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Articles about Prison Privatization
FORBES
Prison Operator Expects More Business
September 13, 2004
Associated Press
The nation's largest operator of private prisons expects to benefit from the Bush administration's expansion of federal police and thinks prison overcrowding could lead to more business.
Corrections Corporation of America, which houses about 63,000 inmates in 20 states and the District of Columbia, also told investors that the demographic producing many prisoners - males between 18 to 24 years old - is growing and should create more demand for its services.
"Successfully exploiting these opportunities should result in strong earnings and cash flow growth," CCA is telling investors as part of presentations it is giving this week.
Inmates riot, set fires at Colorado prison
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Associated Press
OLNEY SPRINGS, Colo. -- Several hundred inmates set fires and attacked their cellmates at a privately run prison in southern Colorado early Wednesday, leaving more than dozen people injured, authorities said.
.........
In all, 13 inmates were taken to hospitals. Nine were returned to the prison and four remained hospitalized, said Louise Chickering, a vice president with Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America, which owns the prison.
COURIER-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, KY
Prison had seen dramatic increase in inmates
September 17, 2004
BEATTYVILLE, Ky. Prison officials say the inmate riot Tuesday at a private Eastern Kentucky prison followed a dramatic increase in inmates and cutbacks in privileges such as free time outdoors.
An inmate advocate says the riot also came after allegations of inmate abuse and mistreatment increased and visits from friends and family were cut back.
The private company that runs the prison for the state, Corrections Corporation of America, does not believe the influx of prisoners from Vermont helped spark the uprising.
MIAMI HERALD
Report: Sex and violence plague prison for girls
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004
By Carol Marbin Miller
Prisoners denied an education, report says
With inadequate and virtually untrained staff and poor oversight, a prison for delinquent girls became a nightmarish place where girls were injured and sexually abused, a Palm Beach County grand jury wrote Monday in the latest rebuke of Florida's juvenile justice system.
The Florida Institute for Girls, a 100-bed prison for hard-to-manage girls operated by a Coral Gables company called Premier Behavioral Solutions, was beset by violence: at least three detainees suffered broken arms -- two in ''takedowns'' by staff -- and others were raped or assaulted by male guards who were not supposed to be alone with the girls.
As staff struggled to cope with the violence, girls frequently were locked in their rooms and denied activities, exercise and even an education, the 62-page report said. Classes were canceled 41 times during a six-month period, due to staff shortages.
''This environment fostered the hopelessness of many of the girls in the facility,'' the report said.
In response to the report, DJJ Secretary W.G. ''Bill'' Bankhead announced late Monday that DJJ and Premier had ''mutually agreed to end'' Premier's contract.
NEW YORK TIMES
Private Health Care in Jails Can Be a Death Sentence
February 27, 2005
By Paul von Zielbauer
Brian Tetrault was 44 when he was led into a dim county jail cell in upstate New York in 2001, charged with taking some skis and other items from his ex-wife's home. A former nuclear scientist who had struggled with Parkinson's disease, he began to die almost immediately, and state investigators would later discover why: The jail's medical director had cut off all but a few of the 32 pills he needed each day to quell his tremors.
Over the next 10 days, Mr. Tetrault slid into a stupor, soaked in his own sweat and urine. But he never saw the jail doctor again, and the nurses dismissed him as a faker. After his heart finally stopped, investigators said, correction officers at the Schenectady jail doctored records to make it appear he had been released before he died.
Two months later, Victoria Williams Smith, the mother of a teenage boy, was booked into another upstate jail, in Dutchess County, charged with smuggling drugs to her husband in prison. She, too, had only 10 days to live after she began complaining of chest pains. She phoned friends in desperation: The medical director would not prescribe anything more potent than Bengay or the arthritis medicine she had brought with her, investigators said. A nurse scorned her pleas to be hospitalized as a ploy to get drugs. When at last an ambulance was called, Ms. Smith was on the floor of her cell, shaking from a heart attack that would kill her within the hour. She was 35.
