Author: Brian Sonenstein

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CCA Settles Overtime Lawsuit in Kentucky; Pays $260,000 to Shift Supervisors

Before we begin, let me say I love Prison Legal News. They have excellent news reporting AND tireless, intelligent activism that undermines the secrecy surrounding the prison industrial complex.

You can imagine my delight when I came across this report that PLN got a US District judge to unseal a $260,000 settlement between CCA and a group of shift supervisors in Kentucky who were denied overtime, arguing it was in the public interest.

The details are as follows:

Corrections Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tennessee, paid the money in November to end a lawsuit brought by 25 employees of the now-shuttered Marion Adjustment Center in St. Mary’s, Kentucky. The former employees took $129,000 of the settlement. Plaintiff’s attorneys received $131,000.

The group claimed in a 2012 lawsuit that CCA denied them overtime after forcing them to work extra hours. CCA has denied the allegations.

Of the 25 people receiving payouts from the settlement, two got $10,300 checks, one got $10,800 and the rest amounts ranging from $1,200 to $9,100. As part of the settlement, CCA denied any wrongdoing.

The report also goes on to say that “Kentucky officials estimated the state saved $1.5 million to $2.5 million per year by not renewing the contract,” which is a powerful strike against the oft-repeated argument that prison privatization saves states money.

What’s most important here is we have evidence of a legal challenge against CCA that substantiates other reports of understaffing/overworking at private facilities. Forcing fewer staff to work longer hours without paying them overtime is one of the ways for-profit prisons cut costs and maximize profits, but the consequences are often high levels violence, inadequate food and health services, and squalid living conditions for inmates.

We also now have another instance on the record where a US District judge has agreed to unseal a private prison’s settlement in the public interest, which should help other journalists and advocates do the same.

While these issues may continue to plague staff and inmates, the unsealing of this settlement constitutes a significant chip in the armor of secrecy that surrounds private prisons.

1 Comment Posted on All Posts, Immigrant Detention, Privatization

Did CCA Try to Cover Up the Inmate Protest at Youngstown’s Private Prison?

Update: WYTV reports “State Representative Bob Hagan said he is calling for a full review of the facility by the Ohio Corrections Institute Inspection Committee after he was denied access Wednesday to the prison to meet with inmates to hear their grievances.”

When I first read that CCA’s private prison in Youngstown, Ohio was on lockdown last night, the few news outlets that reported the story had specifically deemed the situation there a ‘riot.’ I chose WYTV’s report, though, because it contained one interesting detail: the family of one of the prisoners had been told they were refusing to return to their cells to protest poor food quality and mistreatment by guards at the facility.

Today we have confirmation from Ohio State Representative Robert Hagan that what happened at the Northeast Ohio Correction Center (NEOCC) yesterday was, in fact, not a riot. It was an act of resistance, and it ended overnight with prisoners peacefully returning to their cells.

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The Weak Pursuit of Accountability for Rikers Island’s ‘Culture of Brutality’

The New York Times’ reporting work on Rikers Island is starting to make some government officials squirm. But at the end of the day, emerging punishments and accountability measures seem to fall painfully short of addressing the devolving health and safety situation there.

The Times first covered the rise in assaults on civilian employees working at the facility back in May, and then followed up in July with a brutal portrayal of life for its prisoners.

Now the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced that it will fine private prison healthcare provider Corizon Health Services, Inc. $75,000 — “the highest level of censure by the federal Labor Department […] for failing to protect employees from violence at the jail complex.”

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2 Comments Posted on All Posts, Immigrant Detention, Privatization

CCA’s Private Immigrant Prison in Ohio on Lockdown After Protests Over Prison Conditions

There was a prisoner protest at CCA’s private immigrant prison in Youngstown, Ohio today. WYTV reports that, “a woman who identified herself as the aunt of an inmate at the prison told WKBN that her nephew and fellow inmates were protesting the prison’s food and the way the guards treat them.”

NEOCC is on lock-down and there are “Between 20 and 30 prisoners […] in the recreation area and the Warden is talking with them to try and end the situation.”

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Maggots Are The Only Ones Eating Well at Prisons Served By Aramark

The Columbus Dispatch reported yesterday that maggots were found in prisoners’ food once again at the Ohio Reformatory for Women at Marysville during a pre-meal inspection. Last week, 1,000 prisoners at the facility dumped their meals to protest the abysmal quality of food provided by the private contractor Aramark.

