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Callaway County Jail
Fulton, Missouri
Correctional Medical Services
November 17, 2005 Fulton Sun
With half a month left before inmates at the Callaway County Jail lose their
healthcare provider, county officials believe they have found a new provider,
one that will offer more benefits at a cheaper rate. The Callaway County
Commission decided Wednesday morning to pursue using Advanced Correctional
Healthcare to provide medical services to the county's inmates. After
Correctional Medical Services - which will provide the county's healthcare until
Nov. 30 - notified the county that it was pulling out of the contract at the end
of October, Callaway officials have been hurriedly looking for another provider.
"I was really concerned when the sheriff said (CMS) would no longer be
providing services," said county auditor Rosemary Gannaway. "That was
the scary part." CMS generally provides medical services to institutions
larger than county jails, but because of Callaway's proximity to the Department
of Corrections in Jefferson City - which CMS services - CMS agreed to cover the
Callaway jail, Gannaway said. CMS provided a nurse practitioner to work 18 hours
a week at the jail, as well as an on-call doctor. Because the nurse practitioner
recently accepted another job, Gannaway said CMS decided to end the contract
rather than trying to find another nurse practitioner to fill the position.
Correctional
Medical Services
St. Louis, Missouri
November 7, 2007 Financial Times
Madison Dearborn is preparing a sale of Valitas, a company that provides medical
care to prison populations, three sources told mergermarket. An auction for the
company will probably kick off early next year, and the company is working on
putting together a staple financing package at the moment, according to one of
the sources. UBS has been mandated to run the process, the second source said.
Valitas’ EBITDA is around USD 50m, according to an industry banker. The
company’s main subsidiary, Correctional Medical Services, reached USD 750m in
revenues in 2007, according to its website. The company is likely to draw
interest from private equity buyers only, as there are no natural strategic
buyers for the asset, the banker added. Valitas could draw interest from Maximus,
a listed provider of healthcare services to the US government, a second industry
banker said. Madison Dearborn backed a management buyout of the Missouri-based
company in 1997 from Aramark, the company that provides food service and
uniforms to institutions, according to news reports. Under Aramark the division
was called Spectrum Healthcare, and included a business that provided contract
healthcare services to the US military. That business, however, was sold to Team
Health, another Madison Dearborn portfolio holding, in 2002. Team Health itself
was sold to the Blackstone Group, in 2005. The company is one of the oldest
healthcare investments in Madison Dearborn’s portfolio, the industry banker
said. A company spokesperson declined comment, and a Madison Dearborn official
did not return calls.
November 8, 2001
Gregory Jennings, Jacqueline Reich, Lorenzo Ingram, Sr., Henry Simmons, Calvin
Moore, Billy Roberts and Kathy S. Kearns didn't know each other in life, but
they shared a common bond in death: All died in U.S. prisons, the victims not of
the death penalty, or at the hands of fellow inmates or guards, but in the
allegedly negligent care of a single provider of privatized health services.
Correctional Medical Services (CMS) is a St. Louis, Missouri-based for-profit
corporation that contracts to provide health care services to over 270,000
inmates at more than 330 prison sites in 29 states. A 1998 in-depth
investigative report done by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, its hometown
newspaper, shed light on the downside of prison care privatization. The
Post-Dispatch's investigative team spent five months "visiting prisons and
jails; gathering hundreds of police, court and medical records and other
documents; and interviewing doctors, nurses, inmates, lawyers, scholars, prison
and health experts and families of inmates who died behind bars."
Published in September 1998, "Death, Neglect and the Bottom Line: Push to
Cut Costs Poses Risks," found that while CMS successfully reduced the cost
of health care to several states, there were "more than 20 cases in which
inmates allegedly died as a result of negligence, indifference, understaffing,
inadequate training or overzealous cost-cutting." At the ACLU web
site, the civil liberties organization posts a late-January 2001 letter it sent
to the Connecticut Department of Correction (CDOC) that claims CMS's health care
services -- medical, mental health and dental care -- at the Wallens Ridge State
Prison in Big Stone Gap, Virginia is woefully "inadequate." The
ACLU writes: "The health care provided by Correctional Medical Services,
the contract provider at [Wallens Ridge], was considered so grossly inadequate
that [Virginia Department of Corrections] recently fined CMS nearly one million
dollars. The Virginia State Auditor specifically found that CMS did not provide
a dentist at [Wallens Ridge] for over three months, and never provided an
optometrist. Medical privacy and confidentiality is non-existent at [Wallens
Ridge]; as a matter of policy, prisoners are required to discuss their most
private medical and mental health issues in the presence of security staff and
other prisoners." In 1998, the Minnesota Department of Corrections
contracted with CMS for health care services in its state's prisons.
