Seventh Circuit: No Qualified Immunity for Diabetic Detainee’s Death

by Mark Wilson

On August 20, 2013, the Seventh Circuit affirmed a district court’s denial of qualified immunity in a case concerning an Illinois pretrial detainee’s death due to medical neglect.

Phillip Okoro, 23, was arrested for a misdemeanor property offense ...

SEC Rejects CCA, GEO Group Shareholder Resolutions to Reduce Prison Phone Rates

On February 18, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) granted a request filed by for-profit prison company GEO Group to exclude a shareholder resolution that sought to reduce the high cost of phone calls made by prisoners at GEO-operated facilities. Ten days later, the SEC granted a request by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to exclude a similar shareholder resolution.

The resolutions, filed by Alex Friedmann, managing editor of PLN and associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), would have required the companies to forgo “commission” kickbacks from prison phone service providers. [See: PLN, Jan. 2014, p.44]. Such kickbacks are typically based on a percentage of revenue generated from inmate telephone services (ITS) – revenue that is mostly paid by prisoners’ families.

Specifically, the shareholder resolutions stated that GEO and CCA “shall not accept ITS commissions” at their facilities, and that when the companies contract with prison phone service providers they “shall give the greatest consideration to the overall lowest ITS phone charges among the factors [they consider] when evaluating and entering into ITS contracts.” CCA and GEO both filed no-action requests with the SEC ...

Administrators Fired at Privately-Run Texas Jail

The warden and head of security at the Liberty County Jail (LCJ) in Liberty, Texas have been fired in the wake of allegations that the chief of security sexually assaulted a female prisoner at the facility. The 285-bed jail is operated by the New Jersey-based Community Education Centers (CEC), a for-profit company.

Warden Timothy New and Chief of Security Kenneth Reid Nunn were fired in September 2012, just days after the county received a notice of claim from attorney Paul Houston LaValle on behalf of former LCJ prisoner Brandy Nichole O’Brien. O’Brien had been incarcerated at LCJ for failing to make timely child support payments.

According to the notice of claim, O’Brien “was repeatedly subjected to assault and battery, sexual assault, deviant sexual assault, humiliation, degradation and intentional infliction of emotional distress at the hands of Chief of Security Kenneth Reid Nunn and others” while incarcerated at the privately-run lock-up.

“Further, when Chief Nunn was repeatedly caught violating my client’s rights by other members of the jail staff or sheriff’s office, my client was threatened, coerced and coached on the statements she gave to investigators by Warden Tim New and others,” LaValle wrote.

In ...

Shrinking state budgets across the country are leading to prison closures that in turn have a negative impact on communities that depend on the facilities as a source of jobs and revenue. [See: PLN, June 2013, p.1; April 2009, p.1]. Small towns in Kentucky, Georgia and New York are among those facing recent adjustments to this new economic reality, but some local residents and lawmakers have fought back with campaigns to keep the prisons open.

The city of Wheelwright, Kentucky was hit hard by the closure of the 600-bed Otter Creek Correctional Center, a prison owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Officials said over 170 jobs were lost, although CCA pledged to relocate as many employees as possible to other facilities. The company said the June 2012 closing of Otter Creek was necessary after Kentucky did not renew its contract to house state prisoners at the facility.

“A lot of them [the employees] live within the city and a lot of them live in the community, you know,” said Andy Akers, Wheelwright’s mayor. “We’re a tight knit community around here.” Just before the closure of the prison, Akers had predicted a devastating impact on local businesses, fearing ...

Two Murders in Seven Months at CCA-run Prison in Tennessee

On May 23, 2014, the Medical Examiner’s Office in Nashville completed an autopsy report on Tennessee state prisoner Jeffery Sills, 43, who was murdered at the South Central Correctional Facility in Clifton, Wayne County on March 28. The facility is operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company.

Sills’ death was classified as a homicide caused by “blunt and sharp force injuries.” He was allegedly beaten and stabbed to death by his cellmate, Travis Bess, who was later transferred to the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

Jeffery Sills was at least the second prisoner murdered at the CCA-run prison since September 1, 2013, when Gerald Ewing, 28, was killed during a series of fights at the facility. Comparably, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction there were no homicides at state-run prisons in calendar year 2013 and to date this year.

Jeffery Sills’ death was particularly brutal, according to the autopsy report. He suffered lacerations, abrasions and contusions to his head and neck, fractured cheek and nasal bones, cutting and stab/puncture wounds, and hemorrhages in the “posterior cervical spinal muscles” and “skeletal muscle of back and ...

