On December 1, 2023, Harris County, Texas, began sending up to 360 detainees from the county’s jails to a prison in Mississippi, under a contract with its private operator, CoreCivic. The County Commissioners Court approved the $11.3 million one-year agreement, which has renewal options, on November 14, 2023, just weeks after regulators from the state Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) ordered the county to reduce population in its overcrowded jail.

Criminal court backlogs are blamed for overflowing the jail with 9,378 detainees—70% of whom are awaiting trial. Harris County Sheriff’s Office Chief of Staff Jason Spencer said the county looked at proximity, price and track record before choosing Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Mississippi, agreeing to pay CoreCivic $85 a day per detainee sent there to await trial from Houston, over 500 miles away.

Critics point to the prison operator’s track record, with numerous accusations of short staffing, excessive force and substandard health care in some 100 lockups nationwide. TCJS has no authority to go after CoreCivic for jail standards violations outside the state and no counterpart in Mississippi to do so, either. The Mississippi DOC provides no oversight for the lockup, which also holds detainees under contract from ...

In an essay published in Slate on December 14, 2023, former Florida prisoner Ryan Moser said that officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) were “essentially playing whack-a-mole” in their efforts to combat an epidemic of “jailbreaking” prison-issued electronic tablets.

The tablets are issued free to prisoners under DOC’s contract with messaging service provider JPay, a subsidiary of prison telecommunications giant Securus Technologies. The devices connect to the internet at kiosks unless prisoners hack into the operating software to enable connection via a contraband cellphone—a process known as “jailbreaking.”

Moser said the only time he used a jailbroken tablet was one Thanksgiving when phones were down—which happens a lot, he added—so he risked disciplinary measures to make a desperate call his family via WhatsApp. Providing free messaging would reduce the problem, he said. But JPay collects one 39-cent “stamp” for each message a prisoner sends, while DOC pays prisoners exactly nothing for the work they are compelled to do during their incarceration.

DOC could also give prisoners cheaper and more reliable access to phone calls, which are currently provided by Securus competitor ViaPath—formerly Global*Tel Link—at a charge of 13.5 cents per minute. Though some prisoners use jailbroken tablets to ...

Prisoners caged in lockups where Aramark provides the food service rarely enthuse about great quality meals. So it may come as a surprise that an employee of the firm’s German subsidiary won a Next Chef Award on March 11, 2024. After tasting a dish that TV chef Johan Lauffer created, Niklas Herrmann, 23, was the only one of 18 contestants to correctly guess the ingredients and replicate it. President and CEO Arnd Rune Thomas called it “a testament to Aramark Germany’s commitment to empowering culinary creativity.”

If only that could trickle down to prison food. Though no longer forced to subsist on bread and water, those held in U.S. prisons and jails now represent a lucrative business opportunity for private companies including Aramark competitors Trinity and ABL Food Services. But Aramark is the leader, with around 35% of the market. The publicly traded firm is also enjoying a rise in stock price, reaching a market value of $8.44 billion at the beginning of April 2024.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, the company derives most of its revenue from food service contracts with public school districts, colleges and universities, sports arenas and national and state parks. Subsidiary Aramark Correctional Services, LLC contracts with ...

Six guards at West Virginia’s Southern Regional Jail were charged on November 30, 2023, in the fatal beating of pretrial detainee Quantez Burks, 37, less than a month after two fellow guards pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges in his death.

Burks had been held just one day on a wanton endangerment charge when he was handcuffed and beaten to death by guards on March 1, 2022, allegedly in retaliation “for his earlier attempt to leave his assigned pod,” according to a press release from the federal Department of Justice (DOJ).

Guards Andrew Fleshman, 21, and Steven Nicholas Wimmer, 24, pleaded guilty in federal court for the Southern District of West Virginia on November 2, 2023, to conspiring to violate Burks’ civil rights; they face sentencing in June 2024. See: United States v. Fleshman, USDC (S.D. W.Va.), Case No. 5:23-cr-00133; and United States v. Wimmer, USDC (S.D. W.Va.), Case No. 5:23-cr-00134.

DOJ then announced that a grand jury had returned an indictment against five fellow guards allegedly involved in the assault: Mark Holdren, 39; Cory Snyder, 29; Johnathan Walters, 35; Jacob Boothe, 25; and Ashley Toney, 23. They and supervising guard Lt. Chad Lester, 33, were also charged in ...

