Human rights organizations monitoring complaints regarding conditions of confinement for prisoners held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities were likely not surprised when they received news that two detainees had committed suicide at the Eloy Detention Center outside Phoenix, Arizona. The April 2013 deaths of Jorge Garcia-Mejia, 40, and Elsa Guadalupe-Gonzalez, 24, both Guatemalan nationals, three days apart at the Corrections Corporation of America-operated facility, focused attention on for-profit companies housing immigration detainees.

According to Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, "Suicides are a red flag. They usually signify a much larger problem. Sometimes it's because of ineffective mental health treatment, but often times it's caused by poor staffing issues."

Prison Legal News has reported extensively on human rights abuses in private immigration detention facilities, as well as the fact that private prison firms lobby on immigration-related issues and have been implicated in Arizona's enactment of a harsh anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. [See, e.g., PLN, July 2013, p.1; Nov. 2010, p.1]. Around half of the approximately 34,000 immigration detainees held in ICE custody at any given time are housed in privately-operated prisons.

Unfortunately, the rapid expansion of the immigration detainee population, including asylum-seekers and other detainees ...

By the time Jan Brewer replaced Janet Napolitano as Arizona’s governor in 2009, it had been 22 years since the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) built the first prison in the United States designed exclusively for permanent lockdown – a prison that became the prototype for supermax facilities across the country.

Even before Brewer assumed the governorship and brought Charles L. Ryan out of retirement to run the ADC, Arizona’s prisons were known to be ruthless and inhumane. Few other prison systems can claim the dubious distinction of leaving a mentally ill prisoner in an outdoor cage for hours in scorching summer heat until she literally baked to death. [See: PLN, Feb. 2010, p.32].

Yet by playing politics, contracting with for-profit prison healthcare companies and kowtowing to private prison firms, Governor Brewer and ADC Director Ryan have taken a prison system already infamous for its draconian conditions and unfettered incompetence and made it deadlier and even more vindictive and profit-driven than ever before.

The ADC, with a $1.1 billion budget in 2012, will soon open a new maximum-security facility with 500 solitary confinement cells at a prison complex in Buckeye, at a cost of $50 million. In doing so, state ...

On May 25, 2012, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a grant of summary judgment to two defendants in a case involving a jail detainee who died after his prescribed medication was abruptly discontinued.

Wisconsin's La Crosse County Jail contracts with a private company, Health Professionals, Ltd. (HPL), to provide prisoner medical care. On-site doctor visits occurred only 2-4 hours, one day a week. The company's on-call physician, Dr. Stephen Cullinan, was based nearly 300 miles away in Peoria, Illinois.

John King suffered from serious health problems, including asthma, diabetes, a heart condition, high blood pressure, seizures, severe anxiety and other mental health issues when he was booked into the La Crosse County Jail on April 7, 2007.

King was taking "a daily regimen of medications that included five milligrams of alprazolam, a benzodiazepine." He entered the jail with "two grocery bags full of his medications, including a bottle with 115 one-milligram tablets of alprazolam."

Nurse Karen Mondry-Anderson called Dr. Cullinan because alprazolam was excluded from HPL's formulary of preferred drugs. "Obviously unable to examine King, and not bothering to obtain the details about [his] prescription," Dr. Cullinan ordered King to be weaned off the alprazolam in three days. ...

On June 18, 2013 the Idaho Board of Correction voted not to renew the state's $29.9 million contract with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) – the nation's largest for-profit prison company – to operate the 2,104-bed Idaho Correctional Center (ICC). The state's contract with CCA will be rebid once it expires on June 30, 2014, though the Idaho Department of Correction will not be allowed to submit its own bid.

The Board's decision to let the contract expire marks the fourth private prison contract that CCA has lost since mid-May, including two in Texas and one in Mississippi.

On June 10, 2013, CCA was notified by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice that the state would not renew contracts to house prisoners at the company's 2,216-bed Dawson State Jail and 2,103-bed Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility, effective August 31, 2013. The Texas legislature had cut $97 million from the state's budget in anticipation of removing prisoners from the facilities. [See: PLN, June 2013, p.1].

The Dawson State Jail has been a source of controversy for CCA after several prisoners died amid allegations of medical neglect. Pam Weatherby, serving a one-year sentence, died at Dawson in May 2010; her parents said ...

On June 7, 2013, Prison Legal News, represented by the ACLU of Vermont, filed a lawsuit in state court after submitting a public records request seeking information about legal settlements involving Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) – the nation's largest for-profit prison firm. The Vermont Department of Corrections contracts with CCA to house hundreds of Vermont prisoners in out-of-state facilities.

As part of its reporting on conditions in private prisons, PLN had submitted a public records request to CCA in the fall of 2012 that sought information about the resolution of lawsuits filed by Vermont prisoners housed in CCA-operated prisons. The company ignored the request as well as a subsequent administrative appeal.

"The public needs to know how prisoners are treated and to understand how the for-profit prison industry works," said PLN editor Paul Wright. "By reviewing CCA's litigation settlements, Prison Legal News can report on the ways in which Vermont prisoners are being injured at CCA facilities and suffering violations of their constitutional rights, and how much CCA is willing to pay for the misconduct of its employees."

"This is an important case for Vermont public records law," stated Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont. "States ...