Seventh Circuit: Jail Social Worker Ignored Detainee’s Suicide Risk

On August 12, 2013, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a jail social worker could be held liable for ignoring a detainee’s obvious risk of committing suicide.

Algerian citizen Hassiba Belbachir, 27, entered the United States as a visitor in November 2004. She overstayed her visa then flew from Chicago to England in February 2005, where she was detained by immigration authorities.

Belbachir was returned to Chicago a week later. On March 9, 2005, she was incarcerated at the McHenry County Jail in Illinois pending a deportation hearing.

A March 9, 2005 intake report did not reveal indications that Belbachir presented a significant suicide risk – in part because a “guard who filled out the intake report changed Belbachir’s answer ‘yes’ to the question ‘Are you currently extremely depressed or feeling suicidal?’ to ‘no,’” subsequently claiming he had made a mistake.

Five days later, Belbachir’s mental state had deteriorated significantly.

“Belbachir was suicidal and suffering from a ‘major depressive disorder’ – a warning sign for suicide,” according to the mental health progress notes of Vicki Frederick, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker employed by Centegra Health Systems, the jail’s medical ...

CCA Guard Killed During Riot was on Prisoners’ “Hit List”

by Matt Clarke

A federal lawsuit filed by the family of a guard murdered during a riot at a Mississippi facility claims that prison officials knew the guard was on a “hit list” compiled by prisoners when he was called in to help quell the disturbance.

Catlin Hugh Carithers, 24, was beaten to death during a May 20, 2012 riot at the Adams County Correctional Center near Natchez. The facility is operated by the Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company. The 2,567-bed Adams County facility houses low-security adult male immigrants for the federal Bureau of Prisons, most of whom face deportation after finishing their prison sentences.

Adams County Sheriff Chuck Mayfield initially told reporters that the disturbance involved a power struggle between two different factions of prisoners, but an affidavit filed in federal court by an FBI agent in August 2012 stated the riot was a protest by prisoners against poor food, inadequate medical care and alleged mistreatment by staff at the facility.

In addition to Carithers’ death, half a dozen guards were held hostage and others were trapped for hours inside the ...

Are We Really Witnessing the End of Mass Incarceration?

by James Kilgore

“This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration.” – Natasha Frost, associate dean of Northeastern University’s school of criminology and criminal justice

After more than three decades of “tough on crime,” the New Jim Crow, truth in sentencing and three strikes, the law-and-order ship looks adrift with no one rushing to bring it back on course. The bubble of prison construction is about to burst, if it hasn’t already. Pretty soon it may be difficult to find anyone who admits they once advocated serial prison building and trying fourteen-year-olds as adults. Crime figures are down while other distress meters rise into the danger zone – unemployment, homelessness and deteriorating public education. No longer can Directors of Corrections masquerade as first responders and lay claim to unlimited funding streams. Budgetary and social justice alarm bells are ringing loud and clear.

On top of this, as Soros Justice Fellow Tracy Huling notes, a “newfound political will” from state governors of both parties “to close prisons and, in some cases, to reduce the overall size of their incarceration systems” has emerged.At a local level, more than 40 municipalities and counties, ...

Florida Prisoner Awarded $1.2 Million for Burn Injuries

A Florida jury has awarded a prisoner $1.2 million in a negligence suit against the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company, following a trial that was delayed more than a year after a juror said he was afraid to reach ...

The Untold Story Of What Happened At An Overcrowded West Virginia Jail After The Chemical Spill

By Christie Thompson

When roughly 10,000 gallons of chemicals leaked into a West Virginia watershed this January, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency. Officials shut down schools, deployed the National Guard, and rallied volunteers to bring water and support to the 300,000 people without potable water.

But in the state’s emergency response, there was one group that many forgot: the 429 prisoners locked in Charleston’s overcrowded jail, who were entirely dependent on the state to provide them clean water.

The only article that looked at the spill’s impact on inmates was a small, glowing report published two months later in the Charleston Daily Mail. Jail officials trumpeted their success at “protecting” inmates by providing a “plentiful supply of bottled water.”

Joe DeLong, executive director of the West Virginia Regional Jail Authority, told the paper inmates were given eight bottles of water a day and that they had “essentially no access to the contaminated water.” Before the jail returned to using tap water on January 18, DeLong said the jail went through a “very extensive” flushing process that lasted two to three ...