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American Legislative Exchange
Council
Private prison
company’s growth went hand-in-hand with political influence: Jon
Collins September 26, 2011 Minnesota Independent
NPR expose on the for-profits role in the AZ
immigration law
November 28, 2011 Arizona Republic
Arizona's state lawmakers are especially receptive to corporate money and
influence, according to a new report from two liberal-leaning advocacy groups.
The 100-page report strives to show how the American Legislative Exchange
Council uses "its resources to shepherd legislation from the corporate boardroom
to the governor's desk," said Marge Baker, executive vice president at the
Washington D.C,-based People for the American Way Foundation. ALEC describes
itself as a nonpartisan national association of state legislators. Critics,
however, say it is a conservative-based partisan organization that brings
together about 300 large corporations and 2,000 predominately Republican
legislators on task forces to produce model bills. Lawmakers then take those
bills back to their state legislatures in hopes of passing them into law. The
groups released the report, "ALEC in Arizona: The Voice of Corporate Special
Interests in the Halls of Arizona's Legislature," as ALEC prepares to hold its
"States and Nation Policy Summit" in Scottsdale, beginning Wednesday. More than
50 Arizona lawmakers are members of the group. Arizona corporations that provide
financial support to ALEC include the Salt River Project, Taser International,
and Pinnacle West Capital Corp., the parent company of Arizona Public Services
Co., the state's largest utility company. "There's no way ordinary citizens can
match the level of access and influence that ALEC provides to these
corporations," Baker said. "So Arizonans are subjected to laws that serve the
interests of the rich and powerful." But Kaitlyn Buss, an ALEC spokeswoman, said
the organization is merely a "resource" for lawmakers. "Our main goal and focus
is to promote free market, limited government and federalism (ideals)," Buss
said. "We do have model legislation. It's a main part of what we do, but that
doesn't give it priority over anything else that might be introduced at the
Legislature." The report includes side-by-side comparisons of dozens of "model
bills" generated at ALEC conferences, and those introduced at the Arizona
Legislature. In Arizona, lawmakers passed 19 of the 36 model bills introduced in
2010, ALEC officials said. Typically, ALEC model legislation -- including those
highlighted in the report -- focus on anti-immigration, anti-union, and
anti-federal health-care reform initiatives.
September 16, 2010 Think Progress
In December 2009, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a powerful
front group that helps corporate representatives craft template legislation for
state lawmakers, funded partially by the private prison industry — hosted
Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce (R) and began debate on legislation that would
provide broad powers to local police to arrest anyone who might look like an
immigrant. ALEC then distributed the template legislation to its members. The
January/February 2010 edition of ALEC’s magazine highlights the draft version of
SB1070 — the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” — as model
legislation. In April of this year, Pearce then introduced ALEC’s template as
the infamous SB1070 law. Notably, the ALEC task force which helped Pearce devise
his racial profiling law included Laurie Shanblum, a lobbyist from the
mega-private prison corporation Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) which
previously played a role in privatizing many of Texas’ prisons. An investigation
from Arizona’s KPHO-TV found more ties between SB1070 and the private prison
industry: Paul Senseman, Gov. Janet Brewer’s (R-AZ) deputy chief of staff was a
former lobbyist for CCA (his wife is still a lobbyist for CCA) and Chuck
Coughlin, Brewer’s campaign chairman, runs the lobbying firm in Arizona that
represents CCA. In These Times reporter Beau Hodai, who also reported much of
SB1070’s connections to the private prison industry, has a chart to explain the
relationship. CCA is set to receive well over $74 million in tax dollars in
FY2010 for running immigration detention centers. In a presentation given
earlier this year, Pershing Square Capital, a hedge fund with a large financial
stake in CCA, suggested that CCA’s profitability depends on increasing numbers
of immigrants sent to prison. Many of the legislators helping to earn CCA more
profits with radical anti-immigrant bills mirroring SB1070 have been recipients
of private prison industry cash or have worked closely with the CCA-funded ALEC
organization: – TENNESSEE: Earlier this year, legislators in Tennessee passed an
immigration bill with provisions “similar to, but less harsh than, those of SB
1070, including requiring city and county jails in the state to report any
person who may be in violation of immigration laws to U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.” But that wasn’t enough: right-wing local lawmakers also
passed a resolution honoring Arizona’s SB1070, and a delegation of state
lawmakers promised to introduce an anti-immigrant bill even “broader” than
SB1070 in 2011. Many of the leading local lawmakers who voted for the
anti-immigrant bill and resolution received thousands of dollars from CCA’s
political action committee in the past two years, including State Reps. Gerald
McCormick ($250), Barrett Rich ($500), Eric Watson ($250) and State Sens. Bill
Ketron ($1,000), Jim Tracy ($500), Dolores Gresham ($1,000), Bo Watson ($500),
and Jack Johnson ($500). Tracy, who sponsored the resolution honoring Arizona’s
SB1070, also received $2,000 directly from CCA founder Tom Beasley, reports the
Nashville City Paper. CCA retains five lobbyists in the state and spent at least
$50,000 this year to lobby on immigration and other issues. – OKLAHOMA: Rep.
Mary Fallin (R-OK), who won her party’s nomination to run for governor this
year, received the maximum donation permitted by law from CCA. State Rep. Randy
Terrill (R-OK), who announced that he was planning an “Arizona-Plus” immigration
bill that would be harsher than SB1070, is a proud member of the CCA-funded
American Legislative Exchange Council. – COLORADO: A group of Republican
lawmakers in Colorado, after a research trip to Arizona this summer, have stated
that they plan on passing a SB1070 law in Colorado next year. CCA’s lobbyists in
Colorado have raised funds for many of the lawmakers in the group. CCA lobbyist
Margy Christiansen raised $400 State Rep. Randy Baumgardner, one of the leaders
of Colorado’s Arizona expedition, and CCA lobbyist Jason Dunn raised $150 for
State Sen. Mike Kopp, the Republican minority leader who is promising to promote
an SB1070 bill next session. – FLORIDA: During the gubernatorial primary
campaign between disgraced businessman Rick Scott and Attorney General Bill
McCollum (R-FL), the prospect of importing Arizona’s SB1070 became a prominent
issue in the race, with both candidates promising to bring a version of the law
to the state. While many Florida Republicans recoiled at the idea, which stands
to alienate many Hispanic voters, a cadre of state lawmakers and candidates for
the state legislature, most funded by the prison industry, announced their
support for an SB1070-type law. State Rep. Bill Snyder, who has received $500
from CCA, pledged to introduce a bill more draconian than SB1070. State House
candidate Ben Albritton, another outspoken supporter of SB1070, took $500 from
CCA, and State Rep. Joe Negron, who has been working with Snyder to sponsor the
bill, received $1,000 from the Geo Group, another major private prison
contractor which operates immigrant detention centers. Overall, the Republican
Party of Florida has been the biggest recipient of prison industry cash in the
past two years: $37,000 from CCA and $145,000 from the Geo Group. –
PENNSYLVANIA: In the Key State, State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-PA) introduced the
ALEC-drafted “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” one month
before State Sen. Russell Pearce (R-AZ) introduced his version of the bill in
Arizona. Metcalfe is a highly active member of ALEC. He was paid $1,500 by ALEC
just to attend its meetings with CCA lobbyists on how to draft the law. In
Tennessee, the average daily number of immigration detainees sank to 40 in
FY2009, down from 95 in FY2008. This may change with CCA’s aggressive lobbying
for more laws encouraging aggressive arrests of immigrants or people who look
like immigrants. Charles Maldonado, who has reported on CCA’s corrupting
influence at the Nashville City Paper, notes that CCA may see new business at
its West Tennessee Detention Facility with the passage of more SB1070-related
laws. ALEC, with funds from several private prison companies, helped sponsor
“truth-in-sentencing” and “three-strikes-you’re-out” laws all over the country
for the past two decades. These laws have greatly increased incarceration rates,
and have contributed to America’s distinction of having the largest prison
population in the world.
October 29, 2007 Governing
In recent years, the American Legislative Exchange Council has been one
of the most formidable actors on the state policy stage, crafting and
helping to enact new laws by the hundreds. But massive staff turnover
and managerial complaints have led to questions about whether the
effectiveness of ALEC, as the group is commonly known, may diminish.
Twenty-two members of the staff, plus one part-timer and two
consultants, have left since the beginning of last year, when ALEC hired
Lori Roman as its new executive director. That's a considerable
percentage of ALEC's total staff, which at press time numbered 29, with
three vacancies. Some of the ALEC activists out in the country are
beginning to raise questions about all this. "What the hell's going on?"
asks Mississippi state Rep. Bill Denny, an ALEC state chair. "We just
lost all of those people, and they couldn't all have been bad." Numerous
former staff members describe a work environment that grew hostile and
"toxic" over the past 18 months. ALEC recently settled a lawsuit brought
by one former staffer and faces two pending complaints lodged with the
federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Roman says the
departures were neither surprising nor alarming, noting that a change in
management, particularly when the new leader comes in with a different
style, is often unsettling. Some people in such a situation are bound to
leave, she suggests. Roman, who previously ran faith-based programs in
the federal Department of Education, declined to speak to many of the
complaints on the record. She handed Governing a statement that says, "ALEC's
new management team carries out the mission of ALEC with a focus on
ethics, accountability and high performance. Some people may not like
that style of management, but the facts show that it has made ALEC
stronger. In 2006, we went from a $6 million organization to a $7
million organization, with no increase in turnover." Published staff
reports appear to contradict the turnover claim. They show that the
organization lost only five staff members in 2005 and just three in
2004, compared with the more than 20 who have left since the start of
2006. ALEC's staff serves as the conduit between legislators and
representatives from private-sector companies, who meet together on
eight task forces that draft model legislation and policy statements.
ALEC's conservative policies have been widely translated into actual
legislation. In recent years, the group has averaged 1,500 bill
introductions per year, with about 200 of those bills becoming law.
ALEC's influence has been felt across a wide range of issues, from
environmental and prison policy to gun owners' rights and digital-rights
management. Turmoil on the inside is bound to limit this kind of
influence, and in a few of ALEC's strongest states, affect the dynamics
of the legislative process. Perhaps for this reason, not all the top
ALEC officials are willing to acknowledge that serious turmoil exists.
"I can assure you the supermajority of the board is very excited about
where ALEC is going," says Kansas state Sen. Susan Wagle, the
organization's immediate past chair. Georgia state Rep. Earl Ehrhart,
who chaired ALEC's board when it hired Roman, calls the complaints
"lying, crying garbage without any facts to back up what they say." But
based on a series of interviews conducted by Governing, these defenders
appear to be in the minority. "I have deep concerns about it," says Iowa
state Rep. Dolores Mertz, ALEC's national chair. "Right now, it's going
through a trying timse." Other legislators, some speaking on a
not-for-attribution basis, have made complaints about arbitrariness,
sloppy mistakes and a lack of responsiveness. Some private-sector
members, who are the group's financial mainstay, also have expressed
concern, with members from the oil and pharmaceutical industries, for
example, saying they are reconsidering their contributions. Even if some
of the most serious allegations prove false, the loss of so much
institutional knowledge is bound to have an effect on ALEC, if only in
the near term. "It's always jarring if there's new staff, because they
have to start from scratch," says Iowa state Sen. Jeff Angelo, a member
of ALEC's criminal-justice task force. "Most of the model legislation
you're working on, it takes time."
December 9, 2006 Arizona Republic
Hundreds of state lawmakers from around the country will work with
industry lobbyists in the Valley today to craft model legislation on
tort reform, corporate tax policy and industry regulations. The task
force meetings cap the three-day States & Nation Policy Summit at the JW
Marriott Desert Ridge Resort of the conservative American Legislative
Exchange Council, a group that wields significant influence on state
legislation but is virtually unknown to average citizens. Dozens of
Arizona legislators belong to ALEC, at a rate that the state chairman
says is higher than in most states. And its influence in Arizona has
been seen in recent years on legislation ranging from private prisons
and school choice to tax policy and environmental regulations. Model
legislation and policy positions adopted at the local summit could lead
to new laws proposed in Arizona and statehouses across the country.
Nationwide ALEC boasts membership from about one-third of all state
legislators in the nation and bills itself as a non-partisan but
conservative group that promotes Jeffersonian principles of individual
liberty, free markets and limited government. But it is the group's
connections to corporate America and its strategy of developing
industry-approved model legislation for its members around the country
that distinguish it from other legislative groups. That also has
generated a lot of criticism, especially from environmental
organizations. Sen. Bob Burns, R-Peoria, Arizona's state chairman for
ALEC, says the criticism of corporations' role in the organization is
unfounded. "Are we supposed to lock the private sector out of the
legislative process?" he asked. But critics believe many in the public
would be concerned if they knew the role that corporate interests play
in developing ALEC's model legislation and policy positions. Last year,
ALEC says, more than 1,000 ALEC bills were introduced in state
legislatures, including Arizona's. About 20 percent of the total went
into law. "If you are all for corporate America controlling the agenda
in America's statehouses, there is nothing wrong with it," says Adam
Schafer, executive director of the National Caucus of Environmental
Legislators. "But if you think elected officials should be the ones
writing the laws, you may find problems with the way they do their model
legislation." Corporations and industry groups almost completely finance
the group's activities through membership dues and donations, and pay
for sometimes extravagant trips for many legislators and their families
to conference destinations at resorts around the country. Companies
spend thousands of additional dollars to buy seats at the table during
task force meetings where the group's model legislation is crafted. ALEC
officials say industry representatives pay the task force dues starting
at around $2,500 annually to gain a seat on each task force in their
areas of interest. The dues for some task forces are higher, but ALEC
officials wouldn't say how high the dues for industry members can go.
The task forces are structured with two chambers: one consisting of
legislators, the other of industry representatives, ALEC officials say.
In task force meetings, which are not open to the media, industry
lobbyists can push their own pet legislation or block bills they oppose.
To become model legislation, both the public sector and private sector
sides must approve the bill. Lori Roman, ALEC's executive director,
points out that task force legislation must be approved by legislative
board members before it becomes model legislation. And Michael Bowman,
director of policy and strategic initiatives, says it would be "almost
criminal" not to consult industry representatives and notes that
companies sometimes have competing interests anyway. "We have so many
special-interest groups or so many business interests or corporations
here that they don't even agree," he said. "You can't pass something
that favors your own company because another company is going to say,
'We're not going to vote for that.' " Russell Smoldon, a lobbyist for
SRP and ALEC's private-sector chairman in Arizona, says corporate
influence on public policy shouldn't be viewed any differently than
union influence or the influence of environmental groups. But critics
say that the industry lobbyists may have huge economic incentives to
push legislation they favor that may not be in the public good. A
representative for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is the co-chair of the tax
and fiscal policy task force, for example, and the group has pushed
model legislation and policy papers critical of tobacco taxes. Robert
Dewey, a vice president for Defenders of Wildlife, which has issued a
scathing report on the group, calls ALEC a "Trojan horse" that allows
"corporate America to exercise significant influence over state
legislation in almost every statehouse around the country." Others, like
Tim Delaney of the Phoenix-based Center for Leadership, Ethics & Public
Service, question how close they adhere to Jeffersonian principles. "I'm
not sure Thomas Jefferson wanted to have Big Tobacco or Big Pharmacy
companies in the backroom writing legislation," he said.
August 14, 2006 In These Times
While New Mexico’s landscape may make the state the Land of
Enchantment, its rapidly growing rates of incarceration have been
utterly disenchanting. What’s worse, New Mexico is at the top of the
nation’s list for privatizing prisons; nearly one-half of the state’s
prisons and jails are run by corporations. Supposedly, states turn to
private companies to cope better with chronic overcrowding and for
low-cost management. However, a closer look suggests a different
rationale. A recent report from the Montana-based Institute on Money in
State Politics reveals that during the 2002 and 2004 election cycles,
private prison companies, directors, executives and lobbyists gave $3.3
million to candidates and state political parties across 44 states.
According to Edwin Bender, executive director of the Institute on Money
in State Politics, private prison companies strongly favor giving to
states with the toughest sentencing laws—in essence, the ones that are
more likely to come up with the bodies to fill prison beds. Those
states, adds Bender, are also the ones most likely to have passed
“three-strikes” laws. Those laws, first passed by Washington state
voters in 1993 and then California voters in 1994, quickly swept the
nation. They were largely based on “cookie-cutter legislation” pushed by
the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), some of whose members
come from the ranks of private prison companies. Florida leads the pack
in terms of private prison dollars, with its candidates and political
parties receiving almost 20 percent of their total contributions from
private prison companies and their affiliates. Florida already has five
privately owned and operated prisons, with a sixth on the way. It’s also
privatized the bulk of its juvenile detention system. Texas and New
Jersey are close behind. But in Florida, some of the influence peddling
finally seems to be backfiring. Florida State Corrections Secretary
James McDonough alarmed private prison companies with a comment during
an Aug. 2 morning call-in radio show. “I actually think the state is
better at running the prisons,” McDonough told an interviewer. His
comments followed an internal audit last year by the state’s Department
of Management Services, which demonstrated that Florida overpaid private
prison operators by $1.3 million. Things may no longer be quite as sunny
as they once were in Florida for the likes of Nashville, Tenn.-based
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the former Wackenhut, now
known as the GEO Group of Boca Raton, Fla. But with a little bit of
spiel-tinkering—and a shift of attention to other states—the prison
privatizers are likely to keep going. The key shift, Bender explains, is
that “the prison industry has gone from a we-can-save-you-money pitch to
an economic-development model pitch.” In other words, says Bender, “you
need [their] prisons for jobs.” If political donations are any measure,
economically challenged and poverty-stricken states like New Mexico are
a great target. In this campaign cycle, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson
has already received more contributions from a private prison company
than any other politician campaigning for state office in the United
States. The Institute of Money in State Politics, which traced the
donations, reported that GEO has contributed $42,750 to Richardson since
2005—and another $8,000 to his running mate, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish.
Another $30,000 went from GEO to the Richardson-headed Democratic
Governors Association this past March. Richardson’s PAC, Moving America
Forward, was another prominent recipient of GEO donations. Now, its
former head, prominent state capitol lobbyist Joe Velasquez, is a
registered lobbyist for GEO Care Inc., a healthcare subsidiary that runs
a hospital in New Mexico. But don’t get the idea that GEO has any
particular love for Democrats: $95,000 from the corporation went to the
Republican Governors Association last year alone. What companies like
GEO do love are the millions of dollars rolling in from lucrative New
Mexico contracts to run the Lea County Correctional Facility (operating
budget: $25 million/year), and the Guadalupe County Correctional
Facility ($13 million/year), among others. CCA also owns and operates
the state’s only women’s facility in Grants ($11 million per year). To
make sure that those dollars keep flowing, GEO and CCA have perfected
the art of the “very tight revolving door,” says Bender, which involves
snapping up former corrections administrators, PAC lobbyists and state
officials to serve as consultants to private prison companies. In fact,
the current New Mexico Corrections Department Secretary Joe Williams was
once on GEO’s payroll as their warden of the Lea County Correctional
Facility. Earlier this year, Williams was placed on unpaid
administrative leave after accusations surfaced that he spent state
travel and phone funds to pursue a very close relationship with Ann
Casey. Casey is a registered lobbyist in New Mexico for Wexford Health
Sources, which provides health care for prisoners at Grants, and Aramark,
which provides most of the state’s inmate meals. In her non-lobbying
hours, it turns out that Casey is also an assistant warden at a state
prison in Centralia, Ill. It appears that even for a prison industry
enchanted by public-private partnership, Williams and Casey may have
gone too far.
May 2, 2006 Progressive State Network
The Institute on Money in State Politics, a tireless group of people
who compile campaign finance data for all fifty states and regularly
report national trends, have a new report "Policy Lock-Down: Prison
Interests Court Political Players" looking at the $3.3 million private
prison companies have donated to state-level actors in the last two
election cycles. The report specifically notes: Analysis of campaign
contributions made to state-level candidates and political parties also
reveals that private-prison interests: Concentrated their giving on
legislative candidates who, if elected, act on state budgets and
sentencing laws. These candidates received almost half of the money
given to candidates — slightly more than $1 million. So the priority is
budgets and people who determine sentencing? This will come as no shock
to anyone who has studied the origin of strict sentencing laws in
America. As Nathan Newman noted in "Governing the Nation From the
Statehouses: ": For two decades, ALEC has been a driving force in
lobbying for legislation to hand over prisons to corporate management,
with 95,000 inmates in at least 31 states or 6.5% of all prisoners in
private prisons, two-thirds of them in prisons run by Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), one of ALEC's leading corporate sponsors.
Seven states place more than one-fifth of their prison population in
corporate-run prisons. A 2000 report by the Western States Center, "The
Prison Payoff: The Role of Politics and Private Prisons in the
Incarceration Boom," traced the rise of private prisons to "tough on
crime" legislation sponsored by ALEC and its allies that extended
sentences and pushed prison populations beyond the capacities of
existing state facilities. And conservatives who pushed budget-busting
sentencing laws then turned around and blamed guard salaries for the
resulting funding crisis. With tight fiscal budgets, privatization was
sold as the solution. State prison guards, who had often supported many
of the tougher sentencing laws, have found their jobs disappearing to
privatization through this two-step process. In Wisconsin, for example,
more than 3000 inmates are sent out of state to CCA facilities, leaving
the remaining state guards in overcrowded prisons subject to riots and
other threats. CCA isn't just one of ALEC's leading sponsors. For a
time, they chaired the task force that authors model legislation on
sentencing issues for ALEC. Humorously, when Wyoming's Casper
Star-Tribune reported on this fact, they drew a quick response from CCA,
claiming that CCA does not believe that mandatory sentencing laws help
their business. No word yet on how private prison companies are
responding to the new Institute report.
Wyoming Legislature
March 13, 2006 Star-Tribune
Wyoming’s legislators form a citizen’s legislature ordinary people,
who like yourself and your neighbors, work for a living and strive to do
what’s best for the people of Wyoming, within the confines of the state
and United States Constitutions. Because Wyoming legislators put on
their pants (or pantyhose) one leg at a time, they don’t necessarily
come up with ideas for legislation all on their own, out of their own
fertile imaginations. Sometimes they get help, from local and national
sources, some of which might surprise Wyoming citizens. According to
Wyoming legislators and legislative staff, there are several
organizations out there that provide research, data and even model
legislation to legislatures and legislators throughout the country. •
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a bipartisan
membership association for conservative state lawmakers, to advance the
“Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism
and individual liberty.” Headquarters is in Washington, D.C. Founded in
1973 by Paul Weyrich, who also helped found the conservative Heritage
Foundation think tank, the Moral Majority and the Council for National
Policy. ALEC, which claims 2,400 legislator members, charges legislators
$100 per biennium to join (constituting less than 2 percent of the
annual budget), but then charges corporations (over 300) and
associations graduated memberships at $5,000; $10,000; $25,000 and
$50,000 to sit at the table with legislators and craft “model”
legislation. Corporate funds underwrite travel scholarships, by which
legislators and their families can attend national meetings. ALEC’s
corporate members have a keen interest in the bills that they craft. For
example, model legislation for "three strikes" and "minimum sentencing"
-- laws to keep convicted criminals in prison longer was partially
crafted by the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest
private prison organization, when it sat on ALEC's Criminal Justice Task
Force. The odds are fairly even, that if you ask your state legislator
whether he or she is a member of the American Legislative Exchange
Council, the answer will be “Yes.” (Of course, every member of the
Wyoming Legislature and Legislative Service Office is a member of the
National Conference of State Legislatures and the Council of State
Governments, by virtue of being elected to or employed by the Wyoming
Legislature.) The trouble is, ALEC itself and Rep. Pete Illoway,
R-Cheyenne (a member of ALEC’s national board of directors) won’t tell
you who is a member of ALEC. Illoway did say that of Wyoming’s 90 state
legislators, close to half are members of ALEC, but he refused to
provide a list, though he said he has both Republican and Democratic
members. Interviewed earlier this week in his office, Rep. Illoway said
he took great offense of a letter that had appeared that morning in the
Casper Star Tribune, from Brett Glass. Glass, an Internet access
provider in Wyoming, charged that “ALEC drafts "model" bills which favor
its corporate sponsors. It then encourages state legislators to
introduce the bills in their home states. This year's concealed weapons
bill, for example, contains language from ALEC's "Concealed Carry
Outright Recognition Act," while the "duty to retreat" bill was based on
ALEC's "Castle Doctrine Act" (as in, "a man's home is his castle"). Both
were drafted by a committee chaired by a lobbyist from Wal-Mart, the
world's largest retailer of firearms and ammunition. A bill which would
have increased tobacco taxes, and used the proceeds to fund
substance-abuse prevention, was opposed strongly by legislators and
lobbyists involved with ALEC -- none of whom were registered as lobbying
for the group.” Illoway said he’s used model legislation from ALEC once
eight years ago n a bill against the Kyoto global warming treaty. “I
haven’t used a model bill since then,” he said. He said he didn’t know
of any ALEC-oriented bills introduced this session, although an ALEC
Report Card said five such bills had been introduced and one passed into
law. (ALEC headquarters did not respond to a request about what those
bills were.) Illoway said that as a conservative and as “an anti-tax
guy,” he enjoys going to ALEC conferences mostly to interact with other
like-minded legislators from around the country.
Congress and the White House
Briefing Remarks by Alex Friedmann on HR 2450 January 25, 2010
Briefing Remarks by Judy Greene on HR 2450 January 25, 2010
Freedom Forum CEO Tied to For-Profit Prisons An advocate for--and
against--freedom of information
January 9, 2012 Salon
The Obama campaign is keeping mum on the role senior advisor Broderick Johnson
played in lobbying for the 2008 Wall Street bailout when he worked as a hired
gun for the country’s largest financial services companies. Johnson’s past work
as a lobbyist was noted in the press when he was appointed a top Obama surrogate
in late October, but not the details of his extensive and lucrative work for the
financial services industry. Johnson’s hiring despite his recent work for Wall
Street strikes a dissonant note in view of the Obama camp’s reported strategy of
“channeling anti-Wall Street anger” as a way to take on the Republicans. Records
show that in 2008, as an employee at Washington law firm Bryan Cave, Johnson
lobbied for the $700 billion TARP bailout on behalf of the Financial Services
Forum, which is composed of the CEOs of the 20 biggest financial institutions
doing business in the United States. Forum members include big names like
Goldman Sachs, UBS, AIG, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank. From 2007 through
the first quarter of 2011, Johnson and a handful of other Bryan Cave lobbyists
were paid $450,000 by the Financial Services Forum, records show. Johnson and a
small number of colleagues brought in a total of $1.3 million to Bryan Cave from
the financial services industry over the past five years. That includes work he
did for Fannie Mae, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, the Electronic Payments
Coalition and the investment firm J.C. Flowers. Asked for details about
Johnson’s work on the bailout, an Obama campaign spokesperson responded only
that “Broderick is no longer a lobbyist — he deregistered in April — and he will
not discuss any matters related to his clients with the campaign or
administration.” Because of the campaign’s reticence, we don’t know many of the
details of Johnson’s work for the Financial Services Forum beyond the fact that
at the height of the fall 2008 crisis, he lobbied on the Emergency Economic
Stabilization Act, which created the $700 billion TARP program. After the House
narrowly defeated the first version of the bill in late September 2008,
Financial Services Forum executive Rob Nichols sounded the alarm. “Just as the
cardiovascular system is the essential, life-sustaining system of the body, the
financial system is the essential basis upon which the growth and vitality of
all other sectors of the economy depend,” Nichols said. “We believe this
legislation is critically important and should be enacted into law at the
earliest possible time in order restore market stability and increase credit
availability for Americans.” Resentment over the bailouts lingers across the
political spectrum, from the Tea Party to the Occupy movement. Supporters of the
program point to the fact that much of the money has been paid back with
interest; critics argue that it failed Main Street and that, in the words of
Elizabeth Warren, the money given to banks had “no strings attached, no
accountability, no transparency.” The Obama campaign declined to comment when
asked whether the hiring of a former bailout lobbyist undercuts Obama’s critical
message on Wall Street. Johnson is known as an extremely well-connected
Democratic operative. The husband of NPR’s Michele Norris, he has been through
the revolving door a few times, working variously as a Capitol Hill staffer,
lobbyist and Clinton administration official. Mary Beth Cahill, campaign manager
for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid, told the Hill in 2008 that in his work
for that campaign Johnson possessed a “smooth and adept way of managing crises”
and “knew everybody.” In February 2009, just as the new administration was
getting underway and with Johnson fresh off his stint as an informal advisor to
the Obama campaign, he touted his connections with the White House in an
interview with Roll Call. “We are seeing growth across the board,” he said.
“Health care, energy and financial services are key issues in 2009 where we have
both expertise and strong relationships on the Hill and in the new
administration.” Johnson has lobbied for a lengthy roster of large corporate
clients. His work for TransCanada, the company that wants to build the
controversial Keystone XL pipeline, has already been explored in the media. In
the past five years, he has also worked for Shell; Verizon; Anheuser Busch;
Microsoft; Comcast; the Biotechnology Industry Organization; the trade group for
the cable TV industry; private prison giant the GEO Group; and the Talx Corp.,
which specializes in helping employers fight unemployment claims and which has
been criticized for shoddy and unfair practices.
October 25, 2011 Open Secrets
OBAMA CAMPAIGN'S REVOLVING DOOR ADDITION: K Street and Capitol Hill veteran
Broderick Johnson is joining the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama
as a senior adviser. Johnson clocked more than a decade of experience in the
U.S. House of Representatives, as an attorney, during the 1980s and 1990s.
Between 1998 and 2000, he served in senior roles in the Clinton White House,
including acting as the president's principal liaison to the House. And after
working for President Bill Clinton, Johnson became a top lobbyist for BellSouth
Corp. and AT&T. During his time in the private sector in Washington, Johnson has
also worked for Wiley, Rein & Fielding, the Oliver Group, Bryan Cave Strategies,
Bryan Cave LLP and the Collins-Johnson Group, according to research by the
Center for Responsive Politics. In addition to AT&T, Johnson's clients over the
years have included numerous political heavy weights, federal lobbying records
show, such as Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, the Biotechnology Industry
Organization, Comcast, Fannie Mae, FedEx, Ford, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Shell
Oil, Time Warner and Verizon. Federal records indicate that he has also lobbied
on behalf of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the GEO Group (the private prison
industry giant) and TransCanada Corp. -- although TransCanada spokesman Terry
Cunha told Politico Monday that the company's "government relations operation
did not look to and receive lobbying support from Broderick Johnson," despite
what lobbying records show, as the energy company has sought Obama
administration approval for its controversial Keystone XL pipeline project.
September 1, 2010 AP
Prison operator Corrections Corp. of America spent $240,000 lobbying federal
officials in the second quarter. That's down slightly from the $250,000 it spent
on lobbying in the first quarter of 2010 and the $260,000 it spent lobbying in
the second quarter of last year. The company said it lobbied on issues related
to the private prison industry and on all provisions of the Safe Prisons
Communications Act of 2009 and the Private Prison Information Act of 2009, among
other topics. Aside from Congress, Corrections Corp. also lobbied the Department
of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Immigration & Customs
Enforcement in the April-to-June quarter, according to a report filed with the
Clerk of the House of Representatives on July 20.
March 27, 2010 Texas Observer
Henry Arroliga lives in South Texas' Port Isabel Detention Center, one of the
nation's largest immigration detention facilities. After 17 years of living
illegally in the United States, he's bracing himself to return to his native
Nicaragua. Although Arroliga could very well be deported within the next month,
the 2010 U.S. Census will count him as a resident of Los Fresnos, in Cameron
County. His short stint at Port Isabel will pay dividends to the city, county,
and state for the next decade. Arroliga is one of more than 30,000 immigrant
detainees who will be counted in this year's census. Four hundred billion
dollars in federal funding over the next 10 years will be distributed based on
the count, making detainees worth thousands of dollars to cities, counties, and
states where they are briefly detained. The government will allocate more than
$100 million in additional funds to places where immigrants are detained. More
than funding is at stake: The composition of legislative districts, county board
districts, and city council districts could be skewed by soon-to-be-deported
prisoners. Census data are used on the state and national levels to determine
the sizes and shapes of these districts. The inclusion of detainees in the count
means fewer eligible voters per elected official in places like Cameron County.
It also violates the principle of "proportional representation." For decades,
the government has included prisoners in the census, regardless of their
immigration status. In the past, the impact of immigrant detainees has been
slight. This is the first decennial census since the re-organization of
immigrantion agencies and the subsequent boom in immigration detention.
Immigration prisons have expanded from 7,500 beds in 1995 to more than 30,000 in
2010. About one-third of the nation's immigrant detainees are held in Texas.
That doesn't count undocumented immigrants in the custody of the U.S. Marshals
Service awaiting deportation proceedings--thousands in Texas alone. Carl Caulk,
the U.S. Marshals assistant director for prisoner operations, says that recent
Border Patrol crackdowns like Operation Streamline have sent the number of
immigrants in Marshals' custody through the roof. Operation Streamline mandated
that charges be filed against virtually every person caught crossing the border
illegally. Like ICE detainees, these immigrants will be counted in the 2010
census. The Census Bureau's inclusion of immigrant detainees has received little
notice. It comes at a tense time in the immigration debate, with reform
advocates facing a challenging political climate. This year's population count
points to an often ignored irony: The country's detention facilities are
concentrated in districts represented by some of Congress' most outspoken
advocates of reform--including several South Texas congressmen who will benefit
from counting immigrant detainees. U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, a Corpus Christi
Democrat, introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the House this
spring. Yet with about 5,000 beds for immigrant detainees, his South Texas
district stands to see millions of additional tax dollars allocated on the basis
of the census. In response to questions from the Observer, Ortiz issued a
statement reading: "The U.S. Census Bureau is mandated by the United States
Constitution to count every resident regardless of citizenship status. I can
assure you that it is in everybody's best interest to get as many people as
possible counted." Until this census, the count had never identified exactly
where "group quarters" like prisons are and how many people occupy them. For the
first time, this census will let states decide whether to count detainees in
local populations. By excluding prisoners, states would get a more accurate
population count and would ensure that funds are not distributed according to
locations of large detention centers. The amount of federal funding directed to
the state would not change. Counting prisoners--residents or immigrants--is
against Texas state law. "A person who is an inmate in a penal institution or
who is an involuntary inmate in a hospital or eleemosynary institution does not,
while an inmate, acquire residence at the place where the institution is
located," reads Texas Election Code Section 1.015. Nevertheless, the census
counts them as residents. "There's a clear discrepancy between state law and the
Census Bureau's methodology," said Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative,
a Massachusetts-based research group. Congressman Ortiz had no comment on how
detainees could affect federal funding and redistricting. Some of his former
supporters see his willingness to profit from his district's immigrant detainees
as evidence of hypocrisy. "I can't think of anything more two-faced," said the
Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and
Christian Leaders, and an advocate for immigration reform. To the Census
Bureau's dismay, Rivera has urged undocumented immigrants not to fill out the
census forms. "It's our greatest bargaining chip," he said. "The states and
counties want the funding, and we want the legalization." Rivera's campaign has
received considerable attention, and while many Latino leaders disagree with his
approach, he is convinced that threatening to withhold the instruments of
federal funding is the way to attract politicians to the table. Within
facilities like Port Isabel, detainees likely won't be able to opt out of the
census. According to Census Bureau officials, for the last month detention
center employees have been completing census forms on behalf of inmates like
Henry Arroliga. "They're using them to secure federal funding and political
power, and then they're shipping them out of the country," Rivera said. "It's an
insult." The issue has made Rivera and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana
Republican, unlikely bedfellows. Vitter, along with several other conservatives
in Congress, supported an unsuccessful effort last fall to exclude noncitizens
from apportionment and redistricting counts. "I don't believe noncitizens should
be counted in congressional reapportionment," Vitter told Congress last fall. "I
don't think states which have particularly large noncitizen populations should
have more say and more clout in Congress, and that states like Louisiana that
don't should be penalized." Or, if you follow the logic, that states like Texas
should be rewarded. In Raymondville, a rural city 100 miles south of Corpus
Christi, the census count is buzzing along. The Census Bureau has a booth
outside City Hall. Local TV stations are advertising the importance of filling
out the forms. People have been hired to distribute forms, part of a 1.2 million
temporary work force nationwide that will make up the largest civilian
mobilization of Americans in history. In Raymondville, the conversation isn't
about the scale of the government's undertaking. It's about the Willacy
Detention Center, the country's largest detention facility, holding up to 3,000
prisoners. When the census came up at the last City Council meeting, a
councilman asked city secretary Eleazar Garcia: "What about the detainees? Do we
get to count them?" If its population exceeds 10,000 in the census, Raymondville
would be in the running for a panoply of state grants. The only way that could
happen is if the city's immigrant detainees are included in the count. "Overall,
we would benefit if we could hit that mark," Garcia said. So would La Villa,
just north of McAllen. The 2000 census found its population to be 1,305. Just a
year later, the Louisiana-based private prison company LCS Corrections Services
Inc. opened the East Hidalgo Detention Center, which houses up to 990 immigrant
detainees. According to its warden, the facility is almost always full. After
the 2010 Census is tallied, the detention center will nearly double La Villa's
population on paper, potentially doubling its federal funding allocation
distributed by the state according to population. (The facility, run by the U.S.
Marshals, is already a boon to the local government, which receives $2 per
prisoner per day.) The distribution of funds based on immigrant detainee
populations "points to a flaw in the way the population counts are used," said
Audrey Singer, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based
think tank. "The fact that ICE detainees are geographically concentrated will
have an effect on the count." In Washington, there appears to be confusion about
the inclusion of immigrant detainees in the census. Congressman Henry Cuellar, a
Laredo Democrat, represents a district that includes the 1,900-bed South Texas
Detention Center and the 450-bed Laredo Contract Detention Facility. He defended
the inclusion of immigrant detainees: "Vitally important funding that supports
these facilities relies, in part, on census data." Experts say Cuellar is wrong.
"Immigration prisons are funded by the Department of Homeland Security, not
formula grants" based on census data, said Wagner of the Prison Policy
Initiative. Like Rep. Ortiz, Cuellar is a longstanding advocate of immigration
reform. His attitude about immigrant detainees in the census has disturbed
immigration-reform advocates in his district. One reason Texas' congressmen and
state representatives might be looking the other way is that 375,000 Texans were
not counted in 2000, according to a Census Bureau study. That cost the state a
huge amount of federal dollars. The main culprit, experts agree, was the
difficulty of getting undocumented immigrants--including an estimated 150,000 in
the Rio Grande Valley alone--to participate. This year, the Census Bureau has
spent millions on a campaign to convince minorities, including undocumented
immigrants, to get themselves counted. Still, community organizers and activists
along the border say the effort faces considerable challenges. "The census
worker shows up and expects people to be compliant," said Michael Seifert of the
Equal Voice for America's Families Network. "Much laughter is heard in the
cantina around that idea." During the 2000 census, Seifert said some immigrants
distrusted and feared the government--a fear then inspired by President Bill
Clinton's 1996 immigration enforcement bills. "I find it so sweetly ironic that
those who have been caught up in the biggest dragnet of a civilian population in
American history--the detainees--will be included in the census count, and
therefore serve as a 'corrective' to all of those people who will ignore the
census request," Seifert said. The issue could be resolved if Texas decides to
remove immigrant detainees from the count before distributing state funds and
addressing redistricting. The Census Bureau has agreed to release data on inmate
populations earlier than usual to let states and localities consider it in
apportioning districts for 2011 and 2012 races. It's an issue that could be
broached in the 2011 legislative session. Bills to make such adjustments are
already pending in New York, Maryland, Illinois, Florida and Wisconsin. So far,
including immigrant detainees in Texas' census count has been a non-issue. "It's
hard to believe that the victims of our inhumane immigration detention system
are being used like this," Rivera said, "like pawns in a game of state and
national politics." Kevin Sieff lives in Washington, D.C. and is a contributing
writer for The Texas Observer, where this originally appeared.
January 29, 2010
TPMMuckraker
The four conservative activists arrested for tampering with the phones of
Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu earlier this week have been linked to the
Pelican Institute, a conservative New Orleans think tank. Pelican is a
relatively new organization, but it appears to have strong ties to members of
the state's Republican elite, most notably Representative Charles Boustany.
Though only one of the tamperers is from Louisiana, Pelican appears to have been
the group's home base there. The apparent ringleader, James O'Keefe -- also the
activist behind last September's ACORN videotape -- spoke at a Pelican Institute
luncheon last week. Another one of the four, Robert Flanagan, is a paid blogger
for Pelican (Flanagan is the son of the acting US attorney in Shreveport, Bill
Flanagan). Pelican's founder, Kevin Kane, blogs at BigGovernment, the site where
O'Keefe first posted the ACORN video. TPMMuckraker has found that Pelican
"enjoys a prominent voice in Louisiana political circles." A close look at its
board of directors helps explain why this is the case. Pelican listed three
board members on its 2008 990 (available from Guidestar): founder Kevin Kane,
lawyer Stephen Gele, and one "J LeBlanc." A LinkedIn page reveals that the
listing refers to Jennifer LeBlanc, a Republican fundraiser who chaired the
Louisiana finance committee of presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani in 2008.
LeBlanc is extremely tightly linked to Representative Charles Boustany, who was
a close friend of her late husband, Patrick LeBlanc, before he died in a 2008
plane crash. LeBlanc was a top Boustany donor, as well, and he and Jennifer
hosted a high-profile fundraiser for his Congressional campaign in 2005. Vice
president Dick Cheney was the featured guest. The LeBlancs, Boustany, and
Senator David Vitter all endorsed Rudy Giuliani's campaign for president in
2007. Boustany and Cheney. Boustany also endorsed LeBlanc during his
unsuccessful run for state representative that year. That bid was undone by
ongoing scandals related to LeBlanc's prison operation and construction
business, LCS Corrections. The company operates private prisons throughout the
southeast and Texas, and has been investigated by the FBI for "contracting
irregularities" related to possible bribery schemes. Boustany's brother-in-law,
Christopher Edwards, was LeBlanc's attorney during his campaign, and threatened
to sue LeBlanc's opponent over a negative ad. Edwards is the nephew of disgraced
Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards. When Patrick LeBlanc died, Boustany released
the following statement: "Pat was my dear friend, a loving family man and a
leader in the Lafayette community. It is a terrible loss, and my thoughts and
prayers are with Jennifer and his children. Bridget and I will miss him
greatly." Boustany and Pelican were both out in front of the ACORN scandal in
August and September. Boustany was one of the first members of Congress to react
to news of the ACORN videotape last September. The day after the news broke, on
September 11, 2009, he called for a House Oversight investigation of the group's
tax prep activities. TPM has reported that Pelican published an investigative
report on ACORN in August 2009, one month before the O'Keefe videotape was
released. The report alleged that ACORN had evaded federal taxes on a number of
occasions. Was there coordination between Boustany, BigGovernment, Pelican, and
O'Keefe? What role does Jennifer LeBlanc play at the Pelican Institute? Who
funds the organization? There's still a lot more to learn here, but this is
shaping up to be a very interesting scandal.Leia and WileECoyote have done
awesome work updating information on the various networks behind O'Keefe and
Pelican. Pelican appears to have strong ties to the Reason Foundation, and
Pelican founder Kevin Kane and Breitbart's relationship deserves closer
examination, among other things. Let me know if you want to get deep into the
Louisiana muck.
