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American
Correctional Association
Lanham, Maryland
February 28, 2005 In These Times
"ACCREDITATION IS AWARDED to the 'best of the
best' in the corrections field,'" as the ACA explains on its Web site (www.aca.org).
"Accredited agencies have a stronger defense against litigation through . .
. the demonstration of a 'good faith' effort to improve conditions of
confinement." Yet the fact remains that the ACA is still a private,
non-governmental organization with no authority to change prison conditions or
to enforce standards. The ACA's accreditation process is kept secret from the
public; all that outsiders know for sure is which facilities have been
accredited. Today, only 10 percent of government-managed facilities are ACA-accredited,
compared with 44 percent of privately managed prisons. Texas leads the pack in
prison privatization, followed closely by Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma,
Tennessee and Colorado. How meaningful is ACA accreditation? In July 2004, a
severe prison riot broke out at the ACA-accredited Crowley County Correctional
Facility, a CCA prison near Pueblo, Colo. For nearly six hours, several hundred
Colorado and out-of-state prisoners wreaked havoc on the prison, destroying
cells, furniture, plumbing and equipment. Prison administrators had continually
ignored complaints about food quality, conditions of confinement and the
physical abuse of prisoners. At the time of the riot, only 33 guards were
watching over 1,122 prisoners. Several of those guards fled the facility in
panic. An extensively detailed 174-page "After Action" report,
prepared by the Colorado Department of Corrections, noted CCA's deficiencies and
serious errors in running the prison. But CCA retained both its contract to run
the prison and its accreditation. In September 2004, prisoners rioted at
Kentucky's Lee Adjustment Center, another CCA-run, ACA-accredited prison.
Correctional officers working there make less than $ 8.00 an hour, and sometimes
work 12-hour shifts. The government-run Mississippi State Penitentiary, which
was taken to court in July 2002 over its filthy, vermin- and mosquito-infested
death row cells, is also accredited by the ACA (see "Cruel as Usual,"
January 19, 2004). So is the Santa Fe County Detention Center, run by the
Management and Training Corporation, which faces a federal lawsuit for
violations of civil and constitutional rights, including its former practice of
mandatory strip searches of every inmate.
February 28, 2005 In
These Times
IN 1971, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST Jessica Mitford attended the 101st Congress of
the American Correctional Association (ACA) in Miami Beach. The ACA was founded
in 1870 as the National Prison Association by reform-minded wardens who saw
promise in the rehabilitation, religious redemption and humane treatment of
prisoners. By 1971 they had developed a substantial membership, attracting 2,000
attendees to that year's congress. In her seminal 1973 book, Kind and Usual
Punishment: The Prison Business, Mitford reported that the organization had
shifted its focus from reforming and rehabilitating prisoners to reaping profit
from incarceration. Exhibitors, she wrote, sold everything from tear gas
grenades to stun gun prototypes. And with prisons facing costly lawsuits
instigated by prisoners, litigation, Mitford wrote, was "very much on
everybody's mind." Thirty years later, how much has changed? The 2005
winter conference in Phoenix -- attended by an estimated 4,000 -- found the ACA
still touting its principles: "Humanity, Justice, Protection, Opportunity,
Knowledge, Competence and Accountability." The organization stresses that
it brings together individuals and groups "that share a common goal of
improving the justice system." But with the prison industry now bringing in
annual revenue of $ 50 billion, the ACA seems most intent on
"improving" profits. Today's ACA is a sleeker version of the
organization Mitford examined, complete with online certification courses for
correctional employees (starting at $ 29.95) and an expensive prison
accreditation process that claims to instill transparency and accountability.
Members are enticed to earn accreditation in order to receive up to a 10 percent
discount on prison liability insurance (see "A Dubious Distinction").
Keeping litigation costs down is only one way prison corporations profit from
incarceration. In addition, for-profit prisons also increase revenues by
contracting with other corporations to provide substandard or overpriced
services to prisoners. In some states, companies like Microsoft pay prisons to
employ prisoners at wages far below market rates. The conference was financially
supported by private prison giants such as the Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA), the GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut), Correctional
Services Corporation (CSC) and Correctional Medical Services (see
"Detention Blues," July 5, 2004 for background on CSC). The titles of
the dozens of overlapping workshops indicated what the ACA defined as the latest
trends in corrections: "Faith-Based Juvenile Programming,"
"Anti-Terrorism in Correctional Facilities," and "Can't Simply
Paint it Pink and Call it a Girl's Program." The real draw of the ACA
conference was the exhibitors, who had two full days to showcase their wares.
The exhibition hall corridors had been given names like "Corrections
Corporation of America Court," "Verizon Expressway,"
"Western Union Avenue," and "The GEO Court Lounge," where
one could sip Starbucks and eat free glazed doughnuts. Here, the discussions
were all about increasing profit margins, lessening risks and liabilities,
winning court cases, and new, improved techniques and technologies for managing
the most troublesome inmates. In the glaringly bright exhibit hall, attendees
buzzed around booths, snapping up freebies and admiring the latest in prison
technology. Following a day of tours at Arizona jails and prisons, about 60
conference-goers headed to the Canteen fete at an upscale Italian restaurant in
the nearby Arizona Center. Cocktails and bottles upon bottles of wine were
poured out prior to a multicourse meal. Wardens and top-ranking corrections
administrators from Arizona, New Mexico and Maryland sat in the outdoor patio
under heat lamps. Salesmen from Canteen were pressing flesh and passing out
business cards. There were smiles all around. Like so many other private
companies working in prisons, Aramark and Canteen have had their share of
problems. Aramark was singled out by "Stop the ACA" union-organized
protests outside of the conference. On the third day of the conference,
protesters snuck in and placed informational materials in the toilet seat cover
holders of convention center bathrooms. The glossy GEO world magazine,
distributed at the ACA conference, trumpeted the success of the largest
"Private-Public Partnership in the World," a sprawling detention
center complex in Pecos, Texas. Known as the Reeves County Detention Facility (RCDC),
the complex consists of prisons for both Bureau of Prisons and Arizona state
inmates. According to GEO, "the joint venture . . . between GEO Group and
Reeves County has been a rewarding challenge." Unmentioned was the fact
that a Reeves County judge, Jimmy Galindo, is facing a lawsuit over his role in
granting the private operation and expansive construction of RCDC. According to
the local Odessa American newspaper, building RCDC has led to the "near
financial ruin of the county." RCDC is currently the subject of an FBI and
Texas Ranger investigation into tampering with government documents. (In
addition, two corrections officers resigned in early January 2005 over sexual
molestation charges.) The RCDC is a private-public partnership in more ways than
one. Randy DeLay, the brother of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.),
lobbied the Bureau of Prisons to send its prisoners to RCDC, at the behest of
county officials. Randy DeLay isn't the only member of his family with an
interest in corrections. In December, Rep. DeLay accepted a $ 100,000 check from
the CCA for the DeLay Foundation for Kids. The CCA has become a leader in
securing private prison contracts. In FY 2003, the CCA generated more than $
268.9 million in revenue. Greasing the palms of legislators nationwide hasn't
hurt: In 2004, the CCA's political action committee gave $ 59,000 to candidates
for federal office -- 92 percent to Republicans. This is part and parcel of an
industry in the business of locking up human beings. As the industry has grown,
the ACA has moved away from the ideals of rehabilitation and redemption of the
human spirit. Today, human beings behind bars are little more than commodities
to be traded on the open market. Bill Deener, a financial writer for the Dallas
Morning News, writing about recent gains in the private prison market, put it
this way: "Crime may not pay, but prisons sure do."
Baltimore
County
Correctional Services Corporation
January 6, 2004
Pointing to fierce public opposition, a private prison management firm has
dropped its proposal to build a maximum-security federal prison in eastern
Baltimore County. County officials had worked with U.S. Sens. Paul S.
Sarbanes and Barbara A. Mikulski and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger to derail the
plan for the 1,750-bed prison on Sollers Point in Dundalk. The proposal by
Correctional Services Corp. also came under attack from residents, who said it
would have dealt a crippling blow to efforts to revitalize the area. Yesterday,
community activists and elected officials hailed the company's decision as a
"huge victory." "We certainly don't need that in our community
here. We're trying to revitalize our community, and that wouldn't be an
improvement," said Richard W. McJilton, president of the Dundalk Chamber of
Commerce. "Very good news." County Councilman John Olszewski
Sr., who represents Dundalk, praised the cooperative effort to defeat the plan
for the prison. "The will and voice of the people were heard," he
said. "It's refreshing to know our democracy still works and the people are
the ones who count." Last month, Mikulski, Ruppersberger and other
state and local officials held a rally in Turners Station, a historic black
community adjacent to the proposed prison site, and vowed to fight the plan.
Three days later, on Dec. 22, Correctional Services Corp. President and CEO
James F. Slattery wrote to the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee -- a
division of the Justice Department that oversees privately run prisons -- that
it had learned of local concerns and would look for other sites. (Sun
Staff)
November 26, 2003
Sen. Barbara Mikulski is trying to block federal officials from putting prisons
at any of four proposed sites in the state. She says she has added the
prohibition to a pending appropriations bill. Two private firms had recommended
the sites -- three in Prince George's County and one in Dundalk -- to the U.S.
Justice Department. Federal officials have said hearings on the sites could
begin in January. Under the plan by Correctional Services Corporation of
Sarasota, Fla., the Dundalk prison would be built just south of the historic
Turners Station neighborhood. (TheWBALChannel.com)
November 20, 2003
Reacting angrily to a proposal to build a federal maximum-security prison in
eastern Baltimore County, Maryland's two U.S. senators have told Attorney
General John Ashcroft they are "adamantly opposed" to such a facility
there, or anywhere else in the state. Dundalk is one of four Maryland
sites being reviewed by the Justice Department for a 1,750-bed prison. But Sens.
Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes wrote to Ashcroft demanding that all
four sites "be immediately withdrawn from consideration."
"We are especially troubled that these objectionable and ill-conceived
plans were hidden from the local jurisdictions until recently," the
lawmakers wrote this week in a letter released yesterday. Along with Dundalk,
three locations in Prince George's County were named as potential prison sites
by private companies seeking to build and operate the facilities. Also
weighing in against the Dundalk proposal was Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the
former Baltimore County executive, who vowed in a letter to Ashcroft to
"use all my resources and power to stop this facility from moving
forward." Correctional Services Corp. of Sarasota, Fla., has proposed
the Dundalk facility, an idea that is under review by the Office of the Federal
Detention Trustee. Company officials would not comment yesterday. Two
other private corrections companies have offered plans for federal prisons in
the communities of Brandywine, East Gate and Cheltenham in Prince George's
County. Federal law enforcement officials and judges in Baltimore have
long complained about the lack of a federal facility to hold pretrial detainees
and other prisoners in a centralized location. Many have been held at the
state's Supermax prison in Baltimore or in jails on the Eastern Shore, such as
one in Wicomico County that received federal funds to expand. Such
arrangements have made it difficult to transport prisoners and for attorneys to
meet with their clients. The Department of Homeland Security requested 500
beds for people suspected of violating immigration laws at the proposed Dundalk
prison. The rest of the beds would be for pretrial detainees. Community
leaders in Dundalk were surprised by the news of the proposed prison. But they
seemed determined yesterday to fight the proposal, saying residents have
shouldered more than their share of what they call dumping on Dundalk. In
their letter, Mikulski and Sarbanes raised other concerns about privatized
prisons, a new growth industry after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"Previously, such arrangements have often signaled a sweetheart deal that
comes at the expense of the community and taxpayer," the senators wrote.