According to the Twin Cities Independent Media Center, the NAACP called a press
conference in mid-October to publicize a lawsuit "over the death of Gregory
Jennings, who died in Stillwater prison on April 6, 2001 because the medical
staff were indifferent to his complaints of symptoms of diabetes."
Should Calvin Moore, in custody for less than a month at the Kilby Correction
Facility in Alabama, have died from being ignored while he lost fifty pounds and
exhibited severe symptoms of mental illness, dehydration and starvation? Should
Diane Nelson, a 46-year-old mother of three, have died because her request to
receive her heart medicine prescribed by her doctor was refused? And what of
Charles Guffey, who died of a perforated ulcer because nurses at the Tulsa
County Adult Detention Center in Oklahoma refused to pay attention to his
complaints of severe abdominal pain? If these folks were around today they'd
have a lot to say about the human cost of the growing privatization of prison
health care services. Hopefully, privatization will begin to receive the close
scrutiny it deserves. That is the least we can do. The deaths of these men and
women, while tragic, should not have been in vain. (AlterNet.org)
Integrity Correctional Centers
Holden, Missouri
October 27, 2006 AP
For those who knew and cared about Angela Lockridge, this much was clear:
she could be difficult. At 42, she was mentally retarded, epileptic and
dependent on medication to treat her borderline personality disorder. But
nothing prepared her family and friends for the way Lockridge died: alone in a
segregated cell in one of Missouri's private jails, which are run without state
oversight or standards. Operators of the Integrity Correctional Centers in rural
Johnson County were told the cause of death was epilepsy, a neurological
condition that causes seizures. But Johnson County Sheriff Charles Heiss, who
led the investigation into Lockridge's death and has found no evidence of
criminal wrongdoing, nevertheless has been angered by the prison's "guarded"
response to his probe and obstacles blocking his way to potential witnesses.
Heiss, an outspoken critic of private jails and prisons, blames those obstacles
on the manner in which private jails are operated and at least in part on the
lack of state standards and oversight. "Am I surprised she died? No," Heiss
said. "Am I upset and concerned about her death? Yes." Bernie Zarda, president
of ICC, defends his "Christian-owned and operated" prison. He says although
there is no state or federal oversight of his facility, oversight of ICC rests
with the cities and counties that send their inmates there. He also questioned
the motives for the investigation. "I am not really sure why there has been an
ongoing investigation," Zarda said. "The sheriff is giving information that
makes us look not so great. We run a very top-notch, first-class facility with
some 20 jurisdictions in Kansas and Missouri, and we have never had a death
before. Sharon Dolovich, a law professor at UCLA who has written extensively
about private prisons, said while there are several concerns about private
prisons just as there are about government-run prisons, a major problem in
private facilities is staffing. The median annual earnings for prison guards in
2004 was $33,750 at state prisons, $33,080 at local jails and $21,490 at private
prisons, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "The one meaningful
difference is the dramatic under-investment in labor (in private prisons),"
Dolovich said. "The way private prisons make their money is by spending less on
their labor; they pay them less, they train them less and they give them fewer
benefits. "There are predictable effects of doing that." She pointed to a study
from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance that compared
inmate assaults in public prisons over a year with that of private facilities
over the same period. The survey found 25.4 incidents for every 1,000 inmates in
public prisons, compared with 35.1 incidents in private facilities. "I would put
what we know about the profit incentives together with what we know about the
failures of monitoring and other forms of oversight," Dolovich said in an
e-mail. "When we do that, it seems to me, we have both an explanation for the
greater levels of violence in private prisons suggested by the older studies,
and reason to continue to expect greater levels of violence in private prisons
going forward." But Paul Doucette, spokesman for the Association of Private
Corrections and Treatment Organizations, says private facilities are a necessary
alternative to overcrowding in the public prisons and have become more popular
with the federal government, largely because of the influx of immigrants and
refugees. "Research would indicate a quality of operations in private prisons
every bit as good or better than the government-run facilities," Doucette said.
"There's no cutting of corners and diminishing of services. Lockridge was
confined to a segregated cell in a male dorm at ICC on Aug. 1 because she had
been making herself throw up. "She was sticking her finger down her throat, and
they asked her to stop and help clean it up and some other things," Zarda said.