January 26, 2010
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Proposed legislation that would apply existing public records laws to all
prisons housing federal inmates was discussed during a congressional briefing on
Monday. The bill, H.R. 2450, was crafted to extend the Freedom of Information
Act to private prisons that contract with government agencies. If the bill is
passed, publicly financed private prisons, which house more than 100,000 federal
inmates, would be subject to the same reporting standards as the Bureau of
Prisons. The companies that run private prisons say they are not required to
disclose basic information about the facilities or the inmates -- except for
reports issued upon an inmate's death -- under existing FOIA law because while
they receive taxpayer money, they are not public agencies. A panel of
specialists at the briefing spoke about the need for more transparency. "If they
do answer the requests, all the documents are redacted and they cite 'trade
secrets' as the reason they can't disclose," said Tom Barry, senior analyst at
the Center for International Policy, of his experiences getting information
about inmates in private facilities from the Bureau of Prisons. David Shapiro,
an attorney for the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties
Union, put the scope of the issue in perspective, noting "over 70 percent of the
prisoners we represent are in for-profit prisons."
December 11, 2009 TPM Muckraker
A party planning side business run by three current and former congressional
staffers raked in over $20,000 last year from lobbyists holding events to honor
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) -- whose own communications director is co-founder
of the firm. The apparent arrangement between Thompson and the business, Chic
Productions, at once allows private interests to get closer to the congressman's
office and gives the staffers a way to dip a straw into the river of outside
money flowing through Capitol Hill. Chic Productions offers "high style events
with simple elegance" and advertises its previous work executing "congressional
events and fundraising parties." One of Chic's principals was quoted in 2007
saying congressional events make up roughly 90 percent of the firm's business.
The three women who run Chic are: Dena Graziano, Thompson's communications
director since 2006; Michone Johnson, chief counsel for the House Judiciary
Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee; and Michelle Persaud, formerly
of the House Judiciary Committee, now corporate counsel at T-Mobile. Graziano's
bio on Chic's Web site says she has "straddled the fine line between politics
and entertainment as an event and communications strategist to some of the
nation's most well known personalities." Johnson's boasts that, "As a lawyer,
Michone has honed her planning skills by executing everything from intense
negotiations and member briefings to happy hours birthday parties, and staff
retirement parties." A Chic floral display with the congressional seal at '07
Thompson eventThe extent of the business Chic has done for Thompson remains
unclear because lobbyist disclosure statements that reveal the arrangement have
only recently been required, and comprehensive data is available only for 2008.
But besides the lobbyist receptions, Chic has put on at least six other
Thompson-linked events. Lobbyists spend millions of dollars each year wining and
dining lawmakers at receptions held in their honor. The events serve many
purposes, among them gaining valuable access to members of Congress and
staffers, and building good will in a relaxed social format. But actually paying
staffers to organize events to honor their bosses is a new twist on the old
practice. As chair of the Committee on Homeland Security, Thompson is among the
most powerful Democrats in the House. He has been under an ethical cloud since
last week when the Washington Post reported on allegations by Homeland Security
Committee staffers that he held a hearing on credit cards to squeeze donations
out of industry lobbyists. One committee staffer said she was fired for raising
objections to "inappropriate lobbyist requests." Thompson denies the
allegations, which are under investigation by the House ethics panel. Thompson
at Chic "Chairman Reception" in 2007In a six-week period in late 2008, four
companies paid Chic $22,500 to plan events to honor Thompson, according to
lobbying disclosures reviewed by TPMmuckraker. The companies were private prison
contractor Corrections Corporation of America ($10,000), lobbying powerhouse
Patton Boggs ($5,000), Pepsico ($5,000), and software giant Oracle ($2,500).
March 30, 2009 Nashville Post
Nashville attorney Gregg Ramos has been interviewed by members of President
Barack Obama's administration for vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
6th Circuit and U.S. District Court, Middle District of Tennessee, according to
NashvillePost.com sources. The vacancies on the courts were created when 6th
Circuit Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey took senior judge status on Jan. 1 and when
Memphis based Judge Robert L. Echols took senior judge status in 2007. Echols'
slot had been the focus of much controversy when then-President George W. Bush
nominated Nashvillian Gus Puryear to fill the seat in June of 2007. Puryear,
general counsel for Corrections Corp. of America, was the subject of an intense
lobbying effort that eventually doomed his nomination.
November 14, 2008 Nashville City Paper
Tennessee Democrats had a losing record this election season in the state,
but they are likely about to see a pack of federal appointments in the legal
system roll their way. With the changing of the guard from President George W.
Bush’s administration President-elect Barack Obama’s in 2009, appointments for a
federal judgeship in the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee and the
positions of U.S. Attorney and U.S. Marshall for the same region are on the
table. Currently filling those posts are U.S. Attorney Ed Yarbrough and U.S.
Marshall Denny King. The spot that is open on the U.S. District Court has been
publicized not because who was once in the seat, but who was nominated for it —
Gus Puryear. Puryear, who is the executive vice president and general counsel
for Nashville based Corrections Corporation of America, was nominated for the
bench by President George W. Bush in June of 2007. Although Puryear did get a
nomination hearing, the U.S. Senate, which has final say on these lifetime
appointments, never voted on his appointment. Puryear’s nomination suffered from
negative press reports about his ties to Belle Meade Country Club as well as the
alleged practices of CCA in its prisons. Puryear was also targeted by an
organization opposed to prison privatization. The Florida group had ties to
organized labor that represents state corrections officers. Traditionally, when
openings for a federal judgeship occur, the U.S. Senators from that state tell
the president whom they want and he nominates them. When the Senators are from
an opposing party, as is the case of Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, that
courtesy falls to Democratic members of the U.S. Congress, in this case
primarily Congressmen Jim Cooper and Bart Gordon. Because Cooper was such an
early and strident supporter of Obama’s, he likely will have the upper hand.
Protocol would dictate that Alexander and Corker would be given advance notice
of the nomination and as a courtesy they would say if they had any major
objections to the nomination.
September 24, 2008 Nashville Scene
Yesterday, Lamar Alexander, the lead water-carrier for judicial nominee Gus
Puryear, read the campaign its last rites. Alexander's statements are the last
nail in the coffin for Puryear, lead counsel for private prison giant
Corrections Corporation of America. They're also an unofficial acknowledgment of
the power of the one-man campaign. No matter where your loyalties lie, it's
tough to argue that anyone deserves more of the credit (or blame) for Puryear's
failed nomination than Alex Friedmann. Getting the locals to care about who
swings a gavel in Middle Tennessee is one thing. Getting pub from national
outlets is another. Now with the campaign over, Friedmann is a stick without a
spoke. He says he'll continue working on the humdrum elements of vigilanteism
and may even aim his scope at larger targets. "There's always Palin," he jokes.
We here at Pith, however, think Friedmann's bandwagon should be steered
elsewhere. Trudging through the muck of rancorous politics during this election
season has left us exhausted. It's time all of Nashville had a cause worth
championing. Something fun and family-friendly that makes us forget about the
world while alternately making us worry about the cleanliness of our
undergarments.
September 24, 2008 Tennessean
Nominations of two Tennesseans — Gus Puryear of Nashville to be a federal judge
and Susan Williams of Knoxville to be a TVA board member — have been derailed by
political squabbles. Several prison rights and civil rights groups have objected
to the nomination of Puryear, general counsel for Corrections Corporation of
America, the private prison giant based in Nashville. CCA had been hammered by
allegations of underplaying serious incidents in its jails and misrepresenting
the circumstances of in-custody deaths. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the third-ranking
Republican in the Senate, said Tuesday that neither nomination would be approved
before the end of the year. That means the nomination process for both slots
will begin again after a new president takes office in January. "That's another
example of the Democratic Congress not approving a qualified nominee," Alexander
said of Puryear's choice by President Bush to be a judge in the Middle District
of Tennessee. Democrats opposed both -- Puryear was caught in an election-year
political fight. Republicans have tried to gain approval for as many of Bush's
nominees as possible before the end of his term. Reasons cited by opponents as
to why Puryear should not be confirmed include: a lack of trial and judicial
experience, his role as chief lawyer for the country's largest private prison
company, and the company's handling of the 2004 death of Estelle Richardson
while she was in the Metro Detention Facility in Nashville. Democrats, who
control the Senate, say they have treated the president's nominees as well as
Republicans did near the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. But they have slowed
the process, hoping they will be able to fill the vacancies if their nominee,
Sen. Barack Obama, wins the presidency. Williams' nomination to the TVA board
was a casualty of a battle between Alexander and Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev. Reid held up her nomination and that of Bishop William Graves of
Memphis because he wants a Democratic representative on the TVA board. In June,
Reid let Graves' nomination go through after Alexander and Sen. Bob Corker
blocked a nomination Reid wanted. In response to Alexander's comments, Puryear
released a written statement through CCA. "I was honored to be nominated and
understand fully how election-year politics works in Washington. I am very happy
in my current job and look forward to continuing to work with my friends in
Nashville to make our city and state a better place." Alex Friedmann, vice
president of Private Corrections Institute, coordinated much of the opposition
to the Puryear nomination, which Bush made in June 2007. "Mr. Puryear was an
unqualified, inexperienced, conflicted and controversial nominee for a lifetime
appointment to the federal bench. The citizens of Middle Tennessee deserve
better and hopefully will receive a more qualified candidate during the next
administration," Friedmann said in a statement.
September 23, 2008 Tennessean
The nominations of Gus Puryear of Nashville to be a federal judge and Susan
Williams of Knoxville to the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority are dead
for this year, Sen. Lamar Alexander said this morning. "That's not going to
happen," Alexander said at a briefing with Tennessee reporters, referring to the
nomination of Puryear for a federal judgeship in the Middle District of
Tennessee. "That's another example of the Democratic Congress not approving a
qualified nominee." The nomination by President Bush of Puryear, general counsel
for Corrections Corporation of America, had been criticized by prison rights and
civil rights organizations because of his role in representing the largest
private prison company in the country. Williams' nomination has been stalled
because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, wants a Democratic
representative on the TVA board. Puryear issued a statement through CCA. "I was
honored to be nominated and understand fully how election-year politics works in
Washington. I am very happy in my current job and look forward to continuing to
work with my friends in Nashville to make our city and state a better place."
August 31, 2008 Murfreesboro Post
Four years ago, Estelle Richardson, 34, was murdered in a Nashville jail run
by Corrections Corporation of America. That's a tangential issue in the legal
career of Gustavus A. Puryear IV, just one of the things that has caught the
attention of Alex Friedmann, an ex-con gone good and now an editor of Prison
Legal News, an organization devoted to digging out mistreatment and maltreatment
of prisoners. Charges were filed against four guards who were accused of beating
Richardson to death. But their conviction foundered on a technical matter
involving time of death. It is one of the things that troubles Friedmann (once a
convict himself) about Puryear's nomination for a lifetime appointment to the
federal district court in Middle Tennessee. Puryear is chief lawyer of
Corrections Corporation of America that is headquartered in Nashville. "CCA is
the defendant in scores and scores of lawsuits each year. It is difficult to see
how Puryear could ever serve as presiding judge in a trial involving his old
bosses." The nomination---presented before the Senate Judiciary Committee by
Republican Senators Corker and Alexander---came about the way most do: Puryear
has been a worker in the vineyards for Tennessee and national Republicans. He
gave important money to Corker and Alexander and coached up Dick Cheney for the
'00 vice presidential debates. He worked for Fred Thompson. He's been named a
"Republican heavyweight" by a Nashville newspaper. Unhappily, his qualifications
for a federal judgeship are wanting. Friedmann says Puryear has been personally
involved in only five federal cases and two trials over his entire legal career,
and lost one of those. "He has not served as a practicing attorney for years,"
Friedmann says. Republicans answer that Puryear has been rated as "qualified" by
the American Bar Association. "Well," Friedmann says, deconstructing the
classification methodology. "ABA rates lawyers Qualified, Unqualified, or Well
Qualified. Seventy-five percent of all lawyers get the Well Qualified
classification. Puryear, therefore, is in the bottom 25 percent." But
Friedmann's great objection to Puryear's appointment remains his conflicted
position. He's a CCA man and has been their chief lawyer for years. He says
he'll recuse himself from their cases for five years. "Well, CCA's in the courts
all the time. And what about after five years? He doesn't say what he'll do
after that." In typical Republican fashion of the past seven years, Puryear's
record was great from a political standpoint but wanting for professional creds.
Today, the nomination is being held up in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which
indicates it failed to get pro forma approval, a bad indicator for the state's
Republican senators and party. There is a chance that Puryear won't be approved
in the Senate committee. This would, in effect, kill the nomination.
August 15, 2008 AP
Private prison company Corrections Corp. of America spent $240,000 lobbying the
federal government on legislation dealing with prison spending and policy,
according to a recent disclosure form. The Nashville, Tenn.-based company
lobbied on legislation dealing with private prisons and public safety, as well
as on issues involving immigration, labor and more. Besides Congress,
Corrections lobbied the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department,
Office of Management and Budget, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, according to
a report filed July 18 with the House clerk's office.
August 14, 2008 AP
Had this been like most nominations for federal judgeships, the chief lawyer
with Corrections Corporation of America might have been packing up his office
and heading for the courthouse by now. But a determined opponent — a former
prisoner at a Corrections Corporation of America facility in Clifton, Tenn. —
has worked tirelessly to see that would not happen. And he may have succeeded.
More than a year after President Bush nominated Gustavus A. Puryear IV to become
a U.S. district judge in Nashville, the 40-year-old's appointment appears to be
in serious trouble, thanks in no small part to Alex Friedmann, a convicted armed
robber turned inmate advocate. Friedmann, 39, contends Puryear is unqualified
because he lacks experience in federal courts — he's been involved in only two
federal trials — and might have a potential conflict of interest in hearing
cases that involve CCA. On his Web site, http://www.againstpuryear.org,
Friedmann also has detailed Puryear's ties to powerful Republicans like Dick
Cheney, whom he helped prep for a 2000 debate, and portrayed Puryear as someone
who got the nomination because of his connections rather than his
qualifications. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Puryear's
nomination in February but has yet to vote on whether to send his name to the
full Senate. Erica Chabot, the press secretary for committee Chairman Patrick
Leahy, said Puryear is one of only three people who have been nominated for
district judgeships since January 2007 and have had hearings before the
committee but have not had their nominations voted on. Leahy, D-Vt., has said
the panel will not consider any more nominees this session without the consent
of leaders from both parties. "I understand they have put Puryear in the
'controversial' category," said Brian Fitzpatrick, who once worked for
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas defending Bush's Supreme Court nominees and
is now an assistant law professor at Vanderbilt University. "It's very rare for
a district court nominee to become controversial. Usually they just fly
through." The Senate typically defers heavily to the senators from the nominee's
home state, and Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee
solidly support Puryear. But the opposition has been unusually committed.
Multiple organizations, including the left-leaning Alliance for Justice and the
National Lawyer's Guild, have challenged Puryear's nomination, all of them using
research that originated with Friedmann, occasionally quoting it verbatim.
Friedmann says he learned of the nomination because he keeps track of
Nashville-based CCA, which manages 66 facilities around the country. He looked
through dockets and court cases, contacted former co-workers and made Freedom of
Information Act requests. To get the word out, he relied on the nonprofit
Private Corrections Institute, for which he serves as vice president, and a
group he formed called Tennesseans Against Puryear. Puryear did not return calls
from The Associated Press for this story. White House spokesman Blair Jones said
the White House suggests that nominees not speak to the media, prior to
confirmation, out of respect for the deliberative process of the Senate. "Groups
can attack a nominee, but you'll never see (the nominee) respond to anything
except at hearings," said Puryear's friend Ed Haden, an attorney in Birmingham,
Ala. Haden said the obstacles to Puryear's nomination are political, and don't
mean he is not qualified for the job. "As far as his qualifications go, he was
at the top of his class in law school, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals,
he has legislative experience in the U.S. Senate, he manages litigation for a
big Fortune 500 company, and the ABA (American Bar Association) rated him as
qualified," Haden said. "Gus realizes this is a lame duck year in politics," he
added. "It's true for all nominees — whether you're in the deal or not is beyond
your control." Puryear's nomination remains active until Congress adjourns, and
he could still be confirmed. The most likely scenario for that would be a deal
struck between senators. "At the end of the session, it's, 'Who wants a bridge
in Vermont?'" said Haden, who has worked with two U.S. senators on judicial
nominations. Meanwhile, Friedmann is continuing his opposition campaign in the
hopes of making a last-minute deal less likely. "I'm glad the Judiciary
Committee is taking a closer look at Mr. Puryear as a candidate because the
issues we raised are legitimate issues," he said. "But," he added, "I'm
definitely not claiming victory."
July 21, 2008 First Amendment Center
A bill before Congress would extend the Freedom of Information Act to
require private prisons contracted by the federal government to release records
under the same standards as federal prisons. The Private Prison Information Act
of 2007 (H.R. 1889), introduced by Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., would require private
prisons and other correctional facilities under contract with federal agencies
to house federal prisoners to make their records accessible under the same FOIA
requirements that govern federal prisons. An identical bill was introduced in
the Senate (S. 2010) by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Prison privatization has
increased rapidly in the face of growing concerns over overcrowding, safety and
poor health care in public institutions. Desire to control costs has also led to
an increase in privatization. However, privately owned and operated facilities
are not subject to the same FOIA scrutiny as public agencies. Although the press
and public can retrieve information about privately run prisons from the
Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and other government agencies, private prisons remain largely
outside the scope of FOI laws. Of the almost 1.6 million prisoners in the United
States in June 2007, 7.4% of them were held in privately operated correctional
facilities, according to the June 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin. At
last count, in 2000, the BJS reported 264 private facilities under state and
federal contracts used to house prisoners. And there were 5.4% more prisoners in
private facilities in June 2007 than in June 2006, according to BJS. Private
detention centers are also used to house immigrant detainees. Two lawsuits filed
in the last two months aim to force private prisons to release records,
including one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union investigating the
deaths of immigrant detainees in federal custody. In May 2008, The Washington
Post ran a four-day series investigating medical conditions in immigrant
prisons. "Careless Detention" explored the deaths of 83 prisoners and detainees
in custody between March 2003 and May 2008. "Our correctional system is broken.
It is overcrowded and unsafe," said Mike Flynn, director of government affairs
for the Reason Foundation. "Contracting with private prisons gives us an ability
to better manage outcomes. I think contracts should require certain benchmarks,
like treatment programs, continuing education and job training." The Reason
Foundation is a nonprofit think tank that promotes "libertarian principles,
including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law," according to
its Web site. The largest private corrections-management service in the U.S. is
Corrections Corporation of America, which is headquartered in Nashville. CCA
posted $35 million in profits during the first quarter of 2008, according to a
company press release. CCA and other private corrections companies have seen
rapid growth from contracts with states and the federal government. The Los
Angeles Times reported in August 2007 that California state officials had signed
a contract with CCA to hold about 4,000 prisoners for $63 per prisoner, per day.
It would cost the state an average of $123 per prisoner, per day in a state
prison. As private corrections companies grow, so do questions about their
methods, success and profitability. The recent lawsuits seek answers to some of
those questions. The ACLU filed an FOI lawsuit against the Department of
Homeland Security last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia after DHS failed to turn over documents related to the deaths of
immigrants held in public and private detention centers. The lawsuit also named
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of the Inspector General for
DHS. "DHS must not be allowed to keep information about in-custody deaths
secret," said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU National Prison Project,
in a press release. "It is imperative that ICE be held publicly accountable."
Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine that covers prison issues, filed a lawsuit
against CCA in a Tennessee court on May 19 after CCA did not respond to a
public-records request. The lawsuit, Friedmann v. CCA, argues that CCA performs
a public function, and its records should be public. In 2002, the Tennessee
Supreme Court ruled that a private company performing a public function must
make its records available to the public under the Tennessee Public Records Act.
In Memphis Publishing Company v. Cherokee Children & Family Services, the court
ruled that a nonprofit social service agency under state contract had to turn
its records over to the Memphis Commercial Appeal because it was the "functional
equivalent" of a government agency. "Public agencies cannot contract away the
public's ability to review records that otherwise would be publicly accessibly
under the state's open records law," said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal
News, in a press release. "The public's right to know is not delegable to
private corporations." One FOI expert applauded the congressional bills that
would make private-prison companies accountable to the federal FOIA. "I think
that is a long-overdue fix," Charles Davis, executive director of the National
Freedom of Information coalition, said of the Private Prison Information Act of
2007. "This is a problem on the state level. This would fix it at the federal
level in a way that would bring a whole lot of otherwise private operations into
public scrutiny. We've seen lots of anecdotal evidence over the past decade for
the need for public oversight and scrutiny." Some aspects of private-prison
contracts are already accessible under FOIA, however. Flynn of the Reason
Foundation argued that those provisions provide enough information. "The federal
agencies that manage the contract with the private company are subject to the
FOIA process. The agencies engage in regular and ongoing oversight of the
contract, usually having [their] own employees in the facility full-time. All
reports and studies from these monitors are subject to the FOIA process. Terms
of the contract with the private company are subject to FOIA. Their progress in
meeting any benchmarks detailed in the contract are subject to FOIA," said
Flynn. "If there is relevant information that isn't available, it can be [added
to] terms of the contract and then be subject to FOIA. There is no limit to what
can be required to be disclosed to the agency, which would then be subject to
FOIA." Davis agreed that FOIA's coverage of contracts between the government and
private-prison companies was important, but said it didn't go far enough. "The
contract piece is important and FOIA does do a good job with that," he said.
"The contract data is just a sliver of the overall picture of what people should
rightly have access to … . The vast majority of the information isn't covered."
Davis mentioned "inspection reports, incident reports involving inmate violence,
and just about any narrative report documenting inmate treatment." If the ACLU's
or Prison Legal News' lawsuit succeeds in extracting records from private-prison
corporations or if Congress passes the Private Prison Information Act, an
increase in information from these prisons could bring light to a host of new
issues. Some of these may well involve the First Amendment. U.S. courts
frequently address issues related to access to publications, religious material,
special diets and other claims of First Amendment violations from prisoners. "I
think you could get better protections," said Flynn when asked about the First
Amendment rights of prisoners in private facilities, "because they can be
detailed in a contract with the private company. These protections can be
mandated into the contract rather than litigated later." "The best part about
having this information is that we would be able to act on it. Private companies
can be fired. Public facilities cannot," Flynn said. Said Davis, "When you start
getting the human narrative of incident reports, what's going on in these
prisons on a day to day basis, they could be rife with corruption or running
like a Swiss cruise ship."
July 15, 2008 The Daily Cougar
As Sen. Barack Obama wages his presidential campaign across the United
States with political gusto, he's attracted names such as Vice President Al Gore
and Sen. John Edwards. University of Houston Associate Professor of Law Tony
Chase has also temporarily shifted his duties as a professor to become a member
of the National Finance Committee of Obama's campaign. "I've known (Obama) for
quite some time, and I was one of the people he asked whether if he should run,"
Chase said. "Because of that, this is very personal, and I genuinely believe he
is best for this country." Aside from teaching, Chase is chairman and CEO of
ChaseCom L.P. and Chase Radio Partners. He is also chairman and co-founder,
together with SBC Communications Inc., of The Telecom Opportunity Institute, an
organization that provides technical literacy training at no cost to at-risk
communities. He serves as a director of Leap Wireless International Inc. and
Cornell Companies Inc., and is chairman of the Houston Zoo Development Board. He
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a director of the
United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast and Houston Parks. Chase began teaching
communications law and contracts at the UH Law Center in 1990 and received the
Edith Baker Faculty Award in 1994. On July 8, he stepped down as the director of
the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank to dedicate more time to the campaign. "I can't
pick out a certain experience, but teaching graduate law and undergraduate
classes has been particularly helpful in preparing me, because students are the
future and full of ideas that in turn help me think about today's issues," Chase
said. "My experience at the University helps me by being part of the excitement
and interest among young and potential voters." As for his motives, he believes
that the nation, in its current state, needs Obama as president. "I've known
Barack and Michelle for a long time, and based on that, I believe he is a
transcendent political figure," Chase said. "I know him well and his integrity
and how he responds to pressure, but also how he will be an excellent leader."
As the member of the National Finance Committee for the campaign, he helps make
decisions on how the campaign will utilize its funds and how the fundraising
will be run. He also performs special projects such as arranging meetings with
constituents and senior advisors. "The experience I gain from the campaign will
only help the way I try to bring practical experience to the classroom, and this
is actually quite relevant to what I teach at the University," Chase said. Chase
will return to teach in the fall and resume his usual duties for his
organizations. "I will still do what I can to accommodate my teaching
responsibilities and campaign duties and continue to voice my support for Barack
Obama," Chase said.
June 13, 2008 Tennessean
A year ago today, Gustavus "Gus" Puryear IV was nominated for a federal
judgeship in Nashville and appeared headed to an easy confirmation. Now
Puryear's confirmation seems unlikely. In addition to questions raised about his
qualifications and actions as general counsel for Corrections Corporation of
America, Puryear's fate is now caught in intense election-year battles between
Republicans and Democrats in the Senate over lifetime judicial appointments.
Senate Democrats are looking to approve as few of Republican President Bush's
appointments as they can before his term expires, hoping Democratic Sen. Barack
Obama of Illinois wins the presidency. Republicans did the same during the final
months of the Democratic Clinton administration. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., a
longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets nominees, said at
a committee hearing Thursday that this practice is simply the "fact of the
matter." "It is legitimate," Biden said. "These are lifetime appointments."
Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., said at the end of the hearing,
which included approval of three judicial nominees, that no more judges would be
confirmed unless there is agreement among him and ranking committee Republican
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the
Senate. Even Tennessee's two Republican senators, who signed off on Puryear's
nomination, acknowledge his confirmation is in trouble. "Gus Puryear is a
qualified nominee who deserves an up-or-down vote in the Senate, and we're
continuing to pursue every option to that end," Sen. Bob Corker said in a
written statement. "The current atmosphere in the Senate makes his confirmation
more difficult — not impossible, just increasingly more difficult as we approach
the fall elections." Sen. Lamar Alexander said he was still hopeful. "But the
Democrats have slowed confirmation of President Bush's nominees to a ridiculous
extent," Alexander said in a recent interview. CCA spokesman Steve Owen,
responding to a request for Puryear to comment, said the company has "no way of
knowing what the outcome of the confirmation process will be. We continue to
believe that Mr. Puryear would make an excellent federal judge. He has served
the company admirably and with great integrity as general counsel." The
Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Puryear's nomination in February but has
not scheduled a vote on whether to send his name to the full Senate for a vote.
Reasons cited by opponents as to why Puryear should not be confirmed include: a
lack of trial and judicial experience, his role as chief lawyer for the
country's largest private prison company, and the company's handling of the 2004
death of Estelle Richardson while she was in the Metro Detention Facility in
Nashville. Among those opposing Puryear's confirmation are: The Alliance for
Justice, an umbrella group of national civil rights and other organizations,
Private Corrections Institute Inc., which opposes prison privatization and the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
May 7, 2008 Nashville Post
A series of articles by the New York Times have Washington, D.C. insiders
saying that Gus Puryear should keep his day job. Puryear, executive vice
president and general counsel for Nashville based Corrections Corporation of
America, was nominated by President George W. Bush last year to serve on the
U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee. Since the nomination, Puryear has been
attacked here and in Washington for everything from his handling of CCA legal
matters, his membership in the Belle Meade Country Club, to his lack of
experience outside of corporate law. While the nomination of Puryear has not
moved due to objections of U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy and Diane Feinstein, he
still has had hope of being confirmed to the bench. Now, a number of
NashvillePost.com sources are saying that hope is even in more jeopardy.
Democratic insiders in Washington contacted by NashvillePost.com say that what
hope Puryear had was effectively killed by a series of articles published this
week by the New York Times. Republican insiders acknowledge that the articles
have made Puryear's bid "more complicated" and there is no momentum to push him
forward at this time. While the articles don't mention Puryear by name, CCA is
sharply criticized for their handling of the death of Boubacar Bah and the
labeling of his inmate file as "proprietary information - not for distribution."
Bah was 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. While
incarcerated, Bah had fallen and hit his head and became incoherent. According
to the NYT, "documents detail how he was treated by guards and government
employees: shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as he moaned and
vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for more than 13 hours, despite
repeated notations that he was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the
mouth." He was eventually transported to a hospital, but his family was not
notified of his whereabouts for five days. He died four months later. The Times
also ran an editorial on this matter yesterday.
April 25, 2008 Nashville Scene
State Rep. Mike Turner has fired off a missive to Tennessee Department of
Correction Commissioner George Little about the spate of questionable practices
and incidents that have landed Corrections Corporation of America in the news.
CCA, as you'll recall, contracts with Tennessee (along with many other state and
federal authorities) to run their prisons and jails. In his April 16 letter,
which Pith obtained this morning, Turner mentions the Time magazine story that
alleges CCA counsel Gus Puryear allegedly whitewashed incident reports on
escapes and unnatural deaths, so as not to alarm the company's clients. He also
cites The Tennessean piece on an inmate at a Metro-controlled, CCA-run
correctional facility who went nine months without a shower, as well as the
recent Nashville Scene article that reported how guards at that same facility
falsely claimed a jail-cell surveillance camera wasn't working—just one day
after an inmate was found in her cell with a broken skull, according to the
detective who wanted to review the footage. In other words, it's just another
day in the life of CCA and Gus Puryear—who, we should add, is called out in the
upcoming issue of the National Law Journal for being one of Bush's most
controversial judicial appointees.
March 26, 2008 Tennessean
Add women’s rights groups to the list opposing the federal judicial
nomination of Gus Puryear IV, the embattled general counsel for the Corrections
Corporation of America. Puryear’s membership to Nashville’s Belle Meade County
Club is under fire by the women’s rights organization who say women are unable
to vote or hold office at the private golf club. National Organization of Women,
the National Council for Women’s Organizations and the Women’s Equal rights
Legal Defense and Education Fund have sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. Puryear’s nomination ignited a debate whether the general counsel of
CCA, the for-profit prison giant, is suited for the bench in light of
allegations that he encouraged misleading incident reports. Private Corrections
Institute, an advocacy group that opposes prison privatization, has been an
outspoken critic of Puryear's nomination. The Alliance for Justice and the
National Lawyers Guild are among the opposition. There’s also a website,
www.againstpuryear.org, is part of the opposition campaign. The hearings were
held last month and the committee has not voted on his nomination. President
Bush nominated Puryear last June to serve as a federal judge for the Middle
District of Tennessee.
March 21, 2008 Nashville Scene
Yesterday I talked with Rob McGuire, the local prosecutor who brought
charges against four CCA guards in the death of inmate Estelle Richardson, who
in 2004 was found in her solitary cell with a broken skull and four cracked
ribs. McGuire ultimately dropped the case, after doctors for both CCA and
Richardson's family determined that her head injuries might have been sustained
before she was placed in solitary confinement. Now, though, the Richardson case
has taken center stage in the nomination hearings of Gus Puryear, the CCA
general counsel who was nominated by President George W. Bush to a federal
judgeship in Tennessee's Middle District. The Senate Judiciary Committee has
grilled Puryear about his statements about the case—he falsely claimed the
guards were “exonerated”—and how his company handled the investigation. On that
count, McGuire has a rather interesting story to share. And now we're going to
have to jump. McGuire says that when a Metro homicide detective began to
investigate Richardson's death, he asked to see videotape of the
extractions—i.e., those times when an inmate is ushered in and out of her cell.
Instead, guards told him the camera had mysteriously malfunctioned. Wouldn't you
know it, the detective was told, there's no footage available—which is not much
different than when the suspect tells Lennie Briscoe he doesn't remember what he
was doing the night of the murder. At that point, the detective examined the
camera and could find nothing wrong with it. “He turns it on and it appears to
be working just fine,” McGuire says. “That was a significant problem for us; it
did not help their cause.” Of course, McGuire ultimately had to drop the case
when it appeared that any number of different people—from inmates to
guards—could have caused Richardson's head injuries. And because she was heavily
medicated at the time, it was certainly possible that the inmate could have
endured a serious injury without realizing until it was too late. But none of
this lets CCA off the hook. First, there's the issue that, no matter how you
look at it, Richardson was almost certainly killed in a CCA facility, which
Puryear glosses over in his correspondence with members of the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee. In fact, Puryear makes her death out to be a veritable
mystery, even though it's ludicrous to imagine how someone could break their
skull and crack their ribs by simply slipping on the floor. So if—and we're
using the word “if” lightly here—she was killed in jail, that doesn't reflect
well on CCA. Then, of course, there's McGuire's fresh anecdote about the
supposedly malfunctioning camera, which makes you wonder if CCA took an awkward
stab at a cover-up. CCA and Puryear are already under fire for last week's
Time.com report, in which a former prison manager accused the company of lying
to its government clients about the safety of its prisons. Is there a pattern
here? It's next to impossible to gleam objective data from CCA, even though it
manages public facilities across the country. But with Puryear likely to face
additional additional questions from the members of the judiciary committee
about the Richardson case and other CCA matters, a little more transparency
might be in order. Developing....
March 14, 2008 Nashville Scene
Once thought to be a sure thing, Gus Puryear's nomination to the federal
bench is now in serious trouble. A devastating story published on Time
magazine's website yesterday alleged that the young attorney whitewashed company
reports in his role as corporate counsel for Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA). The story revolves around Ronald T. Jones, a former CCA prison manager
described as a loyal Republican like the judicial nominee himself. Jones claims
Puryear oversaw a reporting system in which the company basically lied to its
public-sector clients, minimizing outbreaks of prison disturbances in the jails
it operates. In theory at least, CCA is supposed to provide thorough and
objective reports to the government agencies who have outsourced the management
of its jails to the private company. But Jones says his ex-boss Puryear masked
or omitted details that could result in litigation, fines or bad press. That
aside, he behaved admirably. “When Puryear felt there was highly sensitive or
potentially damaging information to CCA, I would then be directed to remove that
information from an audit report,” Jones told Time.com. Today, The Tennessean
published a well-reported front-page story that included additional details,
including how in 2005 a CCA official once had the temerity to issue a memo with
potentially damaging information about a prison incident. That led to a change
in company policy—in which any reports to be made public had to be cleared by
the office of the general counsel. The Private Corrections Institute, which has
led the charge against Puryear, issued a press release calling on the Senate
Judiciary Committee to summon the nominee back to Washington for yet another
hearing. The group may well get its wish. It's been a dismal week for Puryear—right
as he tries to explain his membership in the historically discriminatory Belle
Meade Country Club, he now will likely have to defend himself against serious
charges of turning CCA’s cold, hard facts into creative fiction. It's still
possible for Puryear to survive this latest onslaught of bad press and go on to
become a good judge. But considering how much trouble he's had so far convincing
people he's up for the job, couldn't the Bush administration have just plucked
someone else? There are plenty of intelligent Republican attorneys in Nashville.
How many of them have Puryear's baggage?
March 14, 2008
Tennessean
A former Corrections Corporation of America manager is accusing the
company's general counsel and federal judicial nominee Gus Puryear IV of
overseeing a practice that produced misleading reports about safety incidents at
its prisons. Ronald T. Jones, who until last year worked as a senior manager in
quality assurance at the Nashville-based prison operator, said that Puryear
directed him and other staff to classify incidents such as escapes, unnatural
deaths and disturbances as less serious to make its performance look better in
reports to government agency clients. Reports prepared for internal use,
meanwhile, included more details about the specific incidents, Jones said.
Private Corrections Institute, an advocacy group that opposes prison
privatization and has been an outspoken critic of Puryear's nomination, Thursday
urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold another round of hearings at which
Jones could testify and Puryear be asked more questions about his actions.
"Alternatively, we support the position of not bringing Mr. Puryear's judicial
nomination forward for a committee vote," said Alex Friedmann, a former inmate
at a CCA prison and the group's vice president. At a Feb. 12 hearing before the
Judiciary Committee, Puryear faced tough questions on the 2004 death of a woman
at the Metro Detention Facility, possible conflict of interest with cases
involving CCA and its executives that are often filed in Middle Tennessee
District, where he would serve, and his membership in the exclusive Belle Meade
Country Club. In response, Puryear said that he would recuse himself for at
least five years from all cases involving CCA and its executives: said there
were disagreements among medical experts about what happened in the death of
Estelle Richardson at the detention facility; and promised to resign from Belle
Meade if he found its membership policies violated the code of judicial ethics.
Committee staff said any action on Puryear's nomination is unlikely until April
at the earliest. The committee has no more business meetings this week and
Congress is on Easter break for the next two weeks. The Judiciary Committee
usually does not hold additional hearings with the nominee and other witnesses.
Instead, the senators rely on written responses to questions and the transcript
of the original hearing when discussing and voting on a nominee. Puryear
couldn't be reached last night for comment. CCA denies allegations -- Louise
Grant, a CCA spokeswoman, called Jones' allegations inaccurate and added that it
paints a false picture of CCA's quality assurance process and of Puryear's role.
"We question the motives of this former employee, who was not in a leadership
position in quality assurance and resigned in lieu of termination," Grant added.
"If our interest was in under-reporting or not finding quality issues, we simply
would not have created this (quality assurance) department or its programs in
the first place." Jones denies that he faced termination at CCA. He now lives in
Detroit and said he left CCA to pursue a legal career. He said in his job he was
responsible for tracking information on events such as unusual deaths,
disturbances and audit findings and that the misleading practices began in early
2005, when the quality assurance department was put under Puryear as general
counsel. A CCA staff member in 2005 provided a report containing potentially
damaging information about an incident at a prison to a government client
without corporate approval, Jones said. That incident, according to Jones, led
to a new policy in which any reports that could be made public needed to be
cleared by the office of the general counsel. "Mr. Puryear then directed me, and
other quality assurance department staff who process audit report finding, to
create two reports for distribution of audit findings," Jones wrote in a
statement sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I would prepare one report
with all of the audit findings and auditor comments in it for "internal purposes
only" and a separate more generic report that contained only general information
about audit results as a whole." In a separate interview with The Tennessean,
Jones added that the more information that could potentially damage the company
if it was released publicly, the more that its operations and financial status
could be affected. In the corrections industry, the number of incidents such as
prison escapes, riots, and sexual assaults are among variables often used to
determine bonuses for employees from wardens to chief executives, industry
observers said. If a prison contract provides for a bonus, such incidents also
would be taken into account by a client government agency in determining the
award. CCA is required to file reports with the state on incidents such as
inmate-on-inmate assaults or inmate-on-staff assaults, disturbances and a daily
census of inmates at its prisons that house state inmates, said Dorinda Carter,
a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections. The department has
onsite contract monitors and other designated employees at the prisons that
report daily on incidents and another division that conducts annual audits of
the CCA prisons, she said. "We feel pretty sure that we're finding out about
incidents as they happen," Carter said. She added that CCA is required to follow
the same policies as the 13 prisons run by the state and that officials are
confident in their monitoring of the company.
March 13, 2008
Mother Jones
Most ambitious lawyers know that if they want to become a federal judge,
they have to fulfill several key requirements. First, they must schmooze the
right people, sit on the right bar committees, and make the requisite political
contributions. Then, above all, they must 1) pay nanny taxes, and 2) wait until
after securing a lifetime appointment to join an exclusive, discriminatory
country club. Gustavus Adolphus Puryear IV, Bush's choice for a trial court seat
in the middle district of Tennessee, had ticked off most of the items on the
list by the time he was nominated last summer. He'd given money, befriended Dick
Cheney's son-in-law, and even prepped Cheney for the vice-presidential debates
in 2000 and 2004. But he forgot about rule number 2, an oversight that might be
his undoing. As a prison company lawyer with virtually no litigation experience,
Puryear's resume offers any number of reasons why he shouldn't be confirmed. But
inexperience has never stopped the politically connected from ascending to the
bench. Country club memberships, however, are a different matter. And Puryear
happens to be a member of the exclusive Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville, a
club whose racist history is so well known that even former Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist had the good sense to quit the club before running for office.
After Puryear's surprisingly contentious confirmation hearing last month,
several senators asked him to provide additional written answers to their
questions. According to the Nashville Scene, Puryear's responses aren't likely
to win him any friends with the Democrats on the committee, particularly Ted
Kennedy, who sent Puryear four sets of questions regarding the club, including
one about its racial diversity. Puryear replied in legalese, writing, “I am
advised that the club does not track its members based on race, nor does it
respond to such requests. I am personally aware that there are minority members,
but I do not myself know the number,” he wrote. The number of black members of
the Belle Meade Country Club is an open secret in Nashville, largely because the
number is exactly one. Belle Meade didn't allow black members until 1994, when
they admitted one guy, a lawyer from Atlanta. Today, that same guy remains the
only black member of the club. So either Puryear is being incredibly
disingenuous, or he is a lot dumber than his supporters claim. (The Nashville
Scene had no trouble figuring out how many black members the club had, after
all, so it's hard to believe Puryear, who's actually a member, couldn't do the
same.) It's rare for the Senate to see confirmation fights over trial court
judges, but Puryear could be the exception. His country club membership has
caught the attention of women's groups, who are mounting some opposition.
Feminist lawyer Gloria Allred has written a letter to the Judiciary Committee
raising questions about Puryear's nomination. She, too, doesn't buy his claim of
ignorance about the club's discriminatory practices, noting that the club's
"entire voting membership is male, "Lady members" are not allowed to vote, and
no women have been proposed for Resident Member status that would afford voting
privileges." As a trial court judge, Puryear would preside over a fair number of
sexual and racial discrimination trials, which is another reason women's groups
are worried about his nomination. If Puryear can't see the blatant, longstanding
discrimination going on in his own country club, can you imagine what he'd be
like in the courtroom? Egads!
March 13, 2008
TIME
As the top lawyer for America's biggest private prison company, Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), Gus Puryear IV, is known to sport well-pressed
preppy pink shirts, and his brownish mop of hair stands out among most of
President Bush's graying nominees to the federal bench. A favorite of G.O.P.
hardliners, Puryear, 39, prepped Dick Cheney for the vice presidential debates —
both in 2000 and 2004 — and served as a senior aide to two former senators and
onetime presidential hopefuls, Bill Frist and Fred Thompson. Political
connections, though, may not be enough to get Puryear a lifetime post as a
federal district judge in Tennessee. Puryear recently confronted tough questions
about his conduct, experience and potential conflicts of interest from Democrats
on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve him before a full Senate
vote. Now, a former CCA manager tells TIME that Puryear oversaw a reporting
system in which accounts of major, sometimes violent prison disturbances and
other significant events were often masked or minimized in accounts provided to
government agencies with oversight over prison contracts. Ronald T. Jones, the
former CCA manager, alleges that the company even began keeping two sets of
books — one for internal use that described prison deficiencies in telling
detail, and a second set that Jones describes as "doctored" for public
consumption, to limit bad publicity, litigation or fines that could derail CCA's
multimillion dollar contracts with federal, state or local agencies. CCA owns or
operates 65 prisons, housing some 70,000 inmates across the U.S. According to
the company's website, it has a greater than 50% share of the booming private
prison market. CCA is also a major contributor to Republican candidates and
causes, and spends millions of dollars each year lobbying for government
contracts. (Puryear enjoys a friendship with Cheney's son-in-law, Philip Perry,
who lobbied for CCA in Washington before serving as general counsel for the
Department of Homeland Security, which has millions of dollars in contracts with
CCA, from 2005 to 2007.) The company has likewise given financial support to
tax-exempt policy groups that support tough sentencing laws that help put more
people behind bars. Like other prison companies, CCA has faced numerous lawsuits
that stem from allegedly inadequate staff levels that can be a cause of high
levels of violence in the prisons. Though hundreds of such lawsuits are often
pending at any given time, many brought by inmates in its own facilities, CCA
under Puryear has mounted an especially vigorous defense against them, refusing
to settle all but the most damaging. Jones knows CCA intimately. Until last
summer, the longtime Republican was in charge of "quality assurance" records for
CCA prisons across the U.S. He says that in 2005, after CCA found itself
embarrassed on several occasions by the public release of internal records to
government agencies, Puryear mandated that detailed, raw reports on prison
shortcomings carry a blanket assertion of "attorney client privilege," thus
forbidding their release without his written consent. From then on, Jones says,
the audits delivered to agencies were filled with increasingly vague performance
measures. "If the wrong party found out that a facility's operations scored low
in an audit, then CCA could be subject to litigation, fines or worse," explains
Jones. "When Mr. Puryear felt there was highly sensitive or potentially damaging
information to CCA, I would then be directed to remove that information from an
audit report." Puryear would not comment on the allegations. Jones resigned from
CCA last summer to pursue a legal career. According to Jones, Puryear was most
concerned about what CCA described as "zero tolerance" events, or ZT's —
including unnatural deaths, major disturbances, escapes and sexual assaults.