"In a post-Sept. 11 world, privatizing a facility that may house dangerous
terrorists is irresponsible. "Private businesses are focused
primarily on the bottom line, rather than the safety and well being of the
surrounding communities," they wrote. (Sun Spot)
Baltimore
City Detention Center
Baltimore, Maryland
Prison Health Services
April 7, 2008 Daily Record
Baltimore County and Prison Health Services Inc. once again asked the
Maryland Court of Special Appeals on Monday to determine what difference a day
makes when it comes to a contract’s expiration. The two sides repeated many of
the same arguments they have used the past three years in a dispute concerning
the county’s attempt to renew a contract providing medical services to inmates
one day after Prison Health claims the deal expired. The case returned from
Baltimore County Circuit Court after the appeals court remanded it there in a
2006 opinion. Lawyers for Tennessee-based Prison Health again argued the county
could not seek to extend a contract providing medical services to inmates at two
county jails the day after the deal expired. “They are not allowed to create a
contract and then hold us to perform what is really connect-the-dots,” said
Andrew D. Levy of Brown, Goldstein & Levy LLP in Baltimore, representing Prison
Health. Jeffrey G. Cook, an assistant county attorney, acknowledged under
judges’ questioning the county could have handled the renewal process
differently but said it was still done lawfully. “It might not be the best way,
but it is a permissible way,” he said. The case stems from a contract the two
sides entered July 1, 2000, covering two jails. The five-year agreement was to
“continue through” June 30, 2005, with options for up to three additional
two-year terms. The county did not send notice of its intention to continue the
contract until July 1, 2005. Earlier that same day, Prison Health sent a letter
to the county declaring the contract completed because the county had not
exercised its option for renewal by June 30, 2005. The county filed a
declaratory and injunctive relief action against Prison Health in July 2005 in
Baltimore County Circuit Court. Four months later, Judge Dana M. Levitz sided
with the county, saying “through June 30” meant a reasonable time thereafter, a
standard the county met by exercising its renewal option July 1. Prison Health
appealed the decision, and the Court of Special Appeals ruled in the company’s
favor in December 2006. The three-judge panel sent the case back to Baltimore
County. Levitz again ruled in the county’s favor last May, and Prison Health
filed an appeal in June. On Monday, Judge Mary Ellen Barbera questioned the
county’s reasoning and wondered if Prison Health was simply protecting itself by
sending the letter to the county July 1, 2005. Barbera was joined on the bench
by Judge James P. Salmon, who also heard the first case, and Judge Sean D.
Wallace, who was specially assigned from Prince George’s County Circuit Court.
Cook repeated one of the county’s arguments that both sides were discussing
terms of a contract extension before July 1, 2005, so the county’s intent was
clear even if not in writing. “Everybody knew what was going on,” Cook said.
Levy countered that intent to renew is not enough. “They are still required to
exercise the option in a clear, unconditional and unequivocal way,” he said. The
court is expected to issue its opinion later this year.
June 6, 2007 Daily Record
The mother of a mentally troubled man who died in state custody has filed a $2
million lawsuit following his overdose on prescription medication given to him
at the Baltimore City Detention Center. Verbena Harris is suing the state, the
Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services and Prison Health Services
Inc. for malpractice and the wrongful death of her son, Ronald E. Faulk. She
claims he was denied treatment for more than a week, then given a month’s supply
of drugs instead of the daily dose he required. “Not only is this another piece
of evidence of the way Prison Health Services has failed to live up to the
standard of care necessary, it’s another example of what happens to men like Mr.
Faulk,” said Alison Kohler of Dugan, Babij and Tolley LLC, Harris’ attorney.
Faulk, 51, was a Vietnam War veteran whose ailments included high blood
pressure, post-traumatic stress syndrome, bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse.
The Baltimore resident had been in and out of the detention center for various
minor charges since at least 1990. “He had his mood swings, but he was a good
person,” Harris said of her son in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “There
was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. He loved his mother.” According to the
complaint pending in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Faulk was arrested on
Feb. 22, 2004, for disorderly conduct and street fighting. After his arrest, he
allegedly went more than a week without receiving medication of any kind,
despite being evaluated and prescribed medication by physicians at the detention
center. Faulk was twice referred for a psychiatric evaluation he never received,
and physicians’ orders to monitor his heart and blood pressure daily were not
followed, the complaint alleges. Harris said she learned of Faulk’s arrest the
day it happened and contacted the facility herself to explain her son’s
medication needs, but said she did not receive a convincing response that they
would be met. “There seems to be at best a deliberative indifference to the care
while he was in jail,” said Kohler. “As I read through the record, the message
that I get is ‘We’ll get to you when we get to you.’” By the morning of March 3,
2004, Kohler said, Faulk was “agitated and manic,” pacing the room and asking
repeatedly for his medication. Later that day, staff nurses gave Faulk an entire
month’s supply of blood pressure medication, rather than administering it
dose-by-dose as ordered by the facility physicians, the complaint says. The next
morning, Faulk was found pale and heavily perspiring and taken to the Johns
Hopkins Hospital, where a doctor called Harris to tell her that her son had
overdosed. “I’m thinking it was illegal drugs, I’m not thinking prescription
drugs,” Harris said of her first reaction. Faulk died at Hopkins early the next
day. An autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was an overdose of the blood
pressure medication given to him at the detention center. Harris, on behalf of
herself and Faulk’s estate, as well as Faulk’s father and his son, is seeking $1
million each in compensatory and punitive damages. The attorneys for the state
and Prison Health Services were unavailable for comment. This is not the first
time a death in custody has provoked debate about Baltimore City Detention
Center’s health services. The American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prisons
Project and the Public Justice Center in Baltimore sued the state in 2003 to
improve conditions at the detention center and central booking facility in
Baltimore. The suit is in negotiations, according to Elizabeth Alexander,
director of the ACLU’s prisons project. Alexander said the ACLU suit highlights
multiple cases of serious medical neglect at the jail that have aggravated
chronic conditions and in some cases caused death. Prison Health Services Inc.,
a defendant in both Harris’ suit and the ACLU’s, has traditionally had “a very
bad reputation, particularly in administering medication,” Alexander said. The
company’s contract with the state expired nearly two years ago, and since then
multiple vendors have been selected to provide services in a completely
restructured health care system. Alexander called the new standard of care “not
quite as dreadful” as in years past. A February report on inmate health care by
the Department of Legislative Services in Annapolis also exposed understaffed
facilities and found inconsistent monitoring of patients. Although originally
filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court earlier this year, Harris’ case was
removed to federal court this month.
September 20, 2005 Baltimore Sun
The state did a poor job of providing medical care to prisoners at Baltimore's
downtown prison over much of the past five years because of a flawed and
underfunded contract with a private company that took effect in 2000, according
to a grand jury report released yesterday. The grand jury report came out of a
review of prison conditions that are part of the routine of grand juries in
Maryland. Circuit Court Judge Stuart R. Berger ordered the Baltimore grand jury
in May to examine health care services at the state-run detention center in
Baltimore. The grand jury identified what it said were serious problems with the
flat-fee contract the state held with Tennessee-based Prison Health Services
Inc. Under the contract, which expired June 30, Prison Health was responsible
for all health care needs for most Maryland inmates. Putting one organization in
charge of all aspects of offender health care was a serious mistake at the
outset," the report states. In addition, it said, the documents the state
sent out inviting companies to bid on health care services for inmates in 2000
were poorly written. And the state's monitoring for compliance in the initial
years after the contracts were signed was inadequate, jurors found. More
importantly, jurors said, the long-term, fixed-price contract locked Prison
Health into what turned out to be a money-losing deal that affected services
provided to inmates. "This resulted in enormous pressure from PHS
management to economize on operations," the report says. "Instead of
looking for efficiencies, PHS made it more and more difficult for offenders to
receive prescription medications, hospital procedures or laboratory tests."
The report said that detainees often did not receive prescribed medication for
weeks after they were booked into the city's jail, and it listed a series of
other problems that The Sun had also discovered in its investigation. PHS
officials have consistently denied that economic factors influenced decisions on
medical care. They say the company lost $15 million on the Maryland contract,
which generated $260 million in revenues over five years. "We hope the
report will be helpful, but their tone is a little more hopeful than we think
the current situation calls for," said Sally Dworak-Fisher, a lawyer with
the Public Justice Center in Baltimore. Her group and the American Civil
Liberties Union's National Prisons Project have a long-standing lawsuit against
the state to improve conditions at the detention center and central booking
facility in Baltimore. Dworak-Fisher said that detainees, in interviews, are
currently reporting many of the same kinds of problems as in the past, with few
signs of improvement since the new contracts took effect July 1. She noted that
the company that holds the $125.6 million, two-year contract for primary care
services, by far the largest segment of the work, has fallen short of supplying
the number of staff it agreed to provide. The grand jury report also said that
St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services "has a history of troubled
performance in other states, as well as in Maryland."
June 1, 2005 The Daily Record
The company that provides medical services to Baltimore County inmates is
arguing that it should not have to continue delivering those services at the
county's expanded prison. Tennessee-based Prison Health Services filed suit
against the county in Baltimore County Circuit Court last week, alleging that
logistical aspects of the expansion will force the company to spend more to
provide the same services. The $74 million expansion on Kenilworth Drive in
Towson is set to be completed in the fall. The County did not bargain for, and
the PHS did not agree to provide services, personnel and costs at this new
facility; rather PHS contracted to provide services to the 'facilities' as they
existed at the time the contract was formed, based on the RFP and Bid documents,
the complaint states. The County has given notice to PHS that it expects PHS to
provide the same services at the new facility as at the old facilities, despite
the increased manpower required, at no increase in price.
May 10, 2005 Baltimore Sun
As they were sworn in yesterday, members of Baltimore's newest grand jury
were charged with investigating the city jail's health care system over the next
four months. City grand jurors, in addition to deciding which felony cases to
indict, typically prepare a report on a specific criminal justice issue, such as
prison conditions, drug treatment and witness intimidation. A major reason to
explore the status of health care is because of "the extent the health
issues associated with the ever increasing population in our prisons," he
wrote. He also noted that prisoners are 17 times more likely than the general
population to have tuberculosis and five times more likely to have AIDS. Since
2000, health care at the jail has been provided by Tennessee-based Prison Health
Services. That company has a contract with the state, which expires in July, for
health services at more than 20 state prison facilities.
October 20, 2004 AP
The firm providing medical care to Maryland's prison inmates has disciplined
four employees in connection with the treatment they gave to a 34-year-old woman
who died last month after she became ill at the women's detention center in
Baltimore. A
statement from Prison Health Services says the three nurses and a physician's
assistant have been reprimanded and reassigned. The statement says the workers
didn't perform a function usually done during the sick-call intake process.
Hospital
records indicate she had been experiencing fainting spells before she was sent
to the hospital. Her family wonders if better care might have saved her life.
Charles H. Hickey Jr. School
Towson, Maryland
Correctional Services Corporation
November 29, 2005 Baltimore Sun
As Maryland prepares to close most of the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School this
week, it has developed a backlog of tough young offenders who are being held for
weeks in juvenile jails while state officials struggle to find places to put
them. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announced in June that 144 residential beds at
Hickey would close by tomorrow. Half of those beds have been used for the most
dangerous juvenile offenders, those who have committed such crimes as attempted
murder, carjacking, armed robbery and assault. A jail and a sex offender
treatment program are to remain open indefinitely at Hickey until replacement
facilities can be built elsewhere. Advocates, legislators and others have long
called for Hickey to be shut down. The reform school in Baltimore County has
long been criticized by state and federal regulators for what they call a
violent, dilapidated environment that often failed to rehabilitate youngsters.
Ehrlich has drawn fire from judges, legislators, advocates and others for
closing Hickey before alternative programs were developed in Maryland.
