Michigan Hall of Shame

Calhoun County Jail
Battle Creek, Michigan
Correctional Medical Services
March 25, 2005 WZZN13
A sneeze changed Linda Peterson's life forever. Peterson, 53, of Battle Creek, was a licensed practical nurse working in the Calhoun County jail when a female inmate sneezed during an examination on May 15, 2002. What Peterson didn't know at the time was that the woman was infected with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a bacteria resistant to many antibiotics. Peterson believes it was that sneeze which infected her. For Peterson, the infection forced amputation of her middle toe and a portion of her left foot, forced her to stop working, plunged her into depression and placed her nearly $100,000 in debt because of medical bills and her inability to work. She can't rid her body of the infection and can only hope to control it. Peterson was working for Correctional Medical Services, a St. Louis, Mo., company which contracts with Calhoun County to provide medical care in the jail. The company provides correctional health care in 27 states. Peterson and another former registered nurse working for CMS, Sally Lett of Kalamazoo, and two former inmates, contend CMS and jail personnel did not do all they could to disinfect jail living areas and equipment to help prevent the spread of the bacteria. "It wasn't as clean as it should be," Peterson said. "We didn't always have the supplies." "The health and safety of the inmates and the employees was not a consideration," Lett alleged.

Macomb County Jail
Macomb County, Michigan
Correctional Medical Services
November 17, 2004 Macomb Daily
Macomb County officials approved a $410 million budget for 2005 on Tuesday that holds the line on taxes and paints the kind of fiscally sound picture that contrasts sharply with the red ink plaguing many Michigan cities and counties. But not all of the news is good. The cost of medical services for jail inmates has risen 34 percent, from $3.3 million to $4.5 million over the past year. On Tuesday, the county Board of Commissioners approved an audit of the medical services, at a cost of $20,000, to determine why costs are skyrocketing. In the interim, the board authorized a temporary, 6-month contract extension with the company that provides the services, Correctional Medical Services. The jail books 26,000 inmates a year.

April 12, 2004 Macomb Daily
The family of a Macomb County woman left an invalid after she leapt from a balcony at the Macomb County Jail may have to pay $100,000 to the medical provider they named in their failed lawsuit at U.S. District Court, Detroit. Attorneys for Correctional Medical Services Inc., the medical care provider at the jail, have asked federal Judge Paul Gadola to sign a court order imposing $100,016.31 in court costs, attorney fees and other expenses against the family of Patricia Rose House for suing them in her November 2001 jailhouse injuries. Earlier this year, the county and the medical carrier both won a motion to have the federal case dismissed. While the county and its employees basically let the matter end there, officials and records indicate CMS is going a step further to demand payback for its trouble thus far. The plaintiffs claimed that officials should have prevented House from jumping from a second-floor balcony to the first floor, causing severe injuries which left her a quadriplegic. Court documents claim she should have been receiving the drug Depakote to treat bipolar disorder, and mistreatment or neglect by medical personnel caused her to lapse into a suicidal episode. When she was brought into jail, she was examined by medical personnel who determined she was not suicidal. Days after her arrival, she jumped.

Michigan Youth Center Facility
Baldwin, Michigan
GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
February 22, 2007 Ludington Daily News
Officials in Lake County had hoped to contract with out-of-state agencies to house prisoners in the Webber Township facility, but that plan may have hit a snag this week. The California Superior Court ruled Tuesday that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shipment of inmates without their permission to out-of-state prisons was not legal, according to reports in the Sacramento Bee and Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times reported Ohanesian’s ruling invalidated the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s contracts with GEO and CCA because Schwarzenegger’s declaration was not valid. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gail Ohanesian ruled Schwarzenegger’s declaration of a prison overcrowding emergency was “unlawful” after the California corrections officer union filed a lawsuit challenging the declaration and Schwarzenegger’s plan to ease overcrowding by sending inmates to out-of-state prisons. Schwarzenegger proposed shipping inmates out of state to alleviate overpopulation within the California prison system, which stands at nearly 200 percent of capacity. The GEO Group, the Boca Raton, Fla. based company who owns the Lake County prison, had contracted with California to house inmates at one of the company’s facilities in Indiana. California has moved 360 prisoners to private facilities in Tennessee and Arizona owned by the Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America. Officials from California visited Lake County for a tour of the former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, but have not contracted to use the shuttered 450-bed prison.

October 6, 2006 Ludington Daily News
A California prison overcrowding emergency declaration could speed up that state’s contract negotiations with GEO Group, which owns the Lake County prison. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Bill Sessa said the agency is continuing to talk with three private prison companies, one of which is GEO, to negotiate contracts to move prisoners to out-of-state facilities. “We’re going to continue contract negotiations with three companies and whoever else jumps in,” Sessa said. Officials from GEO said they are continuing talks with California. “We’re looking forward to working with the state,” said Pablo Paez, director of corporate communications at GEO. “We’re working with them and we look forward to work through the process.” GEO has available beds at three facilities, including the Lake County site, Paez said, noting that California officials have visited the facility sites. Paez said he has no specific timeline for contract talks, but added that the state-of-emergency declaration demonstrates “they have an immediate need to send up to 5,000 inmates out of state.”

September 27, 2006 Ludington Daily News
Rumors abound in Lake County about a timeline for the GEO Group prison to reopen. County officials believe it’s only a matter of time before the company signs a contract, possibly with the state of California, to house inmates in the closed facility, which closed nearly a year ago when Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed funding the state’s contract with the company. Bill Cole, of Custer, a maintenance worker at the former youth prison, said he hasn’t heard anything for sure, but the signs are looking positive. “We are starting to prepare the facility in the event something should happen,” Cole said, noting GEO initiated the work. “They called and talked to me and said we’re not there, we’ve not signed a contract. GEO spokesman Pablo Paez said work at the facility in the last couple of days is in preparation for an official visit from an undisclosed agency.

September 18, 2006 Ludington Daily News
A bill that allows The GEO Group, the owner of the former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Lake County, to contract with out-of-state or federal agencies became law today. After a week-long review, Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed House Bill 5800 late Friday and presented it to the Secretary of State’s office today. “The governor supports this bill because it’s good for economic develop and jobs by providing an alternate use for this facility,” said Heidi Watson of the governor’s communication office. “Hopefully, this will create jobs, and it allows this facility to be reused, which is what we hoped would happen.” Rep. Goeff Hansen, the bill’s sponsor, was hopeful for the future of the community now that GEO has expanded options in renting beds at the facility. “I’m glad she did it,” said Hansen, R-Hart, when informed by the Daily News that Granholm signed the bill. “Hopefully, it’s going to be a good opportunity for Lake County to get back in stride, to get businesses back in business. I’m pleased it went through.”

September 11, 2006 LA Times
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not inspecting the orange crop when he slipped out of the state for a quick trip to Florida, and he wasn't eyeing a new set of wheels when he visited with car dealers. Nor was he parched when he bellied up to liquor dealers in Lake Tahoe, or craving a burger when he chatted with Jack-in-the-Box owners. Rather, he was gobbling up campaign money at each stop. As legislators were approving more than 1,000 bills in August, Schwarzenegger was crossing the state, and the country, soliciting campaign cash. Now, as he decides whether to sign those bills into law or nix them with a veto, he will be cashing checks from scores of contributors whose interests intersect with legislation. In his quest to be reelected, Schwarzenegger is raising money from all manner of businesses: restaurants, insurance companies, banks, financial services providers, construction and real estate interests, farmers, energy producers and car dealers. All have business before the state. On the last weekend in August, as legislators prepared for their final sprint before adjourning for the year, Schwarzenegger traveled to Florida for a fundraiser organized by his brother-in-law, Anthony Shriver. The event was at the home of a major donor to Republican candidates and causes, Randal Perkins, and generated about $500,000. Perkins' firm, Ashbritt Environmental, does cleanup after natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina. According to Perkins' lobbyist, Ronald L. Book, Ashbritt has no state contracts in California. However, several donors who gave at the fundraiser do have business here. Geo Group, a Florida firm that operates private prisons, has long sought more business in California. Geo's Sacramento lobbyists worked to shape the governor's prison overhaul package, which failed in the Legislature on the final day of its session. The package might have increased the number of California inmates housed by private firms.

September 10, 2006 Sacramento Bee
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is conducting an inmate survey to see how many prisoners might be interested in serving their time out of state -- and a Florida company that has contributed $90,000 over the years to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says it would be happy to accommodate them. Department spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said the agency can administratively transfer inmates out of state if they volunteer for the move and if the contracts with out-of-state operators do not exceed a year. Longer term deals, Hidalgo said, would require legislative approval. "If there's a willing inmate and a vendor, we can do this on our own right now," Hidalgo said. One major private prison company, the GEO Group of Boca Raton, Fla., formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., has expressed interest in housing California inmates at its facilities in Michigan, Indiana and Louisiana. GEO currently operates four private prisons in California. It also contributed $22,300 to Schwarzenegger on Aug. 25, in the last week of the legislative session, when lawmakers declined to act on proposals designed to ease prison overcrowding in California. One bill would have required inmate approval for out-of-state transfers. In legislative hearings, GEO expressed support for an involuntary transfer plan. Altogether, GEO has contributed $90,300 to Schwarzenegger going back to 2003.

September 7, 2006 Ludington Daily News
A deal that might have supplied California inmates to the former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Lake County could be in jeopardy. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) proposed sending inmates to out-of-state facilities — potentially including the Lake County prison — without getting the inmates’ permission. However, the future of the proposal is unclear. The California Assembly refused to vote on the measure despite the California Senate passing a bill allowing the transfers only with the inmate’s permission, which is current California law. The California legislature, a part-time legislature, left session for the year Friday without approving Schwarzenegger’s four-bill package. The bills faced opposition by Republicans in the Assembly as well as the corrections officer union and garnered only lukewarm support from Democrats. In addition, Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger also faces a challenge from Democrat Phil Angelides in the November election. The Baldwin area facility was mentioned as a possible recipient of California inmates, and officials from California reportedly visited the site earlier this summer. Pablo Paez, communications director for GEO Group which owns the Lake County prison, said he had “nothing new to report” with regard to any deal to house inmates there. Paez said GEO has been in contact with California and with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement regarding possibly renting bed space at the facility a few miles north of Baldwin. Refusing to name where else GEO is seeking rentals, Paez said “the company remains active in marketing our facility.”

August 31, 2006 Daily News
The Lake County community is one step closer to reopening the former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility thanks to a bill passed Wednesday by the House of Representatives in a 72-31 vote. The bill heads to the governor’s desk for approval, and she has said she will sign it. House Bill 5800, sponsored by Rep. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, would allow GEO Group, the prison’s owner, to contract with out-of-state vendors to house inmates in the Baldwin facility. Current state law mandates the former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility can only be used to house Michigan youth offenders. “We are supportive and the governor expects to sign the bill,” said Liz Boyd, spokeswoman for the governor’s office. “It’s up to lawmakers how quickly they move it to us.” Once the bill arrives on the governor’s desk, she will have 14 days to sign it into law. The approved Senate amendment removed the state from oversight in the facility. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Ken Kopczynski, executive director of the Private Corrections Institute, a Tallahassee, Fla., based not-for-profit watchdog organization that opposes the concept of for-profit prisons. “I’m sure the citizens of Michigan are proud to know their Legislature is looking after their public safety. The state is responsible for inmates in the facility. The courts have ruled on that. You can’t contract away liability. Michigan has the ultimate responsibility of regulating prisons and jails in the state. They’re ultimately responsible for the conditions.” Kopczynski has documented on his Web site more than 30 pages of lawsuits against GEO. “The whole idea they can take over a government service and do it cheaper (is false),” Kopczynski said. “They don’t pay wages, they don’t have the benefits, and they have high turnover which leads to abuse and escapes. They say they’re in it for public safety — that’s BS. They’re in it for the money.”