According to Jones, bonuses and job security at the company were tied to
reporting low ZT numbers. Low numbers also pleased CCA's government clients, as
well as the company's board, which received a regular tally, and Wall Street
analysts concerned about potentially costly lawsuits that CCA might face. In
2006, for example, Jones says CCA had to lock down a prison in Texas to control
rioting by as many as 60 inmates. Despite clear internal guidelines defining the
incident as a ZT, Jones says he was ordered not to label it that way. Instead it
was logged as, "Altered facility schedule due to inmate action". And this was
not unusual, says Jones: "Information was misrepresented in a very disturbing
way concerning the company's most important performance indicators, which
included escapes, suicides, violent outbreaks and sexual assaults." Companies
often try to show their best face to customers, and safeguard internal records
with "attorney-client privilege." But according to Stephen Gillers, a leading
expert on legal ethics at New York University, CCA's use of that privilege seems
like "a wholesale, possibly overreaching claim," similiar to the blanket
assertions of major tobacco companies that tried to keep damaging internal
documents from public view. Those assertions of privilege have been rejected by
federal judges as an attempt to improperly conceal their internal data on the
dangers of smoking from customers, the courts and legal adversaries. CCA could
also be in legal trouble if it minimized the tally of serious prison incidents
and, by implication, its possible financial liability. As chief legal counsel,
Puryear would have also had an obligation to ensure his board had all the
information it needed, good or bad, to make decisions. If Puryear's reporting
system had the effect of withholding information relevant to official prison
oversight, that could bear on his suitability as a federal judge by suggesting
his "disdain for the proper operation of an important function of government,"
notes Gillers. Contacted by TIME, CCA says that Puryear, "has served the company
well and honorably as general counsel and will be an outstanding judge." The
company denies allegations that it keeps two sets of books, saying: "A final
audit report is made available to our customers. Appropriate information
gathered in the audits is separately provided to our legal department." The
company adds that "CCA has produced all relevant, non-privileged documents in
litigation," that its board is regularly apprised of the most serious prison
incidents, and that "all appropriate" information is given to the financial
community. President Bush recently called Puryear and his 27 other judicial
nominees facing Senate confirmation "highly qualified." Whether or not the
Senate agrees on Puryear, Bush is likely to leave the White House with fewer
judges approved than Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, both two-term chief
executives.
March 5, 2008 Tennessean
The accuracy of testimony by Gustavus "Gus'' Puryear IV at his confirmation
hearing to be a federal judge is being questioned by four Democratic members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee. Puryear is general counsel of Nashville-based
private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America and was nominated by
Republican President Bush. After the February hearing, he provided written
answers to additional questions about the company's handling of the death of an
inmate at a company-run facility in Nashville, potential conflicts of interest
he would face as a judge and his membership in the Belle Meade Country Club. The
sometimes-pointed questions and Puryear's responses again raise the stakes in
his confirmation. Once thought to be routine, Puryear's nomination is being
fought by a coalition of civil rights, labor and other groups spearheaded by the
Private Corrections Institute, which opposes prison privatization. Puryear's
responses were released Thursday. Inmate death testimony -- Judiciary Committee
Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, along with Sens. Ted Kennedy of
Massachusetts, Dianne Feinstein of California and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin
questioned the testimony Puryear gave last month about the 2004 death of Estelle
Richardson. Richardson died at the Metro Detention Facility after she was
forcibly removed from her solitary confinement cell by four guards. She had a
fractured skull, broken ribs and liver damage. The state's medical examiner
ruled the death a homicide and the four guards were charged, but the indictments
eventually were dropped. Later, a civil suit brought by Richardson's family was
settled out of court when experts representing the family and the CCA concluded
the skull fracture occurred before she was extracted from her cell. At his Feb.
12 hearing, Puryear testified it was not clear how Richardson received her head
injuries and that they could have been self-inflicted. He said CPR done in an
attempt to revive Richardson could have caused her broken ribs and liver damage.
All four senators questioned that testimony, citing a letter sent to the
committee from Dr. Bruce Levy, Tennessee's chief medical examiner, who conducted
the autopsy on Richardson. He reiterated that the death was a homicide caused by
blunt force trauma that was not self-inflicted. Levy called "misleading at
best'' Puryear's comment about CPR causing injuries. Puryear responded by citing
a letter to the committee from David Smith, attorney for the Richardson family,
who wrote that the "the circumstances and causes of Ms. Richardson's tragic
death were complex and debated ... our own experts attributed the death to a
seizure.'' "There were also issues on whether CPR may have caused the liver and
rib injuries,'' Smith wrote. Puryear said the company's expert, Dr. William
McCormick, former deputy chief medical examiner for Tennessee, wrote that the
rib and liver injuries were "almost certainly'' caused by CPR and cited medical
research to back his claim. Promises made -- Puryear expanded on a promise made
during testimony that he would recuse himself for at least five years from CCA
cases and would also not take on personal cases involving company executives. He
said at the hearing he also would sell all of his CCA stock. Puryear also wrote
that he would resign from the Belle Meade Country Club if he discovered that the
club's membership practices violated the judicial code of conduct. Kennedy wrote
that the club did not allow blacks to join until 1994 and does not give women
the right to vote on club business. Puryear said there are no women who are
"resident members,'' the class allowed to vote, but that he knows of no policy
that restricts women from being recommended for that category. "I am not aware
... that any woman has been proposed or has sought to be proposed as a 'resident
member,' " he said. Judiciary Committee spokesman Erica Chabot said the
committee would likely not deal with the nomination until April at the earliest
because members may want to ask follow-up questions and Congress is out of
session the last two weeks of March. The full Senate must confirm the nomination
once it is out of committee.
February 25, 2008 Tennessean
Gustavus "Gus" Puryear IV is the top attorney for Corrections Corporation of
America, the Nashville-based private prison giant. He graduated with honors from
law school, is a deacon in his church and serves on the boards of numerous
community organizations. Now President Bush has nominated him to be a federal
judge for the Middle District of Tennessee. But Puryear has never been a judge,
has little trial experience, and works for and holds stock in a company enmeshed
with the federal government through campaign donations, lobbying and huge
contracts. And the company he represents gets sued a lot, many times in federal
court in Nashville. Civil rights and prison rights advocates and others say
those and other concerns make Puryear a poor choice to be a judge in the very
court where his company is often a defendant. And his answers at his
confirmation hearing earlier this month are raising questions among some
senators and the state's top medical examiner. What appeared to be a routine
confirmation process has suddenly become complicated. "During that hearing, a
lot of red flags were raised," said Erica Chabot, spokeswoman for Sen. Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "You can bet there are
some follow-ups." Senators on the committee were given two weeks to submit
additional questions that will be sent to Puryear for written responses. Puryear,
39, declined to comment on questions about his fitness for the bench while the
confirmation process is ongoing, said Steve Owen, spokesman for CCA. Trial
experience lacking -- Letters opposing Puryear were sent to the committee by
Private Corrections Institute Inc., which opposes prison privatization; the
Alliance for Justice, an umbrella group of dozens of national civil rights and
other organizations; and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees. Among their arguments: Puryear doesn't have the proper legal
qualifications. Puryear spent less than three years in private practice in
Nashville before signing on as counsel for the Senate Committee on Governmental
Affairs, headed by then-Sen. Fred Thompson. Next, he served as legislative
director for former Sen. Bill Frist for about three years before becoming
general counsel and vice president at CCA in January 2001. Puryear's lack of
trial experience is a greater concern than his role as a corporate lawyer and
his lack of judicial service, said Douglas Laycock, a professor of the
University of Michigan Law School. "District court judges have to run a trial
and run it efficiently. It's just a different skill set," Laycock said. An
analysis of a database of the nearly 1,200 sitting and senior federal judges
shows slightly more than one-third served as judges prior to their appointment.
Only 18 served as general counsels or assistant or associate general counsels
for private companies. Puryear's lack of trial experience is probably why he
received a "qualified" rating by the American Bar Association, instead of the
higher "well qualified," Laycock said. Of the 67 judges nominated by President
Bush since January 2007, 14 received a unanimous or majority "qualified" rating.
The rest had unanimous or majority "well-qualified" ratings. Alex Friedman, vice
president of Private Corrections Institute, said conflict of interest is a major
reason not to confirm Puryear because lawsuits against the company and its
executives are often filed in the court on which he would serve. Friedman served
six years in a CCA-run facility in Tennessee. Puryear told the committee he
would sell off all his CCA stock and recuse himself from cases involving the
company. Laycock said "that CCA gets sued a lot is not a problem" because the
number of cases would be relatively small and could be picked up by other
judges. CCA and Puryear have strong connections to the federal government.
Puryear gave $3,000 to Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker's campaign in 2005-06 and
$1,000 to Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander in 2005. CCA executives and its
political action committee have given $48,950 to Alexander since 1989, according
to the Center for Responsive Politics. Corker has received $27,250 from CCA and
its executives. Puryear is a registered lobbyist for CCA and the company spent
more than $3 million in 2007 lobbying the federal government, according to
lobbying reports. It has received nearly $1.2 billion in federal contracts since
2004, according to a database of federal contracts compiled by the Office of
Management and Budget. Nashville death cited -- Another complaint is the
company's handling of the 2004 death of Estelle Richardson in the Metro
Detention Facility in Nashville. Puryear testified at his confirmation hearing
that her broken ribs and liver injuries could have been caused by CPR attempts
to revive her. Tennessee's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Bruce Levy, who conducted
the autopsy on Richardson, said in an e-mail that Puryear's "statement that the
rib fractures and liver damage could have been caused by CPR is in error and is
not based on sound forensic medicine." Levy has contacted the judiciary
committee. But Dr. William McCormick, the state's former deputy chief medical
examiner, concluded in a report prepared for attorneys defending the company in
a civil lawsuit that the injuries were "almost certainly" caused by the CPR,
said Joe Welborn, one of the attorneys. Four CCA guards were charged, but the
charges were dropped and Richardson's family ultimately settled a lawsuit
against the company. Both Tennessee Republican senators, Alexander and Corker,
released written statements last week repeating their support for Puryear. "The
American Bar Association investigated all allegations raised by liberal interest
groups, but still concluded that Mr. Puryear was qualified to serve on the
federal bench," Alexander said. The Senate Judiciary Committee is not likely to
hold a second hearing on the nomination, said Chabot, spokeswoman for chairman
Leahy. The committee will rely on the record of the first hearing and answers to
written questions to vote. It is not clear when that vote will take place.
February 22, 2008 National Lawyers Guild PR
On June 13, 2007, President Bush nominated Gustavus Adolphus Puryear IV for a
position on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. Mr.
Puryear currently serves as vice president and general counsel for Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest for-profit private prison
company. If appointed he would serve as a federal judge in the same jurisdiction
where CCA is headquartered. Since 2000, at least 260 federal lawsuits naming CCA,
company subsidiaries or CCA employees have been filed in the Middle District of
Tennessee. Such cases would constitute a conflict of interest for Mr. Puryear,
and assigning them to other judges would not be an effective use of judicial
resources. Of greater concern is that Mr. Puryear lacks familiarity with the
federal courts and has little trial or litigation experience. By his own
admission he has tried only two cases to verdict; he has been personally
involved in only five federal cases, most recently a decade ago. He is not
admitted to practice before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is over
the Middle District of Tennessee, and received only a "qualified" rating from
the American Bar Association rather than a "highly qualified" rating. Both
Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker strongly support Mr. Puryear's
nomination. Neither Senator has acknowledged the substantial financial
contributions received from Mr. Puryear and his employer, CCA – which include
over $80,000 to Senator Alexander and $27,000 to Senator Corker since 2004.
Further, Mr. Puryear mentioned in disclosure statements that he is a member of
the Nashville-based Belle Meade Country Club. The fact that Mr. Puryear
maintains membership in an exclusive, predominately white club that did not
admit its first minority member until 1994, and reportedly does not afford
voting privileges to female members but only to male members, is a matter of
significant concern for a federal judicial nominee. In an Associated Press
national wire article concerning Mr. Puryear's nomination, Vanderbilt Professor
Stefanie Lindquist was quoted as saying his judicial appointment "might slide
through as a compromise." The National Lawyers Guild does not believe the people
of Tennessee should have to compromise or settle for a less-than-qualified
federal judge to represent their interests in U.S. District Court. The National
Lawyers Guild calls on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to vote down this
unqualified, conflicted and controversial judicial candidate.
February 21,
2008 AP
A private prison company executive nominated to become a federal judge has run
into a determined opponent — a former inmate. President Bush in June nominated
Gustavus A. Puryear IV, chief lawyer with Corrections Corporation of America, to
become a U.S. district judge in Nashville. That led Alex Friedmann, who spent
six years at the company's prison in Clifton, Tenn., to investigate Puryear's
qualifications. He looked up every case where Puryear was listed on the docket
as counsel. The prisoner-turned-inmate advocate found only five instances where
Puryear was the attorney of record. By his count and Puryear's, the judicial
nominee has been involved in only two federal court trials during his career.
That's just one more case than Friedmann himself has handled in federal court.
Convinced that the well-connected Puryear was unqualified to be a federal judge
and might face a conflict of interest overseeing litigation involving his former
employer, Friedmann began a public relations campaign against the nomination
that led all the way to the Senate. He formed the group Tennesseans Against
Puryear and enlisted the help of the liberal Washington-based Alliance for
Justice and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,
both of which sent letters opposing the appointment. Puryear, a 1993 graduate of
the University of North Carolina law school, didn't respond to several phone and
e-mail requests left at his home and office for an interview with The Associated
Press. At a Feb. 12 hearing of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif.,
questioned Puryear about several issues originally raised by Friedmann and the
nonprofit Private Corrections Institute, a group opposing private prisons that
Friedmann helps run. Puryear told the Senate committee he already was selling
off his stock in the company, according to reports in The Tennessean newspaper.
He owned CCA shares valued at just under $1.3 million as of Feb. 1, according to
Lionshares.com, an online database of stock ownership. He also pledged to recuse
himself from cases involving CCA even after he no longer holds a financial
interest. The committee also questioned Puryear about whether the volume of
lawsuits against Nashville-based CCA — the nation's largest for-profit private
prison company — would burden other judges who would have to hear the cases when
Puryear recused himself. Puryear said it would not be a significant burden.
Friedmann's campaign against Puryear continues. He plans to send a letter to the
Committee on the Judiciary pointing out what he contends are inaccuracies in
Puryear's answers. The two men have never met. Although Friedmann learned of the
nomination because he keeps tabs on CCA, he insists his crusade is based on
Puryear's lack of qualification and not because he's a CCA executive. Friedmann
sued CCA and several employees in 1996 while incarcerated for six years for
armed robbery. Serving as his own lawyer, Friedmann eventually won a $6,000
judgment against a former prison unit manager for a civil rights violation.
Puryear's legal resume includes significant political work — serving as counsel
to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and junior counsel during the U.S.
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigation of campaign finance abuse
led by former Sen. Fred Thompson. He also was a debate adviser for Dick Cheney
in 2000. Stefanie Lindquist, an associate professor of political science and law
at Vanderbilt University, said courtroom experience is good but not essential
for federal judge nominees. She sees more significance in the American Bar
Association rating of Puryear as "qualified," instead of "well qualified" to be
a judge. "A 'qualified' rating is relatively weak. That's going to hurt him,"
Lindquist said. Lindquist said Friedmann's efforts are unusual for even
temporarily disrupting what should be a routine confirmation. There are about
180 Bush nominations pending as the administration and Democratic-controlled
Senate tangle over some sharply contested nominees. Of the Puryear nomination,
Lindquist said: "If there are other, more controversial nominees, this might
slide through as a compromise."
February 20, 2008 Mother Jones
In October 2000, Dick Cheney faced off for a debate with Connecticut Sen. Joseph
Lieberman. The 60-year-old Cheney appeared comfortable discussing the ins and
outs of policy and made good-natured jokes about Lieberman's singing abilities,
or lack thereof. Cheney's smooth performance reflected his many years in public
service. But the aspiring vice president also had a strong debate-preparation
team made up of longtime friends and GOP loyalists. Among them was Gustavus
Adolphus Puryear IV, a legislative director for Tennessee senator Bill Frist,
who was on contract with the Bush/Cheney campaign. Puryear apparently did such a
good job prepping Cheney that he was called in again in 2004 to help him gear up
for his debate with Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards.
Puryear's efforts on behalf of the Bush administration paid off last June when
the president nominated him to be a federal trial court judge for the Middle
District of Tennessee. Puryear certainly isn't the first judicial nominee
selected primarily for his political service, but still, his resume is
remarkably thin on the practice of law, a basic prerequisite even for the
best-connected political hacks. Puryear got his start in politics in the
mid-1990s working as counsel to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs,
then chaired by Fred Thompson, as it investigated the Clinton fundraising
scandals. From there he went to work for Frist. Beyond a brief stint in private
practice for a corporate law firm when he was fresh out of law school, Puryear
has spent more time inside an executive suite than a courtroom. And it's that
corporate work that makes him an especially questionable candidate for the
federal bench. Puryear was in Washington last week for his confirmation hearing
before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Senators Arlen Specter (D.-Pa,) and
Dianne Feinstein (D.-Ca.) both put his resume under a microscope, noting his
conspicuous lack of trial experience. At one point Specter asked him point
blank, "How many cases have you actually tried?" To which Puryear answered: Two.
Indeed, according to his written questionnaire for the committee, of the two
cases he has tried in the entirety of his legal career, he was lead counsel on
one of them. The last time he litigated a case in federal court was more than a
decade ago. Puryear has spent the bulk of his legal career at the
Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private
prison company. As its general counsel since 2001, Puryear has made millions of
dollars working for a company that profits from the country's incarceration
boom, particularly through his recent sale of more than $3 million worth of the
company's stock. (His financial disclosure form shows a net worth of more than
$13 million.) His employer creates enormous conflicts for Puryear as a potential
federal judge, as the CCA gets sued all the time, often in the very district
where he hopes to preside as judge. Since 2000, roughly 260 cases have been
filed in that court against the CCA, its officers, and subsidiaries. In
addition, Puryear's current job involves overseeing the CCA's defense against
inmate litigation, a prison staple that he has publicly dismissed as a nuisance,
even though such litigation has led to significant verdicts and settlements
against the company. For instance, in 2000, a South Carolina jury hit the CCA
with a $3 million verdict for abusing juveniles. Other successful suits have
alleged that the company's employees abused inmates and provided negligent
medical care. Yet in a quote he no doubt now regrets, in 2004 Puryear said that,
"Litigation is an outlet for inmates. It's something they can do in their spare
time." Inmate lawsuits typically account for more than 10 percent of the docket
in Tennessee's Middle District, meaning that Puryear will see his share of them
if he gets confirmed. During his confirmation hearing last week, Puryear told
the committee that he would recuse himself from any cases involving the CCA—at
least, he said, for some time after he's divested all of his stock in the
company. He dismissed concerns about his conflict of interest by noting that the
CCA cases make up a small part of the court's workload and that his recusals
would not create problems for the other judges. But his promises to recuse still
don't get to the heart of a fundamental conflict: To the CCA, inmates are a
revenue stream warehoused at the cheapest price. This not exactly the view of
the criminal justice system you want from a judge if you are a defendant. A
trial court judge in Tennessee's Middle District can expect to handle more than
60 criminal cases a year. Every person Puryear sends to prison is a potential
money-maker for his former employer, which contracts with the federal government
to manage 15 detention facilities, and also holds federal prisoners in other CCA
institutions that house state and local prisoners when the need arises,
according to Steve Owen, the company's director of marketing and communications.
The number of inmates coming from Tennessee may be relatively small, but still,
it seems fair to ask whether Puryear's conflict of interest runs so deep that he
might have to recuse himself from criminal cases entirely. Thus far, Puryear has
largely escaped media scrutiny, as the activist groups that monitor the federal
courts tend to focus mostly on appellate courts and the occasional Supreme Court
battle rather than on trial court nominees. Puryear's CV also doesn't signal
fights on many of the hot-button social issues that usually set off a
confirmation battle. He doesn't sound—or look—like Robert Bork. He's young,
patrician, a model member of the exclusive Belle Meade Country Club, and
director of the Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville. But for his deep voice he
could be Niles on "Frasier." Nonetheless, Puryear might be in for an unexpected
fight, due in part to his decision to publicly dis jailhouse lawyers. Alex
Friedmann was one of those jailhouse lawyers. He spent six years inside one of
the CCA's prisons in Tennessee for attempted murder and armed robbery. Friedmann
actually sued the CCA while incarcerated for retaliating against him for his
comments to a reporter for The Nation. Representing himself, he took another
case all the way to a jury trial, where he mostly lost, though he won a default
judgment against a former unit manager. He also appealed a different case
against the state, over censorship, that went all the way to the Sixth Circuit
court of appeals where he won. "In that regard, I'm more qualified than [Puryear]
is," he observes, noting that Puryear isn't even admitted to practice in the
Sixth Circuit. Now out of prison nine years, Friedmann is an editor for Prison
Legal News, which is how he first learned about Puryear's nomination. After
doing a little checking on him, Friedmann ran across Puryear's quote about
inmate litigation, which didn't sit too well with him, and he set out to torpedo
Puryear's nomination. As a former CCA inmate and a board member of a Florida
nonprofit group that opposes prison privatization, Friedmann readily admits that
he's not a disinterested party in the nomination battle. Nonetheless, his
political instincts are sound. He is cobbling together a coalition to oppose
Puryear's nomination, including the American Federal State and Municipal
Employees Union, which opposes private prisons for their anti-labor positions.
Friedmann's currently at work trying to enlist the real powerhouse of liberal
judicial activists to join the coalition: women's groups. Friedmann has compiled
stats from the federal court docket on the CCA's lawsuit history in order to
highlight the potential conflicts of interest Puryear might face, and he picked
apart Puryear's resume and his responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee's
questions last week. For instance, when pressed on his view of criminal
defendants and prison inmates, Puryear pointed to his service as a commissioner
on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Skeptical, Friedmann checked
out Puryear's attendance record with the commission. He says the commission held
eight public hearings between 2005 and 2007—and Puryear missed at least four of
them. "If the gentleman does have a genuine concern about inmates, why did he
miss half the meetings?" he asks. Friedmann is also raising significant
questions about Puryear's response to questions about the death of a female
inmate at the CCA's facility in Nashville. The medical examiner ruled that
34-year-old Estelle Richardson was beaten to death while in the company's
custody. She suffered a skull fracture, broken ribs, and liver damage.
Prosecutors indicted four CCA guards in 2005, but later dropped the charges
after being unable to determine the time of death. So far, no one has been held
responsible for Richardson's death, although the CCA settled a private lawsuit
filed by her family. When Sen. Feinstein asked Puryear about the case, Puryear
disputed the medical examiner's findings and claimed that Richardson's death
might not have been a homicide at all. He suggested that the broken ribs and
liver injury may have been caused by CPR. It's "common" for people to suffer
such injuries from CPR, Puryear said, to which a dumbfounded Feinstein
exclaimed, "Common?" Apparently not satisfied with Puryear's answers, Feinstein
asked him to provide the committee with further written information about the
case. Meanwhile, after the hearing, Friedmann called the Tennessee medical
examiner who worked the case, who he says reaffirmed the original finding that
Robinson's death was a homicide and that there was nothing to suggest her
injuries were caused by resuscitation efforts. Friedmann also spoke with the
lawyers who represented Richardson's family and he says that they told him that
the CCA never raised CPR injuries as a defense in the litigation. Puryear's
comments to the committee, says Freidmann, are "not supported by the medical
record," which makes him skeptical about Puryear's judgment as a lawyer—and his
credibility. Friedmann seems to recognize that prison inmates are not the stuff
of judicial confirmation fights, so he has also homed in on another issue that
might provide more traction, not to mention the interest of powerful women's
groups: Puryear's country club. The tony Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville
is so exclusive that you have to be a member just to access its website. It
didn’t admit a single black member until 1994, a racist history so potent that
even Puryear's mentor, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, quit the club
in 1993 when he first ran for office. While Belle Meade admits women, Friedmann
has heard that it still won't give "lady members" voting rights. (Troy
Cunningham, the controller of the club for the past 17 years, wouldn’t respond
to questions about women's voting rights, saying that "all questions flow
through the members," meaning that someone will have to put the question to
Puryear himself.) But if Friedmann can stir up controversy over Puryear's
country club membership, he might actually have a shot at scuttling his
nomination.
February 20,
2008 AP
Corrections Corp. of America spent almost $2.5 million in 2007 to lobby on
legislation and regulations related to the private prison industry. The prison
management company spent more than $1.1 million in the second half of 2007 to
lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form posted online
Thursday by the Senate's public records office. The company lobbied on the
privatization of Bureau of Indian Affairs prisons and on the Public Safety Act,
which would outlaw private prisons, as well as the Private Prison Information
Act, which would force private prisons to make public the same information
government jails must provide. Corrections Corp. spent more than $1.3 million in
the first six months of 2007 to lobby on similar issues. In addition to lobbying
Congress, the company also lobbied the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of
Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Labor and Office of
Management and Budget. Corrections Corp. lobbyists included Bart VerHulst,
previously chief of staff for former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.;
Mike Quinlan, former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons; and Gus Puryear,
previously counsel to Frist and an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of
the executive and legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.
December 12, 2007 All American Patriots
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today co-sponsored the Private Prison Information
Act of 2007, legislation introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman to increase
transparency and accountability at private prisons. The Private Prison
Information Act of 2007 will help to prevent abuse and neglect at private
prisons by requiring public disclosure of information about their operations.
“As the federal government continues to contract out the incarceration of
federal prisoners, it is essential that there be public disclosure about the
operation of these private prisons,” Senator Clinton said. “Right now, the
public does not have the same right of access to information about private
prisons as it has for federal prisons. There is a lack of accountability into
how tax dollars are being spent, which can place the safety of correctional
officers, surrounding communities, and prisoners at risk. This legislation will
help to ensure that citizens and elected officials can properly assess the
performance of private prisons and, if necessary, hold them accountable for
misconduct.” Currently, federal law does not require private prisons that house
federal prisoners to disclose information to the public about the daily
operation of their facilities, and many private prisons do not submit reports to
the federal government. This legislation will require private prisons that house
federal prisoners to provide the same information available to the public that
federal prisons are required to provide under the Freedom of Information Act.
Approximately 27,000 federal criminal prisoners are serving time in private
prison facilities. Additionally, more than 40,000 of the immigrants and asylum
seekers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains each year are held in
private detention centers. Studies have shown that correctional officers at
privately run prisons are paid less, receive less training, and experience
higher turnover rates than those at prisons run by government agencies. These
differences can lead to greater rates of assaults on staff, inmate on inmate
assaults, and escape attempts. The bill is supported by a broad coalition of
associations representing correctional officers and law enforcement officers and
public interest and advocacy groups, including Corrections USA; the Sheriff
Officers Association of Nassau County, NY.; the Suffolk County Correctional
Officers Association, N.Y.; the Westchester County Correctional Superior
Officers Association, N.Y.; the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME); the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE);
Amnesty International USA, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
November 12, 2007 AP
Private prison operator Corrections Corp. of America paid Sisco Consulting
Inc. $140,000 in the first half of 2007 to lobby the federal government,
according to a disclosure form. The form, which was posted online Nov. 7 by the
Senate's public records office, did not indicate any specific initiatives the
lobbying firm worked on. The Nashville, Tenn.-based company, which designs,
builds and manages prisons, jails and detention facilities, previously indicated
it spent $1.3 million lobbying so far this year on issues related to prison
privatization. The company owns 40 facilities, but also operates in another 25
facilities across the nation. Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that
could influence members of the executive and legislative branches, under a
federal law enacted in 1995. They must register with Congress within 45 days of
being hired or engaging in lobbying.
November 11, 2007 The Morning Call
For seven years before coming to Congress, Rep. Tim Holden was a Schuylkill
County sheriff. Here, he may be more of a warden. Holden last week testified on
behalf of one of four prison-related measures that he has introduced since the
start of the year. The Private Prison Information Act would require private
prisons that are awarded federal contracts to disclose the same information as
public prisons. ''Private prisons right now have no reporting obligations,''
Holden, D-17th District, said in an interview. ''There is an awful lot of
information that we cannot find out.'' Holden argues that without information
about how private prisons are staffed, how much training guards receive and how
many incidents occur, there's no way to hold them accountable. Private prisons
counter that they provide all necessary information to the agencies that
contract with them. Holden's district -- which includes parts of Schuylkill and
Berks counties -- is home to two state prisons and one federal prison. They
employ several hundred prison guards. But so far there is only one private
prison with a federal contract in Pennsylvania: Moshannon Valley Correctional
Center in Centre County. And Holden, who opposes private prisons, wants to keep
it that way. Without having to disclose the same information as public
facilities, Holden argues, private prisons aren't playing by the same rules when
they compete for federal contracts. ''It is a concern that they'd expand
[private prisons] anywhere in the country,'' Holden said. ''It is only going to
put the public safety at risk.'' Corrections officers have a keen interest in
keeping the industry public: Salaries and benefits are considered to be better
at state and federal-run prisons than at private prisons. But privately run
prisons have become increasingly common in recent years as the federal
government tries to meet the demands placed on it by a growing prison
population. The largest private prison provider, Corrections Corporation of
America, now has 65 facilities throughout the country. It opposes Holden's
measure, arguing that it already provides information necessary to the agencies
administering the contracts, if not the public. ''We have very comprehensive and
detailed standards which we meet with our public partners in terms of
information that is provided to them,'' said Louise Grant, Corrections
Corporation's spokeswoman. ''Transparency and accountability already exist with
the public-private partnership.''
November 9, 2007
Harrisburg Patriot News
Private prisons and other facilities hold about 25,000 federal prisoners.
They don’t have to tell the public how many guards they have per inmate or
whether serious crimes such as assaults or rape occur. U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, a
former Schuylkill County sheriff and probation officer, would shut them down if
he could. But there’s no support in Congress for that step. Instead, Holden,
D-Schuylkill, sponsored the Private Prison Information Act, which would require
the 12 private prisons operated nationwide that hold federal prisoners to comply
with the federal Freedom of Information Act. The Moshannon Valley Correctional
Center at Philipsburg, a 1,300-bed low-security facility that houses mostly
criminal aliens and offenders from the Washington, D.C. area, is one of 12
facilities nationwide. There are five in Texas, two in California, and one each
in North Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio. Houston, Texas-based Cornell
Companies, which operates the center in Philipsburg, operates other state
facilities for juvenile offenders in the state. Holden’s legislation would only
apply to facilities with federal contracts. “As the federal government increases
its use of private, for-profit facilities for incarceration of federal
prisoners, it is imperative that we ensure that information about the operation
of these prisons is readily available,” Holden testified Thursday before a House
Judiciary subcommittee. “The veil of secrecy surrounding private facilities
needs to be lifted.” Holden has two federal prisons and one state prison in his
district. He told the panel, whose members voiced no criticism of the proposal,
about the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio. Members of a
state panel found 44 inmate-on-inmate assaults there during a one-year period,
compared with 305 combined assaults recorded by Ohio’s 32 correctional
facilities. The facility did not respond to state officials’ and media requests
for additional details, he said. “Most daunting of all, private prisons are not
required to provide incident reports detailing health care oversight, rape or
assault, weapons attacks, death, or escape at the facility,” Holden said.
Corrections Corp. of America, a company that manages about 70,000 prisoners,
opposes the measure, said Louise Grant, vice president of communications and
marketing. “We believe the current system works very well” and provides an
elaborate system for making information available, said Grant. Rep. Robert
Scott, a Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism
and Homeland Security, called Holden’s proposal a “good government bill,” but no
other members commented. The full House Judiciary Committee is expected to take
up the bill later this month or in December.
October 11, 2007 Arizona Republic
A Phoenix man and other parents whose children died at boot camps for
troubled youths gave wrenching testimony before Congress on Wednesday, urging
other families to avoid enrolling teens in such programs until there is more
oversight of them. Bob Bacon of Phoenix recounted how his 16-year-old son,
Aaron, died at a wilderness camp in Utah in the 1990s. "We were conned by their
(the camp's) fraudulent claims and will go to our graves regretting our
gullibility," Bacon told members of a House committee. The Government
Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also announced it has
identified thousands of allegations of abuse, some involving death, at boot
camps since the early 1990s. It cataloged 1,619 incidents of abuse in 33 states
in 2005. "Buyer, beware," said Greg Kutz, who led the GAO investigation. "You
really don't know what you're getting." Kutz said the GAO closely examined 10
closed cases where juveniles died at residential treatment camps. In half of
those cases, the teens died of dehydration or heat exhaustion. Other factors
were untrained staff, inadequate food or reckless operations, the GAO said. Five
of the 10 camps are still operating, some in different locations or under new
names. "Ineffective program management played a key role in most of these
deaths," Kutz testified before the House Education and Labor Committee. Rep.
George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the committee and requested the
investigation, has sponsored a bill designed to encourage states to enact
regulations. "This nightmare has remained an open secret for years," Miller said
in a statement. "Congress must act, and it must act swiftly." The death of
Bacon's son was one of the 10 cases studied by the GAO, but not the only one
with an Arizona connection. The sample cases did not include names, but some
were identifiable through news reports. One was the death of Anthony Haynes, 14,
at the American Buffalo Soldiers boot camp in Arizona in 2001. One of the
state's most high-profile camp deaths was that of Nicholas Contreraz, a
16-year-old Sacramento youth who died in 1998 while being subjected to
discipline at the Arizona Boys Ranch near Queen Creek. Bob Bacon's account was
among those Wednesday that outraged House committee members. Bacon said Aaron
was sent to the camp because of minor drug use and poor grades. The father said
he was fooled by the owners of the Utah facility into believing his son would be
well cared for. Instead, Aaron was forced to hike eight to 10 miles a day with
inadequate nutrition and was not given protective gear to withstand freezing
temperatures, Bacon said. When Aaron complained of severe stomach pains and
asked for a doctor, his pleas were ignored even though he had dramatically lost
weight and suffered from other serious symptoms, Bacon testified. According to
court documents, the boy's condition was ignored for 20 days, until he
collapsed. The autopsy showed he died of an acute infection related to a
perforated ulcer. Five camp employees pleaded guilty to negligent homicide, and
another was convicted of child abuse. All were sentenced to probation and
community service. Kutz testified that camp employees studied by the GAO were
often poorly trained. He said kids weren't properly fed and were exposed to
dangerous conditions, their cries for medical assistance ignored. He said that
in only one of the 10 sample cases was anyone found criminally liable and
sentenced to prison. The residential programs, designed to instill discipline
and character, can be privately run or state-sponsored programs and sometimes
include an educational or school-like component. They are loosely regulated by
states. There are no federal laws that define and regulate them. The programs
are marketed to parents who are at a loss as to how to help emotionally troubled
teens, Kutz said. Jan Moss, executive director of the National Association of
Therapeutic Schools and Programs, a trade group, said many kids have been helped
by the treatment programs. She said the industry is taking steps to improve, but
she added, "Clearly we still have a very long way to go." Kutz said there is no
comprehensive nationwide data on deaths and injuries in residential treatment
programs. Auditors found thousands of allegations in lawsuits, Web sites and
state records. "Examples of abuse include youth being forced to eat their own
vomit, denied adequate food, being forced to lie in urine or feces, being
kicked, beaten and thrown to the ground," Kutz said, adding that one teen was
reportedly "forced to use a toothbrush to clean a toilet, then forced to use
that toothbrush on their own teeth." At the boot camp where Anthony Haynes died,
children were fed an apple for breakfast, a carrot for lunch and a bowl of beans
for dinner, the GAO said. Haynes became dehydrated in 113-degree heat and
vomited dirt, according to witnesses. The program closed, and the director,
Charles Long, was sentenced in 2005 to six years in prison for manslaughter. The
autopsy on Nicholas Contreraz showed that after Boys Ranch staffers punished and
humiliated the teen for days, he suffered from a severe infection in the lining
of his lungs. Five employees were charged criminally, but all counts were
dropped. The ranch now operates under the name Canyon State Academy. Julie Vega,
Contreraz's mother, recently told The Arizona Republic, "I feel like he was
sacrificed, and some good things changed for the better because of him. But
nobody really paid a price for his death."
Correctional Treatment Facility
Washington, DC
CCA
July 23, 2010 WTOP
Former correctional officer Quincy Hayes was sentenced Friday to 12 months and
one day in prison for accepting bribes. At his guilty plea on March 18, 2010,
Hayes, 32, of Alexandria admitted that he accepted a $300 cash payment from an
undercover FBI agent in exchange for agreeing to smuggle an iPod into the
Correctional Treatment Facility (CTF) for an inmate. Hayes also admitted to
having smuggled cigarettes into the CTF, located in the District, for another
inmate in exchange for a $100 bribe. Hayes will also undergo a two-year period
of supervised release following the prison sentence, where he will perform 100
hours of community service. The CTF is operated by the Corrections Corporation
of America under contract with the District of Columbia Department of
Corrections.
May 27, 2010 Washington Post
Jail is supposed to be no frills, a place where the only the basic amenities of
food, clothing and shelter exist. But according to prosecutors, one D.C. jail
officer helped an inmate get some creature comforts -- a cell phone, an iPod,
and even a charger for the devices. Thomas Ford, 35, of the District, was
sentenced Thursday to 12 months and one day in prison on a charge of bribery of
a public official, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District announced. Ford
admitted in February that he accepted cash payments in exchange for agreeing to
smuggle cell phones, an iPod and a charger to a cooperating inmate in the
Correctional Treatment Facility, which is operated by the Corrections
Corporation of America under contract with the D. C. Department of Corrections.
The FBI launched an undercover sting in 2008, after getting a tip that
corrections officers were smuggling contraband to inmates. U.S. Attorney Ron
Machen said in a statement that as a law enforcement officer, Ford abused the
public trust, and he pledged, "“whenever anyone violates the public trust and
breaks the law, we will prosecute them vigorously.”
March 11, 2010 AP
D.C. police are searching for an inmate who escaped while being transported to
United Medical Center for treatment. The Corrections Corporation of America says
28-year-old Terrence Moore fled when he arrived at the southeast D.C. hospital
around 9 a.m. Thursday. The company says after officers opened the vehicle
doors, Moore escaped and jumped into a burgundy colored Cadillac and got away
with an unknown driver. Officials are investigating how Moore was able to remove
his restraints. The CCA runs the Correctional Treatment Facility where Moore,
who is from Washington, was a pretrial inmate facing charges of assault with
intent to kill. The facility is under lockdown.
February 23, 2010 Courthouse News
Two former inmates of a Corrections Corporation of America prison say CCA
employees preyed on them sexually and banished them to solitary lockdown when
they complained. One woman claims a CCA guard paid her "sugar daddy" on the
outside, then demanded, and received, sex in prison. Jessica Rubio and Serbennia
Chase filed separate, $20 million federal lawsuits against the private prison
contractor, alleging civil rights violations at the company's Correctional
Treatment Facility (CTF) at the District of Columbia Jail. Rubio, who was
arrested and sentenced in 2008 for sexual solicitation, says CTF employee "Sgt.
Powell" paid her for sex four times when he should have been helping her "turn
her life around." Rubio says that in an effort to go straight rather then
spending "the rest of her life going in and out of prison," she signed up for a
private counseling session with Powell, who ran a group session called "Life
Without a Crutch." Rubio says she thought Powell was "uniquely qualified to
assist her in dealing with her problems and counsel her on how to become a law
abiding and productive member of society." During a private session, she says
she told Powell she was a prostitute and drug addict. She said she worked as a
prostitute because of a "love of money," and because there was no other job at
which she could make "$1,200 to $1,800 a day." After the session, Rubio says,
Powell paid $50 to her "sugar daddy" to have sex with her. Rubio says that
despite the "receipt" for her services, she did not think Powell would "use her
to satisfy his sexual urges because she went to him to turn her life around, not
to facilitate the life she had on the streets." She says Powell took her to the
prison's "satellite kitchen" four times and had sex with her, each time paying
her "sugar daddy" beforehand. Afterward, Rubio says, "She felt cheap, used and
abused." "It reminded her of the life she had on the street, that she wanted to
put behind her, but it had apparently followed her to CTF," the lawsuit states.
After she told investigators about Powell's actions and agreed to testify to a
grand jury, Rubio says she was denied phone calls and other privileges, and
eventually was moved to another prison, where her attorney had trouble visiting
her. She was kept in solitary and kept on near-constant lockdown, she says. In
the other complaint, Chase, who was arrested in 2008 for aggravated assault,
says she was sexually harassed at least three times by a "Lt. Harris" while
incarcerated at CTF. On a number of occasions Harris escorted her to meetings
with her attorney. Two times he grabbed her buttocks or her vagina and said,
"I'll see you later," according to the complaint. Another time he cornered her
in a stairway, grabbed her vagina and said, "When are you going to let me put
this dick in you?" Chase says. Chase adds that the 5th District Police Precinct
violated her privacy when it videotaped her undressing in an interrogation room.
She says the police then circulated a video of her without underwear "exposing
her vagina and buttocks." She says she found out about the video when detectives
sent a copy to her lawyer. She says she was "shocked, embarrassed and felt shame
that her attorneys and other people saw her naked body." After she reported the
harassment, Chase says she was transferred to a jail more than 2 hours away and
kept in a solitary cell on 24-hour lockdown. Both women sued the District of
Columbia, the Office of the Attorney General, and Corrections Corporation of
America for civil rights violations. Chase also sued for invasion of privacy.
They both seek a jury trial, $10 million in compensatory damages and $10 million
in punitive damages. Both are represented by Wendell Robinson. Officials at the
Correctional Treatment Facility did not return a phone call requesting comment.
December 2, 2009 Washington Post
Two D.C. corrections officers and a Maryland woman were arrested Tuesday on
federal bribery charges on suspicion of accepting cash to smuggle cellphones and
iPods to inmates in the District's jail complex. The officers, Thomas Ford, 35,
and Quincy Hayes, 32, have been placed on administrative leave and were released
on personal recognizance after a brief hearing in the District's federal court.
They are officers at the District's Correction Treatment Facility (CTF), which
is run by the Corrections Corporation of America. Renee Braxton, 44, a security
guard at a museum, was also released on personal recognizance, court records
show. Authorities said that an inmate approached the FBI in October 2008 to
report that guards were smuggling contraband into the facility. An undercover
FBI employee, pretending to be the brother of an inmate, met with Braxton and
Ford in 2008 and early this year and gave them several hundred dollars to
smuggle a phone, an iPod and a charger to inmates at the CTF. Ford passed the
items to the inmates, the FBI said. Hayes is accused of accepting a $300 bribe
payment in June 2009 to smuggle in an iPod to a CTF inmate, the FBI said in
court papers.