September 29, 2005 Baltimore Sun
Two Maryland judges said yesterday that the Ehrlich administration's decision to
close the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School without a clear plan to replace it is
jeopardizing the welfare of youths and putting public safety at risk. Baltimore
County Circuit Judge Kathleen Cox and Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Pamela North
told legislators that with Hickey preparing to close, there are not enough
places to send tough young offenders who need to be removed from their homes to
protect their safety and the community. The department said some Maryland youths
will be sent to programs in Texas, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and
Ohio with rates ranging from $47,450 to $116,800 per child per year. The list
includes three facilities run by a for-profit Texas-based company that,
according to published reports, was forced to close one of its centers amid
complaints of abuse. Under pressure from Pennsylvania authorities, a company
operating as Cornell Abraxas closed its New Morgan Academy near Reading in 2002
after about a dozen children were sexually assaulted by adults over the span of
less than two years, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The same company
runs programs that the Department of Juveniles Services plans to use in Shelby,
Ohio; Marienville, Pa.; and South Mountain, Pa., according to a list provided to
legislators yesterday. Another facility on the list has had a more recent, but
less severe, incident of violence. The Summit Academy reform school in Herman,
Pa., has said that four workers were fired in July over a June 18 incident in
which a 17-year-old male student suffered cuts to his face and ear.
June 30, 2005 Washington Post
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said Thursday that the state would close the
Charles H. Hickey Jr. School, the state's beleaguered juvenile detention
facility in Baltimore County, as part of what he called a "new day"
for the juvenile justice system. During a news conference outside the
school's barbed wire-topped fences, Ehrlich (R) also announced a settlement with
the U.S. Justice Department, which had been investigating conditions at Hickey
and the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County. In a report
released last year after a nearly two-year probe, the Justice Department found a
"deeply disturbing degree of physical abuse" by staff members at the
facilities, instances in which staff members did not intervene in fights, and a
lack of suicide-prevention, medical and mental health services. Conditions
at the facilities violated the residents' constitutional rights, the report
found.
March 29, 2005 Baltimore Sun
A former social worker with the public defender's office who said she was raped
by a 15-year-old boy she was visiting at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School
settled a civil lawsuit yesterday against the corporations that ran the juvenile
detention center. Amy Bibighaus, 29, will receive $125,000 from the companies
that ran the juvenile detention center in Baltimore County, lawyers on both
sides of the case said yesterday. While acknowledging that the settlement was
far less than the $20 million they had sought in the civil suit, an attorney for
Bibighaus characterized the resolution as "a complete vindication" for
the social worker, who also was acquitted in 2002 by a Baltimore County judge
after being charged with statutory rape for the incident involving the juvenile
detainee. "I think for her, the idea was to be vindicated, for them to say,
'Yes, we were responsible for what happened to you.' And I think that
happened," said Anton L. Iamele, who represented Bibighaus. Youth Services
International ran the troubled Hickey School for nearly 11 years until the state
decided not to renew its $16 million-a-year contract last March. After assuming
control of the juvenile detention center in Cub Hill, state officials found it
to be an out-of-control operation where housing units reeked of urine, walls
were covered in graffiti and locks didn't work on the doors of the rooms of
dozens of potentially dangerous offenders. The lawsuit alleged that the teenager
propositioned Bibighaus after asking the attorney who accompanied her to the
meeting to leave the room so he could speak with the social worker alone. He
then raped her, according to the lawsuit. When Bibighaus tried to leave the
small office, a malfunctioning lock prevented her from being able to escape, and
the absence of attentive Hickey staff members kept anyone from quickly
discovering the attack, the lawsuit alleged.
July 23, 2004
Maryland juvenile justice officials have stopped, at least temporarily, looking
for a private contractor to run the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School and may
continue to operate the Baltimore County school themselves rather than seek a
new vendor, state officials said yesterday. LaWanda Edwards, a Department
of Juvenile Services spokeswoman, said vendors were informed about a week ago of
the state's decision to withdraw a request for proposals that had been
distributed to companies that expressed interest in running Hickey.
Florida-based Correctional Services Corp./Youth Services International had
operated Hickey under a five-year contract that ended March 31. The state
Department of Juvenile Services has been running it while searching for a new
operator. The U.S. Justice Department reported in April "a deeply
disturbing degree of physical abuse of youth by staff" and
"unacceptably high levels of youth-on-youth violence." Stacey
Gurian-Sherman of JJ Fair, a statewide advocacy group that works with youth and
families, said the problems noted by the Justice Department reflect poor
oversight of Hickey by Maryland juvenile justice officials. State Sen.
Brian E. Frosh, who is chairman of the Senate's Judicial Proceedings Committee,
said he thinks contracting out services such as Hickey's operations is
"very bad policy." He said a contractor has financial incentives
to run such facilities in ways that do not necessarily serve the best interests
of Maryland youths. (Baltimore Sun)
May 27, 2004
When the state assumed control of its sprawling Charles H. Hickey Jr. School
from a private contractor on April 1, it found an out-of-control wreck of a
juvenile detention center where housing units reeked of urine, graffiti covered
walls, and locks didn't work on the doors of the rooms of dozens of potentially
dangerous offenders. Conditions at the state facility in Baltimore County
were even worse under the management of Correctional Services Corp./Youth
Services International than previously disclosed, an investigation by The Sun
has found and state officials now acknowledge. Malfunctioning motion
sensors couldn't detect escapes. One dormitory was in such bad shape that it had
to be shut down. Scores of youths with not enough to do were stashing scissors
and pens for weapons. Dozens of the adults in charge had criminal or drug-abuse
histories that should have prevented them from working at the program for
juvenile offenders. State Juvenile Services Secretary Kenneth C. Montague
Jr. says he hadn't realized how bad things were until the Florida-based company
left. "We were shocked and surprised," Montague said in an
interview this week. The state had been paying the contractor about $16 million
a year to run Hickey, home to about 185 boys, including some of Maryland's most
troubled and violent juvenile lawbreakers. Though the population has varied, the
company was getting at least $60,000 for each youth per year - several times the
cost of tuition at an elite private high school. Montague said the state
knew about some of the problems but that "a lot of it was not visible, was
not something you could see physically. The sensors on the security fence
weren't working. The phone system wouldn't support enough lines." He
said that the company left virtually no accounting of how and when millions of
dollars in state money was spent. "There was no budget," Montague
said. He said the state is withholding $1.8 million that the vendor has
requested for Hickey expenditures because there isn't documentation to prove the
money was spent as claimed. The state says it is also ensuring that
residents are attending classes at Hickey for the mandatory five hours each day.
The monitor reported in March that there was "a lack of education and
programming." On two visits late last year, it reported finding no school
at all occurring on one unit. (Baltimore Sun)
May 8, 2004
The school, which houses 188 juvenile offenders, has been beset by violence,
including abuse by staff. Recent incidents there have included a fight in
February involving four teen-agers and a staff member that sent two youths
to a hospital. The same month, The Sun reported that a Hickey youth was
assaulted by two staff members who held him in his room and repeatedly punched
him in the face. When it took over in April, the state asked all those
employed at the facility to re-apply for their jobs, and it began screening all
320 of them. It soon learned that the contractor - Florida-based
Correctional Services Corp./Youth Services International - had hired workers the
state considers unfit. "It's my understanding there were people here
who would not have passed background checks," said former Baltimore police
officer Joseph Newman, a Department of Juvenile Services consultant.
After a civil rights investigation, the U.S. Justice Department said in a report
last month that it believed workers with felony convictions and histories of
using excessive force were being hired at Hickey and the Cheltenham Youth
Facility, another state-run detention center, in Prince George's County.
"Notably, we found several instances where we believe that staff with
either felony convictions or previous histories of excessive force in a juvenile
detention facility were involved in incidents of abuse," the department
said in the report to the state last month. The state pays entry-level
youth supervisors between $20,000 and $25,000 - significantly less than
their counterparts in surrounding states. At Hickey, the staff had been earning
even less under the private contractor - a little more than $19,000, Adams said.
When it took over, the state found other problems at Hickey besides the staff.
In one dormitory, 24 of 30 locks on residents' doors were broken, Newman
said. Many of the buildings were dirty and had graffiti. (Baltimore Sun)
March 3, 2004
Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services will take over management of the
Charles H. Hickey Jr. School later this month until a replacement can be found
for the outgoing contractor, Youth Services International, officials said
yesterday. Hickey, in the Cub Hill area of Baltimore County, is a state
juvenile detention center in housing about 260 youths charged with offenses
ranging from drug possession to armed robbery.
It has been managed by Youth Services, a subsidiary of Correctional Services
Corp., since 1993. Another contractor, Rebound Inc., ran Hickey for 15 months
before that. The Youth Services contract expires later this month, and
state officials recently began accepting bids from competitors. Youth
Services initially was a local company owned by W. James Hindman, better known
for creating Jiffy Lube. But Hindman took the company public in 1994, and in
late 1998 it was acquired by Correctional Services, based in Sarasota, Fla.
Shortly afterward, Youth Services won a new, five-year state contract at Hickey,
although state officials were threatening within months to fire the company.
Youth Services managed to hold onto the job for the duration of its contract,
even though Hickey has often been troubled by outbreaks of violence, sometimes
involving staff members assaulting students. (Baltimore Sun)
February 24, 2004
A fight yesterday involving four teen-agers and a staff member at the Charles H.
Hickey Jr. School sent two youths to the hospital, just as state police were
beginning efforts to bolster security at the troubled juvenile detention center.
The confluence of events put state Juvenile Services Department officials in the
awkward position of promoting a new security initiative one moment only to have
to explain yet another outbreak of violence the next. And it occurred amid
growing criticism that disorder in the detention centers has reached critical
levels. "I think the point has been made that circumstances at these
facilities need improvement," Juvenile Services Secretary Kenneth C.
Montague Jr. said. "So the fact that we are instituting these initiatives
should let staff members and members of the public know that we are trying to
make those environments better." Critics weren't convinced.
"It's a Band-Aid approach to a mortal wound," said Stacey Gurian-Sherman,
director of the children's advocacy group JJ Fair. "The vast majority of
these children are in these facilities for nonviolent offenses, and the abuse is
happening every day. We're not just talking about physical abuse - youth on
youth, or staff on youth - we're talking about a sick system that the Department
of Juvenile Services has shown itself to be incapable of remedying."
Officials said the new security initiative came together hastily Friday, after
Montague called Maryland State Police Superintendent Thomas E. "Tim"
Hutchins. By late that night, they had agreed on a plan: State police patrols
would immediately begin stopping by, every hour, at the Hickey School in
Baltimore County and the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County.
Beginning today, the plan also calls for a state police investigator to serve a
full shift daily at each facility, either in the day or the evening.