In these two harrowing deaths, state investigators concluded, the culprit was a for-profit corporation, Prison Health Services, that had moved aggressively into New York State in the last decade, winning jail contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars with an enticing sales pitch: Take the messy and expensive job of providing medical care from overmatched government officials, and give it to an experienced nationwide outfit that could recruit doctors, battle lawsuits and keep costs down.
A yearlong examination of Prison Health by The New York Times reveals repeated instances of medical care that has been flawed and sometimes lethal. The company's performance around the nation has provoked criticism from judges and sheriffs, lawsuits from inmates' families and whistle-blowers, and condemnations by federal, state and local authorities. The company has paid millions of dollars in fines and settlements.
................(total article 8624 words)
TENNESSEAN
Prison doctors, staff sued; lack of care cited
March 14, 2004
By Rob Johnson
Terry Crouch is out of prison now, but there's little rejoicing.
A convict who spent nearly 18 years behind bars, Crouch spent months battling blinding head-aches, vision loss and a precipitous weight loss.
His mother, Lynda Smith, who is a hospital nurse, feared that her son was suffering a serious affliction, but after repeated attempts to get prison doctors to examine Crouch thoroughly, she watched his rapid decline throughout the early months of 2003.
Doctors at the Tennessee Department of Correction's Lois DeBerry Special Needs Facility in west Nashville were treating him with antacids. It turns out he had a brain tumor.
Now, in a recently filed federal lawsuit, Smith is charging the state's private medical contractor, Missouri-based Correctional Medical Services, with civil-rights violations and malpractice claims after what the plaintiff calls ''gross negligence and the callous and deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of Terry Crouch.''
.........
The lawsuit alleges that Correctional Medical Services denied Crouch his constitutionally protected rights when its doctors repeatedly refused to perform advanced diagnostic tests to diagnose Crouch's affliction.
The suit alleges that the prison doctors were motivated by a desire to keep costs down and Correctional Medical Services' profits up.
Crouch has since been granted a medical furlough from the Department of Correction. His mother has become a court-appointed conservator.
Although Smith tried to care for Crouch at home, he is now in a Bordeaux nursing home.
PSIRU
Presbyterian Church acts to abolish private prisons
May 30, 2003
The 215 th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA on 30 May 2003 passed a resolution calling for the abolition of all for-profit private prisons. "We have ... trusted the oversight of this responsibility to our governmental leaders. This must continue to be their responsibility; it cannot be delegated from the public to the private sector. However, the shortage of funds that many governments are experiencing makes them receptive to offers from the private sector to build and/or operate their prisons. Since the goal of for-profit prisons is earning a profit for their shareholders, there is a basic and fundamental conflict with the concept of rehabilitation as the ultimate goal of the prison system. We believe that this is a glaring and significant flaw in our justice system and that for-profit prisons should be abolished," noted the rationale for the resolution.
LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER
Prison company in spotlight after riots, homicide
Friday, July 23, 2004
by Matt Gouras, Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Troubles seem to keep mounting this month for the nation's largest operator of private prisons. Corrections Corporation of America suffered through two prison riots this week - one in Colorado and another in Mississippi. The uprisings follow a July 7 homicide at a Nashville facility, which is still being investigated, and a smaller uprising in Oklahoma.
The spate of bad news is providing fodder for critics of privately run prisons and prompting a slight drop in CCA's stock price. In the prison industry, no news is often good news.
State to pay $500,000 for empty prison space in Mississippi
February 5, 2004
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - The state must continue paying for space at a Mississippi prison even while cells are left empty as inmates are brought back to Alabama, a bill expected to surpass $500,000.
The Department of Corrections' contract with the company that owns the private prison did not specify an end date, but it did require a 60-day notice for either party to terminate the agreement, said Steve Owen, spokesman for Corrections Corporation of America.