She was found dead in the cell the next morning. Neer had never known his sister
to make herself vomit. If Lockridge was throwing up, he said, it was because she
was sick. Neer also wondered if Lockridge had received any of her medications
while incarcerated. The prison did not respond to requests for Lockridge's
medical records. Most inmate death investigations involving county jails last
about a week, Heiss said. This one took him more than a month to wrap up. He
said ICC policies and procedures slowed him down. When he tried to interview
inmates who were witnesses, ICC told him he needed the approval of the county or
city that sent those inmates to ICC. Some jurisdictions complied immediately.
Wyandotte County, Kan., did not respond to his calls. "We should have been able
to get to these inmates in a matter of days," Heiss said. "And some of the
inmates I wouldn't even begin to know where they are now." Heiss found other
problems as well, including prison logs that showed Lockridge had not been
checked on hourly as ordered after she was put in segregation. Zarda called it a
clerical error. "We have an officer who failed to log her checks every time,"
Zarda said. "But she was checked every hour."
Joplin City Jail
Joplin, Missouri
GRW
May 14, 2007 Joplin Globe
A Joplin city jail inmate is dead after he was found hanging from the
ceiling of the jail about 7:34 a.m. today. According to Lt. Geoff Jones of the
police department, attempts to revive the man were unsuccessful. He was being
held in a two-person cell by himself awaiting court in Joplin and possible
extradition to Greene County. Detectives with the Joplin Police Department are
investigating the death and an autopsy is scheduled for later today. The name of
the vicitm is being withheld pending notification of family members. The Joplin
City Jail is operated by GRW Corporation, a private security company. Jones said
this is the first in-custody death at the Joplin jail since 1997, when GRW took
over day-to-day operations.
Midwest Security Housing
Pattonsburg, Missouri
Midwest Security
May 30, 2007 Des Moines Register
An escaped Missouri convict was captured in Des Moines today, said Neil
Shultz of the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Abdul Jackson had been missing since
Friday from the Midwest Security Housing in Pattonsburg, Mo. He was arrested at
3422 S.W. Eighth St. Shultz said he understood Jackson’s mother lives at the
house. Shultz said Jackson, who was considered dangerous by authorities, was
arrested without incident. Jackson is a Polk County inmate who was in Missouri
due to jail crowding, Shultz said. He was being held on possession with intent
to deliver crack cocaine, burglary, traffic and a plethora of other charges.
Shultz said Jackson will now also be charged with escape from custody. Midwest
Security Housing is a privately operated prison in Missouri, used frequently by
Polk County to house inmates. Shultz said the facility is "secure" but
"sometimes, things happen. We’re glad we have him in custody again.” Jackson is
currently being held in the Polk County Jail. "I don't anticipate we'll be
sending him back to Missouri," Shultz said.
Potosi
Correctional Center
Potosi, Missouri
Correctional Medical Services
January 1, 2006 Daily Journal
A former nurse for Correctional Medical Services has been charged for allegedly
stealing prescriptions from the Potosi Correctional Center. Lisa Peery, 41, of
Farmington, was recently charged with one Class A misdemeanor count of stealing.
If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in the county jail or fined
$1,000. Peery worked as a nurse for Correctional Medical Services under a
contract with the Missouri Department of Corrections. According to court
records, Peery stole prescription medications and medical supplies from the unit
and took them to her house. The thefts reportedly occurred between January and
June of this year. The medications that were removed include a dosage of
Vistaril, used for the treatment of anxiety and tension, that was prescribed to
an offender at Potosi and a dosage of Cogentin, which is used in the treatment
of Parkinson's Disease, that was prescribed to another offender there.
Ray
County
Ray County, Missouri
Correctional Medical Services
January 13, 2004
A man who escaped from a private jail in Ray
County turned himself in early today after being missing for several hours.