September 28, 2009 Washington Examiner
A D.C. Jail sergeant has been suspended while corrections officials probe
allegations that he had sex with an inmate after paying for it through her pimp,
according to officials and court documents. The investigation has also led to
the forced leave of two other corrections officers, one of whom was later fired
over an unrelated issue, officials said. The three were removed from the D.C.
Jail property, "after allegations of inappropriate behavior arose with an
inmate," according to Walter Fulton, facility program manager at the
Correctional Treatment Center. Authorities said they would not further discuss
the allegations because of an ongoing law enforcement investigation, but some
details were outlined in a lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court this month.
Jessica Rubio, 32, who described herself in court documents as a prostitute with
a drug problem, was an inmate at the Correctional Treatment Facility, which is
an annex of the D.C. Jail. She was in custody on a prostitution charge. She
charged in her lawsuit that she had sex with correctional counselor Sgt. Aundra
Powell after he paid $50 to her "Sugar Daddy" for her to satisfy his sexual
urges. She claims Powell paid for her sexual services on four occasions. The
sexual encounters began last year when Rubio received a receipt for the promised
sex from her pimp and showed it to Powell after a group counseling session, she
charged in the suit. "I see you received it," Powell replied, according to the
lawsuit. Rubio's attorney, Wendell Robinson, said he did not know what form the
receipt was in and would not comment further than what was in the lawsuit. In
order to have sex with Rubio, the lawsuit alleges, Powell removed Rubio from her
jail cell during the 2 p.m. "quiet time" and had her follow him to a satellite
kitchen. Powell walked her to a window and told her to look outside while he put
on a condom and had sex with her, according to the lawsuit. Rubio was released
after serving her time, but was rearrested in April and convicted for
prostitution in June 2009. It was then, she said, that Department of Corrections
detectives questioned her about what happened between her and Powell. Rubio has
since been transferred to the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Va. Walter
Fulton, facility program manager at the Correctional Treatment Center, said
Powell and two lieutenants were placed on paid leave as soon as the allegations
surfaced. Jail detectives are investigating, he said. Powell and a substance
abuse counselor remain on administrative leave. Lt. Ricardo Rich, an assistant
shift supervisor, was fired in June for unrelated reasons, Fulton said. The
Correctional Treatment Facility, at 19th and E streets Southeast, is managed by
the Corrections Corp. of America and is staffed by employees of the District.
December 3, 2008 Washington Post
The mother of a quadriplegic inmate who died in 2004 after suffering
breathing problems at the D.C. jail has reached financial settlements with the
District government and his care providers, her attorneys disclosed yesterday.
The settlements were reached in the controversial death of Jonathan Magbie, a
27-year-old Maryland man who was paralyzed from the neck down and used a
mouth-operated wheelchair. Magbie died four days into a 10-day jail sentence for
possessing marijuana, which he said he used to ease the discomfort caused by his
disability. The jail infirmary, where he was housed for several days, wasn't
equipped with the ventilator he needed to breathe at night. His death sparked
several government investigations, which exposed major lapses in Magbie's care
at the D.C. jail and Greater Southeast Hospital. Attorneys for his mother, Mary
R. Scott, declined to provide details of the financial settlement, which she
reached with the city, private contractors and the insurance company that
covered doctors at the hospital. The American Civil Liberties Union, which
represented Scott, called the settlement "substantial" in a news release. As
part of the settlement, the District government changed the way officials screen
and handle inmates with medical problems and disabilities, Scott's attorneys
said. "The family's concern was to make certain that, to the extent anyone can
prevent it, that this terrible type of event never happens again," said
Elizabeth Alexander, an ACLU lawyer who represented Scott. "A series of people
dealt with this young man, and every single place where something could go
wrong, it did go wrong." Scott declined to comment through her attorneys. She
filed a federal lawsuit in 2005 that accused the District government, Greater
Southeast, three contractors and more than a dozen corrections officers, doctors
and nurses of negligence in Magbie's death. A spokeswoman from the D.C.
government said she could not comment until looking into the matter. Greater
Southeast is under new ownership and has been renamed United Medical Center. A
spokeswoman for Corrections Corporation of America, which runs a portion of the
D.C. jail where Magbie was held, declined to comment. Representatives of two
other contractors did not return phone messages seeking comment. Magbie's ordeal
began Sept. 20, 2004, when D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith E. Retchin sentenced
him to jail after he pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana. D.C. police found a
gun and marijuana in Magbie's pockets in April 2003 after stopping a vehicle
driven by a cousin of his. Magbie admitted buying the marijuana, records show.
Magbie's mother was furious that the judge did not give her son probation, the
typical punishment for first-time offenders. Magbie, paralyzed since being hit
by a drunk driver at age 4, had no criminal record. Retchin told a judicial
commission that she sentenced Magbie to jail because he said he would continue
to smoke marijuana to alleviate his pain. She also told the commission that she
was unaware that he needed a ventilator to breathe at night. The commission
cleared Retchin of wrongdoing. Because of his condition, Magbie was supposed to
be housed in the jail's infirmary, according to an investigation by the D.C.
inspector general. Magbie was taken to a hospital for "respiratory distress" and
returned to the jail infirmary, which didn't have a ventilator, the report said.
Jail doctors did not perform a follow-up examination and did not always conduct
daily rounds to check on patients, including Magbie, the report said. Magbie ate
and drank very little during the next few days, the report stated. On Sept. 24,
2004, he was having respiratory problems, and paramedics were called, the report
said. They found him to be "unresponsive and very sweaty," and his undergarment
was "saturated with urine," the report said. Paramedics told investigators that
the trip to the hospital was delayed by about 30 minutes because the jail staff
would not allow them to leave without the proper paperwork and without a blood
sugar test, the report said. At the hospital, Magbie was "acutely ill,"
according to the report. He died that night.
March 18, 2008 The Huffington Report
At a moment when Democratic Party officials are urging voters to trust
unelected superdelegates to act in the country's best interests, HuffPost's
OffTheBus investigation into the background of DNC superdelegates reveals at
least one appointed superdelegate who is as likely to use his political
connections for personal profit as for the greater good. Take the case of Joseph
F. Johnson, a member-at-large of the Democratic National Committee from
Chantilliy, Virginia -a suburb of Washington D.C. -- and a superdelegate
currently tilting toward Hillary Clinton. Using his web of connections, Johnson
successfully lobbied for the construction of a private prison linked to a
company on whose board he sat; he managed to have that prison contract with
other companies he was linked to; and though the prison became a notorious and
dangerous failure, Johnson benefited personally, pulling in millions of dollars
in stock options and fees. Johnson first rose through the ranks of the
Democratic machine in the early 1990s, as executive director of Jesse Jackson's
Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He brought with him strong ties to D.C. government that
he'd built after his first job in the nation's capital, as chief of staff for
the city of Washington DC's city council head. He also managed Douglas Wilder's
successful campaign to become Virginia's first African-American governor in
1991. And Johnson advised Mark Warner on his successful 2001 gubernatorial bid
in Virginia. Johnson's reputation as a mover and shaker in D.C. Democratic
politics helped pave the way for his appointment to the board of Corrections
Corporation of America, the largest operator of private prisons in the country.
While serving in that position from 1996 to 1999, Johnson was instrumental in
convincing the local government in Washington, DC to pay CCA to run a prison in
Youngstown, Ohio for DC inmates, according to SEC filings for the company.
Meanwhile, two of Johnson's own companies, National Corrections and
Rehabilitation (NCRC) and MedCorr, were contracted to provide employment
rehabilitation and health services in the same prison he helped establish. The
private Ohio prison which Johnson helped establish was, according to
Youngstown's then-mayor, "a nightmare." By 1998, there had been two fatal
stabbings, 44 assaults, and six escapes at the prison. A Department of Justice
report found that under CCA, the prison had "failed to accomplish the basic
mission of correctional safety;" and prisoners eventually collected $1.65
million in damages and legal costs for their treatment under CCA. News reports
traced the problems at the prison to both CCA's management and D.C. Corrections'
practice of sending high-security inmates to the medium-security facility. The
problems, Johnson told the Washington Post at the time, weren't "anyone's fault,
it was just one of those things." Mr. Johnson nonetheless profited from the
deal, receiving $2.6 million in stock options for his work linking CCA with
officials in Washington, D.C. Calling his work "instrumental" to their receipt
of the contract, CCA said that Mr. Johnson had "exceeded his duties and
obligations" to the company and also paid him $382,000 for his "consulting
services" in helping to arrange the deal, and $991,000 for NCRC's services in
another CCA prison in Texas. Johnson had also helped arrange for Washington,
D.C. to sell one of its local prisons to CCA in 1996. Local activists complained
that procurement rules had been skipped over to hand the bid to CCA, but the
deal ultimately went through, and CCA then managed the facility and used NCRC to
provide services to inmates. When the Washington Post asked Johnson if he
considered his dual roles as a conflict of interest, he replied, "Not in my
mind." Two years later, the Washington Post reported that CCA faced $1.3 million
in fines for failing to provide services to inmates, including $536,000 in fines
for failing to properly administer medications and another $77,400 for failing
to provide vision services. The city's Department of Corrections, despite being
$8.8 million in the red, suspended most of the fines, according to Post reports
from the time. Johnson has over time expanded his list of companies; NCRC is
technically a subsidiary of his firm, the Johnson Companies [www.jcmps.com].
Under that umbrella, Mr. Johnson also houses the Houston-based Satellite
Tracking of People, LLC (STOP), which deals in GPS tracking devices for inmates
and parolees; the Nashville-based ConnectGov, Inc, which coordinates distance
learning; and the National Preparedness Training Center, which trains first
responders to disasters.
February 15, 2008
Washington City Paper
With so many millions of dollars walking out the door in Jimmy Choos, etc.,
courtesy of the tax scandal, you’d figure D.C. Gov would be totally into
recovering millions of other dollars it’s rightfully owed by the Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA). You’d figure that. But you’d be wrong. In a
classic case of buck-passing between the Office of Property Management (OPM) and
the Department of Corrections (DOC), the utility bill for steam used to heat the
Correctional Treatment Facility—located right next to the D.C. Jail and
privately operated by the Nashville-based CCA—has gone unpaid for years. What’s
owed is up for negotiation. Last March, former OPM director Lars Etzkorn (who
has since lost his job over that unfortunate police department relocation
fiasco) testified before the Council that OPM was “collecting monies owed.” To
wit: “For example, last month OPM presented to the Department of Corrections the
analysis for it to recover $5.7 million from the Corrections Corporation of
America…” OPM didn’t take over collecting the money, mind you, it presented an
analysis of how to collect the money. And this was after At-Large Councilmember
Phil Mendelson figured out in the 2006 budget process that DOC was actually
being billed for the steam rather than being paid for it. A year after OPM was
informed of that, a year after Etzkorn’s testimony throwing around “$5.7
million,” none of the money has been collected. And $5.7 million could be way
underselling it. To be fair to the CCA, the folks in Nashville didn’t know how
much steam they were using in D.C. until OPM installed a meter last March; a
bill didn’t even go out until a few months later, in June. According to the
bill, the meter shows that in six months—from June to December of 2007—the
Correctional Treatment Facility used more than $450,000 in steam. When you do
the math, and take into account that the CCA, according to its lease, has been
responsible for paying utilities on the facility since 1997…. well that’s
somewhere around $10 million to $11 million in danger of—poof!—evaporating. The
DOC, by nature of its relationship with the the jail, the next-door Correctional
Treatment Facility, and the CCA, has been the agency ostensibly in charge of the
lease with the CCA. But—and you’ll have to try and follow this alphabet soup—the
DOC thinks it’s the OPM’s job to get the CCA on board. Beverly Young,
spokesperson for DOC, e-mailed that succinct response to me this week: “The
Department of Corrections is not responsible for the collections. The matter is
ultimately an issue between OPM and CCA.” Mendelson agrees. The DOC, he says,
never should have been in charge of the lease in the first place. “The only
agency that should administer a lease is OPM,” he says, and further: “They (OPM)
screwed around last year with invoicing and not getting payment….They’re very
slow to act and we're talking about millions of public dollars.” At a hearing
last Friday, OPM’s interim director Robin-Eve Jasper (after being jousted by
Vincent Gray) faced Mendelson on this front: Mendo: “We should get answers
without having to think of every angle to ask the question. So I get the bills,
but it turns out we’re not getting the payment…” Jasper: “I’m going to have to
get back to you. We are billing currently, but the first bill didn’t go out that
long ago…and I don’t believe it was as high as $11 million….I will get back to
you with a detailed response.” Mendo: “What I was last told at our last hearing
on this was that the Office of Property Management was talking to the Department
of Corrections. I’m not sure why that makes sense. Why doesn’t the OPM talk to
CCA or to the CFO’s office?” Jasper: “I can’t answer that question…I can’t
answer why we were in discussion with the DOC rather than sending out a demand
note and just proceeding on that basis.” Mendo: “When you get back to me, can
you also go into what was going on prior to June 2007?” Jasper: “Yes, I believe
we’re trying to establish a baseline of a full year at this point and…establish
prior payments.” Mendo: “I’ve yet to receive any evidence that anyone has talked
to CCA, so this would all be a surprise to them when we send them a bill. That
would kind of help, I think, to talk to them.” Hey, it’s a start. OPM’s
spokesman, Bill Rice, did not return three phone calls. Stay tuned!
December 14, 2006 Washington Post
Two former female inmates at the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility sued
the District and jail officials last week, claiming that male guards took them
to isolated parts of the jail and raped them. The women are suing under the
anonymous names Jane Doe and Jane Roe. They say the District and Corrections
Corp. of America (CCA), the private contractor the city hired to run the jail,
are responsible for the alleged rapes because of their failure to supervise and
train guards and properly investigate allegations of sexual misconduct. The suit
is also filed against the two jail guards whom the women allege raped them: Elry
McKnight and John Gant. The two women are alleging violations of their civil
rights, emotional distress and battery, and are seeking compensatory and
punitive damages. Doe, a Maryland woman in her late 30s, alleges that McKnight
raped her twice in April 2002 in a staff bathroom -- first while escorting her
alone to her cell as she returned from a court hearing, and next when he
pretended that he needed to take her to obtain a new identification badge. She
was serving time for selling heroin. Roe, a D.C. resident, alleges that Gant
forced her to perform oral sex on him in a jail broom closet in December 2003.
Roe said Gant was able to easily separate her from others by asking a female
corrections officer to let him speak with Roe privately in the hallway. Roe, who
was serving time on drug possession charges, was released in January 2004. Doe,
who has seven children and three grandchildren whom she hasn't told about the
incident, said in an interview that she struggled over whether to sue the city.
She said she worried about having to come forward and revisit an episode that
has caused her panic attacks ever since, but decided to do so because her
initial complaint was ignored. In the lawsuit, she alleges that she called 911
twice to get a police officer to come to the jail, but no one came. "It's like
they want to hide everything that happened," Doe said. "If you hide something,
it will happen to a lot of people." Beverly Young, a spokeswoman for the D.C.
Department of Corrections, said the city agency and its personnel cannot comment
on pending litigation. A spokesman for CCA said the company was not aware of the
suit and could not comment. The suit claims that the corrections department and
CCA treated the two women poorly in investigating their claims. Doe was taken to
see CTF Warden Fred Figueroa, and McKnight was eventually suspended with pay
during an investigation, according to the suit. Doe was given no information
about the investigation for three months, until she complained in June 2002 to
her sentencing judge that she had been raped in the detention facility, the suit
alleges. The suit also alleges that McKnight eventually was fired for smuggling
contraband to inmates. "I couldn't believe they [paid] no mind to me. They
thought I was going to be deported," said Doe, who grew up in the Dominican
Republic but is a U.S. citizen. "They just didn't care. They thought I was a
criminal. " Doe said she has stayed away from drugs since her release and is
trying to get a job as a construction apprentice. She said she knows she was
guilty of her crime and had to pay by doing time. "I'm not mad that I was put in
jail. But I was so shocked. I didn't know you had to give them sex, too," she
said. Roe was not available to be interviewed, but her part of the suit claims
that Gant told her she had to do what he said or he could use his power in the
records office to lengthen her stay in jail. CTF officers offered to put Roe in
a kind of solitary confinement when she asked for protection from Gant, the suit
says, but he ultimately resigned from CCA rather than give a statement regarding
the alleged rape. Deborah M. Golden, a lawyer with Washington Lawyers' Committee
for Civil Rights, who is a lead attorney on the suit, said the District and CCA
had a duty to set up procedures to reduce the risk that inmates at the CTF would
be sexually harassed or raped and to take substantive action when inmates made
rape allegations. Golden, who is working on the case with pro bono counsel
Thomas C. Hill, a partner at the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm, said
the women's claims weren't treated with the seriousness they deserved. "You
can't train someone not to be a rapist," Golden said. "But you can set up
procedures whereby lone women can't be taken out of their cells by a lone
officer. You can stop officers from taking advantage of people who are
incarcerated. You can train people to be alert to signs of trauma in the
population." The legal team said it hopes to get top-level officials to take
action to address sexual exploitation, a problem that has long plagued jails and
prisons around the country. "Neither woman disputes their crime," Golden said.
"But that doesn't mean rape was part of their sentence."
June 9, 2006 Washington Blade
Two transgender women said they plan to file a discrimination complaint
against the District’s Department of Corrections after officials at the D.C.
Jail refused to allow them to visit inmates because of their personal
appearance. Gigi Thomas, a client advocate for the local group HIPS, which
provides services to local sex workers, and Tiffany Everlasting, a HIPS
volunteer, said jail officials told them they could not enter the jail because
they wore women’s clothes but lacked identification classifying them as
biological females. The two women said they appeared separately and at different
times on May 30 at the visitor’s reception desk of the Correctional Treatment
Facility at 19th and D streets, S.E. The facility, known as the CTF, is operated
privately under a Department of Corrections contract with the Corrections
Corporation of America, a firm that operates prisons throughout the country. An
official with the D.C. Office of Human Rights said the action by the jail
appears to violate the city’s Human Rights Act, which bans discrimination
against transgender people. The act covers city government agencies as well as
the private sector, including private employers. Walter Fulton, program manager
at the command center for the Correctional Treatment Facility, said the facility
has a dress code policy that prevented “cross-dressers” from being admitted as
visitors. He said the policy, which was under review, was based on concerns
about how jail employees could conduct a “pat down” search of a transgender
person as part of routine searches of all jail visitors. He said the searches
were aimed at preventing visitors from bringing contraband, including illegal
drugs, into city correctional facilities. “It’s likely that accommodations will
be made to allow cross dressers to visit,” he said. Guard convicted of sexual
assault. The refusal by CTF officials to allow Thomas and Everlasting visitation
rights came less than three months after a D.C. Superior Court jury convicted a
guard at the same facility of sexually assaulting a transgender inmate. Court
records show that Robert Ali White, 37, was convicted of a single count of
first-degree sexual abuse of a ward for allegedly forcing a transgender inmate
to perform oral sex on him in December 2004. He was scheduled for sentencing on
July 21. D.C. police arrested White on Dec. 29, 2004, at the CTF facility after
an inmate reported that the corrections officer allegedly forced the inmate to
engage in a sexual act with him, according to court records.
August 14, 2003
The
union for D.C. corrections officers yesterday again publicly criticized the
private company that runs an annex to the D.C. jail, alleging a host of problems
from forced overtime to inadequate pay and calling for the city to cancel its
contract with the firm. But this time, the corrections officers were
joined by two D.C. Council members, who bring a new level of influence to the
long-standing complaints. At-Large Democrats Harold Brazil and Phil
Mendelson stood outside the District's Correctional Treatment Facility at 1901 E
St. SE along with union members, who called for the end of the contract the city
has with Corrections Corp. of America. The company runs a low- to
medium-security annex of the D.C. jail intended to house D.C. inmates with
substance-abuse problems and other medical needs. Brazil and Mendelson
issued ultimatums, saying that if the Nashville company does not address
numerous concerns outlined in an 18-page report by the council's subcommittee on
public interest, they will ask the mayor to end the 20-year contract signed with
the company in 1997. In November, the dispute between union members and
the company escalated after the union said poor working conditions may have
contributed to the death of an inmate in August 2002. They said staffing
shortages, faulty radios and trouble with the institution's telephone system
apparently hampered efforts to help the inmate. (Washington Post)
December 18, 2002
One inmate was killed and a second was wounded in separate stabbings over the
weekend at the D.C. jail, just days after another detainee was slain in a
similar attack, corrections officials and prisoner advocates said
yesterday. The inmate-on-inmate attacks took place over a 70-hour period
in different cellblocks. Officials with the D.C. Department of Corrections
said they put the jail on an indefinite lockdown after the latest incident
Saturday, restricting movements and activities of inmates, while D.C. police and
the agency's internal affairs unit investigate. The violence raised new
concerns among jail watchdogs about whether the detention center can operate
safely above a court-ordered population cap of 1,674 that was lifted in June
after 17 years. Yesterday's inmate count was 2,369. (Washington
Post-Staff Writer)
December 16, 2002
Givon Pedelton was behind bars awaiting trial on a drug charge, but he never
made it to D.C. Superior Court. Someone stabbed him to death at the D.C.
jail last Wednesday evening. Mr. Pedleton is the latest inmate to be slain
while int he city's custody. An inmate was also murdered last August in
the Correctional Treatment Facility, located near the jail. And life
behind locked gates isn't exactly safe and secure for members of the corrections
staff either: Between April and august of this year, they suffered about
15 assaults. The victims' injuries included a broken hand, temporary sight
loss in one eye, a broken nose and 36 stitches to one officer's face.
(Washington Post.com)
November 17,
2002
A long-simmering
dispute between union members and the company that runs
an
annex to the
D.C. jail escalated yesterday after the union alleged that poor
working
conditions may have contributed to the death of an inmate in August.
Union
members at the District's Correctional Treatment Facility at 1901
E
St. SE said
that staffing shortages, faulty radios and trouble with the
institution's
phone system apparently hampered efforts to help inmate
Benjamin
Brown, who
died Aug. 20. They made the allegation and detailed other
work-related
complaints during a news conference outside the facility, run
by
Nashville-based
Corrections Corporation of America.
The
public quarrel about such a sensitive case underscored how relations
have
deteriorated between the company and union leaders. Against this
backdrop,
other
problems have surfaced: Four corrections officers were indicted this
month
on charges
that they smuggled drugs, pagers and cash to inmates in exchange
for
bribes.
Littlejohn
alleged that the company has been trying to break up the
union
for
about a year and that managers routinely harass officers and threaten to
fire them.
He cited the firing in June of corrections officer Jimmie D.
Allen, a
church
deacon, for organizing a prayer meeting just outside the annex.
November 9, 2002
AND YOU THOUGHT
that once someone was convicted and sent to jail it meant
saying
goodbye to drugs, pagers and means of doing business with the outside
world.
This
week, prosecutors indicted four guards at the privately run
Correctional
Treatment Facility, a D.C. jail annex, on charges of smuggling
drugs,
pagers and cash to
prisoners in
exchange for bribes offered by undercover FBI agents. Three of
them were
working at the facility when they allegedly took the bribes. The
fourth, a
former
employee, allegedly served as a go-between. The Corrections
Department
brass would have you believe that the smuggling has nothing to
do with them
because the
Correctional Treatment Facility is run by the Corrections Corp.
of America,
a private concern that operates about 60 prisons elsewhere in
the nation.
Don't
buy it. The city pays the Nashville-based CCA about $20 million a
year for
handling the Corrections Treatment Facility, which, as far as we
can tell, is
not
being run
any better than when the city was operating prisons.
None
of this is the least bit amusing. It is a disgrace. Last year, 10
corrections
officers, including nine from CCA, were indicted on bribery
charges
stemming from a
similar
investigation. All 10 were convicted. But the corruption,
nonetheless,
goes on. What does that say about the competence and
efficiency
of the private firm that
is pocketing
millions of taxpayer dollars -- or about the agency that is
supposed to
be overseeing that operation? What does it say about a city
government
that
apparently
tolerates such a scandal?
November 8, 2002
Four
corrections officers at a privately run annex to the D.C. jail have
been
indicted on charges that they smuggled drugs, pagers and cash to
inmates in
exchange for
bribes
offered by undercover FBI agents, prosecutors said yesterday.
Three
of the four were employees of the Corrections Corp. of America, which
runs the
Correctional Treatment Facility in Southeast Washington under a
contract
with the
city, when they allegedly took the bribes. The fourth, whom
prosecutors
described as a former CCA employee at the facility, allegedly
served as a
go-between
for one of the others in his dealings with an FBI agent posing
as an
inmate's girlfriend.
All
were arrested by the FBI yesterday morning, prosecutors said. They were
indicted on
charges of bribery and introducing contraband into a penal
institution.
All
pleaded not
guilty in U.S. District Court and were released on personal
recognizance.
In a
similar investigation at the Correctional Treatment Facility last
year, 10
corrections officers were indicted on bribery charges, including
nine from CCA. All 10
were
convicted of various charges, prosecutors said. (The Washington Post)
June 29, 2001
Six former D.C. corrections officers pleaded guilty this week to federal bribery
charges after an FBI sting operation in which they accepted money in return for
smuggling cash and pagers to inmates, prosecutors announced yesterday. The
six men were indicted in U.S. District Court last month on charges that they
brought cash and pagers to inmates at the District's Correctional Treatment
Facility after accepting hundreds of dollars from a man who said he was acting
on behalf of inmates. The man turned out to be an undercover FBI agent,
prosecutors said. All have either resigned or been fired from the
Corrections Corp. of America, the private contractor that operates the jail
facility in Southeast Washington. (The Washington Post)
June 1, 2001
Ten D.C. corrections officers have been indicted on federal bribery charges
after an undercover FBI investigation in which they allegedly accepted money in
return for smuggling cash and two-way pagers to inmates, prosecutors said
yesterday. D.C. inmates are not supposed to have money or communications
devices, prosecutors said. But the corrections officers brought both into
the District's Correctional Treatment Facility after accepting hundreds of
dollars from a man who said he was acting on behalf of the inmates, they
said. The man turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. The
indictments followed a two-year investigation and were returned under seal on
Wednesday. Nine of those indicted worked for the Corrections Corp. of
America, a private contractor that operates the Correctional Treatment Facility
in Southeast Washington. (The Washington Post)
July 29, 1999 Washington Post
Two maximum-security DC inmates who were serving time for murder escaped
from two guards who were driving them back to a Virginia prison. The guards left
the door to the van unlocked and the inmates were somehow able to remove their
leg irons and flee.
March 14, 1999
A convicted killer, confined to a wheelchair cut through the bars on the
window of his eighth-floor cell, tied bedsheets into a rope and climbed out of
the prison undetected. The sheets unraveled and he plunged to the pavement
below. An unidentified woman picked him up and took him to a nearby hospital
where he was pronounced dead an hour later. (The Washington Post, March 16,
1999)
Department of Homeland Security
(ICE) US Marshals Service
Washington, DC
CCA, Emerald, GEO Group, MTC,
Wackenhut (AKA Group 4)
ICE
paints bleak picture of detention system Abuses continue despite agency's
documentation: Susan Carroll, October 10, 2011, Houston Chronicle.
ICE continues to use troubled detention facilities despite flagrant violations
of their own detention standards, including poor medical care and mistreatment
of detainees, new internal records show.
Private prison
company’s growth went hand-in-hand with political influence: Jon
Collins September 26, 2011 Minnesota Independent
The Shadow
Prison Industry and Its Government Enablers by Tom Barry January 29, 2010
Center for International Policy
Officials Hid Truth
of Immigrant Deaths in Jail by Nina Bernstein January 9, 2010 New York Times
January 12, 2012 Wall Street Journal
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an inmate injured in a privately run
federal prison may not sue its employees in federal court, holding that state
court was the proper venue for his claim. Under high-court precedents, inmates
in federal institutions can file federal lawsuits against prison employees for
mistreatment that violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and
unusual punishments." By an 8-1 vote, however, the court refused to extend that
right to inmates held in private prisons operated under contract to the U.S.
government. In an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court observed that in
contrast to federal employees, whom prisoners generally can't sue in state
court, employees of the private company enjoy no such immunity. "State law
remedies provide roughly similar incentives [for prison employees] to comply
with the Eighth Amendment while also providing roughly similar compensation to
victims of violations," Justice Breyer wrote. So, there was no need for the
court to expand liability to federal court, he said.
January 9, 2012 Westword
Colorado Congressman Jared Polis has called for a government investigation
into alleged abuse suffered by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender immigrants
detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "Here we have people who
are at their most vulnerable -- many without access to any legal assistance --
who are being preyed upon and assaulted," Polis said in a statement. "LGBT
immigrants appear to be special targets for abuse." That abuse, according to a
complaint filed last year by the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance National
Immigration Justice Center, includes allegations of sexual assault, long-term
solitary confinement and denial of medical care.
November 1, 2011 Messenger Post
The U.S. Marshals Service has declined to investigate allegations by activists
that immigrants at a private New York City detention center have been abused. A
spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service says the Queens Detention Facility
passed its September inspection. Spokesman Jeff Carter says the center adheres
to federal regulations. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and immigrant rights
groups called for an investigation of the center last month saying they had
received reports of mistreatment of detainees and lack of medical care. The
center is operated by the Florida-based GEO Group Inc., under contract with the
U.S. Marshals Service to hold about 200 people accused of crimes. The company’s
spokesman, Pablo Paez, says the firm cannot respond to accusations from “third
parties,” referring to the immigrant rights groups.
October 20, 2011 Chicago Homeland Security Examiner
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) posed difficult questions and concerns to the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Janet Napolitano, at
this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Of particular concern for
Durbin, was the state of immigration detention facilities, especially the
Willacy Detention facility in Texas. According to documents obtained by the ACLU
more than 180 sexual abuse complaints have been reported in immigration
detention centers since 2007, nearly a third of which came from Texas. According
to the Huffington Post, “other states had far lower reports of detainee sexual
abuse, with the next highest reports coming from California (17), Arizona (16)
and Florida (12). (10/21/2011). Senator Durbin sought further information and
assurances from Secretary Napolitano regarding this issue. Senator Durbin, the
second highest ranking member in the Senate Democratic leadership, remarked that
detainee centers have become a huge industry in which DHS spends more than $1.7
billion dollars yearly. Yet, the issue of sexual abuse at the immigration
centers has barely reached public attention. Much of Senator Durbin’s framing of
the issue stemmed from a recent “Frontline” television expose. Durbin noted at
the Senate Judiciary hearing, that “there was an aspect of this program that was
particularly troubling. Maria Hinojosa in part of that program described a woman
who was a victim at this Willacy facility. She had been raped and her identity
was hidden from the camera. She told her story about how it was virtually
impossible for her to even seek justice in this circumstance because she was
totally at the mercy of the guards in this privatized facility.” (Transcript of
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, October 20, 2011) According to the
Huffington Post, the ACLU obtained information under the Freedom of Information
Act documenting that “detention officers broke a rule that detainees must not be
transported without a same-sex officer present. Detention officers are also
instructed to call supervisors with their departure and arrival times when
transporting detainees, according to a 2007Immigration and Customs Enforcement
document.” Senator Durbin underscored his concern by noting that some 85 to 90
percent of those who were detained under civil charges, not criminal charges,
but people with civil charges do not have benefits of counsel. Durbin further
noted, “That the due process requirements are very limited on their behalf, and
that many times they’re in facilities that are privatized… As a group
immigration detainees are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse, and its effect
on the detainees due to social, cultural, language isolation, poor understanding
of U.S. culture and the subculture of U.S. prisons and the often traumatic
experiences they’re endured in their culture of origin. The commission (i.e.,
The National Rape Elimination Commission) issued proposed standards. The
Department of Justice is now finalizing its national standards to prevent,
detect, and respond to prison rape. In April of this year I wrote a letter to
Attorney General Holder emphasizing the importance of strong standards.” In
addition Senator Durbin mentioned the bipartisan support he received from
Senator Sessions (R-Alabama) and others in passion the Prison Rape Elimination
Act of 2003 which aimed at eliminating sexual abuse while in custody in the U.S.
We want zero tolerance on this.” (Transcript of Senate Judiciary Committee,
10/20/2011) At this point in the hearing Senator Durbin asked DHS Secretary
Napolitano “What is the Department of Homeland Security doing to ensure that
immigration detainees are safe from sexual abuse, whether they’re ICE facilities
or contract facilities? Secretary Napolitano’s response was not reassuring for
immigrants or Senator Durbin. She replied, “When I took over as Secretary, we
found that there were little or no standards being applied uniformly across all
the many detention facilities that we use in –in the ICE context…Others are
privatized, companies like Correction Corporations of America. We have to have
beds, and in particular given our priorities and how we are managing the system,
we need beds that are near the southern border…As part of the process I brought
in someone to actually look at the standards and we redid our contracts with
some of the private providers.” (Transcript, Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing,
10/20/2011) Secretary Napolitano tried to explain the process she instituted
since coming to DHS. She said, “We do have a process by which we are regularly
auditing and overseeing what is happening there. But that is not to say there
aren’t cases that are particularly horrific.” She further mentioned that she was
not familiar with the “Frontline” documentary focusing on sexual abuses at
immigrant detention centers but would review it and get back to the Senator
Durbin. Earlier this year the ACLU sued the Department of Homeland Security
regarding sexual abuses at immigration detention centers. The ACLU of Texas has
filed a suit in behalf of three women who say they were assaulted by detention
guards and officers. The victims say they were abused on the way to the airport
after posting bond to be released from detention facilities. According to
theHuffington Post, “The three women were held for a time in the T. Don Hutto
Residential Center in Taylor ,Texas. The 512 bed facility, is privately run on a
government contract by private prison giant Corrections Corporations of
America.”
October 19, 2011 American Independent
Amid a national push to expose incidents of sexual abuse at immigrant detention
facilities across the country, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas filed
a federal suit Wednesday on behalf of three women who say they were sexually
abused at a Central Texas facility with a history of abuse. The suit names
Donald Dunn, a former employee at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor,
just east of Austin, who pled guilty last fall to charges he abused women he was
driving to the airport and Greyhound stations. Allegations by one victim
prompted his arrest and a nationwide search for more victims, the Taylor Daily
Press reported last year. “Eight female victims were discovered, and during the
investigation, Dunn admitted to abusing them during transports,” the Press said.
Along with Dunn, though, the suit also names U.S. Immigration Customs and
Enforcement and the Corrections Corporation of America — the country’s largest
private prison operator, which runs the Hutto facility, for ignoring regulations
that should have kept Dunn from driving the women on his own. “The lawsuit
alleges that ICE, Williamson County and CCA were deliberately indifferent and
willfully blind to the fact that Dunn and other employees regularly violated the
rule that detainees not be transported without another escort officer of the
same gender present,” the ACLU said in a statement. According to the suit, each
of the three anonymous women — asylum seekers from Brazil, Guatemala and Eritrea
— were being released from the facility after passing “credible fear”
interviews, to await a hearing on their cases, when they were assaulted. The
women say Dunn pulled over on the way to drop them off at the airport or bus
station, groped them, told them to undress and exposed himself to them. Between
October 2009 and May 2010, the suit claims, Dunn assaulted six other women too.
A CCA spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the complaint. “The
long history of rampant sexual abuse at ICE detention centers, coupled with the
availability of the same opportunity Dunn exploited in the form of at least 22
documented failures of other male officers to comply with the same policy,
supports a reasonable inference that other male escort officers at Hutto engaged
in similar abuse,” the suit claims. The Hutto Detention Center, once a
residential center for holding whole families of immigrants, has been plagued by
complaints about poor conditions and family separation, and has been an ACLU
target in the past. Separate allegations of sexual abuse at the facility even
prompted an ICE investigation in 2007. Bob Libal with Grassroots Leadership — a
group that promotes accountability for private prison operators and runs a
visitation program to the Hutto facility — said the fact that CCA continues to
operate the facility shows what light consequences the country’s largest private
prison operators face. “This is the second time that there’s been an
inappropriate sexual event at Hutto, and ICE didn’t cut the contract,” Libal
said. “There’s no impact for the company that allowed this to happen.” After
years of campaigning by the ACLU, Grassroots Leadership and other groups, the
Hutto facility was converted from a family detention center to a 500-bed
facility for women who’ve come to the U.S. seeking asylum. The suit filed
Wednesday in Austin is part of a nationwide effort by the ACLU to uncover
records of sexual abuse and call for accountability. The group found more than
200 allegations of sexual abuse in immigrant detention centers across the
country from 2007 to 2010 returned from a public records request. “It is clear
there is an urgent need for the government to recognize just how pervasive a
problem the sexual abuse of immigration detainees is and take immediate steps to
fix the problem and ensure that everyone in the government’s care is protected,”
said David Shapiro, staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project. “The
detainees in immigration detention are a particularly vulnerable population.
Even one incident of sexual abuse is one too many.” The group found 56
allegations of sexual abuse in Texas, far more than the next-highest total, 17
complaints in California. “It’s pretty disturbing, and pretty telling, that such
a high percentage of the sexual assaults happen here in Texas,” Libal said.
October 11, 2011 Broward Palm Beach New Times
Here in Florida, we have a broad array of sunshine laws designed to promote open
government. Local governments routinely have to disclose information simply
because citizens ask for it. But apparently there's one thing that can clamp the
mouths of local officials for good: a private prison contractor asking nicely.
Bill Di Scipio is a Southwest Ranches resident who has vocally opposed the
planned construction of a new 1,800-bed immigrant detention facility that would
be run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a private prison contractor.
At a town council meeting on September 22, he asked why town council members had
told him they weren't allowed to discuss the facility. (Read about another
council member's unusual response to his request.) After the public comment
period, Vice-Mayor Freddy Fisikelli asked the town's longtime lawyer, Keith
Poliakoff, for an explanation. Fisikelli: Keith... explain to him why we're
doing the cone of silence? Poliakoff: To answer your question, the request for
the council to not get into anything until something is, uh, known was requested
by a combination of CCA and Homeland Security. At this point, there's nothing
new, there's no contract proposal, there's no formal award, there's no IGA
(intergovernmental agreement), there's nothing. There's nothing new on that, one
iota. Fisikelli: So it's not the town that the cone of silence, it's the people
we're dealing with. Poliakoff: We've been asked by Homeland Security and CCA.
Fiskielli: That's what I think we need to let the people know. Poliakoff: But
there's nothing new. Well, we wouldn't be able to confirm that, since the
request of a notoriously secretive government agency and a publicly traded
corporation is enough to make a town's lawyer to advise council members not to
speak. That was the end of CCA discussion for the evening. We have a call out to
Poliakoff for more information on the nature and legal weight of this "request,"
and will update if he responds.
September 29, 2011 Los Angles Times
Arrests of federal prison guards soared nearly 90% over the last decade,
possibly because of poor hiring practices during a 25% increase in prison
growth, the Justice Department's inspector general reported. Misconduct
investigations doubled, and more than half of the offenses were committed during
the officers' first two years on the job. The inspector general recommended that
the Federal Bureau of Prisons improve its background investigation of job
applicants and find better ways to assess rookie officers. But other factors
have contributed to the problem, including private prisons and increasing
numbers of female prisoners and young offenders in federal facilities, the
inspector general found. The report did not specify how many misconduct cases
came out of private federal prisons, which have increased their populations by
120% in the last decade, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington
prison issues think tank. "Private prisons aren't always held to the same
standards as public ones," said Joe Baumann, a corrections officer at the state
California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. "That's where so much of the stuff I
come across is from, the private contractors."
May 24, 2011
PORTLAND, OR - A federal judge today strongly rejected the U.S. government's
ongoing attempts to shroud its network of privatized immigrant prisons in a
far-reaching veil of secrecy. The ruling arises out of a lawsuit filed two years
ago, seeking information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The
plaintiff, Stephen Raher, sought documents concerning a series of contracts
between the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and several private prison
companies. The government has repeatedly claimed that it does not have to
release information showing how many prison beds it has contracted for, and how
much it pays under the contracts. In addition, the government fought against
releasing the proposals that bidders submitted when seeking the contracts. In
November 2010, The GEO Group, the largest private prison operator in the world,
intervened in the suit (with the government's acquiescence), claiming that it
wanted to protect its proprietary commercial information. The BOP and GEO
vigorously objected to the release of any information that would provide a
meaningful picture of how the network of privately-run "criminal alien" prisons
are run. "Our government is paying substantial amounts of money in exchange for
services of questionable value," said Raher. "The fact that the government does
not want to allow public scrutiny of these transactions is an affront to the
spirit of public disclosure embodied in FOIA." The ruling by Magistrate Judge
Janice Stewart rejects most of the Bureau of Prison's arguments, noting that the
government had failed to provide evidence to support many of its claims. The
court called the government's justification for withholding portions of the
contractors' bid proposals "hopelessly vague" and characterized its description
of some of the withheld information as "baffling." The court also criticized GEO
for advancing "meritless" arguments and relying on legal theories that are
"nothing more than an unsupported conclusion." The court did reserve judgment on
the question of whether contract prices must be released, saying that a trial is
necessary on that issue. "There is still more work to be done in this case, and
that work is extremely important," said Raher. "I am confident that the
government's argument would not hold up at trial, and that the primary
motivation of BOP and GEO is to avoid revealing the inflated prices paid under
these contracts." As the court noted in its opinion, Raher has articulated a
plausible theory that prison operators use the lucrative federal contracts to
cross-subsidize money-losing contracts with state and local governments, thus
allowing the companies to boast of inflated cost "savings" when lobbying state
legislatures. The case is Raher v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. District
Court, District of Oregon, Case Number CV-09-526-ST. The court's opinion is
available at http://www.tidx.org/pdf/BOP_FOIA/SJ-Opinion-May2011.pdf
May 11, 2011 Detention Watch Network
As the largest for-profit prison company in the country, Corrections Corporation
of America (CCA), prepares for its annual shareholders meeting, new data
released today by the Detention Watch Network (DWN) sheds light on the growing
influence of the private prison industry on the immigration detention system.
Drawn from a variety of sources, including the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Reading Room, and the
Federal Lobbying Disclosure Act Database, the data reveals the companies most
heavily invested in the business of immigration detention – CCA, The GEO Group
Inc., and the Management and Training Corporation – and suggests increased
lobbying activity over the last decade, both in terms of dollars spent and
government entities targeted. “For years, private prison firms have played a
critical role in shaping public policy around immigration detention, pursuing
the bottom line at the expense of basic civil rights and tax payer dollars,”
said Emily Tucker, Director of Policy and Advocacy at DWN. “This data highlights
deep corporate investment in the detention business, raising concerns about how
the corporate profit-motive is fueling the expansion of the detention system as
a whole.” According to research by DWN, corporations have increasingly devoted
resources over the last decade to lobbying for policies and programs that will
increase their opportunities to do business with the government. Of the five
corporations with ICE contracts for which official federal lobbying records are
currently available, the total expenditure on lobbying for 1999-2009 was
$20,432,000, with CCA ($18,002,000) and GEO ($2,065,000) as the top two
spenders. Lobbying efforts targeted a wide range of government entities,
indicating a comprehensive strategy for influencing policy and legislation. Both
CCA and GEO have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, as a lack of
transparency and accountability has led to multiple cases of abuse and
mismanagement in their facilities, resulting in the termination of contracts in
a few recent cases. “ICE has called for sweeping changes in the immigration
detention system,” said Tucker. “Yet they continue to partner with private
prison firms that are part of the problem. We hope this research inspires
further exploration into the relationship between prison corporations and the
government at all levels. We need to reduce our dependence on detention and
begin putting human rights over profits.” For the full collection of data,
visit: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/privateprisons
December 23, 2010 Washington Post
The Senate has confirmed President Obama's pick for U.S. marshal despite
opposition from criminal justice and watchdog groups upset about the nominee's
ties to the private prison industry. Retiring U.S. Marshal John F. Clark said he
welcomed Justice Department veteran Stacia M. Hylton's appointment late
Wednesday and called her a "dedicated public servant with 29 years of law
enforcement in the Department of Justice." "In addition to serving as our
nation's federal detention trustee, she was a deputy U.S. marshal for 24 years
and served in a variety of assignments, which gave her profound insight into the
service's operations," he said in a statement after the confirmation by
unanimous consent. But Ms. Hylton ran into sharp opposition from watchdog groups
who said her consulting work this year for the GEO Group, one of the nation's
largest private prison companies, posed a conflict of interest. The GEO Group
has held tens of millions of dollars in contracts with the Marshals Service.
