Tennessee Prisoners Suing Private Prisons Not Required to File in Local Venue

by David Reutter

The Tennessee Supreme Court has held that a state statute requiring a local venue for lawsuits filed by indigent prisoners does not apply to actions that accrued while a prisoner “was housed in a correctional facility operated by a private corporation pursuant to a contract with the state or local government.”

When Tennessee state prisoner Sandy Eugene Womack arrived at the Whiteville Correctional Facility (WCF) in Hardeman County in February 2010, he had a cut on his right ankle. He alleged that he did not receive adequate treatment for the cut and, as a result, his right leg was amputated below the knee on September 28, 2010. WCF is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

At the time he filed suit, Womack was housed at the DeBerry Special Needs Facility located in Davidson County, a state prison run by the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC). Womack filed his lawsuit in Davidson County, stating it was “CCA’s principal place of business” and alleging the company’s “negligent acts, omissions, and/or intentional acts ... result[ed] in the amputation of [his] leg.”

CCA moved to dismiss ...

Does Political Spending by Private Prison Firms in Oklahoma Influence Prison Reform?

by Joe Watson

Three private prison corporations, including the nation’s two largest, have contributed more than a combined $400,000 to political candidates in Oklahoma since 2004, prompting at least one prominent state legislator to question the correlation between political spending and the state’s stalled Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), a prison reform law enacted in 2012.

“Follow the money,” said state Senator Constance Johnson. “This whole notion of special interests having undue influence on the legislative process, this is proof.” Johnson, a long-time advocate of sentencing reform, said the Oklahoma legislature has increasingly become “pro-private prisons, pro-enhanced felonies; the thing I stand up and argue about all the time.”

A Tulsa World analysis of campaign finance reports disclosed by the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, published on January 6, 2014, revealed that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), The GEO Group, Inc. and Avalon Correctional Services, Inc. together donated $414,397 to the campaign coffers of Governor Mary Fallin, Lt. Governor Todd Lamb, House Speaker T.W. Shannon and at least 78 other state lawmakers, including the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Clark Jolley.

The analysis found that Fallin topped the list ...

Failure to State Rationale in Denying Appointment of Counsel was Abuse of Discretion

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held in July 2014 that the denial of a prisoner’s motions for appointment of counsel in a civil rights action was an abuse of discretion. It also stated the district court had improperly decided a summary judgment motion without resolving a pending motion for more time to conduct discovery.

Indiana prisoner Leonard Dewitt, 51, filed a civil rights complaint alleging deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs against private medical contractor Corizon. He alleged that in 2007 while at the Wabash Correctional Facility, he submitted a Request for Healthcare to Corizon staff, stating something was wrong with his left eye and his vision was “like looking through a dirty piece of plastic.” He was prescribed glasses.

Upon release on parole in May 2008, Dewitt was diagnosed with a form of glaucoma and underwent surgery. He was reimprisoned in 2009 and again requested care for his eye. He received medication that did not work, as well as other treatment, but not the care that he specifically sought – removal of his left eye. He eventually had surgery to remove part of his ...

Who Owns Private Prison Stock?

by Alex Friedmann

The nation’s two largest for-profit prison companies, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Florida-based GEO Group (GEO), are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Other private prison firms, including Management & Training Corporation (MTC), Community Education Centers (CEC), LaSalle Southwest Corrections and Emerald Correctional Management, are privately-held and thus do not have public stock.

As of July 2015, CCA had issued approximately 117 million shares of stock with a market cap of $4.05 billion, while GEO had issued around 75 million shares with a market cap of $2.76 billion. So who owns the vast majority of stock in these two companies? The answer is not everyday people or individual investors, but rather other corporations – banks, mutual fund management companies and private equity firms – as well as public employee retirement systems.

In fact, around 92.4% of CCA’s stock was owned by 300 institutional investors while 91.1% of GEO Group stock was owned by 272 institutional investors at the end of July 2015. In some cases, the same institutional investors held stock in both companies.

The largest owner of CCA stock was Vanguard Group, Inc., with 16.79 million shares ...

Report Finds Two-Thirds of Private Prison Contracts Include “Lockup Quotas”

by Joe Watson

An analysis of private prison contracts from across the United States reveals that state and local governments commonly enter into agreements that require them to keep prisons filled or pay for unused, empty beds.

In the Public Interest (ITPI), a Washington, D.C.-based research and policy group on public services, reported in September 2013 that it found so-called bed guarantees in around 65% of the more than 60 private prison contracts it analyzed, including contracts from Texas, Ohio, Colorado and Florida. The bed guarantees, or “lockup quotas,” ranged from 70% minimum occupancy in at least one California facility to 100% occupancy at three Arizona prisons. The most common bed guarantee was 90%.

Public officials who agree to lockup quotas, according to corrections experts, become obligated – against their communities’ best interests – to keep prisons filled to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t being wasted.

“It’s really shortsighted public policy to do anything that ties the hands of the state,” said Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas School of Public Affairs and an expert on private prisons. “If there are these incentives to keep the ...

