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Posted on All Posts, Inmate Healthcare

Florida plans to rebid and revamp troubled prison medical contracts

Florida’s newly-minted corrections chief Julie Jones has announced that her department will rebid $1.4 billion worth of private contracts to provide healthcare to approximately 100,000 inmates across the state.

The majority of those contracts are held by the nation’s largest and most controversial prison medical provider, Corizon Health Services. Another private provider, Wexford Health Sources, will have its contracts put up for bidding as well. Under those agreements, Florida was to pay Corizon $229 million per year until June, 2018 and Wexford $48 million per year until December, 2017.

Corizon and Wexford were fined $22,500 by the state at the end of January for providing ‘deficient care’ to its prisoners. Shortly thereafter, Jones threatened to cut ties with both contractors unless they negotiated a new deal “with an eye to enhancing prescription drug delivery, mental health services and nursing care [including] requiring more registered nurses to be on hand rather than less-skilled staffers.” Apparently those demands could not be met.

The Florida Department of Correction notes that rebidding the contracts will cause healthcare spending in prisons to increase. Considering these companies have been known to engage in cruel profit-maximizing strategies (such as hiring and underpaying too-few and often underqualified staff or changing / denying inmates’ prescriptions) this was somewhat inevitable without further-compromising inmate healthcare.

Some of these problems were baked right into the contracts themselves; for instance, Corizon agreed to the ridiculous term that its services would cost the state “7% less [to provide care] than what it cost in 2010,” despite a growing prison population and rapidly increasing healthcare costs. As a result, incarcerated people in Florida and their families and loved ones have greatly suffered: Continue reading →

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Virginia woman dies in custody after being tasered, placed in restraints and anti-spit hood

On February 3rd, a 5’3″, 130 pound Virginia woman was killed after six deputies tased her before locking her in restraints with an anti-spitting hood over her head. Natasha McKenna, who was 37 years old and suffered from schizophrenia from a young age, went into cardiac arrest before ever leaving the jail and later died at the hospital.

McKenna called 911 on January 25th to report she had been assaulted. After she was taken to the hospital for an examination, police realized they had a warrant for her arrest stemming from an alleged assault against a an officer. Ten days earlier, at a Hertz car rental agency, employees had noticed McKenna was “being disruptive and acting strangely.” After she assaulted an officer, police secured an involuntary detention order against her and she was held at a local Inova hospital for treatment. She was eventually released.

With the warrant in one hand and McKenna in the other, Alexandria police took her to jail on the 26th. McKenna remained in that jail for the next several days waiting to be transferred. Her condition deteriorated rapidly. By February 3rd, when six sheriff’s deputies lined up outside her cell in body armor, McKenna resisted and a struggle ensued. It was then she was tasered and would eventually die.

The Alexandria City Police Department released details on its investigation of the incident yesterday, but there are several important questions left unanswered. Continue reading →

Posted on All Posts, Juvenile Detention

Montana legislature debuts bill prohibiting solitary confinement for minors, seriously mentally ill

A bill introduced in the Montana House of Representatives this week would curb the use of isolation in state prisons. The Montana Solitary Confinement Reform Act (or House Bill 490) was introduced by Democrat Jenny Eck and would ban solitary confinement for people under the age of 18 and those with severe mental illness. It would also introduce due process and appeal measures for inmates facing solitary and require weekly mental health evaluations for isolated inmates.

Over much of the past decade, prisoners in Montana have endured anguish and abuse in the state’s isolation units. In 2012, Montana reached a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the case of a mentally ill juvenile detainee named Raistlen Katka. Katka was placed in solitary confinement for damaging prison property when he was just 17. The lawsuit stated he was “so traumatized by his deplorable treatment in the Montana State Prison that he twice attempted to kill himself by biting through the skin on his wrist to puncture a vein.” Katka later explained to a judge, “My thought process was if I don’t die, at least I’ll get out of my cell for 30 seconds.”

In the Katka settlement, Montana agreed to limit the amount of time young prisoners could spend in solitary confinement to 72 hours without additional approval. The state agreed to improve its treatment of mentally ill inmates in isolation as well.

But the situation had hardly improved one year after Katka. In a letter sent to Montana state officials, the ACLU and Disability Rights Montana (DRM) detailed the findings of a December 2013 investigation into the conditions facing mentally ill inmates in solitary, where they found that medication was routinely withheld from inmates and some were deliberately left undiagnosed by medical staff. They discovered mentally ill prisoners were being locked in isolation for extended periods of time — sometimes for a full 24 hours without exercise. Many of them were still deprived of basic necessities like proper food, clothing, bedding and human contact.

By April 2014, DRM announced it was suing Montana for the “cruel and unusual punishment” of its mentally ill prisoners, arguing their treatment violated the Constitution.

If this year’s HB490 is enacted, Montana state prisons would be required to put safeguards in place to stem this seemingly-uninhibited flow of inmates into its isolation units. Continue reading →

Posted on All Posts, Inmate Healthcare

Former Corizon doctor accused of molesting scores of prisoners served with two new lawsuits

With the filing of two new lawsuits in New Mexico this week, Dr. Mark E. Walden stands accused of sexually assaulting scores of prisoners while working for inmate healthcare contractor Corizon Health Services inside two different GEO Group for-profit prisons in the state.