"The opposition coalition is disappointed, of course, that the Obama
administration nominated Hylton despite her obvious conflicts of interest
involving the private prison industry, which she will be overseeing as director
of the U.S. Marshals and in contradiction to the president's own ethics
guidelines," said Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News, one of
the groups opposing the nomination. "We continue to hope for change, but see
only the same revolving door and conflicts of interest between public officials
and private industry that benefits from federal contracts under the Obama
administration," he said. Others critical of the Hylton nomination included the
1.6-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees;
the Alliance for Justice; the National Lawyers Guild; the Detention Watch
Network; Grassroots Leadership; the Human Rights Defense Center; International
CURE; the Justice Policy Institute; Public Citizen; and the Private Corrections
Working Group. Ms. Hylton was backed by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers
Association and the National Sheriffs' Association. During her confirmation
hearing, Ms. Hylton said she had recused herself from conversations about the
private prison industry and that federal ethics officials had cleared her recent
consulting work for the GEO Group. "I did follow all ethics requirements and
regulations and worked closely with the ethics office," she said.
December 8, 2010 ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas and El Paso co-counsel Mike
Torres and Leon Schydlower today announced the filing of a lawsuit against the
federal government and administrators of a West Texas for-profit prison on
behalf of the survivors of Jesus Manuel Galindo. Mr. Galindo, 32, died on
December 12, 2008, after suffering a seizure in solitary confinement where he
had been placed for complaining about the facility’s failure to provide him
medication to control his epileptic seizures. For a copy of Galindo, et al. v.
Reeves County, et al. (W.D. Tex. Dec. 7, 2010), go to http://www.aclutx.org/galindo
The suit names as defendants individual employees of the Federal Bureau of
Prisons, The GEO Group (which operates the for-profit prison), Reeves County and
the facility’s contracted medical provider, Physicians Network Association (PNA).
“The Galindo family has suffered a terrible loss, a loss that could have been
prevented if Reeves County Detention Center officials had responded to Jesus
Manuel Galindo’s repeated pleas for care as well as requests on Galindo’s behalf
from fellow inmates and his mother, Graciela Galindo,” said Mike Torres. “A
prison sentence should not be a death sentence because officials are unwilling
to provide basic medical care,” added Schydlower. Mr. Galindo’s death came after
repeated attempts by Galindo, his family and others to persuade prison and
medical staff to move him out of isolation and provide effective medication to
control his seizures. “U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to pay a for-profit
medical provider with a documented record of providing constitutionally
inadequate care, and federal officials looked the other way while inmates like
Mr. Galindo were denied access to the most basic medical necessities,” said Lisa
Graybill, Legal Director for the ACLU of Texas. “A prisoner’s citizenship status
does not matter when it comes to medical care – federal inmates are entitled to
equal protection of the law, and no inmate held in a United States prison should
be subject to the deliberate denial of life-saving medication, then left in
solitary to die.” In recent years, the federal government has increasingly
relied on private firms like The GEO Group, which operates the Reeves County
Detention Center (RCDC) in Pecos, to manage prisons where immigrant prisoners
serve criminal sentences, mostly for non-violent crimes like illegal entry.
Gouri Bhat, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU of Texas, said, “Prisoners at
RCDC face an impossible situation. Private prison officials cut costs and
provide deficient care, and the Bureau of Prisons won’t hear grievances about
private prisons. That is a Catch-22 with deadly consequences.”
December 1, 2010 Washington Times
Critics of President Obama's nominee for director of the U.S. Marshals Service
vowed to take their fight to the full Senate after a key committee Wednesday
backed Justice Department veteran Stacia M. Hylton for the job despite concerns
from watchdog groups about her ties to the private prison industry. The Senate
Judiciary Committee voted to move Ms. Hylton's nomination to the full Senate
amid increasing opposition from criminal-justice and union groups that say her
recent consulting work for a private prison company poses a conflict of
interest. The committee approved the nomination by voice vote. Ms. Hylton earned
at least $110,000 as a private consultant earlier this year for the
Florida-based GEO Group, which has held tens of millions of dollars in prison
contracts with the Marshals Service. Ms. Hylton previously worked for the
government as federal detention trustee and has held several Justice Department
posts. "We're disappointed the Judiciary Committee didn't seem to take these
concerns to heart," said Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News,
one of the groups opposing the nomination along with the 1.6-million-member
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). On
Monday, AFSCME's director of legislation, Charles M. Loveless, told the
Judiciary Committee in a letter that Ms. Hylton's acceptance of consulting fees
from the GEO Group "is a clear conflict of interest." "This is a revolving door
that needs to be shut," he wrote.
November 18, 2010 Washington Times
The nation's largest federal employees union is railing against President
Obama's choice to lead the U.S. Marshals Service, saying Justice Department
veteran Stacia Hylton's recent six-figure consulting deal with a private prison
company makes her "ill-suited" for the job. The American Federation of
Government Employees (AFGE), which backed Mr. Obama throughout the 2008
presidential campaign, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter this week
that Ms. Hylton's ties to the GEO Group "pose a serious conflict of interest
that should preclude her nomination." The letter was signed by John Gage,
president of the 600,000-member national union, which represents government
employees at nearly every federal agency, including the Marshals Service. A copy
of the letter was obtained Thursday by The Washington Times, which first
reported in October on Ms. Hylton's work with the GEO Group. The union, like at
least nine other criminal justice and watchdog groups now opposing the
nomination, is upset that Ms. Hylton accepted $112,500 in consulting fees from
the GEO Group shortly after resigning as the federal detention trustee at
Justice in February and before her recent nomination as the U.S. Marshal. The
Office of Federal Detention manages and regulates the federal detention programs
and the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System. "While the public
record does not disclose the extent to which the $112,500 consulting job with
the GEO Group was discussed prior to Ms. Hylton's retirement, we believe this
creates a clear conflict of interest," Mr. Gage wrote.
November 17, 2010 Main Justice
Stacia A. Hylton, the nominee to lead the U.S. Marshals Service, rejected
allegations at a Senate hearing Wednesday that her previous consulting job would
create a conflict of interest if she is confirmed to the agency’s top post.
Earlier this month, prison and human rights watchdog organizations blasted
Hylton, claiming her work as a consultant in the prison industry would present a
conflict of interest. After retiring from her post as Federal Detention Trustee
in March, Hylton received $112,500 in consulting fees from The GEO Group Inc.,
which contracted with her Virginia-based firm Hylton Kirk & Associates. The GEO
Group, one of the largest prison private businesses, receives millions of
dollars from U.S Marshal contracts. In response to a question from Sen. Al
Franken (D-Minn.), Hylton dismissed the charges and affirmed that she followed
the legal procedure. “I’d like to assure the entire members of the committee
that I did follow all ethics requirements and that I worked closely with the
ethics office before retirement and subsequently after,” she said. Hylton
previously worked for the U.S. Marshals Services from 1980 until 2004, where she
held several high-ranking positions. She was nominated by President Barack Obama
on Sept. 20 to become the new director of the U.S. Marshals.
November 10, 2010 Washington Times
Eight prominent human rights and prison industry watchdog groups Tuesday
announced their opposition to U.S. Marshal nominee Stacia Hylton, a longtime
Justice Department veteran who recently worked as a consultant to one of the
nation's largest private prison companies. The organizations raised conflict of
interest charges concerning Ms. Hylton's consulting work earlier this year for
the Florida-based GEO Group, which has held of millions of dollars in contracts
with the Marshals Service. "It is extremely worrisome that Ms. Hylton is
nominated for a position where she would be directly involved in overseeing
contracts with private prison companies to house federal detainees, given her
cozy relationship with the private prison industry and her acceptance of funding
from the GEO Group through her consulting work," said Ken Kopczynski, director
of the Private Corrections Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog group. Citing a
report last month by The Washington Times, the groups pointed out Ms. Hylton's
acceptance of $112,500 in consulting fees from the GEO Group after leaving her
post earlier this year as federal detention trustee. "This is a prime example of
the revolving door between the public and for-profit private sectors turning
full circle," said Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News, a
project of the Human Rights Defense Center that reports on criminal justice
issues. "After cashing in on her experience in public law enforcement by taking
a consulting job with GEO Group, Ms. Hylton has now been nominated for a
high-level federal position where she will oversee detention services for the
U.S. marshals, including services provided by private prison firms such as GEO,"
he said. The organizations plan to discuss their concerns with the White House
and the Senate Judiciary Committee. They said neither the White House nor the
GEO Group responded to their questions about Ms. Hylton's relationship with the
company. Among the organizations opposing the nomination are the Alliance for
Justice, the National Lawyers Guild, International Cure, the Detention Watch
Network, Grassroots Leadership and the Justice Policy Institute. Last month, a
White House official said Ms. Hylton would not require a waiver from Mr. Obama's
ethics rules, which bar appointees for two years from working on matters
involving recent clients. So far, more than two dozen high-level appointees have
been given full or partial waivers. "After review, it was determined ... she
could easily be recused from participating in particular matters in which that
client was a party," said the official. "This recusal, along with the Obama
administration's ethics pledge and other ethics restrictions, will ensure that
she can serve ably and effectively as director of the U.S. Marshals Service."
Ms. Hylton wasn't working as an employee of the company, but provided services
to GEO Group through her consulting company, Virginia-based Hylton Kirk &
Associates. GEO Group was the only client on her financial disclosure form, for
whom she said she did "consulting services for detention matters, federal
relations and acquisitions and mergers" from March through July of this year.
Marshals Service contracts generate an important source of revenue for the GEO
Group. Ms. Hylton has supporters, including the National Sheriff's Association,
which told the Judiciary Committee of her "extraordinary qualifications,
experience and expertise." Ms. Hylton said if she is confirmed, her consulting
firm would remain dormant except to comply with any legal and tax requirements
while it's inactive. She also said $105,000 in annual retirement pay would end
upon her appointment.
October 25, 2010 The Washington Times
Between leaving her post as federal detention trustee and her recent
nomination as the next U.S. marshal, Justice Department veteran Stacia Hylton
got a consulting contract with one of the largest private correctional companies
in the country, records show. The arrangement with the Florida-based GEO Group
Inc., which has carried out tens of millions of dollars in contracts for the
U.S. Marshals Service, was disclosed in a recent financial report obtained by
The Washington Times through the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. One prominent
prison industry observer said the ties raise concerns about conflicts of
interest. "The massive conflicts of interest with Ms. Hylton having been
employed by GEO Group typify the revolving door of corporate lobbyists and
government employees that President Obama promised to end if elected," said Paul
Wright, editor and co-founder of Prison Legal News, which covers the prison
industry. Mr. Wright said he was concerned that Ms. Hylton would "be in a
position to further reward the GEO Group with taxpayer money and little
accountability or oversight." "The real and apparent conflict of interest is as
massive as it is obvious," he said. While Ms. Hylton is not a registered
lobbyist, the publicly traded GEO Group, which did not respond to messages
seeking comment, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying Congress
and the Justice Department on prison and budget issues in recent years. Under
Mr. Obama's ethics rules, appointees are prohibited for two years from working
on specific matters involving recent clients unless they obtain special waivers.
So far, more than two dozen high-level appointees have been given full or
partial waivers from the ethics rules. Ms. Hylton could not be reached for
comment, and the U.S. Marshals Service and the Justice Department did not
respond to messages about her nomination. A White House official reached on the
matter Monday said Ms. Hylton would not require a waiver. "After review, it was
determined that Ms. Hylton did not need a waiver for her consulting client, the
GEO Group, as she could easily be recused from participating in particular
matters in which that client was a party," said the official. "This recusal,
along with the Obama administration's ethics pledge and other ethics
restrictions, will ensure that she can serve ably and effectively as director of
the U.S. Marshals Service." Ms. Hylton wasn't working as an employee of the
company, but provided services to GEO Group through her consulting company,
Virginia-based Hylton Kirk & Associates. The GEO Group is listed as the only
client on Ms. Hylton's financial disclosure form, though government ethics rules
require nominees to report only clients who pay at least $5,000. She listed
$112,500 in income from her company through "consulting services for detention
matters, federal relations and acquisitions and mergers" from March through July
of this year. But Ms. Hylton also noted that pursuant to a contract, she will
receive funds from the GEO Group for services sometime prior to joining the
government. Contracts with the Marshals Service generate an important source of
revenue for the GEO Group. During an earnings conference call earlier this year,
GEO Chairman and Chief Executive Officer George Zoley noted that among federal
contracts, "the primary driver for growth continues to be the incarceration of
criminal aliens" with the U.S. marshals and federal Bureau of Prisons housing
aliens facing criminal charges or those serving time as a result of a
conviction. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC), the company noted that about 13 percent of its consolidated revenues for
the fiscal year that ended Jan. 3 came from U.S. marshals. The company reported
consolidated revenues for the year of $1.1 billion. While not referring to the
GEO Group by name, Ms. Hylton told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a
questionnaire that any potential conflicts of interest will be resolved under
the terms of an ethics agreement with the government. "In connection with the
nomination process, I have consulted with the Office of Government Ethics and
the Department of Justice's designated agency ethics official to identify any
potential conflicts of interest," she wrote. In addition, Ms. Hylton said upon
her confirmation, her consulting company would remain dormant except to comply
with any legal and tax requirements while it's inactive. She also said her
$105,000 annual federal retirement pay would cease upon her appointment. Ms.
Hylton has held numerous high-ranking positions at the Justice Department over
the years, including acting deputy director and assistant director at the U.S.
Marshals Service. She worked as chief of judicial security during the first
World Trade Center bombing trials. From 1990 to 1993, she was a witness security
inspector. More recently, as federal detention trustee from 2004 to earlier this
year, she oversaw a $1.5 billion budget.
September 29, 2010 Houston Chronicle
Immigration officials plan to require detention centers holding the majority of
the nation's immigration detainees to provide access to 24-hour, emergency
medical and mental health care and expand access to legal resources and
visitation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's long-awaited, revised national
detention standards aim to address vexing, long-term problems within the
hodgepodge of detention centers, prisons and jails that house about 400,000
immigration detainees annually. A draft copy of the nearly 350-page standards
obtained by the Houston Chronicle shows ICE officials have taken steps to
address some of the most critical problems identified in the agency's internal
reports and detention facility inspections, from access to quality medical care
to outdoor recreation time. But immigrant advocates, who had high hopes for the
revised standards since ICE announced plans to overhaul its detention system
last year, said the changes fell far short of their expectations. "I really do
feel it's a far cry from what we'd hoped for," said Lory D. Rosenberg, policy
director for Refugee and Migrant Rights at Amnesty International USA. "This
doesn't read like guidelines for a civil facility... or any kind of
institutional setting. This reads to me like a prison manual." And ICE union
officials plan to challenge several of the proposed changes at the bargaining
table, saying they pose serious safety concerns for officers, contractors and
detainees. Chris Crane, president of the national ICE Council, said officers
were particularly concerned about changes to search procedures and plans to mix
non-violent, aggravated felons, including drug dealers, in with the general
detainee population. "This thing just stinks of politics," Crane said. "It's
about satisfying, publicly, the special interest groups but not really
addressing the real issues, the real problems we have in the facilities." ICE
spokesman Brian Hale said the standards, last updated in 2008, are under review
by non-governmental agencies and the ICE union. Hale said that once ICE
management finishes negotiations with union leaders, the revised standards will
be implemented at 22 facilities nationwide that house about 17,000 detainees on
a daily basis, roughly 55 percent of the agency's daily detained population. The
list of 22 facilities includes the Houston Contract Detention facility on the
city's north side and several detention centers scattered across Texas. Hale
said he did not have a timeline for the union negotiations, and could not
predict when ICE would expand the standards to cover the rest of ICE's detained
population. Last August, top Obama administration officials announced plans for
a major overhaul of the nation's immigration detention system, which includes
more than 250 government-run detention centers, private prisons and local jails
operated largely by private contractors or county sheriffs. Under pressure to
address reports of substandard medical care and lax oversight, ICE pledged to
design a ``new civil detention system" specifically to meet the needs of
immigration detainees, who largely are detained for administrative, not
criminal, violations. In an Aug. 18 draft letter explaining the revisions to
detention standards, ICE Secretary John Morton wrote that the standards were
crafted to increase recreation time, visitation, access to legal services,
libraries and religious opportunities. Other changes include: All facilities
would be required to provide "comprehensive, routine and preventative health
care." -- All detainees would receive medical and mental health screenings to
determine if they are victims of sexual assault or domestic violence. --
Detainees will have no less than 15 hours per week access to law libraries. --
Searches and pat-downs will be conducted by guards of the same gender, if
someone of that gender is at the facility at the time. -- Transgendered
detainees will have access to continued hormone therapy, mental health care and
necessary medication. Linton Joaquin, who has investigated detention centers'
compliance with ICE's standards as general counsel with the National Immigration
Law Center, said ICE should get credit for making major improvements to its
standards. "But at the same time, it's not really addressing the fundamental
defect they identified last year, that the whole detention system is modeled
after the criminal justice system rather than taking into account that this is
civil detention." Rosenberg also said immigrant and human rights advocates had
hoped for more substantive changes, such as those agreed upon by ICE officials
and representatives from Corrections Corporation of America in May. The CCA had
planned to "soften" detention conditions for detainees at nine ICE centers,
including eliminating lockdowns and minimizing searches. Hale said changes have
been on hold pending ICE union negotiations. Human rights advocates and union
officials raised concerns about ICE's plans to change the way it rates
facilities' compliance with the standards. With the revised standards, ICE
created a new system that allows contractors to achieve a "range of compliance"
- from "minimal" to "optimal." Rosenberg said that change allows contractors to
do the bare minimum and still continue to house ICE detainees.
September 1, 2010 AP
Prison operator Corrections Corp. of America spent $240,000 lobbying federal
officials in the second quarter. That's down slightly from the $250,000 it spent
on lobbying in the first quarter of 2010 and the $260,000 it spent lobbying in
the second quarter of last year. The company said it lobbied on issues related
to the private prison industry and on all provisions of the Safe Prisons
Communications Act of 2009 and the Private Prison Information Act of 2009, among
other topics. Aside from Congress, Corrections Corp. also lobbied the Department
of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Immigration & Customs
Enforcement in the April-to-June quarter, according to a report filed with the
Clerk of the House of Representatives on July 20.
August 25, 2010 Washington Independent
Days after the ACLU called for additional protections against sexual abuse of
immigrant detainees, Human Rights Watch issued a report today demanding
Congressional action to improve detention center conditions. The calls come
after the Aug. 19 arrest of a former guard at the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Texas, who was accused in May of groping three women on their way to
deportation. Sexual abuse allegations at Hutto were particularly disturbing
because the facility was lauded as a symbol of ICE’s year-long detention reform
effort, as The Texas Independent pointed out last week. But Human Rights Watch
argued they were not an isolated incident, claiming the problem is more
widespread than officials realize because detainees are often deported or
otherwise unable to report abuse. ICE already made some steps toward preventing
sexual abuse in detention centers after Hutto abuse allegations surfaced in May.
Officials plan to publish revised standards for dealing with sexual assault. ICE
will also prohibit guards from searching or transporting detainees of the
opposite gender. Official policy already bans male staffers from being alone
with female immigration detainees — a rule contract guards at Hutto, a
Corrections Corporation of America facility, were allegedly breaking. In May,
ICE ordered the prison contractor to stop allowing male guards to be alone with
female immigrant detainees.
June 25, 2010 Tennessean
Eight Corrections Corporation of America detention centers that house asylum
seekers and immigrants awaiting deportation may be line for makeovers to create
a less prison-like feel. The move by Nashville-based CCA to spruce up eight
facilities – half of them in California and Texas – drew sharp reactions from
both sides of the debate over U.S. immigration policies. “We’re coddling
lawbreakers,” said Theresa Harmon, co-founder of the advocacy group Tennesseans
for Responsible Immigration Policies. “We have no teeth in our enforcement and
that’s the reason this whole problem continues.” Plants, flower baskets, fresh
colors of paint on prison walls, and more framed pictures were proposed by
private prison operator CCA to soften the look of several detention centers as
part of reform initiatives within the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE is evaluating the changes, said agency spokeswoman Gillian Brigham. Changes
suggested by CCA wouldn’t apply to any detainees with criminal backgrounds or
those considered a threat. Low-risk detainees would be allowed extended visiting
hours up to 12 hours a day, movie and bingo nights, exercise classes, self-serve
continental breakfast on holidays and weekends, better access to legal
resources, free Internet-based phone service and the right to wear their own
clothes. Advocates of better treatment think the proposed changes are cosmetic
and superficial, avoiding the real problems within federal immigration centers.
Judy Greene, criminal justice policy analyst for the New York-based policy
research group Justice Strategies, remains skeptical. “Bingo nights is one
thing, but still having personnel that can’t figure out how to comport
themselves around women detainees or women in state custody shows that (CCA)
doesn’t learn from its mistakes,” Greene said. The federal immigration agency is
CCA’s fourth-largest customer after the federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals
Service and the state of California prison system. On a typical day, there are
30,000 people in immigration confinement at 256 detention centers run by the
federal government, private firms such as CCA and local jailers. Today, CCA
houses roughly 6,400 detainees for ICE. Nearly a year ago, ICE announced plans
to implement revised policies and standards to make the immigration detention
system less penal and more humane.
June 8, 2010 Houston Chronicle
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are preparing to roll out a
series of changes at several privately owned immigration detention centers,
including relaxing some security measures for low-risk detainees and offering
art classes, bingo and continental breakfast on the weekends. The changes,
detailed in an internal ICE e-mail obtained by the Houston Chronicle, were
welcomed by immigrant advocates who have been waiting for the Obama
administration to deliver on a promise made in August to overhaul the nation's
immigration detention system. The 28 changes identified in the e-mail range from
the superficial to the substantive. In addition to “softening the look of the
facility” with hanging plants and offering fresh carrot sticks, ICE will allow
for the “free movement” of low-risk detainees, expand visiting hours and provide
unmonitored phone lines. ICE officials said the changes are part of broader
efforts to make the immigration detention system less penal and more humane. But
the plans are prompting protests by ICE's union leaders, who say they will
jeopardize the safety of agents, guards and detainees and increase the bottom
line for taxpayers. Tre Rebstock, president for Local 3332, the ICE union in
Houston, likened the changes to creating “an all-inclusive resort” for
immigration detainees. “Our biggest concern is that someone is going to get
hurt,” he said, taking particular issue with plans to relax restrictions on the
movement of low-risk detainees and efforts to reduce and eliminate pat-down
searches. The changes outlined in the ICE e-mail are planned for nine detention
centers owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, including the
900-bed Houston Contract Detention Facility on the city's north side. Some of
the changes will be implemented within 30 days; others may take up to six
months, said Beth Gibson, ICE's senior counselor to Assistant Secretary John
Morton and a leader of the detention reform effort. Other major changes include:
• Eliminating lockdowns and lights-out for low-risk detainees. • Allowing
visitors to stay as long as they like in a 12-hour period. • Providing a unit
manger so detainees have someone to report problems to other than the guard. •
Allowing low-risk detainees to wear their own clothing or other non-penal
attire. • Providing e-mail access and Internet-based free phone service. Not
about punishment Gibson said the improvements are part of ICE's efforts to
detain immigrants in the least restrictive manner possible while ensuring they
leave the country if ordered to do so. “When people come to our custody, we're
detaining them to effect their removal,” Gibson said. “It's about deportation.
It's not about punishing people for a crime they committed.” ICE officials have
faced pressure from immigrant advocates and some members of Congress to improve
the detention conditions for the roughly 400,000 immigrants it houses annually.
The agency has relied on a hodgepodge of more than 250 government-run detention
centers, private prisons and local jails to accommodate its growing population —
with roughly one in four detainees held in Texas. At the CCA facilities that
have agreed to ICE's changes, detainees will see more variety in their dining
hall menus and have self-serve beverage and fresh vegetable bars. CCA also plans
to offer movie nights, bingo, arts and crafts, dance and cooking classes,
tutoring and computer training, the e-mail states. Detainees also will be
allowed four hours or more of recreation “in a natural setting, allowing for
robust aerobic exercise.” CCA also committed to improving the look of the
facilities, such as requiring plants, fresh paint and new bedding in lower-risk
units. Advocates pleased Some of the improvements offered at the CCA facilities
counted as hard-fought victories for immigrant advocates, including plans to
improve visitor and attorney access. “A lot of these measures are what we've
been advocating for,” said Lory Rosenberg, policy and advocacy director for
Refugee and Migrants' Rights for Amnesty International. “Many of these points
are very important to changing the system from a penal system, which is
inappropriate in an immigration context, to a civil detention system.” Union
members said they have concerns about the plans, primarily focusing on safety.
Rebstock said some detainees may be classified as low-risk because they have no
serious criminal history but still may be gang members that “haven't been caught
doing anything wrong yet.” He also said eliminating lockdowns will make it more
difficult to protect detainees from one another. He said reducing or eliminating
pat-down searches could allow contraband into the facilities, including weapons.
Gibson, with ICE, said the agency is developing a sophisticated classification
system and will make sure “that our detainees are still safe and sound.” “As a
general matter, it will be the non-criminals who don't present a danger to
anyone else who are benefitting from the lowest level of custody,” Gibson said.
‘On the taxpayers' dime' Rebstock also questioned the cost to taxpayers for the
changes. “My grandparents would have loved to have bingo night and a dance class
at the retirement home they were in when they passed away, but that was
something we would have had to pay for,” he said. “And yet these guys are
getting it on the taxpayers' dime.” Gibson said CCA is making the improvements
at no additional cost to ICE. The agency's contract with CCA for the Houston
detention center requires that ICE pay $99 per bed daily for each detainee,
slightly lower than the $102 average daily rate ICE pays nationally .
May 26, 2010 Government Executive
The Homeland Security Department this week announced that it will replace the
head of the Federal Protective Service after several critical investigative
reports found major gaps in the security of government facilities. Gary Schenkel,
who has served as director of FPS since March 2007, told his staff on Tuesday
that in early June he will move to a DHS policy office where he will serve as
acting deputy assistant secretary for state and local law enforcement. "It is
with great sadness that I announce my departure from the Federal Protective
Service," Schenkel wrote in an e-mail to FPS employees. "For the past three-plus
years I have been privileged and honored to lead this outstanding organization
through many challenges and triumphs." A retired Marine Corps lieutenant
colonel, Schenkel previously served as assistant federal security director for
the Transportation Security Administration at Chicago Midway Airport. In his new
role, Schenkel will support "a key initiative of the secretary's to bolster
relationships with our critical partners in law enforcement," said Homeland
Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. FPS Deputy Director Paul Durette will serve as
the agency's acting director until a permanent leader is hired. An open
executive search to fill the position began immediately, Kudwa said. Sen. Joe
Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, urged the department to move swiftly to find a new director. "FPS
needs assertive leadership to overcome its well-documented shortcomings and to
ensure that federal buildings are secure, and the senator will soon introduce
legislation to strengthen the agency's capabilities," Lieberman's office said in
a statement. The federal labor union that represents FPS employees said it was
anxious to begin a new chapter at the agency. "There is much work that lies
ahead and strong, positive and effective leadership is essential at this
critical time for FPS," said David Wright, president of the American Federation
of Government Employees Local 918. The union urged DHS to "select a
well-qualified law enforcement professional who can balance the equally
important law enforcement and protection missions of FPS." Lawmakers stressed
that Schenkel's departure does not solve several unresolved issues at FPS. House
Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thomson, D-Miss., said he wants more
information on the estimated completion date for the new Risk Assessment and
Management Program to monitor the performance, training and certification of
contract guards; the lack of a strategic plan at FPS and the cost of relying on
a private sector guard force. "Until these issues are resolved our federal
buildings and the federal employees who work in them remain vulnerable,"
Thompson said. "As the department looks for a new FPS director, it must continue
to move forward with renewal and reform at this beleaguered agency." Schenkel's
management of FPS has come under intense scrutiny in recent months after a
series of Government Accountability Office reports questioned whether the
agency's contract guard force was capable of securing federal buildings. In
April, GAO reported that undercover agents were able to slip fake guns, knives
and bombs past guards in federal facilities. A July 2009 GAO report found
similar failures with FPS contract guards. In response, FPS increased its number
of unannounced inspections, required additional magnetometer training and
conducted more thorough reviews of contract guard qualifications. FPS currently
is conducting an internal staffing analysis to determine the feasibility of
insourcing some or all of the contract guard workforce. The agency has an annual
budget of roughly $1 billion, and employs 1,225 full-time workers and 15,000
contract security guards at more than 2,300 federal facilities nationwide.
March 3, 2010 New York Times
When the Obama administration vowed to overhaul immigration detention last
year, its promise of more humane treatment and accountability was spurred in
part by the harrowing treatment of two detainees who died in the Bush years. In
one case, captured by security cameras in 2008, a Chinese computer engineer was
dragged from a Rhode Island immigration jail and mocked by guards as he screamed
in pain from undiagnosed cancer and a broken spine. In the other, a Salvadoran
detainee held for two years in a California detention center was denied a biopsy
for a painful penile lesion, though government doctors suspected the cancer that
eventually required amputation of his penis. But on Wednesday, the
administration argued in federal court that the government had no liability for
neglect or abuse by private contractors running the Donald W. Wyatt Detention
Facility in Central Falls, R.I., where the computer engineer was held. And in
oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday, federal
lawyers maintained that government doctors responsible for the Salvadoran’s care
in detention were immune from being personally sued for medical negligence. In
both cases, the arguments were made against lawsuits brought by the families of
the men who died, Hiu Lui Ng, 34, and Francisco Castaneda, 36. In the Ng case,
the government sought to be dropped as a defendant, and in the other, it tried
to sharply limit potential monetary damages. But critics of the sprawling
immigration detention system, which relies mainly on privately run jails to hold
noncitizens facing deportation, said those arguments had broader and more
disturbing implications. “The government’s positions both in Castaneda and in
the Ng case fly in the face of the stated commitment to overhauling the
immigration detention system and bringing to it more transparency and
accountability,” said Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties
Union, which filed an amicus brief in the Castaneda case and through its Rhode
Island affiliate supported the lawsuit brought by Mr. Ng’s widow, Lin Li Qu, and
two children, all United States citizens who live in New York. “Real reform
wouldn’t be about pointing the finger elsewhere,” Ms. Gupta said. “It would be
about promulgating legally binding standards and making individualized
determinations about whether someone like Ng needs to be detained in the first
place.” Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
reiterated the agency’s commitment to an overhaul. “This administration takes
any allegation of inadequate medical care or ill treatment seriously and will
not accept or tolerate any willful misconduct,” he wrote. “We have taken
important initial steps to change this system and are committed to finishing the
job.” Oral arguments in the Ng case, in Federal District Court in Providence,
centered on the federal agency’s role in ordering that the gravely ill man be
taken in shackles to a federal office in Hartford and returned the same day to
the Wyatt detention center. For that trip, Mr. Ng was dragged from his cell. The
government’s lawyer, Helene Kazanjian, argued that it was “completely unfair” to
expect an agency “that has no contact with the detainee on a regular basis,” to
know that Mr. Ng was in dire condition. But Fidelma L. Fitzpatrick, arguing the
other side, pointed out that the agency had been repeatedly notified that Mr. Ng
was in terrible pain and unable to walk, and that he had been denied a
wheelchair and outside medical care by the detention center, run for profit by a
municipal corporation in Central Falls. “The U.S. government cannot just hire
someone and then close the file,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said. “The government must
take responsibility for the actions of ICE.” Judge William E. Smith said he
would rule later, but his questions took up the plaintiffs’ theme. “If you know
about the severity of the detainee’s condition, isn’t there an obligation to
give him special treatment, to put him on an ambulance?” he asked. Ms. Kazanjian
contended that when the agency learned how sick Mr. Ng was, it sent him to the
hospital where he died six days later. But the judge corrected her. “I ordered
him hospitalized,” he said, referring to his unusual intervention at a habeas
corpus hearing the day after the Hartford trip. “I don’t think ICE can take
credit for that.” In the Castaneda case, the government has admitted to medical
negligence, and a federal judge has said “the word ‘cruel’ is an understatement”
for the treatment described in the lawsuit. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court
seemed receptive to the government’s argument that Public Health Service doctors
were immune from suit under a 1970 federal law. A government lawyer argued that
that immunity reflected “a balance of evils,” adding, “Congress has decided that
it would rather protect the P.H.S., make sure that causes of action and
liability aren’t hanging over the heads of P.H,S. officers, even if that means
some individuals don’t get recovery against certain specific P.H.S. personnel.”
Lawyers representing Mr. Castaneda’s teenage daughter have said a ruling for the
government would preclude a jury trial in the case and cap any damages at
$250,000, which they called insufficient deterrence to the negligence that has
been widely documented.
February 24, 2010 Government Executive
Leaders of a Senate government oversight committee on Wednesday said they
were "astounded" to learn that contractors outnumber civilian employees at the
Homeland Security Department, and expressed concern that contractors could be
performing inherently governmental work. Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and
Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee, thanked DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano for
responding to requests that the department quantify its reliance on contractors.
But they said they were disturbed to learn DHS employs more than 200,000
contractors, compared with just 188,000 federal employees, excluding uniformed
members of the Coast Guard. "The sheer number of DHS contractors currently on
board again raises the question of whether DHS itself is in charge of its
programs and policies, or whether it inappropriately has ceded core decisions to
contractors," Lieberman and Collins said in a letter to Napolitano. The senators
asked for a unit-by-unit breakdown of contractors within the department, but
warned that regardless of that breakdown, the challenge of overseeing so many
contractors is likely to strain the ongoing transformation of DHS into an agency
with strong, central management. "We believe that the current balance between
federal employees and contractors at DHS is unacceptable, untenable and
unsustainable," they wrote. DHS officials are aware of the problem and are
taking steps to properly balance the department's workforce, the senators noted.
Homeland Security's fiscal 2011 budget reflects cost savings from the conversion
of contractor positions to federal jobs. Lieberman and Collins said that while
cost should not be the only factor in determining who should perform work,
savings are beneficial. "The fundamental question in deciding whether a federal
employee should perform a task, or whether the task may appropriately be
assigned to a contractor, should not simply be which option is cheapest, but
rather whether or not the government's interests are best served by having the
work performed by federal employees," the senators said. "Nonetheless it is
notable that the shift to a more appropriate employee-to-contractor ratio may
well also save the department and the taxpayers money."
February 9, 2010 National Law
Review
John Morton makes no apology for locking up 380,000 people a year. They haven't
been charged with crimes. Rather, they're immigrants, confined to a sprawling
network of more than 270 jails and prisons for weeks or months while proceedings
to determine whether they'll be allowed to remain in the country are pending.
"This isn't a question of whether or not we will detain people. We will detain
people, and we will detain them on a grand scale," said Morton, who is head of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security.
"It's a necessary power." The key question for Morton, whose 19,000-employee
agency has faced stinging criticism over conditions in the detention facilities
including substandard medical care and limited access to counsel, is "how we
detain people -- and in my view, the system is run haphazardly." A career
federal lawyer with experience in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern
District of Virginia and the Department of Justice, Morton, 43, came to the job
nine months ago vowing to give the detention system "a very, very hard look,
essentially an overhaul." His goal, he said in a lengthy interview in his
spacious 11th floor office at ICE's headquarters in Southwest Washington, D.C.,
is to create a detention program managed directly by agency employees, not
contracted out to public and private jails. "My whole vision for the system is
to reduce the number of facilities that we have, to have those facilities be
designed and run solely from the immigration enforcement perspective, and to
have strong, direct federal oversight," he said. Immigration advocates are
encouraged by Morton's proposals, but say the plans don't go far enough. "He's
building a better mousetrap," said Andrea Black, network coordinator of
Washington-based advocacy coalition Detention Watch Network. "We welcome the
initial steps. However, they've got a lot of work to do, and we're very
concerned they're not going to be able to enact fundamental reforms needed to
truly transform the system." FEW LAWYERS -- Recent watchdog and media reports
detail many of the ongoing problems inside the facilities. Last week, the
American Bar Association released a comprehensive report urging major changes to
the entire immigration legal system. The ABA described the current detention
system as "costly, extremely difficult to manage, and overburdened." One of the
most acute problems is medical care. According to the American Civil Liberties
Union, there have been 104 in-custody deaths since 2003. The group says that
deficient medical care is believed to be the leading cause of death and is the
No. 1 complaint it receives from detainees. Newspapers including The New York
Times have reported shocking accounts of individual detainees denied treatment,
such a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea. He died in 2007 after suffering a skull
fracture in the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey and being locked in an
isolation cell for more than 13 hours. The reports have apparently hit home.
When Morton was asked to describe his vision for a model detention facility, his
immediate response was, "First-rate, uniform medical care." This year, ICE will
solicit bids to build at least two new centers designed specifically for housing
detainees -- one in Texas, the other in the Northeast. Morton envisions a
combination of dormitories and cells, an outdoor exercise area, good food and
easy access for families and lawyers. He thinks it can even be done in a
budget-neutral manner. "The present system is incredibly expensive," he said.
"We can actually save some money with these new facilities over the long run ...
and provide a better standard of care." In the meantime, the existing system is
under strain. Since 1996, the number of noncitizens held each day by ICE has
increased threefold. On any given day, an average of 32,000 people are in ICE
custody. Some of those held are legal residents who have previously been
convicted of a crime -- in some cases, even a misdemeanor. Others are felons who
go straight to ICE custody after serving prison sentences. Still others are
undocumented aliens or asylum seekers or people who overstayed their visas.
Regardless, all are detained by ICE for a civil, not a criminal, offense. The
only reason people are kept in custody, said Morton, is because "They'll either
run away and wouldn't show up for their detention hearing, or because they're a
danger to the community." That is an assertion that advocates dispute. "There
will always be people who need to be detained, but that number is a lot smaller
than the number of people they hold," said Denyse Sabagh, a Washington-based
partner at Duane Morris who heads the firm's immigration practice. "They really
should look at who they're putting in detention. Some are lawful permanent
residents who have been in the country for many years, with roots and family.
Why do those people need to be in jail?" Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director
of the Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago,
applauded December 2009 ICE guidelines that allow more asylum seekers to be
released on parole but said "the crux of reform is how things will improve on
the local level." One of the top concerns for her group and others is detainee
access to counsel. According to last week's ABA report, 84 percent of detainees
have no lawyer to guide them through the complex removal process. "The need is
so huge. They beg you, 'Please help me get me a lawyer,'" said Karina Wilkinson,
co-founder of the Middlesex County Coalition for Immigrant Rights, who is not a
lawyer but works with immigrants in detention centers in New Jersey.
February 5, 2010 Houston Chronicle
Luis Dubegel-Paez, a 60-year-old Cuban immigrant, lay on the floor of
Rolling Plains Detention Center with no pulse, his face flushed, his pupils
dilated. For months before he collapsed at the detention center near Abilene, he
had been complaining to nurses about chest pain and heart problems, asking to
see a doctor. “Can't stand the pain,” Dubegel-Paez wrote on a sick call slip on
Jan. 1, 2008. In response, he was treated by a nurse at the center's medical
clinic and given cold medicine. As the weeks passed, he filed more urgent
requests to see a doctor — only to be given more cough medicine and Tylenol by
nurses, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records. While
Dubegel-Paez waited to see a doctor, inspectors working for ICE toured the
facility Feb. 26, 2008, to check that it complied with ICE's own detention
standards. The inspectors rated the center “acceptable,” noting no deficiencies
in its medical care. It was only after Dubegel-Paez collapsed and died in March
2008 that ICE's inspectors noted in a report that medical care for about 500
detainees at the facility was being provided only by eight vocational nurses
with minimal nursing or physician supervision. The case highlights what critics
have called pervasive problems with ICE's enforcement of detention standards. A
review of more than 800 pages of inspection reports obtained by the Houston
Chronicle through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that inspectors
have, in some instances, given positive reviews to facilities with serious
problems — ranging from inadequate medical care to poor grievance procedures. In
many cases, ICE has required facilities with deficiencies to make improvements,
though inspectors often failed to note in subsequent reports whether changes
were made. After Dubegel-Paez's death, inspectors noted that the Rolling Plains
facility failed to meet a number of ICE's detention standards, including care
for chronic illness and responding to sick call requests. But ICE officials
still did not downgrade the center's rating because of staffing problems in the
medical unit, records show, and continue to place a growing number of detainees
there. ICE officials said they are in the process of overhauling the nation's
immigration detention system, including its monitoring procedures, and plan to
improve oversight of medical care. “The problems that occurred in 2007 and 2008
are terrible problems, and as an institution and an agency we have to address
them and take them extraordinarily seriously,” said Brian Hale, ICE's public
affairs director in Washington, D.C. “But I also do have to point out that was
something that occurred in the past, and this new administration ... is
committed to ensuring that doesn't happen again. We take it very seriously.” Are
changes enough? ICE officials said they plan to announce changes this spring to
strengthen their detention standards, which are designed to ensure that
detainees have basic protections while in custody. The agency has relied on
300-plus detention centers, private prisons and local jails to house about
400,000 immigrants annually — with roughly one in four detained in Texas. Hale
said ICE is reducing the number of facilities to improve oversight. The agency
also plans to station government monitors at the centers and jails that house
the largest numbers of ICE detainees, he added. Linton Joaquin, who has
investigated detention centers' compliance with ICE's standards as general
counsel with the National Immigration Law Center, said ICE's planned measures
are positive, but “they are so inadequate in comparison to the scope of the
problem.” ICE officials have reported that the majority of inspected facilities
complied with the agency's detention standards, though a 2008 Inspector General
audit found reviewers had not been effective in identifying certain serious
problems at facilities. Locally, the Houston Contract Detention Facility has
received high marks in reviews. Inspection reports obtained by the Chronicle,
which date from early 2007 through February 2009, show ICE has placed detainees
in facilities that have failed to meet some minimum requirements outlined under
its own standards for detainee care, with violations ranging from failure to
accommodate religious diets to lack of formal disciplinary procedures. Access to
adequate medical care continues to be one of the most difficult and
controversial issues for ICE, which has recorded 107 detainee deaths since 2003,
including more than a dozen in Texas. ICE's records documented a wide range of
medical care problems at facilities rated as acceptable, including a complete
lack of on-site medical care at one Dallas-area jail approved for housing
short-term detainees, and chronic staffing problems at larger facilities. An
inspection report for the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall documented a
severe staffing shortage in 2007 in the medical unit, with 19 vacancies out of
46 positions. The reviewer wrote that the facility, which at the time held about
1,250 detainees, was meeting ICE's standard for medical access at an
“acceptable” level, though he noted that employees were staying after hours to
complete basic duties. When inspectors returned a year later, in April 2008, ICE
had increased the number of detainees held at the facility to 1,547 — despite
continuing problems with the medical unit. Hiring a key issue -- The inspector
noted the facility, which is owned and operated by the GEO Group, was having
trouble meeting a standard ICE requirement that all detainees have a medical
exam within 14 days of admission. The medical unit had 10 vacancies at the time
of inspection. “These positions are critical to the delivery of health care and
compliance with all ICE standards,” the inspector wrote, giving the facility a
“good” rating. The center continues to suffer from staffing shortages, with 24
vacancies out of 69 authorized positions in its medical unit, though ICE
officials noted that the government is actively recruiting and hiring for those
spots. GEO Group spokesman Pablo Paez declined comment. On March 14, the day
that Dubegel-Paez died, he filled out a final sick call slip and complained to
his cell mate about chest pains before being seen by a nurse. He was being held
while ICE officials tried to arrange his deportation to Cuba. “I have an
emergency to see the doctor about my heart problems that I been having for the
last couple days, and I have been getting dizzy a lot,” he wrote on the sick
call slip. According to ICE's report, the nurse gave him two Tylenol pills and
scheduled him for a sick call appointment the following Monday. An autopsy ruled
his cause of death was heart disease. Still, weeks after Dubegel-Paez's death,
the acting chief of ICE's Detention Standards Compliance unit affirmed the
center's “acceptable” rating without any requirement to improve medical
treatment. Arthur Anderson, the warden of Rolling Plains center, operated by
Emerald Companies, did not return phone calls seeking comment. The facility now
has an on-site physician only six to 10 hours a week and eight full-time nurses,
ICE reported. ICE has continued to increase the number of detainees housed
there, averaging 537 a day last year.