So while 379 male inmates are due back in Alabama by week's end, the state still must pay the $27.50 per diem cost for each of them through March 11 - 60 days after Prisons Commissioner Donal Campbell announced plans to begin returning the inmates to state prisons.
Prison won't discuss inmate's death
April 27, 2004
By Vic Ryckaert
Two prison employees were fired and a third was disciplined after convicted thief Wayne Spencer died suddenly this year in a state prison in New Castle.
Indiana State Police are looking into the medications given to Spencer, who died Feb. 26 after spending just one night at the New Castle Correctional Facility, a 378-bed facility that opened in 2002.
Spencer's death, and an unrelated lawsuit filed this month by a former prison employee, are raising questions about the quality of the health care at the prison.
.............
In a lawsuit filed this month in Marion Superior Court, the former health care administrator at the prison says she was driven out for questioning what she described as substandard care.
"If you're going to fit a certain population all in one spot, you're going to have to provide adequate health treatment," Barbara Logan told The Star. "This wasn't even the minimum."
Logan, 50, Muncie, was hired in April 2002 by Prison Health Services, a private company paid about $35 million a year to oversee health care for Indiana's 21,500 inmates.
State to investigate prison pharmacists
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
COLUMBUS - The state pharmacy board plans to investigate complaints from prison officials that pharmacists for inmates at two prisons provided wrong or mislabeled medicines.
Pharmacy Systems Inc.'s contract to provide drugs for London Correctional Institution and neighboring Madison Correctional Institution was terminated March 5, less than a year into the company's two-year, $575,000 agreement.
WIS10 TV
Prison health care workers speak out against privatization
April 29, 2004
(Columbia-AP) - Several prison health care workers spoke out Thursday against a proposal that could privatize health care in the state's prisons.
The workers worry that several hundred employees could lose their benefits or their jobs if South Carolina uses a private company for health care. The also say the quality of care will be reduced if a private company provides health care to inmates.
............
A report released in April said the Palmetto State already failed at privatizing health care in prisons and should not try again. The state's prisons used a private contractor for more than a decade for health care, but that practice stopped in 2000. A Legislative Audit Council report had been sharply critical of how the work was done and monitored.
Ex-operator settles prison suits
Saturday, July 24, 2004
By Robert E. Boczkiewicz
DENVER - An Edmond company that once operated a Colorado prison recently settled lawsuits that claimed prison managers repeatedly engaged in sexual misconduct, including rape, against female employees.
Three former female guards sued in U.S. District Court in Denver, seeking more than $10 million in damages from the company Dominion Correctional Services and three managers.
La. Shuts Youth Prison After Allegations
May 27, 2004
By Doug Simpson
TALLULAH, La. -- The allegations began soon after the prison opened for business: teenage inmates beaten by guards, beating each other, running loose on the rooftops of the barracks-like dorms.
Ten years later, Louisiana is shutting down its toughest juvenile prison, a move that child welfare advocates see as an admission of failure.
The closing comes after years of investigations -- by the U.S. Justice Department, human rights advocates and others -- called the lockup a place of chaos and brutality.
"Tallulah became known as one of the worst, if not the worst, juvenile facility in the country," said Mark Soler, head of the Youth Law Center, an advocacy group in Washington.
Advocates said the adult-style prison -- with individual cells inside cell blocks behind fences and razor wire -- created an atmosphere unlikely to rehabilitate the teens. They said the teens were more likely to commit far worse crimes when they got out.
............
The Tallulah prison was part of Louisiana's brief experiment with privately run juvenile lockups. Its clusters of beige metal buildings were built in 1994, with a capacity for 620 inmates. It was used for Louisiana's hard-core juveniles, convicted of homicide, assault, rape and other serious offenses.
The prison, situated in this town of 8,000 in Louisiana's impoverished Delta region, was first run by a management company with no experience in juvenile prisons. Within months, riots and allegations of abuse forced the state to take on-and-off control.