Hickey, which houses about 260 boys, is run by Youth Services International, a
private contractor based in Sarasota, Fla. The state runs the 132-year-old
Cheltenham facility, which houses about 100. Youths charged with offenses
ranging from drug possession to armed robbery are sent to the centers to await
court dates or placement in treatment programs. The new security plan is a
stopgap response to a spate of violence at the facilities, a surge which has had
legislators up in arms, partly because of the length of time it has taken for
some episodes to come to light. Two weeks ago, state police disclosed that
four staff members at Cheltenham had been charged with assaulting a 17-year-old
on Nov. 30. Police reports said the youth was held down and repeatedly kicked
and punched in the chest and face. Last week, the news
surfaced that a youth at Hickey had been assaulted Jan. 13 by two staff members
who allegedly held him in his room and repeatedly punched him in the face,
according to police records. The two men were charged by state police with
assault. Legislators have also heard recent testimony describing frequent
drug use at the facilities, both by resident youths and staff members. That's
one reason the new security plan calls for a tough regimen of extra drug
searches. Yesterday's violence at Hickey provided an early test of the new
security plan. About 8:30 a.m., according to Juvenile Services spokeswoman
LaWanda Edwards, there was "an altercation between four youths and a staff
member." Two of the youths, whose ages range from 14 to 17, were
taken to area hospitals, one to be treated for a broken tooth and cut lip, and
the other for a puncture wound to the head. Both were released after treatment,
Edwards said. The staff member involved was placed on administrative leave,
pending the results of a criminal investigation by state police. Although
the new hourly patrols had begun two days earlier, no state police officer was
present at the time of the fight. The significance of the bad timing wasn't lost
on the department's critics. "To just have somebody swinging by once
an hour isn't going to do it," said Sen. Brian E. Frosh, a Montgomery
Democrat who is chairman of the Judicial Proceedings Committee. "And
perhaps the incident today is an example of why." Nearly lost in the
rush of yesterday's events was the report of another violent incident Friday at
Hickey. A 14-year-old boy awaiting transportation to court in Hickey's
"bullpen" was attacked by another youth who attempted to set his
clothes on fire, according to Juvenile Services officials. The boy's aunt,
Rondalyn Vaughn-Horton, said that his mother appealed to a juvenile judge later
that day not to send him back to Hickey. "The state is supposed to be
looking out for his well-being," Vaughn-Horton said in an interview,
"but the whole time he was out at Hickey he was fighting for his life every
day." The judge complied, assigning the youth instead to the
Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, which opened in October. The center has
helped ease crowding at Cheltenham but has already had its own reports of
violence. A 16-year-old boy was severely beaten there last month by five other
youths, who have been charged as adults with attempted murder.
Vaughn-Horton said her nephew was threatened at the center two days ago by other
youths for not giving up a telephone quickly enough. "I am just
dumbfounded by these reports of violence and abuse, but it's not just Hickey,
it's not just Cheltenham," Gurian-Sherman said. "It's a system that
relies on facilities that we wouldn't put our dogs in." (Baltimore
Sun)
February 20, 2004
A youth in state custody at the Charles H. Hickey School in Baltimore County was
assaulted last month by two staff members who held him in his room and
repeatedly punched him in the face, according to police records. One of
the staff members offered the victim's roommate, who witnessed the incident,
free telephone calls and a CD player to keep quiet about the beating, the
roommate told police. It is the second case to come to light in the past
week in which staff have been criminally charged with assaulting a youth at a
state-owned juvenile detention center. In the other incident, at the Cheltenham
Youth Facility in Prince George's County, four workers were charged with holding
down a 17-year-old and striking him on Nov. 30. In a third case, a
16-year-old boy at the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center was severely
beaten last month by five other youths. None of the incidents was
disclosed by the state Department of Juvenile Services until word began to leak
out from police or others. The department acknowledged the Hickey case yesterday
only after The Sun learned about it from other sources. Juvenile Services
officials contend that they are not obliged to alert the public to such
incidents but will reply to queries if the cases become known. The officials
have acknowledged asking state police investigators not to disclose any details
without consulting with them first. The department's practices amount to a
coverup, said Heather Ford, director of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition,
an advocacy group. "Things will never change for kids until the
department stops covering up abuse," Ford said. But department
spokeswoman LaWanda Edwards said, "We're not hiding anything." She
said department policy is to notify the public about any safety issues, such as
an escape. Edwards said the agency is currently "looking to see if there
are other situations" that warrant alerting the public. Hickey is run
by Correctional Services Corp./Youth Services International, a private
contractor hired by the state. Tom Rapone, chief operating officer for the
Florida-based company, was not available for comment late yesterday afternoon.
Edwards said the two workers, identified in police reports as Ronald Shaw Jr.
and Wade Simmons, have been fired by the company. She said that, like the
Department of Juvenile Services, the contractor "does not tolerate staff
hurting children." The two men were charged by state police with assault,
according to police records. State legislators expressed frustration
yesterday with the continuing violence. Sen. Brian E. Frosh, chairman of
the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said the panel is drafting a letter
to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to urge him to take immediate action at the
state's juvenile facilities to ensure children are protected. Frosh, a
Montgomery County Democrat, said reform legislation before the General Assembly
will not take effect until a year from now, and he and others believe that is
too long to wait. "It's an emergency," said Frosh. "Every week we
get a report." The committee's action was in response to a call from
Sen. James Brochin, a Baltimore County Democrat, who told the committee
yesterday: "This is a crisis, and we should identify this as a
crisis." In an interview, he said the state needs to quickly upgrade
the salaries and qualifications of the hundreds of workers supervising
youngsters at the state's eight juvenile detention centers. Youths charged
with offenses ranging from marijuana possession to armed robbery are sent to the
facilities to await court dates or placement in treatment programs.
According to police records, the Hickey incident occurred on the afternoon of
Jan. 13 after the youth - whose age was not disclosed by the department or
police - became irritated after an inspection of his room by staff. He
pointed a finger at Simmons, who grabbed him by the face and neck, the police
account said. It said two other staff members tried to pull Simmons away.
As the boy held his hands up to cover his face, Simmons and Shaw punched him,
the document said. His face swollen and his body cut, the boy was left in his
room for three hours before being taken to a nurse, it said. Hickey has
had troubles before. In the past 14 months, the independent state monitor's
office has chronicled instances of staff abuse, repeated youth-on-youth
assaults, and staff bringing in alcohol and pornography. The contract with
Hickey is up at the end of next month. The state is considering bids for a new
pact, and several dozen companies, including Correctional Services, have
expressed interest. Sun staff writer Ivan Penn contributed to this
article. (Baltimore Sun)
January 5, 2004
THE ILLS that beset the privately run Charles H. Hickey Jr. School for troubled
boys are deep and long-standing. Despite continued close monitoring by the state
Department of Juvenile Services, including adding more child advocates on the
campus, the rate of youth-on-youth attacks and other violent incidents has not
dropped from an average of 2.5 each day reported back in the spring. Yet
the state agency responsible for the boys' well-being has stretched by another
three months its contract with the private firm that runs the facility.
Hickey's current operator, Correctional Services Corp./Youth Services
International, has had trouble fulfilling its contract, the largest funded by
DJS - budgeted at $15 million in fiscal 2004. The problems include
failures to provide enough training, staff and youth education programs. The
company hired workers who allegedly beat kids, and one who allegedly assaulted a
police investigator during questioning on the matter. A scathing independent
monitor's report, made public in June, detailed an appalling level of violence
at Hickey. To better ensure the children's safety, DJS officials should
have taken over for at least a few months while it plans Hickey's anticipated
overhaul, slated to begin with a new contract in July. Instead, the agency
offered two fiscal arguments against dumping the operator: Its contract
will expire in March, leaving too little time for DJS to pull together the staff
and resources to run the facility itself - DJS would need at least six months to
take over. There's also a federal funding obstacle: A private firm can
recoup some medical costs by applying to Medicaid for each child in its care,
while the state is expected to pay its own way for care. Perhaps a short-term
solution would have been to contract out just those services, as has been done
at the Cheltenham Youth Facility, which DJS operates. (Sun Spot)
December 19, 2003
The Charles H. Hickey Jr. School continues to be beset by violence, some of it
perpetrated by staff, and conditions have not improved since a scathing report
in May detailed 20 cases of child abuse and neglect at the juvenile detention
facility, according to the state independent monitor. With the number of
assaults and other violent incidents showing no signs of abating, the Office of
the Independent Juvenile Justice Monitor recommended in September that the state
consider firing the private contractor that operates Hickey, according to
documents obtained by The Sun under a public records request. The monitor
has backed off from that recommendation - not because conditions have improved
but because the vendor's five-year contract will expire in March. The
Hickey School, which serves about 260 troubled boys, is run by Youth Services
International, a private contractor based in Sarasota, Fla. In the past year,
the monitor's office has chronicled instances of staff abuse, repeated
youth-on-youth assaults, and staff bringing alcohol and pornography into the
facility in Baltimore County. (The Baltimore Sun)
July 17, 2003
State officials are considering replacing the operator of the Charles H. Hickey
Jr. School, or taking over the facility, because of its history of failing to
provide adequate services, a state official said. "We are
still looking at the Hickey contract, and in my communication with the
governor's office all of the options remain open," Juvenile Services
Secretary Kenneth Montague told state officials on Tuesday. (AP)
June 13, 2003
Gov. Robert Ehrlich has asked attorneys to find out if the state can end a
contract with a Sarasota, Fla., company that runs a juvenile detention center in
Baltimore County. Ehrlich wants to know if the state can place the Charles
H. Hickey Jr. School under new management in the wake of a report that staff
members hit, sexually abused and intentionally intoxicated children.
Correctional Services Corp., a subsidiary of Youth Services International, has a
five-year contract to operate the Hickey School until March 31. "All
options are being looked at," Ehrlich said Thursday after seeing the report
on the Hickey School by the state Office of the Independent Juvenile Justice
Monitor. (Gainesville Sun)
June 12, 2003
More than 20 cases of suspected child abuse and neglect have occurred at Charles
H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County so far this year, including instances
of staff allegedly having sex with youths and bringing alcohol and pornographic
materials into the juvenile detention facility, according to a report by an
independent monitor. The highly critical report further revealed that
documented cases of youth-on-youth assaults and other violent incidents occur at
the school, on average, 2.5 times each day. "There may be many other
cases that go unreported by staff and youth for fear of retaliation,"
according to a May 29 report by the Independent Juvenile Justice Monitor, an
advisory group that is part of the governor's office. The report, submitted to
state officials by Philip J. Merson, was obtained by The Sun yesterday.
The Hickey School, which serves 262 troubled boys ages 14 to 17, is run by
Correctional Services Corp./Youth Services International, a private, Sarasota,
Fla.-based contractor hired by the state. Advocates expressed outrage
yesterday at the report's findings, which follow a similar, sharply critical
report about conditions at Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County.
They called for the state to terminate the company's contract. "The state
cannot continue to rely on this vendor to take care of Maryland's youth,"
said Heather Ford, director of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition.
Among the incidents related in the report: On Jan. 5, staff members
allegedly pulled a youth who set off the sprinkler system from his room, slammed
him against a wall and allowed older youths to beat him up. State investigators
charged with investigating such incidents failed to follow through and interview
the youth despite prodding by the independent monitor. On Jan. 22, a staff
person incited what was labeled as a "riot" when he used a fire
extinguisher and a club to threaten youths. Two of the youths were injured
during the melee and taken to a hospital. The staff person's conduct was deemed
"inappropriate" and he was dismissed after an investigation. On
Feb. 7, a youth who had been reported missing was found when he had a car
accident in Anne Arundel County. The car he was driving was registered to a
female staff member, later fired, who was alleged to be having sexual relations
with the teen-ager. On March 16, a youth who was reportedly locked in his
room was found to be severely intoxicated, with a blood alcohol level of 0.25 --
more than three times the state's 0.08 percent blood alcohol level for drunken
driving offenses. He said a male staff member gave him the alcohol, but
investigators were unable to identify the staff member involved. Other
cases included an incident in which a youth's wrist was broken when a staff
member broke up a fight between a group of youths; a student whose back was hurt
when a staff member allegedly threw him against a bathroom sink; and allegations
that a staff member brought in a DVD player and pornographic material to one of
the units and had sex with a youth. Sharon Rubinstein, a spokeswoman for the
Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition, said the report shows that the Hickey
School, which is east of Towson, is not a safe place for youths.