August 30, 2006 Ludington Daily News
The Lake County community is one step closer to reopening the former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility thanks to a bill passed today by the House of Representatives. The bill heads to the governor’s desk for approval, and she has indicated she will sign it. House Bill 5800, sponsored by Rep. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, would allow GEO Group, the prison’s owner, to contract with out-of-state vendors to house inmates in the Baldwin facility. An amendment to the bill — which would have limited the risk level of inmates that could have been housed in the facility — was voted down before the bill passed in a concurrence vote. It had already passed both the house and senate earlier this year, but because the senate added an amendment to the bill, the house had to issue a concurrence vote.

August 2, 2006 Cadillac News
The fate of Lake County's youth prison could be in the hands of the California Legislature. California's Department of Corrections is considering a proposal that would allow the state to export illegal immigrants to the former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility near Baldwin. A CDC official met with a representative of the GEO Group and Lake County Sheriff Bob Hilts Monday in Baldwin to discuss a possible arrangement to fill the 550-bed maximum-security prison. “It's one proposal we're looking at,” said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for CDC. “We have historic levels of overpopulation.” Thornton reported 16,000 of the state's inmates are housed in alternative situations, many of those triple-bunked. “If we do nothing, we'll run out of beds in a year,” she said. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called a special session of legislature to address overcrowding and other prison system issues. The session begins Monday. A series of proposals, including one involving use of the Baldwin facility, will be under consideration by the state's lawmakers, according to Thornton. California is one of several entities facility owners the GEO Group is in negotiation with to enable it to reopen the six-year-old $37 million prison. Gov. Jennifer Granholm closed the facility last October when she withdrew its funding, Before GEO is able to reopen the prison, it must gain legal rights to enter into contracts with the State of California, or other states, federal or local agencies. The State Corrections Code only allows its use as a youth correctional facility under contract with the State. Michigan legislators have shown strong bipartisan support for a bill that would permit GEO to import out-of-state detainees or inmates and contract with other agencies. The House passed the legislation 83 to 20. The Senate approved the bill 36 to 1, said Peter Wills, spokesperson for State Rep. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart. While Granholm had vetoed a version of the bill in May that would have mandated state use of the prison in overcrowding conditions, she has indicated support for the “concept” of the legislation, Wills said. But the bill continues to draw opposition. Rep. Kathy Angerer, D-Dundee, and Rep. Gary McDowell, D-Rudyard, added amendments that would prevent import of inmates. “It will be taken up on Aug. 9. We're working with House leadership to work with members who offered the amendments to see if they would rescind,” Wills said. “We're confident the bill is still a good one.” Even given the authority for filling the prison with a new inmate population, GEO's problems won't end. Before closing, the facility employed 200 workers. “GEO's going to have to do an intensive search for employees,” said Hilts. The bottom line is that operations must be cost effective “Everybody that has visited is interested,” Hilts said. “The question is if they can make a deal. Its always monetary.”

July 26, 2006 AP
A former youth prison in Baldwin would be allowed to house a wide range of prisoners under legislation passed Wednesday by the state Senate. The bill would allow the prison to be used for a Michigan prison population, county prisoners, out-of-state prisoners or federal detainees. The former Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, located about 65 miles north of Grand Rapids, was closed last year. The legislation is designed to provide flexibility so the privately owned prison can house adult offenders and those not just under the jurisdiction of the state corrections department. The 480-bed prison, run for six years by GEO Group Inc., closed last October after state officials decided they could save $18 million by sending the young inmates housed at the Lake County facility to other prisons and ending the contract with the company based in Boca Raton, Fla. The legislation passed the Senate by an 36-1 vote and now goes back to the House because the Senate made changes to it. Before voting, Democrats tried to amend the bill to restrict the type and number of inmates that could be housed in the facility. But the amendments failed. When the bill came up for final passage, only Sen. Liz Brater, D-Ann Arbor, voted against it. Sen. Mike Goschka, R-Brant, was absent and did not vote.

July 25, 2006 Ludington Daily News
The Baldwin prison could reopen if the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and the owners of the prison, GEO Group, can reach a deal. “GEO and California (corrections) officials are in the preliminary stages of exchanging information and determining if there is mutual interest to continue discussions,” said Peter Wills, legislative assistant to State Rep. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart. GEO acknowledged the company is engaged in talks with California about the Baldwin facility. “We’ve had discussions with California for quite a while,” said Pablo Paez, director of communications at GEO Group. “The state has issued a request for information (about available facilities) to send criminal aliens out of state. We’re responding with the information that we have approximately 500 beds available in Michigan.” Paez said California was one of a number of agencies the company has contacted about renting beds at the Baldwin facility, but he refused to name the agencies, stating that the discussions are ongoing. Bill must pass for facility to house out-of-state inmates That legislation, House Bill 5800, would allow GEO to use the facility for uses other than Michigan prisoners. Currently, state law mandates MYCF can only be used to house Michigan youth offenders. Hansen’s bill would allow GEO to house detainees or inmates from other local, state, or federal agencies. HB 5800 passed the House June 15 and the Senate Judiciary Committee June 22 and could go before the full Senate Wednesday. “We’re back in session on Wednesday, and we’re going to try to get it through,” said John Lazet, chief of staff for Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-DeWitt, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Our goal is Wednesday.” Both Gov. Granholm and the DOC are supportive of the bill. Sen. Liz Brater, D-Ann Arbor, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opposes the bill because she disagrees with private prison operations and because the bill would allow other state agencies to ship prisoners out of state. “I don’t agree with (any state) transporting prisoners over state lines,” Brater said. “I’m not going to support importing prisoners to Michigan.”

May 26, 2006 TV 7 & 4
The future of the Geo Youth Prison near Baldwin is again an unknown after hopes to reopen the facility are dashed by the swipe of Governor Granholm's pen. Granholm vetoed a bill designed to house out of state inmates at the former prison. The Geo Prison was closed in November as a cost cutting measure by the state. Operators say they were hopeful of reopening and recouping some of the money that was invested when the prison was built back in 1990. Last week a state lawmaker introduced the bill that would allow the prison to house inmates from outside of the state. The prison was one of Lake County's largest employers.

May 18, 2006 Cadillac News
Eight months after Gov. Jennifer Granholm closed the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, Lake County's largest employer, the community is struggling to adjust to its losses and move forward. The only privately managed prison in Michigan, Granholm pulled MYCF's funding last September in efforts to balance the state's budget. MYCF employed more than 200 full-time workers. Measuring the full impact of the closure is complex, according to Jim Truxton, village president, but during the winter the community has seen businesses close, declining school enrollment and an increase in foreclosures. Major housing and hotel development projects remain frozen. “We've moved back 15 to 20 years in our economic plan,” Truxton said. Up to now, legislation has prohibited the $37 million, 550-bed facility from being converted from a youth prison to other correctional uses. State Representative for the 100th District Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, introduced legislation last March that will allow owners, The GEO Group, Inc., to house inmates from other local, state and federal agencies. “We're trying to open it up,” he said. Hansen anticipates the legislation to pass through legislature by early this summer. The impact of the shutdown is more far reaching than anticipated, according to Hansen. He pointed to infrastructure installed primarily to support MYCF and paid for with a bond. Without revenues from the prison, the water/sewer system has financially drained the township. “Lake County has always been poor,” he said. “Now they're poor and in debt.”

May 12, 2006 Ludington Daily News
The GEO Group has paid its taxes — more than $921,000 in base taxes — on the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility for Fiscal Year 2005, as it was obligated to do, according to Township Supervisor Tony Gagliardo. GEO also paid more than $15,000 in personal property taxes for the same year. The taxable value of the facility is listed at more than $18.9 million, while the true cash value is set at $40,912,283. While GEO’s assessment may change because the facility is not in use, Gagliardo said the township will consider that issue if the company requests a reassessment. “We’ll decide that when the time comes,” Gagliardo said. In the meantime, the township remains “status quo,” nearly seven months after the state canceled its contract with the GEO prison, he said. Gagliardo said he’s not had any contact with the company in about six months, but hopes something will come along to put the facility back in use and employ people again. Bill Cole, maintenance supervisor at the GEO facility, has maintained his job at the prison since it closed. He and a crew of three people are overseeing the physical plant. “We’re trying to keep everything running,” Cole said, “but there’s no major change. We’re just maintaining and painting. We’re here to keep vandalism away.” Cole said he’s not heard anything from the corporate offices about any new contracts, but state law states only Michigan teen offenders can be housed at the facility. A bill introduced by State Rep. Goeff Hansen, House Bill 5800, would allow GEO to pursue contracts to house inmates from federal and out-of-state agencies. In the meantime, the township is left with a water system too large for the amount of users it serves. The prison was the system’s major user until Gov. Jennifer Granholm line-item vetoed funding for the prison in September. Every day, the township releases water from the water tank because the current use does not provide sufficient turnover. The township is looking into installing a new pump better suited to the demand, Gagliardo said. They hoped to get state help with the cost of the pump — estimated at $40-45,000 — but the Michigan Economic Development Council said they could not help with that cost, Gagliardo said. MEDC said they might be able to help with other projects.

March 13, 2006 South Florida Business Journal
The Boca Raton-based correctional and detention management firm said it lost $807,000, or 8 cents a share, on revenue of $164.87 million for the 13 weeks ended Jan. 1. For the 14 weeks ended Jan. 2, 2005, Geo (NYSE: GGI) said it earned $5.22 million, or 53 cents a share, on revenue of $161.59 million. The most recent fourth quarter earnings include an $8.5 million, or 85-cents-a-share, international tax benefit related to certain tax law changes in Australia and South Africa, as well as a $500,000, or 5-cents-a-share, after-tax gain from discontinued operations including the sale of Geo's 72-bed Atlantic Shores Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Jan. 1. These gains were offset by a $12.6 million, or $1.26-a-share, after-tax non-cash impairment charge related to Geo's 500-bed Michigan Correctional Facility, which closed Oct. 14; a $200,000, or 2-cents-a-share, after-tax charge related to one-time costs associated with the reclassification of certain job positions from exempt to non-exempt employees; and $600,000, or 6 cents a share, in one-time start-up expenses related new contracts with the Indiana Department of Correction to manage the 2,416-bed New Castle Correctional Facility in New Castle, Ind., and with the New Mexico Department of Health to manage the 230-bed Fort Bayard Medical Center in Fort Bayard, N.M. The Michigan charge was actually smaller than the $21 million charge the company had predicted it would pay for losing its contract there. The facility closed, Oct. 14, after the state of Michigan canceled Geo's management contract. The company has since sued, alleging wrongful termination of the lease. For the year, Geo said it earned $7 million, or 70 cents a share, on revenue of $612.9 million. The year before - which included an extra week, giving it 53 weeks - the company said it earned $16.81 million, or $1.73 a share, on revenue of $593.99 million.