NEW YORK TIMES
Trouble in Private U.S. Jails Preceded Job Fixing Iraq's
June 6, 2004
By Fox Butterfield
SANTA FE, N.M. - Tyson Johnson was in the Santa Fe County jail here in January 2002, awaiting trial on charges of stalking and aggravated assault, when his longtime claustrophobia gave him anxiety attacks and he asked to see a psychiatrist.
But the jail, which is run by a private prison company, Management and Training Corporation, did not have a psychiatrist or a psychologist. So Mr. Johnson tried slitting his wrist and neck with a razor, and when that failed, he told the jail's nurse, Sheila Turner, "Today I am going to take myself out."
A guard, Crystal Quintana, told investigators that the nurse replied, "Let him." Ms. Turner denies this, her lawyer says.
Ten minutes later, Mr. Johnson, 27 and with no previous criminal record, was found hanging from a sprinkler head in a windowless isolation cell where he was supposedly being closely watched.
The account is taken from a lengthy Justice Department report, depositions in a civil lawsuit filed by Mr. Johnson's mother, Suzan Garcia, and statements by guards to investigators. And the Justice Department report prompts another question: Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft pick an executive of Management and Training, Lane McCotter, to lead a mission to Iraq to restore its prisons only a month after the report was released in the spring of 2003, charging unconstitutional practices in the jail?
................
It was Mr. McCotter, by his own account in Corrections.com, an industry online magazine, who selected Abu Ghraib to be the main American prison in Iraq and then directed its reconstruction after the major fighting ended. (Mr. McCotter left Iraq in September 2003, before the worst abuses by American guards there took place, and no one has suggested he bears responsibility.)
WPTZ 5, BURLINGTON, VT
Inmate Hospitalized Without Family's Knowledge
August 4, 2004
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- A Vermont inmate sent out of state to serve his sentence was hospitalized with pneumonia three weeks ago without anyone from the state or the prison telling the inmate's family that he was sick.
Prison officials said Wednesday that the emergency contact name on Joseph's prison record was notified about his hospital admission.
................
Corrections Corp. Of America, a private company, runs the Lee Adjustment Center. According to a policy between the Vermont Corrections Department and CCA, the Josephs should have been notified by the prison about the illness.
Inmate sues prison firm in abuse case
Friday, June 11, 2004
By Justin Mason
BRATTLEBORO -- One of two inmates who accused a prison guard of sexually assaulting him in a Kentucky prison is pursuing civil action against the nation's largest private prison corporation.
On behalf of a 19-year-old local man, Brattleboro attorney Thomas W. Costello filed suit Thursday morning in U.S. District Court against the Corrections Corporation of America of Nashville, Tenn.
Costello said the man, who asked to remain anonymous, is seeking $75,000 in damages for psychological injury he suffered from the alleged abuse. The suit also alleges that the man's constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment had been violated.
State returning prison inmates from Virginia
August 25, 2004
HARTFORD, Conn. - More than 400 Connecticut prison inmates housed in a Virginia prison will be returned to the state by year's end, Gov. M. Jodi Rell said Wednesday.
The announcement ends a five-year experiment transporting prisoners out-of-state that cost Connecticut taxpayers more than $60 million and led to two lawsuits over inmate deaths. The decision won bipartisan praise.
KVBC 3, LAS VEGAS
State To Take Over Nevada Women's Prison
June 17, 2004
Nevada legislators have voted to let the state take over operation of what has been a privately run women's prison in North Las Vegas -- after one lawmaker said conditions at the prison were "shameful."
The legislators' Interim Finance Committee endorsed the move after Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani said she recently toured the prison and learned of many problems -- including excessive use of psychotropic drugs on "hundreds" of inmates.
Problems in the past year included an inmate becoming pregnant. DNA testing showed a guard was the father. Corrections Corporation of America built and has operated the prison since 1997. Assemblywomen Vonne Chowning and Kathy McClain also backed the takeover from CCA, which is pulling out in September at the end of its current contract.
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