October 7, 2009 San Antonio Express-News
In a move that could affect the revenues of private prison firms and county
jails, the Obama administration said Tuesday it will review, renegotiate and
possibly terminate some of its more than 300 contracts for detaining
unauthorized immigrants. The announcement by Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano is part of an overhaul aimed at ending the reliance
on penal institutions for detainees with noncriminal immigration violations or
valid asylum claims. The overhaul, first announced in August, followed scathing
reports and lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups
alleging inhumane conditions, denial of medical care, and isolation in remote
areas with limited access to pro-bono legal aid. Napolitano, in a news
conference with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John
Morton, said she inherited a scattered “nonsystem” of government and privately
run facilities that needed to be monitored. “It's a huge range of detainees,”
she said, “from those who have criminal records who need to be in a very
prisonlike setting to those who have no record at all and indeed have come
seeking asylum.” The system has ballooned from 5,000 beds in 1994 to more than
32,000 beds in 2008, used by about 380,000 detainees that year. Napolitano said
the capacity to detain people would remain, but the standards of “health and
safety, law, and indeed human decency” needed to be enforced. Plans include
centralizing operations, doubling the personnel involved in detention center
oversight, building new facilities in urban locations near immigration service
providers, and housing detainees in converted hotels, nursing homes, or other
residential facilities. Detainees would be classified by risk, with nonviolent,
noncriminal populations such as recently arrived asylum seekers sent to less
prisonlike environments. Detainees with criminal convictions would remain in
jails. There are also plans for an online system to locate detainees, something
family members and even attorneys are not always able to do. The practice of
detaining families at the T. Don Hutto Family Residence Center in Taylor, which
drew criticism because of its cells and barbed wire, has already ended. The
facility is now being used to house female detainees. It was unclear what effect
the changes will have on private firms or communities that draw revenue from
jailing detainees, but Willacy County Sheriff Larry Spence said the reduced
population at the Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville — at 3,000 beds the
nation's largest — has been apparent and may cause problems for a county that
counts on jobs, taxes, and revenue from it. “I know the numbers are down from
what they used to be,” he said. “It means the county hasn't had the same amount
of money coming in.” The county subcontracts with Utah-based Management &
Training Corp., a private prison management firm. Kathleen Walker, past
president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she expected
quite a few disappointed contractors. “I would imagine that in the state of
Texas, where we have so many different county facilities and independent
facilities run by contractors, that they are not going to like seeing a
potential dip in revenues to retirement centers or abandoned hotels,” she said.
“But to put people in on civil violations with people that have felony exposure
is really just not acceptable.”
October 6, 2009 New York Times
The Obama administration is looking to convert hotels and nursing homes into
immigration detention centers and to build two model detention centers from
scratch as it tries to transform the way the government holds people it is
seeking to deport. These and other initiatives, described in an interview on
Monday by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, are part of the
administration’s effort to revamp the much-criticized detention system, even as
it expands the enforcement programs that send most people accused of immigration
violations to jails and private prisons. The cost, she said, would be covered by
greater efficiencies in the detention and removal system, which costs $2.4
billion annually to operate and holds about 380,000 people a year. “The paradigm
was wrong,” Ms. Napolitano said of the nation’s patchwork of rented jail space,
which has more than tripled in size since 1995, largely through Immigration and
Customs Enforcement contracts for cells more restrictive, and expensive, than
required for a population that is largely not dangerous. Among those in
detention on Sept. 1, 51 percent were considered felons, and of those, 11
percent had committed violent crimes. “Serious felons deserve to be in the
prison model,” Ms. Napolitano said, “but there are others. There are women.
There are children.” These and other nonviolent people should be sorted and
detained or supervised in ways appropriate to their level of danger or flight
risk, she said. Her goal, she said, is “to make immigration detention more
cohesive, accountable and relevant to the entire spectrum of detainees we are
dealing with.”
September 11, 2009 New America Media
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may not be collecting enough data
about its own operations to meet legal and humanitarian standards for detention.
This was the principle finding of a report released Thursday by the Migration
Policy Institute (MPI). The study, "Immigrant Detention: Can ICE Meet Its Legal
Imperatives and Case Management Responsibilities?" analyzes data for all 32,000
detainees held in ICE custody during a single night in January 2009. Without the
ability to track its detainees adequately, the report warns, the agency will be
unable to adhere to legal mandates, administer review processes or abide by its
national detention standards. “The report underscores what advocates have seen
for years: that we don’t know who’s detained or why, that they don’t have a
release process, that they don’t track family ties or make legal immigrants
available for alternatives to detention,” said Andrea Black, network coordinator
for Detention Watch Network. The results were released on the heels of ICE’s
announcement that it plans to revamp its detention system. ICE intends to
address concerns related to health conditions of its detainees, centralize its
detention system, and depend less on local jails and private prisons. "This
report provides a roadmap for meeting the data needs essential for the new ICE
detention initiative to succeed as it attempts to move from a criminal
incarceration model to a civil detention system," said MPI Vice President for
Programs Donald Kerwin, co-author of the report. Researchers found that the
diversity of the imprisoned population may make it harder to gather data and
track cases. The 286 facilities hold a population of men (90 percent), women,
families, unaccompanied children, unauthorized immigrants, asylum seekers,
torture survivors, lawful permanent residents and persons claiming to be U.S.
citizens. The detainees come from 177 countries. Thirty-eight percent come from
Mexico, followed by 13 percent from countries in Central America. They are most
commonly held in facilities in southern and U.S.-Mexico border states, with 68
percent of the total in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas,
Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. The report also revealed key
information about how long detainees remain at ICE facilities. “The data
confirms that people are detained for much longer than ICE reports,” Black said.
The average length of detention was 81 days, but some have been detained for
much longer. Thirteen percent of detainees were held for three to six months, 10
percent for six months to one year, and three percent for more than one year.
“To me, it’s still startling to see how fast the detainee population has grown,”
said Kerwin. Sixty percent of the detention centers in use today, he said, were
created since 2004. ICE’s ability to manage detainees is also compromised by the
presence of private contractors who run the country’s large-scale facilities.
Half of the detained population is held in 17 centers, which each houses more
than 500 detainees. Three-quarters of these are operated by private contractors.
“As a result, ICE has limited control over facilities and detainees,” Black
argued. The report also found that more than half of ICE detainees (58 percent)
do not have criminal records, even though mandatory detention laws primarily
apply to criminals. This is one of the consequences of untargeted detentions,
according to Black, and has led to an overcrowded detention system. In order to
reform the detention system, the Department of Homeland Security has focused on
population management, learning who is in the system, analyzing conditions of
detention centers and alternatives to detention. Dora Schriro, special advisor
to DHS on ICE, Detention and Removal and, since last month, director of the
Office of Detention Policy and Planning, said the agency is launching various
programs to address access to health care, courts, recreation, family visits and
tailor the system to the special needs population. “Accountability is the chore
of government responsibility, not just oversight and data gathering,” Schriro
said. “We are committed to continue the improvements.” But immigrant rights
advocates expressed skepticism over the lack of transparency. “We are pleased to
see the changes in process, but we are skeptical and concerned,” said Black.
“Data has been extremely difficult to access. ICE denied basic information, even
to know how many detention centers they work with.” Schriro noted that the
administration is attempting to address some of these concerns. DHS is engaged
in conversations to create systems that will track detainees, report medical
requirements, and discern eligibility for alternatives to detention. It is also
conducting a study to learn the costs of these processes. The administration,
however, is struggling with the same problems advocates and organizations have
been dealing with for years, Schriro said. In their efforts, she said, they have
to look back, to analyze what didn’t work, and ahead, to implement the necessary
changes. Regarding alternatives to detention, for example, she said, they aren’t
optimistic. “The more we scrub, the more we see it is not usable,” Schriro
stated.
August 17, 2009 New York Times
More than one in 10 deaths in immigration detention in the last six years have
been overlooked and were omitted from an official list of detainee fatalities
issued to Congress in March, the Obama administration said Monday. The
administration added 10 previously unreported deaths to the official roster and
disclosed an 11th, which occurred Friday: that of Huluf Guangule Negusse, a
24-year-old Ethiopian. Mr. Negusse died from the effects of an Aug. 3 suicide
attempt in the Wakulla County correctional facility near Tallahassee, Fla. What
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials call “the death roster” stands at
104 since October 2003, up from the 90 that were on the list the agency gave to
Congress this spring. The latest search for records began late last month,
officials said, when Freedom of Information litigation by the American Civil
Liberties Union uncovered one of the 10 deaths that had gone unreported — that
of Felix Franklin Rodriguez-Torres, 36, an Ecuadorean who settled in New York
and died of testicular cancer on Jan. 18, 2007, after being detained two months
at an immigration jail run for profit by the Corrections Corporation of America
in Eloy, Ariz. On Saturday, after inquiries about that case by The New York
Times, the new chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, issued
a directive for field offices to make sure that other deaths had not been
overlooked, a spokesman said. David Shapiro, staff lawyer with the A.C.L.U.
National Prison Project, said: “Today’s announcement is a tragic confirmation of
our worst fears. Our nation’s immigration detention system has been plagued by a
total lack of transparency and accountability, and even with today’s
announcement there is no way we can be fully confident that there are not still
more deaths that somehow have gone unaccounted for.”
August 7, 2009 LA Times
Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration announced
plans Thursday to transform the nation's immigration detention system from one
reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private prisons to a
centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees. The reforms are aimed
at establishing greater control over a system that houses about 33,000 detainees
a day and that has been sharply criticized as having unsafe and inhumane
conditions and as lacking the medical care that may have prevented many of the
90 deaths that have occurred since 2003. "With these reforms, ICE will move away
from our present, decentralized jail-oriented approach to a system that is
wholly designed for and based on our civil detention needs," U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton told reporters. "The
population that we detain is different than the traditional population that is
detained in a prison or a jail setting." The federal immigration agency plans to
review the use of 350 local jails, state prisons and private facilities,
including more than a dozen in California. Within five years, officials said,
detainees without criminal records probably would be held in fewer,
less-restrictive locations with more federal oversight. Morton also announced
that the agency would stop sending families to the controversial T. Don Hutto
Family Residential Facility in Texas and instead hold them in the agency's only
other family facility, which is in Pennsylvania. The Texas facility, which will
continue to house women, opened in 2006 and faced lawsuits over substandard
living conditions. A settlement resulted in changes to how children were
treated. Immigrant rights advocates welcomed the changes but said there was
still no clear policy on how detention facilities would be penalized if problems
were found. "We are encouraged that the administration is taking a hard look at
what has traditionally been a dark spot in our immigration system," said Karen
Tumlin, a staff attorney at the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law
Center. "However, only time will tell if the reforms announced today amount to
lasting change or simply creative repackaging of prior policies." Tumlin and
others said the detention standards needed to be made legally binding to
guarantee immigrants access to counseling, family visits, legal materials and
recreation time. Legislation has been introduced aimed at accomplishing this.
Advocates also said that the government should use less punitive and less costly
alternatives to detention, such as ankle bracelets or intensive supervision, for
certain immigrants. "We are very disappointed by the failure to discuss
alternatives to detention in the proposal," said Ahilan Arulanantham, an
attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "The
system now detains thousands of people who are not a danger and not a flight
risk." To increase oversight, the immigration agency would place federal
monitors in 23 large facilities, which house more than 40% of the detainees. The
agency also plans to hire experts in healthcare administration and detention
management, and someone to review medical complaints.
July 31, 2009 Gainesville Times
Attorney David Kennedy says clients of his who have been held in immigration
detention centers in South Georgia and eastern Alabama routinely are denied
fundamental rights. "I have had clients who have had no access to phones for
extended periods of time. I have had clients being questioned and induced into
signing things they did not understand," said Kennedy, a Gainesville immigration
lawyer. "I have had clients complain they were stuck in their cells for 23 hours
a day. There’s definitely a problem with immigration detention in this country."
On the eve of a new immigration detention center opening in Gainesville, a
report issued this week by National Immigration Law Center appears to validate
Kennedy’s complaints. The report, based on confidential Immigration and Customs
Enforcement documents obtained in litigation, alleges there are pervasive
problems throughout the country’s immigration detention facilities, many of
which are operated by private contractors. Detainees are routinely denied
visitation with family members, access to legal materials and regular
recreation, according to the report. Many never get an explanation of their
rights while being detained, the report claims. "The conditions are much more
harsh than they ought to be," said the report’s co-author, Ranjana Natarajan.
"This is a civil detention, and these folks are being treated like hardened
criminals." The Corrections Corporation of America could begin boarding
immigration detainees at its new North Georgia Detention Center on Main Street
as soon as next week. The site of the old county jail adjoining the Hall County
Sheriff’s office underwent $4 million in renovations and is being leased from
Hall County for $2 million a year. CCA operates the detention center through an
agreement with ICE and the county. This week, ICE officials did not deny the
allegations contained in the report, vowing to continue to improve conditions.
But Department of Homeland Security officials recently decided against creating
uniform detention center standards that the National Immigration Law Center
wants. ICE is supposed to conduct yearly evaluations of every detention center,
but has no enforceable, binding legal rules on how inmates are treated,
according to the report. "It creates a lot of gray area," Natarajan said.
"Because (detention centers) are not expected to follow the rules, they’re all
over the map." ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said agency officials "feel the
NILC put together a very thoughtful report, and we will carefully review and
take seriously this report, as we would any report. We are committed to
continuously improving our immigration detention system." Gonzalez noted that
within 10 days of taking office, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano
ordered all immigration enforcement policies to undergo a review, "including
detention." In February, Napolitano appointed former Arizona Department of
Corrections director Dora Schriro as a special advisor for detention and
removal. "Her position was created to focus exclusively on the significant
growth in detention and detainment in the last few years," Gonzalez said. On any
given day, ICE holds about 33,000 immigration detainees in facilities across the
country, and supervises another 17,000 people facing deportation through
electronic monitoring and other means. The National Immigration Law Center
estimates that in 2008 about 220,000 people were held in detention centers prior
to deportation. The typical stay is 30 to 90 days. The Gainesville facility
operated by CCA is expected to hold about 500 low- and medium-security
immigration detainees, many of them from North Carolina. CCA spokeswoman Louise
Grant referred questions on this week’s report to ICE officials, but noted that
"CCA does adhere in every one of our ICE detention facilities to the detention
standards set by our customer." The company also has ICE officials on site for
detainee access, Grant said. This week’s report prompted two U.S. senators to
call for a change to the system. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Thursday introduced the "Strong Standards Act," a
proposed bill that would set minimum detention standards and require the
Department of Homeland Security to ensure that laws concerning the treatment of
detainees are enforced. "These legislative initiatives will help reinforce what
our great country has always stood for: liberty, the rule of law and basic human
rights," Menendez said in a statement. To Kennedy, anything would be an
improvement. "If we’re comparing these (detention centers) to their Turkish
counterparts, they’re pretty good," Kennedy said. "But by U.S. standards,
they’re pretty poor."
July 29, 2009 AP
Immigrant advocates say the federal government has failed to meet its own
standards for detaining immigrants, making it unduly difficult for immigrants to
defend themselves in court and fight to remain in the country. A report released
Tuesday says detainees face limited access to phones, mail and law libraries in
violation of federal standards. The authors based their findings on more than
18,000 pages of documents that showed facilities across the country limited
detainees' access to legal materials and transferred them without proper notice.
"Our concern is we have this deep belief in the American justice system that the
truth will eventually come out and those individuals who have meritorious cases
will be granted relief," said Karen Tumlin, a staff attorney at the National
Immigration Law Center who co-authored the report. "We can't have any faith that
that proposition will actually hold true in this monstrous immigration system."
The study was based on inspection reports of dozens of facilities by Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, the American Bar Association and the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees between 2001 and 2005. It comes after criticism over
medical care in facilities and long-standing complaints by immigration attorneys
that their clients are transferred too often, making it hard to represent them.
The authors recommended that detention standards should be legally binding. They
urged the government to make reviews public and make it easier for relatives and
attorneys to track detainees' whereabouts. They also encouraged the government
to promote alternatives to detention, such as the use of electronic ankle
bracelets. ICE created new performance-based detention standards in 2008. It
also hired outside companies to carry out inspections. Tumlin said detainees
continue to report the same problems today as those outlined in the inspection
reports.
July 8, 2009 Government Executive
The Federal Protective Service is failing to properly oversee its
13,000-strong contract guard force, causing grave security gaps at federal
buildings nationwide, Government Accountability Office officials told senators
on Wednesday. As part of a recent review, investigators from the watchdog agency
successfully entered 10 high-security federal buildings carrying components for
a bomb through doors being monitored by contract guards. Once inside, the
investigators assembled an improvised explosive device and walked freely around
the buildings and into various legislative and executive branch offices with the
IED in a briefcase, GAO said in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee. Lawmakers called GAO's findings disturbing,
shocking and outrageous, and asked urgently and repeatedly what they could do to
help FPS gain control of the situation. "In this post-9/11 world that we're now
living in, I cannot fathom how security breaches of this magnitude were allowed
to occur," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, ranking member of the committee.
Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said that in all his years of reading
GAO reports, this one represented "about the broadest indictment of an agency in
the federal government I've heard." Mark Goldstein, GAO's director of physical
infrastructure issues and author of the report, told lawmakers the review
revealed significant shortcomings in FPS' ability to monitor and verify contract
guard training and firearms certifications. In reviewing 663 randomly selected
guards, GAO found that 62 percent had at least one expired certification.
Goldstein said a lack of funding has hindered the agency's ability to reach
appropriate staffing levels and provide the technological tools necessary to
protect federal buildings. But a number of the problems with the contract guard
program are unrelated to budgetary constraints, he said. "Not having national
standards and guidance for inspecting the guards, [and] better standards for
knowing when certifications have expired -- things like that, are not
resource-based," Goldstein said. "I think there has been a lack of attention to
this part of the protective requirements for federal buildings." Lieberman said
he and Collins are aware of management problems at FPS and that is one reason
why they have not pressed to increase the agency's budget. "We didn't want to
just throw more money at the problem until we fix the agency," he said. FPS
Director Gary Schenkel did not dispute GAO's findings and said he takes full
responsibility for the failures as head of the agency. He assured the committee
that FPS officials have been making progress in addressing deficiencies and are
working even faster now that they are aware of GAO's findings.
April 3, 2009 New York Times
The document that follows, “List of Detainee Deaths since October 2003,” is the
government’s latest account of deaths in immigration detention, through Feb. 7,
2009. Compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and obtained by The New
York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, it lists the names of 90 people
who died, their dates of birth and death, their nationality, where they died or
were last held, whether an autopsy report or death certificate was secured, and
the cause of death. The chart updates the first government list of 66 names,
also attached, which covered a period between Jan. 1, 2004, and November 2007.
The new chart adds deaths that occurred before and since, and corrects some
omissions. Notably, it adds the Sept. 9, 2005, death of Tanveer Ahmad, also
known as Ahmad Tanveer, 43, of Pakistan. Officials had maintained for months
that no records of his death could be found, despite complaints that he had died
after his severe and obvious symptoms of a heart attack went untreated for hours
at the Monmouth County Correctional Institute, in Freehold, N.J. New errors
appear on the latest list, and it omits at least one known death from 2008: that
of Ana Romero Rivera, 44, of El Salvador, found hanged in a cell at the Franklin
County Jail in Frankfort, Ky., on Aug. 21. Ms. Romero, a cleaning woman, had
been placed in isolation for not eating, according to local newspaper reports.
Though she was being held for deportation, federal officials now disagree
whether she was legally in immigration custody when she died. The list no longer
distinguishes between where the detainee was last held and where the death
occurred. Sometimes it cites the hospital where a dying detainee was taken, but
not the jail involved, and sometimes the reverse. Some information has been
changed without explanation. For example, the cause of death for Boubacar Bah,
52, who was held at the Corrections Corporation of America detention center in
Elizabeth, N.J., previously was listed as “brain hemorrhage, fractured skull”
and now reads “undetermined.” The government has reported one more death since
the list was issued, bringing the known total to 92: that of Roberto Martinez
Medina, 39, of Mexico, who had been held at the Correction Corporation’s Stewart
Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. He died March 11 at St. Francis Hospital in
Columbus, Ga., apparently of a heart attack. There are more than 500 detention
centers around the country, but one private operator, the Correction
Corporation, had at least 18 deaths, including eight at its Eloy, Ariz., center
alone, three of those since July 2008. The 18 Correction Corporation deaths
include one in 2004 that the new list mistakenly places at the “Jefferson County
jail.” After correcting for such errors, The Times counted 32 of the 92 deaths
at jails run by private companies; 37 of them at county or regional jails, and
20 at federally run detention centers. The remaining 3 deaths fall into other
categories. That breakdown differs from one provided at a March 3 House
subcommittee hearing that cited only six deaths in private facilities. That low
figure was based on a classification supplied by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, which reflected who owned the jail building and the type of
government contract in effect, not the operator. Both lists sometimes obscure
who was operating detention centers where people died, or even in which state a
death occurred. A 2007 death first listed at the Otero County jail, in New
Mexico, is now incorrectly placed at “El Paso SPC,” referring to a service
processing center in Texas. The Otero County jail, where there was another death
in 2008, is operated by Management and Training Corporation, a private company.
Of the 92 people who died in detention, 21 were from Cuba, 19 from Mexico, 6
each from Guatemala and Honduras, 5 from El Salvador, three each from Colombia,
Haiti and Jamaica; two each from Ghana, Guinea, India, Korea and one each from
18 other countries, including Germany, Brazil, Afghanistan and the Philippines.
Readers with information about the men and women listed on the document, or with
knowledge of other deaths in immigration detention, can contact The Times by
using this link.
March 26, 2009 Houston Chronicle
If you were to stop on a street corner anywhere in America and knowingly
hire an illegal immigrant to do your laundry or clean your basement, you would
be breaking the law. But for years, the federal government has been paying
immigration detainees $1 a day to perform menial work in the nation’s public and
private detention centers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials insist
there is no double standard, saying the Voluntary Work Program offers detainees
a break from the monotony of incarceration and a chance to earn money while they
are locked up. Rutgers University criminal justice professor Michael Welch
called the program a “paradox.” “It’s ironic that these undocumented immigrants
are barred from working legally in the community, but while behind bars, they
are not only allowed but encouraged to work for a dollar a day,” Welch said. ICE
officials have found an eager work force in their growing network of detention
centers, which house an estimated 400,000 immigrants annually. The agency does
not track participation in the work program on a national level, said ICE
spokesman Gregory Palmore, though more than 11,000 detainees participated last
fiscal year at one Houston detention center alone. Immigrant advocates offered
general support for the program, saying it at least gives detainees an
opportunity to pass the time by doing something other than sitting in a cell.
But the irony of the program is not lost on some. “Why can the U.S. government
hire undocumented immigrants? And not only hire them, but get a day’s work for a
dollar?” said Brittney Nystrom, senior legal advisor at the National Immigration
Forum, an immigrant advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. “It really
is an absurdity.” ICE says program legal -- ICE officials say the program is
perfectly legal. There is no specific statute, regulation or executive order
authorizing the program, ICE said in a statement. The program “does not
constitute employment and is done by detainees on a voluntary basis for a small
stipend,” according to ICE. Nystrom had a hard time buying that legal
explanation, citing ICE’s own detention standards, which describe the program as
providing “monetary compensation for work completed.” “That sounds like
employment to me,” Nystrom said. Variety of jobs performed -- At Houston’s
Contract Detention Facility on the city’s north side, about 200 immigration
detainees are currently participating in the work program, performing jobs
including cleaning and washing dishes, laundry, and maintenance of the facility,
according to ICE. Others jobs include working as a barber and helping in the
medical clinic, law library or commissary. ICE officials said no detainees from
the Houston facility performed work outside of the detention center grounds. The
Houston detention center is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of
America, one of the nation’s largest private prison companies. CCA’s warden in
Houston, Robert Lacy, referred questions about the program to ICE. Work programs
are commonplace in state and federal prisons. The lowest-paying jobs in the
Federal Bureau of Prison system, such as cleaning and grounds keeping, pay 12 to
40 cents per hour. In its statement, ICE officials said the program gives
detainees “an opportunity to be gainfully occupied on a voluntary basis.” The
agency added that perhaps the most important benefit from the program is
“reducing inactivity and disciplinary problems.”
January 13, 2009 Press Release
A report released today by the Southwest Institute for Research on Women and
the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program describes harsh conditions of
confinement for the roughly three hundred women housed in immigration detention
facilities in Arizona. The report, Unseen Prisoners: A Report on Women in
Immigration Detention Facilities in Arizona, is based on over a year of
research, including over 40 interviews with detainees, their family members,
attorneys, and service providers. “Few people realize that we are locking up
huge numbers of immigrants every day and holding them for months and in some
cases years at a time. They are not being punished for a crime, and yet they are
held in facilities that are identical to, and often double as, prisons or
jails,” said Nina Rabin, the lead researcher and author of the report. “Women
immigration detainees in particular are an invisible population. We hope this
report will raise awareness about women locked up just an hour away from here in
conditions that would shock most Americans. We also hope to raise awareness
about the U.S. citizen children separated from their mothers right now because
of immigration detention.” The report provides detailed information about
day-to-day life in the three facilities that house women immigration detainees
in Arizona: Central Arizona Detention Center, Pinal County Jail, and Eloy
Detention Center. Rabin and several University of Arizona law students conducted
interviews and extensive background research for the report over a twelve month
period between August 2007 and August 2008. Rabin described the study’s
participants: “In our small sample size of detainees who agreed to participate
in this research study, we encountered pregnant and nursing mothers, domestic
violence victims, low-wage workers swept up in worksite raids, and
asylum-seekers fleeing persecution and sexual violence.” The federal agency in
charge of the detention and removal of immigrants, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), contracts for two of the facilities to be run by the private
prison company the Corrections Corporation of America. In the case of Pinal
County Jail, ICE contracts with the county. ICE permitted the researchers access
to two of the three facilities, but declined requests to interview ICE
representatives or facility personnel for the report. Rabin met with ICE
representatives in December to discuss the report’s findings and
recommendations. Key findings of the report include: • Family separation: The
majority of women interviewed were separated from at least one U.S. citizen
child under the age of 10 and were transferred to Arizona from out of state. As
a result, they were hundreds or at times thousands of miles away from their
families and communities during their time in detention. • Severe penal
conditions for women who are not serving criminal sentences: Women described
conditions of confinement that are in many cases more restrictive than in county
jails or prisons, including limited access to recreation, a complete absence of
programming or activities, frugal provision of food and other supplies, and the
routine use of strip searches and shackling during transport. • Aggressive
government prosecution and detention of women who pose no security threat or
flight risk: Attorneys reported that ICE routinely appeals decisions to release
pregnant women on bond; rejects or does not respond to applications for
humanitarian parole of victims of domestic violence, refugees, or women with
serious health conditions; and refuses to reduce bonds for families unable to
pay. • Inadequate medical care: Women reported inadequate gynecological and
obstetrical care, long waits for medical attention, and dismissive responses to
medical requests. The report contains detailed recommendations for Congress, the
Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the individual facilities researched.
Recommendations range from broad policy changes, including the need for
increased consideration of the impact of immigration detention on families, to
specific facility-level concerns, such as the lack of outdoor recreation in
Pinal County Jail. The report will be available beginning on January 13, 2009,
at http://www.law.arizona.edu/depts/clinics/ilc//UnseenPrisoners.pdf. For more
information, please contact Nina Rabin at (520) 621-9206 or rabin@email.arizona.edu.
July 21, 2008 First Amendment Center
A bill before Congress would extend the Freedom of Information Act to
require private prisons contracted by the federal government to release records
under the same standards as federal prisons. The Private Prison Information Act
of 2007 (H.R. 1889), introduced by Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., would require private
prisons and other correctional facilities under contract with federal agencies
to house federal prisoners to make their records accessible under the same FOIA
requirements that govern federal prisons. An identical bill was introduced in
the Senate (S. 2010) by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Prison privatization has
increased rapidly in the face of growing concerns over overcrowding, safety and
poor health care in public institutions. Desire to control costs has also led to
an increase in privatization. However, privately owned and operated facilities
are not subject to the same FOIA scrutiny as public agencies. Although the press
and public can retrieve information about privately run prisons from the
Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and other government agencies, private prisons remain largely
outside the scope of FOI laws. Of the almost 1.6 million prisoners in the United
States in June 2007, 7.4% of them were held in privately operated correctional
facilities, according to the June 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin. At
last count, in 2000, the BJS reported 264 private facilities under state and
federal contracts used to house prisoners. And there were 5.4% more prisoners in
private facilities in June 2007 than in June 2006, according to BJS. Private
detention centers are also used to house immigrant detainees. Two lawsuits filed
in the last two months aim to force private prisons to release records,
including one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union investigating the
deaths of immigrant detainees in federal custody. In May 2008, The Washington
Post ran a four-day series investigating medical conditions in immigrant
prisons. "Careless Detention" explored the deaths of 83 prisoners and detainees
in custody between March 2003 and May 2008. "Our correctional system is broken.
It is overcrowded and unsafe," said Mike Flynn, director of government affairs
for the Reason Foundation. "Contracting with private prisons gives us an ability
to better manage outcomes. I think contracts should require certain benchmarks,
like treatment programs, continuing education and job training." The Reason
Foundation is a nonprofit think tank that promotes "libertarian principles,
including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law," according to
its Web site. The largest private corrections-management service in the U.S. is
Corrections Corporation of America, which is headquartered in Nashville. CCA
posted $35 million in profits during the first quarter of 2008, according to a
company press release. CCA and other private corrections companies have seen
rapid growth from contracts with states and the federal government. The Los
Angeles Times reported in August 2007 that California state officials had signed
a contract with CCA to hold about 4,000 prisoners for $63 per prisoner, per day.
It would cost the state an average of $123 per prisoner, per day in a state
prison. As private corrections companies grow, so do questions about their
methods, success and profitability. The recent lawsuits seek answers to some of
those questions. The ACLU filed an FOI lawsuit against the Department of
Homeland Security last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia after DHS failed to turn over documents related to the deaths of
immigrants held in public and private detention centers. The lawsuit also named
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of the Inspector General for
DHS. "DHS must not be allowed to keep information about in-custody deaths
secret," said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU National Prison Project,
in a press release. "It is imperative that ICE be held publicly accountable."
Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine that covers prison issues, filed a lawsuit
against CCA in a Tennessee court on May 19 after CCA did not respond to a
public-records request. The lawsuit, Friedmann v. CCA, argues that CCA performs
a public function, and its records should be public. In 2002, the Tennessee
Supreme Court ruled that a private company performing a public function must
make its records available to the public under the Tennessee Public Records Act.
In Memphis Publishing Company v. Cherokee Children & Family Services, the court
ruled that a nonprofit social service agency under state contract had to turn
its records over to the Memphis Commercial Appeal because it was the "functional
equivalent" of a government agency. "Public agencies cannot contract away the
public's ability to review records that otherwise would be publicly accessibly
under the state's open records law," said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal
News, in a press release. "The public's right to know is not delegable to
private corporations." One FOI expert applauded the congressional bills that
would make private-prison companies accountable to the federal FOIA. "I think
that is a long-overdue fix," Charles Davis, executive director of the National
Freedom of Information coalition, said of the Private Prison Information Act of
2007. "This is a problem on the state level. This would fix it at the federal
level in a way that would bring a whole lot of otherwise private operations into
public scrutiny. We've seen lots of anecdotal evidence over the past decade for
the need for public oversight and scrutiny." Some aspects of private-prison
contracts are already accessible under FOIA, however. Flynn of the Reason
Foundation argued that those provisions provide enough information. "The federal
agencies that manage the contract with the private company are subject to the
FOIA process. The agencies engage in regular and ongoing oversight of the
contract, usually having [their] own employees in the facility full-time. All
reports and studies from these monitors are subject to the FOIA process. Terms
of the contract with the private company are subject to FOIA. Their progress in
meeting any benchmarks detailed in the contract are subject to FOIA," said
Flynn. "If there is relevant information that isn't available, it can be [added
to] terms of the contract and then be subject to FOIA. There is no limit to what
can be required to be disclosed to the agency, which would then be subject to
FOIA." Davis agreed that FOIA's coverage of contracts between the government and
private-prison companies was important, but said it didn't go far enough. "The
contract piece is important and FOIA does do a good job with that," he said.
"The contract data is just a sliver of the overall picture of what people should
rightly have access to … . The vast majority of the information isn't covered."
Davis mentioned "inspection reports, incident reports involving inmate violence,
and just about any narrative report documenting inmate treatment." If the ACLU's
or Prison Legal News' lawsuit succeeds in extracting records from private-prison
corporations or if Congress passes the Private Prison Information Act, an
increase in information from these prisons could bring light to a host of new
issues. Some of these may well involve the First Amendment. U.S. courts
frequently address issues related to access to publications, religious material,
special diets and other claims of First Amendment violations from prisoners. "I
think you could get better protections," said Flynn when asked about the First
Amendment rights of prisoners in private facilities, "because they can be
detailed in a contract with the private company. These protections can be
mandated into the contract rather than litigated later." "The best part about
having this information is that we would be able to act on it. Private companies
can be fired. Public facilities cannot," Flynn said. Said Davis, "When you start
getting the human narrative of incident reports, what's going on in these
prisons on a day to day basis, they could be rife with corruption or running
like a Swiss cruise ship."
July 3, 2008 New York Times
The federal immigration agency should report all deaths in detention
promptly, not only to the inspector general for the Department of Homeland
Security, but also to state authorities where required by law, the inspector
general has recommended after a “special review” of the deaths of two immigrant
detainees. The detainees — a 60-year-old South Korean woman in Albuquerque and a
30-year-old Ecuadorean woman in St. Paul — were among dozens whose deaths in the
custody of the agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have drawn scrutiny
in the past year. Congress, advocates for immigrants and the news media have
highlighted the lack of systematic accountability in such cases, and documented
problems with the medical care provided in the detention system, a patchwork of
county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities. Both detainees died
because of serious medical conditions that existed before they were detained.
But the review found that the cases pointed to larger problems with oversight
and medical care, including the failure to recognize or act on serious health
care deficiencies in both detention centers that had been documented by routine
inspections. The 55-page report, released Tuesday, did not name the two
detainees, but one was Young Sook Kim, a cook who died of metastasized
pancreatic cancer on Sept. 11, 2006, a day after she was taken to a hospital
from the Regional Correctional Center in Albuquerque, a county prison operated
by the Cornell Companies. A complaint to the inspector general’s hot line,
testimony by a former employee, and an affidavit from a fellow detainee all
contended that Ms. Kim had pleaded in vain for medical attention. The review
found that it was already too late to save her life, and that Cornell clinical
records showed the staff had responded to her written medical requests — albeit
only by giving her antacid tablets when she complained of stomach pain. But the
review confirmed complaints that Cornell was slow to deal with sick calls
because of a nursing shortage: a government inspection in September 2006 found
ailing detainees had to wait for as long as 30 days to see the medical staff.
That inspection, by the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee, also found that
only 11 of 20 detainees with chronic conditions were regularly scheduled for
chronic care clinics, and that its policies did not fulfill requirements to
notify the Homeland Security Department — the system’s parent agency — or the
Justice Department of deaths. Ms. Kim’s death was not reported, as required, to
state medical investigators. The immigration agency initially maintained that
the county should have reported the death, but on Wednesday, a spokeswoman,
Kelly Nantel, said that “as a result of the report,” the agency has directed
that all deaths be reported to the appropriate state and federal authorities.
The report also urged the immigration agency to pool information with the
detention trustee. In September 2006, it noted, trustee inspectors gave the
Albuquerque prison the lowest overall rating, “at risk” — two levels below
acceptable. But because the two agencies do not routinely share information, the
report said, Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed some 3,500 more
detainees at the facility. Last August, the immigration agency removed all
detainees after its inspectors found a host of other problems, including an
inadequate suicide watch. The Minnesota case involved Maria Inamagua Merchan, a
department store worker who was detained in the Ramsey County jail and died in
April 2006. For more than a month, her persistent headaches had been treated
only with Tylenol; when she fell from a bunk bed, several hours passed before
she was taken to the hospital, where physicians diagnosed neurocysticercosis, an
infection of the brain by larvae of the pork tapeworm. “We cannot determine with
certainty whether this death could have been avoided had the detainee received
immediate medical attention for head trauma,” the report said, after praising
the authorities for promptly reporting the incident and for notifying the
Consulate of Ecuador and the detainee’s spouse. But it recommended better
medical screening and education about the parasite, which is endemic in parts of
Latin America.
June 25, 2008 Press Release
The American Civil Liberties Union today sued the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the DHS Office of
the Inspector General (OIG) for refusing to turn over thousands of public
documents in their possession detailing the deaths of immigration detainees held
in U.S. custody. The federal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia, comes after repeated rejections by DHS officials of
requests by the ACLU for critical information about the deaths of dozens of
people in immigration detention. The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring DHS
to expedite the processing of the document request and conduct a reasonable
search of the records in its possession in an effort to fully comply with the
ACLU’s requests. “We know that the medical care provided in many immigration
detention centers is grossly inadequate and has resulted in unnecessary
suffering and death,” said Elizabeth Alexander, Director of the ACLU National
Prison Project. “DHS must not be allowed to keep information about in-custody
deaths secret. It is imperative that ICE be held publicly accountable when it
fails to provide the health care mandated by the U.S. Constitution.” Deficient
medical care is believed to be a leading cause of death in immigration
detention, and is the number one complaint the ACLU has received from ICE
detainees. The ACLU filed a lawsuit last year against the San Diego Correctional
Facility (SDCF), an ICE facility run by Corrections Corporations of America,
Inc. (CCA), the country’s largest for-profit correctional services provider. In
its lawsuit, the ACLU challenges flawed medical care policies and the denial of
needed treatment by ICE and the Division of Immigration Health Services which
has led to excruciating suffering and even death of numerous detainees at SDCF.
In its Freedom of Information Act request submitted to DHS last year, the ACLU
requested information about whether ICE – or any independent monitoring agency –
adequately tracks deaths of immigration detainees, who are often housed in
county jails around the country alongside criminal detainees, or in one of
numerous immigration detention facilities managed by private prison companies.
Past OIG reports to Congress have contained only vague and sporadic references
to investigations into these deaths, and provide little useful information that
would ensure the public that meaningful investigations are conducted into each
death and that steps are being taken to guarantee that detainees receive
necessary medical services before it is too late. “Unless ICE exhibits full
transparency by releasing all of the information that we have requested, we are
left little choice but to believe that it has something to hide,” Alexander
said. Attorneys on the case include Tom Jawetz of the ACLU National Prison
Project, Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, New York-based
attorneys Natalie N. Kuehler and Benjamin R. Walker and Washington-based
attorneys Margaret K. Pfeiffer and Lee Ann Anderson McCall. A copy of the ACLU
lawsuit filed today can be found online at: www.aclu.org/immigrants/detention/35774lgl20080625.html
A copy of the original FOIA request filed by the ACLU can be found online at:
www.aclu.org/immigrants/detention/30260res20070627.html Additional information
about the ACLU National Prison Project can be found online at: www.aclu.org/prison/index.html
June 5, 2008 San Diego Union-Tribune
A class-action lawsuit alleging chronic overcrowding at an immigration jail in
Otay Mesa was settled yesterday. The lawsuit said the overcrowding at the
facility, run by Corrections Corp. of America for U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, subjected immigration violators to health and safety risks. It also
alleged the conditions violated due-process rights under the Constitution.
Before the suit was filed in January 2007, the jail was so overcrowded it was
“triple celling” hundreds of detainees, the suit alleged. That involved putting
three people into cells designed for two, with the third sleeping on the cell
floor in a plastic shell or “boat.” The facility housed 1,000 people at one
point. After the suit was filed, federal authorities moved out more than 100
inmates, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. According to
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the facility now holds no more than 700
people. The settlement agreement requires that detainee populations not exceed
specified limits for the next three years. Corrections Corp.of America will have
to show it is within the caps three times between now and January. If the
requirements are met, the suit will be dropped. The settlement agreement is
subject to approval by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw. A spokesman for
Corrections Corp.of America directed requests for comment to the Department of
Homeland Security, the parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A
spokeswoman for ICE said the agency has not admitted fault. “The parties agree
by settling the case that there is no admission of wrongdoing, and ICE maintains
that the agency houses its immigration detainee population, including those at
the San Diego CCA facility, in a safe and secure environment that is in
compliance with its national detention standards,” said Lauren Mack, a
spokeswoman for the agency in San Diego. David Blair-Loy, legal director for the
ACLU in San Diego, said the lawsuit achieved the goal of stopping poor
conditions for immigration detainees. “The population was at a very high level
before we appeared in the case,” Blair-Loy said. “And after we appeared they
reduced it and then maintained that for a year and a half.”
June 1, 2008 Chicago Tribune
Yanira Castaneda weeps at the empty space in her living room where she spent a
year caring for her brother, who died last February at 36, a loss for which she
blames the U.S. government. Francisco Castaneda had been in a federal immigrant
detention center because he was an illegal immigrant with a drug conviction.