January 27, 2006 Yahoo
The GEO Group, Inc. (NYSE: GGI - News; "GEO") announced today that it will incur a non-cash impairment charge of $21.0 million, or $1.27 earnings per share, during the fourth quarter of 2005 related to GEO's 480-bed Michigan Correctional Facility (the "Facility"). The Facility was closed on October 14, 2005 following the cancellation by the State of Michigan of GEO's management contract. In addition, GEO's facility lease agreement (the "Lease") was cancelled by the Governor of the State of Michigan effective December 3, 2005. As previously disclosed, GEO has filed a lawsuit against the State of Michigan for the wrongful termination of the Lease. The Village of Baldwin (the "Village") and Webber Township (the "Township") joined GEO in the lawsuit and petitioned the court for a Temporary Restraining Order to prevent the State of Michigan from canceling the Lease and the management contract for the Facility. On November 21, 2005, the court denied the motion of the Village and Township for a Temporary Restraining Order. As a result primarily of the court's denial of the Village and Township's motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, GEO has determined that the estimate of the future cash flow for the Facility would be insufficient to cover the Facility's current book value. The Facility is currently valued on GEO's balance sheet at $34.0 million. GEO believes that its lawsuit against the State of Michigan is meritorious and intends to continue to vigorously assert its rights in the lawsuit.

November 30, 2005 Ludington Daily News
The GEO Group has hit a bump in the road in its lawsuit against the State of Michigan after the closing of the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility near Baldwin. Ingham County Circuit Court Judge James Giddings last week denied a motion by GEO seeking injunctive relief to keep the prison open - and to keep the state paying the lease - during court proceedings regarding the lawsuit. The state will have to pay for leasing the facility only through Friday, saving $5.4 million that would have paid for the lease of a now empty prison. Judge Giddings rejected GEO's claim that the lease could only be broken by action of the Legislature, said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections. "The governor took out her pen and struck out this appropriation," Giddings was quoted as saying in a Gongwer News Service report. "Funds for this use in this lease have been prohibited. I don't see how the plaintiffs can prevail.

November 20, 2005 South Bend Tribune
Brian Smith is the kind of person who officials in this small northwestern Michigan town had in mind when they agreed in 1996 to be the home of a new, high-security prison for young offenders. The 37-year-old corrections officer had been working in a privately-run Pennsylvania prison when he and his wife decided to move out of Philadelphia to find a better area to raise their young children. He took a job at the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility and bought a home down the road from where he worked. But the 480-bed prison run by GEO Group Inc. closed last month and Smith now drives 140 miles a day to and from his new job at a state prison in Muskegon. "I wish I could go back home now," Smith said as he stood outside the local Michigan Works office where he was getting information about state aid for his higher gasoline costs. What state and local officials didn't count on was fewer violent young offenders than projected. Young inmates who had been in the Lake County facility were moved to other prisons last month. The state's prison capacity is just short of 49,000 and isn't expected to hit capacity until March 2008, according to Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan. Tracy Huling, a consultant based in upstate New York who has researched the economies of areas near prisons, said the situation in Baldwin shows short-term thinking by both state and local officials. She said the two sides should have been working together to determine whether there were other options for the prison. "States have been creating penal colonies for years and there are consequences," she said. "It's understandable to see how folks get into this situation, but someone has to take the leadership role and say there's got to be a better way." Local officials met with Gov. Jennifer Granholm last month to talk about the future of the area. Since then, they have been working on a list of projects they think would help alleviate the loss of the prison. Although they want to diversify their economy, their top recommendation to the governor is reopening the prison. Without it, they said the area will lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue and fees for the area school district, local governments and the water and sewer systems, which were built to accommodate the large facility. They also said they may have to shut down the water system and drain the water tower because there won't be enough flow to keep the water from becoming stagnant or freezing in the winter. Despite their efforts, reopening the prison appears unlikely. The state budget remains tight and the state is being sued over its decision to end its lease with the GEO Group by the Boca Raton, Fla.-based company, the Village of Baldwin and Webber Township.

November 16, 2005 Ludington Daily News
All but 20 of the corrections officers formerly employed at the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility - 190 of 220 - have been hired into the state Department of Corrections operations, according to DOC spokesman Russ Marlan. Lake County residents were given top preference for jobs at the Pugsley Correctional Facility in Kingsley, the closest state-run facility to Baldwin, Marlan said. Other officers went to the Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee County and to the Muskegon Correctional Facility in Muskegon. The youth prison was a 480-bed, privately owned and operated prison filled with Michigan youth offenders in Lake County's Webber Township. Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed funding for the prison from the state budget this fall, citing what she referred to as inefficiencies and the desire to save taxpayers money. Opponents have countered, saying the facility was fulfilling its contract, and that it was one of the state's most efficient Level V prisons. GEO filed a lawsuit against the state charging that only the Legislature could cancel the state's lease on the building. The company is contending that the governor's veto canceled the contract. GEO's lawsuit said only the Legislature could have pulled the funding for the building lease. Both the House and Senate lawmakers found funding for the prison within the DOC budget. The governor line-item vetoed that funding, and the Legislature signed that budget, which Marlan said constitutes the necessary "legislative action." William Nowling, spokesman for GEO, said the company is seeking injunctive relief - in essence a temporary restraining order - to prevent the state from stopping payment. "It would be a victory for the community," Nowling said, "but it doesn't bring the prisoners back." Nowling said an injunction would keep the building open for other prisoners, either from the state or other entities. "This is only the first stage of the lawsuit," Nowling said. "We invested and put up this $40 million facility and signed the contract so the state couldn't up and run." Webber Township Supervisor Tony Gagliardo said that the township cannot wait much longer. "With our water tank, we need to keep it from freezing," Gagliardo said. "It needs to turn over every seven days." And with only minimal users, there is not enough demand for the water to ensure that rate of turnover, Gagliardo said. The prison was the major user of the water system. Either the township will be forced to shut the water off and drain the tower or they will have to install a pressure tank and pump and erect a building to house the pump, according to Gagliardo. He said adding the new pump would cost upwards of $160,000. The pump and tank would cost the township $80-100,000, with the building adding approximately $40-60,000. Plus, the township would also have to heat the building. "That's not what we wanted to use the (township's) money for," Gagliardo said. Nowling said GEO is actively looking for a new set of inmates to fill the Baldwin area facility. "We're marketing it the best we can," Nowling said. "The problem is the location (in rural Michigan) and that the facility is a Level V maximum security prison. That has limitations." GEO thinks there are several options for the building, including: o The state could renew a contract with GEO to house Level V adult inmates. o GEO could maintain the building and lease it to the state, who could house and staff the prison. o GEO could get prisoners from outside of Michigan to fill the prison. o The state could buy the prison from GEO. "We'd like to keep it within the Michigan system," Nowling said.

November 8, 2005 Detroit Free Press
Republican state legislators would have a hard time explaining why they stuck taxpayers with a $5.5-million bill to lease an empty prison. But they may have to if they fail to amend this year's budget and protect the state against a lawsuit by the private company that ran the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin. Geo Group Inc., along with the Village of Baldwin and Webber Township, sued the state last week for wrongfully terminating its contract, after Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed money to keep the prison open. By closing an unnecessary and inefficient prison, Granholm saved the state $18 million a year -- $12.5 million for operating the facility and $5.5 million for the building lease. The Michigan Department of Corrections already has transferred the inmates at the 480-bed facility, and the department has found jobs elsewhere in the system for the nearly 200 employees. Even so, Geo claims the state owes it $5.5 million in rent because its contract says only the Legislature can cancel the agreement. The state is on solid legal ground, but anything can happen in court. Legislators can make sure the state prevails by amending the current budget bill, or passing a separate bill, to prohibit payment of the lease. Unfortunately, Republicans appear more interested in one-upping the governor than acting in the people's best interest. "We have no plans to save the governor from herself," Ari Adler, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, R-Wyoming, said last month. Protecting the state against a costly lawsuit isn't about saving the governor -- it's about saving the strapped state and taxpayers millions of dollars. Legislators should not play politics with this issue and force the state to pay for an empty prison.

November 4, 2005 Psychiatry News
After a watchdog group sues a Michigan private youth prison over inadequate care for inmates, the prison is closed due to budget reasons. Despite opposition from Republicans, Michigan's youth prison was closed last month when Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) announced the first budget bills for the 2005-06 fiscal year. The move helped trim a projected deficit of $770 million. The prison closing was one of the most hotly contested items in the budget. "This costly facility is not needed and was originally constructed to house violent young offenders, but the need for this facility never materialized," the governor said. Her office noted that the legislative auditor general said less-expensive beds can be used to house the teen offenders, saving the state $17.8 million a year. Earlier this year the Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service Inc. filed a lawsuit against State Department of Corrections Director Patricia Casuso, Michigan Youth Correction Facility Warden Frank Elo, and the GEO Group Inc., a Florida-based, prison-management company that owns and runs the state's private prison at Baldwin, claiming the prison was mismanaged. After the state had given the company a 60-day notice that it was terminating the lease, the GEO Group made a last-minute offer to cut the cost of the state's $18.8 million four-year contract by at least $2 million a year, an indication of how profitable private prisons are. Now the state faces a lawsuit over the lease for the privately built facility, and prison supporters say the fight is not over. The Michigan Youth Correctional Facility was built in 1999 under former Gov. John Engler (R), who promised good-paying jobs to residents in the poverty-stricken Lake County region; it was the state's first privately run, for-profit prison. Soon after it opened, parents of teenaged boys convicted as adults alleged that their children had suffered physical, mental, and sexual abuse at the maximum-security prison. Their allegations were backed up by a watchdog group. "Even though we anticipated that the facility was to be closed regardless, we went ahead and filed the suit because [staff] were not providing the proper services to the kids," Tom Masseau, public policy specialist with the Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service, told Psychiatric News. The suit accused the prison of neglecting inmates' physical and mental health and failing to provide enough trained counselors for those suffering from mental illnesses and developmental disabilities. Masseau said there was only one full-time social worker for 483 inmates. He added that low-level offenders were housed with convicted rapists and murderers. Many inmates were kept in isolation for days at a time without recreation and as punishment for minor offenses were limited to a few showers a week. "Sixty-one suicide attempts were reported between October 2004 and March 2005," Masseau said. "This is a significant increase, because for all of 2003, there were only 18 suicide attempts," he added. Masseau attributed the suicide attempts to the lack of proper treatment for inmates, many of whom suffered from mental illness and developmental disabilities. "Now that the facility is closed, we will be monitoring what happens to these kids to make sure that the state provides the appropriate services for them," he said. The GEO Group said it will vigorously contest the allegations and questioned the plaintiffs' motivation and timing. It warned it will pursue and enforce any remedies under the law against the Michigan Advocacy and Protection Service. Management and Budget Department spokesperson Bridget Medina had no immediate comment on the lease issue and what options the state was reviewing. Many people in the mental health and human service communities agreed that it was time Michigan dissolved its relationship with the GEO Group, a worldwide operation that runs prisons in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. "I fully expected Gov. Granholm to end the contract, and that was sound public policy," Mark Reinstein, Ph.D., CEO, and president of the Mental Health Association in Michigan, told Psychiatric News. "The mental health and human service communities had serious concerns about the efficacy and performance of this facility." Psychiatrist Michele Reid, M.D., medical director of the Detroit-Wayne County Community Mental Health Agency and a corresponding member of APA's Council on Member and District Branch Relations, noted that the Mental Health Commission had received testimony from many families and deliberated extensively on mental health services to persons in correctional settings for both juveniles and adults. "We are elated that the youth prison is closed. It's a scandal that it was ever opened and continued to be run in such a way that could do so much damage to so many children," Susan McParland, director of the Michigan Association for Children With Emotional Disorders, told Psychiatric News. "Our organization had urged that the Baldwin facility, or so-called `punk prison,' be closed.... There was no purpose for this facility. As advocates for kids, we know that detention in general does a lot of harm to children who have emotional disorders, and this facility was the `belly of the beast' so to speak." State Sen. Michelle McManus (R), whose Lake Leelanau district includes the prison, claims the suit sucker-punched residents of a county that often leads the state in unemployment and poverty. "Just when it seems things can't get any darker for residents of Lake County, the groups that are against the prison found one more stunt to pull," she said. "This suit was clearly timed for maximum political impact." Republican legislators who favor privatization wanted the funding for the prison to continue and disputed the claims that adult prisons have enough beds to accommodate the youthful inmates who were shipped to adult prisons beginning October 1. Corrections spokesperson Leo Lalonde said 320 prisoners would be transferred to the Thumb Correctional Facility, with others scattered throughout the system. Sexual assaults at juvenile prisons occur 10 times more often than at adult prisons, according to information released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in July.