Officers said Frank Randal
Lumley, 42, escaped about 4:20 a.m. from a private jail in Henrietta, Mo. Lumley
attacked a security guard and stole the man's keys, said Ray County Sheriff Sam
Clemens. (The Kansas City Star)
St Louis
Justice Center
St Louis, Missouri
Correctional Medical Services
June 8, 2007 St Louis Post-Dispatch
As city officials dig into a paramedic's claim that poor jail medical care
contributed to the death of a woman held on a traffic charge, they enter a realm
that has vexed comptrollers and courts alike. How do jails and prisons give
inmates the help to which they're legally entitled on what the taxpayers are
willing to pay? Problems most often stem from tight budgets and poor management,
according to industry experts, who say the care nationally is dramatically
better than in decades past. "We've made huge improvements, but there are still
a lot of places that have problems," said Edward Harrison, president of the
National Commission on Correctional Health Care. "The problems that we encounter
are often tied into management and personnel issues, both directly affected by
budgets." St. Louis typically pays more than $5 million a year to a private
contractor, Correctional Medical Services Inc. An official of the Creve
Coeur-based company insisted Thursday that it provides quality care. City Public
Safety Director Sam Simon, whose oversees the city's corrections and fire
departments, promised this week to reconcile their very different conclusions on
what happened the night of April 10. His boss, Mayor Francis Slay, said on his
website Thursday: "An internal investigation was conducted by the Division of
Corrections. However, I am disturbed by the fact that the report showed the
young woman was given treatment for her asthma but none of the medicine was
found in her bloodstream during the initial autopsy report." That discrepancy
has not been explained. LaVonda Kimble, 30, died April 11 of an acute asthma
attack at the St. Louis Justice Center. She was supposed to have been released
on bond posted hours earlier in Bel-Nor, which had a traffic warrant against
her. But her release was delayed by a paperwork mix-up. Documents gathered by a
lawyer for her family included a sizzling complaint by one of the Fire
Department paramedics, who noted that it took up to eight minutes to get to the
patient after arrival at the jail, and that jail nurses failed to use a
defibrillator to try restart her heart. The medic also complained in writing
that jail staff distracted medics, and that firefighters who arrived ahead of
the medic crew said they found someone doing CPR by pressing Kimble's stomach
instead of her chest. A Corrections Department report of the incident found no
violation of policies or procedures. City officials promised further action
after the conflicting accounts became public. They said the health care contract
was first awarded during Mayor Clarence Harmon's administration, before Slay
took office in 2001. A spokesman for Slay said the mayor's office doesn't know
the identity of the five-member panel that selected CMS, because there are
always a number of panels, made up of different people, charged with handling
myriad city contracts. The mayor's office has asked Simon for the names. Simon
told a reporter late Thursday he doesn't know but was working to find out. One
of the nurses on duty when Kimble died, Leamorn D. Wiegert, was disciplined by
the state just four days before the incident, according to the Missouri
Department of Health and Senior Services. Wiegert is a licensed practical nurse;
her license is on probation and she is included on the state employee
disqualification list, which means the state found that she committed an act of
abuse, neglect, misappropriation or falsification. Discipline is extremely rare
for licensed nurses in Missouri. In the past year, only two-tenths of 1 percent
were issued any type of disciplinary action — from censure to license
revocation. Details of the complaint against her were not available. She could
not be reached for comment Thursday. Ken Fields, a spokesman for Correctional
Medical Services, said Thursday he could not talk about the details of the
Kimble case. But he faulted the paramedic's report, saying it included
contradictions and unsubstantiated hearsay.
June 7, 2007 St Louis Post-Dispatch
A delay in letting paramedics into the city jail and "substandard" emergency
care by staff there may have doomed an inmate who suffered an asthma attack,
according to a blistering report by the fire department. One of the paramedics
who treated LaVonda Kimble early April 11 wrote of commonly encountering delays
and apathy on calls to the St. Louis Justice Center, at 200 South Tucker
Boulevard. And autopsy findings obtained Wednesday showed no trace of the drug
that jail nurses said they repeatedly administered to ease Kimble's breathing.
The reports were obtained with a court order by John Wallach, a lawyer
representing Kimble's family in considering a wrongful death lawsuit. He shared
them Wednesday with the Post-Dispatch. "People don't generally die of an asthma
attack when they go to the hospital," Wallach said. "I fully believe our
evidence will show if she was treated properly, she would have been fine." Sam
Simon, the city director of public safety, pledged to learn more about what
happened, and about the medical care provided under contract for more than $5
million a year by Correctional Medical Services. The Creve Coeur-based private
company has come under heavy criticism in Missouri and elsewhere for years.
Kimble, 30, the single mother of a 12-year-old child, wasn't supposed to be in
jail in the first place. Her boyfriend had posted bond for her about 6:30 p.m.
on April 10 in Bel-Nor, which had a traffic warrant against her. That was about
four hours after her arrest by St. Louis police. But a release order went to the
wrong jail, a mistake that wasn't corrected until she was already dying. Kimble
fell ill about 10:20 p.m. According to jail records, she received three separate
treatments of Albuterol, a medication to ease breathing, before she collapsed at
1:25 a.m. Firefighters from nearby Engine Co. 2 arrived at 1:40 a.m. and began
CPR. Medic 5 was five minutes behind, but spent seven or eight minutes
thereafter waiting to get in, according to a report by fire department paramedic
Chastity Girolami. The delay was "detrimental to the patient's outcome,"
Girolami wrote. She said firefighters told her they had arrived to find nurses
trying to perform CPR by compressing Kimble's stomach instead of her chest.