Filed on February 13th and 16th, the lawsuits are the sixth and seventh to be brought against Dr. Walden in the past three years, and raise the total number of Walden’s alleged victims to around 50.

Walden is accused of fondling prisoners’ genitals and conducting superfluous, aggressive rectal exams for ailments like tooth aches and toe fungus. Walden has denied any and all wrongdoing, and Corizon and GEO Group have so far refused to speak with the press on these matters.

The two most recent lawsuits represent a total of seven inmates, and name Walden, Corizon, GEO Group and New Mexico prison and healthcare officials as defendants. Plaintiffs have filed under their initials to avoid harassment and retaliation.

According to one lawsuit, Walden used a screen to keep other staff from looking in and seeing what he was doing. A plaintiff known only as “S.W.” claims he was digitally penetrated by Walden on three separate occasions. When S.W. asked why Walden was conducting these exams, the doctor responded that he was “milking his prostate” and made other nonsensical medical claims. Continue reading →

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Report: Incarcerated people more likely to suffer from chronic illness and infectious disease than public

The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics released a new report (PDF) this month on the health of incarcerated people in state and federal lock-ups from 2011-12. The study focused on both prisoners (i.e. people serving longer sentences) and jail inmates (i.e. people awaiting trial or serving shorter sentences), and found they were not only more likely to have had chronic medical conditions and/or infectious disease than the general population, but were also often denied prescription medication after admission. The report also mentions that incarcerated women and prisoners over 50 suffered at disproportionately higher rates from chronic and infectious medical conditions than the rest of the population.

Over 40% of prisoners and inmates surveyed by the bureau reported current, chronic medical conditions, defined as “noninfectious medical problems, such as cancer, high blood pressure, stroke-related problems, diabetes, heart-related problems, kidney-related problems, arthritis, asthma and cirrhosis of the liver.” Specifically, prisoners and jail inmates were 1.5 and 2 times more likely to report high blood pressure, diabetes or asthma than the general public (respectively) and their rate of diabetes and high blood pressure had nearly doubled from 2004. Around 24% said they had more than one chronic condition.

Additionally, about 21% of prisoners and 14% of jail inmates reported “ever having tuberculosis, hepatitis, or other STDs excluding HIV or AIDS, compared to 5% of the general population.” The bureau found that, across the board, incarcerated people were more likely to have had an infectious disease at some point in their life than others.

The bureau also found that 36% of prisoners stopped taking their prescribed medications upon incarceration because a doctor “did not think medication was necessary or that the facility would not provide the medication.” Continue reading →

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New wrongful death lawsuit raises more questions about coming Rikers Island reforms

On February 11th, the Associated Press reported that the mother of deceased Rikers Island inmate Quannell Offley was suing New York City for her son’s wrongful death. The lawsuit is one of many facing the city over Rikers Island and comes after months of reports detailing abuse and neglect by the city’s prison staff.

According to the lawsuit, Offley told prison guards on multiple occasions that he wanted to kill himself after being placed in solitary confinement. His final threat was met by a guard who said, “If you have the balls, go ahead and do it.” He was later found hanging from a bed sheet attached to an air vent in his cell.

Offley’s suicide came just a few weeks after Bradley Ballard, a schizophrenic and diabetic prisoner, also died in a solitary unit at Rikers. Ballard was locked in isolation for 7 days straight without water, exercise, shower, therapy or medication, and was eventually found unconscious on the floor, covered in feces and urine with a rubber band tied tightly around his badly-infected penis. When clinical staff finally arrived, just moments before Ballard’s death, the doctor refused to even touch him or enter his cell. In what would be the last of several severe violations of Ballard’s civil rights, the doctor instructed inmate workers to wrap his filthy, dying body in a bed sheet and remove him.

According to the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations, “A qualified medical practitioner […] is required to visit the SHU once in every 24-hour period to examine into the state of health of the inmates confined in such unit.” But security camera footage of the SHU where Ballard was confined showed medical staff skipping rounds or speaking with prisoners for little more than a minute at a time. Having been in isolation around the same time as Ballard at Rikers, Offley appears to have experienced similar neglect by medical staff in the unit. Continue reading →

9,983 Comments Posted on All Posts, Privatization

Ohio quietly recommends new contract with troubled private food contractor Aramark

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) has recommended the state sign a new two-year contract with the for-profit food vendor, Aramark. The ODRC did not announce the recommendation, which was actually completed last year. The Associated Press got wind of it only after “a records request said the prisons department was satisfied with Aramark’s performance and wanted to renew despite issues with the contract.”

Those “issues” refer to the long list of offenses and contract violations, including food shortages, contaminated food supplies and ‘improper relations’ between employees and inmates, for which Ohio fined Aramark $272,000 last year. Since then, Ohio prison officials say Aramark’s service has improved.

There are scant details on why the ODRC thinks Aramark is fit to continue serving Ohio prisons. According to the Sandusky Register, the evaluation form the AP obtained was little more than a series of check boxes, yes/no answers and standardized questions, “not a detailed analysis.” But one thing the evaluation did show was that state officials were impressed that Aramark’s cost-per-prisoner was similar to that of Indiana and Michigan, where they also have contracts.

The comparison to Michigan, in particular, is interesting because things are not exactly going smoothly there with regards to the state’s contract with Aramark. Continue reading →