November 4, 2005 Cadillac News
The operators of the private youth prison near Baldwin sued the state Thursday, claiming wrongful termination of the company's lease. The village of Baldwin and Webber Township joined The GEO Group, Inc. in filing the suit in Ingham County court against the Michigan Department of Corrections and Michigan Department of Management and Budget. Inmates at the 480-bed facility have been transferred to other facilities and the facility's nearly 200 employees have been offered other state jobs. Job loss is only one problem locals face as a result of the prison closing. A water system built in Webber Township for MYCF supplies only one other user, a small office building. The system has become a costly white elephant. "It's bad enough that we're losing revenues," said Township Supervisor Tony Gagliardo. "But it's costing us to keep it open." A mechanical failure of a water pump on Nov. 1 is adding to township expenses, but officials aim to keep the system operational to support measures to reopen operations. Local government officials say state officials under former GOP Gov. John Engler made promises to persuade them to allow the prison in their community, including a long-term commitment by the state to use the prison after it opened in 1999.

November 3, 2005 AP
The operators of a private youth prison near Baldwin sued the state Thursday, claiming wrongful termination of the company's lease. Inmates at the 480-bed facility about 65 miles north of Grand Rapids already have been transferred to other facilities and nearly 200 employees have been offered other state jobs. Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed money that would have kept the prison open in the budget year that started Oct. 1. The veto saved the state $18 million by ending the state's contract with the GEO Group Inc., the private owners of the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility. GEO, along with the Village of Baldwin and Webber Township, filed suit in an Ingham County court against the Michigan Department of Corrections and the Michigan Department of Management and Budget. The company, based in Boca Raton, Fla., said the state can't end the lease because there was no specific prohibition against using appropriated funds to pay the lease in a Department of Corrections budget recently approved by state lawmakers. But Granholm said the facility costs too much to run and houses few of the violent young offenders it was meant to hold. The state sent economic development workers to Baldwin to help local officials look for other business opportunities for the city and county, one of the state's poorest.

October 7, 2005 Detroit Free Press
Republicans are charging that Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent the wrong message by canceling the state's contract for an unneeded, privately run youth prison in Baldwin. In fact, her message was exactly right. Granholm's budget veto last week, ending the contract with the for-profit Geo Group, will save taxpayers $18 million a year. Thanks to new efforts to control the state's inmate population, Corrections now has room -- roughly 680 spare beds -- to send the 480 teenage boys at Youth Correctional Facility to other prisons. Most will go to an area separate from adults at Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer. Instead of supporting this sensible move to save money, Republicans are on the attack, including a tasteless reference to "Hurricane Jennifer" by Rep. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart. The GOP has argued that closing Youth Correctional Facility would cost jobs, as if that were a reason to keep open a prison. Besides, the state has pledged to transfer all of the facility's 150 corrections officers into vacant positions at other prisons -- where they'll make more money and receive better benefits. Michigan has closed several state-run prisons in the last four years, including the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia and Western Wayne Correctional Facility in Plymouth. Granholm was not picking on the privately run Baldwin prison. Legally, Michigan could cancel its management contract, with 90-days notice, if the prison is no longer needed. Geo was notified June 30. Republicans, who talk a lot about government waste, should think twice before making the governor's veto a political issue. Granholm sent the right message to businesses, citizens and taxpayers: During a budget crisis, Michigan will not maintain costly and unnecessary prisons to subsidize jobs or appease politicians.

October 3, 2005 South Florida Business Journal
The Geo Group said it has lost a contract in Michigan. Accordingly, the company has shifted its fourth quarter and year-end guidance. Available previous guidance did not account for Geo's (NYSE: GGI) plan to merge with Correctional Services Corp., so those numbers are no longer comparable to the new guidance. The new fourth quarter prediction is revenue of $167 million to $174 million and earnings per share from 31 cents to 34 cents. For the year, the new revenue range is $725 million to $745 million and the new earnings per share forecast is from $1.70 to $1.80. Boca Raton-based Geo had predicted as early as July it might lose its work with the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility. The correctional and detention management company said it is in the process of determining whether an impairment charge related to the closure of the facility is required and, if so, the appropriate timing. Media sources in Michigan have indicated the state expects to save $18 million by ending its contract with Geo and also plans to offer state jobs to the soon-to-be-shuttered facility's workers.

October 1, 2005 Cadillac News
Gov. Jennifer Granholm's decision Friday to veto funding for the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Lake County is a devastating blow to the economic future of one of Michigan's poorest counties. The veto ends the state's 20-year contract with the facility's management firm the GEO Group, Inc. The State Budget Office defended the governor's move. Closing MYCF is expected to save about $17.8 million from the Department of Corrections $1.88 billion budget. "We found a significant budget shortfall in Michigan that forced us to make difficult choices," said Greg Bird, director of communications for the State Budget Office. "These prisoners can be housed in alternative facilities at a savings to the taxpayer."

September 29, 2005 Michigan Live
More than 200 workers at the state's only private prison will be given top priority for state job openings if Gov. Jennifer Granholm, as expected, vetoes funding for the facility. Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, said Wednesday that human resources and civil service workers are planning to meet with Michigan Youth Correctional Facility employees in Baldwin next week to talk about state employment. The department also has plans to begin moving some 470 prisoners to state-owned facilities if the $17.8 million for the prison is vetoed.

September 23, 2005 Ludington Daily News
Gov. Jennifer Granholm still plans to veto funding for the Baldwin prison, Liz Boyd, a spokeswoman from her office, said this morning. The Department of Corrections budget — which passed the Legislature with funding for the prison intact — is expected to reach the governor’s desk soon, at least by the start of the state’s new fiscal year, Oct. 1. As Lake County residents await Granholm’s official action regarding the future of the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, several of those residents who received a letter from the governor were left scratching their heads over portions of that letter. The wording was confusing, acknowledged Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, but the result is the same. The DOC still proposes shutting the facility down to save taxpayers money, Marlan said.

September 22, 2005 Detroit Free Press
Political pressure is mounting on Gov. Jennifer Granholm to back off on closing the inefficient and unnecessary Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin. That's bad news, because standing up to such pressure is not what Granholm does best. This time, though, she needs to straighten her spine and do what she knows is best for Michigan: End the $18-mllion-a-year contract with the private, for-profit Geo Group to operate the so-called punk prison. For its size, the youth prison is one of Michigan's most costly and inefficient. Moreover, the maximum-security prison has been criticized for neglecting health and education needs and for housing mostly lower-security offenders. Even if those problems could be fixed, the 6-year-old prison is no longer needed -- and maybe never was. The expected wave of young so-called superpredators never happened. The Department of Corrections has done a better job of managing its population in recent years. Michigan was one of the few states to lower its prison population in 2003 and 2004, and Corrections has other initiatives to contain costly prison growth. The state now has room to transfer the 480 teenage boys to strictly segregated areas within adult institutions. Republicans have argued that closing the youth prison would hurt Baldwin's economy, as if prisons are employment agencies. Like other government programs, prisons exist to provide necessary services, not subsidize jobs. Corrections' 2005-06 budget includes funding to run the prison, but Granholm has said she would veto the money. Unfortunately, Republicans still have reason to hope, because Granholm has backed down in the past. This time she should not. Michigan can't afford to keep prisons open simply to provide jobs or appease politicians.

September 14, 2005 AP
Young offenders at a private prison in Lake County are not spending enough time in school and those who have mental illnesses and developmental disabilities aren't getting adequate help, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday. The Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service Inc. filed the lawsuit against state Department of Corrections Director Patricia Caruso, Michigan Youth Correctional Facility warden Frank Elo and the GEO Group Inc., a Florida-based prison-management company that owns and runs the prison. The group filed the lawsuit in federal court in Grand Rapids. The group wants the court to order improvements at the youth prison near Baldwin. Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service is going ahead with the lawsuit although it appears the state will end its contract for the prison. Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm likely will veto funding for the prison in the budget for the fiscal year that begins in a few weeks as a way to balance the budget, despite Republican support for keeping the funding in place. In the lawsuit, the advocacy group says young inmates attend class for as little as three hours a week despite a contract that requires 30 hours of weekly instruction for inmates with at least an eighth-grade education. Isolated inmates and those in detention do not receive any instruction, although they are required to receive some individually, the lawsuit said. Low-level offenders at the youth prison are housed with inmates convicted of rape and murder because of the facility's high-security classification, making it more likely they will "find themselves the victims of prisoner assaults," the group said in a written statement. The advocacy group also said more trained counselors are needed at the prison to help many of the young inmates who have developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, said Stacy Hickox, an attorney for the group. The prison has one full-time social worker for 480 inmates, the group said.

September 9, 2005 AP
Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Republican legislative leaders have agreed on the state's spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in less than a month, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader said Friday. Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema was expected to lay out the details of the roughly $40 billion budget at an 11 a.m. news conference, spokesman John Long said. Long said the deal includes funding for the Newberry Correctional Facility and Camp Manistique in the Upper Peninsula and a privately run youth prison in Lake County. Granholm and Republicans have disagreed sharply over the corrections budget. Granholm had proposed ending the state's contract with the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin while Republicans had proposed closing the Newberry facility.

September 1, 2005 Ludington Daily News
State Rep. Geoff Hansen, R-Hart, and U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, take issue with Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s contention that the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin, operated by GEO Group, Inc., is not efficient and they are urging her not to cancel the 20-year contract. The fear is if the contract is canceled, GEO will then close the prison and put the about 229 full time employees there out of work. The prison’s operating budget for 2004 was $13.4 million. Granholm, Friday in Ludington, stated the Michigan Auditor General identified the prison as the least efficient in the state and said the offenders in the 480 beds there could be absorbed into Michigan Department of Corrections facilities. Hansen said he understands the Auditor General report differently. He said if judged against other Level 5 prisons in Michigan, it is the second most efficient prison of that type in the state. He said the Auditor General was suggesting that the contract be renegotiated to allow the facility to operate at a lower level, thus reducing costs. Rep. Hansen was more blunt. “If this should happen and the state pulls the contract, the state better have a plan for receivership for Baldwin Schools, Lake County and Webber Township. They’ve been poor forever. They went out on a limb. They have a lot of debt in the infrastructure,” he said. The facility pays $1 million in taxes, including $400,000 to Baldwin schools.