Corrections departments in Michigan and Ohio have fined Aramark approximately $570,000 this year  for unsanitary food conditions and supply shortages at multiple prisons. There have been 9 documented cases of maggot-ridden food in Ohio alone, and Aramark is facing similar complaints in other states like Florida, New Jersey, California and Kentucky.

Thanks can be paid, in part or whole, to Governor John Kasich, who has cut 2,318 unionized corrections jobs (including food service workers) in the past three years in favor of a privatization scheme. Aramark’s contract has saved the state $13.3 million so far.

At the end of July, Aramark was given an ultimatum that they could lose their contract if they didn’t rectify the situation. The company has been allowed to continue serving prisoners despite multiple new discoveries of fly larvae in their food and the health risks that involves. The governor is reluctant to cancel the contract because $13.3 million is apparently worth more to the state than feeding its prisoners.

Aramark is not saving the state money because it is an exceptionally efficient manager of prisoners’ food. They are spending just $3.61 a day to feed each prisoner — just over $1 a meal. Prisoners are losing as much as 20 pounds when Aramark is in the kitchen. Ohio is saving money by starving prisoners.

Aramark’s $110 million, 2-year contract to serve Ohio prisons is just one of many the company has with thousands of other prisons, colleges, universities, schools, office buildings, sports arenas and more. They even own the popular online food ordering service Seamless.com.

Is $272,000 in fines really big enough of a penalty to make them change, or is it merely an internalized ‘cost of doing business?’ Even $570k does not seem like it will do much injury to the company. It’s just a bit larger than the CEO’s signing bonus.

If it’s too expensive to feed all of the prisoners a proper meal, maybe we have too many people behind bars.

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Another Mentally Ill Inmate Dies in Restraint Chair, Sparking Lawsuit

On Wednesday, the Tri-City Herald reported that Franklin County, Washington is being sued for allegedly ‘inhumane and barbaric practices’ that have put mentally ill inmates in harms way.

The suit is being brought by Columbia Legal Services, a Seattle-based legal aid organization that is working on behalf of mistreated inmates at Franklin County Jail. Lawyers allege that Franklin County is one of the worst jails in the country. The mental health needs of inmates are ignored and they are instead “chained to a fence for days, pepper-sprayed without reason, left unsupervised in restraint chairs and forced into isolation.”

One story involved a man who bit off two of his fingers while chained to a fence in the booking area. After he came back from the hospital, they chained him to the fence again. The suit also accuses the jail of “placing inmates in isolation to live in ‘degrading and deplorable’ conditions; forcing inmates to sleep on concrete floors without blankets for extended periods of time; pepper-spraying inmates, then providing no medical attention or way to clean up; unconstitutionally locking inmates down for 23 hours a day; denying inmates access to family visits, phone calls and outdoor activities.”

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2 Comments Posted on All Posts, Immigrant Detention, Privatization

Study Finds Hispanics Disproportionately Incarcerated in Private Prisons

A new study out of Oregon State University found that hispanics are disproportionately incarcerated at state and federal private prisons. And that’s not counting federal facilities contracted to house immigrant prisoners.

The combined population of hispanic and african american inmates in private prisons was also found to be 4% higher than that of public institutions, which researchers called ‘significant.’

They were, however, unable to confirm the source of this racial disparity, but speculated that “private firms may prefer healthier inmates, which tend to be young, non-white inmates; or the assignments may be tied to prisoners’ gang affiliations.”

However:

The disparity in prison placement is not linked to higher overall incarceration rates of Hispanics. It appears to stem from the process in which inmates are assigned to a correctional facility, Burkhardt said. How those decisions are made is unclear; they typically are handled by prison administrators. The research indicates there is a racial pattern to inmate assignment at correctional facilities, which also could raise legal concerns for corrections officials, he said.

I’ll throw my own speculation into the mix: governments under contract to meet occupancy quotas may prefer to send private prisons inmates with longer sentences to avoid having to deal with turnover. Even if you don’t factor for their rate of incarceration, hispanics and african americans still serve prison terms 4-5 months longer than whites on average.

Whatever you do, just don’t tell any of this to white people. A different, also-depressing study from Stanford found that if you’re white and, let’s say, reading posts like this one on racial disparities in incarceration, you might not be moved to support reform. In fact, if you’re white, this information might actually bolster your support for the policies that create such disparity in the first place.