwanted due to a sharp decline in incarceration rates. This has led some local governments to adopt radical strategies such as closing, or even selling, the publicly-financed, privately-operated prisons that were built when incarceration rates were soaring. Some local governments' bond ratings have been lowered due to the financial strain caused by the costs of financing the boondoggle prisons.

The West Texas town of Littlefield has taken the most radical solution, putting its 383-bed prison up for auction after having been abandoned by the private prison company that contracted to fill and operate the prison. The town is hoping to make $5 million from the sale of the empty prison which is costing $65,000 a month in bond interest payments alone.

Nearby Dickens County suffered financially after the federal government transferred inmates from a 489-bed prison to a facility in Lubbock. The costs of the empty private prison included a loss of 120 jobs in a community of 2,700.

McClennan County finally was able to get prisoners from an older jail in Lubbock to its newly-completed private …

Item: California's 33 state prisons are operating at 190 percent of capacity. On January 10, 2002, Governor Gray Davis responded to this crisis by proposing to close five prisons with 1,400 beds.

Item: California is facing a $20 billion budget shortfall. It costs $70 per day to house a convict in a state prison, $44 per day in a private prison. Governor Davis opted to close five private prisons.

Item: On January 16, 2002, Davis signed into law a 34 percent pay raise for California prison guards whose base pay will increase to about $65,000 per year. Plus overtime.

Item: The California prison guards' union spent $2.3 million to help elect Davis 4 years ago. On March 13, 2002, two months after Davis approved the guards' munificent pay raise, the union contributed an additional $251,000 to Davis.

Item: Davis is seeking November 2002 election to a second 4-year term as governor.

Governor Gray Davis, having repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory during California's recent electric power crises, has decided to banish privately operated prisons from the Golden State. Davis' decision delivers on the promise he made to the state prison guards' union …

Corrections Corporation of America paid $12,000 to settle a lawsuit by a prisoner Johnny A. Walsh for claims related to his treatment at the Silverdale Detention Center in Tennessee.

The October 2005 confidential settlement was obtained via public records request by PLN. The complaint was not made available.

Corrections Corporation of America paid $4,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging a guard at the Shelby Training Center in Tennessee assaulted a juvenile, Brandon D. Jones.

The April 2006 confidential settlement was obtained via public records request by PLN. The complaint was not available. Jones was represented by Memphis attorney Andrew Bender.

See: CCA SA 0116-0121

New Jersey has embarked on a grand experiment – shifting state prisoners from expensive state prisons into less expensive, privately-run halfway houses. The state prison system bas less than 25,000 beds while the around two dozen halfway houses in the New Jersey system house about 3,500 state prisoners and parolees. But the system is not without problems--5,100 prisoners have escaped from the halfway houses since 2005 and former employees and prisoners report that drug and alcohol use, crime and violence are rampant in some halfway houses.

Community Education Centers

The largest private influence in the halfway house system is Community Education Centers (CEC), a West Caldwell, New Jersey company that manages private jails, prisons and halfway houses throughout the United States. It operates six large facilities which account for 1,900 of the state's 3,500 halfway house beds. CEC also runs the 900-bed Albert M. "Bo" Robinson Assessment and Treatment Center (Bo), which acts as both a halfway house and an intake center for state prisoners transitioning into the halfway house system. Prisoners who are deemed low risk at Bo are transferred to other halfway houses, including those run by other private entities.

CEC is enmeshed in …

A doctor has been associated with the medical maltreatment of multiple jail prisoners across several states during close to two decades of practice. Some of the prisoners died. Yet Dr. Stephen Austin Cullinan of Peoria, Illinois still retains his medical license.

On August 14, 2012, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (DFPR) fined Cullinan for failing to properly treat a Macoupin County jail prisoner's fractured ankle, which ultimately resulted in loss of the leg.

In the summer of 2007, a seizure caused jail prisoner Jason Waggener to break his ankle and suffer a head wound. He was taken to an emergency room where the attending physician recommended that Waggener be seen by an orthopedist. Instead, Cullinan--who was employed by the Peoria-based Health Professionals, Limited (HPL)--a private provider of prisoner health care at over 100 Midwest jails, returned him to the jail.

During the next few days, Waggener became delusional. He removed his splint and walked about until he incurred a compound fracture that result d in the amputation of his leg.

Waggener filed a lawsuit against the county and Cullinan. In February 2011, the lawsuit was settled by Cullinan paying Waggener $130,000 and …

On October 24, 2012, a Texas federal jury awarded $2.25 million to the survivors of a federal prisoner who died while in the custody of a private prison due to prison officials' failure to provide him with previously-prescribed anti-seizure medication.

Mario Garcia was a 42-year-old federal prisoner When …

On February 17, 2012, a Pennsylvania jury awarded a former prisoner 8400,000 in a suit over medical negligence resulting in serious injury to him.

Derrick Jones was a Pennsylvania state prisoner incarcerated at SCI Albion on March 12, 2006, when he fell in his cell and was seriously …

After years of high rates of escapes, poor supervision and rumors of sweetheart deals between politicians and private companies, the curtain is finally being pulled back on New Jersey's halfway houses.

A New York Times investigation last year concluded that nepotism and poor regulation have allowed Education and Health Centers of America (ECHA) and the Kintock Group–the two purportedly nonprofit groups that run most of New Jersey's halfway houses–to rake in millions of dollars and further their own money-making schemes and political agendas at the expense of taxpayers, victims of violent crimes, and offenders trying to successfully transition back into society.

In December 2012, the Times reported that Kintock had paid its founder, David D. Fawkner–a former probation and parole officer who started the company in 1985–about $7 million in salary and benefits over the past decade, while his daughter, brother-in-law and son-in-law were paid more than $2.5 million altogether during the same period.

Kintock, which is based in Pennsylvania but has most of its operations–including five halfway houses–in New Jersey, had $39 million in revenues in 2010, according to the company's most recent disclosure forms to the Internal Revenue Service.

In recent years, Fawkner's …

Since the for-profit California Forensic Medical Group (CFMC) took over healthcare at the Santa Cruz County Jail last year, the medical staff has been forcing police to take more injured suspects to the hospital before they get booked, likely because the potential liability would hurt CFMC's bottom line

"If the (jail) staff is at all wary," says Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark, "they turn us right around."

Unfortunately, it might have taken a jailed heroin addict's death on Nov. 20, 2012 to persuade CFMC to extend the practice to prisoners withdrawing from drug abuse.

On Thanksgiving morning, the family of Brant Monnett, 47, was notified by the jail that the Santa Cruz tattoo artist was found unresponsive in a detoxification cell, given CPR and declared dead two nights prior. The county coroner's office had not yet determined the cause of his death by the time local media reported the story.

Monnett, who had family in nearby Redding, Calif., and a daughter in Oregon, was the third person to die in the Santa Cruz jail since August and the second since the medical staff was privatized in September. Yet, jail Lt. Shea Johnson said …