July 12, 2005 Biz Journal
In a development the company said could hurt it financially, Geo Group said it may lose a contract in Michigan. The Boca Raton-based prison management firm said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing it received written notice June 30 from the State of Michigan Department of Management and Budget stating the state of Michigan intends to cancel Geo's (NYSE: GGI) management contract to operate the 480-bed Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Mich. The cancellation would be effective Sept. 30. Geo currently operates the Michigan facility via to a management contract with the Michigan Department of Corrections. The company did not give dollar amounts associated with the deal. Yet, Geo said as a result of it efforts and efforts by the locally affected community, the Michigan House and Senate have approved separate budget bills that include funding for the Michigan Facility for Michigan's next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. "The two budget bills will now go to a conference committee for reconciliation and then to the governor for approval or rejection," Geo said. However, the company cautioned there can be no assurances the efforts to continue funding for the Michigan facility beyond Sept. 30 will be successful. "In the event funding for the Michigan facility ends on Sept. 30, 2005, Geo's financial condition and results of operations would be materially adversely affected," the company warned. Shares closed down 22 cents to $25.45. The 52-week high was $32.70 on Feb. 8. The 52-week low was $17.02 on July 26.

July 7, 2005 Yahoo
On June 30, 2005, The GEO Group, Inc. ("GEO") received written notice from the State of Michigan Department of Management and Budget that the State of Michigan intends to cancel GEO's management contract to operate the 480-bed Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan (the "Michigan Facility"), effective September 30, 2005. GEO operates the Michigan Facility pursuant to a management contract with the Michigan Department of Corrections (the "DOC"). As a result of efforts by GEO and the locally affected community, the Michigan House and Senate have approved separate budget bills that include funding for the Michigan Facility for Michigan's next fiscal year, which begins on October 1, 2005. The two budget bills will now go to a conference committee for reconciliation and then to the Governor for approval or rejection. There can be no assurances that the efforts to continue funding for the Michigan Facility beyond September 30, 2005 will be successful. In the event funding for the Michigan Facility ends on September 30, 2005, GEO's financial condition and results of operations would be materially adversely affected.

June 26, 2005 Detroit News
LANSING -- State leaders will mothball a northern Michigan prison this year to save money, but which facility to vacate has emerged as an issue pitting Republicans against Democrats and two struggling counties against each other. Gov. Jennifer Granholm and state Corrections Director Pat Caruso have targeted a Michigan prison for teen offenders, near Baldwin, between Traverse City and Grand Rapids. They estimate a savings of $7.5 million next year by moving its inmates elsewhere. Republican lawmakers, citing the economic blow the impoverished area would suffer with the loss of 230 corrections officer jobs, have rejected that idea. They want to shutter an Upper Peninsula prison in a converted state mental hospital at Newberry and a Manistique prison camp, estimating that would save $12 million. Budget legislation closing the Upper Peninsula prison and camp "will not pass my desk," Granholm pledged last week during a rally of U.P. residents and corrections workers. The governor accused lawmakers of partisan maneuvering that ignores an analysis showing the privately run Baldwin prison is too costly. "Republicans want to keep the Baldwin prison open in defiance of their own auditor general's report," she said. The state auditor general reported Michigan's contract guarantees the prison owner, GEO Group, a rate of $75.81 a day per inmate. That is a higher cost than all but four of the other 37 prisons in the corrections system, according to the report. But Republican Rep. Jack Brandenburg of Harrison Township, head of a House panel that debated the issue in April, said the plan to close the state's only privately operated prison "sends a terrible message" to firms that want to do business here. Democrats accuse the Republican majority of voting to protect prison jobs in Republican territory while sacrificing such jobs in the more-Democratic central U.P.

June 15, 2005 Detroit Free Press
The fight over which state prisons to close has become ridiculously political. Members of the state House, against all logic, approved closing Newberry Correctional Facility and Camp Manistique in the Upper Peninsula and keeping open the expensive and unnecessary Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin. The state Senate ought to reject this plan. For its size, the so-called punk prison is one of Michigan's most costly -- and small wonder. It's run by the private, for-profit GEO Group Inc., whose CEO was paid $2.2 million last year to run a prison system that's considerably smaller than Michigan's. The state's corrections director, Patricia Caruso, earns $130,000 a year. Of more importance, the youth prison, which opened in 1999, is no longer needed -- and maybe never was. The expected wave of so-called super predators never happened. The maximum-security youth prison, with gun towers and 16-foot razor wire fences, has been criticized for neglecting health and educational needs and for housing mostly lower-security offenders. The state's nonpartisan Office of the Auditor General recommended reconsidering the state's contract with the prison. Corrections professionals, in the best position to evaluate prison needs, want to shut it down. Republicans have argued that closing the youth prison would cost the Baldwin area, a Republican district, needed jobs. That's hard to deny. But the argument cuts both ways. Closing Newberry would equally harm that area's economy. The larger point is that government is not an employment agency. It exists to provide necessary services. Michigan can and should close a prison. Politics aside, the best choice for the state Senate is ending the contract with Michigan Youth Correctional Facility.

June 3, 2005 The Evening News
Though clearly worried, a Luce County official today said the threatened closing of state prisons in Newberry and Manistique is hauntingly familiar territory for local people. On Thursday, a State Senate subcommittee voted 3-2 to close the Newberry prison and its subsidiary, Camp Manistique, in a money saving move. The move stunned state Corrections Department officials, who earlier recommended closure of a privately operated prison in Baldwin. Terry Stark, chairman of the Luce County Board, today said the surprise move would be "devastating" for Luce County, which is still struggling nearly 20 years after the state mental hospital pulled out of Newberry. The unexpected prison closure switch followed a well publicized campaign by Lake County partisans to preserve the much smaller and troubled youth correctional facility in Baldwin. A recent state audit of prisons ranked that private prison among the highest cost prisons in the state on a per-prisoner basis. Much larger than the Baldwin prison, Newberry houses about 1,100 inmates. The prison and the subsidiary Manistique camp employ 345 people, many of them local. A critical element in a recent economic revival in chronically depressed Luce County, the Newberry prison is the county's largest employer. The vote to switch Newberry for the Baldwin prison followed strict party lines; the three Republicans on the subcommittee voted for the move and the two Democrats voted against. The apparent political partisanship that figured in the voting in Lansing pits two rural counties in similar economic straits against each other. Baldwin and Lake County are represented by a Republican. Newberry is represented by first-term State Representative Gary McDowell (D-Rudyard). State Sen. Mike Prusi (D-Ishpeming) charged the subcommittee Republicans with playing politics with the prison-closing vote. "I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues would play politics with people's jobs and the public's safety," Prusi said in a statement.

May 27, 2005 AP
A new state audit says prison officials should consider whether to continue sending young felons to a private prison in northern Michigan because it is one of the most expensive prisons in the state. The report released Friday by the Michigan Office of the Auditor General likely will help efforts by Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration to close the facility in Lake County's Baldwin to save money in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The audit said the state Department of Corrections didn't efficiently use state money by housing youthful prisons offenders at the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility. The report covers records from October 2001 to November 2004. State auditors and the Corrections Department estimate the state will save $7.5 million a year by canceling the lease with The Geo Group Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla.-based prison-management company that owns and operates the prison. A portion of that savings would come from moving inmates between 17 and 19 to other facilities in the state, auditor said. The state's contract with Geo guarantees $75.81 a day for each inmate at the prison, the audit said. Only four of the state's 37 other prisons had a higher per prisoner cost, it said. The audit also pointed out a number of security concerns. Prison officials were not making sure employees were randomly searched as they came and went and cells were checked by officers, both required by the Department of Corrections, it said.

May 23, 2005 Detroit Free Press
Deep in the scrubby jack pine forests of Lake County, an unlikely battle is brewing over the state's so-called punk prison. At issue is whether to close the maximum-security prison for 484 teenage boys convicted as adults. Most communities might be glad to see it go, but most aren't Lake County. Perched too far inland to benefit from Lake Michigan's charms, the county often leads the state in unemployment and poverty. So, in the 1990s, when then-Gov. John Engler came courting with an offer of well-paying jobs in the state's first privately run, for-profit prison, many embraced it. Since its opening in 1999, though, parents of inmates have alleged physical, sexual and mental abuse at the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin. A watchdog agency has accused the Florida-based GEO Group Inc., which owns and operates the prison, of neglecting inmates' health, education and rehabilitation. One sign of trouble, critics say, is the high number of suicide attempts from last October through March. Now, Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants to yank the state's $18.8-million contract with GEO Group to help trim a projected deficit that could top $770 million. The inmates -- many of whom are from metro Detroit -- would be shipped to adult prisons by Oct. 1. Critics of the prison, including parents, back the governor. This month, an independent inspector hired by the state substantiated eight violations from myriad complaints made by Michigan Protection & Advocacy about the prison's educational programs. Among other things, the prison was faulted for failing to get inmates' prior school records to determine what services they need. "I really can't comment on that report yet because we're still formulating our response to what their findings were," Allen Haigh, the prison's deputy warden for programs, said last week. The contract calls for providing 30 hours of education a week for those testing at or below an eighth-grade level. Guidelines aren't set for other inmates. Haigh said students usually attend classes for 2 1/2 hours. Kristen Whaley, whose 18-year-old son Kevin Waller began serving a 5- to 15-year sentence in July on invasion, larceny and weapons charges, said he has told her he's in school only about an hour a day. Critics say the prison has imposed overly harsh punishments. Michigan Protection & Advocacy attorney Stacy Hickox said a few prisoners have been kept in administrative segregation -- the equivalent of solitary confinement -- for hundreds of days. "People have become suicidal, in a real deep depression," Hickox said. She said one prisoner with mental-health needs spent 432 days in segregation since December 2003, and another spent 152 days there in 2003. Segregated inmates are allowed books and some personal items and are to get an hour of recreation a day, five days a week. The GEO Group's report to legislators showed 15 suicide attempts at the prison between July and September 2004, and 61 attempts from October 2004 to March 2005. Warden Frank Elo said each incident is addressed seriously. Michigan Protection & Advocacy investigators said they have verified allegations of beatings and rapes involving inmates, and verbal and other abuse claims against workers. Experts acknowledge cruelty and violence are part of any prison culture, and Elo said, "One of the realities is this occupation is prone to inmates that try to escape, assault each other or employees." Elo said that in July his facility achieved a near-perfect rating from the American Correctional Association, a national accreditation board that reviews Michigan's other prisons. Still, parents like Whaley complain that their children aren't safe at the prison, where lesser offenders aren't segregated from inmates convicted of violent crimes.

May 20, 2005 Detroit Free Press
Some Republicans in the state House who consider themselves fiscal watchdogs are making an ill-advised effort to keep open an expensive prison that Michigan doesn't need. Keeping the maximum-security prison in Baldwin running for 480 teenage boys would cost the state $18 million next year. The state can better serve its taxpayers and young offenders by shutting down the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, effective Oct. 1, and transferring the prisoners to strictly segregated areas within adult institutions with room. The so-called punk prison, run by a private, for-profit company, opened six years ago to house the most violent young offenders, convicted as adults. But the wave of so-called super predators never happened. The maximum-security youth prison, with gun towers and 16-foot razor wire fences, has come under fire for neglecting health and educational needs and for housing mostly lower-security offenders. Some were not even convicted of violent crimes. Most in the youth prison are adults 18 or 19. They move into adult prisons at 20. No doubt, ending the state's contract with Geo Group Inc. to operate the prison, as Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposed, will hurt the local economy. That's unfortunate, but government programs like prisons exist, primarily, to provide necessary services, not subsidize jobs. If the head of the Detroit Department of Transportation asked for more state aid to keep bus-driving jobs and boost Detroit's economy, he'd be run out of Lansing. The Department of Corrections must manage its prisoner population to control its costs. It has done so in the last few years, as one of the few states in the nation to report slight decreases in 2003 and 2004. The department has closed the Western Wayne Correctional Facility in Plymouth, the State Prison of Southern Michigan in Jackson and the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia. With 850 open beds, the state can move the 480 youth prisoners into the state system at no added cost. To help close a projected $770 million budget hole, the state ought to shut down its costly and unnecessary youth prison.