"These findings are outrageous," she said. "When the boot camp
scandal broke, it was called state-sanctioned child abuse. Why are these abuses
continuing?" The state's juvenile justice boot camps were shut down
in 1999 after abuses by guards were exposed by The Sun. Maryland recently paid
$4.6 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of young offenders. Company's
response Tom Rapone, chief operating officer for the company that runs the
Hickey School, said he had not seen a copy of the independent monitor's report
and could not comment in detail on specific incidents. However, he said,
monitoring has "been significantly enhanced" during the past six
months. He said his company follows state rules and regulations in reporting
incidents and that it takes firm disciplinary action against staff members when
situations are uncovered that warrant it. "Events take place in these types
of facilities," Rapone said. "Is it a perfect world? No, but certainly
we endeavor. This is a continuing process." (The Baltimore Sun)
July 1, 2002
Nine teen-age boys
who removed a window and cut through
two fences
to escape from the Charles H. Hickey School on Saturday
were back in
custody by the end of the night, authorities said
yesterday.
The
boys, ages 15 to 17, were on foot, unarmed and
wearing their
Hickey School uniforms. They have committed "everything
from drug
crimes to assault," said Lee Towers, a spokesman for the
Department of
Juvenile Justice. (Sun Spot.com)
March 8, 2002
Two teen-age sex offenders were back in custody yesterday after escaping from
the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County, officials said. The
offenders, 17 and 19 years old, escaped about 7 p.m. Wednesday, said Lee Towers,
spokesman for Maryland's Department of Juvenile Justice. He said the teens were
dressed in street clothes. A guard, apparently believing they were employees,
opened the gate and let them pass. The two were being held at a 26-bed facility
for sex offenders run by the Chesapeake Center that is housed on the Hickey
grounds. An employee at the Kmart at North Plaza Mall called police after seeing
two teens shoplifting walkie-talkies yesterday morning, Towers said, and county
police arrested them across the street. (SunSpot.net)
December 5, 2001
Officials for the private company that runs the jail admitted this year to
destroying dozens of reports of force against teens in 2000, and an investigator
with the juvenile justice agency concluded that cases of abuse were hidden by
employees who destroyed records the two previous years. (Sunspot)
November 29, 2001
Top administrators at two state juvenile jails have resigned amid allegations of
continuing abuse and public outcry concerning youth detention. Donald
Brooks became the third director this year to leave Charles H. Hickey Jr. School
in Baltimore County when he announced his resignation Wednesday, said Laura
Townsend, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice.
Brooks took over the top job at Hickey in July. Townsend said Richard
Daugherty, the clinical director of Victor Cullen Academy in Frederick County,
also resigned Wednesday. Daughtery was responsible for administering the
substance abuse program at Victor Cullen. A coalition of 50 juvenile
justice advocacy groups demanded reform, including the closing of Cullen, at a
forum on Wednesday. High turnover of staff was one of the
deficiencies the state cited in an audit of Florida-based Youth Services
International, the private agency which has a contract to run Cullen until 2002
and Hickey until 2004, Townsend said. Calls to Youth Services
International by The Associated Press were not immediately returned on Thursday.
The firm paid a $600,000 penalty in August after auditors concluded Cullen was
severely understaffed and fell far short of requirements for mental health care,
education and financial controls. The state ordered the audit after at least
four inmates escaped in 18 months. Several other escapes have been reported
since. In July, two Cullen employees were fired and another resigned amid
allegations they staged fights between teen-age inmates. (AP)
June 25, 1999
A male teenager disguised with a tee-shirt wrapped around his face, sexually
assaulted a female nurse. The inmate had slipped through an un-locked door
in the kitchen and jumped a Dutch door to get to his victim. (AP, June 28, 2000)
Frederick
County Juvenile Detention Facility
Maryland
Correctional Services Corporation
September 10, 2002 The state Department of Juvenile Services and the
private contractor that runs the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore
County disclosed yesterday that the company will pay the state $792,470 to
settle claims resulting from numerous contract violations at the facility. As it
announced the settlement, the state released a recent performance audit that
detailed the company's failure to live up to the terms of the five-year, $ 79
million contract to run the troubled juvenile detention center. Hickey has been
the site of numerous assaults and other violent incidents in recent years,
resulting in the ouster of its top administrator late last year. Sarasota,
Fla.-based Corrections Services Corp. is the parent corporation of Youth
Services International, which won the lucrative privatization contract in 1999.
Lee Towers, a department spokesman, said yesterday the state is confident The
departmental audit covered the period from April 2000 through September 2001. It
found that the company did not live up to its promises in the areas of staffing,
training, record-keeping, health and education. Among its findings: In almost
every case, the company failed to provide the required 40 hours of in-service
training to staff members employed at the school before the contract. The audit
found that of 108 existing employees, only one received full training while 34
got none at all. Meanwhile, 14 percent of 58 new employees were put on the job
before completing their 40 hours. The contractor failed to provide adequate
supervision and record-keeping when juveniles were put on suicide watches. The
company failed to fully staff 19 percent of the posts specified in its contract
in fiscal 2000 and 24 percent in fiscal 2001. The auditors found that 60 percent
of "incident reports" - detailing rule violations, use of force or
similar matters - occurred on shifts that were short-staffed. Youth Services did
not meet all of the educational requirements in the contract, including some
related to the length of each school day, the library collection, the number of
textbooks and teacher qualifications. The findings were similar to those of an
audit last year of the Victor Cullen Center, a juvenile detention center in
Frederick County that was also run by Correctional Services. The company was
required to pay the state more than $ 600,000 after that audit, which helped
lead to a decision to scale back Cullen's operations severely. The company's
poor performance on the audit will not block its chances of winning an extension
when its contract comes up for renewal in 2004, Towers said. (The Baltimore Sun)
November 28,
2001
A group of juvenile justice advocates is urging Maryland to close a Frederick
detention home that state investigators found failed to provide adequate
treatment, education and staffing and where workers committed numerous incidents
of violence. The group has made similar charges against other state facilities.
The incidents at the Victor Cullen Center include a "Saturday morning fight
club" in which staffers set children loose to settle their differences with
their fists. In addition, numerous youths have been taken to the hospital with
broken bones and other injuries caused by staff. The incidents were documented
in a state audit completed this fall and were publicly detailed for the first
time this week in the Baltimore Sun. (The Washington Post)
June, 1999
Three inmates escaped yesterday from the facility in the second security breach
at a Baltimore-area CSC facility in 48 hours. They pried open the security
screens and escaped in a stolen facility car. The escape follows a rape last
week of a female employee. (The Baltimore Sun, June 28, 1999)
Howard
County
Maryland
Wackenhut
April 19, 2002
A 20-year-old Elkridge man who eluded authorities for eight days last summer
after bolting from the Howard County District Court commissioner's office during
a bond hearing was sentenced yesterday to a year in jail for the escape. The day
of his escape, Porter was one of eight people Wackenhut Security had driven to
Ellicott City, according to court files. He had been arrested on a charge of
violating probation in a case stemming from a fire at Deep Run Elementary
School. During his hearing, Porter complained to a Wackenhut guard that his left
leg restraint was too tight around his ankle, according to police and court
files. One of Porter's hands was out of the cuffs so he could sign paperwork. As
the guard loosened the restraint, Porter pulled his leg out and ran out of the
building, according to court files. (Sunspot.net)
September 6, 2001
A second prisoner's escape from Howard County District Court in little more than
a year has bolstered county officials' plans to station a court commissioner at
the Southern District police station on Scaggsville Road in Laurel. The
two escapes reinforced what Howard Police Chief G. Wayne Livesay has been saying
since he took office in 1998, said police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn:
"Eliminate the transports." The most recent escape occurred Aug.
20, after J.C. Porter, 20, of Elkridge, had been arrested and was being
transported by armed security guards to a hearing before a court commissioner.
Just before the hearing, police said, Porter told a guard his leg was bleeding.
As the guard began to loosen the shackle, Porter kicked free of the restraint,
ran from the courthouse and disappeared into woods, police said. The
private security guard in the Porter case has been barred from working in the
county and the incident remains under investigation, Llewellyn said. Both
transports were handled by Wackenhut Services Inc., which is under contract with
the county. (The Washington Post)
August 30, 2001
His hair had been dyed and he was no longer wearing shackles and handcuffs, but
Howard County police found escapee J.C. Porter in a West Virginia motel Tuesday
night, authorities said yesterday. Porter ran barefoot from security
guards the evening of Aug. 20 while he was at Howard County District Court in
Ellicott City to see a bail commissioner. The security guard present at
the time of Porter's escape has been suspended from transporting prisoners in
Howard County, police said. (The Baltimore Sun)
August 21, 2001
With shackles trailing from one of his ankles and handcuffs dangling from one
wrist, a barefoot 20-year-old led Howard County police on an extended chase last
night after he fled the court commissioner's office where he was being charged
with a probation violation. The man ran right out of his shoes as he
slipped past two guards and into thick woods north of the Howard County District
Court on Court House Drive in Ellicott City, police said. The two guards,
employed by county-contracted Wackenhut Security, chased Porter, who fled the
building and slipped into the woods, county police spokesperson Sherry Llewellyn
said. Porter's escape comes a year and a day after burglary suspect Thomas
Rudolph Jordan escaped after he appeared before a bail commissioner in the same
building. Jordan, whose transport to and from the district courthouse was
also overseen by Wackenhut, was captured about 20 minutes later in the vicinity
of the courthouse. (The Baltimore Sun)
October 26, 2000
A grand jury had added its voice to a heightened effort to place a bail
commissioner on site at the Scaggsville police station, a focus spurred by a
prisoner's escape after a bail hearing at the District Court building in August.
"The recent escape of a prisoner awaiting a bail hearing points out the
need for the commissioner to go to the prisoners and not vice versa," the
grand jury wrote in its report. Chief District Judge Martha F. Raisin said,
"The escape was not caused by the location of the District Court
commissioner. The escape was caused by very, very poor security measures."
Wackenhut was temporarily suspended after the escape but was reinstated.
(Baltimore Staff, Oct. 26, 2000)
August 19, 2000
A robbery suspect escaped for the day after he was left without leg restraints
while waiting for a pre-trail hearing. (The Baltimore Sun, August 30, 2000)
Jennifer
Road Detention Center
Anne Arundel, Maryland
Correctional Medical Services
December 2, 2005 The Capital
Kari Parsons said she can still hear her own screams when she sleeps, days after
she delivered a baby alone in a county jail cell. The 25-year-old Pasadena
woman, jailed after testing positive for drugs while on probation for theft,
said officials at the Jennifer Road Detention Center repeatedly ignored her
pleas that she was well into labor and needed to go to the hospital. Instead,
they took her out of a holding area with other inmates, who helped to time her
contractions, and put her in a cell by herself. "I was screaming so much my
whole body was trembling. Everyone could hear it," Ms. Parsons said.
"I was screaming and praying for God to help me." County Detention
Center officials are investigating why Ms. Parsons wasn't taken to Anne Arundel
Medical Center in time for the birth. She'd been taken to a Baltimore hospital a
few days earlier when her labor pains apparently started a few weeks early.
After paramedics finally arrived at the Jennifer Road jail and took mother and
child to the hospital a quarter-mile down the road, it was hours more before she
was taken in shackles to see her newborn. She was then returned to jail, where
she was held until being released Tuesday. She's free on her own recognizance
until her next court hearing. "It was ridiculous and totally inappropriate
for the detention center to do what they did," said Michael L. May, her
attorney. He wouldn't say whether Ms. Parsons plans to file a lawsuit. "We
are examining the situation to determine what is appropriate," he said.
Detention center officials declined to comment on the incident, or the actions
of Correctional Medical Services, a St. Louis company that provides health care
at the jail. On Thanksgiving morning, Nov. 24, she awoke at 5 a.m. "I felt
like my water broke and I was having little contractions," she said. Ms.