For years, prisoners at the Bradley County jail in Tennessee received poor medical care or none at all. Former prisoner Darrell Eden, who was denied treatment for pre-arrest injuries sustained during a car accident, including seven broken ribs, filed a class-action lawsuit in 2018 challenging inadequate medical treatment under the ...

by Douglas Ankney

When raw sewage flooded two cell blocks at New Mexico’s Torrance County Detention Facility (TCDF) on November 14, 2023, guards working for its private operator, CoreCivic, ordered some 40 affected migrant detainees being held for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to clean it up—and gave the group just two pairs of gloves. Worse, when they complained, the detainees were allegedly thrown in solitary confinement.

That prompted U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) to fire off a letter the following month to Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is ICE’s parent agency, demanding that the lockup be shut down. Heinrich noted that after the bare-handed cleanup operation, at least two detainees “suffered from rashes on the soles of their feet and legs and from respiratory problems.” When they complained, guards put them in “administrative segregation” and gave them spoiled food, as well as denying them access to attorneys, Heinrich said.

“A CoreCivic guard responsible for the night shift in their unit has repeatedly tossed the men’s belongings on the ground and threatened them with discipline, while refusing to give them his name,” he added.

Heinrich also pointed to a March 2022 “management alert” ...

by David Reutter

On March 13, 2023, the federal court for the Southern District of Georgia denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a guard for private prison giant CoreCivic, alleging she was unconstitutionally strip-searched at Wheeler Correctional Facility (WCF).

“Though Defendants attempt to parse the definition of ‘strip search,’” the Court said that “exposure of a person’s genital area while her shirt is on certainly falls within the realm” of one.

When Ariel Curtis reported for duty on October 4, 2020, she passed through a metal detector, and it went off. Pursuant to policy, Sgt. Sharon Creamer conducted a pat-down search of Curtis, but she did not find any metal. Creamer then called Cpt. Cassandra Boney to the screening area. Together they led Curtis to the parking lot, where Bony told Curtis to pull her pants down. Though not wearing underpants, Curtis complied. The strip search uncovered no metal or contraband. Bony then searched Curtis’ vehicle but found nothing there.

Boney then demanded and took possession of Curtis’ car keys, instructing her to walk back through the metal detector. This time, it did not go off. The city of Alamo Police Department was contacted, and officer ...

by David M. Reutter

A lawsuit filed in federal court for the Western District of Arkansas on January 13, 2023, makes a stunning claim: That a man was left to starve to death in jail because he couldn’t afford bail.

Larry Eugene Price, Jr.,50, was suffering an acute mental health crisis when he walked into Fort Smith Police Department (FSPD) and was arrested on August 19, 2020. Unable to make his $1,000 bail on a charge of “terroristic threatening,” he was confined at the Sebastian County Jail (SCJ). There, just over a year later, Price was found dead in his cell on August 29, 2021. The cause of death: acute dehydration and malnutrition.

When the 6’2” Price was arrested, he was a slender but well-nourished 185 pounds. He walked into FSPD “almost every day – often several times a day,” according to the complaint filed on his behalf, which added: “It was not unusual for him to be agitated and irrational or to engage in bizarre behavior during the visits.”

On the day of his arrest, efforts to calm Price down failed. “He yelled and cursed at officers and shouted incoherently,” the complaint alleged. “At some point, he held out ...

by Chuck Sharman

Data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University reveal that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to struggle with accurate reporting of the number of migrants it tracks through its Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. In just one week in late May 2023, TRAC found, the agency reported the number tracked with ankle monitors exploded by 3,760%.

It’s nearly impossible to believe that ICE somehow managed to get monitors on the ankles of 183,000 migrants in just one week – especially when the same week saw a nearly 85% decline in the number of migrants monitored with phone app. Together, the two technologies were used to track 228,876 migrants on May 18, 2023, versus 223,510 on May 26, 2023 – a miniscule variation of less than 2.5%.

What’s less hard to believe is that ICE simply regurgitated data fed to it by its private contractor for the program, GEO Group subsidiary BI, Inc. Least hard of all to believe is that BI and GEO Group have a big interest in the apparent obfuscation: Ankle monitors generate $2.74 in income per migrant per day, while the firm’s SMARTlink phone app generates just 96 ...

by David M. Reutter

A settlement approved by the federal court for the Eastern District of California on January 16, 2024, recalls an all-­too familiar jail story. A wheelchair-­bound detainee named Gregory Cantu was denied anti-­seizure medication after arriving at Kings County Jail in Hanford on a probation violation. Despite ...