April 27, 2005 Michigan Live
Gov. Jennifer Granholm's proposal to shutter the state's only privately run corrections facility, the so-called punk prison in Baldwin, should be shelved, say privatization advocates who point to studies showing that competition from private companies saves the prison system money. But others, including two former Republican senators who voted for the private prison, argued at a legislative budget hearing Tuesday that there's no need for the maximum-security prison for teens because juvenile crime has dropped. At issue is $18.8 million the state hopes to save next year by ending a contract with the Geo Group of Boca Raton, Fla., for housing 480 offenders 19 and younger in the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Lake County. The prison, the state's only private facility, opened in 1999. Granholm has proposed breaking a lease with the Geo Group and absorbing the inmates into other state-run facilities. State officials say that juvenile crime has dropped and predictions about "juvenile predators" never materialized. Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, said he was upset that he wasn't allowed to testify Tuesday, although he was given a short time to testify last week. Michigan Protection and Advocacy, which monitors inmates with disabilities, as well as families of two inmates who are upset at programs and safety at the prison, also were prepared to testify but weren't called upon. MP&A reported that inmates with special education needs are only getting three hours a week of instruction, instead of 30 hours a week called for in the state's contract.

February 27, 2005 Michigan Live
It will cost taxpayers about $40,000 apiece this year to incarcerate 300 minimum security teen-agers at the privately run, maximum security "Punk Prison" in Baldwin. That's $15,000 more than the cost of out-of-state undergraduate tuition at the University of Michigan. And $20,000 more than the cost of incarcerating low-risk inmates at a regular Michigan prison camp. When it was proposed by then-Gov. John Engler in 1996, Lake County's Michigan Youth Correctional Facility was billed as serving two purposes. Neither appears to have been meet. The first was to lock up behind tall fences and rows of razor wire hundreds of the most dangerous, predatory teen-agers in the state. As the Michigan Department of Corrections' own numbers suggest, the estimated number of such vicious predators terrorizing the streets was wildly inflated. A second point was to establish the principle of privatization in what had traditionally been a government responsibility to provide for the public safety. Nearly a decade after it was proposed, however, the youth lockup remains the Department of Corrections' only privately operated prison in the state. Given the high cost of operating the facility, Gov. Jennifer Granholm is proposing to end the state's $19 million annual contract with its owner and operator, Geo Group Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla. Not only is it bad prison policy to incarcerate hundreds of minimum security 18- and 19-year-old adults in a prison designed to house violent juveniles, it's a bad deal for taxpayers. The annual cost of running a low-level camp or prison is not $40,000 per inmate, but about $20,000. Since the state has the bed space to house the Baldwin prisoners in other, state-run facilities, that $19 million represents net savings.

May 2, 2004
Five years after Michigan opened its only private, for-profit prison -- the so-called punk prison in Baldwin -- critics charge that taxpayers are getting soaked for high-security costs when a majority of the young inmates could be housed in lower-security facilities. The Michigan Youth Correctional Facility was part of a sweeping juvenile justice reform package approved in 1996 that promised "adult time for adult crime."The prison was constructed for maximum security, usually reserved for inmates who try to escape or commit new crimes while in prison. It comes complete with two manned gun towers and an armed response vehicle that circles the perimeter 24 hours a day. But the hordes of violent juvenile offenders expected to fill up the facility have yet to materialize. Less than one-third of the inmates there last week were Level 4 and 5, the highest security levels, while two-thirds were Levels 1 and 2, the lowest security levels. Those lower-security levels are assigned to inmates committing less serious crimes or with good behavior over time inside the prison. "It's incredible that we are operating a system where there's only two ways to get to maximum security. One is by serious misbehavior in prison, and the other is by being a kid," said Barbara Levine, executive director of the Citizens Alliance of Prisons & Public Spending, a Michigan prison spending watchdog group. Michigan will spend $19.27 million next year on the 480-bed prison. A study by Levine's group found that most at the facility weren't even juveniles when they committed their crimes. CAPPS found that 58 percent of those in the prison in May 2003 were considered adults, defined as 17 or older, at the time of their offenses. The facility was originally aimed at juveniles who commit crimes serious enough for judges and prosecutors to move them to the adult system. The CAPPS report found seven first-degree murderers, 21 second-degree murderers, 108 armed robbers and 58 sex offenders in May 2003. It also showed inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes, including 32 home invasion sentences, 15 breaking and entering, 19 drug charges and 10 on car theft. The prison is run by the Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group Inc., formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp. Elizabeth Arnovits, executive director of the Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency, said the state is simply filling up the prison with other teens when the wave of "superpredators" predicted in the mid-1990s didn't happen. "Why are we paying this private provider for a Level 5 facility, when in fact they are having predominantly minor offenders who don't need that kind of security?" said Arnovits, whose group advocates for crime-prevention programs. "The few that are Levels 5 that have committed terrible crimes need to be in a special place, but it doesn't have to be this hugely expensive prison." Part of the effort in the 1990s was to move a portion of hard-core juveniles from expensive treatment beds in the state social services agencies to more of a punishment-oriented approach. The daily rate at the state's high-security juvenile facility, Maxey Training School in Whitmore Lake, is $327, according to the Family Independence Agency. The wrong kids are going to the youth prison, said Jon Cisky, a former state senator who worked on the juvenile justice package and is now a criminal justice professor at Saginaw Valley State University. "A kid in on a b&e doesn't belong in a maximum-security prison," said Cisky, who also works with a company specializing in juvenile rehabilitation. (Lansing Bureau)

May 2000
After an expose' by the Grand Rapid Press into allegations of abuse and staff shortages, the state removed 140 inmates from this Wackenhut facility. Legislative hearings have been called for.

Michigan Department of Corrections
Correctional Medical Services
April 4, 2008 Capital News Service
The Department of Corrections (DOC) has left many prisoners without proper medical care, according to a new report from the Office of the Auditor General. More than half of prisoners with chronic medical conditions, such as heart disease, lung disease, and neurological problems, weren't seen for regularly scheduled visits with health care professionals, according to the report. The report also noted cases where annual clinic visits and requested visits had been missed. DOC issued a preliminary response agreeing with the audit's findings, and saying that it has fixed or will fix the problems it identified. But DOC also contends that the audit misrepresents the state of health care in its prisons. For example, it says the report ignored unscheduled visits to clinics made by prisoners. The study looked at 130 inmates who had asked for medical assistance and found that only four hadn't been treated, although many visits were late. DOC indicated that a shortage of employees was partially to blame for its failure to comply with scheduling policies. The department has dozens of vacancies in its nursing and health care professional staffs. Sandra Girard, executive director of Prison Legal Services of Michigan in Jackson, said the report focused too much on bookkeeping. "It doesn't address the quality of the care provided." "People with chronic illnesses just do not receive good care," Girard said. Girard also said that the delays in medical help noted in the report are costly in the long run because chronic conditions are likely to worsen when left untreated. Russ Marlan, public information officer for DOC, said the recommendations were helpful. He said large-scale efforts to improve the department's medical services have been underway for some time and the criticisms raised over health care are being addressed. Other parts of the report were largely neutral, finding only small problems with items like the department's management of staffing and of prisoner medications.

March 11, 2008 The Detroit News
Internet chat room promises of sex with a child brought 27 men hurrying to an unassuming suburban home this weekend. But it was police who were waiting instead of the anticipated teen boy or girl the men, including a doctor from Canton Township, thought they were chatting with online. It was a highly motivated crowd. Four took taxi cabs. One man rode a bicycle through the cold from Ypsilanti. Another was dropped off at the undercover decoy house by his sister. All of them got arrested and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said Monday that the cooperative venture with Wayne County sheriff's deputies and Van Buren Township police expects to round up many more men who made explicit plans with undercover police and volunteers from a nonprofit group that helps law enforcement agencies catch Internet predators. "The truth is stranger than fiction," Cox said. "One man was stopped by police on his way to the home on a shredded tire. He still continued to the house." The men, ranging in ages from 19 to 57 were arrested Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the home in the Walden Woods subdivision. The white-sided, two-story house had been unoccupied, but was made to look inviting enough to cause one man to expose himself to police when he walked in, said Cox. "The universe of people out there that are pedophiles is significant," said Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans, indicating that deputies in his undercover Internet Predator Unit routinely attempt to engage in Internet conversations with people interested in having sex with children. All but one of the men is from Michigan, and most are from Metro Detroit. One man came from New Jersey. The men were to have been arraigned on charges by Monday that carry up to a 20-year prison sentences. One of those arrested included Dr. Audberto Cesar Antonini, who holds a valid medical license according to the Michigan Department of Community Health Bureau of Health Professionals. Antonini, 51, until recently worked as a contract physician in the Michigan Department of Prisons system. His contract was terminated several months ago at the request of prison officials, according to Ken Fields, a spokesman for Correctional Medical Services, the prison's health care provider. Although Antonini also was listed on documents provided Monday by police as an employee at W.A. Foote Memorial Hospital in Jackson, Antonini has never been on the hospital staff, said Terry Christian, the hospital's manager of medical staff services.

February 6, 2008 Grand Rapids Press
As medical director for a Grand Rapids clinic serving low-income patients, Dr. Jack Walen is no stranger to the medical problems of former prison inmates. The past year as technical adviser for a study of health care in Michigan's prisons gave him insight into what it's like for those still behind bars. The study, released today in Lansing, is the latest of several criticizing the quality of health care in the state's prisons. This one, prepared by the American Friends Service Committee and Prison Legal Services of Michigan -- two non-profit groups that advocate for prisoner rights -- recommends 32 changes to improve health care in the prisons. "I think the biggest issue, practically speaking, is most of these prisoners are not in for life," Walen said. "They're going to get out." Some come out with infectious diseases, such as hepatitis C, that often have gone untreated in prison and can be spread to those on the outside, he said. Some, due to inadequate care while incarcerated, become a burden to hospitals and other health care providers in the community. "Either way, the community loses," Walen said. "We, as taxpayers, ought to be outraged at the amount of money spent without adequate oversight for substandard care." He emphasized his volunteer work editing the report was separate from his role as medical director for Catherine's Care Center, a clinic that serves hundreds of uninsured patients every year. The report noted as examples Timothy Souders, who died of heat exhaustion in August 2006 while shackled to a bed at Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson; Jeffrey Clark, who died in July 2002 of dehydration at the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia after the water to his cell was shut off; and Anthony McManus, who starved to death in the Baraga Maximum Security Facility in September 2005. "I think there's a definite culture within the department to deny problems when they arise," said one of the study's authors, Natalie Holbrook, of the American Friends Service Committee. The report recommends reviving the Legislative Corrections Ombudsman, a position the Legislature eliminated in 2003, and creating a permanent legislative committee to oversee prison medical care and mental health care. Some of the 32 recommendations are similar to those in a study by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) released two weeks ago. Gov. Jennifer Granholm ordered that study after several news reports about health care in the prisons. The Corrections Department plans to follow virtually all 56 recommendations in the NCCHC study, spokesman Russ Marlan said, adding he is not surprised the latest report is highly critical of the department. "With a title like 'Tolerating Failure,' I figured it probably was not going to be a ringing endorsement of our program," he said. While placing most of the blame on the Corrections Department, the report also faults Correctional Medical Services (CMS), the for-profit company that has been paid nearly $670 million over the past decade to provide medical care in the prisons. A CMS spokesman released a statement saying: "We are focused on working with the Department of Corrections to continually strengthen the areas of Michigan's inmate healthcare system in which we play a role. It is important to note that no one from the organizations issuing this report even attempted to get the facts about inmate healthcare from Correctional Medical Services." Penny Ryder, of the American Friends Service Committee, said she hopes the growing weight of criticism will prompt corrections officials to improve health care. "It angers me that it took these people dying and full embarrassment in the press for this to happen," she said, adding, "I'm not totally convinced they will do the right thing in the future."