Parsons was sent to a nurse, and by 7 a.m. she was shackled and handcuffed in a
van headed for Harbor Hospital. "They told me my water hadn't broken, but
if it gets worse, I should come back," she said. Taken back to Ordnance
Road, Ms. Parsons said she continued to suffer contractions. She was taken back
to a nurse at the jail, then put in an isolation booth so her contractions could
be monitored. By 5 p.m. Thursday, she said, she was driven to Jennifer Road to
be closer to the obstetrics center at AAMC. For the next day and a half, she
stayed in a cell with four other women. They helped her time her contractions,
but she was still leaking water. "I was using my sheets as a diaper,"
Ms. Parsons said. "I was saturated." By Saturday, she said, the women
in the cell with her were pleading with correction officers to let her see a
nurse. At 6 a.m. Sunday she was allowed to leave the cell to see one, but was
told she was fine and sent back to the cell. At 11 a.m. Ms. Parsons started
yelling, "I'm going into labor!" Taken to a nurse again, she was told
that the baby hadn't turned and she wasn't in labor, she said. "They had me
thinking I was crazy," she said. Sent back to her cell, she continued to
yell in pain. A little after 2 p.m., she was yelling so loudly that corrections
officers moved her to a cell by herself. Ms. Parsons was alone in the cell, with
a bed with no sheets and a toilet. She said a nurse came by again and told her
she wasn't going into labor. Ms. Parsons tried to lie down, but couldn't. She
got up and walked closer to the toilet and squatted, bracing herself against the
wall. "I felt down there and I felt my uterus open. I felt his head,"
she said. She put her hand on the baby's head and jumped to the mattress, where
she pushed and her child came out onto the green plastic cover. "He slid
right out of me," she said. Seeing the child, corrections officers finally
called county Fire Department paramedics at 3:53 p.m. When they arrived,
paramedics cut the umbilical cord and took Ms. Parsons to the hospital. It
wasn't until 11 p.m. that Ms. Parsons was taken in shackles from her room to see
her son, she said.
December 1, 2005 The Capital
A 25-year-old inmate at the Jennifer Road Detention Center delivered a baby boy
in her cell Sunday afternoon, a jail official confirmed yesterday. The birth
came less than two weeks after the woman's attorney asked a judge to keep his
client out of jail because she was eight and a half months pregnant. The
Pasadena woman, who has a history of drug abuse and was in jail on a misdemeanor
theft under $500 charge, was released from the jail and Anne Arundel Medical
Center Tuesday. Her newborn son was in good condition this morning at the
hospital, according to a medical center spokesman. On a bail review dated Nov.
14, 2005, District Court Judge Megan B. Johnson ordered the woman be held
without bond. Her attorney, Michael L. May of Glen Burnie, requested a bond
review for his client on Nov. 18. Judge Robert C. Wilcox denied the motion on
Nov. 22. In requesting the review, Mr. May said his client was charged with
violation of probation and a bench warrant was issued for her arrest. "The
defendant is eight months pregnant and has a severe drug addiction. The
defendant is not getting the necessary medical treatment for herself or her baby
from the detention center. . . That the defendant has indicated that since she
has been incarcerated the baby has stopped moving," Mr. May wrote. The
county contracts with Correctional Medical Services, based in St. Louis, Mo.,
for its inmate's medical care. Ken Fields, spokesman for CMS, could not explain
what happened on Sunday this morning, adding that the incident is under review.
"This is certainly a situation that we want to understand how it
happened," he said.
Maryland
Department of Corrections
Correctional Medical Services (formerly run by Prison Health Services)
April 6, 2007 The Gazette
Maryland’s private contractors for prison inmate health services were
recently cited by auditors from the Office of Legislative Audits for staffing
shortages, not performing medical exams in a timely fashion and incomplete data.
Correctional Medical Services of St. Louis was paid $49.2 million in fiscal 2006
for medical services for prisoners, according to the auditor’s report. Other
companies were paid for mental health, dental and other services. ‘‘Better
oversight is needed by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
to ensure that health care contractors are effectively providing health care to
Maryland’s 26,000 inmates,” the report states. Correctional Medical had an 11
percent staffing shortage in May 2006, the equivalent of 66 full-time positions,
the report says. The company was also not required to develop formal plans to
correct deficiencies such as ‘‘untimely initial and chronic care medical exams.”
Correctional Medical officials did not return calls. The business received a
five-year contract starting in July 2005, and more than 600 full-time employees
began working in Maryland, according to a company news release. ‘‘Appropriate
corrective action has been or will be implemented for all the agreed-upon
recommendations noted in the audit report,” Gary D. Maynard, secretary of the
Maryland corrections department, wrote in a recent letter to Legislative Auditor
Bruce A. Meyers. Substantial improvements to inmates’ health care, including
increased staff and more timely exams, have been made since Correctional Medical
took over the service in July 2005, Richard Rosenblatt, the department’s
assistant secretary for treatment services recently wrote to Maynard. ‘‘No
health care delivery system is perfect,” Rosenblatt said. ‘‘The issues cited ...
are important, but are not unique to a multi-vendor delivery structure.” The
previous prison health care contractors received more scathing criticism from
the American Civil Liberties Union, which called the care unconstitutional, and
others. A 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Justice found that at least six
deaths in Baltimore city’s detention center were due to chronic health neglect.
In January, the state reached an agreement with the Justice Department to
‘‘resolve health and safety violations” at the Baltimore center, a letter by
Meyers states.
March 1, 2007 Baltimore Sun
Maryland's inmate health care system faced staffing shortages last year, and
plans stalled for drug treatment programs and a new electronic database to keep
better track of records, a state audit released yesterday showed. Auditors from
the Office of Legislative Audits noted "several significant areas of
noncompliance" that affected inmate medical services at facilities across the
state, including Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center and the city
jail, according to the report. "We found a number of areas in which inadequate
[state] monitoring appeared to lead to potential lapses in required medical
coverage and certain required medical treatments," auditors wrote. The audit was
the state's first public, independent look at a new system for inmate health
care that the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
pursued in 2005. Until that year, inmate health care costs had been stable
because the state had signed fixed-price contracts with medical providers. But
because of rapidly increasing costs in the health care industry, for-profit
companies that Maryland and other states relied on for inmate health care
services were no longer agreeing to fixed-price deals. Faced with pressure to
improve the system, particularly in Baltimore, state officials offered separate
contracts for the prison system's varying health care needs. Different companies
were awarded contracts for medical, dental, mental health and pharmaceutical
coverage. These contractors now "pass-through" the costs of their goods and
services to the state for reimbursement. For fiscal year 2006, the tab for
inmate health care in the state totaled $109.7 million. Auditors found that
medical care, dental care and mental health care providers weren't providing
required levels of staff. They also noted problems with medical screenings,
chronic care checkups, medication dispensation and timely treatment based on
inmate needs. The contract system requires more monitoring by state staff than
the previous system, auditors found, but the state agency hasn't been able to
add more staff beyond the 30 employees who have overseen the system since before
the new contracts were signed two years ago. Plans for a methadone
detoxification program -- to help treat thousands of inmates dealing with drug
addiction -- and for an electronic health records computer system remain in
early stages, the audit said. Richard B. Rosenblatt, assistant secretary for
treatment services in the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services,
defended the current contract system but acknowledged room for improvement. He
said the new contracts have ensured more staffing and more accountability from
the state prison system's health care vendors. "It's clearly been improved, if
only with the number of feet on the floor," Rosenblatt said. "There's staffing
levels now that were never dreamed of under the prior contract. Now, the fact
that we're not at 100 percent [staffing], sure that's disappointing to us. "If
we've got weaknesses in the system, this is not from a doctor's point of view,
it's from an accountant's point of view." Auditors did not identify individual
contractors in their report. Correctional Medical Services Inc., a St.
Louis-based inmate health care provider, is the main medical contractor for the
state and was paid $49.2 million for its work in the 2006 fiscal year, which
ended in June last year. CMS made $13 million less than it could have made under
its contract. MHM Services Inc. of Tysons Corner, Va., provided mental health
care services at a cost of $9.3 million -- or $1.8 million less than it could
have made under its contract. In both instances, the companies were paid less
than what their contracts allowed mainly because they provided less staffing and
services, according to Rosenblatt. Ken Fields, a CMS spokesman, said in a
statement that the company has increased staffing coverage over the past year by
using overtime and temporary workers. "We will certainly work with the state to
answer any questions that may arise from this review, but quality health care
services are being provided to inmate patients in state prison facilities,"
Fields said. Inmate advocates argued that the audit showed that because the
system is so important and costly, it should be scrutinized more regularly by
outside entities. "We certainly don't fault the state for spending too much
money on its health care contracts, we just think there should be better
oversight to make sure that it's well-spent," said Sally Dworak-Fisher, an
attorney with the Public Justice Center in Baltimore.
August 27, 2005 Baltimore Sun
A for-profit company the state brought in to provide medical care to Maryland
prison inmates has hired far fewer staff than required, and advocates for
prisoners say that they have compiled dozens of cases of poor and inadequate
care since the new contract took effect July 1. St. Louis-based Correctional
Medical Services Inc. serves as primary medical care provider for Maryland's
27,000 prisoners and is required under its contract to have 603 full-time staff.
State officials acknowledge that the company currently has a staff of only 425.
The new contract with CMS was part of a comprehensive restructuring of the way
Maryland delivers medical care to inmates. The objective was to resolve
complaints that have been voiced for several years about inadequate care for
prisoners. But Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties
Union's National Prison Project, said she has seen no signs of improvement. She
said her group has taken sworn statements since late last month from more than
two dozen prisoners in the state-run Baltimore City jails about lengthy delays
in getting access to doctors, poor treatment and medication mix-ups. "I
see no evidence of any improvement in medical care," she said. "The
quantity and quality of these complaints are just what we got before."
Recent complaints, Alexander said, include an inmate who broke his jaw in a
fight and was merely given aspirin. It was a month before any X-rays were taken,
she said. She recounted another case in which a man with a hernia "the size
of a racquetball" was given Tylenol but no other treatment. Prisoners with
high blood pressure, asthma and other ailments have reported lengthy delays in
getting access to physicians and said they sometimes did not receive their
medications for weeks, Alexander said. Fields,
the CMS spokesman, conceded that the company has fewer full-time workers than
the contract calls for but said it is working diligently to hire more people.
June 10, 2005 Baltimore Sun
In mid-March 2002, Marcella N. Leski, 39, was jailed for failing to appear
in court on a drug-possession charge. Twelve days later, she was so ill that her
legs were amputated below the knees. Her family alleges in a lawsuit that the
prison contractor's doctor failed to diagnose and treat an infection that can be
cured with antibiotics. While the question of legal responsibility is in
dispute, what is not in question is that Leski's condition deteriorated while
she was in the custody of the state-run Baltimore Women's Detention Center.