During his 10-month stay, his signs of cancer went untreated until the facility
made him a free, but sick, man. He died a year later. "If they do a crime, they
should do their time, but take care of them," said a tearful Yanira Castaneda,
35, whose family in the Los Angeles area is continuing her brother's lawsuit
against the government. "I think my brother could have been saved." His death is
part of a growing body count linked to the nation's beefed-up detention system,
alarming lawmakers and emerging as the newest Immigration controversy in a spate
of Capitol hearings and media exposés. Federal Immigration officials say critics
are exaggerating the problems. In the case of Castaneda, who fled El Salvador's
civil war at age 10 with his family, the U.S. government in April admitted
negligence. After federal authorities released him last year with signs of
penile cancer, doctors had to amputate that organ in February 2007. But it was
too late. Since 2003, when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was
created, 83 deaths reportedly have been linked to detention sites run by ICE or
by private contractors and local governments, including one detainee with
coronary artery disease in a Chicago detention center and a suicide in McHenry
County Jail. ICE said last month that it counted 71 deaths since 2004, but no
public reporting requirements exist. Infrastructure expanded -- Unable to
resolve what to do with the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants, Congress
authorized ICE to build a vast detention infrastructure that now holds more than
300,000 detainees a year. The expansion, to 32,000 beds from 19,444 in 2004, has
been fueled by recent crackdowns such as the end of the "catch-and-release" of
unauthorized immigrants, experts say. "No bureaucracy can respond quickly to the
sort of dramatic change that the country has seen with Immigration enforcement
and detention over the last decade or so," said Louis DeSipio, associate
professor at the University of California at Irvine. As the largest
investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE "was ramping up
quickly and wanted to show or impress Congress that it was responding rapidly,
but it didn't respond to these other needs" such as medical care, DeSipio said.
Last month, legislation was introduced to mandate health-care standards — now
voluntary—in the more than 300 ICE detention facilities. It also would require
all deaths be reported to Congress. But ICE officials contend that "detainees'
health care is equal to or better than that provided to U.S. citizens in
custody," according to statements in response to news reports. The death rate
for detained immigrants is "dramatically lower" than that of U.S. prisons and
jails, federal officials say. The 2005 rate was 6.8 deaths per 100,000 in ICE
facilities compared with 540.5 per 100,000 in U.S. prisons and jails, according
to the agency. Its 2007 death rate dropped to 3.5 per 100,000, officials said.
"ICE is committed to providing all detainees in our care with humane and safe
detention environments and ensuring that adequate medical services are
available," said spokesman Richard Rocha. Last year the government spent almost
$100 million on detainee health care, double the amount from five years ago, and
did 184,448 medical screenings, with many detainees receiving health care for
the first time, Rocha said. But Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of a
subcommittee looking at detention medical care, contended that ICE failed to fix
its health system even after hearings last October. "If [ICE officials] say they
meet these standards, they are not to be relied on. I'm often disappointed that
what they say is true turns out not to be correct," said Lofgren, who asserted
that some detainees died because staffers withheld required medicine. She said
some medical procedures recommended by physicians have to be reviewed in
Washington by "a non-physician who's never seen the patient." "The policies
themselves foster poor medical care," she said. "No matter where you are on the
spectrum of Immigration reform, you got people in custody. You can't kill them."
Tom Jawetz, an attorney for the ACLU's National Prison Project, said the ICE
figures don't include ill individuals who die after being deported or released.
Lawsuits filed -- In the wake of the detention buildup, Jawetz began filing
class-action lawsuits against ICE last year, including one alleging overcrowding
and another for deficient health care at the same 800-bed facility in Otay Mesa,
Calif. That center is operated by the private Corrections Corporation of
America, which is seeking a second facility with 3,000 beds there for an as-yet
undisclosed use. In court documents, Francisco Castaneda alleged ICE released
him "presumably" to avoid the cost of cancer treatment. "I can tell you that
Castaneda is a perfect example of why the [death] numbers are skewed," said
Castaneda's lawyer, Conal Doyle. Human-rights advocate Homer Venters said ICE's
figure of one out of every three detainees having pre-existing chronic
conditions shows the agency needs a model for chronic health care, not just
acute care. Detainees' average stay of 37.5 days makes comparisons to U.S.
prisons' death rates "unduly rosy," according to Venters and Allen Keller, a
physician and the director of New York University's School of Medicine Center
for Health and Human Rights. To improve care, the federal agency has recruited
non-governmental groups and experts to rewrite detention standards, and has
hired two firms to inspect how centers are managed. "While a single death of an
ICE detainee is a serious matter," ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said, "we strive
to maintain safe, secure and humane detention conditions and to ensure that all
detainees receive quality health care."
May 11, 2008 Washington Post
At the agency in Washington responsible for foreign detainees' medical care,
internal documents reveal a tendency to conceal the truth by withholding
complete medical records or by offering misleading public explanations. But
e-mail exchanges speak for themselves in the death of Francisco Castaneda.
Castaneda's family had fled the civil war in El Salvador when he was 10 years
old, but his mother died of cancer before she could obtain legal status for her
children. Castaneda began working at 17 and eventually got involved with drugs.
After living for nearly a quarter-century in Los Angeles, he was being deported
after serving a four-month sentence for drug possession. In March 2006,
immigration officers took him into custody. Medical staff members suspected that
Castaneda, then 34, had penile cancer. A lesion on his penis was bleeding and
oozing. The staff sought approval for a biopsy, but the Division of Immigration
Health Services, or DIHS, headquarters in Washington denied the procedure for 10
months. Along the way, as he fought deportation, Castaneda filed several
grievances. "I am in a considerable amount of pain and I am in desperate need of
medical attention," he wrote in June. "I feel that I am entitled to a healthy
life." In July, David Lusche, a physician assistant at the Otay Mesa facility in
California, where Castaneda was being held, realized that his grievances were
still pending and that an audit of the compound's medical files was approaching.
At 2:26 a.m. July 28, he e-mailed a colleague, asking him to retrieve a
handwritten grievance from Castaneda that Lusche had left in a drawer in an
examining room. "We need to write something different, or make some amendment,
on the Grievance for Francisco Castaneda," Lusche wrote. ". . . Your response
starts, 'Grievance not resolved.' Those words are going to attract all kinds of
attention during an ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Jail Standards
audit. . . . Could you somehow 'patch up' that Grievance with an amendment then
put it in my box. I just want to avoid problems when the Auditors show up."
Anthony Walker, a physician assistant at Otay Mesa, responded at 10:10 a.m. the
next day: "But it is true, unfortunately, this is a case where his grievance is
correct and I don't blame the detainee." After pressure from the American Civil
Liberties Union, a biopsy was finally scheduled for early February 2007. But
immigration officials suddenly released Castaneda from custody days before the
surgery, sparing the agency the cost. When the DIHS medical director, Timothy T.
Shack, was asked to review the case, he concluded: "I looked over about 200
pages of medical records for this case. In my opinion, the care provided to this
detainee was, and is, timely and appropriate." One week later after the review,
UCLA doctors gave Castaneda a diagnosis of invasive squamous cell carcinoma. On
Valentine's Day, surgeons amputated his penis. In October, after rounds of
chemotherapy, he testified before a congressional panel looking into detainee
medical care. "I am a 35-year-old man without a penis with my life on the line,"
he said. "I have a young daughter, Vanessa, who is only 14. She is here with me
today because she wanted to support me -- and because I wanted her to see her
father do something for the greater good, so that she will have that memory of
me. The thought that her pain -- and mine -- could have been avoided almost
makes this too much to bear." On Feb. 16, 2008, Castaneda died. U.S. District
Judge Dean D. Pregerson denied a government request to dismiss the lawsuit
brought on Castaneda's behalf. In his March 11 ruling, the judge said lawyers
had "submitted powerful evidence that Defendants knew Castaneda needed a biopsy
to rule out cancer, falsely stated that his doctors called the biopsy
'elective,' and let him suffer in extreme pain for almost one year while telling
him to be 'patient' and treating him with Ibuprofen, antihistamines, and extra
pairs of boxer shorts." Pregerson added: "Defendants' own records bespeak of
conduct that transcends negligence by miles. It bespeaks of conduct that, if
true, should be taught to every law student as conduct for which the moniker
'cruel' is inadequate."
May 11, 2008 Washington Post
Neil Sampson, who ran the DIHS as interim director most of last year, left that
job with serious questions about the government's commitment. Sampson said in an
interview that ICE treated detainee health care "as an afterthought," reflecting
what he called a failure of leadership and management at the Homeland Security
Department. "They do not have a clear idea or philosophy of their approach to
health care [for detainees]," he said. "It's a system failure, not a failure of
individuals." A new director for health services arrived six months ago,
following a stretch when the agency was run first by Sampson and then by a
second interim director. The new boss is LaMont W. Flanagan, who brought with
him the credential of having been fired in 2003 by the state of Maryland for bad
management and spending practices supervising detention and pretrial services.
An audit found that Flanagan had signed off on payments of $145,000 for employee
entertainment and other ill-advised expenditures. His reputation was such that
the District of Columbia would not hire him for a juvenile-justice position.
"Another death that needs to be added to the roster," Diane Aker, the DIHS chief
health administrator, tapped out in an e-mail to a records clerk at headquarters
on Aug. 14, 2007. Juan Guevara-Lorano, 21, was dead. Guevara, an unemployed
legal U.S. resident with a young son, was arrested in El Paso for driving
illegal border-crossers farther into the city. He was paid $50. An entry-level
emergency medical technician, with barely any training, had done Guevara's
intake screening and physical assessment at the Otero County immigration
compound in New Mexico. Under DIHS rules, those tasks are supposed to be done by
a nurse. After two difficult months in detention, Guevara had decided not to
appeal his case. He would go back to Mexico with his family. But on Aug. 4, he
came down with a splitting headache, what he called a nine on a pain scale of
10, his medical records show. The rookie medical technician prescribed Tylenol
and referred Guevara to the compound's physician "due to severity of headache
... and dizziness," according to medical records. But Guevara never saw a
doctor. Eight days after the first incident, he vomited in his cell. The same
junior technician came to help but was unable to insert a nasal airway tube.
Guevara was taken to a hospital, where doctors determined an aneurism in his
brain had burst. His wife, pregnant at the time with their second child,
recalled that she rushed to the hospital but ICE guards would not let her
inside, until the Mexican Consulate interceded. Guevara's mother waited five
hours before they let her in. By then he was brain-dead. "My son is not coming
back," sobbed Ana Celia Lozano months later, sitting in Guevara's small mobile
home as her grandson played on the floor. "I want to know how he lived and died,
nothing more." What appears to be the most incriminating document in Guevara's
case has been partially blacked out. Still, what is left shows that he did not
receive adequate care. "The detainee was not seen or evaluated by an RN,
midlevel or physician. . . . At the time of the incident on 8/12/2007, the
detainee was seen and examined by EMTs." Each immigration facility is allotted a
different number of positions, and a shortage of doctors and nurses is not
unusual at centers across the country. Records from February show that about 30
percent of all DIHS positions in the field were unfilled. ICE officials said
last week that the current vacancy rate is 21 percent. Concern about the
vacancies is voiced repeatedly at clinical directors' meetings. "How do we state
our concerns so that we can be heard? . . . this is a CRITICAL condition. . . .
We have bitten off more than we can chew," a physician wrote in the minutes of
one meeting last summer. In some prisons, the staffing shortages are acute. The
Willacy County detention center in South Texas -- the largest compound, with
2,018 detainees -- has no clinical director, no pharmacist and only a part-time
psychiatrist. Nearly 50 percent of the nursing positions were unfilled at the
1,500-detainee Eloy, Ariz., prison in February. At the newly opened 744-bed
Jena., La., compound, nurses run the place. It has no clinical director, no
staff physician, no psychiatrist and no professional dental staff. Last August,
Sampson, who was then DIHS interim director, warned his superiors at ICE that
critical personnel shortages were making it impossible to staff the Jena
facility adequately. In a vociferous e-mail to Gary Mead, the ICE deputy
director in charge of detention centers, he wrote: "With the Jena request we
have been re-examining our capabilities to meet health care needs at a new site
when we are facing critical staffing shortages at most every other DIHS site.
While we developed, executed and achieved major successes in our recruitment
efforts we have been unable to meet the demand." The slow ICE security-clearance
process forced many job applicants to go elsewhere, Sampson wrote. Of the 312
people who applied for new positions over the past year, 200 withdrew, he wrote,
because they found other jobs during the 250 days it took ICE, on average, to
conduct the required background investigations. Last week, ICE officials said
the average wait had decreased recently to 37 days. These shortages have
burdened the remaining staff. In July 2007, a year after Osman's death in Otay
Mesa, medical director Hui strongly complained to headquarters about workload
stress. "The level of burnout . . . is high and rising," she wrote in an e-mail.
"I know that I have been averaging approximately 2-6 hrs of overtime daily for
the past 2 months. I will no longer be able to sustain this pace and will be
decreasing the number of hours that I work overtime. This being said, more will
be left undone because we simply do NOT have the staff." The overcrowding has
created a petri dish for the spread of diseases. One mission of the Public
Health Service is to detect infectious diseases and contain them before they
spread, but last summer, the gigantic Willacy center was hit by a chicken pox
outbreak. The illness spread because the facility did not have enough available
isolation rooms and its large pods share recycled air, but also because security
officers "lack education about the disease and keep moving around detainees from
different units without taking into consideration if the unit has been isolated
due to heavy exposure," noted the DIHS's top specialist on infectious diseases,
Carlos Duchesne. The staff was forced to vaccinate the entire population in
mid-July. In one 2007 death, memos and confidential notes show how medical staff
missed an infectious disease, meningitis, in their midst. Victor Alfonso
Arellano, 23, a transgender Mexican detainee with AIDS, died in custody at the
San Pedro center. The first three pages of Duchesne's internal review of the
death leave the impression that Arellano's care was proper. But the last page,
under the heading "Off the record observations and recommendations," takes a
decidedly critical tone: "The clinical staff at all levels fails to recognize
early signs and symptoms of meningitis. . . . Pt was evaluated multiple times
and an effort to rule out those infections was not even mentioned." Arellano was
given a "completely useless" antibiotic, Duchesne wrote. Lab work that should
have been performed immediately took 22 days because San Pedro's clinical
director had ordered staff members to withhold lab work for new detainees until
they had been in detention there "for more than 30 days," a violation of agency
rules. "I am sure that there must be a reason why this was mandated but that
practice is particularly dangerous with chronic care cases and specially is
particularly dangerous with . . . HIV/AIDS patients," Duchesne wrote. "Labs for
AIDS patients . . . must be performed ASAP to know their immune status and where
you are standing in reference to disease control and meds." Given the frequency
with which ICE moves people within the detention network, keeping track of
detainees is critical to stopping the spread of infectious illnesses. The
purchase of an electronic records system named CaseTrakker in 2004 was supposed
to help. But according to internal documents and interviews, CaseTrakker is so
riddled with problems that facilities often revert to handwritten records. A
study at one site found that it took one-third more time to use CaseTrakker than
to use paper. Thousands of patient files are missing. Recorded data often cannot
be retrieved. Day-long outages are common. When detainees are transferred from
one facility to another, their records, if they follow them, are often
misleading. Some show medications with no medical diagnoses, or "lots of
diagnoses but no meds," according to Elizabeth Fleming, a former clinical
director at one compound in Arizona. After Yusif Osman's death and the discovery
of the problem with his computerized records, the DIHS ordered a review of all
charts at the Otay Mesa center. During the review, auditors also found that 260
physical exams were never completed as required. The nurse responsible for the
error in Osman's case was reprimanded, but the computer problem was not fixed.
The CaseTrakker system "has failed and must be replaced," Sampson, the DIHS
interim director, wrote to his ICE supervisors in August. In January 2008,
medical director Shack told colleagues that CaseTrakker "is more of a liability
than the use of paper medical record system," according to the minutes of a
meeting. It "puts patients at risk." ICE officials said last week that they are
not satisfied with CaseTrakker and are working to replace it. Along with being
at the mercy of computer glitches, detainees suffer from human errors that deny
or delay their care. And with few advocates on the outside, they are left alone
to plead their cases in the most desperate ways, in hand-scribbled notes to
doctors they rarely see. "I need medicine for pain. All my bones hurt. Thank
you," wrote Mexico native Roberto Ledesma Guerrero, 72, three weeks before he
died inside the Otay Mesa compound. Delays persist throughout the system. In
January, the detention center in Pearsall, Tex., an hour from San Antonio, had a
backlog of 2,097 appointments. Luis Dubegel-Paez, a 60-year-old Cuban, had
filled out many sick call requests before he died on March 14. Detained at the
Rolling Plains Detention Facility in the West Texas town of Haskell, he wrote on
New Year's Day: "need to see doctor for Heart medication; and having chest pains
for the past three days. Can't stand pain." Ten days later he went to the clinic
and became upset when he wasn't seen. He slugged the window, yelled, pointed at
his wristwatch. He was escorted back to his cell. Another of his sick call
requests said: "Need to see a doctor. I have a lot of symptoms of sickness ...
as soon as possible!" The next was more urgent: "I have a emergency to see the
doctor about my heart problems ... for the last couple days and I been getting
dizzy a lot." The next day, Dubegel-Paez collapsed and died. His medical records
do not show that he ever saw a doctor for his chest pains.
August 31, 2007 Government Executive
Federal officials reported this week that they have reviewed contracts with
private security firms hired to guard federal facilities and have made overdue
payments to them. But a lawmaker said she will continue to monitor the
situation. A report released by the Homeland Security Department's Immigration
and Customs Enforcement said the bureau paid more than $2.6 million in
undisputed claims by Aug. 3, and planned to review another $3.8 million of
disputed invoices. But Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said the House
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management,
which she chairs, will continue to monitor the disputed claims. Norton said that
reforms at ICE -- including appointing an ombudsman to oversee the bureau's
invoicing system and providing training for contract guard vendors -- will help
"eliminate security risks to federal employees where they work." The report
detailed steps the agency had taken since July to solve problems with its
invoicing system. ICE has appointed additional financial personnel to "provide
hands-on support" to the Federal Protective Service, the agency responsible for
managing contract guards. ICE also sent a memo on July 30 to all its contract
guard vendors on new consolidated invoice procedures and instituted weekly
status reports and conference calls to assess progress on contract guard
payments. The report says the agency would continue to make adjustments "if
needed." Norton requested the ICE report to assess progress on paying contract
guards, some of whom claimed in July that they had gone into bankruptcy or been
forced to borrow money because the government did not pay them in a timely
manner. Some vendors found it difficult to meet their payroll requirements as a
result. "This large amount in overdue, undisputed claims from FPS endangered
security at federal sites because it carried the risk that guards would fail to
show up for work," Norton said. Norton also has proposed the Federal Protective
Service Guard Contracting Reform Act, which would prohibit the federal
government from contracting with companies owned, controlled or operated by
people who have been convicted of felonies. Norton wrote the bill in response to
the discovery that STARTECH International Security, a private guard vendor, had
received funds from the government but had not paid its employees. STARTECH's
owner had served time in prison for fraud. The bill has passed the subcommittee
and will face full committee review in September.
March 6, 2006 USA Today
The guards have taken their concerns to Congress, describing inadequate
training, failed security tests and slow or confused reactions to bomb and
biological threats. For instance, when an envelope with suspicious powder was
opened last fall at Homeland Security Department headquarters, guards said they
watched in amazement as superiors carried it by the office of Secretary Michael
Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without
evacuating people nearby. The scare, caused by white powder that proved to be
harmless, "stands as one glaring example" of the agency's security problems,
said Derrick Daniels, one of the first guards to respond to the incident. "I had
never previously been given training ... describing how to respond to a possible
chemical attack," Daniels told The Associated Press. "I wouldn't feel safe
nowhere on this compound as an officer." Daniels was employed until last fall by
Wackenhut Services Inc., the private security firm that guards Homeland's
headquarters in a residential area of Washington. The company has been
criticized previously for its work at nuclear facilities and transporting
nuclear weapons. Homeland Security officials say they have little control over
Wackenhut's training of guards but plan to improve that with a new contract. The
company defends its performance, saying the suspicious powder incident was
overblown because the mail had already been irradiated. Two senators who fielded
complaints from several Wackenhut employees are asking Homeland's internal
watchdog, the inspector general, to investigate. "If the allegations brought
forward by the whistle-blowers are correct, they represent both a security
threat and a waste of taxpayer dollars," Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan of North
Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote. "It would be ironic, to say the least, if
DHS were unable to secure its own headquarters." Daniels left Wackenhut and now
works security for another company at another federal building. He is among 14
current and former Wackenhut employees — mostly guards — who were interviewed by
The Associated Press or submitted written statements to Congress that were
obtained by AP. A litany of problems were listed by the guards, whose pay ranges
from $15.60 to $23 an hour based on their position and level of security
clearance. Among their examples of lax security: •They have no training in
responding to attacks with weapons of mass destruction; •Chemical-sniffing dogs
have been replaced with ineffective equipment that falsely indicates the
presence of explosives. •Vehicle entrances to Homeland Security's complex are
lightly guarded; •Guards with radios have trouble hearing each other, or have no
radios, no batons and no pepper spray, leaving them with few options beyond
lethal force with their handguns. Over the last two years, the Energy Department
inspector general concluded that Wackenhut guards had thwarted simulated
terrorist attacks at a nuclear lab only after they were tipped off to the test;
and that guards also had improperly handled the transport of nuclear and
conventional weapons. Homeland Security is based at a gated, former Navy campus
in a college neighborhood — several miles from the heavily trafficked streets
that house the FBI, Capitol, Treasury Department and White House. Homeland
Security spokesman Brian Doyle said Wackenhut guards are still operating under a
contract signed with the Navy, and the agency has little control over their
training. A soon-to-be-implemented replacement contract will impose new
requirements on security guards, he said. Daniels, the former guard who
responded to the white powder incident, said the area where the powder was found
wasn't evacuated for more than an hour. Available biohazard face shields went
unused. Daniels said that after the envelope was taken outside, and the order
finally given to evacuate the potentially infected area, employees had already
gone to lunch and had to be rounded up and quarantined. Former guard Bryan Adams
recognized his inadequate training one day last August, when an employee
reported a suspicious bag in the parking lot. "I didn't have a clue about what
to do," he said. Adams said he closed the vehicle checkpoint with a cone, walked
over to the bag and called superiors. Nobody cordoned off the area. Eventually,
someone called a federal bomb squad, which arrived more than an hour after the
discovery. "If the bag had, in fact, contained the explosive device that was
anticipated, the bomb could have detonated several times over in the hour that
the bag sat there," Adams said. The bag, it turned out, contained gym clothes.
Some guards who continue to work at Homeland, who would speak only on condition
of anonymity because of fear of losing their jobs, said they knew of two
instances in which individuals without identification got into the sensitive
complex. Another described how guards flunked a test by the Secret Service,
which sent vehicles into the compound with dummy government identification tags
hanging from inside mirrors. Guards cleared such vehicles through on two
occasions, this guard said, and one officer even copied down the false
information without realizing it was supposed to match information on the
employee's government badge. Marixa Farrar, a former guard, said two guards
always should have been stationed inside the main building where Chertoff had
his office, but she often was on duty alone. One day last fall a fire alarm
rang. As employees walked by Farrar, they asked if this was a fire or a test.
"There were no radios, so I couldn't figure out if it was a serious alarm," she
said. There was no fire.
Federal Bureau of Prisons
October 7, 2011 Forbes
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Harley Lappin (55) enjoyed a 25 year career of
distinguished service when he announced that May 7, 2011 would mark the
beginning of his retirement. He had been director for about 8 years. That
announcement also came at around the same time as a revelation that Lappin had
been arrested for driving under the influence near his home in Annapolis, MD.
According to numerous news sources, the BOP has stated that Lappin’s resignation
had nothing to do with the DUI event. Okay, we’ll give him that. We all make
mistakes, some worse than others, but for a man who made a career of holding
inmates accountable for their actions it must have been a serious blow to Lappin
and those that knew him. However, we live in a forgiving society and, lucky for
Lappin, some are more forgiving than others. In his case, Corrections
Corporation of America had an offer to not only forgive Lappin for his lapse in
judgement for driving drunk, but also to bring him out of retirement. Less than
a month after leaving the BOP, Corrections Corp offered Lappin the role of Chief
Correctional Officer (don’t see many of those positions in corporate
America….but maybe we should). Upon accepting the job, Lappin said, “I look
forward to continuing my career in corrections with a reputable organization
like CCA.” Nice touch. On May 25, 2005, while Lappin was Director, the BOP
awarded a $129 million contract to Corrections Corp. for management of a
low-security federal factility in Youngstown, OH. In April 2009, again while
Lappin was Director, the BOP awarded Corrections Corp a contract to house
criminal alien offenders at its facility in Adams County, Mississippi. In fact,
these are just a few of the awarded contracts to Corrections Corp. from federal
agencies, including the BOP. According to 10-K (SEC Annual Filing for 2010), the
federal government accounts for 43% of the total revenue of the company.
Business is booming in the prison sector these days. According to Market Watch,
activist investor Bill Ackman made a good call on the prison industry back in
October 2009 (before the big insider cases) by saying about an investment in
Corrections Corp that, “It’s also a hedge against your hedge fund business,
because as the SEC ramps up….”, prompting laughter at the Value Investing
Congress in New York where he was speaking. He got that call right. Ackman’s
real interest in Corrections Corp was for a play on the real estate it
owns….hey, he’s an investor but it seems a little cold. However, many investors
think it’s a good call. I’m sure Ackman and many other investors in the publicly
traded Corrections Corp. (NYSE: CXW) are looking for a good return on their
investment. There are a lot of pressures to perform and earn a profit. My hope
is that Lappin will be the best Chief Corrections Officer that he can be without
having to call in any favors from his old friends he made at the BOP. Like I
said, I’m HOPING.
September 29, 2011 Los Angles Times
Arrests of federal prison guards soared nearly 90% over the last decade,
possibly because of poor hiring practices during a 25% increase in prison
growth, the Justice Department's inspector general reported. Misconduct
investigations doubled, and more than half of the offenses were committed during
the officers' first two years on the job. The inspector general recommended that
the Federal Bureau of Prisons improve its background investigation of job
applicants and find better ways to assess rookie officers. But other factors
have contributed to the problem, including private prisons and increasing
numbers of female prisoners and young offenders in federal facilities, the
inspector general found. The report did not specify how many misconduct cases
came out of private federal prisons, which have increased their populations by
120% in the last decade, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington
prison issues think tank. "Private prisons aren't always held to the same
standards as public ones," said Joe Baumann, a corrections officer at the state
California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. "That's where so much of the stuff I
come across is from, the private contractors."
June 3, 2011 Mother Jones
Less than a month after retiring from his post as Director of the Federal Bureau
of Prisons (BOP), Harley G. Lappin has been hired to a top position at the
nation's largest private, for-profit prison contractor, Corrections Corporation
of America (CCA). In a move that has gone virtually unnoticed by the press
except on the business pages, Lappin, who had run the BOP since 2003, has been
named CCA's Executive VP and Chief Corrections Officer. According to a company
press release, his responsibilities will include "the oversight of facility
operations, health services, inmate rehabilitation programs, [and] purchasing."
Lappin announced his retirement in March, a few days before making public his
arrest, the previous month, on DUI charges in Maryland. In a memo apologizing to
BOP employees, Lappin admitted to a "lapse in my judgment...giving rise to
potential embarrassment to the agency," but he refused to acknowledge a direct
link between his arrest and his retirement. The announcement of his appointment
to a leadership position at CCA came just over three weeks after his effective
retirement date of May 7. Taking advantage of two concurrent 30-year
trends--toward mass incarceration and toward privatization of government
services--CCA has grown to a $1.6 billion company that operates 66 facilities in
20 states, with approximately 90,000 beds. It has become notorious for its poor
treatment of prisoners, and for numerous preventable injuries and deaths in its
prisons and immigrant detention centers. About 40 percent of CCA's business
comes from the federal government, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement
as well as the Bureau of Prisons. As BOP director, Lappin would have overseen
government contracts with CCA worth tens of millions of dollars. CCA spends
approximately $1 million annually on lobbying on the federal level alone. A
press release from the invaluable Private Corrections Working Group notes that
Lappin's quick trip through the government-to-industry revolving door is hardly
unique in the Bureau of Prisons' history: "Lappin joins another former BOP
director already employed with CCA, J. Michael Quinlan, who was hired by the
company in 1993. He retired as director of the BOP in 1992, several months after
settling a lawsuit that accused him of sexually harassing a male BOP employee.
While settling the suit, Quinlan denied allegations that he made sexual advances
to the employee in a hotel room." Advertise on MotherJones.com In addition,
there's the case of the recently appointed head of the U.S. Marshals Service,
Stacia Hylton, who until 2010 was the Federal Detention Trustee. In between
serving in these two high-ranking government positions, Hylton worked as a
consultant for the GEO Group, the nation's second largest private prison
contractor. During Hylton's tenure, the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee
gave several contracts to GEO; and the U.S. Marshals Service, like ICE and the
BOP, houses federal detainees in privately owned prisons, including some run by
GEO. "Federal ethics rules do not prohibit former high-ranking employees such as
Lappin and Hylton from working for private companies, even when those companies
contract with the same federal agencies where those former officials were
employed," the Private Corrections Working Group points out. "An Executive Order
issued by President Obama restricts appointees from taking official actions that
directly and substantially affect immediate former clients and employers;
however, that ethics rule was not applied to Hylton and it has been waived for
over two dozen other federal officials, according to a report by the U.S. Office
of Government Ethics."
June 1, 2011 Market Wire
CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) (NYSE:CXW - News), America's leader in
partnership corrections, announced that effective June 1, 2011, Harley G. Lappin,
55, shall serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Corrections Officer (CCO).
In this role, Mr. Lappin will be responsible for the oversight of facility
operations, health services, inmate rehabilitation programs, purchasing and
TransCor, the Company's wholly-owned transportation subsidiary. He succeeds
Richard P. Seiter, who announced his decision to step down as CCO earlier this
year, effective May 31, 2011. Mr. Lappin, as a career correctional
administrator, previously served as the Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons
(BOP) -- the nation's largest correctional system, a position he held since
2003, prior to retirement in May 2011. He served in a variety of roles with the
Bureau of Prisons for more than 25 years, beginning in 1985, including Regional
Director, Warden of the United States Penitentiary in Indiana, and Warden of the
Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina, among other positions. As
Director of the BOP, Lappin had oversight and management responsibility for 116
federal prisons, 14 large, private contract facilities and more than 250
contracts for community correction facilities, in total comprising more than
215,000 inmates managed by 38,000 employees, with a $6.4 billion budget.
September 2, 2010 Press Release
A federal judge today rebuked the federal Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to disclose
basic information about immigrant detention centers operated by private
contractors. The ruling arose in a lawsuit brought by recent law school graduate
Stephen Raher, who had requested documents from the Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) in
2008 pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). The documents, which
Raher requested as part of a law school research project, pertain to a series of
contracts that BOP has issued for privately-operated immigrant detention
facilities. BOP has refused to release the documents, which specify the work
private prison companies must perform and how much the government pays them in
return, citing FOIA’s protections for confidential business information. In
response to the BOP’s argument that it could not disclose how much it pays the
private prison companies, the court concluded that BOP’s “categorical and
conclusory assertions do not provide the particularized explanation necessary to
show that disclosure of a specific document or part of a document would damage
the interest in private competition protected by” FOIA’s commercial information
provision. During the course of the lawsuit, BOP has advanced many arguments
justifying its protection of contractor secrecy. The court rejected most of the
arguments, repeatedly calling the government’s allegations conclusory and
unsupported by the evidence. In response to the BOP’s claims that some documents
contained sensitive security information, the court agreed that FOIA does
protect bona fide security details, but noted that BOP’s “conclusory statements
that a security risk exists categorically for all information related to
staffing, computers, security, and operations does not provide the specificity
needed to satisfy the agency’s burden of proof under FOIA.” Today’s ruling by
Magistrate Judge Janice Stewart gives the BOP 60 days to provide precise
descriptions of the documents and legal justifications for withholding them.
“The case is far from over, but this ruling is important,” said Raher, who
graduated from Lewis & Clark Law School in May 2009. “Immigrant detention is a
lucrative business that negatively impacts thousands of families, but for too
long BOP has refused to release basic information on the companies that profit
from our nation’s disruptive immigration policy. Today’s ruling reiterates that
the government cannot withhold information simply because private contractors
would rather not be exposed to public scrutiny.”
January 20, 2003
Four former inmates of a halfway
house operated by a private company under contract to the Federal Bureau of
Prisons brought this action to recover for injuries after being sexually abused
by a company employee. Background:
In 1998, Susan Scainetti, Yvette Adorno, Stephanie Womble and Rosemarie Johnson
were federal inmates at a community corrections facility In New York City, Le
Marquis Community Correctional Center. The
facility is owned, operated and maintained by Correctional Services Corporation,
under contract with the BOP. Between
Nov. 6 and Dec. 28, 1998, Miguel Carriera, an inmate counselor And CSC employee,
allegedly lured the individual inmates individually into his office and sexually
assaulted them. The assaults were facilitated by the fact that Carriera's office
was at the end of a hallway and was isolated by double doors though which no
sound could be heard. Within two
years after the alleged sexual assaults, the inmates filed
claims
with the BOP for damages. When no settlement was offered, Scainetti filed suit,
and CSC moved to dismiss. Company
representatives said the claim was time-barred. Ruling: On its face, the
three-year statue of limitations barred Scainetti's claims, since her complaint
was filed three years and three days after the date of the alleged assault.
However, after filing her complaint, Scainetti received BOP records under
a Freedom of Information request that showed she originally complained about The
incidents on Dec. 30, 1998. Scainetti had told investigators that Carriera had
made numerous sexual advances toward her and others over a period several
months. She said the sexual assaults occurred on at least four occasions,
"from
sometime in October through December 1998." Since the alleged assaults continued through December 1998,
at least some - if not all - of the assaults were within the statute of
limitations, the court said. The
CSC's motion to dismiss was denied. Scainetti,
et al., v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, et al., No. Civ. 9970(SHS) (S.D.N.Y.
12/18/02). (Corrections Professional)
January 23, 2003
At a time
when tight budgets have forced many states to consider the early release of
hundreds of inmates to cut costs, the federal prison system is bursting at the
seams and ranks as the largest in the nation. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported a population of nearly
165,000 this month, making the system larger than perennial prison giants
California and Texas. (Related story: Drugs getting into federal prisons too
easily) At least part of the increase, officials say, is because of a growing
pool of non-citizen offenders who represent nearly one-third of the federal
inmate population. The majority
have been convicted of drug-related crimes, and their numbers jumped from 22% in
1998 to 28% in 2002. (USA Today)
December 26, 2002
FORMER INMATES of a community confinement center operated by a private company
under contract with the federal Bureau of Prisons brought this action to recover
his injuries they suffered when allegedly sexually abused by an employee of that
company. The court rejected defendant Correctional Services Corp.'s motion
to dismiss, holding that a corporation that runs a correctional center for the
federal government cannot invoke the government contractor defense. The
court noted that the Second Circuit found that the defense "only shields a
government contractor from claims arising out of its actions where the
government has exercised its discretion and judgment in approving precise
specifications to which the contractor must adhere." The instant
court added that a contractor can still be found liable where it exceeded
authority given it by the federal government, or "where the federal
government's authority was not validly conferred." (New York Law
Journal)
Government Privatization
March 4, 2011 Government Executive
Private security guards hired by the Social Security Administration to protect
its facilities spent their shifts watching television, engaged in hour long
phone conversations and chatting with their co-workers when they should have
been on patrol, according to a report released in early March by the agency's
inspector general. The report identified a multitude of performance issues with
the contractor, Paragon Systems Inc. of Chantilly, Va., which SSA has paid
roughly $71 million since 2008. In the most serious instances, weapons and
ammunition have gone temporarily missing and a guard was seriously injured when
a co-worker failed to properly operate a vehicle barrier on an SSA loading dock.
"Our audit work determined that Paragon was not complying with certain terms of
the contract," wrote SSA Inspector General Patrick O'Carroll Jr. "We found
guards were not following post orders as stated in the contract, and supervisors
were not providing sufficient post inspection checks. There were excessive
errors and discrepancies on the forms used to track post hours worked and
account for firearms. These errors and discrepancies could indicate that posts
were unattended."
October 15, 2010 Bloomberg
Computer Sciences Corp., an information-technology company that relies on
government business for almost 40 percent of its revenue, won $4 billion in U.S.
contracts in fiscal 2009 after failing to pay more than 250 employees the wages
and benefits they were owed. Computer Sciences, based in the Washington suburb
of Falls Church, Virginia, topped a list of 15 companies that received more than
$6 billion in federal contracts despite records of wage, health or safety
violations, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. Tyson
Foods Inc., the largest U.S. chicken processor; Corrections Corp. of America,
the nation’s biggest private operator of prisons; and Wackenhut Services Inc.,
owned by U.K.- based security contractor G4S Plc, are also among the contractors
identified. The names of the companies, not revealed in the public report
released Oct. 1, were provided by Representative Robert Andrews, a New Jersey
Democrat who criticized the awarding of contracts to companies that didn’t meet
required standards. “If a company has a pattern of violations, at the very
least, it should raise greater scrutiny before they get government contracts,”
Andrews, chairman of the panel that requested the investigation, said in a
telephone interview. “There doesn’t seem to be much incentive to follow the laws
because you can still get a contract anyway.” The report by the GAO, the
investigative arm of Congress, covered a sample of contracts in the fiscal year
that ended on Sept. 30, 2009. ‘Work to Do’ -- Computer Sciences, which was
awarded the $4 billion from the Defense Department and NASA, was assessed $1.6
million in back pay by the Labor Department covering a five-year period. Tyson,
with more than $500 million in Defense, Agriculture and Justice department
contracts, was cited for more than 100 health and safety violations by the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the GAO said. Wackenhut, which
received $200 million in security contracts with the Defense, Agriculture and
Homeland Security departments and NASA, violated fair-labor laws, according to
Labor Department data cited by the GAO. “Some companies that continue to receive
lucrative government contracts not only pay rock-bottom wages, but have long
histories of labor and workplace safety violations,” Representative Patrick
Murphy, a Pennsylvania Democrat who joined in requesting the GAO report, said in
an e-mailed statement. “We have a lot of work to do to ensure that the federal
contracting process encourages safe and good-paying jobs.” Workers Misclassified
-- In addition to the pay violations, Computer Sciences didn’t provide
protections against cave-ins for employees working in a trench more than 10 feet
(3 meters) deep, according to a 2006 inspection by the occupational safety
agency cited by the GAO. Chris Grandis, a company spokesman, said Computer
Sciences paid the back wages to employees assigned to a U.S. immigration office
in Vermont in 2009, after the Labor Department found they had been misclassified
as contract workers entitled to less compensation. The company also received a
minor citation from the occupational safety agency and agreed to pay a small
fine, he said. Computer Sciences, a government contractor since 1961, received
37 percent of its $16.1 billion in revenue from federal contracts in the fiscal
year ended April 2, according to a regulatory filing. Army, Immigration -- It
ranked 12th in U.S. government contracts in fiscal 2009, the year studied by the
GAO, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its biggest federal contract that
year was with the U.S. Army to provide engineering and logistics support for the
Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command. Computer Sciences also
has a contract with the Homeland Security Department for a processing system
used in applications for immigration benefits and services. The company said on
Oct. 4 that it was one of four firms that will share in a $2.8 billion contract
by the Social Security Administration for consulting and information technology
services. Tyson has received more than 100 U.S. health and safety citations,
including for an incident in which a worker died after being asphyxiated in a
pit of wastewater debris, according to the GAO report. Last year, Springdale,
Arkansas-based Tyson won $500 million in federal contracts, the GAO’s report
showed. Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman, said the company seeks to comply with
federal regulations and the report doesn’t give “the full context of the issues
involved, nor does it report the measures our company takes to operate
responsibly.” Corrections Corp. -- Corrections Corp., based in Nashville,
Tennessee, was cited for five safety violations since 2005 and for failing to
follow labor laws when firing an employee for union participation, according to
the GAO. Last year, it was awarded $800 million in contracts, the agency said.
Steve Owen, a Corrections Corp. spokesman, said the U.S. contracts are subject
to oversight and accountability. He declined to comment on safety and labor
violations cited in the GAO report. Wackenhut, based in Palm Beach Gardens,
Florida, received $200 million in contracts, the GAO said. From 2005 through
2009, the Labor Department said the company owed $4.4 million in back wages to
more than 2,100 employees, and OSHA cited the company for seven cases of health
and safety violations, resulting in $9,000 in fines. The company agreed this
year to pay $290,000 in back pay and interest to 446 rejected black job
applicants. Susan Pitcher, a Wackenhut spokeswoman, said the company had no
response to the report. Violations by other federal contractors included hiring
undocumented workers, failing to meet environmental standards and fraudulently
billing Medicare or Medicaid, according to the report.
June 8, 2010 Federal Times
One of the most heated debates over which government tasks can be outsourced
and which should be done only by federal employees is centering on security
jobs. The government employs thousands of contractors who perform security
tasks: security guards at federal buildings, personal bodyguards for federal
officials working in combat zones, and guards at federal detention facilities.
But that could change later this year, depending on how the government decides
to define "inherently governmental" work. Thousands of citizens and numerous
industry groups have weighed in with public comments after the Office of
Management and Budget announced March 31 it will clarify later this year which
jobs cannot be done by contractors. Public comments are available online at
www.regulations.gov. The National Association of Security Companies — whose
members include Wackenhut, DSI Security and other companies providing contracted
security at federal, commercial and other government buildings — said it may
make sense to insource combat-related security services, but not building
security services. "For the sake of performance and cost, federal agencies must
proceed cautiously with their insourcing efforts, especially in function areas
such as ‘security' and ‘guard services' that, for the most part, cannot be
considered critical," the trade group said. OMB specifically asked for comments
on the types of security services that could be considered inherently
governmental, closely associated with inherently governmental work or critical
to the agency's mission. Existing regulations already exclude building security
functions, such as those performed by Federal Protective Service contract
guards, from the list of jobs that should be considered inherently governmental.
But the Homeland Security Department already is reviewing whether to bring some
or all of those FPS contract guards in house, following scathing reports of
security lapses. And the Obama administration's insourcing initiative could pave
the way for additional contracted security functions to be declared off limits
to contractors. More than 4,900 people submitted a form letter urging the
administration to expand the types of security services that must be performed
by federal employees. The letter, circulated by the petition website
CredoMobile.com, says the list of inherently governmental jobs should include
physical security guards, prison and detention center security teams, security
activities currently contracted out to private military contractors such as
those in Afghanistan and Iraq, and "any security operations that reasonably
require the use of deadly force."
October 4, 2007 Government Executive
The former owner of a Maryland security firm pleaded guilty Wednesday to
lavishing an ex-General Services Administration contracting officer with
shopping bags filled with cash and an expensive Caribbean cruise in exchange for
federal contracts worth more than $130 million. Michael Holiday, 50, of Silver
Spring, Md., admitted in U.S. District Court to bribing a federal official and
then failing to pay more than $400,000 in federal taxes on his ill-gotten
earnings. A former Montgomery County police officer, Holiday also pleaded guilty
to an unrelated charge of transporting child pornography by computer. Dessie
Nelson, 65, a former GSA contracting officer, and Richard Hudec, 44, a former
top official with the security firm, then known as Holiday International
Security, were charged Wednesday in connection with the scheme. The company was
sold in 2003 to Hudec's wife, Lisa, and renamed USProtect Corp. Lisa Hudec has
not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. The case is the largest
corruption case ever prosecuted in Maryland, in terms of the size of the
contracts involved, according to U.S. attorney Rod Rosenstein. "Government
employees are given broad discretion about how to spend taxpayer money,"
Rosenstein said. "Their decisions must be based on which contractor provides the
best service to the public at the lowest price, not on which contractor offers
the best bribe to the employee at the highest price." According to prosecutors,
the plot traces back to May 2000 when Nelson awarded Holiday International
Security a $50 million, five-year contract to provide armed security guards at
GSA buildings in Southern California. The company's proposal was $10 million
higher than that of the lowest bidder. The following February, Nelson awarded
the firm a five-year, $30.5 million contract -- again not the lowest offer -- to
protect GSA buildings in Northern California. Prosecutors said the company's
poor performance on the contract attracted the attention of GSA officials. In a
May 2002 "cure letter," GSA cited the company's unqualified employees, its lack
of required training, the absence of medical and drug test forms and missing
firearms licenses. Despite threats to cancel the contract, GSA exercised all
four option years. Nelson also allegedly helped Holiday International earn a $50
million contract to protect a Social Security Administration facility in
Baltimore by providing an overly favorable review of the company's work on the
West Coast. In her recommendation, Nelson made no mention of GSA's complaints
about the firm's work. In exchange for the advantageous treatment, Holiday said
he plied Nelson with more than $100,000 in bribes and gifts. On one occasion, he
reportedly gave Nelson a shopping bag filled with $35,000; another time it was
an envelope stuffed with $10,000. An April 2002 deposit, Holiday said, included
a $7,000 cruise. The arrangement came to light when SSA's Office of Inspector
General received an anonymous letter alleging improprieties with the agency's
contract with Holiday International. Michael Robison, special agent in charge of
the investigation for the SSA IG's Philadelphia office, said the letter sparked
a far-reaching and surprisingly complex investigation. Neither SSA nor the U.S.