January 23, 2008 Detroit News
An independent audit released Tuesday said Michigan's $300-million-a-year prison health care system is fractured and inefficient, leading to unnecessarily high costs, impeding inmate access and diminishing the quality of care. The state needs to reorganize prison health care services, retrain staff, practice more preventive care, fix its electronic medical records system and hold medical providers more accountable for the services they provide, said a 131-page report compiled after a year-long review by the Chicago-based National Commission on Correctional Health Care. "Most of the problems we identified were attributable to system failures, rather than to individuals not doing their jobs," the $400,000 report determined. "We believe the most pressing problem for the Michigan Department of Corrections is to address the lack of medical service provider coverage and their generally low productivity. "Until this occurs, access to care, quality of care and health care staff morale will continue to suffer." State corrections officials said they agree with the report's findings and added the department's own health care improvement team is implementing many of the commission's 56 recommendations. "We have realigned our resources so we have more oversight," said state Corrections Director Patricia Caruso. "We do have the information and tools to restructure this delivery system and get to where we want to go." A federal court case, media attention and reports of inmates dying because of inadequate care prompted Gov. Jennifer Granholm to order the review in 2006. A U.S. District Court ordered the appointment of an independent monitor and called the state's system "systematically defective" and "dangerous." The revamping won't include firing Correctional Medical Services (CMS), an often-criticized private company that has provided HMO-style managed care in the Michigan prison system for the past 10 years, Caruso said. In fact, the contract with the company has been extended by a year, she said. The report, however, says the state should "seriously reconsider the advantages and disadvantages of continuing to contract out provider services," adding that if the state isn't paying medical staff salaries competitive with private industry, it should consider raising them. The report is critical of CMS, saying there are long patient waiting lists, and the company lets many medical provider shifts go unfilled. "We were told that CMS can unilaterally choose to reduce provider staffing from five days a week to two days a week, if it has trouble recruiting, and that CMS is not subject to any penalty or disincentive," the report said. Some staffing cutbacks violated the state contract, according to the report. The commission found that the department had a monitor for the CMS contract "but it is not clear what he actually did. This contract has been running for over 10 years, and we were not provided a single monitoring report." The report called the health care system "cumbersome," adding that it "results in duplication of administration, services and materials." An example: A female inmate attempted suicide by hanging. After guards got her down, she crawled under a bed and yelled that she wanted to die. A psychiatrist was called but did not come, saying he only sees patients after they've been evaluated by a psychologist. She eventually was evaluated and referred to the psychiatrist, which took more than 45 minutes. "This is an unacceptable response to an emergency situation, directly attributable to a faulty organizational structure," the report says. Problems with management of prison pharmacies also were cited. There are delays in receiving same-day medications and a number of drugs aren't available, the report said. Criticisms also are aimed at Serapis, the electronic medical record system. The report says it is difficult to search and loses relevant patient history information, and clinical documentation is "achingly slow" -- taking time from physician-patient visits. If the department rectifies inefficiencies in the prison health care system, the state should save money, according to the report. Caruso acknowledged the department's responsibility to taxpayers, but added: "Totally aside from money, it's about human lives." She said the reformed system won't cost taxpayers more. "We're taking positions that haven't been filled and are available to be funded and assigning them to health care," she said. Barbara Levine, executive director of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending, an inmate advocacy group, said she's wary of any plan that professes to lower costs and improve health care for the 50,000 state inmates. "If it saves money while adequately protecting the health of prisoners, that's good," she said. "But when they went to managed care, that didn't happen. I'm always cautious about how money will be saved."

July 18, 2007 AP
Michigan will switch to HMOs to provide health care to the state's about 50,000 prisoners, Corrections Director Patricia Caruso says. The plan calls for up to six health maintenance organizations to supply care for inmates, Caruso told the Detroit Free Press on Tuesday. The services now are provided under a statewide managed care contract. The HMO contracts are scheduled for implementation in March, when current contract expires. The prison system will pay at least $300 million in health care costs this year, excluding security and transportation costs for doctor and hospital visits, Caruso said. "I absolutely think our costs can come down," she said, declining to estimate what the savings might be under the HMO system. Federal courts have been overseeing health care at state prisons in Jackson after inmates sued over what they said was inadequate care. Caruso said she understands public resentment over free health care for prisoners when many honest people go uninsured. But, she added, "prisoners are virtually the only people in our society with a constitutional right to health care."

February 28, 2007 The Grand Rapids Press
Fredrick Heinz needed medical care to save his life. Doing time in Marquette Branch Prison, he begged prison doctors to treat his hepatitis C, but was turned down, told it would cost too much, a friend, Jackie Deming, told a state legislative committee Tuesday. When he was diagnosed with stomach cancer in November, Heinz asked for pain medication and was given two Tylenol in the morning and two at night, Deming testified. But when he asked for something stronger, the doctor took away the Tylenol, she said. He was scheduled for cancer surgery, but then was transferred to another prison where the medical personnel said they had no record of his illnesses. "He will never again be lied to and jerked around like a wounded animal," said Deming, of Hudsonville. Heinz died Feb. 5 at age 51. Deming's testimony came minutes after state Corrections Department officials assured the same panel -- the Corrections Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee -- that inmates receive adequate medical care. "We meet the community standards that are provided in any HMO," Barry Wickman, head of the Corrections Department's bureau of fiscal management, told the subcommittee. Tuesday's hearing came as the Corrections Department is under the competing pressures to cut its budget while improving medical care for prisoners. The department's contract with Correctional Medical Services, the for-profit company that has provided medical care in Michigan's prisons for the past decade, expires May 1, but Wickman said the department may extend it another year while the National Commission on Correctional Health Care conducts an investigation ordered by Gov. Jennifer Granholm. William Clancy, a prison psychologist and union steward, spoke out against what he called "the hoax perpetuated by the Department of Corrections as far as the quality of health care in the prisons." Every year, the department files the same report assuring the Legislature that CMS is providing medically necessary services to prisoners. "I ask you, if CMS is providing medically necessary service, then why are prisoners dying unnecessarily?" Clancy said. He noted the case of Anthony McManus, who died Sept. 8, 2005, in the Baraga Correctional Facility after CMS doctors repeatedly failed to heed nurses' requests to examine him. McManus, who was mentally ill, refused to eat, and his weight dropped from 140 pounds in April 2005 to 75 pounds five months later, when he died. "The citizens of our great state will be paying off wrongful death lawsuits for years to come," Clancy warned the legislators. His remarks were echoed by Gary Peterson, employed to schedule inmates' medical appointments at Marquette Branch Prison. Before the state privatized the medical care, the prison had three doctors, each seeing an average 25 to 30 inmates a day, said Peterson, a steward for the UAW local representing some prison employees. After CMS took over the care, the prison was cut back to one doctor seeing an average of eight to 10 patients a day, he said. The CMS doctors frequently quit, he said, leaving the prison without a physician. On Monday, a CMS doctor was fired, Peterson said, because he was not fully licensed to practice medicine in Michigan. "I believe the attorney general should be asked to look into the handling of this contract, as well as CMS's failure to honor its obligations," Peterson said.

December 12, 2006 Detroit Free Press
Lloyd Byron Martell lies on a bed in Dearborn's Oakwood Hospital, sets the disc player above the colostomy bag on his stomach and slides on the headphones. He shuts his eyes and smiles. For a minute or two, the old-school sounds of Sade make the world go away. "Smooth operator," he sings, way off key. "Smoooooooth operator." Then reality smacks him. He jerks up, coughing, spitting blood and phlegm into a plastic bowl. Waves of nausea run though him. His chest tightens, stomach spins, head pounds. Martell's colon cancer has spread to his lungs. His weight is down from 224 to 180. At 41, he has six months, maybe a year, to live, says his oncologist, Dr. Parvez Khan. Martell didn't have to go out like this. In 2004, driving on a suspended license, he fled from Redford police who tried to pull him over for a broken rear window. He got 1-4 years, but prison doctors effectively turned that short bit into a death sentence. Martell, of Detroit, was released in August to die. His cancer could have been contained had the Michigan Department of Corrections treated it two years ago. But like hundreds of Michigan inmates, Martell got a double sentence: one handed down by the court and another executed by a deadly and dysfunctional prison health care system. So now, once a week, the chemo drips into a port in Martell's chest and through a main artery, delivering the chemicals that kill his cells, cancerous and healthy alike, to prolong his life a few more months. Sometimes he wonders if it's worth it. It would be easier just to pop OxyContin and ride out his last few months in a haze. Without chemo, though, the cancer could spread to his liver and brain. "I don't want it to get any uglier, Dog," he tells me. Still, "every time I do this chemo, I wonder why. In the end, it's not going to change anything. I just want some time without throwing up, without pain, without doctors." The cancer can be slowed, but the beast cannot be stopped. The only time Martell cries is when he thinks of how things could have been. "They killed me, with their evil, neglectful ways," he says. Potentially curable if treated earlier. In December 2004, Martell had what he believed was a hemorrhoid lanced in prison. Medical records show it was actually a cancerous polyp. Dr. Jerome Wisneski, who works for Correctional Medical Services Inc., failed to treat it. By October of last year, Martell was bleeding from the rectum and unable to walk. He was sent to Foote Hospital in Jackson, which contracts with CMS for specialty services. Doctors told him he had terminal cancer. In an oncology report, they noted that his cancerous polyp was not treated, though CMS spokesperson Amanda Brown said in an e-mail that Martell "received prompt care." There are no guarantees with cancer, even with early intervention. But the earlier it's treated, the better. Martell's cancer was potentially curable when it was discovered two years ago. Martell's case isn't the first that Wisneski botched. In 1996, he disregarded a bile leak in inmate Richard LeMarbe's abdomen, court records show. Another doctor later found 3 1/2 gallons of bile in LeMarbe's abdomen, causing serious damage that required several surgeries. In 2001, LeMarbe, now 73, and his attorney settled for $150,000 in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They would have gotten a lot more if LeMarbe, serving 25-50 years for second-degree murder, hadn't been an inmate. Martell's attorney, Brian McKeen of Detroit, is suing Wisneski, the Department of Corrections and Correctional Medical Services Inc. for medical malpractice and constitutional violations. But Martell probably won't live to see the money. It will go to his mother, father and 6-year-old son, Loyal, who lives with his mother in Missouri. "I won't be around to take care of my son," Martell says. "I don't want him to have to worry about anything." An oasis of hope. Peacemakers International mission sits on Chene on Detroit's east side, surrounded by vacant lots, drug houses and empty, burned-out buildings. It's an oasis of hope, where the homeless, addicted and afflicted come to pick up the pieces of a broken life. Martell has not come here to die, but to live. He first came to Peacemakers four years ago. While driving down Gratiot, a stray .38-caliber hollow-point grazed the back of his head. The car's rear window and headrest slowed the bullet enough so that it just penetrated the surface of Martell's skull. Inside the mission, Martell pulled out the bullet and prayed. The Rev. Steve Upshur -- "Pastor Steve" -- took him in. After Martell got out of prison in August, he came back to save his life again. Upshur, 57, a maverick minister and former heroin addict, wears black denim, flowing gray curls and feathered earrings. His church works with drugs addicts, prostitutes and anyone who needs hope and love. Upshur figures that's what Jesus is all about. "Pastor Steve always had the door open, even when I wasn't right," Martell says. He goes back and forth between a vacant house on the west side owned by his father and the Jesus House men's shelter run by Peacemakers International. Martell spent his first few days out of prison with his mother, Donna Martin, in Dearborn. More than anyone else, Martin, 60, has been there for Martell when he was in prison and before. Still, the two fought when Martell was at her home. They agreed it was best that he stay somewhere else. At the church mission, Martell found new peace. He had been running all his life, chasing the next high, whether it came from drugs, fighting or drag racing. Bored with high school, Martell dropped out in his sophomore year, earned a GED and, at 19, became a diesel mechanic for the Detroit Department of Transportation. His father, Lloyd Byron Hill, also worked for DDOT and raced cars semiprofessionally, as did Martell. Martell was smart and worked hard, often earning more than $1,000 a week as a mechanic, but he'd blow a lot of it on alcohol and drugs. "I had problems with alcohol, drugs and my temper," Martell says. "But I got up and worked every day. My plan was to go back to the dealership and work as mechanic. "Now all my dreams are shattered." Martell gets $800 a month in disability from Social Security. Medicaid covers medical bills. Fresh out of prison, he was almost in a rage, but he has since let much of that anger go. "I'm ready to die," he says. "I've made peace. There's no way I can carry all that anger around. That will kill you, too." Telling his story has helped him heal. I watched him tell it, his voice raspy and raw, at a weekday service at Peacemakers a month ago. On Nov. 16, he told it again at a Lansing public hearing on prison health care sponsored by Prison Legal Services of Michigan and the American Friends Service Committee. He spoke from the heart and, when he finished, 100 people stood up and applauded. "I'm just trying to save the next man," he says. Martell's story and those of others like him, along with public pressure, have made a difference. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has ordered a review of the prison health care system and a federal judge has also ordered changes. Martell's body is failing but, somehow, he feels free. He can't save the world or even his own life, but he's trying to make things better for others. There's no better way to live or die. JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer.