Maryland's prisons are no place to get sick. The state's own audits and
correctional system records show that the prison health care system has been
underfunded, understaffed and poorly run. A Sun investigation found that many
inmates over the past five years have received inadequate medical attention,
according to interviews, independent state audits, internal state records and
other documents. Maryland corrections officials acknowledge underfunding and
providing spotty oversight of the state's main medical contractor,
Tennessee-based Prison Health Service Inc. As of June 30, Prison Health, one of
the nation's largest for-profit correctional health care providers, will no
longer be providing inmate health services in Maryland. Its contract expires on
that date, and the state recently selected other vendors to provide services for
the state's 27,000 inmates in a totally restructured system. Prison
Health executives say they pleaded to get out of the contract two years ago but
the state refused, and that Maryland continued to pay far less for services than
it was costing Prison Health to deliver. The company says it was paid more than
$260 million in Maryland over the past five years, but lost $14 million. State
audits, lawsuits, internal memos and other documents reveal a grim picture of
inmate heath care since 2000, when Prison Health got its contract. The problems
include: Insufficient staffing. Staff shortages have caused lengthy delays in
prisoners being seen by physicians, psychiatrists and nurses, according to
audits of prison infirmaries done by the state Office of Health Care Quality, an
independent state agency that monitors health care facilities in Maryland. And
records that are kept are not always reliable. For example, state corrections
officials discovered in March that Prison Health staff members apparently had
altered records to falsely indicate that they had conducted required checks on
suicidal inmates every 15 minutes at the Women's Detention Center in Baltimore,
according to e-mail between state and Prison Health officials. The employees
involved resigned, Prison Health executives said. Failure to examine closely
enough and follow through on inmate medical complaints. For example, Ricky
Scearce, 48, reported in 2001 all the classic signs for colon cancer to a prison
doctor on the Eastern Shore, according to a lawsuit he filed against Prison
Health. Although his symptoms persisted, no colonoscopy was ordered to test for
the disease until two years later, as Scearce's release date approached, the
lawsuit said. The diagnosis then: advanced-stage, terminal colo-rectal cancer.
Prison Health settled the lawsuit last year for an undisclosed sum and declined
to discuss Scearce's case. The problems of drug delivery were also the subject
of internal discussions among Prison Health's staff in Baltimore. At a Feb. 13,
2003, meeting, Prison Health's nursing managers complained that critical
documents that doctors and nurses rely on to track drugs given to inmate
patients were "not being completed properly," according to minutes of
the meeting. In interviews this year, Prison Health executives insisted that
they met their obligations and did not cut corners on care - despite losing
millions on the Maryland contract. They said the audits reflect occasional
mistakes they worked to correct, not deliberate neglect. But what turned out to
be a bad deal for Prison Health was a good one for the state, at least in
financial terms. One of the few detailed analyses done by the state showed that
Maryland was spending $2,293 per inmate on health care in 2002 - well below the
national average of $2,722. "Most of the states at that level are poor
states, like Alabama and Mississippi," said Elizabeth Alexander, director
of the ACLU's National Prison Project. "I think it should bother the
citizens of Maryland to be in that category." She noted that Maryland is a
wealthy state. The ACLU is a lead plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit alleging
poor health care services and deplorable living conditions at the state-run
Baltimore jail facilities. As costs rose much faster than Prison Health had
projected, the company pleaded to be released from the contract at the end of
three years. But the state exercised its option to extend the contract for two
years. Alexander and other critics say that decision ultimately compromised
inmate health care. The ACLU's Alexander said state officials demonstrated a
"lack of concern" for the welfare of inmates by extending the contract
- even after serious problems with medical care at the Baltimore City Detention
Center were highlighted in a highly critical U.S. Justice Department report in
2002. Dr. Ronald Shansky, a nationally recognized expert on prison health care,
said a state cannot be excused from its responsibility to deliver an appropriate
level of health care services to inmates in its custody. "If a contract is
underfunded, and not just poorly managed, that's also a state
responsibility," he said. "They should know what it takes per capita
to provide the services ... and shouldn't support any bidder whose proposal is
too low" to do the job properly. Staffing was another daily challenge.
Prison Health officials say they had trouble hiring and retaining staff because
the state's prisons were perceived as dangerous and recruiting in the medical
field was highly competitive. In a May 2004 e-mail, Benjamin Brown, assistant
commissioner for the Division of Pretrial Detention and Services, complained of
continual disputes with Prison Health over staffing and how medical evaluations
of new arrivals at the facilities would be conducted. "Their cavalier
attitude to their contractual and ethical responsibilities is unacceptable;
their inability or unwillingness to communicate effectively is equally
unacceptable," Brown wrote to a state corrections official who oversaw
inmate medical services. In one highly publicized case last year, Prison Health
reprimanded and reassigned four employees who failed to perform their duties
properly in the case of a female inmate who died Sept. 14 from an advanced case
of cryptococcal meningitis. Deborah Epifanio, 34, who had been held at the
women's prison in Jessup and the women's jail in Baltimore, had experienced
fainting spells for days before Prison Health staff sent her to an emergency
room. State corrections officials have not released additional details about the
circumstances surrounding her death. Both Prison Health and its main rival, St.
Louis-based Correctional Medical Services Inc., submitted bids for the medical
service component, the largest of the contracts, with CMS winning. Prison
Health's contract expires June 30. A separate company, Wexford Health Sources
Inc. of Pittsburgh, was chosen to manage and oversee the use of hospitalization
and other care to keep costs in check, Rosenblatt said. He said the contract
gives Wexford financial incentives to hold down costs.
June 2, 2005 The Daily Record
Opposition from some civil liberties advocacy groups could not stop the
Board of Public Works from approving contracts yesterday with five companies to
provide health care services at the state's correctional facilities. In letters
to the board, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Justice Center
urged against the approval of a contract with Correctional Medical Services
Inc., a St. Louis-based company that provides prison health services in 27
states. The groups accused the company of inadequate care and cost-cutting,
leading to some inmate deaths. They are taking contracts at too low a cost. They
are in business to make a profit, said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the
ACLU's National Prison Project, in a telephone interview following the board's
vote. I have no confidence that CMS will deliver minimally adequate health care
under the contract. Currently, Prison Health Services Inc. of Tennessee holds
the contract to provide health services to the state's inmates. Earlier this
year, the company came under media scrutiny for alleged inadequate inmate
medical care in New York. In a letter to Board of Public Works member
Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, the Public Justice Center called the new
contract merely a change in form, and not in substance. The new contract also
includes more funding for prison health care, and more financial flexibility.
Previously, the contract was a flat-rate fee agreement, which meant Prison
Health Services was responsibility for any costs above what the state provided.
Last year, the company received $54.7 million from the state, and lost $12.5
million. The new contract is a reimbursement contract, which requires the state
to reimburse the company for additional costs. For the year beginning July 1,
the state expects to spend approximately $110 million for all six contract
components.
June 2, 2005 Baltimore Sun
After five years of relatively stable health care costs for inmates, the
state Board of Public Works approved an increase in spending of more than 60
percent yesterday that could push the annual tab to $110 million as officials
try to improve medical services for the state's 27,000 prisoners, particularly
in Baltimore's troubled jail facilities. Contracts were awarded to five
for-profit companies, which will run different segments in the prisons'
privatized health care system, such as medical, mental health and pharmaceutical
services. Last year, the state spent $68 million on inmate health care, state
corrections officials said. Correctional Medical Services Inc. of St. Louis won
the biggest contract, a two-year, $125.6 million deal that involves providing
medical services to state prisons and Baltimore's state-run jail facilities - a
total of 32 facilities. Under a state contract signed in 2000, the company has
provided comprehensive medical care services for the past five years to three
prisons in Hagerstown. The state's main prison health care contractor since
2000, Prison Health Services Inc. of Brentwood, Tenn., did not win any piece of
the state's business in the latest round of bidding. Prison Health, which
provided health care services to more than 20 state correctional facilities, had
been criticized by inmate advocacy groups for skimping on services, particularly
in Baltimore's jails. CMS has been the target of inmate advocacy groups and
unfavorable media coverage over quality of care in the past, including an
investigative series in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1998. The newspaper
reported incidents of alleged medical negligence that, in some cases, led to
inmate deaths in Missouri and elsewhere. "Correctional Medical Services'
history of cutting corners to maintain profits jeopardizes the lives of
thousands of incarcerated people across the country," said Elizabeth
Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison
Project, in a statement opposing CMS' selection as Maryland's inmate medical
provider. "Many states have already learned a painful lesson from their
dealings with Correctional Medical Services," she said.
May 10, 2005 Baltimore Sun
A Tennessee-based company that has provided medical services to most of
Maryland's prisons for the past five years announced yesterday that it failed to
win a new contract for inmate medical care potentially worth tens of millions of
dollars. America Service Group Inc. of Brentwood, Tenn., said in a statement
that it had not yet received formal notification from Maryland officials that
its subsidiary - Prison Health Services Inc. - lost the state's business in a
bidding process that began last fall. But the company said it was its
"understanding" that contract awards would be made to other companies.
Prison Health has held the contract to provide medical services to most of
Maryland's prisons, as well as Baltimore's jail facilities - a total population
of more than 20,000 inmates. The for-profit company has been criticized in
Maryland and other states over the quality of care it has provided. Prison
Health signed an inmate medical contract with Maryland in 2000 worth about $270
million over five years, company officials have said. But the contract - known
generally as a flat-fee model -left Prison Health vulnerable to the vicissitudes
of the health care industry. As health care costs skyrocketed, the company
increasingly lost money in Maryland and other states where it had signed similar
contracts. Last year, the company warned investors that significant increases in
hospitalization and prescription drug costs for Maryland inmates would cause it
to lose roughly $1 million a month until its contract expires June 30. Prison
Health officials said they had asked to be released from the Maryland contract
two years ago because of the losses, but the state had the unilateral right to
renew the contract. Maryland corrections officials have said that they renewed
the contract with Prison Health at the time because it represented a good deal
for the state. Inmate advocates allege that Prison Health cut corners on inmate
health care to reduce its financial losses - a criticism that company officials
reject. Critics have also blamed the state for allowing a for-profit company to
operate the inmate medical system in Maryland while absorbing heavy losses.
Maryland
Department of Juvenile Justice
February 12, 2003
The wind blew cold and hard between the tombstones of the cemetery in Aspen
Hill, knocking over the pots of plastic flowers around Vanessa Salmeron's grave
and muffling the sobs of her mother and sister, who were there for their daily
visit. It has been almost a year since Vanessa, a slender 15-year old with
amber hair, hanged herself from her bunk bed at a juvenile detention center in
Laurel. Her death, one of two suicides last year at state-licensed centers
for young offenders, helped trigger Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s campaign vow to
overhaul the Department of Juvenile Justice -- historically one of the state's
worst troubled agencies. The mess has spurred a civil rights investigation
by the U.S. Justice Department, focusing on complaints about the Charles H.
Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County and the Cheltenham youth detention center
in Prince George's County, where there were reports of beatings and a teenager
impregnated by a staff member. A state investigation last year revealed a
"Saturday morning fight club" at the Victor Cullen Center in Frederick
County, in which staff members promoted brawls between juveniles.
Investigations also found that several children had been taken to the hospital
with injuries caused by staff members. The center has since been closed.
(Washington Post)
April 26, 2002
Ending a long
struggle by advocates of juvenile justice
reform, Gov. Parris
N. Glendening signed a bill yesterday creating a
permanent, independent
office to oversee programs for youthful offenders.
The legislation was sponsored by Del. Kenneth C.
Montague Jr., who has
been pushing for independent oversight of the troubled
Department of
Juvenile Justice since the disclosure in 1999 that
guards at boot camps for
youthful offenders assaulted children in their care. (The Baltimore Sun)
February 27, 2002
Maryland should
create an independent commission to
oversee the state
Juvenile Justice Department, which has been rocked by
repeated reports of
abuse, youth advocates told lawmakers yesterday.
The
state juvenile justice secretary, Bishop L.
Robinson, said such a panel is
not necessary because a monitoring program hastily
created two years ago
in response to findings of violence against teen-agers
is working adequately.
In November, The Sun reported that guards frequently
injured young male
criminals being held at the state's three largest youth
detention facilities and
that youth-on-youth violence was common.