Attorney's Office would elaborate on the contents of the letter. "It is our hope
that today's announcement will serve as a clear warning to those who would
attempt to defraud Social Security that neither we, nor any of the agencies
represented here today, will allow such crimes to go unpunished," Robinson said
at a press conference Wednesday. Holiday is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan.
23, 2008. He faces a combined 20 years in prison on the bribery and tax evasion
charges and another 20 years for the child pornography charge. Prosecutors said
Holiday agreed to trade sexual videos of underage children with an undercover
FBI agent in an Internet chat room. Nelson is charged with accepting bribes and
later evading taxes on the payments. She faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000
fine if convicted of both charges. Nelson began working for the federal
government in October 1979 and retired last November from the Public Buildings
Service, according to a GSA spokesman. Hudec, the company's former chief
financial officer and chief operating officer, is charged with scheming to
conceal information from federal contracting officials -- including four prior
felony convictions that would have hindered the contract awards -- and tax
evasion. Hudec, who left USProtect in January 2005, faces 10 years in prison if
convicted. Attorneys representing Holiday, Nelson and Hudec did not return calls
requesting comment. USProtect has provided both armed and unarmed security
guards for at least 18 federal agencies, including for the FBI Academy in
Quantico, Va., and for the Air Force at more than a dozen bases. Many of the
contracts cited in the indictments have since been re-competed and won by
USProtect.
July 2, 2003
This may be the last summer when visitors to national parks and national forests
are greeted by public servants rather than low-bid "rent-a-rangers,"
environmental groups and top Democrats in Congress claim. Federal land
management agencies are studying converting thousands of positions now held by
government workers to private contractors as part of a White House directive to
meet quotas for "outsourcing" certain federal jobs. On Tuesday,
a leaked copy of an internal Forest Service memo showed the agency is
considering replacing its entire law enforcement staff with private security
officers, as well as contracting out parts of its fire suppression,
environmental monitoring and timber sales work force. (The Salt Lake
Tribune)
Jos-Arz
Therapeutic Public Charter School
Washington, DC
Cornell
November 6, 2005 Washington Post
The reddish-brick building sits vacant on a tree-lined lot in Northeast
Washington, a three-story monument to a failed experiment to bring down the
exorbitant costs of special education in the District. Five years ago, the
former seminary on Taylor Street became a public charter school for children
with severe emotional disturbances. Officials from the school system and the
city's youth services agencies enthusiastically endorsed the plan, seeing an
opportunity to reduce the $40 million annual cost of sending such children to
private facilities as far away as California and Utah. The D.C. Council also
liked the idea -- and provided an unusual emergency allocation of $9.2 million
so the charter school could increase its staff and convert the building to a
24-hour treatment facility. But instead of saving D.C. taxpayers money, the
Jos-Arz Therapeutic Public Charter School turned into a costly failure. Jos-Arz,
embroiled in a political battle between the council and the school board,
enrolled fewer than half the number of students projected and never received
enough money to complete the planned renovations. In June, the school moved out
of its home on Taylor Street because it could not keep up with the rent, and the
school board is considering revoking its charter. In all, Jos-Arz received about
$15 million in city funds, of which $2.3 million was used for renovation
expenses, former officials from the school say. Although there is sharp debate
over who is to blame, everyone involved agrees that the city's investment
essentially was wasted. "We spent a whole lot of money, and what do we have
to show for it? Nothing," said former council member Kevin P. Chavous, one
of the school's early supporters. In the early days, the plans of Jos-Arz
founders Rollie and Gwendolyn Kimbrough resonated strongly with both city and
school officials. But Jos-Arz opened only as a day school in fall 2000 because
the building was not yet configured to serve residential students. Charter
schools normally receive an allocation from the city based on their current
enrollment. That formula was not going to work in the case of Jos-Arz, its
advocates said, arguing that it needed a large infusion of funds so it could
build a residential wing and hire medical specialists. The school was soon
hemorrhaging money because of its low enrollment, Jos-Arz officials said. They
said the situation was exacerbated by a city funding formula that did not take
into account the high cost of the residential program. In June 2003, Gwendolyn
Kimbrough quit as Jos-Arz's executive director, saying she had depleted her
personal savings on the school. Houston-based Cornell Cos., which runs some of
the private out-of-state facilities that enroll D.C. special education students,
took over. Paul Doucette, a Cornell spokesman, said city officials assured the
company that Jos-Arz would get more referrals from the D.C. Department of Mental
Health and other agencies involved in the placement of special education
students. But the department instead began putting more emphasis on
community-based day programs. The school continued to receive "only a
trickle of students," Doucette said, and Cornell pulled out in June.
October 12, 2005 Washington Post
The District school board is considering shutting down a public charter school
for severely emotionally disturbed students that received $9 million from the
city to buy a facility but did not come close to reaching the enrollment level
it had promised and has since moved out of the building. The D.C. Council issued
the $9 million revenue bond for the Jos-Arz Therapeutic Public Charter School in
2002 so it could buy a former seminary at 220 Taylor St. NE and renovate the
property. Supporters of the unusual financing arrangement said it was an
investment in the school system's effort to place a larger percentage of
disabled students in public facilities. Placement of special education students
in private facilities has cost the city tens of millions of dollars a year in
tuition. But Jos-Arz, chartered in 2000 as a residential school for 70 students,
has never enrolled more than 20 students and is no longer operating as a
residential program, said Paul Doucette, a spokesman for the management company
that ran the school from 2003 until early this year. The school moved out of the
Taylor Street building before the summer and is now at 1401 Brentwood Pkwy. NE.
The D.C. school board, which gave the school permission to open and is
responsible for monitoring its progress, put Jos-Arz on probation in July,
saying the school had violated the conditions and standards set forth in its
charter. The board is scheduled today to discuss a recommendation to revoke the
charter because the school has not submitted a satisfactory plan for
improvements. The school "is not performing as agreed to under its charter.
It wasn't serving the number of students in the program it said it would,"
said school board member Tommy Wells (District 3), who supports closing Jos-Arz.
"Frankly, the investment the city made into this group -- the purpose is no
longer being met." Doucette blamed the school's enrollment problems largely
on the District government's bureaucracy.
Prison Fellowship
University of Pennsylvania's Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil
Society
August 7, 2003
The White House, the Wall
Street Journal, and Christian conservatives have been crowing since
June over news that President George W. Bush's favorite faith-based initiative
is a smashing success. When he was governor of Texas, Bush invited Charles
Colson's Prison Fellowship to start InnerChange
Freedom Initiative, a fundamentalist prison-within-a-prison where inmates
undergo vigorous evangelizing, prayer sessions, and intensive counseling. Now
comes a study
from the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Research on Religion and Urban
Civil Society reporting that InnerChange graduates have been rearrested and
reimprisoned at dramatically lower rates than a matched control group. For
those who know how hard it is to reduce recidivism, the reported results were
impressive. Colson celebrated the report by visiting the White House for a photo
op with the president. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay issued a triumphal press
release. The Journal smacked critics of faith-based programs for
"turning a blind eye to science" by opposing InnerChange. The report
heartened officials in the four states that have InnerChange programs and
buttressed President Bush's plan to introduce the Christian program in federal
prisons. You don't have to believe in faith-healing to think that an
intensive 16-month program, with post-release follow-up, run by deeply caring
people might be the occasion for some inmates to turn their lives around. The
report seemed to present liberal secularists with an unpleasant choice: Would
you rather have people "saved" by Colson, or would you rather have
them commit more crimes and go back to prison? But when you look carefully
at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The
InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They
were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24
percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned. If faith is, as Paul told the
Hebrews, the evidence of things not seen, then InnerChange is an opportunity to
cultivate faith; we certainly haven't seen any results. So, how did the
Penn study get perverted into evidence that InnerChange worked? Through one of
the oldest tricks in the book, one almost guaranteed to make a success of any
program: counting the winners and ignoring the losers. The technical term for
this in statistics is "selection bias"; program managers know it as
"creaming." Harvard public policy professor Anne Piehl, who reviewed
the study before it was published, calls this instance of it "cooking the
books." Here's how the study got adulterated. InnerChange
started with 177 volunteer prisoners but only 75 of them "graduated."
Graduation involved sticking with the program, not only in prison but after
release. No one counted as a graduate, for example, unless he got a job.
Naturally, the graduates did better than the control group. Anything that
selects out from a group of ex-inmates those who hold jobs is going to look like
a miracle cure, because getting a job is among the very best predictors of
staying out of trouble. And inmates who stick with a demanding program of
self-improvement through 16 months probably have more inner resources, and a
stronger determination to turn their lives around, than the average
inmate. The InnerChange cheerleaders simply ignored the other 102
participants who dropped out, were kicked out, or got early parole and didn't
finish. Naturally, the non-graduates did worse than the control group. If you
select out the winners, you leave mostly losers. Overall, the 177 entrants
did a little bit worse than the controls. That result ought to discourage
InnerChange's advocates, but it doesn't because they have just ignored the
failure of the failures and focused on the success of the successes. The
Penn study doesn't conceal the actual poor outcome: All the facts reported above
come straight from that report. But the study goes out of its way to put a happy
face on the sad results, leading with the graduates-only figures before getting
to the grim facts. Apparently, the Prison Fellowship press office simply wrote a
press release off the spin, and the White House worked off the press release.
Probably no one was actually lying; they were just believing, and repeating as
fact, what they wanted to believe. It's hard to know for sure what those
involved were thinking: Study author Byron Johnson canceled a scheduled
interview at the last moment. The White House didn't respond to requests for
comment. InnerChange program manager Jerry Wilger says he doesn't know
much about research, but he doesn't think it's fair to count the performance of
the people who dropped out of his program against him, a fair-sounding objection
that misses the point entirely. If InnerChange's 177 entrants were truly matched
to the control group but ended up having more recidivism, then either the
apparent success with the graduates was due to "creaming" or the
program somehow managed to make its dropouts worse than they were to
start with. If the program genuinely helped its graduates and didn't harm its
dropouts, and if the whole group of entrants was truly matched to the controls,
then the group of 177 should have done better than the controls. And they
didn't. So, the feel-good winners-only analysis simply isn't worth the
paper it's printed on. Only the full-group analysis (known technically as
"intent-to-treat," a holdover term from its origins in medical
research) has any real value. And on that analysis, the program has a net effect
of zero or a little worse than zero. That makes it a loser. John DiIulio,
an intellectually serious advocate of faith-based programs who was the first
director of the Bush administration's faith-based initiatives and the founder of
the Penn research center, acknowledges frankly the results weren't what a
supporter of such programs would have hoped for. But he points out that a single
study almost never provides a convincing yes or no answer on a program concept.
"The orthodox believers point to a single positive result and say it proves
faith-based programs always work. The orthodox secularists point to a single
negative result and say it proves faith-based programs never work. They're both
wrong." The poor result of InnerChange doesn't mean that no
faith-based prison program could work, but it does mean that this one hasn't, at
least not yet. It joins a long line of what seemed like good ideas for reducing
recidivism that didn't pan out when subjected to a rigorous evaluation. Maybe my
own pet, literacy
training, wouldn't do any better in a real random-assignment trial. But
that's why you do evaluations; they tell you things you didn't want to hear. If
you're honest, you listen to them. And if you're smart, you don't listen
the political advocates of "faith-based" this and that when they say
they're only asking us to support programs that have been "proven" to
work. (MSN.com)
Re-Direct Inc.
District of Columbia
July 14, 2003
Re-Direct Inc. was hired by the District to provide juveniles convicted of
crimes with a refuge of counseling and structure. Instead, teenagers living in
the company's group homes and apartments received little help and were allowed
to roam free. By the time the for-profit company declared bankruptcy this year,
six of the teenagers had been slain. Four were killed on the streets, two shot
in the head inside their apartment. A seventh had committed murder. Others were
in prison for robbery and assault. The company held itself out as a
solution to the city's pressing need for places to put juveniles, aside from
jail. But at a total cost to taxpayers of $3.1 million over five years,
Re-Direct operated run-down dwellings and left behind a trail of broken lives
and bereaved families. How the company came into being and then came undone
illuminates the heart of the problem with the city's network of privately
operated group homes and apartments for juveniles: The contractors have trouble
controlling the children, and the city has trouble controlling the contractors.
Despite receiving between $110 and $170 per child per day from the District, Re-Direct's
owners failed to carry out their proposals, according to interviews with the
teenagers. In the company's homes, counseling and therapy were scarce, and in
some weeks, the $25 Giant grocery cards that the children used to buy their
meals never arrived. Some children faced eviction because Re-Direct didn't pay
their rent. For years, Youth Services took little action. (Washington
Post)
Rivers
Correctional Institution
Hertford, North Carolina
GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
October 17, 2007 Washington Post
The private North Carolina prison where about 1,000 D.C. inmates are held,
the most in any single place nationwide, has substandard drug treatment and
vocational training programs compared with most federal facilities, the U.S.
Bureau of Prisons said yesterday. Harley G. Lappin, the bureau's director, said
he is revising the federal government's contract with the Rivers Correctional
Institution to make the facility "mirror as close as we can the programs offered
in other prisons." The acknowledgment came after years of complaints from
inmates, their families and prisoner advocates about Rivers, which is about 200
miles from the District in Winton, N.C. Lappin promised the changes during a
hearing convened by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who has been pressing
the Bureau of Prisons to make reforms. Norton has contended in recent months
that the 7,000 D.C. inmates in 75 institutions nationwide get "second-class"
treatment compared with the rest of the 200,000 inmates under federal control.
She recently visited Rivers and a federally run prison in Cumberland, Md., to
compare the way inmates are treated. Activities at the two places were as
different as night and day, she said. At Rivers, Norton said, inmates had too
much unproductive free time. At Cumberland, programming was more organized, with
inmates shuttling from one event to the next. D.C. inmates at Rivers are held
alongside immigrants who have committed crimes and are serving their time before
being deported to their home countries. Those inmates often are not offered the
same programs in prison as U.S. citizens. "If you're a District resident, you
get tired of not having rights, even when you go to jail," said Norton, who at
times grew testy with prison officials. Nonviolent federal offenders get a year
off their sentences if they complete a 500-hour drug treatment program. But
prisoners serving time for D.C. offenses get no such consideration, even though
the D.C. government passed a law two years ago that said they deserved the time
off. Lappin said he expected the disparity to be changed soon. The congressional
hearing was the first in the decade since the District asked the federal
government to assume control of its prisoners. Norton said the scrutiny was long
overdue because inmates were hundreds or thousands of miles away, out of sight
and out of mind of most residents. But their families never forgot that their
loved ones, once sequestered at the Lorton prison complex in Northern Virginia,
needed more attention. Hundreds, in fact, showed up at a recent meeting to voice
their concerns. Yesterday, two former inmates appeared on Capitol Hill. Douglas
Robinson, 52, has been incarcerated for 16 years, 11 at Lorton and the rest in
Bureau of Prisons facilities. At two of the institutions, he said, he often
could not enter programs he wanted because they were full or canceled. But he
credited a 500-hour drug treatment program at Butner Federal Correctional
Institution in North Carolina with helping to save his life. "For so long, I had
ducked and dodged that I had a problem," he said. "I learned that my behavior
was causing my problem. When I arrived home, I made a choice to move on with my
life." Out for six months, he now works at Goodwill Industries, stocking trucks.
Kevin Barnes, 30, served three years at Rivers. The library was cramped and
contained few books, he said. The focus instead was athletics, and the majority
of inmates spent their time playing basketball, football and other sports.
"That's not going to help an inmate when they come home," said Barnes, who said
he now works as an electrician. The GEO Group, a company that runs 68
correctional and residential treatment facilities worldwide, owns and operates
Rivers. The prison's warden, George Snyder, defended the institution in
testimony yesterday, saying that there are plenty of classes, in such areas as
anger management and computer skills, available for inmates. As a career prison
official, Snyder said, he is committed to providing even better programs.
June 28, 2007 Washington Post
A D.C. prisoners' rights group claimed in a lawsuit yesterday that a private
penitentiary contracted by the federal Bureau of Prisons has provided "grossly
inadequate and inhumane" medical treatment to hundreds of District inmates in a
quest to improve profits. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that
prisoners at the Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, N.C., are routinely
denied care or provided with inadequate treatment. A majority of the inmates at
Rivers, 70 miles southwest of Virginia Beach, are from the District. Keith
Mathis, 32, a plaintiff in the class-action suit, said he asked to have an
infected tooth pulled but received a filling instead. Over the next few months,
the problem worsened, growing into an open sore and eventually requiring
emergency surgery when his face "burst open," the suit alleges. Mathis's case is
one example of poor treatment alleged in the suit filed in the name of 10
current or former inmates against the Bureau of Prisons; its director, Harley G.
Lappin; and the GEO Group Inc., which owns Rivers. "There's one doctor for 1,300
patients," said Philip Fornaci, executive director of the D.C. Prisoners' Legal
Services Project, which filed the suit. "We have been getting complaints from
prisoners at Rivers for five or six years. In the last several months, we have
been on-site verifying those complaints. They were so widespread that we decided
to file suit to improve the situation." District prisoners, as part of a deal
with Congress cut a decade ago, are spread throughout the federal prison system.
Some facilities are run by the federal prisons bureau. Others are operated by
private firms that provide services, including health care, to inmates. Fornaci
said the Bureau of Prisons failed to provide oversight. "The contract itself
actually encourages a skimpy use of medical resources to maximize profits," he
said. The Bureau of Prisons did not respond yesterday to the allegations. John
Bulfin, general counsel for the GEO Group, said the company had not seen the
suit and could not comment until the allegations have been investigated. Of the
199,000 inmates in the federal system, 20,900 are in private prisons. As of last
week, 1,379 were at Rivers, nearly 1,000 of them District residents -- about 15
percent of D.C. prisoners in the federal system. Many of the inmates at Rivers
are older than 40, with chronic health conditions. Here are two examples from
the suit: · Inmate Charles Lewis, 57, the suit alleges, had suffered three heart
attacks and two strokes. He had Bell's palsy diagnosed when he arrived at Rivers
in May 2006. At the D.C. jail, Lewis received physical and speech therapy,
treatment from specialists and proper medication. Once at Rivers, however, he
had his back and knee braces confiscated. Therapy was discontinued. He was moved
to a top-floor cell and top bunk, the suit alleges, increasing his chance of
injury. · An inmate identified as John Roe had depression and schizophrenia
diagnosed, and he attempted suicide three times. He had chronic infections on
his legs, a herniated disk and an ear infection. He has been denied medical care
since arriving, the suit alleges. "This is not the jail. You're not the
community," the man was told, according to the suit. "This is a business." Mark
Corbett, 48, was incarcerated at Rivers from 2004 to 2006. In the criminal
justice system since he was 12, Corbett served time at Lorton before it closed
and in federal prisons in Connecticut, Michigan, New York and West Virginia. He
suffers from depression and has foot and dental problems. At Rivers, he said, it
was difficult to get an appointment with the doctor. Rivers was the worst one I
have seen in my life," said Corbett, who is in the District looking for a job.
"The nurses have a nasty attitude. They wouldn't give me an eye appointment. I
had to virtually curse this man out to pull my wisdom tooth. . . . Some people
do abuse the system and try to see the doctor every day, but [at Rivers] they
take it out on everybody -- even those with serious illnesses."
August 4, 2003
WINTON - Local, state and federal officials are praising
the quick action by authorities here at Rivers Correctional Institution (RCI)
who uncovered and defused a murder plot that targeted four RCI employees.
On Monday, RCI employee Sylvia P. Wilkins, 44 of 103 Mt.
Olive Road, Windsor, was arrested and charged with four counts of solicitation
to commit a felony - first-degree murder. After being transported from the
Bertie County Sheriff's Office, Wilkins was placed in the Hertford County Jail
under a $600,000 bond ($150,000 for each count). Wilkins,
a former teacher at Southwestern Bertie Middle School, made her first appearance
on Tuesday in Hertford County District Court. A probable cause hearing has been
scheduled for Aug. 12. According to Lt.
Steven Stephenson, Special Investigations Supervisor at RCI, Wilkins was
employed as a vocational/computer teacher at the prison. She had been employed
there for two years. The RCI inmate whose assistance was allegedly solicited by
Wilkins was disciplined by prison officials for the role he played in the murder
plot. His name cannot be publicly released. Other
than confirmation that the four intended murder targets were either co-workers
or supervisors of Wilkins, those names were not released. Lt.
Stephenson could not comment on how long the murder plot was ongoing, saying
that once he became aware of it on June 24, "I immediately contacted
Hertford County Sheriff Juan Vaughan and Jerry Gaughran (Special Agent with the
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General)."
"We were contacted because prisons, including those
owned privately such as RCI, are under the jurisdiction of the Office of the
Inspector General," stated Gaughran. (Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald)
United States Department of Justice
Correctional Services Corporation
May 4, 2004
All juvenile and adult correctional facilities must follow Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines and supply hearing aids and
interpreters for inmates with hearing impairments so they can attend educational and rehabilitative programs, according to a series of
settlement agreements agreed to by the Department of Justice. The DOJ issued the orders through settlement agreements with the District of Columbia Department of Corrections, the Maryland Department
of Juvenile Services, Youth Services International Inc. and Correctional Services Corp. in Sarasota, Fla. The juvenile complaint was filed after a juvenile was sent to a
YSI/CSC facility contracted by MDJS. The facility failed to provide him with an interpreter for five months.
(The Special Educator)
April 17, 2004
With blistering language but only a mild threat of further legal action, the
U.S. Justice Department has concluded that the violent conditions and
substandard care at two Maryland juvenile detention centers are substantially
violating the constitutional civil rights of the youths confined there.
The results of the department's 20-month investigation were made public
yesterday in a 51-page letter, which details brutal conditions inside the
Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County and Cheltenham Youth Facility
in Prince George's County. "In particular," the letter stated,
"we find that children confined at Cheltenham and Hickey suffer harm or the
risk of harm from constitutional deficiencies in the facilities' confinement
practices, suicide prevention measures, mental health and medical care services,
and fire safety. In addition, the facilities fail to provide required education
services." The monitor's most recent quarterly report, issued late
last month, concluded that most of the problems outlined in the past had yet to
be adequately addressed. It said that assaults had continued at Hickey at the
rate of 2.5 a day through the last quarter of 2003. The state is now
running both facilities, although up until March 31 the Hickey School had been
managed for the past 11 years by a private contractor, Youth Service
International, which since 1999 has been a subsidiary of Correctional Services
Corporation, based in Florida. The investigation also faulted poor
training for staff and said that staff members often failed to report serious
incidents. It also faulted poor security in Hickey's dormitories, saying
that "youth are not sufficiently supervised, allowing them to tamper with
locking mechanisms on youth room doors, disable the locks, and enter other youth
rooms to assault one another." (Baltimore Sun)
January 25, 2004
Jan 25 (Reuters) - From nuclear plants to ports, private workers guard the most
critical U.S. infrastructure against terrorist attacks. They screen agents at
the FBI, go undercover to probe hidden dangers and track lurking threats in
cyberspace. As demands and fears grow in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001
attacks Washington is outsourcing more and more homeland security jobs, raising
concerns that the sensitive $40-billion-a-year industry is slipping out of
government control. "The American people expect that the critical
tasks of national security and homeland security are being carried out by the
best-qualified people who are responsible to the public, not to a corporate
bottom line," said Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat on the
House Select Committee on Homeland Security. Dan Guttman, a specialist in
public outsourcing at Johns Hopkins University, said years of government
downsizing meant "everything got outsourced, without regard to how
sensitive it was. At the same time we had this fiction ... that the work of
government will still be in the control of officials." Since Sept.
11, President George W. Bush has nearly tripled homeland security spending.
Business has been eager for a slice of the pie. "The contractor
business is salivating," Guttman said. No official statistics are
available, but analysts say there could be one to four contractors per
government employee involved in security. For the government as a whole, the
highest estimate says there may be 8 million contractors compared to 1.8 million
staff. BOOMING BUSINESS Long used by the Pentagon, outsourcing is
becoming increasingly common in the security realm. Wackenhut, a unit of
Group 4 Falck (Copenhagen:FALCK.CO
- News), guards government
buildings and nuclear sites. CSC (NYSE:CSC
- News) provides physical and
cybersecurity for several government agencies. Kroll (NasdaqNM:KROL
- News), a contractor for the
Justice Department among others, provides services from screening vendors and
staff to setting up and monitoring early warning systems that identify
bio-chemical hazards and weapons of mass destruction. The war on terror
has also been a windfall for small companies like Cross Match Technologies,
which provides fingerprint scanners for the Department of Homeland
Security. "Sept. 11 had a significant impact on demand for our
products. Revenue has grown 11,500 percent over the last five years,"
spokeswoman Maureen Stevens said. "It's just like any other new
market opening up. It's been quite a good one in terms of businesses exploring
it," said Brookings Institution national security fellow Peter
Singer. Jack Johnson, chief security officer at the Department of Homeland
Security, said contractors face careful oversight and meet the same security and
quality requirements as government staff. He said many were former federal
employees or had extremely specialized skills lacking in government. Chad
Kolton, a spokesman at the Office of Management and Budget, which coordinates
federal outsourcing, said contractors helped provide "the maximum benefit
and the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars." CRITICS'
CORNER But critics say insufficient oversight and coordination may
outweigh possible benefits. "The process by which we hold companies
accountable is very murky. ... Do we really want the companies deciding on these
kinds of security concerns?" said Deborah Avant, a George Washington
University professor who focuses on contracting. Some critics say the
government is so disjointed it is hard to keep track of which contractor is
doing what for whom -- especially when contractors hire subcontractors.
Critics also say there are too few safeguards against a "revolving
door" between the public and private sectors, or against conflicts of
interest with contractors' other clients. Others worry firms may misuse
information gleaned from government jobs, such as personal data on
citizens. Firms shrug off these concerns. "We are bound by the
same exact rules that anybody within the government would be bound," said
Jeffrey Schlanger, president of Kroll's government services arm. He said
accountability was far greater in the private sector. "Anybody who has
tried to fire a civil service employee (will know). To fire us, all it takes is
a stroke of the pen." Weldon Kennedy, a former FBI deputy director
who is now vice chairman of security firm Guardsmark, said concerns about
oversight were ridiculous. "The government is a very difficult customer to
deal with for the most part because of all the rules and regulations that are
applicable," he said. Kennedy said a statute prohibiting government
employees from working in related private sector jobs for one year after leaving
the public sector was also closely observed. (Yahoo.com)
January 23, 2003
They
are the first line of defense against terrorists. But more often than not,
private security guards who protect millions of lives and billions of dollars in
real estate offer a false sense of security.
Most of the nation's 1 million-plus guards are unlicensed, untrained and
not subject to background checks.
Their burgeoning, $12 billion-a-year industry is marked by high turnover,
low pay, few benefits and scant oversight. And according to government officials
and industry experts, little has changed since Sept. 11, 2001. Security guards
themselves say they have seen few improvements since the 2001 attacks. A poll of
1,200 guards in California, Texas and Florida last spring for the Service
Employees International Union found lax security persisted. Four in 10 guards
said their buildings had no new security procedures. Seven in 10 said no
bomb-threat or natural-disaster drills were conducted. A majority said they
received no training on evacuation or other emergency procedures before being
hired.
Many Fortune 500 companies "are just putting bodies in
uniforms," Gelting says.
Not trained for terrorism Raynard Williams is an $8.40-an-hour guard at
ABC Entertainment Center, an entertainment complex in Los Angeles. To get his
job with Universal Protection Service, he sat through a generic four-hour
training video. "Something to put you to sleep," he says.
Like most guards, Williams, 39, gets no health insurance through work, no
paid vacation and no sick days. "It's a thankless job," he says.
In 2000, the most recent year for which figures exist, private security
guards earned an average of $17,570. For many, it's a second job; most leave
within months.
Williams says he and his fellow guards feel vulnerable without proper
training. But employers, he says, know that "if they give us training,
we'll want more money."
Over the years, criminals have landed jobs as security guards. Some
didn't go through background checks.
Others were subject only to one state's checks, which didn't find
criminal records in other states. Stories of guards beating, raping and robbing
the people they were hired to protect have hurt the industry's image.
Janet Boston knows firsthand the chaos that can ensue when untrained
guards face an emergency.
A guard at the World Trade Center for 26 years, she was on the 78th floor
when terrorists set off a bomb in the garage in 1993. She and other security
officers were as clueless about wwhat to do as the workers the were hired to
protect. They didn't know whether to evacuate the building. They didn't know
where to tell panicked people to go. As a result, workers rushed down stairwells
and were blocked by locked fire doors.
"People were hollering and screaming all over the place,"
Boston recalls. "Nobody knew what to do, not even security. It took almost
the whole day for us to figure out what was going on. People were
hysterical." USA Today)
December 19, 2002
The federal government this week detained as many as 700 Middle Eastern men and
boys after they registered with U.S. immigration officials in Southern
California, according to published reports. There are also ancedotal
reports of detentions in other cities this week. The detentions took place
after the men registered under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration
System, which the immigration and Naturalization Service says is "being
implemented by the INS to fulfill a congressional mandate to implement a
comprehensive entry-exit program by 2005." The arrests sparked a
large demonstration in Los Angeles Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles
Times, at which some protestors carried signs reading: "What
Next? Concentration Camps?" The men appear to have overstayed
their visas, but according to the paper, some of those arrested have applied for
green cards. One reported case involved a 16-year old boy whose mother is
a permanent resident and stepfather is a citizen. (CBS News.com)
December 6, 2002
The Defense Department can use contractors to guard military bases in limited
cases under the 2003 Defense Authorization Act signed Monday by President
Bush. Section 332 of the law allows military installations to hire
contract security guards to meet new base security requirements by the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. Authority to use contract guards would expire after
three years under Section 332, so Defense could not award long-term security
contracts. The new law does not affect the existing ban on hiring contract
firefighters. (Gov Exec.com)
November 18, 2002
The White House plan to put as many as 850,000 government jobs up for
competition from private contractors could be an unprecedented boon to the
outsourcing industry. Companies that focus on outsourcing to the federal
government might see stock prices perk up. Wackenhut, major provider of
security services, already works with the government and expects that
relationship could grow. "There are certain areas that should not be
privatized. We don't want to be the FBI, we don't want to chase
criminals," CEO Alan Bernstein says. "But there are a lot of
ancillary jobs." (USA TODAY)
November 17, 2002
FOR MONTHS, President George W. Bush swore that his demand for authority to hire
and fire workers at the Department of Homeland Security had everything to do
with national security and nothing to do with union-busting. Then, one day
after Democrats said uncle on homeland security, the White House announced plans
to privatize up to half the federal work force -- 850,000 workers. Some
privatization makes sense. Law enforcement -- the FBI, prisons,
prosecutors -- always should have justice as their motive, not the bottom line.
Private prisons and prison doctors often have provided substandard services
without direct public accountability. The Bush plan has two other
problems. One is that private workers who want to blow the whistle on
wrongdoing won't have job protection. The other, much bigger, problem is
politics. The Bush proposal weakens a basic principle of government
contracting: The job goes to the lowest qualified bidder. Without
that, government contracting is susceptible to becoming political payola.
(St.Louis Post-Dispatch)
September 27, 2002
The Bush
administration has launched an informal
inquiry into
potential
conflicts of interest and ethical problems
involving
federal
agencies and
the companies that do business with
them.
In an
Aug. 30 letter to attorneys and ethics
officials in
19
government
agencies that was obtained by Government
Executive,
the Office of Government Ethics asked for
comments
on
“whether federal contractors raise conflicts of
interest
problems
or concerns
and, if so, whether such problems can be
best solved
by applying
regulations” to the contractors.
The
letter also asked the attorneys’ opinions on
whether
ethics
rules should
be included in contracts and if changes
to federal
purchasing
regulations are necessary.
Chief
among the questions raised was whether having
corporate
employees
work alongside government employees “may
cause the
lines
between the public and private sectors to
blur” and
if “the
public is
able to distinguish between the
contractors
who work in
[a] federal
agency and federal employees.”
Government
contractors and agency managers are
likely to
react
negatively
to the ethics probe. One procurement
executive,
who
asked to
remain anonymous, said it was “potentially
very
troubling”
that these
discussions might reflect a desire by the
administration
to
restrict the
interactions between companies and the
federal
managers
who write and award contracts. (Gov Exec.com)
August 24, 2001
Attorney General John Ashcroft responded to the Justice Department's latest
figures on drug prosecutions by claiming that they prove that "federal law
enforcement is targeted effectively at convicting major drug traffickers and
punishing them with longer lockups in prison." The data the
department released show almost the opposite: that the nation's tough drug
sentencing regime is, to a great extent, being used to lock up comparatively
low-level offenders who could easily be prosecuted in state courts. The
data, far from affirming that the federal drug effort is a success, raise real
questions about the federal government's prosecutorial in the war on
drugs. Another striking feature of the department's data is the
disproportionate role that marijuana seems to be playing in federal drug
prosecution. Marijuana is hardly the most dangerous of drugs. Yet 31
percent of federal drug referrals involved marijuana offenses in 1999, more than
for any other type of drug. And though these referrals ultimately produced
shorter sentences, they were actually more likely to result in prosecutions than
cases involving powder cocaine, crack cocaine and heroine. Marijuana cases
all by themselves now account for a measurable percentage of the entire federal
criminal caseload. (The Washington Post)
Washington, DC
Aramark,
CCA
October 19, 2011 Washington Post
Former Arlington County Sheriff Thomas N. Faust has been tapped by D.C.
Mayor Vincent Gray (D) as acting director of the District Department of
Corrections. Faust, who must be confirmed by the D.C. Council, said at Gray's
weekly news briefing that his years as an elected sheriff have made him
sensitive to community needs. “This is not my jail system,” he said. “This is
the system of the citizens of the District of Columbia.” Faust retired as
Arlington’s sheriff in 2000, less than a year into his third four-year term, to
become executive director of the Alexandria-based National Sheriff’s
Association. He had worked in the sheriff’s office for a total of 24 years. In
Arlington, he is credited with the opening of the new jail and justice center in
1994, and with implementing innovative programs, including substance abuse
treatment and parenting classes for inmates. Faust took the helm of the
Department of Corrections last week, according to a biography of him posted on
the agency’s Web site. Faust worked most recently as a public safety consultant,
and before that was a vice president for Aramark Correctional Services.
August 4, 2011 Washington Post
The District is home to more lawyers per capita than any state in the union, yet
when city officials or those aggrieved by the D.C. government find themselves in
need of representation, they gravitate to a small, familiar fraternity. For
instance, Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D),
and members Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) have at one
time or another been represented by Frederick D. Cooke Jr., the city’s former
corporation counsel. For a time, it seemed Reed Smith partner A. Scott Bolden
represented every person with a beef against the city. And the issue was renewed
this week with the revelation that council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7)
turned to David W. Wilmot to represent her before the D.C. Office of Campaign
Finance regarding questions about her constituent services fund. The probe
cleared her of the most serious charges leveled against her — that she had
mismanaged her service money and had introduced legislation benefiting the
landlord of her ward office in return for below-market rents. Wilmot no doubt
did a creditable job representing Alexander, but the quality of his advocacy is
not in question. What is questionable, and is particularly questionable for a
city government under a microscope, is that Alexander would turn to perhaps the
John A. Wilson Building’s most powerful and best-paid lobbyist for legal aid.
Wilmot represents Wal-Mart, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Comcast, pharmaceutical
manufacturers, hotel owners and others, according to city filings. Alexander
said the decision to retain Wilmot, whose roots in city politics go back
decades, was a no-brainer. “David Wilmot has been a family friend for years,”
she said. “I’ve known him long before I was a council member.” She points out
that her father used to play tennis with Wilmot and that he used to live in
Hillcrest, in her ward. No doubt that friendship is powerful, and no doubt that
District politics is a small world, as Alexander puts it. “It’s kind of hard to
find someone that you can’t connect to something,” she said. “You know how they
say there’s six degrees of separation? In D.C., there’s two.” But you don’t have
to be an ethics maven to see the potential for at least the appearance of
malfeasance in allowing lobbyists to render services to the politicians they
lobby. All the same, here’s what an ethics maven thinks: “What you’ve just
described is quite troubling,” said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a watchdog
group. “It could well be a way for a special interest group to funnel resources
to officeholders. . . . Most troubling, it could represent a means of gaining
the allegiance and indebtment of the officeholder to the special interest.” A
lot of doubts could be cleared up if there was any transparency about how and
how much officeholders are paying for the services of their lawyer-lobbyists.
But there’s no disclosure requirement. Alexander declined to discuss whether she
paid Wilmot a fair market rate. “He was paid,” she said. “I’m not going to
discuss my fee. . . . That’s my personal information.” There’s a similar lack of
transparency about Cooke’s representation of Brown and Thomas. He lobbies on
behalf of the Corrections Corp. of America, which runs an annex of the D.C.
jail, and for Clear Channel Outdoor, which owns billboards in the city. Cooke
and Wilmot noted that lawyers and lobbyists are bound by rules of professional
conduct and city regulations, and they said they adhere to their requirements —
which include avoiding conflicts of interest. “The fact of the matter is, with
respect to persons I represent on the council, I don’t lobby them” Cooke said.
“I don’t lobby Marion. I don’t go to him and say I’d like you to vote in favor
of XYZ legislation or I’d like you to introduce XYZ legislation.” And now that
he is representing Brown and Thomas in the course of their legal troubles, Cooke
said he will no longer lobby them. But questions will persist as long as Brown
and Thomas remain less than fully forthcoming with details of their financing,
and Cooke said he’s being as specific as professional rules allow in saying they
are “like every other client I have, that is to say, a fee for service.”
March 18, 2008 The Huffington Report
At a moment when Democratic Party officials are urging voters to trust
unelected superdelegates to act in the country's best interests, HuffPost's
OffTheBus investigation into the background of DNC superdelegates reveals at
least one appointed superdelegate who is as likely to use his political
connections for personal profit as for the greater good. Take the case of Joseph
F. Johnson, a member-at-large of the Democratic National Committee from
Chantilliy, Virginia -a suburb of Washington D.C. -- and a superdelegate
currently tilting toward Hillary Clinton. Using his web of connections, Johnson
successfully lobbied for the construction of a private prison linked to a
company on whose board he sat; he managed to have that prison contract with
other companies he was linked to; and though the prison became a notorious and
dangerous failure, Johnson benefited personally, pulling in millions of dollars
in stock options and fees. Johnson first rose through the ranks of the
Democratic machine in the early 1990s, as executive director of Jesse Jackson's
Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He brought with him strong ties to D.C. government that
he'd built after his first job in the nation's capital, as chief of staff for
the city of Washington DC's city council head. He also managed Douglas Wilder's
successful campaign to become Virginia's first African-American governor in
1991. And Johnson advised Mark Warner on his successful 2001 gubernatorial bid
in Virginia. Johnson's reputation as a mover and shaker in D.C. Democratic
politics helped pave the way for his appointment to the board of Corrections
Corporation of America, the largest operator of private prisons in the country.
While serving in that position from 1996 to 1999, Johnson was instrumental in
convincing the local government in Washington, DC to pay CCA to run a prison in
Youngstown, Ohio for DC inmates, according to SEC filings for the company.
Meanwhile, two of Johnson's own companies, National Corrections and
Rehabilitation (NCRC) and MedCorr, were contracted to provide employment
rehabilitation and health services in the same prison he helped establish. The
private Ohio prison which Johnson helped establish was, according to
Youngstown's then-mayor, "a nightmare." By 1998, there had been two fatal
stabbings, 44 assaults, and six escapes at the prison. A Department of Justice
report found that under CCA, the prison had "failed to accomplish the basic
mission of correctional safety;" and prisoners eventually collected $1.65
million in damages and legal costs for their treatment under CCA. News reports
traced the problems at the prison to both CCA's management and D.C. Corrections'
practice of sending high-security inmates to the medium-security facility. The
problems, Johnson told the Washington Post at the time, weren't "anyone's fault,
it was just one of those things." Mr. Johnson nonetheless profited from the
deal, receiving $2.6 million in stock options for his work linking CCA with
officials in Washington, D.C. Calling his work "instrumental" to their receipt
of the contract, CCA said that Mr. Johnson had "exceeded his duties and
obligations" to the company and also paid him $382,000 for his "consulting
services" in helping to arrange the deal, and $991,000 for NCRC's services in
another CCA prison in Texas. Johnson had also helped arrange for Washington,
D.C. to sell one of its local prisons to CCA in 1996. Local activists complained
that procurement rules had been skipped over to hand the bid to CCA, but the
deal ultimately went through, and CCA then managed the facility and used NCRC to
provide services to inmates. When the Washington Post asked Johnson if he
considered his dual roles as a conflict of interest, he replied, "Not in my
mind." Two years later, the Washington Post reported that CCA faced $1.3 million
in fines for failing to provide services to inmates, including $536,000 in fines
for failing to properly administer medications and another $77,400 for failing
to provide vision services. The city's Department of Corrections, despite being
$8.8 million in the red, suspended most of the fines, according to Post reports
from the time. Johnson has over time expanded his list of companies; NCRC is
technically a subsidiary of his firm, the Johnson Companies [www.jcmps.com].
Under that umbrella, Mr. Johnson also houses the Houston-based Satellite
Tracking of People, LLC (STOP), which deals in GPS tracking devices for inmates
and parolees; the Nashville-based ConnectGov, Inc, which coordinates distance
learning; and the National Preparedness Training Center, which trains first
responders to disasters.
July, 1999
Two maximum-security DC inmates who were serving time for murder escaped from
two guards who were driving them back to a Virginia prison. The guards left the
door to the van unlocked and the inmates were somehow able to remove their leg
irons and flee. (Washington Post, July 29, 1999)
Youth Services International
CSC
October 23, 2002
A discharged youth counselor with a back injury alleged his employer violated
the Americans with Disabilities Act when it did not allow him to return to work
after his disability leave. Charles C. Hasbrouck was a youth counselor for
Youth Services International Inc. He had to help maintain the security of
the detention facility and provide crisis intervention. Often he had to
restrain disruptive students, which sometimes required twisting and
kneeling. Hasbrouck injured his back in a motor vehicle accident.
His doctors permanently restricted him from lifting more than 40 pounds and
banned him form repetitive bending or twisting. When he returned from
disability leave, Youth Services refused to allow him to continue in his
position as a youth counselor, he said.
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