Girolami noted that when medics asked a nurse if she had used an automatic
defibrillator to try to restore Kimble's heartbeat, "She just looked at us and
asked what we were talking about." The jail care was "substandard at best,"
Girolami wrote in her report. She also wrote that a corrections officer
distracted paramedics with questions about their ID numbers while they struggled
to save Kimble's life; the medics twice asked jailers to back off. "She kept
persisting and finally my partner informed the staff that this patient was in
cardiac arrest and basically dying, and they would have to wait," Girolami
wrote. "The staff was surprised at this. They didn't know the patient was in
cardiac arrest." Kimble was rushed to St. Louis University Hospital, where she
died at 2:44 a.m. "This experience at the Justice Center was by far my worst,"
Girolami wrote. She complained, "Every time I've been to the Justice Center, it
takes 10 to 15 minutes to even get to the patient. There is never anyone to
guide us and never any sense of urgency." Her report was one of a variety of
documents Kimble's family has gathered in preparation of a wrongful-death
lawsuit. The autopsy report shows that corrections officials asked for and got a
special toxicology test for Albuterol, and that none was detected. Wallach said
the medical examiner plans to send samples to an outside laboratory for further
testing. "If, in fact, she was not given Albuterol, then the official records
are false," the lawyer said, "If that's the case, LaVonda's civil rights were
blatantly violated and it led to her death." An internal investigation
concluded, "There was no evidence that the Division of Corrections violated any
policies or procedures." But Simon, the public safety director, said Wednesday
there will be an investigation to reconcile reports from the fire department,
corrections department and medical examiner. "We need to conclude our
investigation and determine what happened," Simon said. "What I know is these
are just allegations at this point." Ken Fields, spokesman for Correctional
Medical Services, said he could not comment on a specific patient. However, he
insisted that the jail's medical staff is trained to properly administer life
support techniques, including CPR and use of automated external defibrillators.
"Our services and equipment are in keeping with the standards of care in the
community," Fields said. "All nurses at CMS are licensed by the appropriate
entity and are qualified to provide the care they are asked to provide."
St Louis MetroLink
St Louis, Missouri
Wackenhut (Group 4)
April 26, 2008 St Louis Post-Dispatch Leaders of the Metro public transportation
agency said Friday that a Florida-based security firm was not able to deliver
enough trained security guards to meet deadlines in a MetroLink security
contract. So Metro and the Wackenhut Corp. agreed to part ways late last month,
transit agency President Robert Baer told reporters after Friday's Board of
Commissioners meeting. Metro had heretofore not shed much light on why the
three-year, $13.1 million contract was terminated after only a few months. "It
was around the availability of personnel," Baer said. "The training of
personnel. The certification. Licensing of personnel. Nothing deliberate. It was
just a matter of logistics and timing. We thought that we had laid out a very
specific, step-by-step game plan. There was some dispute about that." Baer said
there will be no financial penalty for ending the contract early. Wackenhut
spokesman Marc Shapiro said he could provide no further details on what led to
the mutual agreement in late March. Securitas Security Services will finish the
three-year contract — and has already assumed responsibility in St. Clair
County. Securitas, which unsuccessfully sought the contract that ultimately was
awarded to Wackenhut, will honor its original bid price of $11.5 million. Baer
said Wackenhut is cooperating in the transition. Clarence Harmon, the former St.
Louis mayor and police chief, is the St. Louis general manager for Wackenhut.
Meantime, Baer stressed that there have been no lapses in security. "That was
not the issue," he said. "It was an issue of availability of people."
Tarkio
Academy
Tarkio, Missouri
Correctional Services Corporation
August 3, 2004
Tarkio Academy, which provides residential treatment for juvenile offenders ages
13-19 who were court-ordered into the system, will be closing its doors on Sept.
19. The decision was handed down by Maryland-based Youth Services
International (YSI) last Friday. Facility administrator Victor Hogan announced
the decision on Monday, July 19, to the 157 employees at the academy.