December 8, 2006 WOOD TV 8
A federal judge on Thursday held the state Department of Corrections in contempt and threatened $2 million in fines unless it hires more physicians at Jackson prisons. In a scathing 61-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen ordered the department to hire extra doctors within four months. He said inmates' health care is "systematically defective, dangerous and readily results in preventable death, illness and suffering due to untreated serious medical conditions." Enslen also ordered that the department hire more nurses, file a staffing plan within three months and create independent monitoring offices at the prisons to handle inmates' complaints. Health care at the Jackson facilities has been under federal oversight for years, the result of a long-standing lawsuit by prisoners represented by the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project. Enslen cited delays causing prisoners to not get proper treatment until it was too late. He said a prisoner deserves to serve his sentence and nothing more. "What he does not deserve is a de facto and unauthorized death penalty at the hands of a callous and dysfunctional health care system that regularly fails to treat life-threatening illness," Enslen wrote. Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said he couldn't comment specifically on the ruling because state attorneys were still reviewing it. He said, however, that it's an "ongoing battle" to recruit and retain health care workers to work inside prisons. Last month, Enslen issued a separate decision criticizing the state's care of mentally ill inmates and halting the use of non-medical, punitive restraints on prisoners. That decision came after a 21-year-old mentally ill inmate died in August after spending four days naked inside a hot, isolated cell at the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson. An autopsy determined the inmate, Timothy Joe Souders, died accidentally of hyperthermia and dehydration. Elizabeth Alexander, director of the National Prison Project, said the judge noted in Thursday's ruling that prisoners who need specialty care face too many delays. Between 30 and 40 percent of specialty care wasn't provided within the time deemed medically necessary, Enslen said. Of six randomly selected cases, four involved delays that could have caused unnecessary death or suffering, he said. It took 40 days to test a patient with blood in his urine. Another inmate complained of a mole on his back, and despite a doctor saying it should be removed surgically, there were many delays. Later testing showed malignant melanoma and that the cancer had spread while the patient was awaiting treatment. "This is a very significant decision," Alexander said. "Our hope is that finally the state will turn the corner and understand it has to clean up a dysfunctional medical care system." The ruling covers three of the five prisons in Jackson, Marlan said. Each prison typically houses about 1,000 inmates. Gov. Jennifer Granholm in August ordered an independent review of prison health care. The state earlier this week picked an outside agency, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, to conduct the review. "That should give us a good idea on where we stand," Marlan said. The case is Hadix v. Caruso, et al.

November 14, 2006 Detroit Free Press
In the end, it took a federal judge to get it right. Michigan's state bureaucracy, against all available evidence, has been in denial about Michigan's deadly and dysfunctional prison health care system. Even Gov. Jennifer Granholm's pledge in August to order an outside review of health care in Michigan's nearly 50 prisons is beginning to smell like an election-year ploy. The review was supposed to start in early October but the state hasn't even decided who is going to do it. The strong wording in the preliminary injunction he issued Monday shows that U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen of Kalamzoo had clearly run out of patience with the state. He told the Department of Corrections and its private contractor for primary services, Correctional Medical Services of Missouri, to either treat sick inmates or be held in contempt of court and jailed. "You are valuable providers of life-saving services and medicines," Enslen wrote. "You are not coat racks who collect government paychecks while your work is taken to the sexton for burial. The days of dead wood in the Department of Corrections are over, as are the days of CMS intentionally delaying referrals and care for craven profit motives."

November 14, 2006 Baltimore Sun
A federal judge has ordered prison officials in Michigan to immediately cease the use of non-medical, punitive restraints following the death of a mentally ill inmate who died after four days spent naked and shackled in an isolated cell. U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen's sharply worded order, issued Monday, directly addressed the case of Timothy Joe Souders, who was serving up to four years for resisting arrest, assault and destroying police property. Souders, 21, spent most of his last four days naked inside an isolation cell at the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson, his arms and legs bound in shackles and sometimes lying in his own urine. He died Aug. 6, two hours after jail staff removed his restraints. "The court finds that the defendant's practice constitutes torture and violates the Eighth Amendment," Enslen wrote in his ruling. "Its cessation is required immediately to prevent further loss of life, loss of dignity and damage to both inmates and correctional officers." His order also requires the state's Department of Corrections to submit a plan within 45 days for how to improve mental health care for inmates. The state has contracted with Correctional Medical Services Inc., a St. Louis company, to provide health care to prisoners. Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said the department was still reviewing the order and had no comment Monday. Following media reports that examined issues highlighted by Souders' death in August, Gov. Jennifer Granholm called for an independent review of health care in the state's prisons. Souders' family last month filed a federal lawsuit against CMS. The official cause of Souders' death has not been announced.

October 26, 2006 Detroit Free Press
Gov. Jennifer Granholm has pledged to do what's necessary to fix the state's troubled prison health care system. To do that, the governor will need the truth -- straight with no chaser -- from the independent review she ordered in August. But getting it won't be easy. The people who really know what's up -- prison employees and inmates who use the health care system -- won't speak freely. They'll fear retaliation, unless the department offers them anonymity and protection. So far, state administrators don't seem even to be aware of the problem, but the people who live and work in the system are. Inmate Henry Donald Franklin, 43, testified in federal court earlier this month about the death of 21-year-old mentally ill inmate Timothy Joe Souders. Before testifying, Franklin apparently took some payback for talking to prisoners' attorneys who were investigating Souders' death. Franklin was locked up near the isolation cell where Souders died on Aug. 6, after spending most of his last four days strapped to a steel table in oppressive heat. In a Kalamazoo courtroom, Franklin said he had heard Souders, who might have died from dehydration, choking and asking for water. Franklin, who is legally blind, said he kicked his cell door on several occasions and yelled for help. Officers told him to shut up and mind his own business, he said, finally threatening to put him in restraints. I visited Franklin last week at Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson, where he's serving 30-50 years for unarmed assault with intent to steal. After he had spoken to the attorneys, Franklin said, someone broke his typewriter into four pieces and pushed in the grill of his radio. He also said pain medication and eyedrops for his glaucoma had been withheld for about a month. Prison officials say they have investigated the matter and deny the allegations that Franklin made to me and under oath in federal court. "No one's given me any help since I talked," Franklin told me through the glass in a prison segregation visiting area. "They left me hanging. If I would have known, I wouldn't have done this (testified)." Even high-level administrators could face reprisals for bucking the system. Dr. Chris Samy became regional medical director in Jackson in February. But Samy, a corporation medical director for 10 years, told me she was forced to resign her Corrections post in June. Her job was to monitor health care and oversee Missouri-based Correctional Medical Services Inc., a controversial private contractor delivering primary medical care in Michigan prisons. Still, Samy said she had no authority or support to make necessary changes. While at Jackson, Samy said three or four diabetic inmates died because blood sugar reactions were not properly monitored. "Most medically necessary procedures were denied or withheld from the inmates, resulting in long-term illness or death," she said. When Samy complained, she said prison medical administrators ignored her and finally made her so uncomfortable that she had to resign. She cited a cozy relationship between the department and CMS. In fact, even an MDOC consultant concluded this year that Corrections staff are too protective of CMS. "No one has the guts to say, 'Do what has to be done,' " said Samy, a suburban Detroit resident in her mid-50s. MDOC spokesman Russ Marlan said the department is investigating Samy's allegations. He said she made no formal complaints while employed by the department. Also troubling is an alleged "witness promotion plan." A civil service grievance filed against MDOC last summer alleges that Director Patricia Caruso approved transfers and promotions for about 10 employees who testified in 2004 on the department's behalf during a 27-day grievance hearing against former Pine River Warden Jan Trombley. On the flip side, the 10 or more employees who testified against the department did not get them. Deputy Director Dennis Straub made it clear in an earlier meeting that the department would deny opportunities to employees who went against it, said East Lansing attorney Robert G. Huber, who represents the employees. Employees called it the "witness promotion plan." According to one MDOC employee, Straub said "staff who don't (support the department) can find a home elsewhere." Caruso denies the allegations and has asked the Michigan State Police to investigate. My opinion: Caruso has too much integrity to sanction anything that shady. But the point is, employees undoubtedly will feel pressure to protect the department during an outside investigation. All these allegations underscore how hard it will be to get solid information. The no-snitch rule operates not only on the street, but also inside criminal justice agencies. Granholm should make sure the people who work and live in Michigan prisons feel safe enough to tell the truth. Employees and inmates must get anonymity and immunity, or the governor's so-called independent review will be little more than a whitewash. JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer. Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or 313-222-6585.

October 14, 2006 The Grand Rapids Press
The use of four-point restraints as punishment for prison inmates meets the American Medical Association's definition of torture and should be discontinued, a doctor appointed by a federal judge to monitor health care in Michigan's prisons testified Friday. The continued use of restraints is "likely to result in future deaths," Robert Cohen warned U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen. He blamed the Aug. 6 death of Timothy Joe Souders, a 21-year-old mentally ill inmate, on the fact he was shackled atop a steel table in the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson for most of four days during a heat wave. "While naked in bed, he was found to be lying in his own urine and feces," Cohen said, adding that Souders' "condition during a heat wave required constant monitoring ... There should be no policy for maintaining prisoners in punitive restraints. It was that policy that led to his death." After Cohen's testimony, attorney Elizabeth Alexander, representing inmates in the class action lawsuit, asked Enslen to issue an order temporarily barring the state Corrections Department from using restraints to punish prisoners. Enslen appeared inclined to issue the order, but Assistant Attorney General Peter Govorchin stepped outside the courtroom to call state Correct