$8,000 Payment for CCA Prisoner for Failure to Treat Asthma

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) paid $8,000 to settle the lawsuit of Silverdale Correctional Facility prisoner Robert Jackson, who alleged CCA failed proper medical treatment for him.

Jackson had an ongoing and existing asthma condition that was known to CCA ...

$7,900 Settlement for Juvenile Assaulted in CCA Prison

Corrections Corporation of America paid $7,900 to settle a negligent hiring lawsuit that involved assault and battery of a juvenile at the Silverdale Detention Facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The complaint stemmed from a July 18, 2005, assault of juvenile Marvin Hinton. The ...

$1,750 Settlement in Treatment Delay at Tennessee CCA Prison

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) paid $1,750 to settle a lawsuit alleging it delayed to treat the broken ankle of a prisoner at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Center.

Prisoner Shannon Stanton suffered a broken ankle on July 27, 2002, and sought ...

$1,500 Settlement for Prisoner’s Nude Perp Walk by CCA Employees

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) paid $1,500 to settle a lawsuit alleging guards at Hardeman County Correctional Institution stripped a prisoner and walked him through the prison.

While working in the prison’s parking lot, prisoner Thomas Pruitt was approached by ...

$250,000 Settlement for Women’s Loss of Child in CCA Tennessee Jail

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) paid $250,000 to settle a lawsuit claiming it provided inadequate medical care that caused her to lose her baby.

Unable to make bond on misdemeanor drug charge, Meredith Manning was placed into the custody ...

The Wal-Mart Model: Not Just for Retail, Now It’s for Private Prisons Too!

by Carl Takei

The nation’s biggest and baddest for-profit prison company suddenly cares about halfway houses – so much so, that they want in on the action.

About a year after acquiring a smaller firm that operates halfway houses and other community corrections facilities, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
CEO Damon Hininger announced  that “[r]eentry programs and reducing recidivism are 100 percent aligned with our business model.”

Wait, what?

High recidivism rates mean more people behind bars, and CCA depends on more and more incarceration to make its billions. Since when do they actually want people to do well after they get out, instead of being sucked back into the system?

It’s tempting to be hopeful. Is this a long-overdue acknowledgment that it’s morally bankrupt to make money off of imprisoning human beings? Is the nation’s largest for-profit prison company really admitting that mass incarceration has destroyed too many communities and that locking fewer people behind bars is a good thing?

Come on. It’s CCA. We can’t afford to be naïve. The motivation behind this announcement is where it always is for CCA: the bottom line.

If you read Hininger’s speech ...

The Spread of Electronic Monitoring: No Quick Fix for Mass Incarceration

by James Kilgore

In a troubled criminal justice system desperately looking for alternatives to incarceration, electronic monitoring is trending. North Carolina has tripled the use of electronic monitors since 2011. California has placed 7,500 people on GPS ankle bracelets as part of a realignment program aimed to reduce prison populations. SuperCom, an Israeli-based Smart ID and electronic monitor producer, announced in early July 2014 that they were jumping full force into the U.S. market, predicting this will be a $6 billion-a-year global industry by 2018.

The praise singers of electronic monitoring are also re-surfacing. In late June 2014, high-profile blogger Dylan Matthews posted a story on Vox Media, headlined “Prisons are terrible and there’s finally a way to get rid of them.” He enthusiastically argued that the most “promising” alternative “fits on an ankle.” Joshua Earnest, press secretary for the Obama White House, even suggested ankle bracelets as a solution to getting the 52,000 unaccompanied immigrant children out of border detention centers and military bases in the U.S. Southwest.

The reasons behind this popular surge of electronic monitoring are obvious: Prisons and jails (along with immigrant detention facilities) are overflowing from decades of mass ...

Third Circuit: No Supervisory Qualified Immunity for Prisoner Suicide

by Mark Wilson

On September 5, 2014, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of qualified immunity to supervisory prison officials for inadequate third-party medical care resulting in a prisoner’s suicide.

The Delaware Department of Corrections (DOC) operates the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution (HRYCI). On June 17, 2002, the DOC contracted with First Correctional Medical, Inc. (FCM), a for-profit company, to provide medical care to prisoners at HRYCI. The contract outlined FCM’s required standards of care, and specified that “[t]o the extent that the health care standards of the American Correctional Association and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (‘NCCHC’) differed, FCM was to adhere to the higher standard.”

In 1997, the NCCHC published intake screening standards for correctional facilities. Those standards were updated in 2003, but FCM violated its contract by failing to implement the NCCHC’s 2003 guidelines. It also did not properly implement the 1997 standards.

Then-DOC Commissioner Stanley Taylor and HRYCI Warden Ralph Williams were aware of the deteriorating quality of FCM’s medical services. Williams admitted he knew that 1) “FCM’s performance had degraded significantly”; 2) “FCM may not have been fulfilling its contractual ...

Doctor of Death: Former Jail Physician Leaves Trail of Prisoner Deaths, Injuries

by Matt Clarke

An Illinois doctor whose medical care – or lack thereof – was linked to the deaths of prisoners in multiple states has lost his license to practice medicine, has been fined at least $50,000 by ...

Pennsylvania: Wexford Settles Case Involving Death of Prisoner’s Baby

A federal civil rights complaint filed in March 2013 accused employees of Wexford Health Sources of failing to provide appropriate medical care to a pregnant prisoner at Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland County Prison (WCP), resulting in the death of her nearly 8-month-old unborn son.

The suit was filed by Tiffany Pollitt and her husband, Brian C. Camp, Sr. Pollitt learned she was pregnant in January 2012, and an ultrasound five months later showed a healthy baby with no abnormalities. Pollitt was in the custody of WCP on July 28, 2012 when she was exercising with a volleyball in an outdoor gym.

She was accosted by two other prisoners, Gabriella Wade and LeAnn Armstrong, who demanded that Pollitt give them the ball. As she argued with Wade, Armstrong tried to take the volleyball and hit Pollitt hard in the abdomen. Pollitt confronted Armstrong about hitting her when she was pregnant. A guard arrived, issued Pollitt a disciplinary report for creating a disturbance and placed her in solitary confinement.

Pollitt awoke the next day with uterine cramping, tightness in her lower back and vaginal spotting. Her requests for a sick call form or to see ...