A federal judge in Mississippi has sentenced William Grady Sims, 61, the former mayor of Walnut Grove who also served as warden of a privately-operated correctional facility, to 7 months in federal prison for telling a prisoner to lie to investigators about a sexual encounter.

Sims served as mayor of Walnut Grove, population of about 1,900, on a part-time basis from his 1981 election until his forced resignation upon pleading guilty to federal charges. The February 14, 2012 plea bargain bars Sims from ever holding public office again.

His plea to a charge of witness intimidation also resulted in the dismissal of a sexual assault charge stemming from when Sims was employed as warden of the Walnut Grove Transition Center, which was operated by private prison firm GEO Group at the time.

On or about November 26, 2009, Sims took a female prisoner at the facility to a hotel in the nearby town of Carthage and had sex with her. The woman's name was not revealed; Sims was secretly recorded in March 2010 telling her "to lie to investigators," which led to the witness intimidation charge. [See: PLN, Aug. 2012, p.45; April 2012, p.1].

At his April 24, 2012 sentencing ...

By Matthew Clarke

On January 30, 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had arrested twelve guards and a cook who were employed by private prison company Community Education Centers (CEC) at the Ector County Correctional Center (ECCC) in Odessa, Texas. The ECCC holds about 235 prisoners and is being operated by CEC under contract with the United States Marshals Service (USMS).

The indictments are against Valerie Ann Arenivas, 22, Ashley Dawn Clark, 29, Jazmine Desiree Cruz, 19, Barbara Jean Garrett, 52, Jennifer Amida Lopez, 25, Jonathon Wayne Meza, 29, Nancy Torres Morales, 36, Gabriel Angel Navarette, 23, Dennis Earl Newsome, 63, Jovanna Marie Olivarez, 21, Charlette Smith, 46, Jessica Lucia Smith, 33, and Matthew Ryan Williams, 26. Each is charged individually with one count of accepting a bribe. Each faces up to 15 years in prison and up to a quarter-million dollar fine. The indictments specifically charge a violation of U.S.C. § 201(b)(2)(C) and state that the contract with the USMS conferred on the CEC employees the status of "public official” making accepting the bribe and smuggling a breach of official duties.

The indictments were initially sealed, but were unsealed after the arrests were made. They allege ...

In February 2013, the Tennessee Court of Appeals issued its second ruling in a long-running lawsuit filed under the state's Public Records Act against Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest for-profit private prison company. The Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling of the lower court, holding that CCA must produce documents that it had refused to disclose, plus pay attorney fees and costs.

The suit was filed by PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann. In 2007, CCA had denied Friedmann's request for records related to litigation filed against CCA and for reports or audits that found contract violations by the company, among other documents. The Chancery Court ruled in Friedmann's favor on July 29, 2008, finding that CCA was the functional equivalent of a government agency and ordering the company to produce the requested records. [See: PLN, Oct. 2008, p.24].

CCA appealed and the Court of Appeals affirmed in September 2009, noting, "With all due respect to CCA, this Court is at a loss as to how operating a prison could be considered anything less than a governmental function." The appellate court narrowed the lower court's ruling by exempting one CCA-run Tennessee prison (the South Central Correctional Center), finding ...

The Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) is moving forward with a legislative mandate to privatize its entire medical system. Whether the plan is implemented, however, may depend on the outcome of a lawsuit filed by prison health care workers challenging the FDOC's outsourcing of medical services for prisoners.

During its 2011 session, the Florida legislature approved a budget provision that authorized the privatization of 29 south Florida prisons. A challenge by the union that represented FDOC employees at the time, the Florida Police Benevolent Association, resulted in the Leon County Circuit Court ruling that the provision was unconstitutional. [See: PLN, April 2012, p.38; Feb. 2012, p.1]. While that issue generated considerable media attention, overlooked until now has been the state's plan to privatize the FDOC's entire medical care system.

That system serves Florida's 101,000 prisoners at an annual cost of around $400 million. The privatization plan seeks to save at least 7% annually. Contracts that the FDOC approved in April 2012 exceeded that amount, with anticipated savings of 11% in 2012 and 13% in 2013 from what the agency spent in 2009-2010, which is the benchmark set by the legislature. The winning contract bids were the two lowest-cost proposals.

Under ...

In April 2013, two professors at Temple University in Philadelphia released a study, titled "Cost Analysis of Public and Contractor Operated Prisons," that alleged financial savings through prison privatization and equal or better performance by private prison companies.

According to an April 29, 2013 press release issued by Temple University, the study lauding the benefits of prison privatization was funded by "members of the private corrections industry." However, the research study itself, produced by Temple's Center for Competitive Government, did not disclose that it was funded by private prison firms – including CCA, the GEO Group and MTC.

Further, the authors of the study, Professors Simon Hakim and Erwin A. Blackstone, submitted editorials regarding the results of their research that were published by newspapers in Oklahoma, Maine, Florida and Kentucky. Three of those four editorials likewise did not mention their study's private prison funding source.

Nor did Professors Hakim and Blackstone disclose that they have a predisposition to favor the private sector, as they both have previously advocated for privatization of government services, including privatizing certain police functions.

"Any published or publicly released research should identify all sources of funding in support of that research," said Prof. Edward L. Queen, ...