Virginia Must Improve Prison Medical Care Under Proposed Class-action Settlement

by David Reutter

The Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) has agreed to let a court-appointed monitor examine medical policies at all state prisons, and to allow a third-party physician to oversee health care at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW) as part of a proposed settlement in a class-action federal lawsuit.

The agreement was reached the same day that U.S. District Court Judge Norman K. Moon held the VDOC could not escape its constitutional responsibility to provide adequate medical care to state prisoners by hiring a private contractor. The parties filed a notice of settlement on November 25, 2014, just six days before a trial was scheduled to begin on the prisoners’ claims that health care at FCCW was so inadequate that it violated their Eighth Amendment rights.

“The Department of Corrections, as with most defendants, does not concede that they were at fault,” said Mary Bauer, director of the Legal Aid Justice Center, which represents the prisoners. “However, you can read into the settlement that significant changes need to be made.”

The lawsuit was filed in July 2012 on behalf of five prisoners at FCCW. [See: PLN, ...

Peer-Review Reports Must be Disclosed in Philadelphia Jail Conditions Suit

by David Reutter

A Pennsylvania federal district court held on November 4, 2014 that medical care contractor Corizon Health has to produce mortality and sentinel event reviews in a class-action suit filed by prisoners in the Philadelphia Prison System (PPS) seeking equitable relief from unconstitutional conditions of confinement.

The lawsuit alleges that the PPS is overcrowded and triple-celled, and overcrowding results in danger to the health and safety of the prisoner population. Before the court was a discovery request filed by the plaintiffs that sought “mortality and sentinel event reviews for deaths that occurred in custody from January 2012 to December 1, 2013.”

The PPS defendants sought to obtain the discovery information from Corizon, a non-party to the suit, but the company objected, contending that the records were not discoverable because they were protected by Pennsylvania’s peer-review privilege law. The plaintiffs argued that federal courts do not recognize the state peer-review privilege.

The district court explained that where, as here, there are both federal and state law claims in a case, “the federal rule favoring admissibility, rather than any state law privilege, is the controlling rule.” Therefore, “the mere fact ...

“Deep-Seated Culture of Violence” and Abysmal Medical Care at Rikers Island

by Gary Hunter

Pressure is mounting to speed the progress of reforms at New York City’s infamous Rikers Island jail complex, as city and federal officials focus on two primary areas that have drawn the focus of public attention: violence that escalated to a record level in 2014 – much of it related to guards using force against prisoners – and grossly inadequate healthcare.

According to data obtained by the Associated Press, New York City jail guards reported using force against prisoners 4,074 times during 2014, an average of 11 incidents per day, ranging from pepper spray to punches. During September 2014 alone they reported 406 incidents – just one month after a federal report blasted Rikers Island guards for being too quick to resort to violence against youthful prisoners.

The increase in use-of-force incidents came as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) joined a class-action lawsuit to address what federal prosecutors have called a “deep-seated culture of violence” in New York City’s jail system.

“There has clearly not been a commitment to date to address officer violence on Rikers Island,” complained Dr. Bobby Cohen, who sits on the ...

Whether Private Actors Entitled to Qualified Immunity Bypassed Due to Factual Dispute

The First Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rule on a question of whether qualified immunity is categorically unavailable to private medical contractors because disputed issues of material fact remained in the case.

Before the appellate court was the interlocutory appeal of a Maine federal district court’s denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The First Circuit noted it had jurisdiction only to the extent the appeal rested on legal rather than factual grounds.

The defendants were employees of Corizon, a private contractor that provided medical services to prisoners at the Cumberland County Jail. The civil rights action was filed by the estate of Paul Victor Galambos III, who died on December 12, 2008 as a result of the defendants’ deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs after he injured himself and was placed in a restraint chair.

The defendants – psychiatric nurse practitioner Michael Trueworthy, Registered Nurse Barbara Walsh and Licensed Clinical Social Worker Linda Williams – argued their performance did not fall so far below the standard of care as to constitute deliberate indifference, and they were thus entitled to qualified immunity. The district court ...

Strip Searches of Female Visitors on Their Menstrual Period Addressed at CCA Shareholder Meeting

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, held its annual shareholder meeting in Nashville, Tennessee on May 14, 2015. It was likely the first time that the words “vagina,” “penises” and “menses” have been mentioned during a corporate shareholder meeting.

In January 2015, a federal lawsuit was filed against CCA by a woman who visited a prisoner at the company’s South Central Correctional Facility (SCCF) in Clifton, Tennessee. The visitor, identified only as Jane Doe, said guards had “forced her to expose her genitals to prove she was menstruating when she tried to take a sanitary napkin into the facility,” the Associated Press reported.

The suit was later amended to include another SCCF visitor who alleged she had to endure a similar search by CCA guards to prove she was on her period, while in the presence of her minor children.

Apparently it was CCA’s policy to require women visitors who were menstruating to provide evidence they were on their period. This was accomplished by making them remove or change their tampons or pads in the presence of a female guard, who ...