"We're all pretty disappointed and bent out of shape about it," Hogan
said. "We basically had to start over again. We were making such great
progress toward this becoming a better facility and meeting our requirements. We
just don't understand why the decision was made to close the academy before we
could accomplish all of our goals." Hogan recalled that when he was
introduced as the academy administrator, he knew there were a number of things
that had to be accomplished to satisfy the corporate office's requirements: the
population of students, number of staff members and improved programming were
among the things that were on their list of items to work on. (Maryville
Daily Forum)
Vadalia
Women's Prison
Vadalia, Missouri
Correctional Medical Services
November 26, 2004 AP
The family of a state prison inmate who complained of blinding headaches in the
days before her death has filed a wrongful death suit against the state and the
prison's health-care provider. Al'Deana Simmons, who was incarcerated for
forgery, died in July 2003 at the women's prison in Vandalia of a ruptured brain
aneurysm. She was 33. Her mother, Virginia Terry, and three minor children
through their father are seeking actual and punitive damages, as well as
compensation for attorney's fees. The defendants include Correctional Medical
Services, the Missouri Department of Corrections and several of their employees.
The suit alleges the defendants "were deliberately indifferent in failing
to provide medical care to the decedent in that they were aware of the serious
pain that decedent was experiencing and the blindness she was experiencing, from
which an inference could be drawn that a substantial harm to decedent
existed."
September 2,
2003
Virginia Terry was thankful when her daughter, a drug addict suffering from
bipolar disorder, got locked up at the women's prison in Vandalia, Mo., for a
forgery conviction. "I thought, at least she'd be safe," Terry
recalls. That changed when Terry's daughter, Al'Deana Simmons of Camdenton,
began complaining, in letters and phone calls home, about the type of health
care she was getting behind bars. She said prison doctors changed her
anti-depression medication. She cried about blinding headaches. And Terry will
never forget what Simmons said in their phone conversation July 1, the day
before she died of an apparent aneurysm. "She said her head was
sizzling and that she was going blind," Terry recalls. "The prison
doctor saw her for 10 minutes and said nothing was wrong." The case
of Simmons, 33, is one of many being explored this summer by investigators with
the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in Washington. Investigators
have been to the prison three times and interviewed 127 inmates about the
medical treatment provided by St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services.
They also have met in St. Louis with inmates' relatives, including Terry. She
provided them with her daughter's letters and medical records. CMS won its
first Missouri contract in 1992 under then Gov. John Ashcroft, who now as U.S.
attorney general heads up the Justice Department. Yet, in a move rarely
seen by the Justice Department, Missouri's prison system has denied the
investigators the access they want. The investigators have wanted to see the
infirmary and talk to prisoners and staff at the prison, about 70 miles
northwest of St. Louis. Prison officials wouldn't allow it, instead telling
federal investigators they could talk to prisoners only in the visitation area
during normal visiting hours. That kind of restriction to a prison setting
is rare, happening only a handful of times in the Justice Department's 23 years
of work using the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. The act
was passed by Congress in 1980. It empowers the attorney general to investigate
the conditions at these institutions and file lawsuits to remedy "a pattern
or practice" of unlawful conditions. A spokesman for the Justice
Department declined to comment. Tim Kniest, spokesman for the Missouri
Department of Corrections, said investigators weren't permitted to "walk
around unescorted" because of safety concerns. Kniest said that, if the
investigators make arrangements with the Missouri attorney general's office,
they can have a tour. The investigators work with the Special Litigation
Section of the Civil Rights Division. That section's job is to protect
constitutional rights of people confined to institutions such as state-run
nursing homes and prisons. $80 million a year Correctional Medical
Services is the nation's largest prison health care provider. It has contracts
to provide medical care for about 228,000 inmates and prisoners in 27 states.
In Missouri, CMS' current five-year contract, renewed in late 2001, covers
medical and mental health care for the 29,500 prisoners in Missouri's 21
prisons. The cost to the state is about $80 million a year. It is based on a
fixed per-day price (now at $7.50) for each housed inmate. That cost pays for
everything from Band-Aids and aspirin to inmates' prescriptions and catastrophic
health care. There are about 1,700 female prisoners in the Vandalia
prison. There are women prisoners in Chillicothe, but the federal investigators
have not visited that prison. CMS has been the subject of controversy in
recent years. A five-month investigation by the Post-Dispatch in 1998 found more
than 20 cases nationwide in which prison and jail inmates died as a result of
alleged negligence, indifference, understaffing, inadequate training or cost
cutting by private health care companies. Many of the cases involved CMS.
(STL Today)
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