Robinson
initially disputed the newspaper's accounts in
testimony before
lawmakers but backtracked when his figures on numbers of
incidents
proved to be inaccurate. Department officials could not
provide corrected
statistics to members of the House Judiciary Committee
seeking the information yesterday. (SunSpot.net)
February 6, 2002
A top official with
the Department of Juvenile Justice
has resigned after
disclosures that he twice understated the number of
assaults against teens
at Maryland's juvenile jails, the agency announced
yesterday.
Henry
R. Lesansky is on leave until Feb. 18, when his
resignation will take
effect, according to an agency spokesman.
Lesansky
had been responsible for overseeing
investigations of conditions
at the jails, including reports of guards assaulting
teens. His departure
comes after a series of embarrassments for the
department and its
secretary, Bishop L. Robinson.
For example, at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in
Baltimore County,
the number of reported assaults by guards against teens
were reported to
have declined from 40 to 16. Towers said a review of
that report found it
was also incorrect. The department will issue a
correction as soon as
possible, he said.
Vincent Schiraldi, director of the nonprofit Center on
Juvenile and
Criminal Justice in Washington, said the discrepancies
in reporting on
assaults in the facilities were evidence of the need for
an independent
citizens' group to monitor them. (Sunspot.net - Maryland News)
December 6, 2001
Bishop L. Robinson, secretary of the Department of Juvenile Justice, arrived
armed with numbers and complaints when he appeared before state legislators
Tuesday. For 10 minutes, he criticized The Sun for reporting that guards at the
state's three largest juvenile jails were assaulting teens in their care.
But Robinson was wrong. Robinson's misstatements, made in the process of
defending his department, inadvertently gave advocacy groups for children new
energy in their demands that an independent citizens group -- not government
workers -- be permitted to inspect the facilities. Earlier this year, The
Sun, using state public records laws, obtained dozens of reports from Robinson's
department on juveniles at Victor Cullen who were taken to the hospital's
emergency room last year. For example, on Aug. 29, a teen was taken to the
hospital after complaining of numbness and tingling in his arms and legs after
an altercation with a guard. In addition, some documents containing
information about physical abuse at the jail last year were destroyed, altered
or never completed, according to officials from Correctional Services Corp., the
private company that operates Victor Cullen. Robinson declined to be
interviewed for this article. "It's extremely disappointing that the
administration is spending it's time trying to discredit reports of the violence
rather than working to end it, especially when it's pretty well accepted by
everybody involved that those facilities are loaded with problems," said
Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal
Justice in Washington. (Sunspot)
Maryland
Legislature
March 9, 2005 City Paper
A consultant hired by the state of Maryland to write the parameters for a new
prison health-care contract is a co-founder of Prison Health Services Inc., the
Brentwood, Tenn.-based company that has the contract now. Jacqueline Moore, of
Jacqueline Moore and Associates, co-founded Prison Health Services in 1978 with
her then-husband. Prison Health Services has held the Maryland prison contract
since 2000 and is paid about $53 million annually to care for the 24,000
inmates. The company says it’s losing about $1 million per month on the
contract. The company and other observers estimate the new contract will total
about $100 million annually. Moore’s company was hired in September to help
write the request for proposal—a set of specifications that prison health
companies can use to guide their bids for the contract. Critics say Moore has a
conflict, even though she says she has not been associated with Prison Health
Services since 1990, and her ex-husband has since founded at least two other
prison health-care providers. The new bid specifications include a cost-sharing
arrangement between the vendor and the state, Moore says: “In the past, RFPs
had a lot of fines, and there was a lot of risk associated for the vendors. They
were trying to do something different in this RFP.”
Victor
Cullen Juvenile Facility
Frederick County, Maryland
Correctional Services Corporation
December 27, 2001
In a victory for
child advocates opposed to Maryland's
large juvenile jails,
Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend announced Thursday
that the
185-bed Victor Cullen Center will be sharply scaled down
and most of its
teens sent to community programs.
Victor Cullen is operated by Correctional Services
Corp., a
Florida-based company whose contract expires June 30.
The
company, which also operates the Charles H. Hickey
Jr. School in
Baltimore County, has been in financial trouble and under fire from
juvenile justice officials for not living up to its
contract.
Correctional
Services paid Maryland a $600,000 penalty
in August for
failing to meet contractual obligations at Victor
Cullen. The facility was
short on security staff and teachers, among other
deficiencies.
The
Department of Juvenile Justice has found similar
problems during an
audit of Hickey, according to sources, and the agency
and Correctional
Services are negotiating a fine for that facility. Vincent
Schiraldi, director of the nonprofit Center on
Juvenile and
Criminal Justice in Washington, said Townsend's approach
was "a bunch
of steps" in the right direction.
"They're
downsizing substan tially, increasing mental
health treatment and
relocating kids into the community," he said. "Those are
three great steps
and we're real pleased with that." James
F. Slattery, Correctional Services president, said
in a statement that
he had no quarrel with Townsend's decision. He said the
rural setting of
Victor Cullen made it difficult to recruit employees
trained to deal with
teen-agers who increasingly seem to be arriving with
mental health issues. (The Baltimore Sun)
December 22, 2001
The father of a teen-aged boy formerly incarcerated at the Victor Cullen
Center said Thursday the boy was sexually assaulted by other students last
month at the Sabillasville treatment center. Guards witnessed the act but did
nothing to try to stop it, the father said in an interview Thursday.
"He'll be testifying against the kids," the father said of his son.
"It's a shame he's not testifying against the guards. As far as I'm
concerned, they're conspirators in the whole thing." The attack occurred
Nov. 30, only days after Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend ordered
around-the-clock monitors at Cullen in the wake of reports of abuse and
mismanagement. Youth Services Inc., a part of Correctional Services Corp., has
a contract to operate Cullen through next year. In August, YSI paid the state
back $600,000 for its failure to live up to its contract. "While he was
being attacked, the guards came into the room and left again," the father
said. Ms. Townsend, the DJJ spokeswoman, said the guards — called "youth
supervisors" — did question the individuals in the room, but they were
told nothing was going on. Then they left. Vincent Schiraldi, president of the
Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice in Washington, noted the attack
occurred after the state began 24-hour monitoring of the center. "If you
can't to keep kids safe at the peak of supervision, when can you keep them
safe?" Mr. Schiraldi said. (Fredrick News Post)
December 5, 2001
Officials for the private company that runs the jail admitted this year to
destroying dozens of reports of force against teens in 2000, and an investigator
with the juvenile justice agency concluded that cases of abuse were hidden by
employees who destroyed records the two previous years. (Sunspot)
December 1, 2001
When state officials audited the Victor Cullen Center earlier this year, they
found a mess at the juvenile jail: not enough staff, a failing education system,
inadequate mental health services and way too much violence. The findings
were predictable for at least two reasons. Private companies across the
country are struggling - and often failing - to turn a profit by operating state
facilities. And the company that operates Victor Cullen, Correctional
Services Corp., has a history of serious problems at facilities in several
states, and its financial condition has been steadily deteriorating. The
company's most recent problems in Maryland - which include reports that guards
at Victor Cullen and the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School have been assaulting teens
in their care - have state officials debating whether to continue contracts with
Correctional Services. It's a debate similar to those being held in many
states around the country, as the wisdom of having private companies run
juvenile facilities is increasingly called into question. (Sunspot.net)
November 29, 2001
Top administrators at two state juvenile jails have resigned amid allegations of
continuing abuse and public outcry concerning youth detention. Donald
Brooks became the third director this year to leave Charles H. Hickey Jr. School
in Baltimore County when he announced his resignation Wednesday, said Laura
Townsend, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice.
Brooks took over the top job at Hickey in July. Townsend said Richard
Daugherty, the clinical director of Victor Cullen Academy in Frederick County,
also resigned Wednesday. Daughtery was responsible for administering the
substance abuse program at Victor Cullen. A coalition of 50 juvenile
justice advocacy groups demanded reform, including the closing of Cullen, at a
forum on Wednesday. High turnover of staff was one of the
deficiencies the state cited in an audit of Florida-based Youth Services
International, the private agency which has a contract to run Cullen until 2002
and Hickey until 2004, Townsend said. Calls to Youth Services
International by The Associated Press were not immediately returned on Thursday.
The firm paid a $600,000 penalty in August after auditors concluded Cullen was
severely understaffed and fell far short of requirements for mental health care,
education and financial controls. The state ordered the audit after at least
four inmates escaped in 18 months. Several other escapes have been reported
since. In July, two Cullen employees were fired and another resigned amid
allegations they staged fights between teen-age inmates. (AP)
November 22, 2001
The state warned yesterday that it might shut down Victor Cullen Center, a
juvenile jail in Frederick County, because of contractual failures by the
private company that operates the facility. Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend, in a statement released yesterday, said she has asked the state
Department of Juvenile Justice to send a 24-hour monitoring team to the center
for delinquent boys in rural Sabillasville. She also has ordered the
department to prepare an operational plan by the end of the year, a strategy
that could include closing the institution. Townsend, in a note to Juvenile
Justice Secretary Bishop L. Robinson, said the center - designed to house more
than 200 offenders - lacks adequate security, teaching staff, food service and
recreation workers. The deficiencies were revealed in an audit conducted
in August by the department. The audit concluded that the contractor -
Youth Services International, a division of Florida-based Correctional Services
Corp. - was not meeting "staffing levels required by the contract,"
"failed to sufficiently provide mental health services" and, among
other items, "the contractor has too many vacant positions."
Last year, at least four guards from Victor Cullen were charged with assaulting
juveniles and two others were charged with sexually abusing youths at the
center. At least six guards have been fired this year after allegations of
physical assaults. A spokeswoman for the department said in an interview
last night that Youth Services has demonstrated failure to meet contractual
obligations to shape up after the audit. "We've been monitoring, and
we came to the conclusion that conditions were not improving, when the
contractor said they would," said spokeswoman Laura Townsend, who is not
related to the lieutenant governor. (The Baltimore Sun)
September 15, 2001
The contractor that manages Victor Cullen Academy has agreed to pay the state
$600,000 after auditors concluded the boys reform school was severely
understaffed and fell far short of requirements for mental health care,
education and financial controls. After nine months of negotiating, the
Department of Juvenile Justice announced the settlement with Youth Services
International on Wednesday. The Cullen audit was ordered more than a year
ago after two students escaped through a third-floor window using a makeshift
rope. Their absence went unnoticed until state police returned them four hours
later, and it was at least the fourth escape in 18 months. (AP)
July 3, 2001
Two Victor Cullen Academy employees have been fired amid a broadening state
investigation into allegations that they staged fights between teen-age inmates.
The employees, who were not identified, were dismissed about two weeks ago, said
Woodie Harper, a vice president for Correctional Services Corp., the parent
company of the contractor that runs the school. A third employee at Victor
Cullen resigned, state officials said. The counselors allegedly took the
boys to secluded parts of campus and let them fight out their differences.
An audit was ordered after at least four inmates escaped in 18 months.
Several escapes have been reported since. (AP)
June 27, 2001
Two counselors at the Victor Cullen Academy have been suspended while officials
determine whether they allowed youths to resolve conflicts in "fight
club." Victor Cullen staff told The News-Post that the fights
involved boys from the academy's Silver Charm cottages, which houses youths with
drug and alcohol problems. The counselors allegedly took the boys to
secluded parts of campus and let them fight out their differences. State
auditors recommended fining Youth Services International, the Owings Mills-based
contractor that runs the school. Youth Services is a division of
Corrections Services Corp. of Sarasota, Fla. The audit was ordered after
two boys escaped from a third-floor bedroom using a makeshift rope. The
escape, which went unnoticed until state police arrested the boys hours later,
was at least the fourth escape in 18 months, and several have been reported
since then. (AP)
June 30, 2000
Two 16-year-olds were apprehended by state police about four hours after sliding
down a |
